Fair play: accepting responsibility for student results: equity in education relies on equal access to learning experiences and fair play during those experiences.

We often hear about the "next big thing in pop culture: a new entertainer, a new piece of technology, a new kind of car, a new trend in clothing. Well, the great educational enterprise of our time--"the next big thing"--is achieving educational success with disadvantaged students. In the history of formal education around the world, it has never been done on a large scale. In California, in particular, it includes success with immigrant students in the first generation.

Finally, the pious term of "equity" is beginning to grow legs and walk boldly onto the stage in many educational theaters of the United States. This article includes three elementary schools in California where just that has happened.

Equity in education relies on equal access to learning experiences and fair play during those experiences. Too often policy makers, voters and even some educators define equity only in terms of equal access. From these people you will hear comments like, "They had the same chances that the other kids had. I don't know why they didn't get it."

In the Lau v. Nichols case before the Supreme Court in 1974, the justices decided 9-0 in support of the premise that the "equal treatment of unequals" makes a "mockery of education." And our Constitution, specifically the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as statutes such as the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, remind us that "persons" subject to our federal and state laws must be granted equal "benefits."

This is "fair play" and requires that all students get it, no matter what it takes: more time, more effort, more money. Indeed, some students need "ballast-like" support activities to make their educational sailing smooth and help them reach their destination.

Equity is less about the same treatment for all and more about holding everyone to the same high standards and high expectations. All students should expect a safe and productive educational experience aboard the best possible vessels with competent and caring people at the helm. It is only fair.

All schools can create the conditions in which even the children struggling the hardest can succeed socially and academically. To do this, they must establish fairness through rules that make sense, validate responsibility as a shared norm by all involved, and acknowledge and respect all differences as a core value for the school. With a foundation of positive relationships among teachers, administrators, students and parents, a standards-based curriculum must be made as relevant and rigorous as possible.

The new "Rs"

These are our new Rs: rules, responsibility and respect lead to relationships, relevance and rigor. We like looking at the opposites in the triangulation. Responsibility is opposite relationship; respect is aligned with rigor while rules and relevance are aligned.

Responsibility and relationships are reciprocal. Rigor is when respectful teachers and students go to the deepest level possible when studying a subject. Rules are the underpinnings of meaning and represent agreements; relevance is established when there is an agreement that what we are studying is important, valuable and related to our daily lives. They make up a guiding star that can be the norms and expectations needed to lead to a compact for achievement and accountability.

Doug Reeves would likely concur: "In an era in which we expect students to be accountable for the choices that they make, we must demand no less from ourselves. We must challenge one another not only to be accountable for student results, but also to accept responsibility for the choices that we make in teaching strategies, curriculum and leadership" (Reeves, 2004).

Reeves' challenge asks that we, the educational professionals, assume responsibility for our strategies, curriculum and leadership. It requires strategic targeting followed by intentional acts for student achievement. We must assure that our behavior not only has a purpose, but an expected outcome. And in using research-based tools, we must implement strategies with reasonable fidelity if we expect to get results in line with the research upon which they are based.

There are three discrete groups of students whose circumstances put them in particular need of equity and fair play: socioeconomically disadvantaged, special education and disabled, and English language learners. Schooling circumstances for these students often create conditions that throw them off kilter and in need of ballast for balance and accelerated progress.

In many schools, some ethnic groups are also among the lower performing subgroups. For example, Latino students may--at once--be affected by minority status, low parent income, low parent education level, limited English proficiency and the culture shock of being in a new country. Many California schools need to mitigate these potentially negative circumstances by doing business differently.

As Benjamin Bloom has reportedly said, "Poverty only seems to cause low performance because of the way we run schools today." Fortunately, with what we know about best practices today, schools can be run differently, making it unnecessary for these students to suffer wholesale low performance and failure.

Confronting the brutal facts

It is the purpose of this article to describe strategic schooling methods that have served as the cognitive architecture to frame equity for our consultancy. We will describe how three elementary schools met their accountability objectives and closed the achievement gap between all statistically significant subgroups.

Jim Collins, author of "Good to Great," (2001) states that the only "organizations to improve are those where the truth is told and the brutal facts confronted." The three schools that we highlight confronted the truth at different times in their reform journey.

Heights Elementary School was in trouble. Identified for II/USP and Program Improvement, the school had an urgent need to make changes. Baldwin Academy and Kwis Elementary had school administrators that intervened before sanctions were levied. They never experienced public intervention processes.

All three schools have dynamic, "get your hands dirty" principals who never asked a teacher to do anything that they wouldn't do themselves. All three sites embraced data as a vital tool and as a means to answer the question, "What do we do next?"

Each school presented fits the high minority, high poverty, high achieving triangulation that Kati Haycock addresses in her work with the Education Trust. Most importantly, the schools were invested in being strategic about their work. They weren't interested in more spray-and-pray, fad-based work.

Strategic Schooling Model

The Strategic Schooling Model as developed by Dennis Parker in 2000 is:

1. Targets: achievement targets, student targets, content targets.

2. Feedback: data and examples of student work directly related to the targets.

3. Know-how: the application of organizational, classroom and personal expertise by educators, students and parents in an effort to hit the targets.

4. Context: the physical conditions, beliefs, values and assumptions at the school in which all of this occurs.

Heights Elementary (Pittsburg Unified School District)

Heights Elementary School is influenced by the chaos of chronic, generational poverty that impacts the school and family community. In 2005, the school was released from Program Improvement sanctions through the efforts of a highly functioning, collaborative faculty that systematically sets goals and achieves them.

For our purposes, a school has closed the achievement gap when all statistically significant subgroups are performing within 5 percent of the school-wide API score. Heights Elementary School has met this objective.

The first goal embraced by the staff was to close the gap between ethnic groups with a special emphasis on improving the education of African American students. (White students are not a significant subgroup at Heights.)

Between 1999 and 2006, API scores showed the following growth: for all students, 210 points; African Americans, 280 points; Hispanic/Latinos, 253 points and socioeconomically disadvantaged, 223 points.

The Heights faculty has embraced collaboration meaningfully and uses periodic academic conferences as tools to monitor student progress, analyze data, plan instruction and develop team cohesion. The staff focused on the social emotional well-being of students as well as the research-based instructional tools that give predictable achievement gains. These efforts resulted in meeting their API and AYP goals.

In one fourth-grade classroom at Heights, 86 percent of students were proficient or advanced in math; 72 percent of students were proficient or advanced in English language arts. This success was centered on the teacher's commitment to tutoring. She was available at all free periods and made it her priority to be a constant prosocial presence in the lives of her students.

Many of these students had never set a goal and achieved it before the lofty expectations established in the first few weeks of fourth grade with a small, vibrant teacher named Valerie. She and her students constantly monitored the established goals and the probability of achievement. Mid-course corrections were made to increase effort on the goals.

Features that contribute to a positive learning environment

* First impressions are incredibly important at Heights. Everyone smiles. Teachers often wear clothing similar to the student's uniform. This is a very well-organized learning community. Rules are posted in the hallways and are visible in every common area.

* Room environments are well-organized and not cluttered. Disarray is often a familiar indication that the adult is not prepared to do what needs to be done.

* Books and other materials are neatly distributed. Students are given verbal, visual and tangible ideas about what they will learn in the classroom. It is clear that everyone is expected to participate and learn. Charts, lists or graphs are displayed to show progress and growth or are distributed for students to maintain.

* Teachers are at the door and offer comments to students as they arrive in the morning. Height teachers are diligent in offering positive feedback from the day before to set the tone for the day. "Evan, you did a great job on your math worksheet. Thanks for working so neatly. Jose, I could not believe how many vocabulary words you used in the paragraph about the story. Aida, thanks for working with the group so quietly." Teachers specifically reinforce the behavior that they want more of in the future.

* Students participate in defining what a great school or classroom would look like. They then identify what might get in the way of that occurring. It is these things that become the classroom rules. For example, if blurting out in class is a problem; not blurting out in class becomes a rule. Contributing to how the classroom runs is the first step in offering the students a voice, which is a common theme as the school evolves into a successful community of learners.

Unique aspects of the Heights program

1. Context: The school creates a prosocial learning environment and a "family" orientation and sets norms for personal responsibility. Cues for behavior are set by a very hands-on and visible principal who walks the school daily and is actively engaged in instruction, working personally with students from the statistically significant subgroups.

2. Targets: The school helps students set new targets and goals in monthly, one-on-one data chats. Grade level adult mentors are provided for "riskier" students. The school organizes student and content targets based on data; states clear objectives for students based on grade-level standards and uses kid-friendly standards as content targets in the classroom.

3. Feedback: Monthly, one-on-one data chats are held with students about their progress. The school uses data to make instructional decisions; uses benchmark and other formative assessments; uses summative and testing data to organize grade-level plans; and presents student work with standards labeled and comment sheets available for observers. More oral and fewer written assessments are offered for special education and students with disabilities. Students receive outlines or story maps of the course.

4. Know-how: The school uses Standards Plus[R] in English language arts and math in all grades; brain-mind principles are used for organizing inquiry (Linden, 1998). Read Naturally is used to increase fluency and comprehension. The school utilizes non-linguistic representations for vocabulary and facilitates a learner's lab for remediation and re-teaching. Language development is richly organized about English mechanics and grammar. This process-oriented instruction should be a response to what's missing in the English learner's repertoire.

Baldwin Academy and Kwis Elementary Schools (Hacienda-La Puente USD)

Baldwin and Kwis Elementary Schools are in La Puente, in Los Angeles County. Baldwin is 92 percent Hispanic, 86 percent socioeconomically disadvantaged and 43 percent English language learners. Kwis is 83 percent Hispanic, 70 percent socioeconomically disadvantaged and 25 percent English language learners.

Each school has had the same principal since 1999: Bonnie Wilson at Baldwin and Sue Kaiser at Kwis. They have worked with each other on a journey of beating the odds for low income, minority students. Both schools have shared approximately four days a year of staff development sessions on Strategic Schooling since 2000, working to implement some of the best organizational and classroom practices available. The results speak for themselves.

Both schools were in trouble in the beginning, with APIs in the 400s and very low state ranks. In 1999, for example, Baldwin was in decile 2 statewide and decile 5 in comparison with schools of similar demographics. By 2005, it was a 6-10. Kwis was a 3-2 in 1999 and a 6-9 by 2005.

Since these schools have so few white students, we have to compare their minority students' APIs with white students statewide. In 2006, the API for white students in grades 2-6 in California was 838. Kwis and Baldwin are at 808 and 812 respectively, with a gap of 30 or fewer points.

The current state gap in API between Hispanics and whites is 151 points; in these schools, it is 33-42 points. Between English learners and whites, it is 160 points statewide; in these schools, it is 6467 points. And between socioeconomically disadvantaged students and whites, it is 165 points; in these schools it is 33-42 points.

Features that contribute to a positive learning environment

The role of the principals at these two schools cannot be overstated. Both--although each with different personalities and leadership styles--lead and do not just manage their schools. When staff development occurs, they expect implementation within days and walk through classes regularly to see that teachers are trying the new strategies. Teachers have been heroic in their capacity to try many new things as a leap of faith.

Both principals notice "positive outliers," or teachers whose data indicate particular success, and both frequently substitute for other teachers so that they may observe their more successful colleagues.

These principals are concerned about full implementation across all classrooms and all grade levels, and they are concerned with pushing the envelope with teaching that goes beyond the textbook, especially in areas such as critical thinking and writing. These teachers support students and each other to a fault.

Teachers work deliberately at establishing good relationships with students and a system of rules in each classroom, and they practice classroom procedures, especially at the beginning of each year and after returning from each vacation. Visitors often comment on what "good students" they have; yet, in her first year, Sue Kaiser had to handle 165 fights among students at Kwis.

Students are committed to improving academically not only as a result of good relationships with teachers and excellent classroom management, but also through their awareness of the standards being learned, their academic performance at any given time in the year, and their commitment to hitting new personal achievement targets at every turn.

Some unique aspects of the programs at Baldwin and Kwis

1. Context: The entire school community believes their students can become proficient in high percentages. Teachers work most often in collaborative teams, and there is high degree of internal accountability, with all teachers aware of each others' scores. Teachers and administrators put kids' needs ahead of their own. There are few to no once referrals; students are committed to their work, their teachers, their classrooms and their classmates. The walls in each classroom are full of learning aids and handmade artifacts of interactive learning.

2. Targets: An ambitious API target is set annually that is well beyond the state minimums. Target students are identified and monitored at least monthly ("bubble" kids near proficient and "triage" kids well below). Students set their own targets for state testing as well as in-class targets during the year. Teachers post their standards (blueprints in grades 2-5) and check off every week what's been covered, and students do the same with their own copies. Grade levels choose "focus standards" or "nemesis standards" monthly for extra emphasis and mini-lessons.

3. Feedback: State test data is extensively dissected in public to discern both successes and areas of need. Trimester data is analyzed in grade-level teams and guides future teaching decisions. Through test chats, students know their achievement and set new targets annually. There is a 100 percent parent conference rate and parents know and understand their children's achievement levels. Annual awards ceremonies recognize all students who scored high or made gains on the state tests. Finally, data walls in the schools and in each classroom reflect past performance and new targets.

4. Know-how: Textbooks are used as "tools," not scripts; supplementary materials are included as needed (Standards Plus, etc.) during the day and in after-school interventions.

There is extensive use of interactive teaching strategies and visuals during instruction (GLAD, Thinking Maps, etc). English language learners receive daily ELD lessons in homogenous proficiency groups. Test prep involves "deconstructing" the state's "released items" one at a time; weekly lessons become standards-based mini-lessons that require higher-order thinking.

Principal key instrument of equity

We perceive the principal to be the key instrument of equity and fairness in schools. With a committed faculty and staff, the principal can guide the reform process seamlessly. As we were writing this article, we realized that we had developed significant relationships with the educational leaders of the schools we worked with. In many ways, we served as their coaches. But they were the models of what we wished to see.

Knowing the right thing to do

According to Richard Elmore (2003), "Knowing the right thing to do is the central problem of school improvement." He notes that many struggling schools include faculties with their hearts in the right places and their shoulders to the wheel. They are not getting poor results because they are lazy, unfocused or nonbelievers. They just have not yet learned the "right things to do."

Whether schools implement the "right" practices--that is, the ones that get the most gains for the least effort with the most struggling students--early or later in their journey, we now know it can be done.

References

Collins, Jim. (2001). Good to Great: Wily Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't. New York: HarperBusiness.

Elmore, Richard. (2003). Knowing the right thing to do: School improvement and performance-based accountability. Washington, D.C.: National Governors Association Center for Best Practices.

Haycock, Kati, (2000). Achievement in America. Washington, D.C.: Education Trust.

Linden, Nancy (1998). Book & Brain Reading: Test Taking Strategies. Dallas, TX: B&B Press.

Read Naturally. (2001). Saint Paul, Minn.: Read Naturally.

Reeves, Douglas B. (2004). Accountability in Action: A Blueprint for Learning Organizations. Englewood, CO: Advanced Learning Press.

Standards Plus[R] (2002). Rancho Cucamonga, CA: Learning Plus Associates. www.standardsplus.org.

Michelle S. Karns and Dennis R. Parker are school improvement consultants and student advocates. As school practitioners, they work with systems and school sites to affect the changes necessary to accelerate student achievement. For more information, e-mail [e-mail].