States Seek to Leverage Assistance

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IF YOU'RE driving down a narrow dirt road and find a 500-pound boulder blocking your path, you're probably not going to hop out of the car and roll it out of the way. You need leverage. So you might find a small rock to use as a fulcrum and a strong branch to use as the lever. If the fulcrum wobbles or the branch is too short, you won't get the mechanical advantage you need. But with a stable fulcrum and long enough branch, you'll easily lift that 500-pound boulder. Ta-da! Job well done. So now picture your state's chief state school officer or the state board of education meeting up with a far more pressing challenge: how best to leverage assistance to the schools that need varying degrees of improvement. Most states already have the fulcrum, that is, the authority to act. Do they use district leadership as the lever? Do they use building leaders? Do they use regional entities? My guess is that state departments of education across the nation are looking for an assortment of levers that can be used to help one, then two, then 20 schools improve the learning of their students. The following are examples of recent state attempts to put together a tool kit of levers. The planning lever. Illinois S.B. 2829 (passed in 2006) established a peer review process for evaluating school improvement plans. Parents and outside experts must be involved in developing the plans. Florida H.B. 7087 (2006) requires local boards to annually approve improvement plans. Beginning with plans approved for implementation in the 2007-08 school year, each secondary school plan must include a redesign component based on the principles established in the High School Redesign Act (e.g., strongest teachers for struggling students, applied/integrated coursework, intensive interventions). At a minimum, school improvement plans are required to include professional development, continuous use of disaggregated student achievement data, ongoing informal and formal assessments to monitor individual student progress, and alternative instructional delivery methods to support remediation, acceleration, and enrichment strategies. The triage lever. New Jersey A.B. 3676 established a Performance Continuum. School status is reevaluated every three years and goes as far as full state intervention but also allows for partial state intervention. State leaders may order budget changes, and if the position is vacant, may appoint a new superintendent. They also may appoint a highly skilled professional for direct oversight and may add three members to the board of education. The local lever. The Virginia standards for accreditation require that low-performing schools or districts be given a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) written by the school board. The MOU may ask a school to use the services of a turnaround specialist (one of Virginia's major levers) and makes it clear that the local board may reconstitute or close a school. (For more details on the turnaround specialist, see the following lever.) The building-level leadership lever. For several years, Virginia has had a program in place to develop a cadre of principals who specialize in turning around chronically troubled schools. Training is to reflect a focus on business and education strategies that have proved effective in turning around low-performing organizations. Each specialist serves under contract as the principal of a low-performing school for a minimum of three years. Specialists are eligible for such incentives as additional retirement benefits or deferred compensation. Arkansas has a similar program. The state board in Georgia has instituted an Academic Coach Program. The coaches are to work with principals to develop a focus plan that includes a monthly account of the work of the coach as well as benchmarks for the program implementation. Eligible recipients (public school districts and public middle and high schools) may apply for funds, but grants are not automatic. …