School-based Expectations
When we work with a district, we know that an individual school within the district is making progress when it:
- Deepens the implementation of the school-wide literacy focus.
There is obvious evidence that the school is "living" a solid school-wide focus on literacy through its words, actions and deeds. - Develops professional collaboration teams to improve teaching and learning.
Teacher teams meet regularly to talk about student work, teacher assignments, effective literacy practices and data that demonstrate progress towards eliminating their school's achievement gaps. The school principal is involved, and helps in the effort to use these meetings to drive improvements in teaching and learning. The Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) meets regularly and provides leadership around the school-wide focus on literacy. - Learns and uses effective research-based teaching practices.
A narrow list of three to five best practices has been identified and progress is being made in implementing the best literacy practices in each and every classroom in the school, for each and every student, each and every day. - Implements a targeted professional development plan that builds expertise in selected best practices.
The school’s professional development supports the focus on literacy by building teacher expertise and promoting high expectations for all students. As expertise is developed, teachers are held increasingly accountable for implementation of strategies. - Re-aligns its resources to support the instructional focus.
The school allocates its resources (people, time, talent, energy and money) to align with the school-wide instructional focus on literacy. - Engages families and the community in supporting the instructional focus.
The school communicates openly and pro-actively with families and its neighboring community, involving them in the efforts around the school-wide literacy focus. - Uses SMARTe targets as its goals for improvement.
The school meets at least two school-wide SMARTe goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). One is around the CST and one is around a local measure of student performance. Results are easily available and publicly posted. The data is part of an internal accountability system that is used by the ILT as a lens for decision-making. - Re-focuses the role of the principal as an instructional leader
The principal meets the goal of spending 50 percent of the instructional day in classrooms — observing, demonstrating, modeling and supporting effective literacy practices.