The Complexity of Developing Instructional Program Coherence in Turnaround

• In Event: 79.015 - Recrafting Coherence in the Era of Common Core

Abstract

This overall purpose of this study is to understand the dynamics of a district-led turnaround that seeks to promote rigorous and consistent teaching and learning across a large set of priority schools. Earlier studies of this district demonstrated that it had repeatedly produced strong growth in student performance, outperforming other turnaround initiatives funded by the state. The district then sought to replicate this success across a dozen more schools, but given the scale of the demand adopted a new, more centralized approach to improvement.

In this analysis, we examine whether and how that ambitious effort contributed to a coherent instructional program in mathematics at the school and district level. In this first year of our three-year study, we collected qualitative data in five schools along with surveys of all priority schools in the district unit and a sample outside of it. Researchers conducted a total of 85 interviews, observations and shadowing events in the district turnaround office and schools throughout 2017-18.

While prior studies have shown the importance of developing common commitments and a district infrastructure to support instructional program coherence in schools (Newman et al., 2001; Mehta & Fine, 2015), our findings illustrate the formidable complexity of such an endeavor. From one vantage, the system put in place for these turnaround schools is an exemplar of the kinds of “thick mechanisms” (Mehta & Fine, 2015) necessary for coherence: the districtwide adoption of Eureka, an ambitious mathematics curriculum aligned to state standards and a challenging new state assessment, coupled with intensive district coaching supports and school-level processes of peer collaboration oriented to the same. Two district teams comprised of leadership development directors and content-based teacher coaches were heavily focused on the implementation of the new Eureka curriculum and similarly dedicated to its key principles of learning and common instructional practices.

But although mutual commitment to a common curricular and instructional approach is essential, it also lays bare critical issues and presents new challenges to coherence that must be solved at every level. In the district, for example, the leadership and instructional teams diverged over how to address the learning needs of students who are far below grade level in a program oriented towards grade-level standards and conceptual understanding. Mixed messages resulted in confusion and considerable variation on this central problem of practice. Several factors account for these and other disjunctures in instructional guidance. Structurally, the two district teams had different roles and proximity to outcome accountability. This contributed to different metrics of success, and different ideas about the trajectory of instructional improvement for the school as a whole versus teachers individually. Administratively, weak mechanisms for coordination across the two teams led to further fragmentation. Finally, both groups had critical gaps in the template of support practices and routines by which they conducted their work, forcing them to rely frequently on individual discretion and judgment and increasing the threat of inconsistency.

This research contributes to a new, robust dialogue in the field about the complexity of developing instructional program coherence at the school and system level.

Authors

• Diane Massell, Consortium for Policy Research in Education

• Joshua L. Glazer, The George Washington University