| abstract
| - Governor Ed Rendell and Secretary Francis Barnes, with funding provided by The Annenberg Foundation, made a three-year PA High School Coaching Initiative. Part of Pennsylvania’s plan, Leading for Learning, to improve student performance. Includes Project 720 and the Accountability Block Grant, provided to school districts. Its $31 million places one literacy and one math coach for every 600 students in some of the most high-need high schools. Coaches facilitate in-class coaching and modeling, peer collaboration and teacher training to improve teaching and learning. Pennsylvania Department of Education and University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Literacy Network (PLN) and Foundations, Inc. to provide professional development for the new coaches and the district and school leadership teams. Research for Action documents and evaluates. The Rationale As the growing body of research suggests, significant improvement of schools, more often than not, hinges on one thing: quality teaching. Although important, creating a strategic plan, aligning standards and assessments, and setting performance targets is not enough. That work will not have an impact if teachers do not understand the standards and the instructional techniques necessary to reach all students. Yet, the consistent delivery of quality instruction within an individual school and across a set of schools, particularly at the secondary level, is one of the most important challenges districts face—it is also one of the most daunting. The Pennsylvania Department of Education firmly believes that if we are to hold schools accountable for improved teaching and learning, then we must also contribute to their wherewithal—through intensive, ongoing training, tools and supports—to radically change their practice. The High School Coaching Initiative is one of these important supports. Emerging research indicates that there is a strong correlation between coaching and increased student achievement. Although various models, roles and definitions of coaching have evolved over the past ten years or so, “proven practices” in coaching that led to documented student achievement have emerged: * Coaches are selected by districts based on their deep knowledge of curriculum, expertise in instruction, skill in data analysis, understanding of adult learning and ability to lead and mentor teacher colleagues. * Coaches are involved in intensive professional development and collaboration that deepens their leadership skills, content knowledge and pedagogical expertise. The professional development focuses on specific content and the dissemination of explicit instructional strategies to teachers so that high expectations for teaching and learning are established and aligned across classrooms and schools. * Effective coaching often hinges on the coaches’ ability to foster deep working relationships with both teachers and their principal. Coaches are able to navigate the sometimes inherent tension between administration and faculty and perform the role of “first among equals” with teachers. * Effective coaching focuses on helping teachers translate proven practice and research-based strategies into their own classroom practice. Coaching identifies and focuses on teachers’ professional learning needs. * Effective coaching provides teachers with tools and strategies for aligning standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction in the core content areas. * Effective coaching increases teachers’ understanding of individual student learning needs, ability to identify those needs and capacity to implement various instructional strategies to meet those needs. * Effective coaching is embedded in educator practice and their day-to-day efforts. The Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative: Program Design The Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative will create an unprecedented statewide infrastructure for on-site, embedded professional development that is based on the recent research presented above. The goal of the Initiative is three-fold: 1. Improve student performance at the participating high schools. 2. Build capacity throughout the Commonwealth for the expansion of this model. 3. Generate a research base that will inform the development of the coaching model and support its refinement and expansion. Pennsylvania Department of Education is inviting selected districts that have high-need high schools and the capacity to successfully implement a coaching model. We are also encouraging the selected districts to include a partnership with their Intermediate Unit in order to build the capacity of the Intermediate Unit staff to support coaches and the coaching model in the participating district and in the other districts they serve. Support to Districts Districts involved in the Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative will receive extensive supports at the district and school level for implementing coaching. In particular, districts will receive funding for three years to support certified teachers hired to replace teachers released for the coaching positions. Each district will receive a set budget based upon average teacher salaries and benefits and prevailing “cost of living” data. Funds will flow from the Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative’s fiscal administrator, The Philadelphia Foundation, directly to the districts. Through this reimbursement, each participating high school will receive one math and one literacy coach for every 600 students at two to three of their high schools. Additionally, districts will receive: * Guidance in planning and implementing the coaching initiative at their high schools. * Extensive training and mentoring, including credit-based courses, for coaches, school leaders and district leaders in instructional leadership through the nationally recognized University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Literacy Network and Foundations, Inc. (Please see Appendix II for the outline of professional development opportunities.) * Networking opportunities for district and school leadership teams to problem-solve and plan with colleagues from other selected districts. * Penn Literacy Network’s credit-based regional courses in math and literacy content and instruction for their high school teachers. * All expenses paid for credit-bearing courses, trainings and travel related to the Coaching Initiative. * Assistance in data analysis and data-based decisionmaking in order to continually improve the coaching initiative and teaching and learning at the selected high schools. Commitment from Districts A crucial component to the Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative is the commitment of the participating districts, high schools and Intermediate Units to this work. In Appendix 2, district and school leadership teams and teacher unions/associations must provide assurances that they commit to participating in the Initiative and will follow its requirements. Required commitments include: District Level: Programmatic Districts must: * Have a clear management structure for the initiative. In particular, the District must select a leadership team to spearhead the implementation. The district leadership team should include either the superintendent or assistant superintendent; appropriate administrator from the curriculum office (if applicable); principals from the participating schools; and teacher representatives (including coaches) from participating schools. * Designate a district liaison to PDE, the technical providers and Research for Action. * Commit time from their leadership team to participate in summer courses, regional networking and on-site mentoring. * Ensure that the technical providers (PLN, Foundations, Inc., PDE) are able to readily access information and work on site and in schools with administrators and teachers. * Ensure that the evaluators have access to student data and program documents and are able to conduct interviews of participants and observations of classrooms and other relevant settings. Districts must be willing to work with evaluators to design a data collection plan for their district. * Be willing to make decisions and changes in use of time and resources to support the High School Coaching Initiative. * Be willing to identify the potential policies and practices that could impede the implementation of the initiative and be willing to address those obstacles. * Exhibit a willingness to collaborate with IUs as partners. District Level: Financial Districts must: * Designate a primary finance/fiscal liaison who will work with the contact at The Philadelphia Foundation. * Submit monthly reporting of Initiative expenses in standard format developed by The Philadelphia Foundation. * Notify The Philadelphia Foundation of any and all changes in the district’s personnel participation in the Initiative. * Bill The Philadelphia Foundation monthly, on reimbursement basis, providing teacher level detail for monthly payment of salaries, wages and benefits for replacement teachers. * Periodically process and pay travel and expense reimbursements for coaches participating in the Initiative meetings, courses and other activities. The district must bill The Philadelphia Foundation and provide copies of all travel and expense reimbursements. * Agree to be responsible for costs in excess of their allotted budgets. * School Level To support this work at the school level, districts must: * Include the participating principals’ faithful participation in training, mentoring and networking opportunities and implementation of the initiative in their professional goals for performance appraisal, personal assessment and school assessment. * Ensure that principals will schedule the requested amount of time for themselves and their administrative teams to participate in mentoring. Principals will make themselves and their administrative teams available for the scheduled time. * Ensure the principals will arrange schedules and coverage to make teachers available to work with coaches for the specified amount of time—which will include planning, debriefing, observing and conferring with other teachers. * Work with principals to allocate equitable amounts of time for teachers to be available for coaching and participation in study groups. * Ensure that principals and other administrators will honor the coaches’ role and responsibilities as coaches and will not reallocate their time to substitute service, administrative duties or other duties unrelated to coaching. Coaches All coaches will be full-time, 10-month employees of the district and spend 100% of their time as on-site professional developers and trainers of teachers through in-class modeling, peer observing, coaching and facilitating teacher study groups and collaboration. Coaches will serve as part of their school’s leadership team, providing support to principals in data analysis and professional development decision making and providing professional development and guidance for teachers in improving their content knowledge and instructional strategies. The coaches’ job goal is to ensure that school staff acquire the understanding and skills to: 1) Enable all students to improve in their learning and gain the knowledge and skills to access future scholastic and workplace opportunities; and 2) Close the achievement gap. Overall, the job of the coaches is to build the capacity of the school and teachers to meet the learning needs of all students. All coaches will spend the majority of their time working in classrooms (e.g. modeling, observing) with teachers, with some of their time allocated to data collection and analysis and facilitating teacher study groups. The teacher study groups will be structured around analyzing student work and lesson plans. In particular, coaches will guide teachers in working through how to implement instructional strategies learned through the technical providers’ courses and trainings (described below). The coaches’ analysis of student work and teaching and learning data will inform what occurs during their coaching sessions with individual teachers and in the teacher study groups. The roles and responsibilities of the coaches include: * Identifying school teaching and learning needs, barriers and weaknesses by collecting and analyzing student data, and organizing and implementing problem-solving actions with teachers; * Facilitating school-based, high quality professional development, working with teachers in teams or individually to refine their knowledge and skills. Training vehicles could include in-class coaching, peer observing and/or modeling; guiding teachers in looking at student work; developing lesson plans with teachers based on student needs; etc.; * Monitoring instructional effectiveness and student progress using tools and strategies gained through professional development; and * Facilitating/participating in community and parent seminars/functions to provide them with information about standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction. Coaches will be charged with acquiring the knowledge, skills and strategies by participating in the Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative’s intensive professional development and implementing the strategies learned. They must also remain knowledgeable about current and past research in the fields of literacy and/or math teaching and other pedagogies relevant to the coaching role. Similar to other teacher positions, coaches should report directly to and be held accountable by their school principals.
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