From equal access to equal outcomes: if the adults in a school collaborate around student learning through data-driven professional learning communities, student achievement can be raised in all subgroups.

A significant shift has occurred in the definition of success in public schools from one of equitable access to learning to one of equitable learning results grounded in standards-based instruction and accountability.

Equity of access threads through public policy from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 to the special education legislation of the 1970s to Title IX. When "A Nation at Risk" called attention to the need for a skilled workforce, the shift to a results-based focus became pre-eminent, culminating in 2001 with No Child Left Behind. With the reauthorization of IDEA, students with disabilities were brought into the success model and given equal rights to curriculum mastery.

Over the past three years, the Riverside County Office of Education's County Achievement Team, as a recipient of a California Department of Education grant, has worked with eight pilot schools and districts in the state to bring about systems change with equitable attention and results for each subgroup.

The project, RCAT Plus, has targeted urban, suburban and rural districts in Northern and Southern California that were invited to participate by the CDE on the basis of their historically low performance, specifically their ratings on key performance indictors for students in the special education subgroup. These were schools performing in the lowest quartile of the evaluation system for special education.

The project has operated under the belief that if we can move the adults in a school to collaborate around student learning--through data-driven professional learning communities at the grade, departmental and/or leadership levels--we can raise student achievement in all subgroups.

Data from 2003-2005 strongly demonstrates that the RCAT Plus schools have met and exceeded the performance levels of each group of students preceding it. RCAT Plus schools, in almost every case, are achieving continuous progress.

As project evaluator Susan Leddick, concluded, "The rates of percent change for all students scoring at or above proficiency in both English language arts and mathematics have been substantial, and the rates of percent change for students with disabilities have been dramatic" (Leddick, 2005).

Since the 2003 baseline year, the rate of change in proficiency for AYP for all students in RCAT Plus schools has increased by 16 percent in English language arts, compared to the state's rate of 8 percent and similar schools' rate of 9 percent. In mathematics, the RCAT Plus schools rate of change in proficiency increased by 30 percent, compared to 10 percent for state schools and -8 percent for similar schools.

For students with disabilities, the rate of change in ELA proficiency in RCAT Plus schools has risen by 67 percent, compared to 13 percent for the state and -25 percent for similar schools. In RCAT Plus schools for mathematics, the rate of percent change for students with disabilities has risen by 267 percent!

A proven model

RCAT Plus was built upon the already-proven RCAT model--an innovative approach to school change at the time it was conceived in 1999 by Dave Long, Riverside County superintendent of schools.

The idea was to bring together a group of county once experts in data, literacy and mathematics to serve low-performing and aspiring schools, create a comprehensive data profile of student achievement and demographics, and then partner with the school to affect significant, targeted change in curriculum and instruction that could be evidenced by the next year's achievement data. Students with disabilities were included in the vision, but emphasis was given to general education.

When RCAT Plus was developed in 2003, students with disabilities became part of improvement central. The goal was to use the RCAT model to increase student achievement for all students, with a focus on special education. The teams sought to change the belief system that special education students were "back forty" participants to one that valued the fact that:

* students with disabilities are the responsibility of the entire school and district, not just the special education teachers;

* special education students must have equal access to the core curriculum accessed by others;

* teachers of these students with disabilities should participate in regularly scheduled collaborative core curriculum grade level/department meetings;

* instructional practices can be changed to affect closer achievement parity for special education students; and

* all students, including those with disabilities, can learn and can make continuous progress.

Professional learning communities became the vehicle for these philosophical shifts, with the emphasis on three core principles: collaboration, results focus and concentration on learning rather than teaching.

A unique feature of the project was the pairing of a county office lead with a CDE special education consultant to serve each of the eight schools--four high schools, three middle schools and one elementary/middle school.

The county lead, supported by additional team members as needed, attended each training with the school team of district office administrators and school counselors, teachers (special education and general), principals and assistant principals.

RCAT Plus identified three project training strands: leadership training within the professional learning community model; RCAT team-supported training, coaching and monitoring; and an institute on research-based practices.

The training spanned three years, beginning with an infusion of group process and facilitation skills as well as systems theory, such as Jim Collins' "Good to Great" (2001), Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" (2002), Richard Knowles, Tim Dalmau and Margaret Wheatley's (1999) circles, Richard DuFour's (2004) professional learning communities, and Doug Reeves' (2004) data teams.

Leadership skills and the right leaders

Without focused, consistent leadership across system levels, people fall back into past practices, fail to actively test new ones, and ignore the need to reflect on the efficacy of such practices or to celebrate their successes. At onset, the project schools rarely, if at all, evidenced system processes in their daily work to produce improved learning outcomes. Systems theory, professional learning community structures and group facilitation skills laid the foundation for deep change.

To bring about focused leadership, it was most important to have the "connectors" on the leadership team--those individuals who are the tipping points, who usher ideas from one person to another, who curry and grow sustainability through distributive leadership so mobility does not become such an issue. People in the project referred to this as "having the right people on the bus."

Confronting the brutal facts

Those bus riders had to, in the words of Jim Collins, "confront the brutal facts" of their students' achievement. This meant traveling deeply into the data, disaggregating overall and subgroup scores by content area, risking discovery and inviting acceptance of what the data actually revealed about their programs, instructional strategies and beliefs.

Using an RCAT-devised Data Protocol, school teams analyzed their classroom and teacher-specific data as they si multaneously built their teacher leaders and wrote their SMART (Specific and Strategic, Measurable, Attainable, Results-Oriented, and Timebound) goals in mathematics and English language arts (Conzemius, 2002).

DuFour's three guiding questions constantly on the map were: What do we want students to learn? How do we know our students are or are not learning what we want them to learn? What can we do at the classroom, department, grade and system levels if they aren't learning it?

Special education teachers brought to the table a toolkit of intervention and differentiation strategies and a long-standing knowledge of individual assessment. General education teachers stretched the conversation with higher standards and aligned group assessments. Together, they zeroed in on closing the achievement gap between special and general education students.

Coaching from a distance

The leadership teams, eager to facilitate their groups in systems change, dialed into conference calls and Web site bulletin boards to be coached at a distance. Aided at the site by monthly RCAT coaching and "just in time" professional development, they simultaneously built professional learning communities.

They used the RCAT Data Protocol and the student work (aka "tuning protocol," Blythe, Allen and Powell, 1999) to hone their practice, access research-based practices and remain accountable through monthly progress monitoring. RCAT-led "after action reviews" allowed groups to reflect on segments of accomplishment.

Without the staff having this explicit skill development and feedback on how to distinguish their work from their habitual way of doing business, the model's outcomes would have been different.

Bringing general and special ed together

Most energy was spent on creating and using assessments; on bringing together standards, instruction and assessment; and on working together to bring down the invisible wall standing tall between general and special education. This was accomplished collaboratively by special and regular education teachers who met and meshed in various ways.

"This year the focus has been on inclusion and articulation between special education and general education teachers," reported one high school teacher. "A general education teacher now attends every IEP meeting and all RSP students are in general education classes."

Another middle school wholeheartedly addressed its special education noncompliance issues as a school team, not a segregated departmental team, and several schools specifically identified their students with disabilities in their SMART goals.

This may not seem remarkable, but in the beginning project year, many teachers surveyed in baseline studies indicated that they did not recognize their students with special needs, let alone make accommodations for them.

Special education and general education rarely mixed or collaborated in joint planning to improve instruction and guarantee results for students receiving special education services. The students were not part of the system, and the system did not invite them or their teachers to join.

After the project, one teacher commented, "I have a greater sense of my role as a leader in the improvement process for all student learning." Another realized, "These kids I'm teaching today aren't the same as the kids I taught years ago. If I'm focused on all kids, I'll do what it takes for them to learn."

This invigorating cultural shift to a focus on students was a collaborative effort, and, because of it, many teachers reported a renewed sense of excitement, professionalism and collegial respect previously not experienced in their work.

Interactions and cultural shifts

Each segment of the project brought changes to practice and to improved student performance, but, as systems theory would predict, it was the interaction of all the components that led to the large project gains. At the beginning it was mentioned that the new definition of a successful school is one that not only allows equity of access, but equity of results for all students.

Another criterion should be added: that the school maintains that pattern of continuing progress over time. This can only happen if empowered leaders, cognizant of systems issues--teachers most among them--form a united group. This group must spend time together during the school day to confront realities, plan and implement relevant actions to improve student learning for all students, and hold each other accountable for continuously improving results.

It can happen more readily with external training, coaching and monitoring from a team dedicated to long-term assistance.

Year-to-year growth in AYP over the three-year term of the project demonstrates that all subgroups in both English language arts and mathematics in RCAT Plus Schools exceed the performance level of the groups before them. The addition of this special education lens to cultural change and teacher efficacy has allowed and led to increased achievement by all students.

The project evaluator said, "We can easily recall the sense of fragmentation, resistance, hopelessness and resentment that pervaded [the RCAT Team's] first reports of observations and recommendations. Those conditions have been replaced by more collegiality, a belief in self and others, a sense of connection to the important work of the school, a notion of skills that are involved in doing it, and a clear view of what is to be done. Who could begin to estimate the power of such a shift in the culture of a school's adults? RCAT [Plus] has [definitely] moved beyond 'promising' to evidence-based" (Leddick, 2005).

RCAT Plus has offered schools and districts a research-based process for achieving equity of access and equity of learning results for all.

References

Blythe, Tina; Allen, David and Powell, Barbara. (1999). Looking, at Student Work. New York: Teachers College Press.

Collins, Jim. (2001). Good to Great. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.

Conzemius, Anne and O'Neill, Jan. (2002). The Handbook for SMART School Teams. Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service.

Dufour, Richard. (2004) Whatever It Takes: How PLCs Respond When Kids Don't Learn. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Gladwell, Malcolm. (2002). The Tipping, Point. London: Little, Brown and Company.

Leddick, Susan. (Dec. 8, 2005). Riverside County Office of Education Evaluation of RCAT Plus Process 2004-2005.

Reeves, Douglas. (2004) Data-Driven Decision Making,. Englewood, CO: Center for Performance Assessment.

Wheatley, Margaret (adapting the work of Richard Knowles and Tim Dalmau). (1999) Leadership and the New Science: Discovering, Order in a Chaotic World Revised. San Francisco: Berrett-Kuehler Publishers, Inc.

By Diana Walsh-Reuss and Jane Moore 

Diana Walsh-Reuss is director of special education, Riverside County Office of Education. Jane Moore is regional director, Riverside County Office of Education, Division of Educational Services.