How A Decade-Long Literacy Obsession Transformed Brockton High

Posted on September 30, 2011 by aagabor

Contrary to the assumptions of many education reformers, it is possible to turnaround a failing school without firing teachers, getting rid of the union, offering pay incentives or hiring high-priced outside experts.

In a wide-ranging interview last week, Susan Szachowicz, the well-respected principal of Brockton High, in Brockton, MA, described how an obsessive focus on literacy and an inclusive teacher-driven approach to improvement, has sustained a decade-long transformation at Brockton, the largest school in the state where most kids are poor, African-American or Latino and many speak a language other than English at home. In 1998—75 percent of Brockton’s students failed the state tests in math and 44 percent failed English. On the most recent tests, in 2011, 87 percent of students passed math and 94 percent passed English.

Indeed, Brockton students do more than just pass. This year 78 percent scored in the top-two out of four categories on the state’s Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test—Advanced or Proficient—for English Language Arts, and 64 percent scored in the top two categories for math. (Students can pass with a “needs improvement” score.) Close to 90 percent of Brockton’s graduates are college bound, estimates Szachowicz. And, for seven years, Brockton High has been designated a “model school” by the International Center for Leadership in Education.

Brockton’s turnaround began with a crisis. Although the school had long cared more about football than academics, in the 1990s, a new education department policy threatened to withhold diplomas from any student who didn’t pass the state’s MCAS; Brockton faced the possibility that the majority of its students wouldn’t graduate.

In response, a team of high school teachers, led by Szachowicz who was then a history teacher, and, Paul Larino, who has since retired, launched a school-wide multi-disciplinary literacy initiative that focused initially on developing a standard writing curriculum for all classes and retraining all the teachers in the school to teach that curriculum.

A decade later, Brockton is still focused on the same process-obsessed approach to literacy. At a time when school systems are under growing pressure to institute an ever changing array of remedies to improve performance, Brockton has focused single-mindedly on improving its literacy strategy for over 10 years. “This was no fast pirouette,” says Szachowicz who was appointed associate principal for curriculum and instruction in 2000 and became principal three years later. Although the school’s scores began to improve within the first year of the literacy initiative, she adds: “We’ve been working at this for a decade. It’s about doing it systematically and doing it the same way.”

It is about getting everyone at Brockton High to “row in the same direction.”

Kaizen in the Classroom

Though Szachowicz doesn’t think of it in those terms, the strategy that she and Brockton High’s “restructuring committee” launched has many of the hallmarks of Toyota Motor Corp’s kaizen philosophy. Notwithstanding its recent problems with quality and safety, kaizen and the Toyota production system remain one of the most sustained systems-focused approaches to management.

First, Brockton analyzed why its students had trouble learning and decided that “writing was the key to unlocking kids’ thinking,” and thus held the greatest promise for improving learning across all disciplines.

Second, the school tapped the expertise of its teachers to develop a writing process, focusing initially on a 10-step process for writing an “open response”—an assignment that requires students to read a text and to write an essay responding to a question about the text. The benefit of the “open response” assignment was that it crossed “all disciplinary lines” and offered the opportunity for the biggest bump in improvement. No class or teacher would be exempt—not math, not science or gym.

Third, the school has continued to study student performance and introduce new literacy modules to continuously improve the school’s approach to literacy.

Fourth, to implement the system, Brockton developed training modules for its own teachers on how to teach the various literacy processes it has developed.

Fifth, Brockton instituted an evaluation system that was designed to ensure that teachers were teaching the literacy modules, but at the same time, made sure the evaluations were used to improve teaching, not to punish teachers.

“The key to our success was adult learning, not kid learning,” says Szachowicz.

Of course, persuading over 300 teachers in a school that had grown used to failure wasn’t easy. One key to getting the teachers on board was by including them in the decision-making process. The restructuring committee itself included members from almost every discipline. Meeting with small groups of teachers, it created an iterative process whereby it kept going back to the faculty with drafts of the literacy objectives and the skills it expected students to learn. “We kept asking the faculty three questions,” recalls Szachowicz. “One, did we include everything that you think is necessary, and is anything missing. Two, did we state it clearly. Three, what would you change/add.”

Brockton eventually developed a four-part definition of literacy, and a chart of specific literacy skills that had to be posted in every classroom. The school also made sure that the skills were applicable in all content areas. To implement the strategy, Brockton created a strict schedule of literacy assignments that every department was required to follow. The schedule was designed to ensure that over the course of the academic year, the same skills would be repeated over and over in a variety of different disciplines so that students would get the same consistent message about the Brockton writing process in every subject.

The Importance of Adult Learning

Another key to making the process work was teacher training. “I was a history teacher and I used primary source readings all the time, but I didn’t know how to teach reading,” recalls Szachowicz. “What we were onto is if we’re going to ask people to do things differently, we have to show them how.”

The Brockton teacher’s contract allowed for two teacher-meetings per month of one-hour each. The meetings had always been a chore, a time when teachers were reluctantly corralled to listen to announcements that could just as easily have been put into a memo. The restructuring committee got permission from the principal to use the meetings to hash out the literacy strategy and to conduct teacher training. This meant that the training sessions could last no more than an hour. The union was known to file a grievance when the meetings went over by a single minute. Even the one time that the restructuring committee tried to schedule some voluntary meetings, a grievance was filed.

So the restructuring committee developed a step-by-step training module that lasted just under an hour. Teachers would learn the module twice—once as part of an interdisciplinary group and, two weeks later, they would take the same training module, but this time within their respective departments where they could plan ways to integrate content.

Significantly, almost every facet of the literacy strategy was home grown. Just about the only thing for which the literacy committee turned for outside help was in developing an evaluation system. Szachowicz notes that Brockton High’s initiative was highly influenced by Jon Saphier’s Research for Better Teaching, which emphasizes “skillfully and relentlessly” quality monitoring and, in about 2004, hired Saphier’s organization to train administrators in how to evaluate whether the literacy initiative was being properly implemented. Szachowicz estimates that typically the school spent no more than about $35,000 per year on the literacy initiative.

The observations were key to ensuring that teachers were using the process and teaching it on schedule. Equally important, the evaluations were designed to monitor and improve the process, not to punish teachers. After all, for the first time ever, Brockton High was expecting science teachers, math teachers, even gym teachers to teach writing. “They were nervous about doing something they’ve never done before,” says Szachowicz. To make sure that the evaluations were not considered punitive, the school decoupled the literacy observations from teachers’ formal job evaluations.

Still, getting the teachers to buy in was not easy. In the beginning, the majority of teachers were skeptical, but not necessarily negative. But Szachowicz makes it clear that the restructuring committee “didn’t wait for buy in,” she says. If they had “we would still be waiting. We got buy in when we got results.”

Of course, some teachers couldn’t be persuaded. Szachowicz recalls one teacher who covered the mandatory literacy charts in his classroom with posters. When he taught his literacy module he did so with “sarcasm”.

“It was not a good situation, he eventually retired,” says Szachowicz who acknowledges that the restructuring committee cajoled and pressured teachers to follow the program.

The most negative teachers were deliberately grouped together during the literacy brain-storming sessions. Szachowicz estimates that about a dozen teachers left as a direct result of the literacy initiative. It was Brockton’s “good fortune,” says Szachowicz that, in 2004, the state offered an early retirement incentive, which allowed the fence-sitters to “walk out the door”. Some 40 teachers, a little over 10 percent of Brockton High’s workforce, left; though Szachowicz notes that not all the teachers who took early retirement were leaving because of the literacy initiative.

The Great Shakespeare Fiasco

While scores have improved, Szachowicz insists that the school’s literacy initiative is not aimed primarily at improving test-taking. In fact, early on, Brockton did try to gear its literacy program to the test; the effort, which began with an attempt to improve the students’ dismal performance on the portion of the test that during the previous three years had required them to interpret a Shakespeare sonnet, became known as the Great Shakespeare Fiasco. For an entire school year, Brockton teachers force-fed sonnets to their students, only to find that the next state test didn’t include any sonnets. “This cannot be about what’s on the test,” insists Szachowicz. “It has to be about what kids need to know, about their thinking routines.”

Brockton High also has benefited from consistent leadership. In 1998, shortly after the literacy initiative was first initiated, Eugene Marrow, a gym teacher and former football coach became principal of Brockton High. Although he was “not a curriculum guy, he believed in improvement,” says Szachowicz who credits Marrow, an African-American who grew up in Brockton and had “high expectations” of kids, for supporting the programming and helping to win over many teachers. “It was important that he was not an outsider,” says Szachowicz.

During the course of more than a decade since Szachowicz has guided Brockton High’s literacy strategy, she has worked for three superintendents. The first, Joe Bage, was “a rock,” says Szachowicz, who backed the literacy strategy “100 percent.” Bage’s successor let her continue with the program. Now Brockton has its third superintendent since the start of the literacy initiative.

Alluding to Isaiah Berlin’s essay, The Fox and the Hedgehog—“The fox knows many little things. The hedgehog knows one big thing.”–Szachowicz calls herself a hedgehog: Whatever anyone throws her way, she keeps her focus on just one thing: “literacy, literacy, literacy.” But the program is constantly being updated and improved. Most recently, the school worked on developing teaching modules to improve how kids read and analyze visuals, such as graphs and charts.

The other thing that hasn’t changed at Brockton is a commitment to teacher involvement. Periodically, Brockton High holds teacher meetings that follow a “world café” format. The sessions are designed to brainstorm ideas and to develop a dialogue among Brockton High’s teaching staff, many of whom don’t know each other. This semester, the school is using the process to develop new policies and ideas for one of the most hot-button issues in education: its use of digital technology and electronic devices.

Posted in Education, Quality Management | 11 Comments

What National Car Rental Could Learn from Walmart About Disaster Repsonse

Posted on September 2, 2011 by aagabor

Like many travelers last weekend, I was expecting Hurricane Irene to turn my return trip from Istanbul to New York City into a nightmare. To my surprise, I seemed to get lucky: Anticipating that my flight to New York would be canceled, I managed to snag seats for myself and my family on a flight to Washington, DC and had no trouble getting a rental car at Dulles airport. After spending Sunday night in the capital, I drove back to New York, arriving home just half a day later than I had intended. In fact, I didn’t have a real problem until I tried to return my National rental car at the Manhattan location that I had requested when I made my reservation and that was specified on my contract.

“I am not authorized to accept your car,” explained the courteous young rental agent when I arrived at National’s East 80th Street location at about 5 p.m. on Monday afternoon. “You will have to drive the car to the airport.” The agent, who gave her name as Jay Givens, explained that in the aftermath of the storm and a large volume of rental cars returning to New York—often the only way travelers had of getting back from airports up and down the East Coast to which flights had been diverted in the aftermath of the storm–National didn’t have room in its garage. However, she reassured me, National would be happy to pay for my cab fare from the airport back to Manhattan.

Struggling to maintain my temper, I said that I did not have time to drive to the airport—this was rush hour, I might add–and that I wanted to speak to the manager. Ms. Givens readily obliged and it became clear from her brief exchange with the manager that I was not the first customer who had been asked to perform car-delivery services for National that afternoon.

I was ready to tell the manager that he might want to arrange for one of his employees to drive excess vehicles to the airport, or to lease space in one of the numerous neighborhood garages. Perhaps some customers would be willing to drive to the airport in exchange for a meaningful discount off of the hefty rental prices that National charges, especially for cars that are dropped off at a different location from where the rentals originate; in my case, I paid over $200, about double the cost of a one-day rental, for the privilege of dropping the car off in Manhattan.

But before I could say any of that, the manager sighed audibly and said: “Go ahead, leave the car. I’ll probably get fired. But just leave it.”

Fired? Ms. Givens, a picture of calm and courtesy throughout this exchange, nodded and explained that it was National management that had issued the edict to turn away customers who were trying to return cars in Manhattan.

Just then, a harried young man raced into the office. He too wanted to return his rental car. But unlike me, he wanted to leave his car at the airport so that, after a grueling drive from North Carolina, where his flight had been diverted, he could catch a connection home to Germany from JFK. Only, in his case, the company wouldn’t allow him to return the car to the airport. You see, the German tourist had rented a car from Alamo, National’s sister car-rental company. Almost all National rental locations also rent Alamo cars—but not the one at JFK. And even though the East 80th Street station was filled to capacity, the company wouldn’t allow him to drop his car at JFK.

I left the National office shaking my head. Many companies—like Walmart, which organized a rapid-response flotilla of supplies to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina—realize that disasters are an opportunity to burnish their image and win customer loyalty. But disasters also test management systems. Judging from what I experienced, it’s a test that National Car Rental and its parent Enterprise Holdings, which bills itself as the world’s largest car rental company and one that aims to “exceed” customer expectations, failed this week. The one thing the company has going for it are employees who want to do the right thing. Their fear of reprisals, though, is another indicator of lousy management.

Posted in Quality Management | Tagged | Leave a comment

Education-Technology Lessons from School of One and An Old Tracy-Hepburn Film…

Posted on August 11, 2011 by aagabor

In Desk Set, the 1957 Hepburn-Tracy classic, when an inventor, played by Spencer Tracy, installs a giant computer named EMERAC in the reference department of the Federal Broadcasting Network, he tries to reassure the chief librarian, played by Katherine Hepburn, that it will make her job easier. Of course, management thinks the computer can do it all and fires the all-female staff. This being a Hollywood movie, Hepburn eventually gets her man, the women get their jobs back and EMERAC self-destructs.

On a cold windy morning last spring, 22 educators from as far away as Kentucky stepped into a math class room at I.S. 228, a middle school in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, to view a 21st century version of EMERAC. They stopped in front of four large computer screens that resemble airport monitors. But instead of flights and gates, the screens listed the names of some 150 seventh graders who were working in small groups or individually, most seated in front of laptops. At either end of the long narrow room, four teachers taught live lessons to groups of five to ten students each. .

Joel Rose, a boyish looking former fifth-grade math teacher who once worked in human resources at the New York City Dept. of Education, raised his voice so he could be heard above the airport-like din: “The idea that one teacher can possibly personalize learning given the variability in an individual classroom is a myth. We know that some do it better than others. Even when we get a great teacher, this job is just too hard.”

Last year, I.S. 288, which got a “C” on its 2010 progress report, was one of three schools that turned its math program over to Rose’s brainchild, the School of One, a much ballyhooed experiment that is being funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Cisco, among others.

A computer algorithm determines almost everything that happens in I.S. 228’s 90-minute math classes. The school year begins with a detailed evaluation of each student—his hobbies, social life and academic performance. “If a kid says he likes technology, and mom says he likes technology, and teacher says he likes technology, let’s start off with the assumption that using technology might be an effective modality with this kid,” says Rose.

The computer generates a personalized “playlist” of a dozen-or-so target skills covering a year’s worth of study that could include remedial or advanced subjects, depending on a child’s needs. Each day the algorithm updates the playlist, based on what he has learned, and generates his next day’s schedule. No two kids get the same playlist.

“A kid shows up in the morning, looks up at the monitor,” explains Rose. “He sees that he’s working with Mr. Smith on the area of a triangle during his first period. Then, he’ll work with software on area of the triangle. At the end of the day he takes an assessment. If he does well, he moves on.” If not, it’s back to the area of the triangle, only in a collaborative activity or maybe with a virtual tutor.

Ann Wiener, one of the visitors, is a former principal who now coaches principals for the New York City Leadership Academy. Wiener noticed that every child she spoke to liked something about the program: “One kid liked the virtual teacher; but didn’t like that she didn’t get the same virtual teacher each time,” said Wiener. “Another liked the small teacher-led groups—though he didn’t like all the teachers.”

“Sometimes it’s good to work independently,” said a girl named Anika who was working on a math program on her laptop and described herself as a strong student.

A boy named Justin who also had been assigned to work independently on the computer groused: “A live teacher will explain things better.”

At another table, a small-group collaboration station, three boys huddled over a single computer screen that looked suspiciously like a Facebook page; when a visitor peered over their shoulders, three hands shot up and slammed the laptop shut. None of the teachers noticed a thing.

About eight adults work in each of two School-of-One classrooms at any given time–about half of them student teachers. That makes the ratio of certified teachers to students about 1 to 36; but, because most students are working on computers, the teacher-to-student ratio for live instruction is much smaller.

The teachers’ days also are programmed by the algorithm. Every afternoon, after the computer evaluates the daily quizzes and updates each student’s playlist, it generates the teachers’ schedules. The teachers are welcome to design their own lessons, or they can select from the hundreds of lessons on the School of One portal.

The key, says Rose, is getting teachers to act like surgeons—specialists who hone a handful of math skills that they repeat over and over. “We want teachers to do the hardest part of the job: deliver great live instruction, and check on overall student learning,” says Rose. “Everything else can be done by other adults and technology.”

“If we have kids working on computers, maybe we don’t need fully certified teachers walking around the room going ‘good job.’ Or checking on the internet connection.”

One visitor asked whether shuffling kids among modalities and instructors means that they never have a chance to develop a close relationship with a teacher. “That’s true,” replied Rose. “But, then in the old days, if a kid didn’t like his math teacher, he was hosed.”

“I’ve heard that teachers hate it,” said another visitor referring to the algorithm. “That it turns them into automotons.”

“Our survey results say the opposite,” says Rose. “The vast majority prefer teaching in School of One.”

Unlike EMERAC, which was eventually overwhelmed by the data it was fed, the learning algorithm gets more powerful every day. “We can now tell a publisher that lesson 13 on fractions is terrific, but lesson 16 on decimals stinks,” says Rose, who wants to use an itunes model to select only the best lessons from publishers, rather than buying entire text books.

The algorithm also provides feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of individual teachers.

Rose is most excited about what School of One does for live classroom instruction. “Let’s be honest,” says Rose. “At most schools the teacher shuts her door and you don’t know what’s happening in there. Some teachers prepare for five hours, some for five minutes.”

With the custom-designed open-space plan, teaching becomes “more transparent,” says Rose, recounting a favorite anecdote about a teacher who, on a snowy day when half the class stayed home, suggested showing a video. “What are you kidding?” responded her colleague.

Rose, bouncing on the balls of his feet, says: “That’s the kind of collective accountability we’re trying to achieve.”

A recent study by the NYC DOE’s Research and Policy Study Group found that, in its first year of operation as a pilot program, School of One students learned at a rate 50 to 60 percent higher than those in traditional classrooms.

School of One planned to double in size in the 2011/2012 school year. But in March, shortly after giving the I.S. 228 tour, Rose resigned saying that continuing School-of-One-style innovations “can best be accomplished through the sustained efforts of an independent organization with a national scope,” and NYC DOE has put off the expansion, citing budget constraints. The program will continue in the original three schools with News Corp.’s Wireless Generationproviding technology “leadership.” Jonathan Werle, a DOE vice- chancellor, serves as Project Manager. And the NYC DOE retains control over the School of One brand.

It is unclear what will become of a research project at NYU, which was to study eight new schools selected by Rose. Four were to get the School-of-One treatment; the others a placebo. A preliminary study by NYU researchers of School of One’s impact on middle school math achievement is expected in October—though, as the researchers note, “the first year of school-wide implementation is too early to make definitive claims.”

Back in the hallway at I.S. 228 one of the teachers explained why School of One is “a win win win” for everybody: “It’s much better for the teachers,” said the teacher, grey-haired and sporting a faux gold chain with a bejeweled Texas-star pendant over his suit jacket and tie. “The computer does everything. It generates the lessons, the tests and it grades the tests. Plus, most of the time the computer is giving the instruction. From the teacher’s point of view there’s no negative to it. Kids like it ‘cause it’s fancy. And from the administration’s point of view, it’s great. They get to save on salaries.”

Posted in Education | 2 Comments

About Andrea’s Blog

Posted on August 11, 2011 by aagabor

Welcome to my periodic musings on the state of American education, business, journalism, the consumer experience, women and food—how it is grown, cooked and eaten. A systems thinker since I wrote my first book, The Man Who Discovered Quality by W. Edwards Deming, most of my ideas and writing are informed by a systems view of the world.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Are women better cops, drivers, hedgefund managers?

Posted on June 13, 2011 by aagabor

On WNYC this morning, ran across an interview with Dan Abrams on his irresistable-sounding new book: Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt that Women are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers and Just About Everything Else.

Some of the Abrams’s fun observations: Women are better investors–i.e. they garner better long-term results–because they are more measured, less impulsive. Women are better legislators; and legislatures that have a preponderance of women are also less corrupt. Women wash their hands more often after using the bathroom. And 82 percent of the people struck by lightning are men because they tend to stay out on the golf course, and on the roof, even after the storm clouds have gathered.

One thing men are better at: Taking risks. Rep. Anthony Wiener are you paying attention?

Posted in Women | Tagged | Leave a comment