Overview

This glossary organizes a selection of key terms used in the book, Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better, that have formal meaning. In many cases our definitions align with those established in prior writing on improvement research and networked communities. In some cases they have been modified slightly for the education context. In a few cases they are original to this work.

The terms are grouped together according to the following topics:

• About Networked Improvement Communities
• About Improvement Science and Quality Improvement
• About Standard Work and Processes
• About Systems
• About Driver Diagrams and Working Theories of Practice Improvement
• About Doing Improvement Research
• About Measurement
• About Evidence for Improvement

About Networked Improvement Communities

Colleagueship of Expertise
A community of academic, technical and clinical experts deliberately assembled to address a specific improvement problem. All involved are improvers seeking to generate strong evidence about how to achieve better outcomes more reliably.

Networked Improvement Communities
An intentionally designed social organization with a distinctive problem-solving focus; roles, responsibilities and norms for membership; and the maintenance of narratives that detail what they are about and why it is important to affiliate with them. A NIC is marked by four essential characteristics. It is:

• focused on a well specified common aim;
• guided by a deep understanding of the problem, the system that produces it, and a shared working theory to improve it,
• disciplined by the methods of improvement research to develop, test and refine interventions, and
• organized to accelerate their diffusion out into the field, and effective integration into varied educational contexts.

Network Hubs
A core group formed either as single organization or distributed across network members that carry out critical functions necessary for the support and effective operations of a networked improvement community. These functions include, but are not limited to: improvement science expertise, analytics, knowledge management, convenings, communications, and technological support.

Network Initiation Team
A team that accepts responsibility for the formation of a networked improvement community. It leads a set of processes that articulates of the problem to be solved, analyzes the system that produces current undesirable outcomes, and develops the aim statement and an initial working theory of practice improvement. The initiation team also takes the lead in securing the necessary supports for the network (both political as well as material), recruiting initial members into the community, and engaging the academic and technical expertise relevant to the specific problem to be solved.

NIC as a Scientific Community
It is organized around a shared theory and shared measures for its aim and primary drivers. Participants engage in discipline inquiries using established inquiry methods such as PDSA cycles. Promising results are subject to replication across the network to warrant claims that changes are improvements.

NIC Charter
A document that provides sustaining guidance to the distributed efforts of NIC members. It is composed of the Network’s Aim, Causal System Analysis, (often consisting of both fishbone diagrams and system improvement map), and the Working Theory of Improvement (typically represented in a driver diagram).

About Improvement Science and Quality Improvement

Continuous Improvement
Improvement research that involves multiple iterative cycles of activity over extended time periods.

Improvement Research
These are particular acts of inquiry, or projects, that aim for quality improvement.

Improvement Science
The methodology that disciplines inquiries to improve practice. Undergirding it is an epistemology of what we need to know to improve practice and how we may come to know it.

Quality Improvement
An effort to increase the capacity of an organization to produce successful outcomes reliably for different sub-groups of students, being educated by different teachers and in varied organizational contexts.

Solutionitis
The tendency to jump quickly on a solution before fully understanding the actual problem to be solved. It results in incomplete analysis of the problem to be addressed and fuller consideration of potential problem-solving alternatives. It is silo-ed reasoning—seeing complex matters through a narrow angle lens—that can lure leaders into unproductive strategies.

About Standard Work and Processes

High-Leverage Process
A process that has the following properties: 1) it consumes substantial resources, especially teacher or student time; 2) its execution and outcomes vary considerably; and 3) there are reasons to believe that changes to it might improve resource efficiency and effectiveness.

Macro-Process
A process for which the execution typically entails a sequence of more discrete micro-processes.

Micro-Process
An elemental activity or segment of work taken to achieve a particular end.

Standard Work
Regularly occurring processes that are amenable to formulation as best practice routines within a networked improvement community. The purpose of these routines is to assist educators in carry out their work by reducing the cognitive load associated with the performance of complex tasks. Such processes reduce undesirable variation in performance and free educators to better focus their attention thereby advancing quality outcomes more reliably. High leverage processes are attractive candidates for standard work.

About Systems

Causal System Analysis
An analysis that directs attention to the question, “Why do we get the outcomes that we currently do?” In working through this analysis, participants develop a shared understanding of the specific problem(s) they are actually trying to solve. The process also provides a first test as to whether a team seeking to initiate a NIC can engage productively together as a focused improvement community.

Fishbone Diagram
A tool that visually represents a group’s causal systems analysis (sometimes known as a cause-and-effect diagram or an Ishikawa diagram).

System
An organization characterized by a set of interactions among the people who work there, the tools and materials they have at their disposal, and the processes through which these people and resources join together to accomplish its work.

System Improvement Map
An analytic tool that represents what we learn through the causal system analysis about the different organizational levels (e.g., classrooms, schools and districts) and key organizational sub-systems (e.g., human resources, finance, instruction) relevant to solving the identified problem.

About Driver Diagrams and Working Theories of Practice Improvement

Change Idea
An alteration to a system or process that is to be tested through a PDSA cycle to examine its efficacy in improving some driver(s) in working theory of improvement.

Concept Framework
It provides conceptual detail and relevant research findings that form design principles for key drivers and change ideas. It also provide a conceptual basis for the development of practical measures. (Also may be referred to as design principles.)

Driver Diagram
A tool that visually represents a group’s working theory of practice improvement. The Driver Diagram creates a common language and coordinates the effort among the many different individuals joined together in solving a shared problem.

Improvement Aim
A goal for an improvement effort that answers the question What are we trying to accomplish? Improvement aims should clearly specify how much, for whom, and by when? They sit at the far left end of a Driver Diagram.

Pareto Principle
A principle anchored in a long history of organizational studies that 80% of the variability in organizational performance is often associated with only 20% of the possible causes. It aids in the selection of primary, and when needed, secondary drivers as well.

Primary Drivers
Representation of a communities’ hypothesis about the main areas of influence necessary to advance the improvement aim.

Secondary Drivers
A small set of system components that are hypothesized to activate each primary driver.

Working Theory of Practice Improvement
A small inter-related set of hypotheses about key drivers necessary for achieving an improvement aim and specific changes associated with each driver. It requires a creative blending of observations arising from the causal system analysis with relevant research that bears on this problem together with wise judgments from expert educators.

About Doing Improvement Research

Adaptive Integration
Learning how to integrate a change package into a new setting, adapting it as necessary to local conditions, while preserving fidelity to its undergirding principles and assuring local efficacy.

PDSAs (Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycles)
A pragmatic scientific method for iterative testing of changes in complex systems. Each cycle is essentially a mini-experiment where observed outcomes are compared to predictions and discrepancies between the two become a major source of learning.

Process Map
A tool for visualizing the steps in a process that can assist an improvement team in identifying gaps, strengths, and opportunities for improvement.

Run Chart
A graphical display of a some measured characteristic over time. Data from PDSA are often displayed in run charts.

Solution Systems
An intervention that consists of multiple inter-related components that must mesh well together. Formally, such interventions have a systems character. For positive effects to occur reliably coordinated improvements need to occur across all of the drivers that compose the solution system. A material weakness in any one driver can undermine the efficacy of the overall solution.

About Measurement

Balancing Measures
These measures help improvers to keep an eye on the other parts of the system that are not currently the target of improvement, but nevertheless may be affected by the changes being pursued.

Lagging Outcome Measures
Measures that are only available well after an intervention has been initiated.

Leading Outcome Measures
Measures that predict the ultimate outcomes of interest but are available on a more immediate basis.

Measurement for Accountability
Broad, general measures that aim to sort individual or organizational units into performance categories. This use introduces increased formality into the measurement process and places primacy on the reliability of individual scores. Often used as measures for improvement aims.

Measurement for Improvement
Measures that directly link to the specific drivers and work processes that are the object of change. They provide evidence for testing changes and examining hypothesized causal connections in the working theory of improvement.

Measurement for Research
Detailed measures developed by researchers to represent particular theoretical constructs. Used in academic research to test relational propositions among key constructs that form a theory. Often useful as a basis for developing practical measures.

Outcome Measure
Measures that operationalize the aim statement in the driver diagram. These data provide a way of assessing whether progress is being made on the specific problem to be solved. Accountability measures are often used here.

Practical Measurement
Data to inform improvement that is embedded in regular work. Since the intent is to inform continuous improvement, practical measures are collected frequently to assess whether positive changes are in fact occurring. Since the focus is on specific populations and contexts, the measures are framed in a language natural and comprehensible to those asked to answer them.

Primary Driver Measures
Measures associated with primary drivers. Since these drivers are intermediate outcomes in the working theory of improvement (i.e., intermediaries between process changes and leading and lagging outcomes) they play a key role in the testing of a working theory of improvement.

Process Measures
Measures that feed back valuable information about how specific processes being tested are performing under different conditions.

About Evidence for Improvement

A, B, C Level Learning
Three inter-related levels of learning, developed by Douglas Engelbart, that together form a schema for individual and organizational learning. “Level-A” learning represents the knowledge acquired by front line workers as they engage in their practice. “Level-B” learning occurs across individuals within an organization. “Level-C” learning is orchestrated by a network hub and coupled with appropriate technologies to support rapid communications across distributed sites. This confluence is what enables the network to accelerate how it learns to improve.

Evidence-Based Practice
Tools, materials, or sets of routines, typically grounded in theoretical principles, that has been subject to rigorous empirical study. Their use is warranted by results from a rigorous field trial that demonstrated that the intervention can work because it has somewhere.

Know-How
The detailed practical knowledge necessary to get good ideas actually to work in classrooms, schools, and districts.

Practice-Based Evidence
Evidence that grows from practice and can be used to improve it. This evidence, emerging from improvement research, demonstrates that some process, tool, or modified staff roles and relationships can be made to work effectively under a variety of conditions and that quality outcomes will more reliably ensue. It is the evidence of know how.

The UChicago Network for College Success (NCS) began in 2006 out of a growing need for research-based education reform in Chicago. Today, NCS partners with 17 schools and 300 educators that serve over 16,000 students—approximately 16% of the district’s high school student population. NCS brings deep expertise to help schools develop effective change strategies to support and sustain higher student achievement.

The UChicago Network for College Success (NCS) is being spotlighted this year because of its use of continuous improvement to dramatically increase the number of 9th-grade students, especially Black and Latinx children and children from low-income families, on track to high school graduation (i.e., have earned enough credits for on time sophomore year promotion). This focus is based on the fact that students who fail a course or whose attendance falls to unacceptably low levels in 9th grade have greatly diminished chances of making it over the high school finish line. Indeed, 9th graders who end the year on track are four times more likely to graduate. On track is a stronger indicator than race, ethnicity, poverty, or test scores.

NCS achieved its results by focusing annually on 15 to 20 Chicago schools comprised of more than 300 educators and 15,000 students. These schools saw their overall on-track rates rise by nearly 20 percentage points from 72% in 2010 to 91% in 2019. The success of students of color during this period was also noteworthy. For example, the on-track outcomes for Black males grew from 58% in 2010 to 84% in 2019, and those of Latinx males increased from 66% to 84% in the same period. For their longest standing high school cohorts in which NCS has graduation data, being on track in 9th grade translated into an average graduation rate that grew from 71% in 2013 to 84% in 2019.

In this webinar, leaders of the UChicago Network for College Success and practitioners on the ground discuss how they dramatically increased the number of 9th-grade students that were on track to high school graduation.
Download presentation slides (PDF)

Read the full profile of the Network for College Success for more details about the work.

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Spotlight at the Summit

UChicago Network for College Success (NCS) will discuss their work at a featured session at the 2021 Summit on Improvement in Education.

Improving Educational Outcomes in Under-Resourced and Isolated Areas

In Chile, the nonprofit organization Fundación Educacional Oportunidad is partnering with the Ministry of Education, Harvard University, and 60 very under-resourced majority rural schools to improve the language skills of economically disadvantaged preschoolers. Its work builds on over a decade of using improvement science to tackle some of Chile’s most vexing social problems. While the work is just under two years old, it’s noteworthy for blending insights from scholarship, quality improvement, and on-the-ground expertise in support of children’s learning.

Based on research, Fundación understood that for young children to achieve necessary levels of language and literacy development, schools had to maximize instructional time, improve student attendance, and promote effective early literacy instruction. A multidisciplinary team of coaches and experts on improvement and early education worked with 15 districts, 118 school leaders, and 148 teachers and teachers’ aides and determined that these primary drivers for improving language development resonated with practitioners in the field. Of the participating schools, 60% are located in rural areas.

BY ENGAGING PARENTS, TEACHERS, AND SCHOOL LEADERS TO BECOME ACTIVE AGENTS FOR IMPROVING IN THEIR OWN CONTEXT, FUNDACIÓN EDUCACIONAL OPORTUNIDAD IS SHOWING RESULTS AND MAKING PROGRESS ALONG EACH OF THE CORE PROGRAMS.

Together, the team identified a set of drivers aimed at having 80% of children in pre-kindergarten and 90% of children in kindergarten reach the advanced category on a Spanish language evaluation by the end of 2017. The schools then worked with Fundación to implement strategies that included providing teachers with help on time management in the classroom and integrated lesson planning, to maximize instructional time; coaching and video feedback to promote effective literacy instruction; and attendance committees to provide one-on-one support for improving student attendance.

VIDEO: A presentation by Un Buen Comienzo Improvement Network, Fundación Educacional Oportunidad at the Spotlight on Quality in Continuous Improvement Symposium on November 15, 2018 in Washington, DC.

Fundación also brought together parents, school leaders, teachers, teachers’ aides, and local education agencies three times a year to teach them how to use quality improvement tools, such as identifying the root causes of problems and using plan-do-study- act cycles to test whether their approaches to improvement were helping schools make progress in the target areas. During these meetings, the members of the networked improvement community also shared what was working and identified new challenges to be collectively addressed.

Fundación also supported teams of teachers and school leaders in visiting each other’s schools to observe innovations and share data. At the classroom level, teachers proposed innovations and used rapid iterative cycles of experimentation to test whether the innovations were producing improvements and then adjust accordingly.

By engaging parents, teachers, and school leaders to become active agents for improving in their own context, Fundación Educacional Oportunidad is showing results and making progress along each of the core programs. Children’s language scores are improving—although they have not yet reached the 2017 targets. And the schools have seen progress in the amount of time spent on instruction. This work demonstrates that the science of improvement can be used and adapted to spur positive change in the most under-resourced and isolated settings and can be applied internationally.

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Network Demographics*

• 20 schools
• 24 preschool teachers
• 21 teachers’ aides
• 20 school principals
• 20 school pedagogical leaders

Improving to Achieve Collective Impact

Using improvement science across a community poses a unique challenge: It shifts the focus from an individual organization to multiple organizations working together on systems-level problems. The payoff is enabling communities to build a common language and approach to using data for improvement, which builds trust and enables community-level impact.

In Salt Lake City, Utah, United Way of Salt Lake and StriveTogether are using the discipline of improvement science to improve outcomes for children and families. StriveTogether is a network of 70 communities across the U.S. that is working to improve educational outcomes for young people from cradle to career by bringing together diverse stakeholders around a common set of challenges, thereby having a collective impact. United Way of Salt Lake—backbone organization for network member Promise Partnership of Salt Lake—joined with StriveTogether to convene an impact and improvement network to tackle chronic absenteeism in grades K–3, the numbers of which had grown steadily in the Salt Lake City region between 2011 and 2016. In addition to improving attendance, the Partnership hoped to improve the ability of its staff and partners to use improvement science in all facets of their work.

AS A RESULT OF THOSE EFFORTS, CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM AMONG STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES DECREASED SIGNIFICANTLY … AND THE PROPORTION MEETING OR EXCEEDING THE BENCHMARK FOR READING PROFICIENCY IN GRADE 3 INCREASED FROM 8% TO 17%.

Between January and November 2017, United Way of Salt Lake and StriveTogether held seven learning sessions with a networked improvement community in Salt Lake City that included six teams from eight schools in three districts. Teams were composed of school staff, United Way staff, parents, and AmeriCorps volunteers. During the sessions, teams learned the tools and techniques for continuous improvement and shared what was and was not working. In between, they applied what they had learned in real time.

To develop their strategies for reducing chronic absenteeism, improvement teams reviewed nationally recognized best practices. However, they put most of their emphasis on local quantitative and qualitative data, and on the knowledge of school staff and others who understood the specific needs of their students. This approach entailed talking with parents, students, teachers, guidance counselors, and others who were dealing with the problem on a daily basis.

VIDEO: A presentation by StriveTogether and United Way of Salt Lake at the Spotlight on Quality in Continuous Improvement Symposium on November 15, 2018 in Washington, DC.

The improvement teams took these learnings and developed a mix of interventions. Some targeted every student in a grade or school with, for example, attendance campaigns and competitions. Other interventions, such as mentoring or connecting with a caring adult at school, were aimed directly at specific student populations, including refugees and children receiving special education services, who were more often chronically absent than their peers. As a result of those efforts, chronic absenteeism among students with disabilities decreased significantly between 2015–16 and 2016–17 compared to the average for other students, and the proportion meeting or exceeding the benchmark for reading proficiency in grade 3 increased from 8% to 17%. Because multiple teams were testing different strategies with K–3 students, they could share information, ask questions, and learn at a quicker pace than if they had been implementing this work in isolation. As the network focused on school and district processes, it also uncovered limitations in district policy and state truancy laws that have sparked a new focus on case management rather than on punitive responses to poor attendance.

The efforts to reduce chronic absence have built an improvement culture among Promise Partnership staff and community partners. The work of the network has since extended to an ongoing, regional network focused on addressing chronic absence in six school districts. The culture of improvement has also spread to address different problems in the Salt Lake City community, such as kindergarten readiness, food insecurity, and inter-agency social service challenges.

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Network Demographics*

• 154,484 students
• 41% economically disadvantaged
• 34% students of color
• 12% English language learners
• 11% students requiring special education

* As reported by the Spotlight recipient.

The Northwest Regional Education Service District is the largest of Oregon’s 19 education service districts. NWRESD works with school districts in the four counties it serves to deliver quality, cost-effective programs and services, including special education, technology, professional development and school improvement.

NWRESD was selected as a 2019 Spotlight honoree because of its efforts to enhance interagency collaboration to make measurable improvement on a state-level education policy priority. Specifically, NWRESD collaborated with its schools to establish a common improvement aim, analyze underlying causes of low success rates, and devise interventions intended to advance more equitable 9th-grade classroom performance and eventual high school graduation. NWRESD developed an infrastructure that enabled coordination of school improvement teams and their leaders; social connections and relational trust in and among teams spanning multiple districts; data systems to provide both quantitative and qualitative evidence of students’ educational experience and outcomes; and the common use of a standard set of on-track measures to assess progress.

VIDEO: A presentation by Kimberley Ednie and Daniel Ramirez of the Northwest Regional Education Service District at the Carnegie Foundation’s Spotlight on Quality in Continuous Improvement Symposium on November 21, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Improving by Bringing Together Improvement and Implementation Sciences

The National Implementation Research Network (NIRN), in partnership with the Kentucky Department of Education, is working with educators at the school, district, regional, and state levels to marry implementation and improvement science.

In Kentucky, approximately 20% of elementary and middle school students with disabilities were proficient in mathematics. Kentucky’s goal is to support teachers in dramatically improving mathematics proficiency by focusing on evidence-based mathematics practices and seven effective teacher practices highly correlated with student learning outcomes. The goal is to have 80% of districts using innovative, evidence-based mathematics practices in their Learning Laboratories within six years.

THE GOAL IS TO HAVE 80% OF DISTRICTS USING INNOVATIVE, EVIDENCE-BASED MATHEMATICS PRACTICES IN THEIR LEARNING LABORATORIES WITHIN SIX YEARS.

To support this work, NIRN has designed a statewide capacity-building infrastructure of implementation teams at the school, district, regional, and state levels to help teachers continuously improve their practice. Through monthly intensive training and coaching, teams learn to use data and plan-do-study-act improvement cycles with explicit communication routines and common data protocols shared across all levels of the system. The goal is for each level of the system to provide the supports and resources needed to ensure success at the next level, with learning constantly communicated back and forth to inform the next round of improvement cycles. Thus, practice informs policy, and policy enhances sustainable practice.

VIDEO: A presentation by the National Implementation Research Network and Kentucky Department of Education at the Spotlight on Quality in Continuous Improvement Symposium on November 15, 2018 in Washington, DC.

Kentucky, with the intensive support of NIRN, began working with two regional educational agencies, five districts, and seven schools in Kentucky’s first Learning Laboratory, which aims to capture the diversity of learning contexts in the state, from urban to rural. By going slow while learning, the project could go fast once the implementation infrastructure is developed and tested for effectiveness. The Learning Laboratory is now being expanded to three new regions in Kentucky. It allows for learning by doing and aims to accomplish three things simultaneously:

1. Learning how to move from ideas (general statements about evidence-based practices) to effective implementation (defined as putting the systems in place to reliably produce the intended outcomes)
2. Developing an initial base of human capabilities statewide to support systems change and improvement learning
3. Creating a leadership cohort at each level that will bring others into the work over time by capitalizing on the collective efficacy of teachers who improve student outcomes.

By focusing on the regular use of capacity, fidelity, implementation, and outcomes data, NIRN is creating a coherent system for developing an implementation infrastructure. At each organizational level, improvement cycles focus on identifying barriers that must be resolved. Teams then implement a planned series of tests designed to study and improve both measures and processes, and they then use those findings to inform policy changes that will support effective practice. At the center of both the implementation and improvement work are the following core questions: Given the diversity of contexts in the state, what works for whom and under what set of circumstances? And how can we get more of the desired outcomes reliably at scale?

NIRN’s learning loop—which ensures feedback at each level of the system—is designed to continuously improve the system of supports for educators. NIRN identifies weaknesses in the implementation system; periodically re-examines and, if needed, changes the quality of its measures; and subjects all practices, even those that are evidence-based, to further specification and refinement. The focus is on evaluating the system of supports provided to teachers, rather than teachers themselves, so that teachers can implement new practices with a high degree of fidelity, improve outcomes, and close persistent education gaps.

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Network Demographics*

• Districts: 5
• Schools: 7
• Teachers: 69
• Students: 6,728
• Ethnicity:
  • 65% White
  • 21% African American
  • 8% Latinx
  • 2% Asian
  • 4% two or more races
• Free or reduced-price lunch eligible: ~66%

* As reported by the Spotlight recipient.

Improving Middle-Grade Literacy

A network of charter management organizations in Memphis, Tennessee, is using improvement science to improve literacy instruction and achievement. In 2012, KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program)—a national network of charter schools—partnered with Great Minds to create a K–8 literacy curriculum for its schools that emphasizes rigorous reading and rich writing assignments in alignment with the Common Core. The KIPP Wheatley curriculum is shared with other charter networks, including three other networks in Memphis—Aspire Public Schools, Freedom Preparatory Academy, and Memphis Business Academy.

These four networks of 17 schools looked to raise persistently low literacy achievement scores on the Tennessee state test by coming together in a networked improvement community, known as the Learning Collaborative, in the 2017–18 and 2018–19 school years. Combined, the schools serve more than 5,500 students, with 90% African American, 7% Latinx, and 85% qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. Members of the Collaborative identified teacher and leader literacy content knowledge as a primary driver for increasing student learning. KIPP brought together diverse teams from each individual charter school network, including district leaders, principals, assistant principals, and teachers, for in-person and virtual learning sessions. It also instituted monthly on-site coaching sessions from literacy content experts.

THE COLLABORATIVE IS LOOKING TO MOVE FROM “AVERAGE” GROWTH TO “GROWTH FOR EVERYONE.”

The Collaborative sought to create change by using a series of teacher and leader practices designed to develop content and instructional knowledge over time. For example, it developed a tool to help guide coaches in leading teams of content teachers to internalize the standards and outcomes associated with each lesson within the curriculum. Teams of teachers and coaches started with small tests using the tool and gradually expanded its use across grade levels and schools, making adjustments as needed for each unique system. Using student achievement data along with teacher and leader data on the frequency of key practices, members of the Collaborative applied cycles of learning to reflect and act on progress that was informed by each other’s work.

VIDEO: A presentation by the Memphis KIPP Wheatley Learning Collaborative, KIPP Foundation at the Spotlight on Quality in Continuous Improvement Symposium on November 15, 2018, in Washington, DC.

Accomplishments in the first six months of the Collaborative included, for example, a 31% increase in the number of teachers preparing for lessons by doing the student work themselves and an 18% increase in the number of teachers reporting that they rehearsed lessons in a collaborative team prior to teaching them. The Collaborative also began to see gains in achievement of students performing at the advanced or proficient level on the state English Language Arts test in some schools and networks, though overall results varied. The Collaborative is looking to move to “growth for everyone” by analyzing the causes for variation in results across schools and teachers, and by adjusting its structures and content in year two of the Collaborative. To do so, the Collaborative will be increasing the involvement of principals and network leaders, measuring the quality of the enabling systems, and codifying excellent close reading instruction in a revised rubric. Together, these charter management organizations are demonstrating the power of marrying content-based professional learning for teachers to improvement science to produce gains in teaching and learning.

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Network Demographics*

• Schools:
  • 11 in 2017–18
  • 17 in 2018–19
• Students:
  • ~2,500 in 2017–18
  • 5,500 in 2018–19
• Ethnicity:
  • 90% African American
  • 7% Latinx
• Free or reduced-price lunch eligible: 85%

* As reported by the Spotlight recipient.

The Literacy Design Collaborative seeks to improve school instruction by utilizing improvement science principles. LDC engages with a variety of stakeholders and systems—states, districts, professional and academic organizations, schools, and teachers—to develop skilled educators equipped to support all learners. LDC aims to improve standards-driven instruction in every discipline at every grade level, K–12.

LDC is spotlighted for its use of disciplined inquiry processes to test and refine the core elements of their program design. This approach allows it to leverage its digital delivery platform to rapidly test user-centered prototypes for program design and implementation guided by evidence of the relative impact of these approaches on student learning. LDC’s digital, analytic infrastructure enabled it to transform from a face-to- face professional development program focused on individual teachers to a strategic, tech-enabled systems approach for school and district leaders to use in their efforts to diagnose and strengthen literacy practices across instructional systems.

VIDEO: A presentation by Suzanne Simons and Chad Vignola of the Literacy Design Collaborative at the Carnegie Foundation’s Spotlight on Quality in Continuous Improvement Symposium on November 21, 2019 in Washington, DC.

The Connecticut RISE Network began in 2015 with a network of public school teachers, counselors, and administrators across five schools in four districts who shared the urgent belief that more could be done to improve their students’ college, career, and life outcomes. In 2019, the network expanded to nine school districts across the state, serving more than 14,000 students in 10 high schools. Its theory of change is embedded in its name—all students can succeed by leveraging new resources, data-driven innovations, improved systems, and educator empowerment.

The Connecticut RISE Network is being spotlighted for its work in generating demonstrable improvement of 9th grade on-track achievement and four-year graduation rates for students of color and students from low-income families through the use of networked improvement methods.

National research shows that 9th-grade on-track student achievement (i.e., earning enough credits to be promoted on time to sophomore year) is the single best predictor of whether a student will graduate from high school within four years—more so than test scores, family income, or race/ethnicity. The RISE Network partnered with five high schools in four of the state’s largest districts—East Hartford, Hartford, Meriden, and New Haven—that served 6,000 students, including 82% Black or Latinx students. This cohort demonstrated a 20-percentage point increase of on-track rates from 64% in 2015 to 84% in 2020, and the average graduation rate increased from 78% in 2016 to 87% in 2019 while statewide graduation rates remained constant.

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In this webinar, leaders of the CT RISE Network and practitioners on the ground discuss the strategies and practices that led to a rise in graduation rates from 78% in 2016 to 87% in 2019.
Download presentation slides (PDF)

Read the full profile of the Connecticut RISE Network for more details about the work.

DOWNLOAD PROFILE

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Spotlight at the Summit

Connecticut RISE Network will present their work at a featured session at the 2021 Summit on Improvement in Education.

Improving Middle-Grade Mathematics

The Central Valley Networked Improvement Community (CVNIC) is working to improve mathematics outcomes for 5th graders in seven very rural, agricultural districts in the Central Valley of California. As a whole, the Tulare County Office of Education, which operates the network, supports 43 districts and serves nearly 112,000 students, 78% of whom are from low-income families; 77% are Latinx, and 26% are English language learners.

CVNIC currently works with 12 schools serving more than 1,000 5th graders across Tulare County, which spans a geographic area the size of Connecticut, with 64% of the overall population socioeconomically disadvantaged. When CVNIC began two years ago, only 17% of 5th graders in those schools met state expectations for mathematics performance, which was below the overall performance of the county. Since then, that figure has increased to 25%, with performance in non-network county schools remaining stagnant at 21% and the state as a whole holding steady at 33%. Network classrooms have moved from below the countywide average for mathematics performance to outperforming the rest of the region.

NETWORK CLASSROOMS HAVE MOVED FROM BELOW THE COUNTYWIDE AVERAGE FOR MATHEMATICS PERFORMANCE TO OUTPERFORMING THE REST OF THE REGION.

With the aim of increasing 5th grade mathematics proficiency to 51% within the network by 2019, a multidisciplinary team of content experts, improvement experts, change experts, and practitioners worked together to identify the root causes for low mathematics achievement. This process included conducting teacher, student, parent, and administrator interviews; dissecting local and state achievement data; tapping into scholarly research about mathematics learning generally; and mapping out the system that contributes to poor performance. CVNIC then supported teams of teachers at individual schools to test improvement strategies through efforts such as creating a positive classroom culture, developing students’ beliefs that their abilities and competence can grow through hard work and effort, and engaging students in productive struggle around mathematical ideas and concepts.

VIDEO: A presentation by the Central Valley Networked Improvement Community, Tulare County Office of Education at the Spotlight on Quality in Continuous Improvement Symposium on November 15, 2018 in Washington, DC.

CVNIC used common protocols to test innovative change ideas and consolidate what they were learning at each site with the support of individual coaches. Those learnings were then shared across the network through hub facilitators, an online platform for collaborative improvement work, and district showcases at network meetings. To further build connections across isolated rural schools and districts, the county office set up a network Facebook group and supported cross-district collaboration focused on plan-do-study-act improvement cycles. CVNIC further supported this work by designing a strong measurement system that included leading and lagging indicators related to mathematics achievement; process and outcome measures relevant to the innovations being tested; and measures of the health and productivity of the network itself.

Tulare’s example is particularly important because most states have some form of intermediary entity—county offices of education, boards of cooperative educational services, intermediate units, or regional service centers—that provides services to geographically dispersed, often isolated rural schools and districts that may lack access to intellectual as well as material resources. CVNIC’s work in Tulare County shows that such intermediary entities can play an effective role in organizing and supporting a networked improvement community and in building the human and organizational capacities to effectively engage in improvement work and make improvement happen at scale.

Network Demographics*

• Districts: 7
• Students: 1,167
• Teachers: 43
• School sites: 12
• Gender:
  • 48% male
  • 52% female
• Ethnicity:
  • 59% White
  • 33% Latinx
  • 1% African American
  • 1% Asian
  • 2% two or more races
• 81% socioeconomically disadvantaged
• 19% English language learners

* As reported by the Spotlight recipient.