Five Strategies for Creating a High-Growth School

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Bobby Moore, who is director of strategic engagement for Battelle for Kids, and we are here to talk today about a new white paper that Battelle for Kids has published called Five Strategies for for creating a high-growth school.

[00:33] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:35] SPEAKER_01:

Bobby, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Great.

[00:37] SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Justin. Excited to be here.

[00:38] SPEAKER_01:

Well, tell us a little bit about where these strategies came from. I know Battelle works with school systems and with districts and does a lot of work kind of behind the scenes. You're not the kind of organization that teachers and principals are uh necessarily familiar with on the on the front lines on a day-to-day basis but if we look at the the systems level and we look at the the research and we look at the kind of behind the scenes big picture work that's being done i know your your reach is is quite extensive there and i wonder if you could tell us kind of the the process of identifying these strategies for high growth schools

[01:17] SPEAKER_02:

Great, thanks. And first, just a little recap. Battelle for Kids is a not-for-profit organization. As Justin says, we do work across the country. We're in 30 states and work quite a bit with state departments of education. We were Tennessee's number one Race the Top partner when they received the $460 million funding from the Race the Top grant.

[01:37]

We've also been Ohio Department of Education's Race the Top partner. We're statewide in Georgia with formative instructional practice learning modules. And our whole tagline is we want to empower teachers, develop leaders, and help create high-performing school systems. And one of the great projects that I get to work on is a collaborative that we call SOAR. And SOAR is a collaborative of 100 rural, urban, and suburban districts. And during the year, we bring principals, superintendents, and teacher leaders together.

[02:07]

do problem solving. We have design labs. We allow them to collaborate and share their best practices. And again, it's a learning lab, kind of a think tank for us that we can learn from others. But it's also an opportunity for us to accelerate what's working best in our schools and push out information across the rest of the state and across the country.

[02:24] SPEAKER_01:

That's fantastic. So you can very quickly identify what's working well, what's working now by hearing directly from people who are implementing it.

[02:32] SPEAKER_02:

Yes. And again, it's not only just a research lab, it's also an opportunity for people to continue to collaborate and share among themselves so they can constantly make themselves better too. And Ohio is like a lot of other states across the country where we've had value-added data for several years, more specifically around the areas of reading and math. So for the last several years, we wanted to identify who were the highest performing buildings and districts in the state of Ohio in terms of getting more than a year's growth in reading and math. And we wanted to really study those practices, interview principals, teachers, superintendents, and district leaders. What was really the secret sauce in making those things happen?

[03:11] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Well, let's get right into it then. What are some of the five key strategies that you found in place in the high-performing schools that you identified?

[03:21] SPEAKER_02:

Well, interestingly, they're not going to be really a surprise to anybody that reads the literature on school improvement and that's a real avid researcher and someone that just loves to put their hands on a lot of great articles. Just say iPads. other buildings and districts is their ability to implement with fidelity. And the first one, number one, is that laser-like focus on student learning. So the districts and building leaders that we talk to, they've had that Jim Collins hedgehog concept down to perfection. even though there's been a lot of reform happening across Ohio and even across the country, they've kept a laser-like focus on what really works in their building and measuring the impact of what works and replicating that as much as possible.

[04:09]

And there's been a lot thrown at teachers and principals across the country in the last four or five years, and these districts, you know, they remain compliant with whatever the State Department of Education said they need to do, but they, more importantly, they remain committed to the practices that they knew that would accelerate student learning.

[04:25] SPEAKER_01:

Well, and when you say fidelity to practices, are those practices that have been validated elsewhere or validated locally and are being replicated locally for the most part?

[04:36] SPEAKER_02:

That's a great question. In fact, John Hattie, he's kind of sweeping the country right now talking about Know Thy Impact. and our best districts and buildings they know thy impact they constantly look at data in ohio we have an ohio improvement process and other districts have kind of a study do act process and so they're constantly looking at whatever practices that they're doing in their buildings looking at the data and they're replicating what's working and more importantly if it's not working they have the courage to stop doing And you've read Jim Collins' Good to Great book. He said, all great leaders start with a not-to-do list. And that was a practice that we heard a lot from our buildings and districts is that they had to, it's not about adopting new programs and practices. It's about having the courage to stop doing what really doesn't accelerate student learning.

[05:19] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think that's so critical for gaining leverage. If we see reform and improvement efforts in kind of a Pac-Man fashion, that it's our job to kind of run around and munch up as many reform dots as possible in the time that we have, I think we do end up with so much going on, with so many plates spinning, that that strategic focus, that laser-like focus, really can't be a reality unless we do what you said, unless we have a stop-doing list. So let's get into that question of leverage, because I see the second key finding in your white paper is around leveraging time and resources. What are some of the things that you've seen that highly effective, highly impactful schools do differently around time? Because it's a topic that's of great interest to me. I work with principals on their individual time management and productivity.

[06:13]

What do you see schools doing at the organizational level?

[06:16] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I want to thank you, Justin. I've stolen a couple of ideas from you, too, helping me even manage my time better. So I appreciate all the information you're putting out on Twitter. But the leveraging time, talent, and resources is probably, like you, I think one of the areas I was most interested in. and probably an area that many of our principals and district leaders have struggled in, is how do you get more out of your current six or seven hour day? How do you get more out of the limited resources that you have?

[06:40]

And you hear it so often, we've got to do more with less. And what these buildings and districts have done is really thought out of the box and have redesigned the way that they actually think about school. For instance, we know there's a major emphasis on literacy and math across this country. So many of these building leaders, again, they had the courage to realize that maybe not all content areas are created equally. Maybe they were having more math classes or more time in math or more time for reading. We tend to see these high-performing buildings that the classes are actually, especially in K-8, are having 60 to 90 minutes of math versus maybe some other buildings where they're still only getting 45 minutes.

[07:20]

And typically, people immediately jump to the conclusion, well, they're block scheduling. Well, it's not necessarily block scheduling because they're taking in the class the entire year. It's just they're adding instructional time. Another way that they're leveraging time is building schedules with no new instruction periods every day. And the no new instruction period is almost like a timeout from delivering new curriculum and instruction during the day. but it's a time to go back and do some flexible grouping and reteaching to students who may have been struggling, but also in giving some enrichment type activities to kids who have mastered the material in the first place.

[07:55]

In fact, if you're working with value-added growth measures, you realize it's not only important to grow your struggling kids, but you also need to make sure that you're stretching your kids who master content the first time you deliver it. Another thing that we hear from our buildings and districts are how they're using personnel differently. There are more times the school counselors are doing more things around data teams. They're in the classrooms doing some things around college and career readiness. There's multiple pathways we're hearing in our high school buildings now in terms of helping kids think about how they want to be more successful in their college and career. readiness.

[08:30]

Another one is the weekly intervention enrichment time. So when principals are building their schedules, they're very focused on creating two, three, four periods a week that there's additional intervention enrichment times for kids who are struggling. and having time to collaborate for their teachers. In fact, most recently I was down in Mississippi working, doing a leadership academy. And one of the things I asked for our principals to do is actually look at other people's schedules and see whether or not they could identify the principal's priorities by looking at their schedule. And very few could do that.

[09:03]

And that would be my first challenge to any educational leader in the country right now is to take your building schedule and hand it to two or three other people and ask them to look at it and see whether or not they can identify what are your priorities. And if they can't do that, then you've probably built your schedule around beans, balls, and buses. That's lunch, transportation, and athletics.

[09:23] SPEAKER_01:

I love it. I love it. And yeah, I mean, we hear a lot about, you know, being an RTI school or being a PBIS school or being a, you know, differentiated, you know, we have all these different kind of kind of mental categories for the, you know, the efforts that we're making to serve our students more effectively. But yeah, if they don't show up. in the actual calendar if the calendar is only driven by logistical factors and convenience and things like that. And I know it does take a lot of creativity.

[09:52]

I pay attention to Pat Quinn's RTI newsletter and people are constantly asking Pat about how they can make time for intervention. And I think the bottom line that I'm hearing from you is they do it. They figure out what their needs are And they schedule around them. And then they also collect the data, as you said, you know, the know thy impact. And I wonder if we can get into talking a little bit about that data collection, that monitoring, that, you know, paying attention to growth. Because I think one, if I could identify one way that Hattie's work is being kind of misconstrued as it becomes more popular.

[10:32]

I think people hear about a strategy and they hear about an effect size that a particular strategy has. They think, oh, well, this type of strategy or this type of instruction or this type of leadership has such and such effect size. Therefore, I have such and such effect size and I should do this rather than that. But I think the missing piece there is not just knowing our likely impact based on the set of strategies and their their known effect size, but actually measuring our impact and monitoring what we're doing and monitoring the effect that it's having on our actual students.

[11:09] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, those are great comments. And before I get to the Hattie, I'm going to go back to RTI real quickly. When you talk about response to intervention, there's the old typical inverted pyramid. And one of the things that we've tried to leverage in our collaborative is we've taken the pyramid and actually made it a diamond. Because typically what happens is in RTI models, you're only responding to kids who are struggling with the curriculum. But if you're being evaluated and held accountable for growing all kids, you also need to respond to kids who are mastering the material as well.

[11:39]

So in our diamond of success, not only are teachers responsible for flexible grouping and reteaching or the schools responsible for collaborating in that endeavor, not only for kids who are struggling, but the next question is, and it's the before question, what are you going to do with the kids who are mastering the material? So in our RTI model of a diamond, we're actually focusing on kids who are mastering material and stretching them and also focusing on kids who are struggling and helping them close gaps. Now, I also want to talk about the time thing, which is really interesting because across the country, all these new evaluation systems have kind of identified teachers as either proficient or progressing or exemplary. And time really has a great impact on a teacher's impact. People don't realize it as much. And when I was a superintendent, one of the first things that we did was change all of our reading and math time to 90 minutes in K-8.

[12:31]

Now, our growth was really, really good in our district, and I used to kind of joke that our teachers weren't as efficient at teaching literacy and numeracy, but they were much more effective. And what I mean by that is the fact that neighboring districts may have only been teaching 50 minutes of math and reading, and their kids were achieving at pretty high levels. Well, we were teaching 90 minutes and getting growth and sometimes more growth. So we may not have been as efficient, but we were more effective. And as a school leader, you're responsible for leveraging your resources so you can get the best impact that you can out of your talent. And that goes back to your question about John Hattie.

[13:09]

John Hattie quite honestly says that there's a lot of strategies that have an impact. Some of them just have more impact than others. And he uses the .4 measure in terms of his impact. If there's any kind of strategies that have a .4 or larger, those are things you want to focus on.

[13:28]

And he calls them, again, his better, I guess, strategies. So when you look at some of John Hattie's research, really start at that .4 level, and he equates that to about a year's of growth and above. And also, Justin, just a great piece on John Hattie. Last spring I got a chance to spend the day with him, and and go to dinner with them and just pick his brain. And probably one of the most outstanding things that have really resonated with me was John Hattie talked about getting rid of SMART goals.

[13:54]

So whenever I speak now at workshops and conferences, I tell people to get rid of SMART goals, and they immediately panic and start to fall off the seat because they go, oh, no, we've got to have SMART goals. Well, what John Hattie says is you need to have smarter goals. He says to replace the A in smart from attainable to ambitious. So if you're going to have a high-performing school, you have to have ambitious goals. And he also said to add an E and R on the end because you constantly need to be evaluating and reflecting on your goals. So if there's something that you want to take out of this interview today, think about moving from smart goals to smarter goals, moving from attainable to ambitious goals, and constantly evaluating and reflecting on those goals, too.

[14:31]

Fabulous.

[14:32] SPEAKER_01:

I love it. Let's conclude, if we could, by talking a little bit about distributed leadership. People can refer to the white paper, which we'll link on our website. You wrap up the white paper with a focus on empowering teachers and developing leaders. Honestly, you cite a lot of the same research that I cite in my work with Ken Leithwood and Karen Seashore Lewis and Kyla Wallstrom, some really foundational researchers who have examined distributed leadership. What's your take on why empowering teachers, why seeing leadership as not just something for administrators, why that makes a difference for kids?

[15:12] SPEAKER_02:

Well, one of my favorite film clips I like to use whenever I do presentations is the old clip with Spartacus. And that was with... Kurt Douglas and Tony Curtis. And at the end, people are willing to stand up and say, I am Spartacus, I am Spartacus, and actually put their lives on the line to protect who Spartacus is.

[15:31]

And I usually ask the question, why are they willing to do that? And sometimes people say, well, it's because they believe in the leader or they have a great respect for the leader or they feel like they own something. But it's much deeper than that. It's about the belief in the cause. And so great leaders, and Leithwood writes a lot about transformational leaders, they get people to really rally around a vision or a cause. And in the United States, our rally and our cause is that all kids can learn and will learn.

[15:59]

And one leader can't do it alone. And in those buildings and districts, when they empower teachers and they really take a group of the willing and a coalition of those people that want to do great work in the classroom and together collaborate, amazing things happen. In fact, that's where the magic really happens. And that's empowering teachers, creating teacher leadership, and as Leith would call it, transformational leadership.

[16:21] SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. Well, the white paper is available for free. And I know on Principal Center Radio, people are used to hearing where they can buy the book. But the five strategies for creating a high growth school white paper out of the SOAR project at Battelle for Kids is available on our website. We'll link directly to it and at the battelleforkids.org website as well.

[16:44]

Bobby, if people want to connect with you on Twitter, where can they find you?

[16:47] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, my Twitter account is at Bobby Moore BFK, and please follow, and we're constantly putting out resources that can help you in the classroom and in your building. We actually have a learning hub where there's a lot of free resources on there, too, and I know you guys are used to getting a lot of great information from Justin on his Twitter feeds. Well, you can also go to the Appatel for Kids website and go to our learning hub, and we have a lot of other free white papers and articles and things that will help make a positive impact in your buildings and classrooms there, too. Fabulous.

[17:16] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Bobby, thanks so much for joining us on Principal Center Radio.

[17:18] SPEAKER_00:

Well, Justin, thank you for your time today. Appreciate it. And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[17:26] SPEAKER_01:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Bobby Moore? I want to highlight something that we ended on and just touched briefly on toward the end of our conversation around distributed leadership. And if you haven't had a chance to review some of that research, just go ahead and grab the Battelle white paper that we've been talking about in this episode. because I think it has a great summary and a great bibliography where you can check out more about distributed leadership. But one finding from that body of research is that when leaders distribute leadership, when leaders involve more people in the work of leadership, our power does not get diminished at all. And I think that's something that we worry about a little bit.

[18:09]

The idea that we might be giving up power to distribute leadership and to have more people involved in decision making, involved in those kind of key leadership roles in the school, especially beyond people who are officially administrators. But something interesting happens when we start to do that. We start to build greater capacity for instructional leadership. And It's not that our influence goes down at all. Our influence actually goes up even higher when there's more leadership present in the school. And if you're interested in learning more about building instructional leadership capacity in your school through some specific pathways around decision-making and involving staff in, uh, professional learning community and in particular processes that can take your school to the next level, I want to encourage you to check out the High Performance Instructional Leadership Network.

[19:00]

As a member school, you can gain access for your entire staff. So whoever wants to be involved as an instructional leader can access our professional development materials. And you can find out more at principalcenter.com slash leadership.

[19:13] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.