By John Glaser and Elena Toscano
In 2003, the Napa Valley Language Academy, a dual immersion charter school in the Napa Valley Unified School District, had a schoolwide Academic Performance Index of 514 and a wide achievement gap between white and Hispanic subgroups. The school was struggling under the pressure and sanctions of high stakes accountability, and school and district staff found themselves in an adversarial relationship that left them feeling equally frustrated and alienated from one another. With NVLA’s charter up for renewal that same year, there were conversations about whether the charter should even be considered for renewal.
Four-and-a-half years later, the school’s API has climbed consistently and steadily to 749, achievement for all subgroups has grown and the animosity and mistrust that had characterized the school and district relationship has been replaced by partnership, collaboration and mutual support. While the school missed its goal of emerging from Program Improvement status altogether by only three students, there is a common sense of purpose, and a shared confidence that the practices and strategies being implemented at the school are the ones most appropriate to ensure the achievement gap at NVLA is eliminated altogether.
Redesigning the district office
At the same time we were struggling in our relationship with NVLA, the Napa Valley Unified School District office was itself in transition. We were just coming to grips with the effects of the financial downturn that left districts throughout California facing millions of dollars in program cuts. Because of the financial crisis, we needed to balance the budget and make significant cuts districtwide, including central office staffing. With five charter schools in the district, we were also forced to question our approach to supporting sites to ensure that the quality of customer service was matching the needs of all schools, including those that could look elsewhere for services traditionally provided by the central office.
We were also transitioning to a new superintendent, which afforded us the natural opportunity to assess the needs of the organization and to redesign the district office in a way that would best address our system’s needs, while simultaneously making modifications to help us through our financial realities. Our inquiry turned naturally to how best to organize our central office. Remembering that “form should follow function,” we set out to determine what we needed from our district staff.
What we discovered was that both school-based and central office staff shared the same fundamental interests. Principals desired a “customer service” oriented relationship with the district office, defined by side-by-side support rather than top-down control. District office staff aspired to a working relationship with schools that really facilitated an authentic supportive relationship with sites that could focus on learning.
What this conjured for us was a central office “consulting model” to make it easy for district staff to approach schools as “clients” or “customers” with organizational and instructional needs. Such an innovation was not altogether surprising, given the new superintendent had returned to the district after spending the prior 11 years working full time in a private consulting firm.
The model that evolved in Napa Valley Unified assigned each district level administrator to work with a particular group of sites in a direct instructional capacity as a Learning Support Partner, or LSP. The name was carefully chosen to convey both the role and the function of this new assignment. LSPs were expected to assume a support role to schools, with the specific task of engaging in mentoring, coaching and advocacy around the process of encouraging powerful teaching and learning.
The new responsibility was not taken lightly, given every LSP also had an operational role in the organization, including human resources, English learner services, special education, interventions, curriculum and instruction or student services. The number of schools assigned to each support partner varied based on other work responsibilities of the LSP.
Not the “accountability police”
Our new structure also forced us to wrestle with some important organizational demons. We knew instinctively what the LSP needed to be — a coach, a mentor, an advocate and a critical friend. We also knew what we did not want it to be — the accountability “police,” or an evaluator whose formal assessment might discourage principals and others to seek support openly on the most difficult issues. So the superintendent — who also needed to know the principals well — assumed the role of primary evaluator, freeing up the LSPs to focus on the critical support functions.
At the time the consulting concept was developed, we tried to keep the LSP role as purely a mentoring function. Classroom walkthroughs, which we renamed “learning walks,” were more oriented to offering praise for the many positive things that were happening in schools, rather than explicitly monitoring teaching practices with critical feedback. After a period of adjustment, teaching staff became more comfortable having principals and district administrators in their classrooms on a regular basis.
We eventually discovered, however, that the more comfortable everyone became with school and classroom visits, the more comfortable they became with monitoring. Our experiences with school and district program improvement soon convinced us that the monitoring process, done honestly and openly, is a huge key to continuous improvement of instructional strategies.
The past two years have been devoted to developing LSP “monitoring” capacity to engage in data-driven conversations designed to ensure ongoing and sustained improvement in our classrooms. For us, monitoring represents knowing what is important and supporting each other in an effort to do it better and better. Once we affirmed our commitment to “learning” (doing things better) vs. “performing” (looking good), we were able to move forward with this critical step.
Becoming transformational coaches
From the start, LSPs established regular times to meet as a professional learning community and received training to hone our own coaching skills. Bi-monthly meetings allowed time to share experiences, but also included professional readings, simulations and critical discussions on successes, concerns and figuring out our new roles.
Recognizing the need for more technical and specific support, we received training during the second year from the Edison School Organization in its achievement coaching model. An awareness that we could benefit from more regular professional development led to a formal partnership, during the third year, with Springboard Schools. We focused on questioning, listening and feedback strategies and agreement on standardized practices and goal-setting with site administrators around three areas of focus: intervention, English language development and leadership.
In this fourth year our coaching needs have evolved to learning how to be an effective transformational — and sometimes confrontational — coach.
Commitment to school site visits
The effectiveness of the LSP consulting model requires an ongoing commitment to being at schools and in classrooms on a regular basis. Juggling the demands of full-time, district-level positions while supporting school staff on site has forced LSPs to calendar visitations and try to be on site two to four times a month. In addition, LSPs are in touch with principals by phone and e-mail, sometimes daily.
LSPs are encouraged to experiment with different approaches to working with their assigned schools. Laura Ryan, administrator of assessment and interventions, and Courtney Henderson, director of elementary education, each employ a “group coaching” technique, meeting regularly with groups of principals to share and conduct joint site and classroom visitations. Debriefing with groups of principals provides the opportunity for deeper conversations about teaching and learning.
Feedback on the model
Feedback from the sites was immediately positive, with universal appreciation of the LSP model, although a need for more equity in roles was also expressed. Napa Valley Unified has more than 30 schools and programs with a wide range of diverse needs, including charter schools, Title 1 sites, large comprehensive campuses, a continuation school, independent study and an adult school. Respective school assignments for LSPs were initially based on the unique skill set of the district office administrator to match the needs of the school. After the first two years of assigning and reassigning schools, principals expressed a need to establish continuity by keeping the same LSP from year to year. It became apparent that equity for sites meant all LSPs needed to share similar skills, while sites could still call upon any LSP for his or her particular expertise.
For example, Char Ford-Gray, coordinator of English learner services, trained all LSPs on the critical components of a highly effective ELD lesson and organized field trips to model classrooms. While serving as LSP to four schools, she is also available to any district school to support its English learner program. Sharyn Lindsey, assistant superintendent of human resources, meets weekly with the Napa High School principal to address site-specific issues such as transitioning from a block schedule or implementing a new English curriculum, while training district and bargaining unit leaders in interest-based problem-solving.
The strengthening of individual LSP skills coupled with the willingness to serve all sites supports our core value that we share ownership of all students, no matter where they are housed in the district. Over time this has strengthened the relationship and trust between central office, principal and site staff.
Changes in perception and relationship
The 235-point increase in the Napa Valley Language Academy API in four years is one example of the success of NVUSD’s partnership and LSP consulting model. More important is the dramatic change in the perception and relationship between the school site and the central office.
As a K-5 dual immersion charter, NVLA provided a program with a goal of biliteracy in Spanish and English for all students before entering middle school. Its charter status allowed it to instruct in two languages and draw native English speakers to its campus, located in a neighborhood of largely Spanish-speaking immigrant families.
With the onset of accountability and disaggregation of data, however, it became apparent that the dual immersion model was working well for English-speaking students learning Spanish, but the English learners needed more support to meet targets in English language arts. Tensions had mounted between a charter school committed to a vision of biliteracy and district-mandated oversight for accountability under NCLB.
With the charter up for renewal, a crossroads had been reached: To continue with a charter program that brought integration to a largely Hispanic neighborhood, or to return to the traditional, non-charter status and risk losing the rich diversity that had been established.
With a new superintendent committed to a collaborative support model, the decision was made to renew the school charter, support the dual immersion model and provide the school with support to improve student achievement for all subgroups. Elena Toscano, now assistant superintendent of instruction, was assigned two days a week to work on site as an LSP. According to Napa Valley Language Academy Principal Deb Wallace, “With Elena serving as our LSP, the relationship changed from a feeling that the district was sitting in the stands watching us struggle in the game, to putting on a helmet and joining our team on the field to help us win.” The school created space for its LSP, who moved in and became part of the staff, knowing that building trust would be critical in moving forward.
Helping the site access trainings, resources and specific strategies and partnering with other district Title 1 schools to share best practices began to make a difference in results in the first year. Implementing practices consistent from classroom to classroom and year to year provided students with more equitable services. The achievement gap is closing and so has the distrust that once existed between the school site and district office, thanks in large part to the close partnership between the principal and staff and their LSP.
Benefits are reciprocal
The benefits of a district office consulting model are reciprocal. Both site administrators and district LSPs are growing in their capacity as administrative leaders. Schools benefit from on-site support, while central office personnel have a more clear understanding of the challenges in the field. Relationships and trust are strengthened.
Site administrators enjoy knowing that someone at the district office is a partner who understands their school’s unique needs and is readily available when a problem arises. Regular site visits keep district administrators keenly aware of current issues in the field. The cross-pollinating of ideas between schools by LSPs has promoted consultation, collaboration and support among and between principals and teachers all across the district.
The consulting model has helped redefine the way we do business in the NVUSD, and added a new dimension to the term “unified” district.
John Glaser is superintendent of Napa Valley Unified School District. Elena Toscano is assistant superintendent of instruction.