Results

The Ideas of Mike Schmoker

Results - The Key to Continuous Improvement

There are simple, proven, affordable structures that exist right now and could have a dramatic, widespread impact on schools and achievement -- in virtually any school. An astonishing level of agreement has emerged on this point. Indeed, Milbrey McLaughlin speaks for a legion of esteemed educators and researchers when she asserts that "the most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement is building the capacity of school personnel to function as a professional learning community".

Schmoker argues for a simple, collaborative strateigy as the key to continuous improvement. He promotes an approach with four steps, each of which is detailed below:

I. Replace “Improvement Planning” With A Focus On Improving Teaching Through Learaning Communities

Schomker decries the traditional strategic planning process as unproductive. His view is that strategic planning suck organizatioinsd us into superficial, time-consuming, counterproductive actions that seldom affect instruction. Schmoker argues for the creation of professional learning communities that focus on :

• DATA - driven (academic) priorities.
• GOALS: that are clear and measurable.
• TEAMWORK (“R&D”) cycles for specific, short-term (not just annual) assessment results.

Schmoker has created a simple process whereby collaborative learning teams work through three basic steps:

• SET measurable, annual goals for the subject area.
• IIDENTIFY low - scoring skills/standards, (e.g. MATH: “operations with fractions”, WRITING: “voice”; “word choice”,P.E. “run a mile under ____ minutes”)
• USE formative assessment data to improve instruction.

II. Ensure A Guarranteed & Viable Curriculum

Schmoker quotes the work of Robert Marzano by observing that a guarranteed and viable curriculum might be the single most important factor for raising student achievement. Schmoker states that most curricula are not guarrranteed or viable, and that the "brutal facts" tell the following story:

• ROSENHOLTZ: a “self-selected jumble” of standards
• BERLINER/WALBERG: total incoherence from one teacher to the next
• LITTLE; SIZER; ALLINGTON; CALKINS: curricular chaos in “language arts”

Schmoker suggests a "mapping" process to ensure that curriculum is guarranteed and viable. He advocates mapping/aditing the curriculum - even crudely - by month or quarter, consulting state “assessment guides”, and narrowing the actual, taught curriculum down to the most essential “power standards". He also advocates a simple "quarterly curriculum review" by administrators that resembles a type of “Show & Tell” each month. Administrators and learning teams would examine assessment results (per curriculum map), gradebooks (that reflect standards taught), and student work (per curriculum maps).

III. Demystify Leadership

Schmoker sees distributing leadership among learning teams as one of the keys to continuous improvement. He advocates a three-step process for demystifying leadership:

1. Maintain a singular foucus—on instruction
2. Team Management — for "small wins" Point to tangible accomplishments — however incremental at first. When people see and feel the buildup of momentum, they will line up with enthusiasm.)
3. Reward & Recognition, and Reinvent the evaluation system around all of the above. Schmoker quotes Robert Evans, who wrote "The Human Side of School Change": "The single best, low cost, high- leverage way to improve performance, morale, and the climate for change is to dramatically increase the levels of meaningful recognition for educators."

IV. Institute Instructional “R & D” – Start with High Leverage Areas

Schmoker points out that educators must both use & conduct their own research and become “scientists who continuously develop their intellectual and investigative capacities.” It begins with R & D into those areas most likely to make a big difference instructionally - sure fire best bet leverage points, inculding:

• Essential Elements of instruction
• Rubrics: explicit instruction for each element; how to use for self-evaluation
• Modelling: direct, explicit, detailed teaching
• Critical/analytical reading
• Writing: introductions; transitions; “voice”
• Marzano’s best practices: Compare & Contrast; Summarizing & note-taking

Schmoker argues that literacy instruction offers ths greatest R & D opportunity, observing that under-developed literacy skills are the number one reason why students are retained, assigned to special education, given long-term remedial services and why they fail to graduate from high school. He promotes breaking down literacy into reading and writing processes with a purpose in order to research impact, for example:

• READING
  • Reading critically—for evaluation and synthesis
  • Analyzing characters
  • Discerning author’s point of view; fact from opinion
• WRITING
  • Effective introductions to essays
  • Use of transitions between paragraphs
  • Persuasive writing techniques

Graphical Model for Continuous Improvement - Schmoker

Reflection on How Schmoker's Ideas Connect

Mike Schmoker has a unique way of simplifying complex ideas and incorporating many of the critical understandings promulgated by the other experts we have studied in the Sweet Home Administrative PLC. The key connection with Schmoker's work is the simple team process for examining data, determining instructional leverage points, and using formative assessment to "research" the effectiveness of the leverage point on student learning. Schmoker's work strongly ties to that of Dufour

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