Reeves (2006) developed a matrix describing the relationship between antecedents and student achievement. Antecedents are those structures and conditions that precede, anticipate, or predict excellence in performance. In education, they might include teaching strategies, collaborative structures, feedback, and other known improvement practices. As Reeves (2006) describes in The Learning Leader, the “antecedents of excellence are those observable qualities in leadership, teaching, curriculum, parental engagement, and other indicators that assist in understanding how results are achieved” (p. xix). When leaders are aware of the antecedents and intentionally develop, expect, and monitor their implementation, they are focused on the right work. Reeves’s (2006) matrix (figure 4.2, page 90) shows that leaders with a high understanding of antecedents who remain focused on these practices are more likely to have high results and replicate this success. In other words, their achievements are not because they are lucky one-time events. Because they are continuing to repeat high yielding, research-based practices (for example, implementing the PLC process, using evidence to inform decisions, and sharing leadership with others), these leaders will continue to experience success.
Source: Reeves, 2006.
FIGURE 4.2: The leadership and learning matrix.
Schools in the Lucky category have students who achieve high results without the school aligning what the adults are doing with student results. Reeves (2006) writes that Lucky schools achieve these results just because the students show up. The Losing category includes poor results coupled with self-defeating behavior; leaders and teachers in these schools repeat the same actions over and over again, despite evidence that nothing is changing. They may know they have poor results, but they are not interested in learning or implementing any research-based practices to improve student achievement.
Conversely, schools in the Learning and Leading categories collaborate around most-effective, research-based practices. They create collaborative teams that learn more effective instructional practices together. They use evidence frequently and in a timely way to plan next steps for students. They develop strategies to engage students in their learning, and they provide rigorous classroom opportunities for students to think. A habit of consistent data use to ensure deep implementation and corrective action provides leaders with information about what is effective and what is not. In other words, they are constantly aware of the antecedents and their impact. This habit should replace the habit of waiting or hoping for change.
Reflection
Where would you place your school on the leadership and learning matrix? What actions do you need to take to move your school toward the leading matrix?
Determining Root Causes
A question we are often asked when supporting school leaders is how to help teachers determine the root causes of student underperformance. Many collaborative teams in PLCs have become good at writing assessment questions and understand the need to circle back to the assessment data to determine next steps. When observing these meetings, however, we often hear teachers make statements such as, “These students just can’t do math,” “These students just can’t read well,” and “I don’t know why they didn’t do any better because I taught this to them.” These statements are not helpful in the collaborative discussions as they do not provide teachers with an opportunity to really identify why there is a lack of learning and understanding. For example, why are the students not able to do their math? Can we look more closely at student work and identify the skills or concepts that are missing? Is there background knowledge that needs to be revisited? Are they not able to read the word problems? Why? What strategies can we provide to address the root cause of their low performance? Without the identification of root cause, teachers often skate on the surface of planning next steps for instruction and intervention, missing the chance to really work with students on their skill-by-skill or concept-by-concept needs.
A primary role of the school leader and leadership team is to be critically aware of the facts and support collaborative teams in working to identify root cause. Schools improve when they understand the why before the what or how. As teams deepen their discussions and truly look at the why of student needs, it becomes easier for them to plan next steps that provide the what and how. The deeper root cause discussions should lead to an action plan of what the adults need to do and how they will do it. As the leader, you can use questions to lead the team to a more focused skill-by-skill, student-by-student analysis and action plans for next steps. We want to ensure that the discussions lead to adult actions. “What do we need to do next?” and “How will we do this?” are the resulting questions we want to answer once the teachers really do understand why the students have not mastered the targeted skills. For instance, the team may agree that many students are not demonstrating mastery on learning targets because they have foundational reading gaps. The data may lead the team to the hypothesis that some students may be having trouble answering comprehension questions because they are struggling to read fluently or need more phonics work. The data do not always indicate a clear reason; sometimes the team will have to draw conclusions and act on its conclusions to see if it makes a difference in student mastery. The team can create an action plan that includes a focus on fluency and phonics as antecedents to improve learning. The collaborative team will need to identify how they will address the fluency and phonics issues. They should be sure to identify effective strategies, talk through how much time they will need instructionally (for example, if they will use whole groups, small groups, or flexible grouping for their instruction), and how they will reassess the instruction and interventions. And they can monitor their strategies with a continuous look at the data. Leaders who go beyond the numbers to the root causes (the antecedents of success) lead and become part of the action plan.
Reflection
Think about your teams’ discussions and what you see as next-step actions in your school’s classrooms. Are your teachers digging deep enough to understand root cause so their instruction and intervention plans are addressing what the students truly need? What can you do to strengthen this work in your school?
Using Data for Action
We have also noticed in our work that teachers are often unsure what to do with all of their data. Teams can easily overlook root causes and stop their discussions long before they deeply understand what the students need, and, most important, what to do next. The action they come up with may or may not be aligned with student needs. As we have previously stated, they may need a leader’s help in aligning their actions with the why students are not learning. In our coaching roles, we often work with teams that master the art of collecting great amounts of data, but stop short of making good decisions about what to do next. The volume of data can be overwhelming; teachers will need help in understanding how to use them to really build their next steps. When you are in the room, listen to assess whether teams are considering effective instructional strategies to re-engage learners. Are teams considering how to plan differentiated, small-group activities for their core instruction? Are they thinking about flexible grouping to address the root causes of students’ struggles? Observing the team working to answer PLC critical question three (What will we do when students are not learning?) gives a snapshot of the current reality of how teams are using data to make instructional decisions for students. Of course, it is impossible for a leader to always be in the room; we suggest spending a significant amount of time with a team to build its capacity, and then slowly beginning to remove yourself from the conversation once you feel the team is becoming more proficient. You can follow up with occasional visits to ensure ongoing proficiency. Access to each team’s agendas, minutes, and data documents also helps school leaders stay apprised of team progress.
Adam Rogerson, a principal in Riverview, New Brunswick, Canada, demonstrates a deep understanding of evidence-based decision making and the need for collaborative teams year after year (A. Rogerson, personal communication, Ma
rch 2017). As principal of Gunningsville Elementary School, he always had a list in his pocket—a list of struggling learners. As superintendent, Karen was always impressed with his knowledge of data. He knew where his students were on their learning journey—student-by-student and skill-by-skill—and, most important, he could describe his teachers’ actions to address student needs. The staff monitored the success of their actions every two weeks during grade-level collaborative meetings and on a monthly basis as a faculty. All teachers would come together to report on their actions and successes in moving students off the struggling learners list. Principal Rogerson’s teachers understood how to write quality formative assessment questions and rubrics, and also how to commonly score their students’ work. They started with the end in mind—determining prioritized outcomes and planning from these expectations. When students were not meeting grade-level expectations, the teachers changed their instructional and intervention plans; nothing was left to chance. The teachers were expected to know the root causes of student needs from their assessment work and then modify their plans based on this analysis. Principal Rogerson modeled this shared ownership of students by leading an intervention group.
Teachers informed parents of grade-level expectations through team newsletters, school communications, and many parent-teacher conferences and interviews. Students were also expected to set goals for themselves. When visitors came to the school, students could speak clearly and accurately about their schoolwork and individual progress. An intentional focus on formative feedback—feedback to and from the students about their daily, weekly, and monthly progress—was a habit that led to Gunningsville’s consistent student achievement success. During the five years represented in table 4.2, with Rogerson as the principal, the provincial assessment measured school achievement consistently from 83 to 100 percent proficiency. The school always scored above the district and province average. The school was not just lucky—it had evidence of using data for action.
TABLE 4.2: Gunningsville Elementary School 2008–2013 Achievement Data
Grade 2 Reading Achievement, 2008–2013
Percentage of Students Meeting Standard
Grade 4 Reading Achievement, 2008–2012 (Grade 4 not tested in 2013)
Percentage of Students Meeting Standard
Grade 5 Mathematics Achievement, 2008–2013
Percentage of Students Meeting Standard
90.9
95.2
91.4
87.8
100
100
83.1
90.6
91.3
91.2
84.7
87.8
95.8
92.2
Source: © 2013 by Province of New Brunswick Department of Education, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Reprinted with permission.
Reflection
What can you learn from Principal Rogerson? How might you increase your daily use of data as an effective leadership practice?
Setting SMART Goals
Team SMART goals (or goals that are strategic and specific, measurable, attainable, results oriented and time bound; O’Neill & Conzemius, 2006) focus a team on the same outcome: success for all students in a particular grade level or course. This common goal requires team members to rely on one another to reach the goal, and a key step to reaching a SMART goal is monitoring results. The collaborative teams at an elementary school we worked with demonstrated this interdependence when members learned how to write and use SMART goals to guide their work. For this team, working to increase reading levels through a focus on phonics instruction was the goal. The team established the following short- and long-term SMART goals.
Short-term SMART goal:
The Green Team will increase student success on the phonics screener from 38 percent to at least 60 percent (at least forty-five students) on the October 28 reassessment.
The team then celebrated its success and continued to set short-term goals as it increased the phonics proficiency of student readers.
Long-term SMART goal:
The Green Team will increase the number of students reading at grade level by May 15 from 51 percent to 95 percent as measured on end-of-grade assessments.
To meet this long-term goal, the team must continue to monitor student data, look for root causes of student struggle, and plan for instruction, intervention, and assessment that support increased learning. As the school leader, you have a role to play in ensuring teams revisit their SMART goals. Establishing an expectation of reviewing SMART goals as an ongoing part of collaboration in your school is an effective way to keep a focus on results—the third big idea of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2016).
We often work with schools that find it difficult to identify SMART goals. When we offer support, we discover staff frustration and lofty goals not based on current reality and unlikely to be reached. Without a good understanding of what a SMART goal develops from, teachers and principals often pull a number from the sky and go back to their strategy of hoping for improvement. A great place to start in developing a strong results orientation is for the guiding coalition to model the use of SMART goals with teams.
Overall, school goals can create synergy for collaborative teams to follow. When teachers align their SMART goals with the overall school goals and monitor the progress of both short- and long-term goals, staff begin to work in the same direction. As you become more evidence-based in your actions, you will also find many opportunities to celebrate your success. You will not be guessing about what is improving; you will know. As hockey legend Wayne Gretzky (BrainyQuote, n.d.) states, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”
Reflection
Are your SMART goals “smart” as we define and describe them? What action are you able to see resulting from your goal setting? Can you think of some next steps to refine this work?
Wrap-Up
School leaders are bombarded with data points to consider: state and provincial data, international tests, district benchmarks, surveys, attendance data, needs assessments, and, of course, teacher- and team-generated assessments. Going to collaborative team meetings provides more data to consider, and, during classroom visits, principals compile their observations in the form of checklists and anecdotal notations. All of this becomes evidence of practice, leading to a clear understanding of what is working and what is not, and most important, what to do next. The struggle for most leaders is twofold: (1) having the time to dig deep into the data for clear understanding and (2) planning action that responds to the needs the data identify. It can be a struggle to dig deep, have intentional conversations about the data, and ask your students and teachers reflective questions to ensure they understand the goals and expectations. Distractors that pull leaders away from this important work in a PLC can be challenging. However, using evidence in your daily practice is the right work.
Wrap up your examination of using evidence for decision making and action by completing the “Making an Impact in Eight: Using Evidence for Decision Making and Action” reflections (pages 97–99).
Making an Impact in Eight: Using Evidence for Decision Making and Action
The following eight ideas provide opportunities for further reflection and action. We provide five reflections on what great leaders do and avoid doing to gain focus, as well as three considerations for how to make an impact in eight minutes, eight weeks, and eight months to guide your leadership planning and practice.
Chapter 5
Prioritizing the Student
Every student deserves a great teacher, not by chance, but by design.
—Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie
In the early 1980s, Karen was a struggling young teacher of high school English. Her experiences were not quite as positive as she had hoped when she started her teaching career. She struggled with classroom management, and she lacked confidence in her ability to reach her students. In her first year
s of teaching, Karen did not feel supported. She felt isolated. There were not many—if any—opportunities for collaboration at her school. Karen was part of a generation of teachers who worked in isolation. It really was up to her alone to figure out what her students needed.
Karen did what she thought was best for her students. One student in particular—Edward—struggled significantly. Edward, like many of her students, didn’t like English and struggled to keep up in the class. Karen believed in Edward and wanted him to succeed. She often had him stay after class to finish his work and tried to keep him engaged. At times, this was a battle for both Edward and Karen. Karen certainly didn’t feel successful with Edward, and she was not getting support from anyone at her school. She felt alone in her efforts and discouraged. She decided the best thing to do would be to resign at the end of the school year.
A few days before the school year ended, Karen and the school received some terrible news: Edward had died in an accident. The great loss was profound for staff and students alike. Karen didn’t realize until a few days later the very significant impact Edward would have on her life.
On the last day of school, Karen was finishing grading English exams. Edward’s was the last one. When Karen graded his exam, she discovered that Edward had written her a very thoughtful thank-you note in the margin. He had taken the time to express his appreciation for her not giving up on him and let her know he had actually learned a lot that year.
Leading With Intention Page 10