System-Building in a Suburban School District

• In Event: System-Building to Improve Access, Quality, and Equity in Elementary Science

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze system-building for elementary science instruction in a suburban district with changing demographics.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
As with Papers 2 and 3, this paper leverages the analytic framework detailed in the symposium overview, which focuses on five domains of work in central offices and schools aimed at improving instructional quality and reducing disparities.

Modes of inquiry
As with papers 2 and 3, this paper was developed within the embedded, comparative case study design detailed in the symposium overview.

Data/Analysis
This paper focuses on Suburban School District (SSD): a school district serving over 12,000 students, about half of whom are students of color, one-third are low-income, and one-seventh are emergent-bilinguals.

Within the comprehensive dataset and analysis plan described in the overview, this paper draws on:

● Observations of six district-level curriculum adoption committee meetings
● 8 interviews with the district curriculum team (n=2), senior central office leader (n=1), other district content area and supplemental service leads (n=4), and an external partner (n=1)
● A sample of artifacts including documents detailing district goals, instructional visions, curriculum materials, and documents associated with the curriculum adoption meetings.


Results
Improvement in elementary science instruction in SSD is one part of a broader district focus on continuous improvement that started in the 1990s and evolved into system-building efforts to support rigorous, high-quality instruction for all students.

Like CSD, SSD uses an externally-developed commercial curriculum as the foundation of its educational infrastructure. The district complements this with a set of internally-developed supplemental resources, including instructional materials, rubrics, and assessments in addition to development of shared norms that foster a district-wide commitment to continuous instructional improvement.

The central office delegates the work of supporting the use of this educational infrastructure to school-based instructional coaches and an external partner. The external partner provides science specific professional learning directly to teachers while the school-based coaches work with individual teachers and grade-level teams on classroom instruction across subject areas.

As in USD, SSD’s central office manages environmental relationships to ensure alignment with the NGSS. In particular, SSD leverages its relationships with an external partner for teacher-level professional learning and engages with the commercial market for instructional resources.

To support the preceding, SSD distributes instructional leadership across a number of roles including site-based instructional coaches and committees of teachers, staff, and community stakeholders who engage in cyclical curriculum review efforts.

Those committees are one example of how SSD manages performance through continuous improvement processes that drives all the preceding. This approach foregrounds continuous improvement of instructional practices ahead of accountability in the effort to maintain their vision for high-quality science instruction while being responsive to evolving community needs.

Significance
As a complement to the cases of USD and CSD, the added value of the case of SSD is that it foregrounds managing performance: in this case managing for continuous improvement as a principal driver of efforts to develop district-wide systems to support equitable and high-quality elementary science instruction.

 

Author

• Christa Haverly, Northwestern University