Guest post by Melissa McCoy for StriveTogether.
The data is stark: Our schools are not preparing every student to succeed in life. Seeking change, educators try programs and initiatives to improve outcomes for kids. These reform efforts often treat students the same, using widespread, one-size-fits-all approaches. But each student is unique and a few solutions are finally adopting a new approach: Start small to go big.
In Spartanburg, South Carolina, leaders are shifting to this approach. They are harnessing the power of one — focusing improvement on one student, one day, with one learning objective — with the support of a community partnership called Spartanburg Academic Movement (SAM). Business and industry have led improvement efforts this way since the 1950s, with health care eventually following suit. Now, education and social systems are also starting small to go big.
SAM recently launched a training hub, the Wardlaw Institute for Continuous Improvement, to accelerate data-centered improvement efforts countywide. The inaugural cohort of leaders participating in the Institute’s training includes district administrators, principals, instructional coaches and leaders from organizations supporting families and children. Participant Thomas Webster, principal at Drayton Mills Elementary, admits he came into the course hopeful but skeptical.
As in so many other high-poverty, high-minority schools around the country, the stakes at Drayton Mills Elementary are high. During his career, Webster has seen programs with promise come and go. At SAM’s Institute training, however, he wasn’t learning just another packaged curriculum, but rather tools that could be applied to anything. “They don’t answer the question of what we should be doing, but how we should be doing it,” Webster explains. “I liked that because oftentimes, ‘best practice’ curriculums and initiatives ignore the fact that context matters.”
During the training, Webster and his team of teachers worked to improve reading performance for students in one class in one grade level, kindergarten. But why would a principal with the weight of an entire school sitting on his shoulders start so small? Three reasons:
- You have to know (like, really know) the root cause of challenges. Webster’s team had to figure out why kindergarten students were struggling so much. The team had long believed that kindergarten students struggled most with upper- and lowercase letter identification, so activities largely centered around developing these skills. However, analyzing the root cause showed that kindergarten students actually needed more help with hearing and naming letter sounds. Armed with new information, teachers shifted instructional plans.
- People have to feel safe in order to change. For people to improve, they must feel safe, valued and heard. At Drayton Mills Elementary, Webster led by example. He acknowledged that as an administrator, he was too far removed from instruction to know what teachers should try. This encouraged one teacher to say to her peers, “I think that I may need some help with different strategies so that I can better meet my students’ needs in the classroom.” Webster applauded her commitment to her students and connected her with teachers she could learn from,. “The vulnerability and courage of this teacher cannot be overstated,” he said. “By asking for help, she opened the door, and we were able to quickly get her the support she needed.”
- Every kid is different. Everyone knows this to be true, but school solutions are often developed on a large scale. At Drayton Mills, the team is doing the opposite. For the kindergarten literacy project, they started with the one teacher and three students in her class. Rapid-cycle testing allowed the teacher to see results in real time to and make adjustments. Within two weeks, those three students grew by two reading levels, a jump that typically takes twice as long.
As seen at Drayton Mills and throughout Spartanburg County, starting small doesn’t mean smaller impact. Starting small allows educators and partners to learn quicker, adapt better, expand practices and ultimately accelerate more equitable outcomes for students. Continuous improvement is empowering Spartanburg’s educators to meet each student where they are and provide what they need to reach their goals. And all of this started with one community partnership, Spartanburg Academic Movement, offering continuous improvement training to one cohort of leaders that are now, collectively, beginning to solve one complex problem school by school, teacher by teacher and student by student.
Cheryl Broadnax, StriveTogether’s senior director of district improvement, is leading the initial training efforts in Spartanburg. She brings her past experience as the assistant superintendent of Cincinnati Public Schools, where she initiated efforts to help educators use continuous improvement practices. In Spartanburg, the end goal is to give SAM the knowledge, structure and confidence to sustain this work. “SAM has a clear vision and understands how critical it is to engage and support districts. You can see, hear and feel the energy in the community around this work,” Broadnax says. “I’m excited to share my learnings and to support Spartanburg in their own continuous improvement journey.”
Melissa McCoy is a district improvement consultant for StriveTogether and founder of Effect Change Consulting, based in the Cincinnati area.