What's involved?

Creating i2 Clusters is in some respects straightforward; no aspect of the work is currently unfamiliar to districts. Rather, it is a reorganization and concentration of work for greater effectiveness. In other respects, however, the proposed change is very ambitious because many stakeholders will need to be heard and engaged. SERP will work with potential partner districts on the steps required to explore, prepare for, and launch an i2 Cluster. A set of steps are detailed below, along with the rationale for each.

Steps for Collaborative Planning

STEP 1:

Work with the community to explain Innovation and Induction Clusters, and build support for their mission.

Communities are highly invested in their schools, and a proposal for change may meet with skepticism. i2 Cluster schools will provide new opportunities for students, just as teaching hospitals provide an opportunity for cutting-edge medical treatment. Many people seek out teaching hospitals for this reason, but not all people see them as an advantage. We expect similar variation in the reaction of families to the i2 Cluster proposal. Families and other members of the community must have the opportunity to understand the purpose of Cluster schools and the opportunities and commitments entailed in sending a child to a Cluster school. Community voices should be carefully considered in the decision regarding specific school selection.

How Step 1 helps:

It is often schools in the most affluent areas of a school district that provide students with opportunities for rich learning experiences. A decision to locate the Cluster in an underserved community will ensure that the investment works toward greater equity. But there are very good historical reasons for those in more disadvantaged neighborhoods to be suspicious of a new initiative that targets their schools. By spending the time to explain the purpose of Cluster schools and to listen carefully to the concerns of parents and other community members, the foundation for a positive and supportive relationship with the community will be laid. By avoiding the inclusion of schools located in communities that object to the idea of Cluster schools, the chance for success will increase.

STEP 2:

Structure Cluster leadership for successful operation within the district.

Recruit a district leader who would be a member of the district cabinet to lead the i2 Cluster. S/he would need to have close working relationships with the district’s research office, and would routinely interact with the curriculum and instruction team and the highest levels of school and district leadership. The relationships will facilitate the flow of new knowledge, tools, and practices from the Cluster to the rest of the district, and ensure that the Cluster is serving the needs of the larger district.

How Step 2 helps:

Many district leaders are genuinely interested in research and improvement. But given the pressing, day-to-day needs of the district, it is costly for them in terms of both time and social capital to support a research and development agenda. District leaders have only limited opportunities to influence what happens in schools; in many cases, they cannot actively support research efforts without compromising other urgent priorities. By implementing these efforts in schools that are staffed specifically for this purpose, the challenge for district leaders is substantially reduced.

New instructional programs or practices, even when they are supported by high quality research, can be undermined by implementation challenges. For example, a new reading intervention may be excellent when paired with high-quality diagnostic assessments, but it may be unusable without good data to determine who needs the intervention. And even after the appropriate students are identified as needing the differentiated form of instruction, the inability to control critical features of the school schedule may undermine success. Anything new carries risks that leave district leaders open for public criticism, and effective innovations can be blocked for fear of negative backlash. By introducing new programs and practices in the i2 Cluster, implementation challenges can be addressed in a contained and supported environment before attempts to scale to the entire district are undertaken.

STEP 3:

School Board and Teachers’ Union are brought in as partners.

The presentation to the School Board would emphasize the opportunity to address the needs of students in the most underserved neighborhoods, while simultaneously supporting improvement in all schools through the outflow of well-inducted teachers plus the sharing of new programs and practices that are both research-based and reality-checked.

How Step 3 helps:

School boards should have little cause to object to the proposal; board members may be proud to have their city be on the cutting edge of education improvement and a model for the state and the nation.

Unions can be honestly approached with the argument that the Cluster provides the district’s new teachers with the support they need. It also provides an opportunity for expert teachers to have a professional ladder with higher pay that is not solely based on their being evaluated as superior to their colleagues, but rather on their more expansive mentor and research collaborator role. It can also allow the union to actively support learning about what makes for good teaching, without a requirement that all teachers’ data be turned over for analysis.

STEP 4:

The Cluster schools are chosen, with clear messaging about their unique role.

Experienced teachers and administrators would be recruited for jobs that pay a premium, and families would be given the option of choosing these schools with the understanding that they are sites for research on the improvement of teaching and learning, and mentoring of new teachers.

New teachers would be placed in the Cluster schools.

How Step 4 helps:

- Well-planned induction, particularly over a two-year period, has a substantial impact on retention.

- Parents who are unhappy with their children being included in research studies can opt out of placement in Cluster schools.

- The concentration of master teachers and the additional pay create conditions for attracting some of the talented teachers who generally leave these schools and neighborhoods at first opportunity.

- A professional structure is created in which excellent teachers can advance to a more responsible and higher-paid position that leverages their teaching expertise (rather than moving into an administrative position).

- New teachers have well trained master teachers as their first mentors.

STEP 5:

A designated longitudinal data analysis team is established for the Cluster.

The potential of research to reveal critical underlying phenomena that play out over the course of students’ K-12 experience, as well as over the course of a teachers’ professional experience, would be substantially expanded.

The promise of reliable data collection would allow for recruitment of a team of university researchers with experience and demonstrated excellence in longitudinal data analysis.

How Step 5 helps:

Data agreements would become routine, rather than requiring a major effort on both sides (district and university).

Following students across many years, with good records of their experiences as they move through the system, would allow for analyses that are far superior to what is common today.

An investment in data security and encryption that guarantees the highest level of security for all involved makes far more sense when the analyses are many and ongoing, rather than being a one-time event.

STEP 6:

An unpaid, standing panel that includes researchers, district leaders, a school board member, family and student representatives, union representatives, and other highly respected members of the local community is convened to establish priorities and provide guidance. The panel would give legitimacy to the choices that need to be made regarding research foci, and help to steer the work over time.

STEP 7:

A program of work (design, implementation, study) is launched on high-leverage problems that will have broad applicability and impact.

Examples of high-leverage problems:

How can principals establish and support effective professional learning communities in their schools?
How can teachers, particularly new teachers, be supported to infuse productive classroom discourse into their routine instruction?
How can the classroom management challenges that undermine teachers’ success be addressed early and effectively?
How can a supportive culture of productive struggle be established early and permeate the schooling experience?
What structures and processes can support teachers’ routine use of data to inform their interaction with individual students and with classes of students?

How Step 7 helps:

The failure to solve high-leverage problems can lead to ineffective work on other problems that are seen as more pressing. For example, we know from extensive research that teachers’ learning and improvement in practice is best accomplished through interaction with colleagues and observations of each other’s classes. The introduction of a very promising instructional approach may fail not because the approach is flawed, but because the opportunity for teachers to learn together to become successful with the program was not present. We know that preparing principals to structure and prioritize professional learning opportunities for their teachers can greatly facilitate all other efforts at instructional improvement. Tackling these types of high-leverage problems early on can get the Cluster schools off to a strong start.

STEP 8:

Attention is focused on scaling new practices and programs to other schools in the district, and to other districts.

Newly inducted teachers would be placed elsewhere in the district. Continued study of their experiences would help to improve future i2 Cluster induction processes.

SERP would bear responsibility for carrying the work of the Cluster schools to the network of all i2 Clusters so that the districts may learn from each other. SERP would also spread successful innovations more broadly, making new professional development, pedagogies, and curricula widely accessible outside of the Cluster. Information on what scaled well (traveled to other schools) and what did not would be fed back to the i2 Cluster for future planning.