I didn't recognize your hair outside the door. You want your life? You ready? >> This study session of the Independent School District 5:35 School Board is called to order at 5:32 p.m. on Tuesday, August 25th, 2026 in room 137 of the Edison building. Present at this meeting are school board members, Superintendent Kent Fquel, a non- voting exeicio member, and the assistant school board clerk, Miss Anne Kramer. Miss Kramer, will you please call the role? >> Director Barlo >> here. >> Treasurer Cook >> here. >> Director Mclofflin >> here. >> Clerk Marvin >> here. >> Chair Nathan >> here. >> Director White >> here. >> Vice Chair >> here. The board acknowledges this site and all RPS sites are situated on the ancestral land of the Dakota people and we honor the Dakota nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples. At this time, we offer the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Item 2.1 is approval of the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? >> Move approval. >> Second. >> It has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? The agenda has been approved. The agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at rochesterchools.org/simly. >> Our focus topic tonight is plans to practice. Superintendent. >> Okay. Well, thanks to board members and cabinet members for being willing to try this kind of an experimental effort. Last year, I facilitated with all of our created facilitated with all of our administrators um a work and a game that was about how you align your improvement initiatives with your goals. And then some of you experienced that because Kathy and I did it at MSBA, but we didn't do it for the board. And in retrospect, I actually wish we had. So this year we did a dayong workshop on moving from plans to practice and I thought learning from last year we would try having a study session in which you all engage in a mini version. This was a dayong um activity with all of the people, our principles, our assistant principal, central office leadership team, but hopefully it also will just be kind of enjoying an enjoyable experience. I will just say I made it to every secondary school today except Dakota. I ran out of time trying to get there and kids are back. Things are um in good shape. Um there was a lot of really really really good energies. Um and among our principles, this message of shifting adult practice as the critical next phase of our work definitely resonated and they weren't just kind of saying that um to sort of make it feel good. So obviously this is a study session. I'm not going to do any kind of long lectures. We're going to spend quite a bit of time on a video that at least I find pretty engaging and helpful. I know Jean has already watched it but uh she said she's willing to sit through it twice. Um but I do want to preface a few things here kind of to get us going. Um, as you saw if you looked at the slides or even if you didn't, I really do think we have laid uh including through the board's formal actions a really powerful set of plans for improving student outcomes in our districts. Of course, we spent the most time on our skips. We are in September going to going to the home stretch of approving our new strategic plan. We have had a very ambitious set of department projects um that our uh departments have implemented over the past several years. We're launching uh a really critical uh framework for improving teaching in addition uh to every other uh job category in the district and many many more. But the critical critical uh premise of this session and I think of our work in the months ahead is that for student outcomes and our effective fits as an organization improve adult practice has to change. Um I put together uh for the sessions where we kicked off with all staff last week at John Marshall this very very simplified theory of action for our work. Um, and I actually think that um, it proved fairly helpful to some members of our staff to sort of at least have a sense of in my experience and my distillation of a pretty big body of research on how you improve student outcomes. These are the big buckets and they're kind of common sense, but schools and districts skip them often. Um the board has set measurable and meaningful goals for improvement our performance measures which we did not have until this point. Um I think about uh our trajectory against those measures every single day multiple times. So your role in setting up that process is really critical. We've spent a lot of time over the last five years changing our organizational structures. everything from our start times to our balanced budget model to our school improvement process to the schedules that exist in our elementary schools and on and on. And I think those changes have been critical because they create the context within which um the changes can be made. But then we get to that third box and that really is the focus today and it's I'm sure this is true in any organization but those of us who've been in education for a while know that you can change the program you can change the schedule you can change the curriculum and if teachers or counselors or social workers or principles or PSPs don't change practice you either get no gain you get uh sometimes a decline um because ultimately it's only You shift the way you ask the questions, you assign the work, you build the relationships that you really do get. But the conundrum there is you can't force people to change practice. Like it's just impossible. You can create requirements, you can do evaluation and observation, but that ultimately this is something that our staff working directly with kids have got to want to do and to embrace. That doesn't mean it's optional for instance to teach the science of reading. But the skill with which a teacher teaches the science of reading is wildly complex. But notably that theory of action does not stop with adult change in practice because the adult change in practice ultimately only goes so far. The kids have agency. The kids have got to want to engage in learning. But if the adults don't shift practice, simple changes in organizational structure are very unlikely. change how kids engage in learning. You'll notice that the parents, caregivers, and community uh strand is not in the direct theory of action. That's partly because we don't control what parents, caregivers, and community members do. Um uh but we know they can be powerful enablers and I think it's important where we put their input. They really aren't about we certainly care what parents and community members think about how teachers teach or how principles lead. We get lots of feedback on that, but ultimately their biggest contribution to changing student outcomes is on the kids. It's at home with the kids. It's through mentoring. It's through uh relationships. So that parent and caregiver and community involvement is critical, but it really engages with the students. And then there you get to that final um end of the process where we're hopefully beginning to see student outcomes improve. And in the case study that we're going to look at tonight in video for Chicago public schools, they really did see um significant improvements over an extended period of time in those outcomes. And we're going to watch that video through this. I started this process with the board's role in setting those measurable meaningful goals. The last conversation we're going to have tonight is what is the board's role in supporting change in practice? And that's something I have figured out and it's an open question because we know you're a governance board, you're a policy board, you're setting the direction, but if it ultimately comes down to how we change the processes that we have in place at the site level, what is the role of uh the school board and I would extend that to the superintendent and central office because we're remote in a lot of ways from um one of my this is I know like at least years in the classroom. But one of my favorite examples of how structure does not change practice is has to do with block state and that um in a high school where you got the block schedule. You essentially take what was one maybe 45 minute period and you make it a 90 and there's different ways of doing this and it's very controversial. Some people love the block schedule. Some people think it's the death of all good things. But when I lived uh we went my first year of teaching was traditional and I went to block the second year and then people were talking about it and I was in a very very traditional social studies department. So I was me and another woman were the first hired in 25 years. not much and the was talking about a block schedule said very old school social studies teacher said this is fantastic this has radically changed my teaching this improve everything now I can show the whole there was no change in that guy's practice actually um oops I I do this every once in a while see I need my own Um, so really what we're trying to do is go from the macro to the micro. That the board's goals, the board's direction on policy is the big picture context. It's critical to that whole improvement trajectory, but ultimately it comes down to what is happening uh in our drug court kids. So first we got to define what we mean by practice because I find it's a term that gets mixed up with a lot of other improvement terms. So these are Kent's like definitions of these things. It's not like this comes from some particular body of research, but as we get into this work, I want to be sure we're we're we're defining what we mean by practice. So, a practice is a recurring and observable way that people perform consequentially. It's not just the routine you do to do something and that important. It's the practice you do to do something that is meaningful. So, it's recurring. It's not just one moment of brilliance where you write an essay and never do anything like that again. It's observable. can be seen or heard. So it's not just a mindset. It's like you're actually doing something in the world and it's consequence. It matters for So that's our definition of practice. Um practice uh some examples. Yes, I used AI to make those pictures. Um landing an airplane is a practice. Um doing surgery involves practice. Playing the violin involves practice. Catching a pass as a receiver involves it's a form of practice. Writing a novel is a form of practice. um cooking a great meal, uh doing carpentry and of course teaching um as a practice. So you are at two tables tonight where you're going to have in order to have deeper conversations rather than across the full board and cabinet broke you up. Um there's going to be a few times where I'll be asking you to talk and wrap up the table and then we'll come back as a small group. Tonight just to get us focused in the zone of practice, but also maybe to learn a little bit about each other that you don't know. Here's your first prompt. I'd like you to go around the table and each share what is one practice in the world that you wish you could master. Anything that you did and you got to be honest, don't be nervous. What is excellence in that practice look or feel like? And what why did you choose that? What inspires just practice? So, this is kind of your what we call in the old days your anticipatory set to get you thinking about uh the subject matter. So, pick any practice um and whoever the grade can start and Wait, I'll stop you or wave your hand when everybody's had a chance to show please. >> And you are on YouTube, so don't say something that you don't want out there. What was I was gonna pick that one. Soviet occurrence and stuff have to What's your definition? >> I was born predicting is very different. >> I think I would feel good about others. Those moments where I can change relatively well serious. >> What do I call where to go? >> The ability to do that construction. >> The reason that interests me is >> now watch the threats that they Um >> the well I'll just go with what uh >> I I think it would be cool to master some kind of I mean not master but just be proficient at some kind of tangible art form like painting or drawing or something. said practice that someone had somebody else at your table and oh this was interesting. >> Yeah. Juliet. Okay. Um >> do we name the person? >> Yeah. >> Okay. So Carl said that he'd always wanted to be able to play the piano or the guitar. >> Wow. >> And I did not know about know about that about him. So >> in a rock >> in a rock band too. >> Oh wow. That's specific. >> That's very not dead yet. >> Okay. How about something from this table? Something that someone said that surprised you. surprised me that Eric uh wanted to learn how to surf and I thought immediately that he must have been a Beach Boy fan or something. >> Were you on curiosity? >> Oh, absolutely. Back when I had to pull Eric Eric and flowing long hair back in. >> Well, thank you for jumping in. So those examples that you just used of practice, I think very briefly it's important to differentiate that from some of the other terms that we use as part of our processes. So as we said, practices are recurring and observable ways that people perform these tasks. Outcomes, name the thing we're trying to improve. Um strategies, name the broad approach that we are using. Actions or activities, name the steps we're taking. frameworks help us organize the work and programs bring all these things together. It's a good program into a coherent goal. I added this for our administrators so we could differentiate um a lot of these big macro things especially for principles. Um our focus today is really on that that issue of practice. um in trying to go deeper on what do we really mean by practice I came up with five criteria for what constitutes a practice and they're similar to what I shared at the very beginning but the first of all it's doable that a practice is something you may not be able to uh you know uh shoot uh three-pointers like um one of the best players in the NBA but it is actually something that you actually can realistically do If basketball is the practice you're trying to improve, it's observable, it's repeatable, it's teachable, and for our work, this will be critical because simply saying you should be a master teacher like teacher X, and you can't break what they do down to practice, it's not a useful uh point of comparison to give somebody. You got to be able to actually teach the practice. And it's got to be um accessible. You got to actually be able to say, is this practice happening at a high level or a low level? But if you really want a gut check to it, you say, can a person do this? Can we see it? And can we get better at it? So, um, I put the five types of six types of processes that I came up with. I'm going to put an example on the screen. I ask one of you who's brave to just take a guess to tell me is it a practice, an outcome, a strategy, an action, a framework, or a program. And some of them are a little debatable. So this is not uh really about right answers but this is all a jumping off point. So if I said taking our category from the 5e survey emphasize ambitious instruction is that a practice an outcome a strategy an action a framework or a program will take. Yes. >> Yes. >> I'm leaning towards strategy >> like strategy. I would agree that it's a strategy. So within ambitious instruction, there are many practices, but like that is not in and of itself a practice. A practice in within ambitious instruction for instance would be we ask kids questions for which there are no simple right answers and ask them to formulate their own responses. Very good. Thank you. Here's the next one. Improve reading proficiency. Is it a practice, an outcome, a strategy, an action, a framework, program? What's that? >> Outcome. >> An outcome. That is an outcome. >> During a collaborative group activity, the teacher monitors whether every student contributes to the group's work and encourages participation by students who are not actively engaged. What would that >> an action? It is an action. That certainly is. That certainly is an action. I could call it practice in the sense that whenever I'm doing group work, I'm monitoring which kids are not participating and I'm effectively being able to say Karen what's your idea that you can share with. So I would that's actually a practice in the Daniel framework that I but you're right the action step the action thing was very important for principles to differentiate because in our skits we have actions and those are things like hold the professional development session which I was trying to differentiate from practice so some of this is because you're getting multi-tered system of support in literacy is a practice outcome strategy and action framework framework a framework just helps you organize the concepts and then conduct professional development on deeper learning. That one >> that one would be exactly what we're saying. That would be an action like we're going to get this thing done and it's done. We could check it off. >> And then one final one. We're going to implement the advancement via individual determination of the AVID program which used to be an RBS. What would that be? just said it. >> Okay. So, hopefully that gives you a little sense when we're talking about practice, it's the things that in the case of education, adults do uh as a matter of repeatable um engagement with students or service to students. Now, we had central office administrators at this workshop a couple weeks ago, too. And so, I wanted to give some examples of how practices often happen on the operations side. So in Carl's word of HR, world of HR for instance, you're following a consistent hiring process with clear steps and communication. And you can see some of those other examples. At the end of the workshop, which we're not going to do tonight, each participant made a practice improvement plan. They identified a practice in their work that they were going to be focused on this year. And the operations people did the same, but they focused on things that obviously are practices that occur within their departments. But the core of what we talked about then and what we're talking about tonight are educational practices. Now, practice change is really hard and there's a large body of research that shows that, but it's often just common sense. And so, I wanted to um highlight tonight some of the barriers to practice change. When I had all the administrators together, they generated their own barriers and they did another exercise to generate solutions. In interest of time tonight, I'm just highlighting a few that were in my own experience, but also that came up in our workshop with our leaders in RPS. Um, this is a huge one. The practice has not been clearly enough defined for people to truly know what you want them to do in a way that they actually can um understand and frankly recall. Second, you haven't developed their skills. They may understand the practice but they actually have not uh sufficiently developed the capacity to put it into place. This is a biggie in schools. You want to change practice but the current systems reinforce the old practice. The way people uh talk to each other, the way the schedule is built, the way the curriculum is created, um uh the the duties that you have assigned. Feedback is tremendously important for practice change. And if you don't give people feedback, which happens more often than you might think, or you give them the feedback, but it's way too late, then you also are finding yourself really struggling to make that shift. A huge thing obviously in our district with of as ambitious an agenda as we have and as tight of resources is that the competing priorities overwhelm their the opportunity to really focus on the practice change. Um the change in practices challenges people's identity and autonomy. If you for instance are a teacher who sees your ability to define your own curriculum, shape your own instruction as foundational to who you are as a professional and along comes the science of breathing and it says no no you actually are going to teach phonics in this way. That can be a really fundamental challenge to someone's sense that am I a professional who is guiding the instruction for my students or am I just doing this routine that you have uh told me is based upon research and is now a district and state mandate. Um so it can get to some pretty fundamental questions of why I'm in my profession. Um or does it conflict with people's beliefs and existing norms? the video we're going to watch about the ninth grade on track work uh and I'll highlight this in a second really challenged some longstanding beliefs and norms about what kids could and should do and it they had to grapple with that in order to get to the practice change that they were trying to achieve. So I wanted to give our administrators kind of a a starting process for thinking about practice change that they could incorporate into their skip plans and into their other work. And so you have uh onepage summary kind of a cheat sheet that should be at your table. Um I uh this is the scaffold that we have the administrators use to begin developing the practice change plans that you also have a copy of but for purposes of tonight's pretty high level overview. I'll go through this pretty briefly and this is Kent's distillation of thinking about practice change. So there's many other ways I'm sure to come at this challenge. There's no one simple playbook. The first is you've got to find the practice. Um that is something that I think uh we often don't um spend enough time on and uh if we do it we do it once in a workshop verbally and there's nothing for people to fall back on. Um and so it not only has to be defined but it has to be accessible because our our people are doing incredibly complex tasks in very fluid situations. they need a way to go back to understand and refine the practice. Uh the second you want to engage and unite people around the practice. Why are we shifting practice in the case that we talked about so often over the past few years? Why are we moving toward the science of reading? Not just because it's a state mandate, but because for a couple of decades we underinvested the kids to decode words which had catastrophic implications for their ability to read some capability to read. So we got to we got to do the why and we got to do it collectively. Third, we got to build their capacity. Give them professional development but also the practice for coaching through observations. If it's a really complex practice that requires it, you need to create the enabling conditions so that uh staff actually have the time and space that they need to put in place that practice change. Adaptive work, which may be a term that's pretty familiar to some of you, but maybe not to others. term that I use as opposed to technical work. So that there's some things that are a technical solution. Um the technology simply didn't work but somebody came in and fixed it and that actually helped. But adaptive work is um understanding people's mindsets, behaviors, reactions and adapting to them to help them move toward the practice. So that would be a case in which for instance the perceptions of an educator of what kids can do clashing with uh practice that asked kids to think, talk, act and write at higher levels. Uh that's not a technical thing. That's a real dialogue. Um super I worked for in St. Paul had a line that she would use um all the time. She used to grab teachers by their practice and their hearts and minds will follow that actually first if you show them these kids can write more. These kids that actually was better than put them all in the auditorium and give them a rah speech and then it'll happen no actually show them that we can engage them in different ways reflecting and improving actually space to say is this practice working am I feeling that I'm I can do it with some level of efficacy and then sustaining practice is the key I mean we make these major investments in professional development for instance um and then we have new staff and the new staff come in and they have to be brought along And then people need to be updated and so finding ways to sustain practice change is is really huge. So thank you for bearing with me for that. That's that's our meaning lecture for the time that we have this here. Before I actually introduce the video and the case study we're going to do. Any reactions, observations, thoughts that are rolling around in your heads? And I should say board members, I really have encouraged cab members to fully participate in this even though they've been through a version of this once before themselves, not all that thoughts reaction before we go on. >> Yeah, J. >> Um I absolutely I think this is awesome. Absolutely. What we need to do and clearly there are a whole lot of kids in the district who are not getting what they need. We have to do something different. But when we're talking about changing a a practice, I'm thinking that part of this has to be also to recognize what is working, which practices are being successful, who's doing things right, which staff, people and others are getting great success. And part of this discussion I think is that I think we all know so many great educators who um everybody knows they're amazing but when you ask them so what are you doing to get these kids so motivated so engaged they can't name what they're doing because it's become instinctive and I think especially the Danielson framework >> provides vocabulary it kind of breaks it down so we can see that person's doing great work with kids because of these specific practices. >> That's such a both of those points that we absolutely have to acknowledge that in many of these practices are in place for schools. We have not necessarily like most districts done a lot identify them, hold them up, hope other people share. So it's key. And then the other point about common vocabulary, it's like really why can't you just be like Dr. Martin? It's not a replicable strategy. >> Nobody wants to. So, >> no that's true. Julie, you're >> Yeah, I was going to say I'm looking at actions and I would say that from my own experience anybody ever has the opportunity to watch a really good teacher conduct a rehearsal of an orchestra or a band, they will see all of these things in play throughout throughout the lesson. >> Yeah. >> And then you'll see why it works. Conversely, if something isn't working and it's not going well, you could look at this and say, "What's missing?" >> Yeah. I >> I mean, it's it's just music is just so it's so out there. It's so easy. >> It's so observable. When I read Narrated Peter and the Wolf at the Rochester Symphony last year, >> I was stunned at the speed with which that conductor who only comes into town to conduct like certain years conveyed direction to the musicians and they had to instantly on the fly and it was all this language of practice that they had and I couldn't believe it how it was it was so efficient like she would give us direction and then the strings would do this and it was like that they had learned practice language that they really had she could give that direction and they could get it and process it. It was pretty amazing. I mean, you could have it would be easy well to find if you had a group of say 60 or 70 musicians and nobody spoke the same language, you could have a very very effective rehearsal. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> I think the interesting thing with that it's it goes along with like a really good um athletic coach. What are the things that happen to make the music class, the band, the orchestra, whatever go really well? they're giving immediate feedback. It's like specific feedback. They're coaching the kids um or the adults, whoever. And I I think sometimes in education, we um we tend to deliver professional development and walk away from it. And this with built in all of this is intentionality around um the practice change like it has to happen. Um, we have to be right alongside each other all the way down from central office all the way down to the classroom because the real support and the sense making and all the learning that happens happens at the building level and the teachers need somebody giving them the feedback. Otherwise, you're you just go you revert back to what you know even if your intention is to like even if you know it's not great and I want to do better if there's nobody kind of giving you that feedback and helping you move along. So the Danielson piece, like all of these things kind of go together to help us with the feedback and the common language and the coaching that's that's going to need to happen in order for practice to legit like truly change in the classroom. >> Yeah. >> I was just thinking of Dr. Marvin's comment about replicating, you know, fine teaching, great teaching, and reflecting back to my time as a building principal and how often we had a system for peer observation in the last building I was in, and how often I had to go to a teacher and say, "You do this really well. I would like to have some um staff come in, some of your peers come in and observe." And they wouldn't realize that they were doing those things that they needed to be pointed out. strength. >> Yeah, they they because it was just part of what they did. And so when I would say, but this is this is the part I want people to see, they didn't recognize their greatness at that. And so I think as part of our work, we like the feedback Mona was talking about, but and also like highlighting >> modeling because that's modeling, right? >> And getting to model. But a lot of times it's I think sometimes we think, oh, they don't want to be that person that everybody goes to see because then they're, you know, brown nose or whatever. I think oftentimes it's just they don't know. They don't recognize what they have going in their practice that other people don't. >> Yeah. >> Or need to see. >> That's right. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. No, I was just going to say I was thinking of the example that uh Julie gave um and then listening to what Mona said, um thinking from the perspective as someone who has been conducted, right? One of the things that I think we may be overlooking just a little bit is that the difference between the orchestra, the basketball team, is that there's a common goal, which is why it makes it work a little better. And I say that because thinking of a person that was in orchestra and sat, you know, played I only got the second violin, but it was because the the orchestra and these these structures are designed to play to your strengths. and they don't expect more of you than what you bring to the table, if that makes sense. So, there's a common understanding whether it's sports, right? If you play one position, that's the position you play. That's the position you're coached at. Um, and there's an expectation there. And I think all of this works if there's a common goal, right? So, when you're speaking of changing the practice broader, right? You would everyone would have to have this a common goal. That's what makes um a conductor with an orchestra look seamless or makes a a coach a new coach look seamless because the people that the students they're working with all come there one with the expectation of performing greatness um they all come prepared um to do their part as well right which which and I only say that because it also it may it can appear as though you know and I'm not saying the conductor isn't great but The conductor is only as good as the orchestra that they are conducting. So if no one came in there ready, if nobody knew their pieces, if nobody knew their parts, it would not run um as seamlessly as it does when you are working with a prepared um population if this makes sense. So I think it it changes a little bit in when you're trying to change a practice with um not everybody having the same goal. So getting to that space. >> I didn't think it was going to take me so long to click to click back because I didn't realize but that's I think you making a power point that's why the step the board took that's not the exact same as a conductor but this whole thing doesn't happen if you all are not setting up that common goal. I mean unless we are saying all kids are going to read >> at this level we don't have that common goal that's that that sets up the potential of the process. So I think that's why it actually really was a really fundamentally important point >> um to have that um that common goal. Now I have to click back through. Thank you. Any other points? Well, my my reaction to the the practice change framework is that it it seems like the leading of adaptive work is is carrying a lot of weight in this framework because that's where that that's where you have the opportunity for people to reflect. I mean, it's one thing to model what good practice looks like and sort of provide positive examples. It's a whole other thing to get into what you were talking about earlier about people's sense of themselves as a professional and their identity which is tied to some of these practices and examining which ones no longer make sense in an environment of limited time and energy and attention to try to reach these students. That's really difficult work. And um it it makes sense that there's a a space for it, but it just it strikes me that that is a from the perspective of the leader who is charged with bringing adults through this change framework, that seems like a really critical step that would take some some clinical skills to do well. I and I I'm not sure if there's getting to the idea of like what's the board's role in all of this. I don't know. I I don't know what the practice for that would be. How do you lead that type of discussion and do it well and have people feeling supported and trusting enough to really examine their practices and think about which ones don't make sense anymore? I I don't know that that's my reaction. I don't really have a particularly insightful direction to go with it or anything. Just it seems like a pretty tough step. >> It is. I think it's to say one thing that this board has very much supported in that space. That's why we invest as heavily in principles as instructional leaders and not just managers, >> right? >> Which the board has been super supportive of and why all the work Eric did with principles. It's all about that adaptive leadership process and it's one reason why the more we can both support and at the board table insist on our principles being adapted instructional leaders who are not just technical, you know, juice um to their work is is really critical saying are you are you moving your staff through that adapt to like okay I understand you're here we're going to move in that you know next direction and yes you're going to be accountable for that but that evaluation is not acceptable but we have these resources in the building that we can go right from any other points before we end our So, I'll be honest. I looked a lot for one for something on the just because it's been so where we've been. Um didn't find something that was as illustrative of a practice change. But we are also doing the ninth grade on track work which um launched last year in our um high schools. We did see a measurable not large but a measurable improvement in our nth graders who are on track as measured by their grades, their attendance and the credits that they earn. Those are the three things I identify using off track and you'll hear lots more about this. So this work started a couple decades ago in Chicago public schools. It's now spread to Rochester. It's spread many places. But one of the things I wanted to highlight before we watch the video is that when this work started and I think still in many cases today um this was a paradigm shift. This was not the way we thought about nth graders in high schools. And so here are some ways that I think this work we're going to watch in a video had to really pretty fundamentally change the way people thought and talked and acted around nth grade. So first of all, there was a long-standing sense that not all kids can succeed. There's a bell curve and so some nth graders have to fail. It's just part of um the way you uh sort the good students from bad students. And so there's just going to be well when a kid fails in nth grade it has catastrophic implications for their chance of actually being on track. These are young adolescence brand new to a large companies of high school. So they had to like get rid of this idea that there's just a a percentage of defects and we're just going to live with that percentage of defects in our nth graders. Um there was another sense that the failure was productive that if I give you an F or we uh suspend you you have a you know something like that that in fact that is inherently going to be uh a productive difficult experience that's going to get you back on track. Well, does that happen for some kids? Yes. But we know from a lot of the research that um when that kid in ninth grade has that experience, especially if they came from a middle school that was like we hope our middle schools are relational, nurturing, positive, it can have a devastating effect for how they see themselves as high school students said I am not capable of what it takes here. Um, the other thing that this ninth grade on track work had to really challenge was the idea that what we do in high schools is not really determinative of whether kids graduate, but fundamentally it's about what they walked into our building with or their family service. Um at one of the three sessions that I did last week at JM um when I said we considered not moving kids who are academically behind not on to nth grade there was a group of people who clapped and it was I mean that was honest like they were saying you send these nth graders in they're not ready and I said but we're not going to do that they laughed but um it this is a huge issue where you say there's nothing they should have dealt with this in third grade I can't do it that was deep within a lot of high schools Um, another another paradigm that this ninth grade of track work had to change was this idea that the teacher's responsibility ends with providing the instruction and assigning grade because you're going to see that what turned things around in this ninth grade trackwork was a lot more about the relationships, the data and interventions and people had to go beyond just covering the curriculum. Um, attendance is not my job. It belongs to the kid, the family or the attendance office. And so encouraging kids to get here is not something that's fundamental to my job, not just as a teacher, but as a counselor, as a principal. Um, and then the last one that I came up with, and this definitely I lived through as a teacher. We didn't talk about data as something that would be useful for actually making decisions. It was just for being accountable like you know after the fact. It was like a you know postmort. Here you're going to see no data is what we use ongoing with the intervening. So that those are some of the big changes. So here's your task during this video because we're not just uh about you have a sheet at your tables and you do not need to write down full sentences or anything. You're not going to turn it in, but I really encourage you to jot something down because it is an hourong video. So I thought a lot about this. This is a a long period of time, but I think it's a rich case study. And you're going to be watching for three things during the video. One, what are some of the organizational changes that led to the improvements? What we might call changes in structure? Two, what are the changes in adult practice that help produce those improvements? And three, what changes in student attitudes and behaviors help produce improvements? So, if you find any one of those, please jot them down. Um, when we think about practice, remember, it's not just practice in terms of instruction, but anything the adults are doing that is meaningful and on a repeated basis um as part of their ongoing work. So that is our task. We are going to have Ann bring us up with this video is called the second window and um I hope you find it uh interesting and compelling. Um it also I think does a nice job of showing how something else we've tried to do in Rochester which is having research inform our strategies definitely happened in this case in Chicago. So hopefully the tech will work. >> When our students drop out of high school, they have basically no good options available to them. So the the the magnitude of this inflection point, the fork in the road is huge. We like to think that um it is too late when kids hit high school, their adolescence, their life's trajectory is set. There's been a lot of focus on early childhood as being this really important window to be intervening with students. Adolescence is another time. And there's also a lot of evidence coming from neuroscience which is telling us that you know the adolescent brain is another great window for changing their perceptions of the world and what is possible. The cerebral cortex which is where the sort of high demand cognitive processing the seat of judgment is taking place right here is not developed at the age of 14. It's minimally developed. >> It's completely developmentally normal to not necessarily be able to control every impulse you have. And that doesn't mean you're a bad kid or that you're doomed. And if everybody sort of thinks of their job as being sort of a proxy cerebral cortex while your while your brain is still maturing in ninth grade, there's a lot of kids who probably in the past people gave up on who can go on and do great things. >> I think that there is a perception that exists that uh 14-year-olds uh should function like many adults and know how to study, that they should know how to carry themselves, that they should know how to articulate what they need. And some students uh are very great at that already by the time they come to high school and and many need some support in in that area. All of our freshmen here at North Grand take a freshman seminar class, but it's a regular class that they take every day. And the whole purpose of freshman seminar is to teach kids how to do high school. >> Good morning to you. Good morning to me. Good morning to everyone and be happy. My name is Brett Murphy. Mr. Murphy. Some people call me Murphy. Some people call me Murf. And for the last 12 years, I've been teaching freshmen because I love freshmen. I understand freshman and I get how hard school is and how it's a tough transition. And I like to do whatever I can to make you all get through that and realize how well you can do. William Bennett, you know, famously said in the late 80s, um, you have close to an educational meltdown here. >> On my second visit to Chicago, after I read through the statistics provided for me by our department, uh, I said that I thought uh, Chicago had the worst school system uh, in the country. Uh, why did I say that? The statistics that I was given said the following. 50% of their uh students do not graduate from high school. They do not make it through. Of the students who remain in school, 50% of them score in the bottom 1% in the United States in terms of their achievement levels. I said, "This is disaster. This is educational meltdown. Uh it is the worst school system in the country." Um, a spokesman from the mayor's office responded immediately and said, "Uh, we're not the worst. Uh, Detroit is the worst." Uh, this is what Justice Holmes would have called what I would say being guilty of low aspirations. >> It was just a disaster. Um I it is amazing to me that we don't understand the power of institutions in children's lives. I mean we had kids literally spending entire days in the lunchroom and nobody doing anything about it. Overcrowded high schools. Kids were taking, you know, teachers don't have a home room, so they just going all over the place. Kids can't find them. It was just basically chaos. Around the time of Bill Bennett's comments in the late 80s, um there was this feeling that the problem with Chicago public schools was that it was bloated and inefficient and you needed to devolve power um from central office to um stakeholders on the ground. At the very beginning, the the consortium was created to study Chicago school reform. A lot of people across the city, including people in Chicago public schools, felt that there needed to be an independent, objective, nonpartisan group of researchers studying the unfolding of school reforms. >> The partnership with the consortium was uh unique and was just extraordinarily beneficial. they consortium had a research capability and capacity that we didn't begin to have in the district and I actually think it's good that it's not in the district because you always want the third party. You want the honesty. You don't want the, you know, the spin or the PR or whatever. >> Early on in my time at the consortium, there was this sense that it was vital to improve high school graduation rates. But there was also this sense that there was nothing that high schools could do. Uh, a lot of people thought of high school graduation as something that's influenced by all of these factors outside of high school before students get to high school and that by by the time students were in nth grade, it was too late. So, one of our pivotal insights was that the nth grade year actually is the key year for graduating and that what high schools do and how students experience that nth grade year makes a big difference for whether they graduate. had you asked me, you know, 15 years ago, I probably would have said senior year is the most important year in high school because that's when you're preparing for college and, you know, filling out applications and all of that. But what we learned through this process is that and what we know now is that it starts a lot earlier than that. A student is considered on track if they accumulate at least five fullyear credits in the freshman year and they fail no more than one semester of a core course. That's English, math, science, and social studies. We found that a student who's on track in the nth grade year is about four times more likely to graduate high school than a student who's off track. Freshman on track is more predictive than students gender, race, economic status, their eighth grade test scores, their mobility, all of those factors combined. >> Demography isn't necessarily destiny. Uh it's not just who you are and what you look like when you enter in high school, but your high school experiences have a lot to do with how well you do in high school. The data was so compelling, so clear, and for me it was just like, bam, this gives us a real a lever, a strategy to try and significantly improve outcomes for young people. >> So, the district took a gamble with all of those resources and all of that energy to place in the freshman year, trusting the research that would we would see gains in uh high school graduation. That takes courage, that takes focus, that takes time, uh that takes an alignment of resources to your values. And I think too often, sometimes districts want the quick fix and they want uh to see the data immediately. And this is one instance where we had to dare to keep trying and wait. And it worked. It worked. It paid off. In 2003, the district took the on-track indicator and put it into its accountability system. After the on-track rate was introduced in accountability for one year, ontrack rates went up and then they went back down and they stayed pretty much constant for a few years. In the meantime, we realized, you know, high schools could use students attendance and grades really early on in the year to figure out who needed more support. The next year there was a slight bump up in on track rates, but the district then took that information and they came up with a whole series of supports. So, we give the these watch list spreadsheets to the high school teams and then continue to refresh them as the ninth graders go through um the year to really track, you know, where are we? And we developed a a kind of summary report that said if your freshman on track measure were to be locked in today, it would be this. Um and we did that quarterly. And so, you know, principles had an incentive to, you know, they were going to be evaluated on this. They were going to be called to account for this number. And so, they were watching it really closely. At the same time, also the network for college success was formed again to help schools use data around student performance in the nth grade. And then that year, OnTrack rates went up quite a bit more. And then the next year, even more. And they kept going up and up and up after that. So people thought with the on track work that okay well you're going to have more kids on track but like your test score is going to go down cuz now you're going to have all these low performing kids who you know made it because you're supporting them and the and the opposite happened. So there was better achievement actually while you had more kids on track from an equity and academic outcome perspective. This is what I know for sure about freshman on track. Not to sound like Oprah, but I know for sure that there are kids who would not have finished high school, who would have very different life outcomes without the on track work. So, we first started in Chicago learning about Freshman on track or at least I did um probably about 10 years ago. Um there were various reports that came out of the consortium out of the University of Chicago uh which talked about freshman year being super critical for student success not only in high school but also in college. We offer a ton of supports to our freshmen starting before they actually even become freshmen over the summer. What we do is uh an intense sort of reinvention of orientation. So rather than a traditional one-day orientation where kids might get their schedule and get a tour of the school etc. we do a several week long uh orientation where students get support in math and literacy. They take uh courses uh taught by counselors about um post-secondary awareness and they engage in activities around identity and uh social emotional learning. So, right now we're going to look at a study done by the University of Chicago that actually studied freshman students and we're going to be able to find look at some information that they found. So, they found that freshmen who missed fewer than eight days of school their first year have a 90% chance of graduating. So, if you're missing fewer than eight days of school, that's like almost automatic. 90% chance that you're going to be able to graduate. That's huge. It goes to show you how important it is to be here. Freshmen who earn a B average or better have a 95% chance of graduating from high school. So, if you're earning a B average and have a you have a 95% chance of graduating from high school. >> None of this stuff is rocket science. is really thinking about sort of that summer bridge between 8th and 9th grade and how do we help more students come into the high school and start to, you know, get exposed to, you know, how do you study and how do you just transition through the hallway and how do you find your classes and how do you have an adult who's going to help take care of you? School's not easy when you come in as freshmen. Most of us are nervous, scared, and we need a safe place to be able to get used to this. We also need someone to teach us how to do high school cuz it's a little bit different. There's going to be different homework. There's going to be different tests. There's going to be final exams and stuff like that. >> High school has been different for me cuz it's nothing like elementary school. It's different like how we traditions. The classes is different. The time periods, the desks are different. A lot of people are different. Like there's new people that I never met before. New rules. different rules. It's just like a a new lifestyle for me. >> Number one, I can help you with homework. I can help you with learning how to check your grades and use your email and all that stuff. We also are going to write in journals in here and talk about real stuff like the stuff that matters, what goes on in our life. I like to think of my classroom as a big family. >> We go over missing assignments. We go over life lessons. We go over skills that we can use for a job application and etc. He shows us that he cares because of how he treats us and shows us respect. >> So, I've been teaching for quite a while and I was here before freshman on track was a thing. When that research was brought to us, we were very interested in it. Um, our graduation rate was relatively low compared to what it is now. And um we really like the idea that there's something that we could do to improve graduation rate. Before that, there was a lot of talk from some of the teachers and some of the administrators, previous administrators who aren't here anymore about, well, some kids just, you know, it's not they're not cut out for school. So, we just expect some kids to drop out and that's okay. They used to call them knuckleheads like it was ridiculous, right? That's just not part of our school culture anymore. And I think Freshman on track is a big part of that. I definitely think that really thinking about the research that that had been done around freshmen um and high school graduation outcomes and post-secary outcomes kind of drove us as educators to be more uh focused on collaborating and being self-reflective on our work. Really turning inward and looking at ourselves as educators and how are we um perceiving our students? Do we have any subconscious beliefs that maybe can impact how we support our students? So, seven years ago here at Northrand, our freshman on track rate was 76%. That was before we started looking at the research and engaging in the work. The following year, we were able to raise it to 90% and then since then it's been above 90 90% consistently. In CPS, we grant our principles a high degree of autonomy and our performance policy clearly states that freshmen on track matters. individuals know that while they have a degree of autonomy to hit that goal that eventually they have to meet the goal that we have as a district. >> Schools did different things and some schools, you know, they had on track coaches, some schools had tutoring programs, some schools had buddy systems, some schools had mentoring. So, there was a lot of freedom in what the school did to help kids to intervene. And I think that's part of the story that's really important. Um, I could see another district saying, "Okay, everybody, we're gonna implement this program." Uh, and this wasn't the case. This was kind of data driven. It was researchdriven, but the solutions were chosen at the local site by the people who knew their kids best. Freshman on track rate, if you can see, last year is 95% and and we are trending up on that. Scholarship dollars are trending up. This year, the freshman class was 433 students. The first thing that we did this year was we hired a new freshman counselor. So, her role was specifically to work with 9th grade students and parents and she has been amazing. The second strategy was employing intervention strategy person. And what he does specifically is when students are falling off track, if they have C's, D's or Fs, then he figures out ways also to meet with the parents, create study session opportunities, either those are before school or after school. He also works and and owns the work of the AM ambassadors, which are upper classmen who are responsible for tutoring and supporting our ninth graders who are struggling academically. The last thing we do is a freshman advisory every Wednesday. Other students in the in the school have what's called independent labs. So they can once a week during um advisory on Wednesdays, they have opportunity to go study or do college applications or whatever they need to work on for those 40 minutes. Okay guys, today I'm I'm going to hand you out your missing work report. So like we do every week, I give you a copy on the first day of the week letting you know things that you need to work on that have been marked missing in the grade book. So this is for Clarence. This is for Ben Nir. And congratulations Javon has everything turned in on time so he doesn't get a paper. It's so important. Doesn't it make you feel good Javon to not have that additional stress? >> Stress off my shoulder. >> The stress off of your shoulder. So like when we when you're um in class, you want to make sure you're absent from class or something comes up or you're missing the work. You always want to make sure that you're talking to your teacher that very next day to find out what you missed. I know you have seven teachers now. You're adjusting from that transition from elementary school where you may have had one or two teachers to having seven teachers. So, the key to being successful is making sure that whatever you're using, your binders, your notebooks, that everything stays organized cuz remember what did I tell you about your GPA your freshman year? >> It's like the easiest to change. >> Yes. So, you're starting off at ground zero. So if you have a really high GPA your freshman year, that kind of sets the trajectory for the rest of your high school experience. So it is so important that you make your freshman year your year where you um work your hardest to get these are better in all of your classes. Miss Taylor meets with a small group of students every day. And these are the kids that the data informed us early on that they may struggle in high school. So she's looking at the portals every day to check grades. She knows the assignments. She knows the task. She knows when exams are. She knows when quizzes are. And they're making plans to support students. And those who fall short, she's there to kind of catch. >> Me and Mr. Roberts, we want to work and support you. So, if there's anything that we that you need from us, please make sure that you're communicating. >> Our freshman seminar class is very personal. We have three peers throughout the day and that time is basically focused on teaching the students executive functions. Um, we teach the students how to how to study, how to write down their work, how to plan their week or how they want to do certain things. And I think that's very helpful when we look at the the greater scheme of things for the freshman class. >> The bell is getting ready to ring shortly. So remember, like I tell you guys every day, you must write your homework down daily and you must stay organized. Why do you think that I want you to write down your homework as soon as you get in the room? >> What can happen? >> Cuz you can forget later. >> You can forget later. You can forget later. If you're struggling with something, don't suffer in silence. There's so many people in the building who are here and willing to help you to get make sure that you have the support that you need in order to be successful. She'll give us um a sheet that uh holds all of our homework that we've been missing and she goes to we write out all our classes down all the miss work for our classes and then over the week we set goals to see how we're going to get that work done. Once I get to know a student and we can have like a one-on-one conversation, you can tell they you can tell the students approach. So once I identify the type of student they are and what they need and if I can't figure it out on my own, we have a whole freshman on track team who's always willing to help me out. Me, Mr. Morrison, Miss Taylor, we talk, we may talk three or four times in a meeting setting throughout the the week. >> Our assistant principal, Mr. Morrison has done a really good job at pulling together the freshman team as it relates to the freshman team teachers and he's been working with uh the network for college success. They look at the data, they come up with a plan and strategies to work with each student. The network for college success uh helps principles to think about the research, think about the implications for their practice, um put together the data that they would need to understand what's happening at their school level and to uh create the conditions for success. So we think of ourselves as capacity builders. >> Here were these principles that had vision but literally were not working together. Somehow when they got together and they started talking to each other, they just decided they were going to form a network. The network for college success was not my idea. It was their idea. Um I was just trying to respond to see if I could get people together in the room and see what they thought. the researchers can only do so much, but you need other groups like the network for college success who they're a professional development organization and so they are drawing on research to work with schools uh around the problems they've selected to work on and I think that's another learning for anybody else who wants to develop a a research practice partnership that you need somebody in the system to carry the water of the research and to carry the messages meages from the practitioners back to the researchers. >> I first encountered Freshman on track as a principal at Diet High School. If I'm quite honest, I thought it was another thing that would come and go. At the time, I was a principal in the network for college success. I had a group of other principles working on the same thing, so I was almost forced not to forget about it. You may have noticed that you are sitting across from another school. We're going to do data a little differently today. Instead of giving you your data and asking you to analyze it, start thinking about next steps. We're going to give your data to a different school and we're going to give that school's data to you. And we're going to ask you to start by analyzing your partner's school's data. We're going to take about 10 minutes to explore your partner schools data and in 10 minutes we'll come back and then we'll do a a a share a pair share. Okay. >> In our performance management sessions that we lead and in collaboration with Chicago public schools we display everyone's data and you would think one might think that principles would be very protective of that. >> Is it scary to look at other schools data? No. I think it's really helpful uh to see where you know where my school sort of falls in terms of data in comparison to other schools. I'm super competitive personally as a principal when I look at my data compared to other schools. Um of course I want I want my kids to to be doing the best and to be doing even better. Um but I have to look at it within my own context and that's something that NCS also helps us to do. You know making specific targeted goals based on where your data is and where you want to go. If you want to win, you obviously want to see, you know, what other schools are doing. And then if they're doing something, it looks like they're having a little more success. Then that gives us an opportunity to have an exchange about what they're doing that maybe we're not doing. So I think it's a good thing to collaborate because at the end of the day, we're all in it for the same reason, and that's to really educate students. >> I work with seniors, but I also work with freshmen. So, you know, one group helps inform the other. Something we've also worked on this year is uh for our grade level meetings uh creating a better kid talk protocol so that it takes the focus from you know in discussing a particular student from oh my god this kid is driving me nuts to here's what's going on in my classroom here is the issue with the you know here's what I see going on with this student here's what I'm wondering and it's a far more productive way of developing um interventions, solutions, next steps. Um it's taken us about a year to really work this out, get people to buy into it. Still a little bit of a struggle. Uh cuz there are people who still kind of naturally want to just vent and you need time to vent, but venting is not productive. I think one of the things you observe when this work goes from um like just starting to be present in a school to uh being embedded in the school practice is that you see the conversation about students that happens between teachers change from something like that student just won't or those students don't do to here's what I'm doing to make sure that they're successful and and that's really a change in the definition of what a school is and a job and a different job description for a teacher. So instead of being a judge, they're being a facilitator of success. There aren't that many things that change the way educators relate to students. And I always compare um a lot of other reforms to um to diets and freshman on track to like a lifestyle change. You know, it's like you can go low carb for like a couple of days or whatever and you know, will you really stick with it? But when you're doing freshman on track, right, you've changed how you thought about what your job is. if we have, you know, some way that we can have one-on-one discussions with undivided attention to just kind of, you know, ask the kids a couple questions and try to try to figure out what's going on. I mean, you know, we already do have a lot of discussions, but if we could have something where we really can focus without interruption or without having to, you know, keep an ear out for the rest of the room, maybe that might help give us some more insight and help us devise some more solutions. >> Support doesn't mean top down we tell you kids what to do, but inviting student voices into the conversation because their stories are very important. What do we really know about this student? What do we know about their strengths? What do we know their challenges? What do we know about their family? How do we encompass all of the different things that we know about this student so we can fully support them? >> The fundamental change in practice that the network for college success supported and that lots of uh schools were trying and finding success with was to organize your nth grade teachers in a grade level team. Traditionally, the way that high schools are structured by academic department doesn't necessarily give you that space to talk across departments, by grade level about students. And so if you can get that freshman success team together that shares a group of kids that can take collective responsibility for nth grade course failure, not just who's failing or passing my class, then you've got a framework for thinking from the students perspective and from sort of a case management perspective about what do we need to try to get all these students on track. We met with all the students that were failing one course or more and then we haven't met with some um students that are D's or at risk. But Derek is organized a boot camp with Miss Taylor. >> Once they got going, it was like, okay, we see the potential in the students. We just got to kind of separate them from their friends. Let everybody want to goof off and and laugh. So, I've I figured putting them in the library would kind of set the tone. >> Like, if a student comes to me and says, "Can I revise this essay for a better grade?" I'm not going to say no. I want you to be a better writer. I want you to take my feedback and make it better. So, if you want to take the time to do that, >> of course. >> But I think that puts the onus on like students that are self- advocates and students that are defeated and like giving up already. they are they're seeing that confusion or that that that you know fuzzy area as >> well she's not going to accept it anyway. Can we be notified like when all the major homework assignments are due, papers or tests and quizzes just so we can give that extra push? We can be the rem to face like, hey, you got a test or you have this this paper due. So when they sit and say, I have no work to to do, you have a test or a paper that you can get like be getting ready for. >> So we we talked about a homework boot camp downstairs in the Blitz meeting. So, we went ahead and put that together. >> So, today is our uh third week of homework boot camp. So, basically what it is is that we saw a trend of um >> after the third quarter slump, we saw the trend that there was a lot of the homework that wasn't getting done. You on my list too, man. >> I know. >> I don't know. This quarter like everything was good. >> No, you just tired of doing work cuz it's the fourth quarter and it's getting hot outside. You trying to go out. >> I'm saying like you going to come up fast. >> Come on, man. Let's just finish strong. >> If you finish strong now, you ain't got to see us for the whole summer. >> Did you finish Did you finish typing your paper for Mr. Ste? >> No. So, you have something to do. So, let's let's get on that >> since I have like people who actually counted on me now, like my mama or Mr. Roberts or any of my teachers, Miss Callaway. Now that I got actual people trying to help me out, it's motivating me to actually do better and make them proud. So, I've been trying to make them proud all this semester by getting all my work in. I got all my missing assignments in. >> What we want for kids is to have group of adults who are organized around their success, who know who they are, and um are working with other adults in a, you know, on a team or in a community to make sure those kids are um being taken care of and are doing well. Um, this is in pretty sharp contrast to how I think high schools were in the past where I think the general thought was that we're going to present this material to the kids and they're going to study it and then we're going to tell them if they got it or they didn't. Uh, and this is a very different approach. Um, instead of weeding kids out, it's turning high school into a a community that's trying to ensure success for every student. So many students are lost on on the assembly line of education because they're not moving quick enough. And and ninth grade on track says, "No, let's pause for a minute. Let's deeply understand what are the needs of our young people and then let's put the right systems and supports to wrap around them so that they continue their educational career to get to graduation and then enter into a post-secary option. So, right now I'm logging into Aspen for I can check my grades and see what's my total GPA. I'm doing pretty good. I feel like I'm doing pretty good. I have a C in in art. It should go up to a B soon because I'm I'm almost done with my with my glazing stuff. I have a B with Mr. Murphy. I have a B in biology. I have an A in English and I have a C in Mr. Alvarado's class and world studies. In the beginning of the year when I was in my regular classes, I wouldn't understand the stuff as much as I understand the stuff now and I wouldn't focus cuz there was a lot of students in there. So sometimes I would like just quit and shut down. But like now I'mma sit by myself hopefully and I could just work by myself because if I stay with someone I'm gonna get distracted easily. Melanie is a very bright and um I'm going to say she has a bubbly personality. She's changed this year in that um I've really seen her grow and want to better herself, better her grades. in my class specifically, she realized, you know what, maybe I'm sitting with too many of my friends and I need to move and I need to stay focused. Um, she has, so she's done that on her own. She has come in during her own lunchtime to make up work and to um ask clarifying questions so she's not distracted by others and that's helped her. I think that a lot goes into raising a metric such as freshman on track. So, we have common planning time where our teachers meet or all of our nth grade team meets. Uh, it's called this freshman success team. We talk about what specific targeted academic interventions we can do for certain students to help them. Um, because maybe they're struggling in my class, but uh, in another teacher's class, they're excelling because of a certain strategy that he or she may be using. There's a lot of collaboration that goes on. every teacher in here, you know, you it comes your meeting time whether it's department meetings or that and everyone goes h right just because you have so much to do and it's your prep period but it's two prep periods a week and what we get done is valuable being able to talk about kids talk about specific kids and why and discuss the reasons why they're not succeeding in multiple classes if that's a case or behavior issues uh is so important. >> Part of the transition to this work is ensuring that teachers have time to actually work together and collaborate during the school day. You know, when freshmen on track was introduced, it was a way to to intervene and it it made sense to us. It was logical and we also started to see the results immediately. >> Knowing whether a kid was on track or not at the end of the freshman year doesn't do anybody any good if you want to intervene during the freshman year. So CPS had like jumped in and started coordinating their reporting to schools so that there were there were quick turnaround reports and this was this was data that people wanted. Uh and I think it really did change their mindset. This is usable. >> Literally every day I pull my freshman failure report and look at the FS and then I call my attendance clerk and every single kid who has an F, I ask her if they're here or not. And so if they're here, great. if they're failing and they're not here, then I'll ask her to call home that day. Making sure that the parent knows that the the child is absent, asking why the child's absent. Um, letting them know their percentages in the classes that that they might not be doing well in. Um, and that's something that happens from the first week of school all the way through the end. The use of data has been also very critical in just kind of the growth that we've seen over the years as a school and how we're looking at our students and and providing supports for them. We are shooting to be very equitable and providing um access to all of our students. We look at data and we see, wow, there's there's actually some real gaps that are significant. We see gaps in GPA with um our boys versus our girls. And what does that mean about what we're doing and how we're doing it? >> Before we used to say 20 kids are flunking geometry, let's do a geometry after school program. What we do now is realize that one kid geometry because he his mother can't get him to the bus in the morning. It's a huge fight. He's always late for school. Geometry summer school is not going to help with that. Next kid is doing for a different reason. What fundamentally had to change was the people in the building had to start acting differently towards kids. What I'm working on with Chris nonstop and what I talk to his mom about is relating to school, understanding the importance of it, taking ownership of his education and what that's going to mean for him later. >> I'm a pretty shy and chill person. So most of the time I just hope that someone else has the same question as me. And if not, I just move on and hope over time that I understand what we're doing. >> With Chris, it's just constantly pulling him aside and having conversations. And how are you doing? And I see that, you know, you're kind of just getting by. He puts his hood on a lot and he gets a little sleepy sometimes and sometimes it works like with him little bits at a time. It's in this transition from elementary school to high school that a lot of students struggle, including students who had done really well in elementary school. In that transition, it was important to be building relationships that um when students started to struggle, it's important that teachers noticed it and said something by saying, "Hey, I noticed that you didn't come to class last week or, you know, you haven't turned in um the assignment that was due on Tuesday." are the sorts of things that students notice. they realize that somebody is paying attention to them and that can really change how they feel about the school. >> What was your favorite class for a semester? >> Um, freshman seminar with Mr. Murphy. >> A freshman seminar with Mr. Murphy. Tell me about that. Why do you like that class so much? >> Um, because we would talk about like mental disorders and we would talk about feelings and trying to write all our feelings in a notebook. >> Mhm. So like he will only read them and it's just like a way to like get your feelings out >> and not tell anybody. Like if you don't want to tell nobody about your deepest secrets, you could just write it in the notebook. >> Mhm. What was your hardest class for you? >> Um algebra and art. >> Arge algebra and art. Algebra was hard for me too. I was the kid who every day after school when I was a freshman, I went to tutoring to get extra help cuz I needed to hear it a couple times. So well, you can do it. You got to keep you got to keep working hard. Talk to your teachers if you feel like you're getting behind. Turn in everything. >> You'll be able to do it. >> So Melanie right now in algebra is >> not passing. There were a couple weeks where she was putting her head down in class and um really refusing to do any work. Uh there was one incident where um she totally refused to do anything. And so I actually sent her out of the room to the dean. Um, and then that was kind of the moment where I was kind of like, okay, maybe we need to approach this from a different place because whatever we're trying isn't working. Let's look for things you're missing. So, what's the first thing you see you're missing? >> Brain warmers. Week 37. >> Um, this one, right? >> This is what um we can do. I can gather some of these things and we can work on some of them together. We're going to have to kind of work together probably more than once though because I'm not if you feel like you can know how to do all of these things or you can get help from someone at home. Then you can take them and do them on your own. But I just want to make sure that you can do them. So you feel like you understand everything so that when you take the exam on Monday, you feel really confident like you've practiced everything with all of your work. And because you've practiced so much, you feel like you're going to do well and um be able to pass >> like last week on Saturday, >> but I don't know if I did or not. >> After you worked on this with Elantra. >> Yeah. >> I found it. >> See, I did it. >> I got it. I'll come get you a blue piece of paper. You can start to maybe get this ready and then I'll look for your study guide. Okay. We made a schedule to for her to come in at lunch so we can definitely uh check in at least once before the final, probably a couple times so that she's able to review all the material and make sure she feels confident to do well on that exam. I think she realized her grade wasn't so great. And then I noticed that Melanie's grades were okay in the other classes. So, I'm not sure um if maybe she realized, hey, I need to stepping up in algebra. you have any >> you have done so well, right? And I'm so proud of you for that. But all of a sudden, like I've noticed a lack of focus and all of a sudden your grade in biology in algebra dropped super fast. Why do you think that happened? >> I don't know. I think I gave up. >> I mean, what what and that happens and it's okay, right? We can go through little periods, but what do you think like caused you to just not to give up? >> What do you mean? >> You mean why did you give up? >> So many things have been happening. >> Yeah. Stuff at home? >> No, just stuff at school. >> Social stuff? >> Yeah. >> Drama stuff. >> Yeah. >> And you've been letting that affect. So, who do you go talk to when there's drama and other stuff messing up? my counselor or you >> me, right? >> So, you have to make sure that you do that. >> All right. >> I have to hurry up to go home or like cuz I got to go cook for the kids or I got to go home and go do laundry or like got to go home clean the room. I got to take all the kids a shower and stuff and it just bugs me a lot. When that test comes, I know I'm going to cry. I'm I am going to cry when that test comes cuz in eighth grade and seventh grade I wouldn't pay attention in class. I would always ditch just hang out outside of the in the hallways. And now they're not going to let you do that here in high school. I think things are going a little downhill personally for me just because I was so used to everything being a little too easy that I started to slack off and my grades dipped a little but I'm getting them back up now. Okay, so today we're going to be working on our final project. Project number one is who's to blame for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet? It's an argumentative essay. It's an opinion. You have to defend your opinion using evidence from the text. So, I think you're a good test taker. So, I think you're going to be fine on the final exam, but I really need you to make sure that you do that paper and do it well. Otherwise, your grade could slip to a D. Now, another thing is, how would you feel about getting a B? Have you thought about doing a second project? You're here every day. You work relatively hard and uh I think you know your stuff. Do you think you know your stuff? >> Okay. It's a lot about building relationships and I think you often have to convince students that it does matter and that it matters for them and talking to their parents usually helps with that. Christopher's mom cares a lot about how he does in school. So, I encouraged him last week. They're doing a final project for Romeo and Juliet. I encouraged him to do two of them. >> Okay. >> They have a choice of five projects. >> Okay. >> He's choosing to do the paper. >> Okay. >> Where he's arguing that Frier Lawrence, the guy who married Romeo and Juliet, >> is actually to blame for their deaths. >> Okay. >> He's doing a nice job with it. He should finish it any day now. It's a 77. Now, we're in C++ territory. >> Why not put a little extra effort in toward the end >> with the extra >> and get the B? Okay. >> She um was just telling me that um they have a final coming up and a paper coming up, but she wants him to do um something extra to get his C up to a B. So, we're going to work on that this weekend. She could have just said, you know, he's fine. He'll get a C. No, you do this one more assignment. I'll give you a B. She wants them to succeed. She wants them to get more. She doesn't want them to settle. >> Now, what you got? >> Let me see what what you doing. How many times does four go into 16? Right here. >> How many times is four going into 16? >> Four. >> Okay then. So 1/4 of 16 is is what? >> Four. >> Okay then. >> Do you sure that's right? >> So what you what you doing? What's the assignment? Think about something that like that you passionate about. You want to play football? Write about football. What you can do is write it down. Read it. Save it to your old phone and listen to it as a song. You don't like doing homework. >> No, it's the way you say stuff. >> Look, look. We here to help you. I'm not going to stop until we help. We help you tomorrow when you come in hitting the ground running. So, we not going to sit back here and just let you fail. >> I don't believe it's too late. And I don't believe in throwing in the towel. And I believe that if students come to us, and some students do come to us um who academically really have some deficiencies and some gaps, then it's my job is to figure out how to help them. That's my job. So, it would be kind of like, you know, going to the doctor and telling the doctor, well, you know, I'm sick. And the doctor says, oh, well, you know, it's really far. It's nothing I can do. So, I don't believe and it's too late. I just believe and keep trying. That's what I believe. I think the the most dangerous myth that we have in education is that failing a student teaches that student an important lesson. And we know from our research here that when a student fails, they start to internalize negative stereotypes, negative narratives about themselves, that they don't often times learn important lessons. Um that failure begets failure. When we fail students at the ninth grade, when they're in this new community, we send very clear messages to the students um that are counterproductive. The kids are not hearing, "Oh, I better work harder." They're hearing, "I don't belong here." I'm trying to finish this essay for uh Furlong's English class for uh Romeo and Juliet. And the objective of the essay is who who do you think is responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet? And that it's a final. So it kind of determines whether you pass or not. So, I'm headed to algebra to take my final. I feel I'm scared. Do you remember? >> Did you guys add them? >> Mhm. >> Like, huh? >> Um, you need to look and see if you can remember. >> Okay. Okay. It was kind of harder than the part first that we did cuz this is my last test and then we're done with school. I'm tired of school. >> Okay, so I got Melany's exam in front of me. It looks like she knows how to begin a lot of the problems. She got the first four uh completely correct, which um is a large part of the understanding. So, it looks like she's on a good track to do a better on this portion and hopefully um I can convince her to go back and put some work for the multiple choice, too, so I can um really see what she's understanding and give her the credit that she deserves. >> Did you finish the other papers that I asked you to finish? >> Um I think I have some that I have to finish, but I'm not done yet. >> Okay. So, are you going to continue to do those throughout the day? Uh yeah, but but I'm going to get an early dismissal, so I think I'm going to come back to finish doing what I have to do. >> Again, I just I care about you and I just want to make sure that you feel good for for next year and for for everything. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. >> There's definitely a mindset among some teachers that like, no, if they don't turn it in on time, I don't accept it because that's setting them up to fail in college because they don't accept late work in college. And our approach has been like, okay, but they're not in college yet. Right now, they're freshman in high school. And so we have to sort of build that scaffolding to support them along the way and build the identity and build the skills to get them to the point where they'll succeed in college. >> Okay, Christopher, you received a 78% on your Romeo and Juliet test. >> I got 10 wrong. >> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 wrong. So that's a C plus. Redid your paper. I gave it a B. There you go. 80.4. four. Nicely done. When I first started working at the consortium, students were about as likely to not graduate in four years as they were to graduate. Now, students are more than three times as likely to graduate than to not graduate. And they're graduating with higher achievement than ever before. taking more rigorous classes with higher test scores and those graduates are more likely to go to college. >> I think the numbers that were true here in Chicago would be made with some tiny variation true everywhere. So the lessons of behind the numbers and the lessons behind the strategies, there's nothing unique about Chicago kids or Chicago high schools or that middle, you know, elementary to high school transition. I think the freshman on track story is so important because it's important not just as a dropout prevention strategy but as a story about how reforms can work. When you're trying to catalyze um real change, you need um to assume that you don't already know what the answer is in every context. Um and then you need to give people the tools and support they need to do the work that they're going to do. Um, I think it's really changed a lot about what people think is possible. That, um, something that was seen as insurmountable and complicated as high school dropout was actually something that could be solved within a high school. >> The most gratifying part is that, you know, 15 years later, um, Freshman on track is at an entirely different level. um what was sort of a new language is now it's just part of the vocabulary now and I think it's impacted you know obviously not just the Chicago public schools but districts across the nation are thinking about this differently. So this this nexus of policy and practice I think is so crucial and so often those two worlds don't meet and that's to I think the real uh detriment of education and impacting kids lives. I think this is a great example of where policy and research and data and practice intertwined and meshed in a really powerful way and in a way that 15 years later you guys want to tell the story. >> We're really proud of the success and the progress that we've made in Chicago public schools. Um while we're proud of that, we're still pushing to make sure that there is equity across the district. I personally won't be satisfied until every single student in CPS, no matter their um zip code or the school that they attend that they have access to a high quality education. >> What we have to think about is like how do we look at every student group or every group of students who are entering into the building as a different set of young people who need our support. And so we have to understand like like how are they coming to school? What do we need to understand and know about them? And then how might we need to shift again in service of them? And if we do it in a way that's respectful that we have kind of trained our brains to think the best about everyone's child, I think we've won half of the battle. No matter how low they come in, no matter what gaps they may have, you still got to make them believe that you believe in them because kids will work hard for people who care. And that's the truth. And the minute you stop caring, they know that's it. I would propose that we take a brief break and then what we're going to do when we come back is I'm going to ask you your tables to share your favorite example of either a change in organizational structure in practice or in student behavior and then we'll conclude with a larger group discussion of how we replicate strategies. Anybody want to propose no break? I'm suggesting it, but I don't Everybody wants to keep going, but otherwise people seem okay with that. Let's take >> five minutes. >> Say five minutes will be 10. So, let's let's try >> let's make sure that we are back in >> 7:30 we're started for sure. And if everybody's back before then that's great. How's that? >> 7:30. >> Okay, great. This is going to take a little bit of discipline at your table >> because what we learned today, your task is not to yet make meaning of what we just saw, though that's where we're going to end with a full group discussion. But your task is to go around your table and have each person take a turn and you're going to pick one of the three things that you watched for that struck you and just name it. Don't go deeply into all the implications of it and things. We want to get out the things that you saw that fall into these three categories in relatively fast fashion. and then um I'll bring us back together and we'll pivot to the so what now what some of the implications are. The purpose that you're dealing with here is to try and be sure that um you are uh individually and collectively seeing some of the differences between the organizational structures that changed in Chicago schools to make their progress possible, the adult practice change which is our key focus today and then some of the changes in student attitudes and behaviors. Obviously, they really only focused on two kids, so there's less in this video about the changes in the kids, but we did see some of that. So, let's say the person who is most committed to children will start out this conversation. So, go and I'll I'll really keep it fairly rapid. You don't have to be one word, but just you're saying this happened. I saw an organizational change here. Okay, here we I think it's Justin because you have four. >> Okay. I'm not committed to kids, but I'll start anyway. Um, organizational change. Uh, >> they provide a teacher with time during the school day to meet together. >> Somebody else >> next. That was mine. >> Okay. You can say it too. Are we still >> Yeah, teachers had time during the school day. anyone >> n success >> those are kind of the same. Yes. >> Okay. >> I would take into that different expectations for nth graders compared to later years. orientation. >> Let's say organizational organizational structures around I did also put on there for organizers. >> Did we get to move on to practice changes changes in adult practice? specifically intention teaching students, >> inviting students into the process, >> targeted support, >> prioritize. >> Another thing I grouped in adult practice was the the teachers that talked about how they were becoming more research, collaborative, >> examine their own beliefs and bias. >> The end. Um I will also say the collaboration >> organizational structures regularly >> specifically principal accountability or >> and I think the adult practice that changed was the teachers started seeing their jobs differently and not just um presenting information but also supporting individual kids. So I I put that in there, too. And I struggled with is that really a practice or a mindset, but one of the statements that somebody said was they no longer see themselves as a judge, >> but rather a facilitator of success. And I thought to change that mindset and be like my job >> organizational structure was the the nth grade team for you, but I'm support. What a completely different I never wrote down. >> I wasn't sure where exactly where this went. I think it's organizational the the alignment resources to their values. >> You know, I mean, that's what your budget is, right? >> Okay. Um, >> we're trying to stay focused here. >> Okay, good. >> Um, for students, I love that one kid said, "I have actual people trying to help me out." >> That was something >> such a motivator. >> That's such a >> I love that too that he was motivated by the teachers and parents that were supporting me, wanting to make them proud. >> Yeah. motivated by teachers who care about their success. I also added um this wasn't >> sorry to get too far up but going back to something you said earlier Justin leading adaptive work that the student had no qualms about her freshman seminar teacher reading her journal her deepest darkest secrets and that was bothering her. So that I thought about that building that trust that was her favorite class. She'll write anything in that anything in that journal. >> She's okay with her freshman seminar teacher >> reading that nice to hear. Well, then they taught them because they some of the adult was just saying about the they were accountable to the freshman on track, but they had freedom to figure out what interventions. So then it impacted the kids. I I can't remember which student said this, but he was expressing that >> student attitudes >> that some of them started >> students felt accountable to the adults that were invested in their success like they wanted to do it for those felt like they they owed it to those adults to us. It's amazing how reluctant they were that they got. I also put I think that really >> One of the things I saw too in the student attitudes was um they were able to analyze what motivated I mean there was there was self-reflection um >> the one gal you know she recognized that when she was in a larger group or with her friends there was a lack of focus I mean she could name it >> yeah understanding about that and then I'm thinking what is the relationship between that awareness and all the journaling may not have a really smart kid in eighth grade. >> Yeah. who was not. >> There's definitely a theme of the schools or the the adults shifting from judges of success to enablers of success. But >> I wasn't quite sure where it put kids in class and are they in school today and secretary would call home to find out if and why. >> We got to visit her and got to meet her and visit her school and >> Oh, for real? >> You're not just making up? >> No. No, we were we were there last fall. >> But before we visited the schools, the biggest thing that stood out to me when >> when we were part of the the learning was the focus on >> what what is the role we can play in improving the outcomes for kids because there's so many things that that matter that have an impact on their on kids that are outside of our control and things inside our within our control. And if we we if we shift our thinking and and focus on what's truly within our control, even attendance, >> I can't physically force a kid to come. But if I if I as the teacher call and check on them, they are more likely to come back to school because they know somebody cares about them. So like I have and the thing I think that's underlying all of this, >> well, you know what they're going to have to do in life. >> Kids believe, >> well, they're 14 years old. >> That's it. That's it. And if they know that there's somebody there. >> Yeah. I mean, that was just It's just an ask believe that there's somebody there believes in them >> the algebra. >> I think this teaches everything >> they're going to try. I agree and I think eventually they learn kids to be intrinsically motivated >> but if initial if the initial reassessing sometimes the parents the parents saying please let me >> I also like that the district She started out in grade school. You know, you have to do so much. >> Aren't they supposed to learn? Oh yeah, think about that the next time a cop stops you for speeding. places that maybe use high school kids as tutors in those I want to hear. This is a good story. >> I will point out it's been stressful for her. >> So, yeah. So, she went back to work. How old is her baby? >> Her mother-in-law's there. >> He's going to get vaccinations. The other thing that happened in here that kind of goes to what you said just I wasn't quite sure where to put it because I felt like there were there were organizational structures in place but it was also you saw it in just three minutes >> where I could official adult practices was that >> I think the adisement. So they had they had a freshman advisory >> twice a week. >> So they had those structures in place. But you also saw it happening like you know the the English teacher. That's why they have all oneonone just talked to you for a minute after conversation saw. You're so smart. It's killing me that you're not >> why you know why did you need to do different? So that that concept of adisement they had organizational structures in place but it was also visible in just adult practices that they were taking every opportunity to engage in those one-on-one supportive conversations. >> Make sure the kids >> well be specific about what to do. >> Well, that's because you can just do this >> how much does I love the assignment >> and even reminding there's five choices if you do two that specific >> so it's not >> you need to do your English paper knowing you need to work on your algebra >> final wanting to find out what >> right Why do they dump everything tomorrow? >> Yeah. >> Why are all the tests on Friday the last day? >> I think this is successful here and I'm not saying we can't but this was very passion driven. This work was very passion. So >> it yes and no because you heard the one principal say when I first started I thought this was just going to be something that came when >> so the pra she had to engage in the practices and her beliefs followed right and that happens sometimes >> but the piece I think in here is the collective advocacy and we and >> so really it's the mindset that we can make an impact and I don't have to carry the whole all of it on my shoulders because we're all in it together. The adults are all in it to support all of the kids. >> Um, >> that's the hardest part is is convincing the adults. See, and I think there are a whole lot of adults that don't need convincing, but it's got to come from that and that's what they're saying from that site that our school together has decided this is what we're going to do. >> And and now especially teacher, we just need you to Well, I got 160 kids. I'm spending three hours after school every day rubbing and correcting and whatever. Um, and I'll spend more time with the kids. I'll try to be better and more caring, but you know, there's a tipping point at which and they talk about work life balance and that's a lot. There's there's also there's a great line towards the end. The the chief equity office talks about the assembly line of education moving his kids through. He says we need people to hit the pause button. And I I back to what you said, I think teachers also feel like they didn't hit the pause button. >> There's always this race to get through their content and not >> and so there's a shift that has to happen there as well >> with standards and all that stuff. >> Don't have to get through all of American literature. Let's just get some >> but I also think >> theage >> it's not everybody that needs the support. So you look at the the folks you were highlighting they said they have three they make three groups a day. >> Those groups were small three four kids. We're talking about 12 kids. What I thought too was a really interesting idea. >> It's just like what do you have in place to make sure everyone >> and you have some kids that are going to advocate for themselves that are going to be selfarters that like you said might not be on the list but they know they need additional help. Some some young people are good at um advocating you know for really freshman on track the best about everybody environment >> email this to every nth grader in the class on track seminar I think it's going to be >> yeah I especially like that especially as a if you will summer school alter alternative will >> the summer bridge >> big bodies in little tiny brains >> and just like they >> I'm excited to >> what we're going >> it's great >> what they're able to accomplish more to hear >> how our skill You just go K through five and then the kids are somewhere six through eight and then they hit high school and you wonder why they have trouble. >> I also like that they sent ambitious goals. So they said the board set a very ambitious goal of what 90 and 95% of success rate and they got 76% and then they got 90 and I think sometimes from our level you know we're nervous for making those those high goals because we want to look good right so we don't want to set >> that's what I'm saying but you don't want to set >> what I'm just saying I'm not talking about that particularly but just like as we're thinking of goals where we are lacking I like that they set the goal they really wanted not the goal that was most achievable but the goal that they really wanted and I think that also led to right because there's a lot of statistics that say >> oh you know 3 to 4% is average you know one of the things I really encourage them I was impressed that they set a very very ambitious goals for this program to really statistically they will say oh you know communicate to >> 6% better you're doing well and they asked them board perspective as we think of goals and outcomes and areas that we are lacking. it it's not what I got out this is not a bad thing right they got 76% that first year a lot of freshmen are gonna come >> but they got 90 then it went back down but I think that gives real and I say that because I have a 20-y old come to me >> you know I get nothing >> well if you said it was bad I've never seen it but I feeling more than one >> more than one semester >> well I'm just saying district to go from 50% to the number that they were asking. I'm just saying that it has encourages they could have set a goal and said we want to go from 50% to 60%. But they >> they set much ambitious goal didn't hit it but stayed with that goal. They could have dropped their goal back down so that >> they would have looked successful according to their goal tracking. But they >> and that's hard too because ninth graders aren't always >> number come home. I think that's >> exactly I asked all those questions and was like oh my god why do you care >> that's fine >> you don't know where back if I can I apologize I want to be mindful of time and I want to save some time for an open and full discussion I know although I know some of you are facing each other's backs but everybody can kind of pivot I hope um probably is the person who's seen this video the most in the room except for Jean um let me kiss you in advance Thank you. Thank you. >> Let me let me just highlight a few things that um I've noticed that struck uh struck me um because I've had the benefits of seeing this. And by the way, for board members too, we are doing this work in Rochester. And so we will put this on a board agenda. It will be a key part of our um MTSS for behavior and well-being. And so this is happening. And I heard today very positive things about the launch of the new strategies in our middle schools to have eighth graders engaging in welcoming to sixth graders which came out of the night track for us. This it's brand new this year and they're great. So just a few examples of what I would call structural change um that were part of the Chicago story. They hired new people. They hired the coaches. They hired the specialists. Um they launched a number of new programs. They added that ninth grade counselor for instance. um they created a homework boot camp. So I would call all of those things structural changes in a sense. When you get to practice change, the way to think about this is did the structural change actually shift or empower or inform the actions adults took. So one example that they had that I think could be both a structural change and a practice change was their creation of the ninth grade teams. So high schools which most of us have been in high schools know have usually been ruled over by departments. You're like the English department, the social department, the math department, which has its benefits because then you're talking about that subject area across grades, but it was pretty huge change to get the nth grade teachers and social workers and counselors together. So, that was a structural change, but it appears that they really changed practice, too, because they had very different ways of talking about kids within that structure. And so they created for instance a kid talk protocol so that they didn't go immediately to deficit language problem solving and they actually had a structured way of talking about kids in that uh structure. To me that was a a tool that promoted really specific practice change um that was there and I emphasize that because I think we've done a lot of structural change in the last uh five years and there's also been practice change but that's really the weight that's ahead of us in so many ways. Few other examples of the practice change that probably you saw but just to kind of put a finer point on it. Um constant use of data the data for continuous improvement that was huge practice change. They were not using data in that way. Proactive intervention as opposed to waiting for the problem. The whole thing was we're going to proactively identify these kids proactively build relationships like through their nth grade seminar but then proactively inter They used to wait very clearly for things. Um, teaching students how to do school like that was an explicit gigantic change in practice. They probably like Kathy was just talking about parents who would watch this and say, "That's great, but my kid doesn't need it." Well, we used to expect all kids to walk in with that food, you know, and the fact is they realized their kids didn't. and they proactively shifted uh in a huge way to new school. um the relationship piece of course I know both of your tables you know mentioned that but if you really think about practice change in the relationship it it's not just I care about you there was a great line where somebody said when a student struggles teachers noticed it and said something like the and said something is the key thing that's the practice change like I didn't actually just something's off with this kid I actually articulated it to the student. So that's where a mindset shift is different than a practice change. Like what's what's going on with Billy today? He was just off. It's different that I am going to actually say Billy something seems uh challenging. Um the uh the intense orientation they built out for nth graders I would say is another uh really great example of the the structural change. Two of the um interviewers talked about this change made us be more collaborative as teachers and self-reflect like I had to reflect what is what is going on in my practice for the leaders the principles said very clearly we used to look at uh our data and talk about our schools in isolation and then the learning network for the college of success completely changed that so they were collaborative not defensive when I watched this video I wondered if we did what they did where we gave John Marshall centuries data century John Marshall How would that go? I said that to our principal two weeks. How would you guys react to that? Like what would what would that be like? Would it be what they seem to suggest it was, which is like this is not territorial and possessive and that's big change for like a lot of leaders. One thing uh final point that struck me that I think about all the time for our work, they started to see results right away. And that propelled the practice. They started to see and we've definitely seen know our our attendance boost last year, our our grad rates, it's incremental. It's not where we all want. I don't know that our frontline people are seeing those results in the way that they start, you know, where you start to see, oh my gosh, this kid is getting their assignments, this kid, you know, not not just our attendance rate is going up because our attendance rates are going, but this kid is coming to school. That's like what really fuels the the practice change. Um any others that um you didn't get a chance to talk about at your tables that anybody thinks um just want to really highlight from from the video before we kind of turn to a final discussion about so what now for the board. >> Yeah. >> No, it was inspirational. Um, my question was, did Chicago have some people teaching only why is all the pressure on us? you know, we're the ones that have to do this and the rest of you guys are just, you know, we're setting them up for success, which is great, but 10 years. >> Yeah. But did you hear about that when you went to the team that went to Chicago last year? >> No. And what we've actually seen this year, and you might be able to speak to it if they talked about it at this kickoff, but I think they're trying to look at like how do we continue some of these supports into um into 10th grade. Um I I didn't hear any of that. I didn't hear anything anybody wondering about I think I think people recognize the re you can't argue the research and I think people recognize the importance of that year and just wanting to >> No absolutely I'm just the teachers are saying I'm doing the same job everybody else >> is and >> yeah I haven't I did not and I haven't heard that I don't know if you have >> not in any video like this where they're touting their success they probably downplayed some of the struggles It's pretty that certainly is how some of our early elementary teachers feel about literacy. We have to do all the down here. >> Well, that's why I think I like that they had that counselor and they have the intervention and transition specialist. I mean, to your point, I do think there may be more work, but I think there was some consideration, understanding that they needed more support in order to be able to successfully do that. So I would I mean I'm sure they do have you know concerns as individuals but I think that it was promising that it wasn't just these teachers have to come up with it. We know that you need they have a counselor that's just for the ninth grade they have you know the intervention transition that's just so they also um in addition to the additional work they got it looks like they also get their own special team of specialists as well that are helping them with that. So I think that may help. It sounds like the one gentleman just does the uh on tracking. So I think that may be a way that they're kind of trying to balance it having people that just focus on some of those more resources added to the team. >> Right. There's more >> that investment is behave in the way that they sustain themselves into >> well uh to me it's as basic as keeping the main thing the main thing uh which is what improving student outcomes. Uh so all of that to to to get to uh I think what may uh how I'm curious to see how what you will present uh in regards to um helping me as a board member better understand how all of this the skips the RPS 2030 central office department projects the Danielson framework work from teaching how that ultimately moves us to improving student outcomes and so >> yeah thank you I can share a few thoughts on that but just people do they have any extra resources financial resources or do they have to this is how much money you get >> they were very constrained in Chicago and they at lower level they were successful but no they had budget challenges throughout that period >> and that has to be >> yeah um to the point that Don raised and I want to kind of open this as a final you know discussion uh for not just board but cabinet members the question of what would the board's role be I I would answer that in um in three ways. Two that are formal and one that's informal. I think one as I said at the beginning the board's uh adoption of those targets for improvement I think is critical kind of back to Stephanie's point about the orchestra all playing for one role that we have a goal for our graduation rates. So I think the board and I think it's so critical that you live that and will be accountable to that and not simplistically saying the test scores need to go up, it's fault, but why aren't the test scores going up or why aren't they going up? So, the outcome piece I think is a really is a really big deal. And I'll be honest, we're going to get push back. When I stood in front of all our staff last week and I went through every one of the outcomes, you could it was a very positive session, but you could probably tell we've never had this. We've never had our system saying we are setting these goals for improvement and they're not delusional goals but they're notific look at the um look at the progress Willow Creek is making that their scores are coming out up again and we got to take a hard look at Gage because the achievement is terrible um and it's incumbent upon you know us delivering that um and there's great people there doing great things and they are very aware the outcomes need you know so being willing to do that I think the the second thing is being willing to um embrace board agenda items that are about practice a lot of you know I joke with Kathy a lot that the number of people that watch our board meetings is not large, but you do set the tone for so much in the district of what you talk about in partly because of the staff time that gets driven, but partly because and partly because very good reporters writes news article a lot about what you guys so making time in board agendas for discussions of practice which I think some boards might see that's not governance like I don't want to talk about how the Daniel framework is really being used to to improve the quality of teacher question. But I think we want to put that on your agenda and we agree that you need that. And I think the third is your informal interaction when you're on those physics. If you are asking about is this shifting practice? Is this shifting you're asking our principles? Is this shifting your leadership practice? You're asking teachers well how are you doing things differently than you used to? Um are we giving you enough support? you know, are you feeling like you really understand that you need to practice? It's almost like taking a look at that framework, right, created and saying, you know, do do you feel that you have the structural supports you need? Do you have the time? So, I think an emphasis on those practice changes maybe I can just sort of put any of my administration colleagues on the spot. Are there other things in your mind around this kind of practice change before I open it up to board members about things? There's no magic box. I hope that starts coming back really hammers home. You know, the level of focus that we have on really improving outcomes through the skip. I I think that would be a huge win. >> Yeah. You're there. And I have I don't get to see it anymore, but I have witnessed and um lots of good questions um for staff and I think they really appreciate that you're there authentically, not just it's not just a like take a spin around the building, but you're really seeing instruction and asking those questions. Very powerful. How about members thoughts just about um I'm glad um that you mentioned about embracing the agenda items about practice um because as I was thinking of the level of detail that we are now embarking on um and how that it feels like well it is the strategic plan is different from the last one because as you've said many times we were building the airplane as we were flying it whereas we're going to have your recommendations for the priorities that we move forward forward. Um, but one of our biggest roles is to take the vote on the budget that funds whatever we've decided to do. So I I wonder if as we go forward with developing the as as you bring us the recommendations of the strategic plan, you help us to understand what the resources or the areas of resources in the budget that support the components and maybe think about our budget information that we get as a board. Um given that we're probably facing budget reductions, how do the uh recommendations you presented to us impact the components of the strategic plan to whatever level you feel you have to share. So because we have to address a budget reduction, we had to cut the staff. This is going to impact this piece of the of the initiatives or the strategies or the practices. um because I know you think about those things, right? Um but I think we have to start connecting if if if we if we took the step to say we're going to improve these student outcomes and we're backing the strategy and that you're recommending to us. Um we also have to make sure that we're making the right decisions with the finances and that we're all on the same page with that. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. That's not something I've been thinking of in this session, but you're right. the budget for if we believe that practice change is critical we have to fund practice change we have to have the time and support structures for that so that's yeah um one I don't go to the scripts all the time because my schedule but the thing that I do take away is that I think there I find some value in talking to the administrators about skit but then also seeing the class demonstrates that and that there's a balance between those two things that I don't want too much of I still want to see the school and the classroom but um seeing both those >> yeah on my visit this year I'm asking to watch instruction which I haven't done before and I'm going to make very clear it's not evaluative I'm not there to be yes you can show me your superstar if that's what you want to be but I want to make that shift in my own visits which the ship. >> Do you tell them that in advance? >> I just did for this year and I'm doing longer visits too. So I want to get deeper and >> so in addition to the budget, the other thing that I think of in terms of the the board's ability to create the organizational structures is the the calendar and the agreement with the agreements with the bargaining units because the the calendar for the last I don't know four or five years has included these four professional development and curriculum um adjustment days. Um that you know from everything like when we when we talked about implementing the readact and from everything we just saw that opportunity for collaboration and uh teaming is really important to building the and reinforcing these professional practices. Um and then to the extent and I I think the board has uh done a good job of relying on your expertise and managing those negotiations and you and your team, but to the extent there are opportunities to implement some additional structures that would require contract language changes, and I don't have any particular ideas about what those might be, but if that's the case and if the board's endorsement of some changes would help unlock another level or another set of tools that we might be able to use. Um I I think I I would certainly be interested in as a board member in understanding that and having an opportunity to help shape that. Um but those are the the two things that I think of. >> Yeah, the labor negotiations piece is huge. I um I think um uh we I said this last staff. The fact that um the teachers union worked deeply with Mona and her team to select the Daniel framework is a really big opportunity that we need to not screw up. We need to say their professional associations. This is not done onto them by the board by me. it was collaborative and and because you know there a lot of their members out there that are doing great with those things but there's a nobody can do that whole thing perfect the most teacher it's it's designed to have so much so there are going to be moments where evaluation and coaching is going to be like challenging and we've needed that and so to really continually say we are so thrilled that our teachers unique is embracing this new vision of great teaching is just a thing that board members I think can can really be like congratulating it's definitely not rank and file like all I care about is my salary my benefits and how it's worked like they are formally saying we care about this kind of teaching and I just want credit for it >> can you talk a little bit more about how that came about >> we um have to by statutoily have a teacher development and evaluation process in the state. And we had a process um last year where we recognized that the single evaluation tool we were using which is called the class tool was really being used as a single evaluation instrumental. It wasn't this is our vision of great teaching that we introduce teachers to from the moment they're hired the first day. We professionals develop it. We coach it. We have teacher sharing around it. And yes, we do evaluate it. But we don't evaluation. And so we knew we needed to build that process out. And so Mona and REA had a working group that Mark Miles did a f by all accounts a fantastic job facilitating where we looked at all of the different options and um came to a joint agreement that the group literally voted right and voted for the uh Danielson tool. And um so it was a very collaborative process and now we're staying in touch with them on implementation >> because it's the tool is one piece and then there's the process that we had to work through as well. And one of the things that was really really fantastic is they stressed from REA standpoint they really stressed um wanting this to be about professional growth and development. And so we have Mark created this visual where really the foundation is professional growth and development and then the evaluation piece is a smaller piece that sits on top of it. And so we've kind of revamped a lot of it. So coaching will be um a lot more formalized now. It's still not evaluative, but they'll they'll get um verbal feedback, but it'll be followed up with with written feedback as well. And there's um the inquiry cycles to be able to go in and observe other other people um is all worked right into it. And then the last piece that we're going to take an additional year to really work out is the formula that we have to use for the evaluation side. And that's the last piece because the the growth of development is really the most important. >> I think at the same time there's this working and maybe ask on this. I I think the fact that our scores came out with pretty discouraging ambitious instruction scores kind of helped fight a fire under this it wasn't the reason we we were doing the working group anyway but suddenly you have kids telling us I'm not I mean you can say a little about the principles of the ambitious instructions >> there there's it was a fundamental shift for a lot of our buildings even from a skip lens to think about we need to think about what our instruction practices look like, especially in our English and math classrooms to achieve ambitious instruction. And so they wrote skip goals specific to that with initiatives and action steps working to try and build that ambitious instruction into their skills. And similarly, the principles wrote ambitious instruction goals into their own professional goals this year, which was really how they're going to work to help their teachers build that that type of work. So it it's it has been significant the attention that's being paid to that right now. >> I guess my question was that was it innovative to have that and then I guess more >> it's expected that you do have your union involved in at least a formal expression of support for the framework. I think the working group that we had which I was I was not part of so I don't credit was a much more collaborative process than I I to my knowledge when and predates me but when uh RPS selected the class tool it was nothing like it was a central administration as opposed to >> I think the contraction ual pieces you have to have and you can speak to this probably better Carl >> but you also like it's I don't know if it's necessarily the tool versus like the process like they have to um but we did all of it evaluation that's required that's so you don't this vision of professional which that which we're evolving toward I often want to be mindful before I got to Rochester I would often use as an incentive for education because anybody who's in healthare will say oh my gosh we're not perfect but they take professional practice seriously whether you're a nurse whether you're doc radiology technician nobody's insulted that you're going to go to a workshop to learn professional practice and if you deviate from professional practice there are consequences you know sometimes you live to death education is not an exact analogy but I think especially here in the home but we want to talk about not just initially Danielson teachers but we have We're adopting it for social workers, counselors, nurses, I mean every every it's going to be in the strategic plan information you're going to get. We're going to do it for maintenance. We're going to do it and I think connecting us here in the home of Mayo Clinic to like worldass practice um because obviously what Mayo does is not just for research. I think it's >> well I'm just going to say that your timing of bringing ideas to Rochester was great. It seems to me seems to me especially with the Danielson framework which is all about a description of what really good teachers do about how they plan how they create an environment where the kids are going to learn how they deliver lessons, how they pursue professionalism. It's this is what great teachers do and every school I think can say and in our school this is what we really need to focus on. These are some of our prolific teachers who could help model this and coach others. And it's going to vary from one building to the next, from one grade level to the next. Um, but so much of this and and we keep getting back to this too is our building, our identity, our kids, what we need here. And we've empowered buildings to make a lot of those decisions. And I just think this is exactly the right time. And all of this in the strategic plan and everything we've talked about today, including framework, are just so intertwined. It's to me just seamless. >> It does have a feeling of a lot of convergence coherence kind of thing. One thing and I'll I'll end this point and turn it over to Kathy to conclude our meeting. Um uh in my early discussions with teachers and administrators who are in the early stages of figuring out how to fit the Danielson framework is going to change practicing. One of the points you made Gene is the one that I heard most often planning. We did not have planning defined as practice. we just assumed effective planning was happening instruction and that the Danish framework has all kinds of stuff about effective planning of instruction and I've heard again and again it wasn't part of any of our evaluations wasn't a part we didn't define it there's many many other things but in the early stages of people beginning to internalize this that's the big thing I'm hearing and of course if your planning for instruction is not plentiful and effective it's going to impact the quality of that instruction so the framework is already having and impact on practice by highlighting what it means to have effective lesson planning. Um, which is very very much about knowing the need. So, >> one more thing to say about the role of the board and um this piece on engage and unite. Um, I think the fact that you already and the board is uh good with having these conversations about practice, I think gives us an opportunity for that box on your theory of action with our parents and caregivers and community members. Um, you know, a lot of who we've talked about tonight are deeply engaged in the work, our our professionals in the buildings, our our leaders. Um, but as we talk about these practices, we've got to figure out a way to make it simple for the people who are watching whose kids are in the classroom because if we want them, right, to ask them questions maybe related to the practice or be engaged with it. Um, you know, I think everybody here tonight enjoyed the level of depth and detail we've had in this conversation, but as you said, I'm not h sure how many people are going to watch and digest meetings like this. So, I think we we re and and it it came up when we were talking about our board goals, too, right? How can we start helping um to share the information so that the community walks along with us and has some tips on how they can support it. >> Well, thank you everybody for being willing to let us jump in and I know we're still in a formal meeting, so bring us home. >> A few more agenda items. >> Okay. Um, so our ABCD uh is in this agenda item for reference for every school board meeting. And we have a September 1st regular meeting with a focus topic on world languages update and our Dakota language and American Sign Language um programs. Monitoring item is a report on the superintendent evaluation learning uh leadership component. On September 15th, we have a regular meeting. where our focus topic is the RPS 2030 strategic plan recommendation and prep for action our proposed school district property tax payable 2027. Are there any other items board members would like to add for se uh add for consideration for a future meeting item? Hearing none. Um our upcoming board meeting dates September 1st, September 15th, October 6th, and October 20th. All of those meetings are regular meetings at 5:30 p.m. And hearing no other business, this meeting is adjourned at 8:22 p.m.