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Networks of Inquiry for School and District Improvement
Continued...

Starting in 1999, we developed a Network of Performance Based Schools in British Columbia designed to improve schools through the use of shared classroom assessment practices and team inquiry. Since 2001, the government in the province of BC has focused on a mandate for the K-12 system that emphasizes achievement for all students, increased choice and a governance role in school councils for parents, a clear student-based funding system, and increased accountability for all levels of the system. As part of developing the overall accountability framework, we were responsible for designing a school district review process to replace the former practice of school accreditation. The focus on team inquiry as one of the principles of the Network has been adapted for the design and implementation of the District Review. 

This article will describe these two emerging change strategies – the District Review and the Network of Performance Based Schools – and situate both in the international landscape of change ideas – change through policy imperative and change as an ecological system of sustainability. It is important to note that we bring an ‘insider’ perspective to this work. This perspective has both advantages and disadvantages in terms of understanding the interactions between, and the long-range impact of, the school and district improvement initiatives.

Network of Schools Using Inquiry to Improve Student Learning

Internal Accountability. The Network of Performance Based Schools started five years ago with 30 schools from nine school districts. These schools came together voluntarily to focus on classroom assessment to improve student learning. Through networking and responsiveness to growing interest, there are now 150 schools involved in inquiry-based improvement. The schools in the Network represent the diversity of schools in the province. Schools range in size from an elementary school in Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) of 45 aboriginal students through to a large urban Vancouver area secondary school of 1800 highly multicultural students.

As Network developers we believe that the most powerful form of accountability would come from educators:

• working together as  learning communities both within the school and across schools;
• using common teacher-developed, research based assessment practices in key learning areas;
• engaging in whole school action research; and
• annually reporting the results of improvement initiatives to school communities, to other Network schools and to educators across the province.

Elmore argued that internal accountability by educators is critically important when he stated  “high internal agreement is the best defense against uninformed external pressure” (2003: p. 9). Our observations of the work of the Network schools support the view that the stronger the internal accountability system (shared assessment measures), the more open schools are to making productive use of information from some external measures (provincial assessments). This increased level of assessment sophistication builds confidence with both the staff and the school community.

Team inquiry. Schools in the Network work as teacher-principal leadership teams. The team generates a research question in one or more of four areas of interest – improving student citizenship/social responsibility, writing, mathematical problem solving, or reading. The language of assessment and the assessment measures are shared with students, teachers, and parents. The school team develops strategies for improvement and attends four meetings annually where they exchange ideas and resources with other schools. Fullan’s (2000) idea that schools need brains – that they need to learn from other schools, is an important underlying concept for this work. The team commits to sharing their ongoing findings in print, in web formats and at a public forum. Accountability is developed through an expectation that all findings be explored and shared.

Assessment For and As Learning. The core measure of learning improvement for the participating schools is a set of teacher developed and tested, classroom based scoring criteria (performance standards) in literacy, numeracy, and citizenship. These resources were developed over a number of years with wide teacher involvement and are readily available both in print and on the provincial ministry website: www.bced.gov.bc.ca/perf/stds. The BC performance standards were developed to support assessment for and as learning and include rating scales, student samples, and sample tasks for Grades 1-10. Educators have worked with parents to develop ‘family-friendly’ versions of the standards and many teachers have worked with their students to translate the standards into ‘kid friendly’ language all of which are posted on the Network website for easy sharing (www.npbs.ca).

Research to Practice. The Network is a learning community of theory and practice, and Network leaders have drawn on the work of a number of researchers. The importance of thoughtful, classroom-based assessment has a central place in this work. Network members have studied the assessment work of Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, Richard Stiggins, and Lorna Earl. The Network has been informed in its understanding of change through the work of Michael Fullan; on innovation by following the work of Peter Cuttance; on networks through the research of Ann Lieberman and David Hopkins; on leadership through James Spillane’s concept of distributed leadership; on learning communities through the work of Louise Stoll; and, on the needs of vulnerable children through the work of Douglas Willms. The challenge for Network schools is to apply the best of international thinking to their own local inquiry-based improvement work.

One power of a network is that the schools learn from the experiences of others and are not left on their own in finding and applying useful concepts and strategies for improvement. The observations of Hopkins and Jackson who identified the importance of networks during times of change are useful:

In the past most school systems have operated almost exclusively through individual units – be they teachers, departments, schools or local agencies. Such isolation may have been appropriate during times of stability but during times of change there is a need to ‘tighten the loose coupling’, to increase collaboration and to establish more fluid and responsive structures. (2002: p. 10)

The Network of Performance Based Schools grew out of the drive of school leaders to be thoughtfully responsible for their own school improvement and to be connected to a community of similarly inquiring schools. The BC District Review, however, was developed as a response to the accountability mandate of the provincial government.

District Review – Using Inquiry for Improvement and Accountability

Background. The District Review was developed and first initiated in 2002-03 and twenty districts were reviewed in the first year of implementation. By May 2005, all sixty districts will have been reviewed.

Among the challenges in designing a process for a review of a school district was the expectation from government that the results of the review would be reported to the public in an easily understood format. If the review process was to lead to increased commitment within the district, the demand for public reporting needed to be balanced with a sense of teamwork and professional support. Meeting both the expectations and need for accountability and the desire for coaching for improvement presented a design challenge.  The dual nature of the review process builds on some important aspects of the work emerging in Network schools including an emphasis on team inquiry and shared leadership for learning results for all students.

The language of accountability  - a focus on increasing test scores and linking investment with results – holds a certain appeal for policy makers and yet can create distress for educators working in complex and challenging situations. More is expected in a situation where financial resources are being held steady or are declining. A challenge in designing a workable approach to school and district accountability is to avoid overly restrictive accountability measures attractive at the policy level and, at the same time, to develop ways for schools and district to communicate publicly and effectively the improvements they are making to student learning.

The research literature that informed the design of the district review drew mainly on American and Canadian sources. Elmore and Burney’s studies of improving districts, McLaughlin’s work in California with multiple school districts, and more recently, Anderson’s study of five improving districts were useful starting points.

Key ideas. There are four themes informing the District Review work. The first is focusing school improvement on stronger learning gains for all students – especially those who are most vulnerable. Willms describes vulnerable children in Canada, based on empirical observation of developmental outcomes, as:

…vulnerable in the sense that unless there is a serious effort to intervene on their behalf, they are prone to experiencing problems throughout their childhood and are more likely to experience unemployment and poor physical and mental health as adults. (2002: p. 3).

The second is the increasing use of classroom-based assessment as a serious and valued indicator of improvement. The third is the inclusion of parents as full partners on the review teams so that at least one significant part of the public that receives service is formally included in the quality review work. The fourth is the conscious integration of many of the thoughtful school leaders in the province – the teacher, parent, and principal leaders who actively seek out and desire to contribute to a larger learning community – with the most deeply committed leaders at the district level to create a new model for school and district improvement. The goal is to develop a sustainable review model where the work at both the school and district levels is considered seriously and where the levels interact in meaningful, coherent,  and not exclusively hierarchical ways.

The BC District Review is based upon ten points of inquiry. Through an analysis of  district and school learning results and insights gained through focused interviews with school and district leadership teams, the review team examines the following areas:

• Goals and Rationale
• Data and Results
• Strategies and Structures
• Coherence and Communication
• Leadership and Teamwork.

The points of inquiry provide the framework for recommendations to the districts and for the public report. The review report includes a summary of findings and a display of a continuum of progress in each of the ten key areas. For more specifics about the District Review process, templates, and reports, please see www.bced.gov.bc.ca/review/.

In reflecting on current accountability directions in the United States, Elmore argues that there is an urgent need to develop strong theories of district and school improvement. He claims that the urgency stems in part from the difficulty of school improvement work. Schools are low performing in large part because their instructional practice and organization are not strong enough to meet the demands of educating all children. The urgency also stems from the politics of education:

Bad policy happens in part because of educators’ weak knowledge, weak practice, and weak mobilization. We have deliberately chosen not to engage in powerful collaborative learning around the central problems of our work and have instead organized ourselves professionally and politically in fragmented ways that reinforce rather than push against the pathologies of policies that affect our work. The discipline of developing a practice of improvement is one way to repair these problems. (2003: p. 10)

The District review has two contributions to make to school improvement. First, it points all districts in the direction of developing a practice of improvement on an on-going basis. Second it uses cross-role teams – teachers, parents, school district, and provincial leaders - to review the work of districts. This is helping to create a provincial community engaged in collaborative learning around significant issues of school improvement.

At the time of writing, the balance between accountability and improvement seems to be appropriate. Districts, for the most part, are demonstrating genuine commitment to the achievement and accountability agenda, and Network schools are continuing to deepen their inquiry-based improvement efforts. This, however, is only a start and is a vulnerable start in a provincial educational culture characterized by political conflict and volatility. To genuinely ensure that the accountability and improvement work results in real learning gains for all learners, and especially for those who are the most vulnerable, the work must be sustained over time.

Learning Changes and Sustainability

If Elmore’s view that policy makers and school improvement practitioners need to look  in new directions is right (and there is considerable evidence in our context that he is) then the concept of sustainable school and district improvement leadership is helpful. This perspective draws from the ideas of complexity and ecology as a source of change models for twenty first century learners. Rather than the key ideas coming from industrial processes – standardization, scaling up, effectiveness and efficiency –current thinkers are drawing on newer, postmodern disciplines and are situating their work in the traditions of teamwork, constructivism, and democracy.

Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink (2004), for example begin by stating:

Educational change is rarely easy to make, always hard to justify and almost impossible to sustain. Educational changes that enhance and enrich deep learning among students, however, are particularly problematic and then sustaining such changes over time has presented severe challenges for educational reformers. (2004: p. 1)

 They go on to say:

The demands of the emerging knowledge society along with dramatic demographic changes in society as well as in teaching and leadership, require different ways of thinking about change in human and natural systems than conventional approaches to planned change have allowed. (2003: p. 1)

Hargreaves and Fink’s working definition of the key and interrelated characteristics of sustainability is:

• Improvement that sustains learning: not merely change that alters schooling;
• Improvement that endures over time;
• Improvement that can be supported by available or achievable resources;
• Improvement that doesn’t impact negatively on the surrounding environment of other schools and systems;
• Improvement that promotes ecological diversity and capacity throughout the educational and community environment. (2004: p.7).

They connect these concepts of sustainability to the knowledge society which they outline in three dimensions. The first is an expanded scientific, technical and educational sphere. The second is the complex ways of processing and circulating knowledge and information that today’s economy requires. Third and perhaps most important for schools looking to their future,  “it entails basic changes in how corporate organizations function so that they enhance continuous innovation in products and services, by creating systems, teams and cultures that maximize the opportunities for mutual, spontaneous learning.” (2004: p.7).

They go on to note that the conventional rational paradigm needs to be balanced by an ecological approach that looks at human and natural systems holistically.

They cite Capra who argues that ecosystems and human communities are “networks that are organizationally closed, but open to the flows of energy and resources: their structures are determined by their histories of structural changes: they are intelligent.” (2004: p. 9)

Their exploration of these concepts leads them to offer three key suggestions for educational systems:

1. Embed the future of school leadership in the hearts and minds of the many and not on the shoulders of a heroic few.

1. Have educational systems view leadership as a vertical system over time so that continuity of improvement is developed and future leaders who demonstrate flexibility in changed circumstances are recruited.

1. Create cultures of distributed leadership throughout the school community so that teachers, students, and parents are leading change. (2004: p.

We are using these suggestions for sustainability as we consider the design and continuing work of the Network of Performance Based Schools and the District Review. The following observations are a starting point for on-going reflection.

Embedding Leadership in the “Many”

Connected schools where strong teaching-learning systems are integrated with ethical, intelligent, classroom-based, ‘assessment as learning’ practices have the greatest likelihood of embedding school leadership in the key leaders we need – the teachers and their principals. Teachers working together with their school leaders, their students and their parents are at the center of sustainable change. Currently there are over 550 teacher and principal leaders directly connected with the formal meetings of the Network of Performance Based Schools. Principals feel supported by teacher involvement because they are no longer exclusively responsible for the direction of the improvement efforts. As one principal stated, “The best thing for me about the Network is that I can be a member of the of the team. I can leave my role at the door and concentrate on what I love – teaching and learning.” 

Districts that approach the District Review as a constructive school improvement leadership opportunity rather than as a policy compliance activity have the chance to use the review as a time to build or deepen their district work as a professional learning community. Whether this opportunity is seized is highly dependent on the current culture of the school district and thestrength of the district leadership team.

Viewing Leadership as a System “Over Time”

Using leaders from Network schools as part of the district review process builds capacity. Involving teachers as key leaders in the school improvement work of the Network has already shown a positive impact on school sustainability – when the principal or vice principal member of the leadership team is given a new assignment, the commitment from the teacher leader acts as a recruitment force for the new principal and the work continues and expands. Some reassigned principals have even made smaller “networks” with their new and previous schools to connect the work and create a bigger learning community for staff development.

The most thoughtful districts have taken the processes from the Network of performance Based Schools and built them into their school improvement work as part of their “pre review” preparation. Many district leaders are recommending educators and parents for placement on review teams as a way of increasing leadership capacity and experience.

Network schools have a conscious strategy for involving both students and parents in theleadership of the improvement work. One of the major strategies is building a shared language of self-assessment based on the BC performance standards. This is developing greater ownership on the part of learners and their parents for results. The District Review looks at the creation of cultures through three lenses – teamwork with parents, teamwork of schools and the district, and teamwork or distributed leadership within the school. As review team members use strong teamwork practices in their own settings, positive cultures may be more common.

Concluding Questions

Education in the K-12 system in British Columbia is at an interesting juncture. There are possibilities that the inquiring and accountability approaches can be orchestrated in a sustainable and thoughtful way. The district review and the inquiring school network strategies have the potential to meet public demands for transparent and honest information about educational progress. The balance is fragile. It is possible that the tensions involved in formal accountability and networked school improvement will not be managed and that the pressures of accountability will overwhelm the internal motivation of schools to improve.

As school and district improvement practitioners, the following questions will serve to guide our thinking as we both participate in and observe the change processes underway in British Columbia:

• Can the learning communities at the school level influence the directions of their districts?

• Can networks of inquiring schools “ripple out” to create province-wide change in a timely and sustainable manner?

• Can school staffs be motivated to continue improving during a time of intense accountability pressure?

• How can the tension between external accountability and internal improvement initiatives be productive rather than destructive?

• Can the Network of Performance Based Schools stay in a “third space” where they play a constructive and motivating role?

• Can or should the District Review process develop into a network of improving districts internally motivated by inquiry?

Leadership is critical in ensuring that the caring, thinking, citizenship, and engagement we want for our learners is also a characteristic of our improvement work. We have a responsibility to our 21st century learners to model the best of what we know in the improvement and accountability processes we design.

References

Black, P, and Wiliam, D. (1998) Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment. Phi Delta Kappan. 10: 139-148.

Capra, F. (1997) The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Costa, A. & Kallick, B. (2000) Habits of Mind. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Cuttance, P. (2001) School Innovation: Pathway to the Knowledge Society. Canberra,Australia: Department of Education, training, and Youth Affairs.

Earl, L. (2003) Assessment as Learning – Using Classroom Assessment to Maximize Student Learning. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, Inc.

Elmore, R. (2003) A Plea for Strong Practice. Educational Leadership. 61 (3). 6-10.

Fullan, M. (2001) Leading in a Culture of Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fullan, M. (2003) The Moral Imperative of School Leadership. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, Inc.Fullan, M. (2004) Leading in a Culture of Change: Personal Action Guide and Workbook. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Halbert, J. & Kaser, L (2002) Inquiry, eh? School Improvement Through a Network of Inquiry. Education Canada,  42 (2) 1-7.

Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the Knowledge Society. New York: Teachers’ College Press.

Hargreaves, A and Fink, D. (2003) Sustaining Leadership, in press 1-30.Hightower, A., Knapp, M., Marsh, J, & McLaughlin, M. editors. (2002) School Districts and Instructional Renewal. New York: Teachers’ College Press.

Hopkins, D. (2003). Networks of Innovation. Towards New Models for Managing Schools and Systems. OECD.

Hopkins, D. & Jackson, D. (2002). Building Capacity for Leading and Learning. A background paper prepared for AERA. New Orleans.

Laskway,L. (2003) Distributed Leadership. Research Roundup. 19 (4).Lieberman, A. & Grolnick, M. (1996). Network and Reform in American Education. Teachers College Record. 98(1), 7-45.

Lieberman, A. & Wood, D. (2003). Inside the National Writing Project. New York: Teachers’ College Press.

McLaughlin, W. & Talbert, J. (1993) Contexts That Matter for Teaching and Learning. Stanford, California: Center for Research on the Context of Secondary School Teaching.

Spillane,J.P., Halverson, R. & Diamond, J. (2001). Investigating School Leadership Practice :A Distributed Perspective. Educational Researcher. 30(3), 23-28.

Stoll, L., Fink, D. & Earl, L. (2003). It’s About Learning [and It’s About Time]. London: Routledge Falmer.

Timperley, H. & Robinson, V. (2003) Partnership as an Intervention Strategy in Self-Managing Schools. School Effectiveness and School Improvement. 14 (3), 249-274.

Togneri, W., and Anderson, S.E. (2003) Beyond Islands of Excellence: What Districts Can do to Improve instruction and Achievement in All Schools – A Leadership Brief. Learning FirstAlliance.

Willms, J.D. editor. (2002) Vulnerable Children. Edmonton, Alberta: The University of Alberta Press.

Relevant websites

British Columbia Network of Performance Based Schools : www.npbs.ca

British Columbia School District Review: www.bced.gov.bc.ca/review/

British Columbia Student Classroom Assessment Performance standards: www.bced.gov.bc.ca/perf_stds/

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