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How Can Districts Help Schools
Focus on Meeting AYP?
How Have States Implemented AYP?
How Do Districts Support Schools to Meet AYP?
How Do Schools Meet AYP?


The primary way that districts help schools focus is to present clear expectations and align the district's resources --- use of time being the most important --- to reaffirm, build capacity, and monitor schools' progress toward meeting those expectations. A district, like any other organization, shows what it values by what it pays attention to. Districts must pay careful attention to how well they are aligned to meeting AYP targets.




How do districts align efforts and resources?
Districts need to align their curriculum to the state content standards and design professional development that helps teachers understand the intent of the content standards, identify how students demonstrate proficiency on the standards, know how to interpret student performance, and use the diagnostic information to make instructional decisions. Districts demonstrate and model good alignment when they
  • Use regularly scheduled meetings to promote student achievement on content standards
  • Focus professional development on building capacity to improve student performance on content standards
  • Evaluate principals on their performance on promoting student achievement
  • Redesign report cards to provide information about student performance on content standard indicators
Though what you need to align might be self-evident, districts often give conflicting messages about what is important when they continue programs and procedures that are no longer aligned to their current goal. Some examples of district actions that will work against helping schools focus on their AYP target follows.
  • Asking staff to prepare students for a district or norm-referenced exam that is not aligned with the state content standards. You may argue that you get useful information from a norm-referenced or district exam, but you do so at the expense of having staff use that time to teach and assess students on the content standards.
  • Analyzing data that is not aligned with the content standards.
  • Adding student achievement targets that are not aligned with the content standards.
  • Writing curriculum that is not aligned with the content standards.
  • Not differentiating between essential curriculum and extended curriculum
  • Showcasing teaching strategies not aligned with content standard indicators.
  • Designing district professional development events not aligned with what teachers need to know to ensure their students attain proficiency on the content standards
  • Not making student achievement discussions the major part of A&S meetings
  • Promoting good teaching over good evidence of learning
  • Ignoring evidence of student learning

What expectations should districts set for schools to meet AYP?
Providing schools clear expectations helps schools focus on what needs to be done. These expectations should include the following:
  • Principals will analyze state assessment data and monitoring data to create a school needs assessment.
  • Principals are expected to set up structures for teams of teachers to meet at least once a week to plan, examine monitoring data, examine student work and revise instruction based on the data.
  • Schools are expected to monitor individual student progress on the indicators they need to learn on an ongoing basis.
  • Schools are expected to submit monitoring plans with their school improvement plans that describe how they will monitor individual student progress on the indicators.
  • Principals will monitor and document the collection of evidence of learning and how it is being used to inform instruction.
  • Principals will document how they have focused regularly scheduled time and resources on AYP student achievement goals.

How do you monitor those expectations?
These expectations will only be effective if they are also the focus of conversations the districts have with schools and the criteria by which districts evaluate the effectiveness of principals and school leaders. When district leaders visit schools, the questions they ask should reinforce what they want the school staff to pay attention to. Questions should focus on where students are on the content standard indicators, what evidence there is that teams of teachers regularly monitor student progress, and what evidence there is that students are making adequate progress.
 
When district leaders do classroom walkthroughs, their feedback to school staff should focus on evidence of learning on content standard indicators and evidence that team planning and collaboration are focused on student performance.
 
The criteria that district leaders use to evaluate principals should include evidence of effective use of a monitoring system that provides ongoing information about where students are in relation to the content standard indicators, regular team time used to examine student work and analyze monitoring data, and use of data to inform instruction, interventions, and professional development.
 

Resources
The School Improvement in Maryland Web site uses audio interviews to share how district leaders expect their principals and schools to monitor student progress.


 
 

NCREL has provided a checklist for districts to assess how well the district supports school accountability as part of their Tool Kit for Making Good Choices: Districts Take the Lead.


 
 
The School Improvement in Maryland Web site has an online workshop on aligning efforts and keeping staff focused on the student achievement targets.


 
 


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