A Tradition of Excellence

How School Leaders Are Helping Turn One Troubled School into a Success Story

Marc Cohen

Three years ago, I was appointed to lead an underperforming middle school with a predominately minority population that is named after one of America's most acclaimed heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In a country historically preoccupied by race and the scars that racial oppression has left on generations of minorities, I entered my new position with an unyielding sense of humility and a determination to make Dr. King's dream of equity, excellence, and acceptance a reality. 

A Healthy Dose of Reality

My first day as a principal, I was approached by a student who smiled, introduced himself to me, and kindly informed me that "We run this school, Mr. Cohen." I returned the smile, walked back to my office, and told my administrative team that it was time to go to work. I recalled that, just a few days earlier, I had a similarly toned interaction with several staff members who shared their thoughts about what was wrong with our challenging students and how they expected me to "take care of it," because my most recent prior experience was in supervising alternative programs. 

That day I learned two lessons: I realized that there was far more I did not know about the job than I did know about the job. And if I really wanted to get anything done, I needed to create a coalition of staff—including grade-level team leaders, department chairs, and support staff—to share the responsibility of running a school. I needed to capitalize on some quick-win opportunities and empower staff to take more ownership of our school. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School had its share of challenges. Although it had less than 750 students the year before I was appointed, the school had one of the highest referral and suspension rates in the county (nearly 1,300 referrals and more than 200 suspensions in that year). I decided that first day to work on refocusing everyone's attention on our school's tradition of excellence. 

I wasn't exactly sure what the excellence would look like, but I had been around long enough to know that what people were really looking for was something to be proud of. We started celebrating everything. We rewarded students and staff every chance we got for demonstrating our core values: respect, responsibility, and integrity. We found opportunities to be silly and unique, and we garnered some positive press for encouraging students to attend school and demonstrate their collective attention on creating a peaceful school. 

In addition, we started inviting the community into our building. I held coffees and breakfasts; gave regular tours of our facility; and solicited businesses to support our new, positive approach to managing student behavior. Very quickly, people started to notice a change in mind-set. I will not pretend that our climate was transformed overnight, but I can say that people started to notice and speak about my school in positive terms. This was a good first step. 

Three years after I started, suspensions have been reduced by 73 percent, and there has been a 16-point decline in the gap between suspension rates for African American students relative to all other students (Montgomery County Public Schools, 2008, p. xiv). Schoolwide referrals are down 54 percent, and incidents requiring suspensions are down an astounding 74 percent.

To address school-related systems that were supporting and preventing success, I created a system that required my Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) to meet weekly to discuss current issues, analyze data, and participate in various forms of collaborative decision making. As an ILT, we are committed to making decisions that are data-driven and in the best interests of children. Data flow freely in our building. With so much information available, so many people accessing the data, and so many competing interests in interpreting the data, we established a streamlined plan to cut through the rhetoric and eliminate redundancy. 

Circling the Wagons Around a Common Vision

The Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education and Superintendent Jerry Weast have insisted that our "good" schools could only become "great" schools by making race and equity a primary system concern: "The target is each child, with individual schools and the school system focusing on raising standards and, at the same time, closing the gap in student achievement by race and ethnicity and among students challenged by limited English proficiency, disabilities, and poverty" (Montgomery County Public Schools, 2007, p. 1). They are so dedicated to raising standards for all students and eliminating the achievement gap that they have made this one of the defining tenets of our district’s strategic plan, Our Call to Action: Pursuit of Excellence, which explicitly states that the overriding effort to improve student achievement across the school system is derived from a "focus to ensure that student performance is not predictable by race" (Montgomery County Public Schools, 2008, p. v).

My staff aims to eliminate the racial predictability of student achievement because we feel it is necessary. As Robert Barr and William Parrett (2007) say in their book Saving Our Students, Saving Our Schools, if we fail in our mission, "far too many students will...spend their lives unemployed, underemployed, or unemployable" (pp. 236–237). 

As a staff, we committed ourselves to educating with what Michael Fullan (2003) refers to as a "moral imperative." We defined this in our building as our "1:3" mission. Our goal is to eliminate the racial predictability of student achievement in one year, but we understand that we may have to accept three years. 

Following a shared leadership model, my team has developed a school improvement plan that is in line with the 1:3 mission. We've created achievement-based goals and systems to share the reporting and monitoring responsibilities across the staff and to ensure that all data is examined both in the aggregate and by No Child Left Behind subgroups. 

Each department and team has its own action plan that targets school goals and shares specific action steps. There is variation in how and to what depth each team and department addresses each of these steps, but every systematic change in our school must tie back to our school's and our school system's laser-like focus on closing the achievement gap. 

In an attempt to keep things simple, we have decided to break down data monitoring into two separate but equally important components: student performance and instructional practices. Any planned actions related to students, such as report cards and standardized tests, are the responsibility of our grade-level teams. Any planned actions related to instructional practices, such as classroom observations, are the responsibility of content-area departments. 

Data Monitoring in Action

Sally is a 6th grade English teacher. Although our school is implementing many action plans concurrently, Sally needs to be familiar with only two of them: the English Action Plan (i.e., implementing equitable instructional practices to better meet the needs of all learners) and the 6th Grade Action Plan (i.e., providing targeted interventions to African American and Hispanic students who are on the cusp of proficiency on the reading and math state assessments).

The master schedule has been constructed to provide collaborative planning time for Sally and Bob, the other 6th grade English teacher. Additionally, Sue, the special educator assigned to support Sally's classes, has time built into her schedule to meet with the teachers she supports at least once per week. Sally, Bob, and Sue meet to discuss the curriculum, plan lessons, brainstorm engaging activities, and blind-assess student work. 

Every 4–5 weeks, Sally is responsible for sharing disaggregated achievement data with her department. In small groups, Sally works with her content peers to analyze student performance on specific curriculum indicators and to develop instructional strategies to fill in gaps where students are deficient. These meetings are centered specifically on increasing rigor and sharing strategies to meet the needs of students with different background experiences and learning style preferences. 

At the 6th grade team meetings, the group reviews similar data. But at these meetings, Sally must initiate kid talks, bringing the team’s attention to specific students who are struggling. The team reviews how the student is doing across all content areas and develops an intervention plan if the student is showing signs of falling behind. Teams have established a predictable rotation for their meetings to ensure that they are monitoring all areas, including data analysis; cross-curricular collaborative planning; kid talk; and instruction that focuses on race and equity, rigor, or the adolescent learner. At the end of the year, they will examine their practices, including this continuum of meetings, to determine the next year’s emphasis and process upgrades. 

Bob, who is the English Department chair, and Ann, the 6th grade team leader, each have monthly advisory meetings with me and one of my assistant principals to discuss progress on their respective action plans. These meetings are designed as check-ins, and Bob and Ann are responsible for reviewing current results in each of the action plan areas that have changed since the last meeting. This is their chance to ask questions and seek additional resources and support and my chance to build their capacity to lead. I spend most of these meetings listening and asking questions that require reflection and introspection about both the data and the processes each uses to lead. 

At these meetings, my assistant principals and I are listening for two things: 

• Are we effectively implementing our action plans? If the answer is no, then the assistant principal is responsible for making sure the team or department focus is restored to practices that align with the plan. 
• Are there any common themes or problems that we are hearing that need a larger group discussion? Themes or problems become an item on one of my weekly ILT meeting agendas.

At ILT meetings, all team leaders and department chairs are responsible for sharing a brief, 3- to 5-minute monthly summary of progress on their action plans. During these presentations, the members provide feedback and share practices that have been effective for them. 

In addition to these presentations, the staff developer is responsible for designing a process for the team to address the common themes or problems that need attention. If we need to make a decision, the process is stated at the outset. I have found that the more I can allow the teacher leaders in my building to own the problems and develop the solutions, the more buy-in I get from the rest of the staff. As a result, major problems are rare because we deal with them quickly and in a risk-free manner. 

Celebrate Academic Results

Our attention to the needs of the individual child has yielded remarkable results. Over the last three years, students are achieving at record levels for our school on the Maryland School Assessment (Montgomery County Public Schools, 2008, pp. vii–xiv). 

In math, this includes an improvement of nearly 10 percentage points: 

• Hispanic—an increase of 10.8 percent.
• Special Education—an increase of 8.9 percent.
• Limited English Proficiency—an increase of 8.2 percent.
• Free and Reduced Meals Students—an increase of 8.0 percent.

We have also doubled the number of students successfully completing algebra by the end of 8th grade, from 32 percent in 2005–06 to 63.5 percent in 2007–08.

In reading, the data are even more stunning:

• All—an increase of 14.7 percent.
• Hispanic—an increase of 25.8 percent.
• Special Education—an increase of 20.9 percent.
• Free and Reduced Meals Students—an increase of 20.6 percent.
• African American—an increase of 14 percent.
• Limited English Proficiency—an increase of 10.5 percent.
• White—an increase of 9.4 percent.

My belief is that the role of public school education in today's America is more critical than ever. I wake up every morning with a clear and focused moral purpose. I believe that all students—regardless of the color of their skin, the size of their parent's bank account, the kind of cars in their driveway, or the level of education in their family—who walk through the door of my school have the ability to achieve at high academic levels, and it is my responsibility to make sure that they are provided with world-class instruction to help them live up to their fullest potential. Every minute is important; every relationship is critical. We do not have the luxury of even one day to phone it in, to come to our jobs less that fully prepared. If we are going to change society, if we are going to make Dr. King's dream come alive, we must be 100 percent present for our students every moment of every day. 

Even though we have not yet accomplished our school's lofty mission, one thing is absolutely clear: as a staff, we speak and act with one collective voice. We demonstrate through word and deed that our efforts can and will make a difference. They must. We have a generation of students counting on us. Together, we plan to make history by eradicating the achievement gap from our building, even if it is one student at a time. Our jobs are just that important. 

References

Barr, R. D., & Parrett, W. (2007). Saving our students, saving our schools: 50 proven strategies for helping underachieving students and improving schools (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. 

Fullan, M. (2003). The moral imperative of school leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Montgomery County Public Schools. (2007). Our call to action: Pursuit of excellence, the strategic plan for the Montgomery County Public Schools. (Available from Montgomery County Public Schools, 850 Hungerford Drive, Rockville, Maryland 20850)

Montgomery County Public Schools. (2008). Annual report on our call to action. Retrieved from http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/about/strategicplan/annualreport/pdf/AnnualReportCalltoAction08.pdf

Marc Cohen is a principal in Montgomery County, Md. He was also the recipient of the 2009 ASCD Outstanding Young Educator Award.