The Challenges of Mission Reform at Concord High School


Introduction[CSD1]
Since 2003 Concord High School[1] has been involved in the process of becoming a mission driven school. While framed by a new organization, their accrediting body NEASC, it is the same work that has been espoused by many organizations in recent decades. In researching this paper I found three binders in the shelves of the district office that were from the University of Dayton. They were published in 1991 and explained a complete plan to become a mission driven school. Many of the buzz words have changed but the basic process of examining a mission, and creating a plan for action that derives from that mission are the same.

So this summary of the work of Concord High School tells some of the recent history of the school and focuses on the problems that occur in bringing theory to practice. In this iteration of mission work our main guiding documents were the Understanding by Design documents specifically the recent book Schooling by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. The Concord School District has had a long history working with the Understanding by Design process and calls itself a UbD district. There are many branches of district teams that use UbD thinking to guide their work.

History
We have compiled the history of the last 5 years in a 73 page document but here are some highlights of the work done at Concord High School. In the years from 2003-2007 time was spent on building consensus. Malcom Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, might say that we were in that holding pattern waiting for the tipping point to tip. This time was spent in philosophical discussion mainly focused on building consensus for change. At Concord High School there was little impetus to change because it was already such a good high school. Low dropout rate, high student and teacher satisfaction, lots of students going to good colleges and happy parents in the town.

In the case of Concord High School the work from 2003-2007 came together with two other important factors to bring us to our tipping point--the point where philosophical discussions end and the creation of a product and a program begins. A plan had been developed to guide work during the 2007-2008 school year when school leaders were informed that the school was being placed on warning by their accrediting institution NEASC. This warning status meant that they had to reformulate the plan during the 2007 summer to be much more aggressive in its goals. In addition to the strong suggestions from the accrediting institution the State of New Hampshire also was requiring that all high schools create course competencies that needed to be implemented in the 2008-2009 school year. Neither of these were much of a surprise but it meant that the high school now had little choice in what it needed to do. The time for discussion was over. 2007-2008 would be a year of products.

In the summer of 2007 teachers, administrators and the superintendent met and designed the CHS Plan. This plan clearly outlines the flow from very big district goals down to individual courses. This plan is based on the district’s continued work with Understanding by Design and is an adaptation of graphics found in Schooling by Design and the UbD professional development workbook. The CHS Plan served as a road map for the work that was done at CHS this year.

2007-2008—A Busy Year
Teaching is somewhat like putting out a newspaper every day. News writers might hope for more time to edit a story and more time to do research but the fact is that the newspaper has to come out every day. Writers do their best job and then turn in what they have at the deadline. It is the same for teachers. A common request is more time to work on curriculum and school planning. But the fact is that there is never enough time and the students keep coming in that door. Teachers do everything they can to be ready but at 7:45 they have to go to work—they have hit their deadline. This need to both run the school and partake in two big school changes was a constant theme of the work during the year. Teachers and school leaders constantly had to remain mindful of what the theory in the books said and what was possible for someone who also had to teach 140 students.

To lead the process principal Gene Connolly formed a Steering Committee in the summer of 2007. This group would meet weekly all year and guide the process. They were a one year task force with 4 specific goals.
Define the goals of the mission and express them as graduation expectations.
Create rubrics to measure the graduation expectations.
Pilot the use of the graduation expectations for each student.
Create competencies for each course.

The work began by asking all teachers one question, “What do you want students to know and be able to do when they walk across the graduation stage?” From this list the steering committee was able to compile one list that was divided into two types of expectations. Those were the Habits of Mind that were derived from the existing district goals and the Graduation Expectations that delineated specific academic goals for graduates.

Examples:
Habit of Mind:
Graduation Expectation:

The design was that the Graduation Expectations would be measured for each individual student during many points in their high school career. And that the Habits of Mind would me measured not for individuals but for groups of students.

The main thrust of the 2007-2008 work was in making rubrics to measure the Graduation Expectations and in implementing the use of the Graduation Expectations in classes.

The most successful step that the steering committee took was in its use and organization of the one all day professional day that the district does have. On this day in early October the steering committee organized a professional day that was attended by 2/3 of the faculty. (Faculty that could not attend had made commitments long before the day was planned.) The day was organized to define the graduation expectations and create rubrics to measure them. The participants were organized in mixed groups according to teaching specialty and years of experience. Two groups were assigned to work on each expectation and rubric. The group on technology for example wrote a goal statement for technology and then created a rubric for it. This was a very successful professional development day and by the end of it the faculty had created the expectation statements and the rubrics that would be used for the remainder of the year. Many faculty members expressed the sentiment that it was one of the most powerful professional days that they had ever attended.

The steering committee collected these rubrics, edited them and then presented them to staff. The second expectation on critical thinking was presented to staff in October. And the remaining expectations on oral communication, listening, reading and technology were presented to the staff in December. At each presentation members of the steering committee explained how these rubrics fit into the CHS plan. They also provided real examples of how these expectations could be used successfully in class.

Challenges
Schooling by Design is a wonderful book that takes the thinking of the UbD books to a school reform program. CHS will continue to work with the program described in the book and has already planned a summer retreat to continue to work with Grant Wiggins on the implementation of the CHS Plan over the next few years. This year has also been a year of learning about what can and cannot work at our particular school. With 150 teachers, 2000 students and a deadline of March 1 to complete the work—challenges inevitably arise.

Impetus for Change:
CHS had been discussing the philosophical basis for change for 4 years. While this pace was too slow in our eyes and especially in the eyes of your accrediting body it is important to spend time at the beginning of the process determining what the issue is. Wiggins and McTighe describe this in their book but it can easily be glossed over or a phase that is rushed through. It truly is the foundation for success though. No one ever drives by a construction site and marvels at the beautiful foundation but it is the most important part to any building. This is the same for mission reform. The work done at the beginning, upon which all other work is based, is the most important and least glamorous of all the work that is done.

Product:
At some point philosophical discussions need to end and the creation of a product needs to begin. Once CHS did move from our overly long foundation period it was critically important to keep everyone focused on creating a product during the year. This meant sometimes cutting off interesting philosophical discussion to bring a meeting group back to the task of working on the product at hand. This was particularly difficult at the beginning of the year…

Continual Change and Improvement:
There might never be a final product. Culturally we can become used to working on something and creating a final product. A product that is “done.” Mission reform is not like that. At CHS we used the example of how teachers teach. Every teacher starts with a product in their first year and builds upon it in each successive year of their teaching. The first time I taught biology I taught a unit on reptiles because that was one of the chapters in the book. I found a National Geographic that was a 90 minute show on reptiles, 15 worksheets and a note set from a different book. In subsequent years I first improved this unit and then realized that I should really be teaching reptiles within the bigger context of adaptations. Each year the presentation and information improved. The same approach is needed in this work. The rubrics to measure the graduation expectations this year were not perfect. The rubric for critical thinking was so well written that most people—students and adults—had trouble understanding what it meant. So in the next year we will work on using everyone friendly language in the rubrics.

Big Goals:
We constantly asked teachers to think about what they wanted students to know when they walked across the graduation stage. By continually coming back to this we kept the focus on what they really wanted to have as goals. We often said that if they were working on something that did not feel like it should be a graduation expectation…









[1] I will personify Concord High School in this paper to avoid long awkward phrases like, “the faculty at Concord High School,” etc.

[CSD1]Chris—take a quick look at this. It is a very rough first go. I will edit the writing more in later drafts. I am mainly interested in your thoughts on 1) structure, 2) questions that you have as an outside reader. I welcome anything you have to say.