Schools to Watch

CRITERION: The school holds itself accountable for its students' success rather than blaming others for its shortcomings. The school collects, analyzes, and uses data as a basis for making decisions. The school grapples with school-generated evaluation data to identify areas for more extensive and intensive improvement. It delineates benchmarks and insists upon evidence and results. The school intentionally and explicitly reconsiders its vision and practices when data call them into question.

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Using the Products of Instruction
to Improve the Process

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At Barren County Middle School (BCMS), accountability and school governance are inextricably linked, in part because of the mandates of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA). As Principal Michelle Pedigo explains, "KERA set the stage -- we aren't going to do business the way we did before." Principal Pedigo describes accountability as a spur for curricular reform:

"Barren County Middle School is governed by a School-Based Decision-Making Council which is made up of two parent representatives, two teacher representatives, and the principal. The working arm of the council is its committees: the Consolidated Planning Committee, Budget, Curriculum, Scheduling, Technical/Media, School-Business Partnerships, Professional Development and the Discipline Committee. These committees have parent, student, and teacher members, and they research and formulate answers to charges they are given by the council. This system supports continuous improvement at the decision-making level. It encourages parent and student involvement in decisions that support higher student achievement."

In Kentucky, every school must have an annual improvement plan. Based on a needs assessment, the plan establishes goals and activities for continuous improvement. During the 1996-97 school year, BCMS was assigned to the state's School Transformation and Assistance for Renewal [STAR] Program because it ranked 141 out of 336 among the state's middle schools and was not improving at the rate the state wanted. Pedigo says, "We learned that we must collect monthly, sometimes bi-weekly, student work as evidence to support whether the plan and its activities were really spearheading higher student achievement. At that point, we developed a 'crate system' whereby teachers would collect high, medium, and low student work and lesson plans that supported student work, and this evidence would be reviewed and evaluated by a committee on a monthly basis. The information from this evaluation was compiled in a Vital Signs Report that was given to the School-Based Decision-Making Council. This process caused us to take a look at student products instead of just the process. We became better informed about what we should be expecting our students to accomplish and what they were really accomplishing."

At BCMS, teams of teachers have a common planning period every day. At least two days a week, they discuss parallel teaching and how connections can enhance their own content. At least once every nine weeks, all teachers of the same content evaluate student work and student progress in conjunction with the school's improvement plan. This 'Impact Check' information is then forwarded to the School-Based Decision-Making Council, which makes school-wide decisions for continuous improvement.

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