Chapter Four
Moving Beyond the Crisis

SUSTAINING THE EFFORT
Too often a school community may become complacent when it achieves the minimum benchmark and no longer carries the "low-performing" label. As a result, stakeholders do not maintain the energy to enact sustained, systemic change. High-performing learning and work environments with continuing community support require sustained efforts over long periods of time.

Effective staffs in high performing schools possess the responsibility, authority, and resources to:

• set uncompromisingly high academic standards for all children while providing multiple pathways for students to meet established standards.

   Example: Using alternative teaching methods can help underachievers meet high standards.

Success Stories

• assess the progress of each student, using multiple methods, including a careful and continuing review of student work.

   Example: Some districts have moved to "authentic assessment," using portfolios that give teachers a more complete picture of each student's strengths and areas of need for meaningful reteaching.

• create more instructional time within the school day and provide programs for tutoring, after school, and Saturday school.

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   Example: To close the achievement gap, a Michigan junior high school staff created an extra period during every day for students to redo class assignments, get extra instruction or receive enrichment instruction.

• engage parents, business, and community-based organizations as partners in the development, understanding, and enhancement of learning opportunities in the school, home, and community.

• provide sustained, content-focused, and classroom-centered professional development for teachers led by master teachers and content specialists.

   Example: Both Delaware and North Carolina have teacher academies jointly sponsored by their Associations and departments of instruction.

Tools

• create internal accountability systems that hold all staff responsible for all students' progress.

• work continuously to align curriculum, instruction, and assessment based on ongoing reflection about professional practice and its impact on student performance.

   Example: At Azalea Elementary School in Pinellas County, Florida, students, staff, and teachers work to align standards, learning, and assessment. Their schoolwide test scores have jumped 20 percent.

• establish small learning communities so that each child is well known, and instruction focuses on meeting the child's learning needs based on continuous assessment.

   Example: The establishment of a school-within-a-school can create a more personalized school experience for students within a large school population.

MOBILIZING PARENTS AND COMMUNITY SUPPORT FOR THE LONG HAUL
Long-term support from the community is vital to maintaining continuously improving caring schools.

This support comes in the form of ongoing support systems for youth, appropriate levels of funding, multi-faceted support from the business community and enlightened policies and laws. It also includes support from higher education communities in the form of partnerships and teacher training and preparation for the high performance environment.

Members need to be politically active to lobby for appropriate resources, more authentic assessment of students, and site-based decision making.

Reward all members who are actively engaged in their school communities. Some state affiliates like the Georgia Association of Educators and North Carolina Association of Educators offer annual awards to members actively engaged in their communities and to community members actively engaged in their schools. Local awards, grants, and recognition can also be used. You can also offer ongoing professional development to assist members with a standards-based environment.

BUILD STRUCTURES TO SUPPORT THE NEW WORK
Build organizational structures that support a new way of "doing business."

Work with the school board and community to redesign the school district's hierarchical organizational pattern to reflect a more decentralized approach. The district may have to enact new policies to allow more school-based control over the school day, calendar, hiring practices, and other vital issues traditionally managed on a district-wide basis.

Work with the superintendent and school board to redesign the leadership structure within each school so it supports the site-based decision making model. Association members can lobby for new policies and procedures to guarantee instructional leaders of staff autonomy over school decisions.

Work with school site and staff to create more instructional time within the school day, and specialized by targeted skills or subsets of students. There needs to be more additional time provided outside of the traditional school day.

ASSESSING OVER TIME
Ongoing assessment of the plan is vital if schools are to make continuous improvement. The association and school district should review the plan annually. And they should conduct a comprehensive review every three years, and:

• include all stakeholders.
• use multiple measures.
• include the latest school profile data.

In reviewing this new information, the planning group will want to:

• evaluate the process for effectiveness and affectiveness
• analyze results to see if the needs of the current school population are still being met
• recommend changes in the plan that will make it more effective.

Finally, a report should be given to all stakeholders that includes:

• progress toward meeting the goals
• suggested changes in the plan or process
• acknowledgements and a celebration.