Hey! This blog stuff works! Thanks to Cindy H., Scott M., & Kevin M. for your coaching & making this a reality.

Last Ed blog contained a request to help out an Elementary Principal (old hockey player) that essentially moved into the AYP penalty box. He was looking for other Principals that had worked on the AYP issue.

A number of you responded & we forwarded those contacts to him. He made contact w/ two Principals who really helped out.

Next challenge: That Principal has now moved to a more specific request for assistance as identified in an e-mail to me:

Hey Bruce,

Always great to chat with you. Our specific issue is special education students not making adequate progress.

Here are some areas we are considering in our process:

1. Classroom and special education teachers must own their IEP students.
2. Parent and family support of students not making progress is a must.
3. After school EXCEL program to support only students not making progress.
4. Is the curriculum used for students on IEP's effective?
5. Close progress monitoring of students.
6. Should some students not making progress take the alternate MTAS assessment?
7. Are students receiving enough eyeball to eyeball time (w/ teachers)?

Hope this helps..keep me in the loop with your progress.

Take care,
(Name)

Please respond to this blog & let us know if you have some ideas or proven strategies to address any of those opportunities for improvement. Let's get some best practice ideas up for other educational leaders to review.
Thanks in advance & take care!

Building Bridges for Student Outcomes

One of my school district clients recently had an interesting idea. This SpEd leader wanted to bring all of the major players in the district together to plan out a better model for better serving all students.

The two planning sessions were entitled: Building Bridges for Student Outcomes.

In the sessions, the group completed the following tasks
Session 1 (three hours)
1) Briefly review applied research / best practice ideas
2) ID & review recent successes & issues
3) Develop a vision for a better system
4) ID priorities for actions
5) Review possible next steps
6) Evaluate this session

Session 2 (two hours)
1) Briefly review products from session #1
2) Develop specific goals aligned w/ new priorities
3) Develop workplans for new goals
4) Review next steps
5) Evaluate this session

The group did excellent work & came up with the following priorities for the improved system:

#1) Comprehensive, inclusive interventions & differentiation plans (pyramid including social, emotional, behavioral)

#2) Define & train to a district coaching model & implement consistently

#3) Vertical alignment of curriculum & assessments K-12 (cross content included)

#4) Comprehensive assessment system embedded in instruction (variety of methods of assessment that is fully implemented

#5) Every child reads by grade 3 @ or above grade level

#6) Coaching model continues to support full implementation with fidelity of PA (Principles of learning) & is fully implemented.

Their work in FY09 will include implementation & evaluation. Obviously, they have a lot of work ahead. But bringing the players together to plan together is an excellent start.