Impact & Innovation Awards 2013

Quality Teacher & Education Act

Impact Strategy #1

Revere’s deeply rooted, multi-layered ROCI system utilizes data to continually improve teacher practice and increase student achievement. School leaders, coaches, and teachers use the Results Oriented Cycle of Inquiry constantly to ensure that every student has full access to quality teaching and learning, thus narrowing the gap for traditionally underserved students. This process names each student’s needs and identifies school-wide trends, keeping a laser-like focus on student achievement.

We set rigorous, meaningful goals for student outcomes then create and implement a research-based plan to achieve them, assess the plan’s effectiveness, reflect on progress and adjust our practice to best serve students. A commitment to continuous improvement through collaboration for student success underlies this student-centered, data-driven mindset school wide.

Each week, administrators, instructional leaders and coaches collect data from walk-through observations, professional development, grade level collaboration, student work, to design, implement, and continually assess the blueprint for achieving year-long, school-wide goals. This team plans professional development and identifies individual coaching and classroom needs. Aligning professional learning systems and meeting weekly to monitor are crucial to responding when support is needed.

Teachers participate fully in reflection, analysis and action. Each quarter faculty analyzes benchmark data and adjusts plans to meet student needs. One such analysis led to PD on vocabulary development.

Weekly grade level collaboration drives the cycle. Together, teacher peers analyze weekly assessment data, adjust instructional maps and plan lessons, paying close attention to African American students, English Learners and students at different levels. During one cycle on sentence frames, teachers created shared lesson plans for the standard, including when students would use sentence frames. Grade levels wrote sentence frames. Teachers strategized about differentiating for ELs, such as frontloading key vocabulary. They chose formative assessments. The following week, they shared results and successful practices, identified re-teaching opportunities and planned another lesson.

Impact Strategy #2

Using a three-tiered Academic Response to Intervention system built on the ROCI process, Revere identifies students with academic needs and intervenes early to close the achievement gap.

RTI supports general and special education students, creating an integrated system of instruction and intervention guided by child outcome data and student need rather than any identified disability.

RTI begins with universal basic literacy screening three times a year. Students at risk receive interventions at increasing levels of intensity, in Spanish and English, to accelerate learning rates, with clear instructional goals, close progress monitoring and parent involvement. Revere’s RTI team meets weekly to analyze student data, assess and adjust, basing decisions about intensity and duration of interventions on individual student response to instruction.

Tier I emphasizes the development and support of quality core instruction, including differentiated learning and balanced literacy. Coaches work closely with teachers to develop their instructional practices. At Tier 1, specialists may push into classrooms for reading and small group instruction, supporting individual students and helping teachers to strengthen Tier 1 strategies.

Tier II involves direct push-in or pullout instruction. Students work in groups where instruction is specifically targeted to their needs. At Tier III, students may receive one-on-one instruction and push-in support.

Serving 90 to 110 students a year -- largely ELs and African Americans -- RTI works child by child to accelerate growth and close the gap. Students move through dynamically and exit when ready, not in a predetermined cycle.

Early diagnosis and intervention allow many students to avoid special education assessment. Only 5 students tested for SPED services (and all qualified) in 2012-13 after failing to make adequate progress in intervention. Two intervention students moved from Special Day Class into RSP; one made two and a half to three years of reading growth in two school years.