What makes schools better?

The Economist recently published an article titled "How to get good grades: It is not money nor uninformed reform that makes schools better" on November 25, 2010. The article focused upon school systems which demonstrated growth in student achievement rates and identified what these systems had in common. The basis for this analysis is derived from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Here are the findings outlined in the article.

#1 Spending money is not the answer: This claim was supported from the graphic from the Economist magazine below.

#2 First focus upon the basics: School systems should first focus upon teaching towards basics standards.

#3 Then collect data: School systems should "pay more attention to collecting detailed data on examination results. This serves not just to make schools accountable, but helps to identify the best teaching methods." (The Economist, November 26, pg.68)

#4 Only hire highly effective teachers: Those school systems which focused upon selecting professional teachers, recruited from the best universities, were able to raise standards.

#5 Decentralization is the name of the game: The highly effective school districts that were able to achieve the above criteria then created a professional climate conducive to ongoing learning. "The authorities hand control over to teachers, most of whom are highly educated and motivated, so they can learn from each other and follow the best practices." (The Economist, November 26, pg.68)

The entire article can be found online here.

Create a 'Learning System'

This was the by far the easiest article to post onto my Middle School Learning blog since it documents teachers in the Social Studies Department at Jonas Clarke Middle School in Lexington, Massachusetts. In full disclosure of my bias, I am the Social Studies Department chair at this school.

Ed Week recently published an article on November 10, 2010 focusing upon the effective use of professional development at Lexington Public Schools to create a 'learning system'. The goals of the professional development program are to provide high quality, relevant and accessible training for educators in the district. The article addressed the implementation of PLCs as instrumental in building a collaborative focus at Lexington Public Schools.

Teachers across the district have been provided with common planning time for content teams or by grade-level teams. This collaborative focus in building teacher capacity to improve student achievement by creating and using common assessments using data-driven decision making to improve instruction.

The Ed Week article provided an example of this collaboration in the Social Studies Department, "At Jonas Clarke Middle School, for instance, the three members of the 8th grade U.S. history content team used their collaboration time to craft a unit on the 2008 presidential election, after realizing that many students didn't understand the distinction between a Republican and the political concept of republicanism." (Ed Week, 11/10/10)

The entire Ed Week article titled "Mass. District Strives for Teacher Learning System" is available online at the following link: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/11/10/11pd_local.h30.html