Portrait of success

Portrait of success

A 'positive deviant' school models and shares its strategies

By Joan Richardson

Results, November 2003

Instructional coach Kynette Gray stops in to visit the classroom of a new teacher at Ladd Elementary School. The young teacher is a mid-year replacement and her students are testing her to learn their limits. It is clear to Gray and to the students that this teacher is struggling.

Gray quickly confers with principal Gustava Cooper Baker and, with breathtaking speed, a veritable educational SWAT team is unleashed to support the teacher. Assistant principal Janeda Oliver will be in and out of the classroom today and will release the teacher to observe other teachers in the building. She also quickly makes plans for Gray to spend all of the next day in the classroom providing a variety of observations and demonstrations. Baker has a private conference with the teacher and tells her, among other things, that she is not convincing these street-smart, African-American students that she means business. She needs to speak up more forcefully.

"I want her to be successful here," says principal Gustava Cooper Baker. "We'll provide whatever she needs in order to be successful."

Ladd African-Centered Elementary Shule in Kansas City, Mo., is one of the six "positive deviant" schools and districts studied by NSDC this year with funding from the Kellogg Foundation. These schools and districts are achieving above-average results with students although they have the same access to resources as other schools and districts in their areas. In addition to standing out from others in their communities, these schools and districts also have practices that enable them to identify good practices internally and ensure that they are shared widely throughout their school or district, thereby enabling all teachers to perform at higher levels.

Ladd faces the same challenges felt by many urban schools--92% of its all-black student population qualifies for free- or reduced-price lunch--but Ladd has managed to address its challenges and create an exemplary educational program for its 300 students in grades K-5.

In 1996, Ladd became an African-centered school. During its first two years of using the African-centered focus, student learning did not improve. But, after a change in leadership at the school in 1999, the attention to African-centered ideals was embraced more enthusiastically and student learning began a steady rise. Student learning has moved from the lowest levels into the highest. In 1998, less than 10% of the 3rd graders scored at the highest level in reading on the statewide assessment; in 2002, 72% were at the highest levels. No 3rd graders were at the highest level in communication arts and science; in 2002, between 25% and 30%, respectively, were at the highest levels. Only 1.4% of Ladd 4th graders were at the highest levels in math in 1998; in 2002, 55% achieved that level.

In addition, student and teacher attendance are nearly perfect and parent satisfaction with the school is at the highest levels.

The Change Begins

The big shift at Ladd began when principal Gustava Cooper Baker arranged to have the Ladd staff go on a weekend retreat with the staff from J.S. Chick Elementary School, one of the district's highest achieving schools and the only other African-centered school in the city. Baker, who had previously worked at Chick, wanted the Ladd staff to begin learning from their colleagues across town. During the retreat, the two sets of teachers got acquainted, listened to speakers, and finally began to plan the coming school year. Before they returned home, the two staffs proposed doing common grade-level meetings each month to continue their work. In those meetings, Chick and Ladd teachers talked about the learning objectives for the month, shared what had worked in the past, and planned ahead for specific lessons for the coming month. By mid-year, the Ladd teachers were ready to work on their own in weekly grade-level meetings that continue to this day.

One of the values that emerged from the retreat was a belief that teachers could learn a great deal from each other. As Ladd teachers work each year to align their professional learning with school improvement goals, "we try to use the expertise we already have here," said EMH teacher Bettie Harrell.

Ladd also decided to use district-provided professional development money to hire its own fulltime instructional coach, a job that would help expand its internal capacity by providing timely and appropriate assistance to all teachers. In that job, Kynette Gray is in the school every day, offering model lessons, observing teachers teaching, running study groups, and introducing new ideas from district professional development sessions. She quickly becomes aware of strategies that are working successfully in the school and has a variety of tools for sharing those strategies with other teachers.

Several other elements at Ladd ensure that good ideas from one classroom are spread throughout the building. Among them:

Personal professional planning. Baker begins and ends each year by urging teachers to set both personal and professional goals for themselves and to monitor their progress by maintaining portfolios.

Year-ahead planning. At the beginning of the school year, teachers work together to examine student achievement data and determine how they will tackle areas of weakness. They identify student learning outcomes and include those in their school improvement plan. They set goals for where they want student learning to be at the end of the year. "We spend quite a bit of time on this at the beginning of the year," said assistant principal Janeda Oliver.

Deliberate planning. Each week, teachers submit a week-long set of lesson plans to Oliver. She reviews each teacher's lesson plans and spot checks classrooms to ensure that teachers are actually teaching what they said they would. Ladd staff designed a unique planning book that requires teachers to identify how each lesson supports a core curriculum objective, how it supports various underlying African-centered principles and beliefs of the school, and how each lesson will be assessed. "Each week, they identify concerns among their students and they begin their planning from that point," Oliver said.

Monitor progress. Teachers measure student learning each month using assessments created by the grade-level teams and share that information back with their teams. This ensures consistency across classrooms as well as providing teachers with a way to keep themselves on track to the year-end goals they have established for students. "The district is ready to monitor student progress every month. Ladd has been doing this for several years," Oliver said.

Cultural Supports

Beyond the structures that support professional learning, Ladd is characterized by a work ethic that is second to none and a sense of family and relationship that enables teachers to deeply trust their colleagues and have the open, honest conversations they value about student learning and professional expertise.

"I've worked in other schools where you couldn't even approach someone because you didn't want them to know that you needed help. When I started here, if I needed help, I could go to anyone and they would take the time to sit with me and work with me. I can still ask any teacher here any question. We're happy to share," said teacher Jami Buckley.

This article is adapted from Joan Richardson's upcoming book on learning from the positive deviance in your organization, which will be published later this year.