It was the best of times; it was the worst of times for two schools at opposite ends of Montgomery County, a Maryland suburb outside Washington, D.C. The year 2006 had brought both schools' staffs a greater understanding of how to read and use student data. Unfortunately, both schools had failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) and were feeling the threat of the school improvement dungeon, which, like the Bastille, is easy to fall into and hard to escape. Although each school had vastly different populations and different lenses through which to view their situation, they were both seeking the same thing—an answer to the question, "Now what?"

The Schools

John T. Baker Middle School is located in Damascus in northern Montgomery County, where agriculture is still a way of life for many. The school prides itself on serving its stable community well, and data revealed that the school's traditions and programs worked for a majority of students. Its students consistently exceeded 80 percent proficiency on the Maryland School Assessments. The staff was therefore shocked when the school failed to make AYP two years in a row. How could a school with such high averages be in such a predicament? A subgroup examination quickly revealed the problem. Students who were in special education, who had limited English proficiency, or who were eligible for free and reduced-price meals had scored well below other students. Missing AYP, even by just a few individuals in these subgroups, put Baker into School Improvement I.

Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School, on the other hand, is located on the Washington, D.C., border in Silver Spring and faces many challenges within its student body: poverty, language barriers, special education, and high mobility. The school's hard-working and innovative staff had struggled since the inception of No Child Left Behind to make AYP and was now in School Improvement II. The staff members knew they couldn't keep doing what they had done in the past; they had to continue finding new ways to move their numbers higher.

Both schools began effectively using similar monitoring processes that entailed determining the number of students necessary to reach AYP, creating spreadsheets of student data, organizing students on the basis of perceived intervention needs, and continually monitoring this structure as student needs changed.¹  Taking data averages and disaggregating them by subgroup led the schools directly to the students who needed more support. Despite this, the schools simultaneously reached the same "stuck point." The question became, How do we go further? Clearly, the next step was to align individual student data with the right intervention for the right student at the right time.

Making Plans

Both schools turned to a strategy they called academic intervention plans (AIPs), which enabled them to use data to discuss students' academic progress and determine whether interventions were helping students to succeed. At both Baker and Lee, collegial teams of teachers, administrators, counselors, and other staff followed this protocol:

1. Use strategic monitoring to identify students requiring help to reach a particular goal, whether for achievement of proficiency on statewide exams or for success in accelerated courses.
2. Collect and synthesize relevant data, including several years of state math and reading scores, unit exams, attendance records, and grades.
3. Review the data and establish goals for each targeted student.
4. Determine action steps to help students achieve their goals. This plan includes interventions, criteria to determine the effectiveness of interventions, next steps, and a running record of discussions about the student.
5. Implement interventions.
6. Meet regularly to monitor targeted students' progress, keeping discussions focused on academics and data, and determine next steps for interventions.
7. Continue the process throughout the year, adjusting the initial plan as needed. Treat the plan as a fluid, dynamic document that changes as the individual student's needs change.

Such an endeavor requires the input and talents of many people. Team leaders facilitate the regular discussions; teachers provide insight into the students' progress; administrators offer schoolwide vision and support for such efforts; parents provide support at home and for school-based interventions. AIPs are truly the efforts of a village working together for the success of students.

The conduits for this process at both Baker and Lee became the staff development teachers, who fostered understanding of the monitoring and intervention processes in their respective schools. Once the staff development teachers at the two schools found each other, the processes and resources cross-pollinated. As one school's staff developed an idea, it shared with the other school, who in turn shared an idea back. The school's different lenses served to balance each other. Baker learned from Lee how to see the students behind the numbers. Lee learned from Baker a collaborative focus that ensured data-based, academic discussions.

Sixth grade teachers (Ann Pluchino, special education; Tina Claxton, reading; and Jennie Orelli, special education) discuss data on a John T. Baker Middle School student.

Extra Benefits

The AIP process had two specific, intended outcomes: (1) providing students with more fine-tuned interventions that met their needs and (2) enabling teachers to become better at translating data to classroom practice. However, as both schools implemented AIPs, a number of surprising patterns began to emerge.

Finding a New Perspective

First, a major shift in perception occurred as teachers moved their focus from a deficit model of viewing students to an ability model. Teams talked less about how a student was disrupting a class or not doing homework and more about what this student needed in order to grow. Teachers took greater accountability for student learning. Conversations were no longer about how students weren't learning but instead focused on the team's responsibility for ensuring that students moved toward their goals.

Teams identified specific strengths of a student and used those to build success. For example, Lee teachers identified one student's strength as participation with other students. To capitalize on this, they chose to connect him with a study buddy, building confidence, English fluency, and cognitive success.

Uncovering Invisible Students

Second, relationships with students changed. The staff at both Lee and Baker noted that often the students requiring intervention were the "hidden" children, those who blend into the fabric of the classroom. These students have learned to say just enough to make the teacher believe they understand when they don't; they have survived school by "laying low."

A teacher's attention is often drawn to students who are high achievers, are failing, or are causing disruption. Many students in the middle, however, glide along the pass-fail line. With strategic monitoring, these students were identified, and with AIPs, they were directly supported. Teachers said that they knew these previously invisible students better after two months using intervention plans than they would have in an entire year of teaching without this focus. They now knew exactly who needed help and what type was required.

Sometimes the intervention for these students involved nothing more than providing additional wait time in class; sometimes it was a matter of regularly meeting with the student; sometimes it involved phone calls to parents with a Spanish translator. Regardless of the degree of intervention, teachers were better able to reach out to these students and build positive relationships.

Taking Ownership

Third, staff at both schools readily took ownership of the process. Early on, school leaders determined that teacher buy-in to the process would be a priority. Each team had the freedom to design plans and conduct discussions in a manner that suited its unique style, as long as certain criteria were met. This freedom became one of the most crucial elements of the AIP's success because team members felt valued and invested in the process.

Great ideas came from giving teachers room for creation. At Baker, many teams chose to use the template provided for tracking the interventions, but one team made some radical changes. When a standard form was created the following year, many of this team's changes, including using student photographs and reformatting the objectives and goals, became embedded in the new form. These ideas would not have emerged had the team not been given the freedom to design something they were comfortable with. (See the template for the form used at Baker, a sample completed form, and an explanation of the typical components of the plan.)

As formative assessments began to show students with AIPs gaining ground, staff at both schools became more motivated to continue improving the process. Suddenly, something was causing legitimate change at the student level, and the change belonged to them.

Members of the John T. Baker Middle School 8th grade team (Scott Webster, English; Donna Beatrice, World Studies/8th grade team leader; and Donna Wood, science) examine an academic intervention plan.

Lessons Learned

As the staff from Baker and Lee collaborated over the next two years, the process grew, changed, and became more streamlined. Although each school adapted the process to suit its population and purpose, both learned similar lessons:

• Teacher buy-in and ownership is more important than the standardization of processes and forms.
• Discussions need to be focused and academic. It can be easy to detour into traditional talks about missing homework and poor student preparation. A team leader should keep the discussion on the students' goals and data.
• The intervention plans can inform staff development. As teams examine student needs, they also examine their own, giving administrators and staff development specialists ideas for building teacher capacity. For example, one team discussed a student's difficulty with long-term content retention and their subsequent need for strategies to assist her. It became an opportunity for authentic professional development driven by student data.
• The academic intervention plan is a flexible, living document requiring adaptation throughout the year as interventions work or don't work, as teachers come to know their students, and as more data are collected. The document should not look the same at the end of the year as it does in the beginning.

Celebrating Success

In 2007, after one year of AIPs, Baker posted gains for all students, dramatically improving its subgroup scores and clearing all AYP hurdles with room to spare:

• Reading scores increased 26.8 points for students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch (72 percent proficient).
• Math scores increased 28.6 points for students in special education (57.8 percent proficient).
• Reading scores increased 21.7 points for students in special education (60.2 percent proficient).

Between 35 and 40 percent of students with intervention plans achieved proficiency. In an era when one student in one subgroup can keep a school from making AYP, the fact that the AIP process facilitated the movement of so many students cannot be overlooked.

Lee also posted considerable gains overall:

• Reading scores increased by 11.4 points for students in special education (47.9 percent proficient).
• Reading scores increased by 11.4 points for Hispanic students (56 percent proficient).
• Math scores increased by 8.4 points for students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch (46.6 percent proficient).

Most significant, Lee made AYP for the first time in three years.

In 2008, both schools again made AYP and moved out of School Improvement status, crediting strategic monitoring and AIP processes for their success.

The True Power of Intervention

As important as meeting No Child Left Behind's requirements might be, true power of academic intervention plans lies in their ability to transform teacher practice. The constant dilemma with data is how to make it useful. It is one thing to have data available and be able to read them. It is quite another to use the data to inform practice.

For two schools, AIPs have provided the mechanism for sustainable and meaningful changes in teacher practice evidenced not just by test scores, but by the climate in the buildings, the interactions between teachers and students, the collegial nature of discussions about students, and instructional changes to match student needs. This is the crux of effective staff development; it changes paradigms, beliefs, and actions to make teachers more effective and increase student learning.

AIPs have demonstrated their power to transform teaching at two different schools with distinctly different populations. They have demonstrated themselves to be the "spring of hope" in a "winter of despair," creating a happy ending in the tale of two schools.

Endnote

¹  Morrison, H., Morrison, J., & Bedford, S. (2007). Beyond the numbers: Making AYP one student at a time. Principal Leadership, 7(6), 26–31.

Jennifer D. Morrison is a staff development teacher at Baker Middle School in Damascus, Maryland; Jennifer_Morrison@mcpsmd.org. Margaret Rudt is a staff development teacher at Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School in Silver Spring, Maryland; Margaret_A_Rudt@mcpsmd.org.