School-Based Coaching
Collaborative Leadership of Data-Based Instructional Improvement
New schools face a dual challenge: to accelerate student learning and to teach at a level of rigor that prepares students adequately for success in college and work.
Our school-based coaching model aims to help schools tackle these challenges in smart ways that increase the quality of teaching and learning at scale in a school. We believe that in order for schools to change student learning outcomes at scale, they must become learning organizations that use data in ongoing and nimble ways to mobilize teams within the building to employ and assess targeted changes in instructional practice.
Coaches work closely with principals and their instructional leadership teams to identify student learning needs, target those needs through instruction, develop professional learning plans that increase the capacity for instructional improvement, increase the quality of instruction through ongoing practice-feedback cycles, and continuously assess and revise plans based on the deliberate examination of student work, student data, and classroom practice.
Our coaching work is organized into four distinctive “phases” that are cyclical, not linear, and described below.
Problematizing Student Learning Needs
Our work begins with the examination of data on student learning. Network coaches collaborate regularly with colleagues from the Consortium on Chicago School Research to provide schools with research-based, individualized school reports that help schools surface trends in their data. We ask schools to identify troubling data points around which to organize. We “problematize” student learning data to create a sense of urgency and clarify the school’s focus.
Task Forcing & Strategizing
A team must take on the challenge of addressing the student learning need throughout the school. Instructional leadership teams are responsible for and charged with developing a strategic plan to improve teaching and learning across the school building. We help schools develop an assessment plan for monitoring change over time and a professional learning plan for building teacher/staff capacity to improve instructional practice.
Supporting Adult Learning Through Practice & Feedback Cycles
The instructional leadership team leads the school in understanding the student learning need and learning about and implementing specific instructional practices that target that need. This work involves designing professional development, providing effective feedback to colleagues as they practice, and leading department/content-area and grade level teams in examining student work and data. Coaches support this work by engaging in parallel processes with the instructional leadership team – providing explicit content, sharing observational feedback, and facilitating the examination of student work and data.
Ongoing Reflection on and Assessment of Student Learning
Instructional leadership teams assess the impact of changes in teaching on student learning by examining interim assessment data, as well as student performance on formative and summative assessments (e.g. end-of-unit exams). They also use classroom observation to assess progress in instructional practice. Network schools support each other in this effort by participating in “learning walks” in which teams of participants help the host school look closely at and collect “data” around their instructional area of focus.
Each year, the USI Network team reflects on the effectiveness of our work in schools and refines our coaching model. Our work evolves every year and is enhanced by feedback from our school partners, as well as by our engagement with our USI Network collaborators.