5 Steps to Design Schools That Work for All Children

Manley and Hawkins are the authors of the new AASA book Designing School Systems for All Students: A Toolbox To Fix America's Schools. AASA members save 20% on the book using promotion code AASA20.

The changing demographics of the 21^st century American family present many challenges for school leaders. Under federal and state requirements, children, no matter their background or individual needs, must meet performance standards or risk failing to graduate high school. School leaders must decide how to meet the diverse needs of their children. They must overcome any and all obstacles that prevent them from designing schools where teachers, staff, parents and, most importantly, students are successful.

In this article, we outline a basic framework to improve America’s schools. School improvement begins with a clear, collaboratively developed vision that depicts the academic, social and emotional future that the entire school community desires (Senge et al., 2000). Effective leaders, then, align all activities, processes and policies with the vision that their guiding ideas frame. We offer five steps to a school design that works for all students.

1. Establish Guiding Ideas and Operating Principles

Guiding ideas are the conceptual framework upon which a vision is based. They become operational when placed into an “if-then” framework.

Assume that your vision includes the guiding idea that “All children can learn.” Learn what? When? How? The guiding idea comes to life when you create operating principles. If we believe that “All Children Can Learn,” then “they must be strong readers.” Now, start examining the implications of this operating principle on all organization domains (curriculum, teaching, supervision and staff development). Putting your guiding ideas into action creates the dynamic tension inside schools that initiates change and new achievements.

2. Establish Explicit Evidence of Success

It is easy to agree that “all children can learn.” Effective organizations also define what, when and how children will show evidence of their learning. \

In our example of a district with a vision of “all children can learn,” the district has chosen to define learning through the domain of reading instruction. What evidence represents “strong readers”? We selected, “All children will achieve mastery levels of performance on all local/state/national reading assessments by the end of third grade.”

Explicit evidence of success allows your school to hold itself to a meaningful standard of accountability. Throughout each primary grade (K-3), based upon clear evidence and multiple and frequent benchmarks, students receive differentiated instruction to ensure success.

3. Design Curriculum Aligned With the Guiding Idea

We have chosen an instructional goal to have all children reading grade-level materials with comprehension by third grade. Curriculum, now, must be designed that aligns to this goal. Obviously, the curriculum must be guaranteed and viable; developmentally appropriate; rigorous; and, attendant to pacing, process and content.

Curriculum must provide teachers with their instructional goals and express explicitly what their students are expected to do as a result of instruction. If leaders and teachers learn and apply the wisdom inherent in Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom & Krathwohl, 1956) and Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design (Wiggins, 2005), they will have greater capacity to improve learning for all children. Creative brainstorming among grade-level teachers often produces a hierarchical engagement of students in learning activities that involve multiple cognitive and dispositional levels.

4. Create Professional Development That Aligns With Guiding Idea

Professional development is essential to the fulfillment of any guiding idea. All too often, leaders design new initiatives without adequately creating sensible opportunities for teachers to develop the capacity for success.

Effective professional development specifically expands teachers’ capacity to fulfill the guiding idea. Designs vary from district to district based upon the unique capacity and needs of every staff, yet there are some central themes we can discuss.

Teachers who use student performance expectations to guide instruction need an immediate yardstick to measure progress and modify instruction. They must be taught how to evaluate data and as they watch their students perform a variety of activities, they should relate their observations of student performance to the taxonomy of learning (Manley & Hawkins, 2009). They must be taught how to develop the capacity to adjust time and strategies to ensure all students master the required learning.

Given our emphasis on all students, teachers must master how to differentiate instruction based on the feedback they receive from children as they witness their behaviors, struggles and achievements.

5. Supervise to the Guiding Ideas

Leaders cannot supervise with a traditional paradigm and also encourage their faculty and staff to take risks and grow within a new paradigm. Effective leaders are cognizant of the demands that change places upon their faculty. They supervise using a more collaborative, growth-centered model that aligns with their guiding idea.

Leaders in a growth centered enterprise lead with inquiry. Inquiry, in the hands of skilled leaders, encourages communication, builds trust, promotes collegiality and keeps the guiding idea prominent within the school culture.

A conversation using inquiry promotes self-reflection, reveals the teachers’ and leaders’ thought processes and their mental models, and allows for insight into potential refinements of teachers’ and administrators’ practices.

America’s schools can be designed so that diverse students from various

cultures and environments succeed well beyond what we currently imagine. In too many schools, leaders lack the vision and the will to improve. By focusing on the systems we need in schools, we can design schools in America that work for all students.

References

Bloom, B. S., & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomyof educational objectives: The classification of educational goals, by a committee of college and university examiners. Handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York: Longmans.

Manley, R. J., & Hawkins, R. J. (2009). Designing School Systems for All Students: A Toolbox To Fix America's Schools. Lanham, MD Rowman and Littlefield. (In press).

Senge, P., Cambron-McCabe, N., Lucas, T., Smith, B., Dutton, J., & Kleiner, A. (2000). Schools That Learn - A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design. (2005). Understanding by Design (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall.

Rich Hawkins is a consultant for systemic change and adjunct associate professor of educational administration at Dowling College and Bob Manley is professor of educational administration at Dowling College.