Key Concepts to Consider from the book: Becoming A Great High School
Foreword:
In America’s best high schools, curriculum, instruction, and assessment are guided by clear learning goals. (pp: xii)
With clear learning goals in place, high schools that go from good to great set out to accomplish those goals by strategically employing the instructional strategies embodied in a commonly held, research-based instructional model. (pp: xii)
Chapter 1: Moving Schools from Good to Great
All students are expected to graduate from high school, be ready to enter college or start a career, and have world-class, 21st century knowledge and skills. (pp: 1)
Those educators who have made the most progress have done so with artistry ad with an attitude that says, “It may not be our fault, but it is our problem.” (pp: 2)
Principals, teachers, and other school leaders need research-based guidance regarding policies, practices, strategies, and beliefs most likely to produce results. Fortunately, such guidance is now available (pp: 2)
When evaluating established research, teachers, building administrators, and other high school change agents are advised to ask questions, perhaps even play the role of skeptic, before concluding that a school improvement initiative will produce the same results in their schools. (pp: 2)
Significant school improvement depends first, last and foremost on improving the quality of instruction in classrooms. (pp: 2)
6 + 1 Model for High School Reform: (pp:4)
(1) One Attitude (We Expect Success!)
(2) Six Strategies:
Strategy 1: Developing Clear Instructional Goals
Strategy 2: Developing a Common Vision of Effective Instruction
Strategy 3: Using Frequent Formative Assessments
Strategy 4: Tracking of Student Progress
Strategy 5: Providing Timely Intervention for Struggling Students
Strategy 6: Celebrating Student Success
The organization we currently have is perfectly designed to deliver the results we currently get. (pp: 4)
Insanity is: continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results. (pp: 5)
Chapter 2: Cultivating a We-Expect-Success Attitude
Effort is the most useful because a strong belief in effort as a cause of success can translate into a willingness to engage in complex texts and persist over time (pp: 6)
Changing student’s beliefs from a focus on ability to a focus on effort increases their engagement. (pp: 7)
A student’s belief in his or her efforts rather than his or her innate ability is the most important determinant of student learning. (pp: 7)
All students receive three critical messages at every turn from every adult and from the policies, practices, and procedures of the organization:
(1) What we’re doing here is important
(2) You can do it!
(3) I’m not going to give up on you—even if you give up on yourself (pp: 7)
Educators that exhibit effort-based learning know how to effectively show their students how to:
(1) Say it
(2) Model it
(3) Organize it
(4) Protect it
(5) Reward it (pp: 
Are teachers modeling behaviors that demonstrate “What we’re doing here is important” when they come to class late or unprepared, schedule a movie day, or allow students to pack up early following a test or taxing learning experience? (pp:
“What we’re doing here is important” if classes are not protected from routine public announcements or if early dismissal for athletic contest is a frequent occurrence? (pp:
Across all our analyses, the single most consistent predictor of whether students took steps toward college enrollment was whether their teachers reported that their high school had a strong college climate. (pp: 9)
A key distinguishing factor between high-achieving and low-achieving schools was the school communities commitment to student excellence. (pp: 10)
The math coursework a school or district offers is by far the most concrete piece of evidence of its academic plans or aspirations for its students. (pp: 11)
Students who took at lease one AP course and test had higher college GPA’s and graduation rates than students who took at least one AP course but no tests. (pp: 11)
Putting a new title on an old syllabus does little to prepare students for post-secondary education and careers. (pp: 14)
Just slapping a new title on the same old courses won’t boost achievement—it only gives students a false sense of promise that they will be college-ready. (pp: 14)
High school teachers can further enhance a dual-or-concurrent enrollment class by using college and university lectures, lecture notes, assignments and video and audio clips free online. (pp: 15)
A student’s access to a high-quality academically challenging high school curriculum has been found to have the biggest influence on whether he or she will earn a college degree. (pp: 16)
Too many students spend their high school careers in general education tracks that do not prepare them for post-secondary education or future careers. (pp: 16)
Students should be offered multiple pathways that bring together challenging technical and academic courses. (pp: 17)
“Slowing students down does not help them catch up”
“Students who take consumer math will never have any money” (pp: 18)
Students in a general/voc track are less challenged in the classroom, receive less encouragement about college, and do not feel as well-prepared for life after high school. They are less likely to aspire to college or to believe that their parents expect them to attend college, and the strength of their convictions that college as attainable and affordable is significantly lower. (pp: 18)
Ensuring “ambitious academic content is provided to all students in core academic subjects.” (pp: 19)
Chapter 3: Developing Clear Instuctional Goals
Marzano defines a guaranteed and viable curriculum as one in which:
* Clear guidance is given to teachers regarding the content to be addressed
In specific courses, at specific grade levels.
* Individual teachers do not have the option to disregard or replace content.
* The content articulated in the curriculum for a given course can be adequately addressed in the time available. (pp: 21)
Learning goals best serve the information needs of all stakeholders, including students when they are:
- Centered on the truly important learnings of the course
- Clearly and completely integrated into learning progressions within and across all courses.
- Precisely defined so that all educators can interpret them consistently
- Created within the developmental reach of the students who are to master them.
- Designed to be manageable given the teacher’s available resources and students’ ability to learn.
- Thoroughly mastered by the designated teacher. (pp: 22)
Decisions about what to teach in each grade are left up to schools, many of which pass the choice on to teachers. The result is an uneven hodgepodge of instructional aims and subject matter, with content and expectations varying sharply from classroom to classroom and from school to school. (pp: 22)
The myth of linerarity: is that greater implementation leads to greater student achievement in a linear fashion. That is, if we implement a particular research-based reform a little, we will see a little improvement in student achievement. If we implement the reform to a moderate degree, we can expect a moderate increase in student achievement. A myth…why? We shouldn’t expect any change in student achievement until we get to extensive implementation. (Instructional goals, performance standards, aligned curriculum and assessments) (pp: 25)
State standards alone do note constitute a guaranteed and viable curriculum. State standard documents typically include:
- Too many standards
- Standards that are not of equal importance
- Standards that lack unidimensionality
- Standards that allow for vastly different expectations for students that vary between teachers (pp: 25)
A guaranteed and viable curriculum identifies the “what” of teaching, not the “how”. How a particular learning goal will be taught will always require considerable judgment on the part of teachers (the art of teaching), within the guidelines provided by the research on best practices (the science of teaching) (pp: 29)
Freedom of inquiry for students and faculty must be safeguarded, but that inquiry needs to be focused on the learning goals that the school or district has collaboratively determined to be most important. (pp: 29)
The Team Learning Process (DuFour)
Decide where you’re going
Establish performance goals
Periodically assess students to gauge their progress against stated learning goals
Look at the results
Do something different in your instruction to improve results (pp: 30)
School-wide Goals (Littleton) to consider:
Nonfiction writing
Information literacy
Citizenship and work habits
Thinking and reasoning (pp: 32)
Highly effective schools leave nothing important to chance. They are very deliberate about what is essential for students to know and be able to do. (pp: 33)
Developing Learning Goals at the Classroom Level
When students know what they are supposed to be learning, their performance, on average increased by 21 percentile points. “Instructional goals narrow what students focus on.” (Marzano) (pp: 35)
There is an important distinction between learning activities and learning goals. “Completing a science lab on osmosis” is not a learning goalnor are “preparing and presenting a report on cocaine, “solving the problems at the end of chapter 7,” or “writing an essay.” These are learning activities. Learning goals state what students will understand or be able to do as a result of engaging in one or more well-constructed learning activities. Examples of learning goals are as follows: Understand the relationship among topography, natural resources, and culture, Know the states and their capitals, Revise and essay to improve word choice, and Engage in series of drills to improve dribbling skills. (pp: 35)
A focus on learning goals rather than performance (scoring proficient on state tests) has been shown to increase student motivation. (pp: 36)
Principal questions specific to instruction and learning:
- What are you trying to accomplish?
- How are the kids doing?
- How do you know when students are not mastering a specific skill?
- What are you doing to help them improve? (pp: 38)
Rigor
Common Themes: problem solving, critical thinking, reflection, ownership, communication, creativity, complexity, breadth and depth and connections. Rigor is all about quality of work we ask our students to engage with as well as the assessments crafted for evaluation purposes. (pp: 41)
Establishing and communicating clear instructional goals and using state standards as a beginning point is the antidote to curriculum anarchy. It is also the first step in becoming a great high school. Highly effective schools are very precise about what they intend to accomplish, and they know how to move beyond a focus on instructional activities to a focus on rigorous instructional goals. (pp: 50)
Chapter 4: Developing a Common Vision of Effective Instruction