Indiana Record of Services

Winter 2011

State Manager: Frank De Rosa

State System of Support

School Improvement: State Turnaround of Schools. The Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) has completed Stage 1 (see Figure 1) of turning around its chronically lowest performing schools. In late fall, four middle and high schools were visited by IDOE staff and community members to conduct school quality reviews. The reviews by the technical assistance teams were based on Mass Insight Education's survey of the literature related to actions of high-poverty, low-performing schools that led to their becoming high performing. IDOE compiled the reviews into final reports, which included the schools' areas of strengths, areas of improvement, and recommendations. In February 2011, IDOE will begin Stage 2 with Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett, Ed.D., and IDOE staff meeting with the schools and districts to discuss the written reviews. During the remainder of the current school year and next school year, the schools are required to demonstrate good efforts in implementing and addressing the recommendations. Their effortsare monitored by regular onsite visits by IDOE staff.

In the 2011–12 school year, Stage 3 will begin with IDOE determining whether the schools are making good efforts toward change. Effort refers to extensive changes that occur rapidly—not simply "playing around the edges." In Stage 4, the Indiana State Board of Education will determine the intervention for each school. A range of interventions exists, such as assigning a lead partner to assist the school or having a Turnaround School Operator (TSO) manage the school.

This winter, IDOE Turnaround Director Lee Ann Kwiatkowski led the effort to write the response for proposals for national and state organizations that describes the roles and requirements of Indiana's TSOs. A number of management companies and community organizations applied. The responses were scored, and seven were selected to give oral presentations to a panel of IDOE staff and external partners. For those that scored well, IDOE and external partners will conduct visits to schools currently managed by those TSOs and then select the final group to operate up to 20 of Indiana's lowest performing schools. The Great Lakes East Comprehensive Center assisted in these efforts by codeveloping scoring rubrics for TSOs' responses to the proposals, their oral presentations, and the visits to their schools.

Coplanning by IDOE and Great Lakes East is occurring now for community meetings in five areas of the state, which represent the 20 schools that are the persistently lowest performing in the state. The meetings will bring together key individuals such as business owners, clergy, and service organizations to learn of the turnaround process and timelines and to seek their input as to how to best communicate with parents. In addition, IDOE and Great Lakes East are developing systems for identifying and recruiting exceptional teachers and principals based on the research of turnaround schools, such as developing a website titled INcredible Educators. Finding educators who have the skills and the desire to serve in low-performing schools is one of the greatest challenges districts face. IDOE and Great Lakes East hope to address this challenge by providing Indiana districts and TSOs with educators that are well prepared and eager to serve in the state's lowest performing schools.

School Improvement: Response to Instruction. Indiana's Response to Instruction (RTI) Pilot Schools Program accelerated into the winter with professional development sessions for staff at each of the 11 pilot schools. During the week of November 15, separate four-hour sessions were held, one in each of the pilot schools' corporations. The sessions addressed RTI foundations and differentiated instruction with special considerations for English learners (ELs). The sessions were led by Alyson Luther, IDOE director of RTI, with technical assistance and feature presentations from Stacy Rush, Ph.D., Great Lakes East staff member, and Lisa Tabaku, ELL education specialist and associate manager at the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Instruction

Common Core State Standards. On January 24–25, 2011, Great Lakes East, Great Lakes West, and REL Midwest held a meeting titled "Building a Collaborative Work Plan for Implementation of the Common Core State Standards" in Rosemont, Illinois. The two-day meeting convened state education agency officials from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin who are responsible for implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in their states. The purpose of the meeting was to assist states in forming multistate teams to create plans for developing resources, strategies, and tools for implementation of CCSS. The teams engaged in activities designed to build a common understanding and a collaborative environment among states regarding standards implementation. The IDOE team consisted of Schauna Findlay, Ph.D., director of curriculum and instruction; Zach Foughty, secondary mathematics consultant; Adam Jones, English language arts specialist; Will Krebs, school leadership and policy specialist; Alyson Luther, director of RTI/ELL/integrated services/textbook; and Michele Walker, director of student assessment. The teams identified specific successes and challenges that impact implementation and shared their commitment to communicate the work to their assessment consortia. Indiana is one of 11 governing states in the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) with 26 member states.

Theory of Action for Mathematics Reform. Great Lakes East continues to provide technical assistance to IDOE as they begin to develop a theory of action for mathematics reform within the current CCSS implementation plan. The theory of action is a new title for work that was previously referred to as a new secondary integrated mathematics policy statement and business plan. When completed, components of the theory of action will include the following: (1) an introduction and statement of reasoning including an analysis of NAEP, ISTEP+, and End of Course Assessments data and of CCSS for mathematics, (2) changing curriculum and instruction K–12, (3) elementary mathematics specialists, (4) high school mathematics pathways and making informed decisions about the integration of secondary mathematics, and (5) graduation requirements, which includes achieving the goal of "90-25-90" (90 percent graduation rate of all Indiana students, 25 percent of all Indiana students have a college-level experience in high school, and 90 percent of all Indiana students pass ISTEP+).

Overall, the new theory of action will emphasize mathematics curriculum, instruction, assessment, and K–12 professional development. It will point out the soundness of an integrated secondary mathematics model. In March 2011, key sections of the theory of action will be presented to the Indiana State Board of Education. Ultimately, Indiana school corporations will be able to use it as a guide in annual textbook selection. The authors of the IDOE theory of action include key members of the CCSS team, who are Schauna Findlay, Ph.D., Zach Foughty, and Trice Black (elementary mathematics specialist). Great Lakes East technical assistance providers are Lisa Palacios and Frank De Rosa. Great Lakes East continues to facilitate an advisory relationship with the Center on Instruction's mathematics experts Russell Gersten, Ph.D., director of the mathematics strand, and Richard Schaar, Ph.D., executive advisor to the Office of Education Policy of Texas Instruments, Inc.

College and Career Preparation. Throughout fall 2010, Great Lakes East continued to support the academic integration efforts of IDOE's Division of College and Career Preparation (CCP). IDOE has been tasked with recommending three courses to the Indiana State Board of Education that integrate academic and career and technical education (CTE) standards. These integrated courses would provide high school students the opportunity to earn interdisciplinary credit. Great Lakes East and CCP have collaborated this fall to develop a knowledge base to inform IDOE's recommendations.

The knowledge base consists of three components. First, Great Lakes East and CCP, with support from the National High School Center, researched the characteristics of effective integrated courses and student achievement results related to participation in integrated courses. Second, Great Lakes East and CCP designed and launched a statewide survey of local CTE directors to collect baseline data on what integrated courses are currently offered across the state. Third, Great Lakes East and CCP completed a scan of state policies and procedures related to academic integration and interdisciplinary credit to identify best practices nationwide. This information, in addition to data previously collected by IDOE, will be used to inform discussions and decisions on the identification and development of the state's course recommendations. The CCP academic integration team consists of Matt Fleck, director of college and career preparation; Davis Moore, trade and industrial career preparation specialist; and Great Lakes East representatives Beth Ratway and Tori Cirks (lead).

In addition, with assistance from Great Lakes East, IDOE has continued to support its Math-in-CTE professional development program, conducting a fall workshop on November 4–5, 2010. This workshop brought together mathematics and CTE teacher teams who participated in a five-day training session last July to advance their work on the development and refinement of integrated lessons. Teams had opportunities to share challenges and learn from each others' experiences as they implemented the first set of lessons during the fall semester. The next workshop is scheduled for March 10–11, 2011. In addition, Great Lakes East will collaborate with CCP staff members Davis Moore, Peggy Wild (family and consumer sciences specialist), and Kelly Dunn (consultant to Indiana's College and Career Pathways project) to support the second phase of the development of Indiana's College and Career Pathways.

Michigan Record of Services

State Manager: Gary Appel

Teacher Quality

Michigan System of Highly Effective Professional Learning: Policy Revision. The Great Lakes East Comprehensive Center continues to support the work of a Michigan Department of Education (MDE) cross-functional stakeholder team made up of leaders from each of the MDE departments and from key stakeholder groups throughout the state. MDE and Great Lakes East have convened monthly meetings of the Stakeholder Team since October 2010 for the purpose of creating a more comprehensive System of Highly Effective Professional Learning. The team is preparing a system overview policy and corresponding guidelines to take to the State Board of Education in spring for the board's consideration and for public review. The team also is developing a communication dissemination plan and a monitoring and evaluation plan to ensure that highly effective professional learning is embedded throughout the system. The work of the team is expected to continue into summer 2011.

High School

High School Redesign. On November 23, 2010, Jenny Scala, National High School Center, and Bersheril Bailey, Great Lakes East, cofacilitated an MDE needs assessment for high school improvement. The data gathered through this process may be used to begin the development of a five-year strategic plan for high school improvement in Michigan. Participants represented various offices at MDE: Office of Education Improvement and Innovation, Education Technology, Office of Career and Technical Education, Office of Educational Assessment and Accountability, Office of Field Services, Office of Professional Preparation, and Office of Special Education and Early Intervention Services.

A week later, on November 30, 2010, representatives from MDE (Jan Ellis, spokesperson for the Superintendent of Public Instruction Office; Leisa Gallagher, Office of Special Education and Early Intervention Services), Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators (Myra Munroe), Michigan Association of Secondary School Administrators (Diane McMillan), Michigan's Children (Michele Corey), and Bailey planned and cofacilitated a session at the MDE School Improvement Conference titled "Dropout Prevention and School Improvement: Tapping the Power of School Community Partnerships." All session participants received a copy of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Practice Guide Dropout Prevention. Jerry Czarnecki, teacher at Kelloggsville High School, and Kristine Gullen, high school consultant for Oakland Schools, shared strategies and interventions from the Practice Guide that they use in their school and intermediate school district. IES What Works Clearinghouse resources also were shared with participants. Graduation Town, an online electronic learning community, was introduced during the session; it is dedicated to supporting state, district, and building efforts to ensure that all students graduate from high school college- and career-ready. Graduation Town provides a place for educators, parents, students, and community partners to share, ask, advise, collaborate, teach, learn, and network. The platform was designed by the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals in partnership with MDE. Great Lakes East regularly provides research and other resources from national content centers for the site.

In addition to the high school dropout prevention and improvement work, Great Lakes East and MDE collaborated with the Michigan Alternative Education Organization to hold a professional learning opportunity, "Mastering the Maze of Michigan Merit Math," on November 11, 2010, for alternative educators across the state. The session was designed to increase educators' capacity to teach mathematics to struggling learners. Presenters included Dan LaDue, MDE high school mathematics consultant, and Mike Lehman and Marie Copeland, project managers for EMATHS (Embracing Mathematics, Assessment, and Technology in High School). Approximately 75 educators attended the one-day session. Great Lakes East and MDE will continue to work with alternative education organizations to provide ongoing professional learning opportunities to assist alternative educators with helping students meet the state-mandated Michigan Merit Curriculum, which all students must meet in order to obtain a Michigan diploma.

On December 20, 2010, MDE welcomed the Office of Innovation and Improvement's new Alternative Education Consultant Gregg Dionne. Great Lakes East supported Dionne's participation at the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center Equity and Diversity Summit on January 26, 2011, in Arlington, Virginia. The purpose of the event was to increase the capacity of state education agencies (SEAs) to address equity and opportunity through policy, procedures, and practices; to provide a forum for discussion of the U.S. Department of Education's renewed emphasis on equity; to identify underlying barriers to equity; and to share strategies, promising practices, and tools that address equity concerns. Sessions included staff from the Education Department (ED) and a panel of students from the Ron Brown Scholar Program and the Academic Development Institute high school Liftoff program, who discussed what public education did to assist them as well as what more could have been done.

Statewide System of Support

Michigan's Statewide System of Support (SSOS). MDE's Pacesetter Academy team members participated in the Center on Innovation & Improvement (CII) Distance Learning Session on January 7, 2011. Participants included Mark Coscarella, assistant director for the Office of Education Improvement and Innovation; Karen Ruple, manager for the statewide system of support, and Bailey. The theme for the session was "Operations Manual: Staying on Message in Disruptive Times." Cindy Koss, Ed.D., assistant state superintendent at the Oklahoma State Department of Education, presented "Staying on Message in Changing Times: Oklahoma's Statewide System of Support." Gerry Briscoe, Alaska Comprehensive Center, discussed how to strengthen a standards-aligned system for SSOS. MDE continues to refine Michigan's SSOS Operations Manual. Technical assistance to the Pacesetter Team will continue by revisiting CII's SSOS rubric and the SSOS Self-Assessment report provided by Great Lakes East to continue to redesign and improve the statewide system of support and development of the SSOS Operations Manual.

As part of the SSOS redesign, MDE is developing a School Improvement Review Visit (SIRV) process in collaboration with Great Lakes East and CII. During the first two weeks of December 2010, teams made up of representatives from MDE, Calhoun Intermediate School District, and Great Lakes East visited two schools to pilot the SIRV process. The teams conducted three-day site visits where they gathered data from classroom visits, student, teacher, and parent focus groups, individual interviews with administrators and teachers, as well as an examination of artifacts. Information from the visits was compiled to produce reports that were reviewed with the schools and process mentor team members. Great Lakes East provided MDE with CII's Patterns of Practice: A School Review Process to support the development of Michigan's process.

Great Lakes East facilitated a full-day debrief meeting on December 13, 2010, to review and refine the SIRV process. The debrief participants included representatives from CII, MDE's Office of Education Improvement and Innovation; Calhoun Intermediate School District; AdvancED; University of Wisconsin; and Great Lakes East. Great Lakes East further collaborated with MDE to develop a site visit training manual to be used with site visit team members who received training on February 8–10, 2011. MDE plans to pilot SIRV in seven additional schools this year. Lisa Kinnaman, Ed.D., director of Statewide School Improvement Programs and associate director of Center for School Improvement and Policy Studies, met with Great Lakes East and MDE on February 11, 2011, to share information on Idaho's Instructional Core visit and to answer questions to inform the continued development of SIRV. MDE's new website MI Excel Working Together for Student Success, Statewide System of Support was launched in January 2011 (a collaborative effort between Great Lakes East, MAISA, MDE, and Pace and Partners, a Lansing-based marketing company). The website is a resource for SSOS participants as well as anyone interested in learning more about supports available to increase student achievement. Resources from the National High School Center, Center on Innovation & Improvement, Center on Instruction, National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, What Works Clearinghouse, and American Institutes for Research will be posted on the site on a continual basis.

English Language Learners (ELLs). As a part of its ongoing capacity-building effort with mainstream teachers, Michigan Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) trainers (Cohort 1, summer 2009, and Cohort 2, summer 2010) participated in one of three follow-up meetings planned for this school year. More than 20 SIOP trainers from around the state participated in this initial November 19, 2010, meeting. Facilitated by Great Lakes East subcontractors from the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) staff members Emily Evans and Dennis Terdy, this follow-up training focused on team-building activities, sharing resources and training support information, MDE ELL Strategic Plan updates, and statewide SIOP planning.

On December 7, 2010, the cross-office ELL core team held its regular meeting. With an ongoing goal to coordinate and leverage ELL-related activities at MDE, Shereen Tabrizi, Ph.D., MDE Office of Field Services manager, and Terdy cofacilitated this meeting. The primary focus was to inform MDE office participants about the new ELL Strategic Plan components and to initiate connecting these components to initiatives within the various MDE offices. The next meeting discussing this cross-office connection to the newly revised strategic plan took place on February 4, 2011. In addition, on January 6, 2011, Great Lakes East staff participated in the MDE ELL Advisory Committee held in East Lansing, Michigan. The primary focus of this meeting was to finalize the state's ELL Strategic Plan and initiate the work of four subcommittees.

Response to Intervention (RTI). The Michigan RTI Team collaborated with the MDE School Improvement Office to provide an RTI preconference to the annual statewide School Improvement Conference. The preconference event was held on November 29, 2010, and was attended by more than 300 participants. The day included:

• A keynote address by Victoria Bernhardt, Ph.D., presenting her most recent work on RTI and continuous school improvement
• A presentation of Michigan's Essential Components of RTI
• Stories from the field on implementation of RTI at the school, district, and regional levels

The RTI team continues to work to identify and develop next steps to encourage statewide implementation of RTI in a consistent and effective manner. The team will continue to present Michigan's Essential Components at statewide conferences. In addition, the implementation of a system of RTI is presented within Michigan's Continuous School Improvement Process. Michigan continues to strive for One Common Voice—One Plan for schools in order to increase their focus on working together coherently to increase student achievement. The Statewide Guidance Team is now working on the development of an implementation guide for Michigan schools, which will include Michigan's Essential Components of RTI, Continuous School Improvement, and Implementation Science.

Ohio Record of Services

Winter 2011
State Manager: Mark Mitchell

Assessment and Accountability

Credit Flexibility Implementation. Statewide implementation of Ohio's credit flexibility policy in all districts is moving forward. The Great Lakes East Comprehensive Center continues to support the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) as it offers Web conferences on credit flexibility topics important to districts. (See a list of the past online events in the fall 2010 Great Lakes East e-newsletter, p. 13.) The first part of the Web conference series, from August 2010 to November 2010, was followed by a participant survey. On December 20, 2010, Great Lakes East staff members Tori Cirks and Mark Mitchell met with ODE's Tom Rutan, associate director, Curriculum and Instruction; Mike Hubbell, consultant, Education Reform; Pete LuPiba, Public Information Officer, and Patti Grey, public liaison/ombudsman, to review the survey results and to forecast credit flexibility work for the remainder of Year 6 and into Year 7.

The Web conference survey collected data from a range of respondents who participated in Web conferences from August 2010 to November 2010. Most respondents identified themselves as school counselors, district staff, or administrators (principal or vice principal). To gauge the overall merit of the Web conferences, survey respondents were asked to rate the quality of the Web conference attended as well as the relevance and usefulness of the content presented. More than 80 percent of respondents found the quality of the Web conferences to be either good or excellent, and approximately nine out of 10 rated likewise for the relevance (93 percent) and usefulness (89 percent) of the content. Survey respondents also indicated that they appreciated the information provided by ODE and found experts invited to present on specific topics or issues most helpful. They particularly liked that the information was current and sufficiently comprehensive. One respondent commented, "I am glad that these are available to us—especially from the ODE—because they are more 'informed' as to the myriad of changes that keep occurring." In addition, the respondents indicated they also liked the question-and-answer segment of the Web conferences.

• A summary of the November 20, 2010, discussion points and forecasted work is included below:
  • 2011 Credit Flexibility Web Events. There is a need (based on participant feedback) for additional Web-based events to support local implementation. However, for spring, participants would like to see a differentiated approach where there would be some "Credit Flex 101" options as well as more specific and intensive "Advanced Credit Flex" options. The advanced options also would provide an opportunity for ODE to pose implementation questions to the field to see how different districts are approaching common challenges.
  • Community of Practice. ODE has identified a state team to begin work on developing the credit flexibility community of practice (COP). There are some "quick wins" or topics that may be good test subjects for the COP (e.g., district policies). ODE and Great Lakes East will work with the state team, with assistance from the IDEA Partnership, to discuss and make final decisions on COP structure and the roles and responsibilities of team members.
  • Case Studies. The field has expressed a need for additional illustrations of local credit flexibility implementation. Districts want to know how others are addressing and approaching some of the common implementation challenges. Although the final format of these illustrations (or case studies) may change, ODE and Great Lakes East plan to work together during the next few months to identify possible sites and to collect the necessary information for statewide dissemination.

Planning and implementation for these areas of credit flexibility support were further discussed and refined at a February 9, 2010, meeting between Great Lakes East and ODE representatives.

Standards, Assessment, and Accountability. Staff from both Great Lakes East and REL Midwest attended a meeting with Stan Heffner, associate superintendent, and Center for Curriculum and Assessment staff along with Cynthia Lemmerman, associate superintendent, Center for School Improvement, to identify areas of work that Great Lakes East could support. Following is a list of collaborative work that emerged from this meeting:

• Great Lakes East will continue to support ODE as they build the capacity of educational service centers (ESCs) and other regional providers in support of district implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Great Lakes East is positioned to play a collaborative role through an internal-external working group to support this work.
• Great Lakes East and REL Midwest are ready to provide technical assistance to ODE as it convenes a state-level panel for moderation and scoring; this group would work with ESCs to form regional moderation panels. Great Lakes East and REL Midwest could again serve as a thought partner in the design and operation of these panels and the training required to build the capacity of regional partners to do this work.
• Great Lakes East can help support cross-center work between ODE's Center for School Improvement and Center for Curriculum and Assessment. On December 20, 2010, Great Lakes East met with staff from these two centers to walk through a preliminary draft of the Innovation Configuration Map (see the fall 2010 e-newsletter) and to gauge interest in reconstituting an assessment system workgroup.

On January 24–25, 2010, an ODE team attended a Great Lakes East- and Great Lakes West-sponsored Common Core State Standards regional meeting in the Chicago area. The meeting was attended by state teams from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The Ohio team included Heffner, Jim Wright, assessment director, and Denny Thompson, curriculum director, from the Center for Curriculum and Assessment; Pamela VanHorn, director for Statewide System of Support, Center for School Improvement; Brinda Price, educational consultant, Center for the Teaching Profession; and Daniel Badea, technology consultant for ODE. Following the meeting, Heffner and Wright traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in a Council of Chief State School Officers Common Core State Standards meeting for the State Collaboratives on Assessment and Student Standards program.

A next step in this work is support for design of a transition roadmap targeted at districts and schools as they move toward implementation of the Common Core State Standards. This roadmap will then be adapted to additional audiences in Ohio.

State Systems of Support

State Systems of Support and the Ohio Improvement Process (OIP). In order to realize the transformational change to Ohio's educational system as articulated in Race to the Top and Assurance Area E, Turning Around the Lowest Achieving Schools, ODE has restructured the work of their centers and offices—none more so than the Center for School Improvement. Under the leadership of Cynthia Lemmerman, associate superintendent, Center for School Improvement, there are some new leadership team members with whom Great Lakes East will work: Jay Keefer (director, Ohio Network for Education Transformation [ONET]), Pam VanHorn (director, Statewide System of Support), Jeanne Paliotto (director of Transformation Specialists), Ron McGuire (contractor), and Barbara Boone (director, Office of Education Reform).

At the November 2–3, 2010, meeting, the Statewide System of Support Transition Team adopted an overarching goal and three strategies that, if realized, would ensure an effective and sustainable statewide system of support. This transition team included many of the original state-level design team members. At the meeting, levels of the statewide system of support were defined (state, regional, and local) and role descriptions were established for each.

On November 17, 2010, Great Lakes East staff members Sheryl Poggi, Claudette Rasmussen, and Mark Mitchell designed and facilitated a meeting with an OIP Leadership Team, including Center for School Improvement and Office of Exceptional Children staff. Participants reviewed the draft goal and strategies developed by the transition team and made slight changes. The overarching goal crafted by the team and adopted by the OIP Leadership Team is to "build the capacity of districts and schools to engage in inclusive, continuous, and sustainable improvement in order to raise student achievement and close the achievement gap." The strategies for achieving this goal are as follows:

• Accountability for Improvement: The statewide system of support will monitor and evaluate the impact and fidelity of plan implementation based on defined performance indicators.
• Leadership: The statewide system of support will build, support, and extend leadership capacity to accelerate ongoing improvement efforts.
• Collaboration: The statewide system of support will implement and sustain efficient and consistent policies, procedures, and practices that foster and advance collaboration across all levels and with all stakeholders to drive continuous improvement and achievement for all students.

A number of activities also were identified by the transition team regarding the design and implementation of a statewide system of support evaluation, need for ongoing professional development, enactment of quality assurance measures for professional development and use of resources, and improvements to the OIP Facilitator's Guide and Resources. Plans for development and implementation of a plan for work teams to continue this work will be taken up by the Center for School Improvement Leadership Team.

The goal and strategies were shared with the Single Points of Contact and Special Education Points of Contact in a December 10, 2010, meeting. Great Lakes East provided support to ODE in the design of this meeting. Next steps for this work include a planned meeting with the Center for School Improvement Leadership Team on February 15, 2011, and a cross-center ODE meeting on February 16, 2011.