Year Four

CVCS is about to begin its fourth year, but where are we as a school? There are many ways to locate a school. We are in the fourth year of our five year charter. We are in the Merit School of Music. Ask Learning Coaches or teachers, “Where are we as a school?” and it is unlikely that the response would be temporal (“in our fourth year”) or geographical (“38 S Peoria Street”). Much more likely would be the response that locates the school in reference to its ideal future. In fact, that response is the most important, for it speaks to the purpose of the school. At CVCS, we are striving to empower students to flourish, and we cannot stop working until we have accomplished that mission. This year, we will be involved as a school in our students’ education, instructing them and learning what they know and can do, and then working with Learning Coaches as partners to empower all our students to flourish. We always want to know where we are with each family in that mission.

Asking outsiders is another way to find out where a school is. Last year, I used grant dollars to hire the same firm that will conduct our charter renewal evaluation in year five to conduct a mid-charter evaluation. I wanted a heads-up on how CPS will view the school when we apply to have our charter renewed. You can see their report by clicking here. I would like to discuss some of these evaluators’ major findings and report on our response to them. The mission of CVCS is to empower students to flourish, not to have our charter renewed. Yet it would be irresponsible of me not to provide the CVCS community with an overview of what we are doing as a school to make sure that CVCS remains open after its first charter expires as an option for parents in Chicago who want to work with us as partners in empowering students to flourish.

The first strength the report names is the curriculum (p. 2). In fact, it is the only “consensus strength” (p. 10) in the final section. The evaluators describe the curriculum K12 offers CVCS students online as individualized, offering students “the ability to move at one’s own pace, flexibility, and autonomy” (p. In the same area of curriculum, however, an “area for improvement” is the “lack of expectations around…comprehensive scope and sequence, delivery of instruction, and use of assessments” (p. 3). It was recommended that CVCS “[set] expectations for the amount of time teachers spend on instruction; [increase] the use of Elluminate to deliver instruction to all students , not just those who are struggling; and [incorporate] higher-order activities into on-line [sic] and learning center lessons” (p. 3).

The evaluators found that the variety of assessments is a strength (p. 2). Scantron as a tool allows us to learn what students know as judged against Illinois state standards and to tailor curriculum to meet individual students’ academic needs. We have a program for determining early literacy abilities among our kindergarten through second grade students. K12 provides online assessments for online learning that Learning Coaches use to gauge students’ mastery of academic content. Those assessments, the evaluators found, “are not being used systematically to validate student mastery in multiple ways” (p.4). They recommend that CVCS “establish a systematic method for monitoring student progress at various intervals throughout courses” (p. 4).

Of all the “areas of improvement” the evaluators found, we have focused most attention on this section, teaching and learning. At the K-8 level, K12 has aligned for us math and reading standards to OLS lessons, and further aligned those standards to lessons in Study Island and Odyssey. We also have exercises for reading and math standards that will allow teachers to know what students have learned. Teachers will become better partners with Learning Coaches by instructing students both online and at the Learning Center and then have the tools to find out what they have learned and to have the resources to help students who need it. In this way, we will honor the commitment and time Learning Coaches make by finding out what students know and making available additional resources as appropriate. We have made the Home Room teacher the same person as the Learning Center Teacher. All students will be learning on Elluminate in targeted, virtual sessions, and the “method for monitoring student progress at regular intervals” will be “systematic” (p. 4) and more robust than the evaluators could imagine.

The evaluators found that we do not use Learning Center time “to provide maximum benefit to the teaching and learning process” (p. 4). The evaluators found “limited evidence of differentiated instruction,” with direct observation of Learning Center instruction revealing that “teachers deliver[ed] the same lesson to all students …across almost all classrooms visited, including classrooms that incorporated students at several levels. It is not clear how whole group lessons are providing instruction to students who are progressing at different rates throughout the curriculum” (p. 4). The evaluators recommend that we “[establish] clear expectations for learning center [sic] time, which are focused on maximizing instruction and benefit to student learning” (p. 4).

The relationships CVCS teachers built with Learning Coaches last year is clearly a strength (p. 5). An “area for improvement,” however, is the lack of a “shared understanding of the purpose or philosophy of the school program,” which has resulted in “a fragmentation in some areas of the school culture” (p. 6). They recommend that CVCS establish a “common program purpose” and create “uniform expectations and clearer guidelines around roles and responsibilities for stakeholders” (p. 6).

The evaluators included the following “area for improvement” in the section on “Learning Community,” but it also belongs to the previous section, “Teaching and Learning”: “There is no clear system for feedback to improve teaching and learning” (p. 6). Nothing in this review surprised me, and this observation least of all. After all, if there is no shared purpose as a school, and if there are no expectations for teaching and learning, there was little feedback that could be given beyond the general instructional virtues of promoting higher order thinking and differentiating instruction. The evaluators recommend CVCS “[provide] formative feedback to staff” and take advantage of the” hybrid nature of the CVCS program” (p. 6).

I read this review of CVCS holistically, not as a laundry list of to-do items. That is, we cannot meaningfully discuss providing formative feedback to teachers and taking advantage of our “hybrid nature” without a mission the school is trying to accomplish. Moreover, the feedback to teachers throughout the year is best when it is linked to the school’s identified objectives. Those objectives have to be established. We have done all this. Last spring, I engaged Learning Coaches and faculty in a discussion of the school’s purpose, and we have concluded that our mission is to empower our students to flourish as individuals and as citizens in a diverse, global society. What do we need to accomplish in order to empower our students to flourish? Teachers and staff worked in June and August to articulate and refine what our objectives as a school should be, and because those objectives are linked to our mission, they are strategic in nature. That is why we call our school wide objectives “strategic objectives.” Those strategic objectives cascade down to departments and then down to individuals. Thus when we provide formative feedback to teachers this year, as the evaluators suggested we do, that feedback is tied to our purpose as a school, which the evaluators suggested we find. Best of all, the feedback we give to teachers use criteria the teachers helped create. Finally, we have created a mentoring program for new teachers and opportunities for teachers to make their teaching a clinical, rather than an isolated practice. The evaluators took issue with goals teachers had outlined for themselves in their professional growth plans, citing a lack of clarity in how these goals lead to improved outcomes (p. 7). One look at our strategy map indicates clearly how teachers’ individual goals lead to improved outcomes. Finally, the evaluators recommend “developing a targeted, purposeful plan for professional development for all parties that is linked to a strategic plan” (p. 7). Accordingly, we planned for a month of professional development in August, created certification programs in teaching virtually and using communication tools, and have planned professional development throughout the year that is directly linked to our strategy map.

In the section on governance and leadership, the evaluators found confusion among teachers when asked, “To whom do you go with questions?” (p. 8). As they recommended (p. 8), we have created an organizational chart, but it is probably too early in the school year to know whether it is clearer to teachers to whom they go when they have a question. The question of “clear systems for communication” needs more than organizational chart for an answer. It is actually a question of culture, and culture takes time to develop.

Finally, an area of improvement for leadership was to develop strategic plan (p. 9). The evaluators recommended the school “[create] a plan that provides a clear roadmap for the school and its stakeholders—currently and into the future” (p. 9). It was the last recommendation of the report, but it was the first thing we did. We call the “roadmap for the school and its stakeholders” a “Lesson Plan,” a strategy map that illustrates how we plan to align what we do with accomplishing the mission of empowering students to flourish. It addresses all aspects of the school, from online and face-to-face instruction to communication to the problems the evaluators found in last year’s attendance procedures (p. 9). Our strategy is to put the school on the road to greatness, which for us means empowering students to flourish, and have our charter renewed along the way.

What can you do in year four? At CVCS, Learning Coaches are partners in the work of educating our children. All schools are supposed to teach students and then find out what students have learned. We will do that like other schools (only better), but unlike other schools, we rely on a partnership with Learning Coaches to empower our students to flourish. The “Third Year Review” indicates that the school needs to more comprehensively and systematically do its part in teaching students and in finding out what they know, not in fragmented ways, but as Shakespeare wrote, “as many arrows, loosed several ways, come to one mark.” Our efforts as a school to become more involved in teaching and in finding out what students have learned will make us better partners. As we become full-fledged partners with Learning Coaches, you can help CVCS and the children we share by familiarizing yourself with the assignment the external evaluators gave us and by helping us complete our assignment. It is important to know what these same evaluators will be looking for when they return in year five. Right now, in year four, teachers and staff want to work more closely than ever with Learning Coaches to achieve our strategic objectives and to accomplish our mission of empowering all our students to flourish. You can join us in working with us to maximize our opportunities as a hybrid school and to fully realize the potential of our curriculum. No one, teacher, staff, Learning Coach, or student, comes to CVCS thinking the work will be easy, but not one of us came here because we wanted easy work. We all came here to flourish.