3010 - MEET THE CHALLENGE- (MANAGE, EMPOWER, ENERGIZE, TRANSFORM)

Executive Summary

Purpose

The purpose of the Durham Public Schools Theory of Action framework is to provide an effective, long-term management framework for improving student achievement. The Theory of Action is aligned with Durham Public School’s Vision, Mission, Core Beliefs and Commitments to drive the Board’s policies, budgets, and administrative strategies forward for academic excellence for all students in DPS. The four main components of the Durham Public School’s Theory of Action are (1) Instructional Management and Support, (2) District and Board Responsibility and Accountability, (3) Empowerment of Principals and Teachers, and (4) Energizing the Community and Mobilizing Resources.

Instructional Management and Support

Instructional Management and Support refers to the instructional management style that is the foundation of Durham Public School’s Theory of Action. Instructional Management and Support provides each school with effective, centralized instructional management and a clear direction of the core curriculum, so every student in Durham Public Schools is equally provided the highest quality of instruction. At the same time, individual schools will be empowered to effectively manage and teach in innovative ways with professional autonomy. As individual schools demonstrate measured success in student achievement, those schools will be given further decision-making autonomy and encouraged to take ownership over the continuous improvement of their students while still meeting rigorous student achievement standards. Conversely, individual schools that are experiencing difficulties improving student achievement and meeting accountability standards will be more closely monitored and given additional support and assistance in the areas of concern.

District and Board Responsibility and Accountability

The Durham Public School’s Board of Education and Superintendent are responsible for establishing Board policies or management directives that will:

• Establish and effectively communicate instructional and management policies regarding student achievement expectations.
• Provide accountability standards according to both state and district guidelines.
• Report all schools’ accountability results according to both state and district standards.
• Serve all schools in the common goal of meeting standards and exceeding expectations.
• Encourage highly effective and autonomous schools that take ownership over the success of all students in their school.
• Effectively communicate all of the above to the Durham community.

Empowerment of Principals and Teachers

Principals

• Will be held accountable by Superintendent to ensure their schools are teaching the required curriculum to all students using research-based, best teaching strategies, and effective classroom management techniques.
• Will be held accountable by the Superintendent to ensure an accelerated curriculum is available to all applicable students. Additionally, effective support will be provided to all students who are in need of academic, behavioral, or social assistance.
• Will have the authority to hold others accountable as principals are ultimately responsible for all that occurs in their own school.
• Will be given freedom to hire and fire staff, manage budgets, allocate staff, create productive schedules for students and staff, plan extracurricular activities for students, and effectively communicate with all staff and members of the school community including students and families/guardians.

Teachers

• Will be supported by their principal to provide the highest level of instruction available to all students.
• Will be held accountable by principals to provide effective and innovative instruction, as well as, assist struggling students in a timely and productive manner.
• Will be provided the core curriculum by the state and district; however teachers will have considerable freedom to determine their own classroom pedagogy.
• Will be required to participate in Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s).
• Will be provided with the opportunity to participate in professional development initiatives.
• Will be encouraged to pursue advanced degrees in education such as Masters, Doctorates, National Board Certification, and other specialized certifications.

Energizing the Community and Mobilizing Resources

• The Board and superintendent will build civic capacity to mobilize community resources in support of our children. 
• The efforts will be funded through existing taxpayer funding, institutional support, and in partnership with existing community efforts.  

Durham Public Schools Board of Education Theory of Action

The purpose of this policy is to codify the Durham Public Schools Board of Education’s Theory of Action as a long-term framework for improving student achievement. The Board’s Theory of Action should align with its Vision, Mission, Core Beliefs and Commitments to drive Board and Administration planning, goals, policies, budgets, and actions.

The Board is responsible for adopting policies to align all district systems around its Theory of Action. The Superintendent is responsible for maintaining and improving systemic capacity to achieve the stated goals.

The Board of Education of Durham Public Schools, determined to create a school system to serve the needs of every child, does hereby set forth our theory of action for rapid transformation. This theory of action is based on the beliefs and commitments that we have adopted and presented to our community. We believe that change—significant reform—is needed in DPS to keep these key commitments: Every child will be challenged to achieve at his or her highest capacity; and we will diminish achievement gaps based on race, ethnicity and socio-economic status until they are extinguished. We cannot rest until these commitments are realities. This theory of action is the board’s roadmap for change, and it will guide our work and the work of the school system in the years to come.

Our theory of action is called “MEET the Challenge,” and it embodies five key assumptions about our dynamic community and the families that are moving here, the characteristics of our urban school system, the educational rights of students, the place of public schools within our community, and the nature of work and human motivation. These assumptions are:

Our schools are fortunate to operate in a dynamic, diverse community characterized by prosperous businesses, major universities, an expanding tax base and broad support for public education. Durham is a fast-growing community in a fast-growing region—and yet many of the families moving to this area have not chosen to move to Durham or to send their children to Durham Public Schools. This is especially true of middle-class families who have many choices of where to live and where to send their children to school. We view this as a critical missed opportunity and a call to action.

Our theory of action will ensure that our schools are attractive to the new, young families moving to this region. These families want a strong basic education and much more: They want a rich, innovative curriculum and advanced academic offerings that will prepare their children for a college education, a great job and a fulfilling intellectual life. Our theory of action must account for these families because their active involvement in Durham Public Schools is critical to the success of our schools and our community. We need to take advantage of Durham’s many assets to help us succeed in this work.

Our schools operate in an urban environment characterized by high poverty rates and high student mobility, and our theory of action must account for this reality.

Durham, like all urban communities, has thousands of students living in poverty and an extremely high rate of student mobility. Often students from poor households are concentrated in the same neighborhoods and the same schools. In addition, it is not uncommon for a classroom in some DPS schools to take in five or even 10 new students over the course of a year and to lose that many as well. Wherever students move in Durham, we serve them in their new neighborhood schools. Our theory of action must ensure that all students—regardless of their socio-economic status, their neighborhood, or their mobility within the county—receive the same high level of instruction in each of our schools. We need to ensure that there is consistency of instruction across our district so that every child receives the same educational opportunity and so that a third-grader moving from one school to another mid-year will not find herself behind in her work.

It is a right of every child in DPS to receive an education that will enable him to achieve the minimum goals established by the state of North Carolina—and it is the right of every child to be offered an enriched education that goes far beyond these minimum goals as well.

While there are many troubling aspects about the culture of testing fostered by federal and state law, we fully believe that all of Durham’s children can and should achieve success on the state competency tests. The requirements of these tests are basic educational competencies, and it is a critical, non-negotiable task of DPS to teach our students to achieve these basic competency levels. In fact, we believe each child has a right to be taught to this level of success. At the same time, we believe it is the right of every child in our system to receive an enriched curriculum as well. We do not believe that some students should be drilled repetitively in the basic skills while other students receive this basic education and much more. The right to an equal education in DPS means that every school will have an enriched curriculum. These curricula will differ across schools: One school may offer a Montessori program; another a string orchestral program; a third a dual-immersion language program. But access to advanced academics and a broad elective offerings will be present everywhere.

Durham Public Schools has the key role to play in the education of our students and the achievement of our educational goals. Working alone, we can go a long way towards educating every student to his full potential and we can significantly diminish the achievement gaps. However, for every child to succeed and to fully extinguish the achievement gap will take a full community effort that must include individuals and institutions beyond the schools.

DPS is ready to receive every child who walks through our schoolhouse doors regardless of socio-economic status, previous preparation for school, English language proficiency, health status or level of family support. That is our job, and we do not shirk from it. Our schools are filled with teachers who are prepared day-in and day-out to work with every student regardless of her level and variety of needs. We know, however, that many of our students face challenges outside of school which make it very difficult for them to achieve regardless of the commitment and abilities of even the best teachers. Students who come to school hungry, who have slept in cold, crowded rooms, who have problems with their physical or mental health, who move constantly from one house and one school to another, who have little or no parental support at home—these students need the resources of our entire community to prosper in school. They may need the support of social service agencies, of mental health agencies, of tutoring programs in churches and community centers, of volunteer mentors, of guardians ad litem, of the foster care system, of recreation agencies, and more. To truly extinguish the achievement gaps, the mobilization of our entire community behind our children will be necessary.

The people on the front line in DPS are our teachers. Their role is the crucial role. While we believe we need consistency and equality of curriculum across all of our schools, we also believe that our teachers need to be empowered in order to do their best teaching.

DPS is fortunate to have many excellent teachers. In order to keep our veteran teachers and to attract capable new teachers, we believe it is essential for all of our teachers to feel like they are respected and empowered as professionals, that their views are heard and valued, that within the basic requirements of DPS they are able to exert their own independent, creative abilities to the fullest in their classrooms. There is certainly an important level of extrinsic motivation in all of our work within DPS: Teachers are working, like all employees everywhere, for a paycheck, and they are working to meet outside requirements like the state testing goals as well. But we believe wholeheartedly that most of our teachers are driven by an intrinsic motivation to succeed in educating their students, to be the best teachers they can possibly be. It is a cliché—but a truth nonetheless—to say that teachers don’t teach for the money. The financial rewards of teaching are not great. The intrinsic awards, though, can be enormous, and DPS needs to make sure its teachers are empowered to realize those rewards. An important part of this motivation can involve the support of teachers in going beyond teaching the basic skills required by state testing or the standard course of study. Just as students deserve to receive much more than an education in the basic skills, teachers deserve a chance to teach an enriched curriculum.

The Elements of “MEET the Challenge”

Our theory of action, “MANAGE, EMPOWER, ENERGIZE, and TRANSFORM,” consists of these key elements arising out of our core beliefs and commitments and, subsequently, the assumptions elaborated above. The elements are:

Managing Instruction:

Managing instruction means that the district central office manages the core educational functions of the system in a way that guarantees equality and consistency at every school. There are some important functions that the district must implement, monitor and evaluate in order to ensure that every school is providing the necessary basic education and the necessary enriched curriculum opportunities to every child. No school can be allowed to make an individual decision that will deny any child the right to acquire the basic skills required on state tests or the right to access an enriched curriculum.

Standards:

Managing instruction means that the board and central administration will set standards that each school must meet. These will be academic performance standards, standards for enriched curricular offerings, graduation and promotion standards, and—in the words of the Center for Reform of School Systems, “business process standards, safety standards, student conduct standards, ethical standards, parent and community satisfaction standards” and more. It is the job of the board and central administration to set standards for the district in all important areas. The state of North Carolina has set some basic standards for educational attainment at various grade levels. While these standards are an important minimum requirement, there are many areas in which we believe DPS should be setting much higher—and much broader—standards for our students.

Instructional and curriculum management:

It is the role of the board and central administration to ensure that each school fully implements sufficient curricular offerings founded on the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and designed to promote optimal student achievement and growth for all the students we serve. It is also their job to ensure that the curriculum is aligned to the board’s academic standards. The board and central administration are responsible for professional development of teachers and principals that supports this curriculum, for a comprehensive system of benchmark assessments to evaluate the success of each student in learning the required curriculum, and for an aggressive feedback system that assists principals and teachers to use the benchmark information to improve the performance of each student throughout the year. The central administration is responsible for implementing a thorough, powerful, timely system of data management so that this feedback is available in useful form to every principal and teacher. Further, the administration is responsible for the development and implementation of pacing guides in a format useful to teachers.

In addition to the management of the basic curriculum to meet the standard course of study, the central administration is responsible for ensuring that each school’s curriculum includes significant opportunities for enrichment far beyond the basic skills for every child. This is a critical aspect of managing instruction. The data feedback system developed by the central administration must include standards and measurements regarding implementation of the enriched curriculum as well as the basic skills.

Accountability:

Our theory of action requires that people in the system be held accountable for meeting the standards set by the state and by our district. This accountability includes the Board of Education itself, the superintendent, and every administrator and teacher in the system. Once we have set our standards, it is the job of each of us to ensure that they are met. We ask the public to hold us, the Board of Education, accountable for reaching the district’s standards. We will hold the superintendent accountable for these same standards; and the superintendent will hold every teacher and administrator accountable. As individual schools achieve success in meeting standards, one important consequence will be that these schools will receive more freedom to make decisions at the school level regarding delivery of instruction. Schools that are not meeting achievement standards will be monitored and managed more tightly by the central administration.

Empowering of Principals and Teachers

While district standards, a managed curriculum, pacing guides, benchmarking, systematic data feedback and accountability are crucial to the success of an urban district like ours, we know they are not enough. While our teachers understand the need for equality and consistency of instruction across all of our schools, they want more. Just like every working person, they want opportunities in their jobs for creativity, flexibility, individual inspiration and initiative. In fact, it is the best teachers—the ones with the desire to excel, to inspire and challenge their students—who tend to want this freedom and flexibility the most. We must help them achieve it, or we must lose them.

This is also true of principals. They, too, want to be empowered to take important initiatives to lead the improvement of their schools.

In short, teachers and principals want to be treated like professionals—not like cogs in an instruction machine. Our theory of action includes the empowerment of these professionals. One key: While the curriculum will be managed, teachers will have considerable freedom to determine their own classroom pedagogy. Teachers have their own styles, their own strengths, and individual classes of students have their own needs and personalities. As long as teachers are successful in getting their students to reach district standards of excellence, they will have plenty of room for the pedagogy that suits them and their classes. If a teacher is not succeeding, the principal may feel the need to intervene in classroom pedagogy. But our theory of action rests on the belief that empowered teachers are the best teachers, and empowerment starts with pedagogy.

There are other ways to increase the empowerment of teachers as well. These include especially the creation of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) of teachers so that they can work together to exchange teaching ideas, coach and mentor new teachers, and develop common lesson plans and common assessments. Teachers often work in isolation, and it is critical that they have the same opportunities as other professionals to work in a creative team environment.

We can also empower teachers by providing them with accessible, excellent professional development opportunities. We can support their work towards pinnacles of teaching excellence like National Board Certification. We can offer them opportunities for advanced graduate study, for AIG certification, AVID certification, IB certification, ESL certification and more. We can continue to partner with our local universities to offer high level professional development that is affordable to teachers as well.

In addition, empowerment of teachers to teach depends on strong administrative support for a safe and orderly teaching and learning environment in the school. Training of teachers for classroom management, effective mentoring of new teachers, and the creation of a culture of respect and order within the school is essential if teachers are to be empowered to do their best work. This culture of respect also means that teachers should have a voice in the critical decisions affecting their schools. While final decision-making authority rests with principals, empowering teachers means giving them the opportunity to participate with their principal in important school decisions.

Just as the best teachers are empowered, the same is true of principals. We are all familiar with the energetic, creative, driven principals who lead their schools to success. In fact, we believe this is a primary indicator of school success. As long as a school is meeting high district standards, the principal of that school should be given considerable freedom to manage most of the work of that school. She should have the lead role in hiring staff, managing the school budget, deciding on staff allocations, scheduling, and planning extra-curricular activities. All schools and all teachers, however, must reach high district standards, or an administrative intervention will be necessary. And even the most empowered principals must be sure that their schools are effectively teaching the required basic curriculum and the mandated enriched curriculum.

Energizing the Community and Mobilizing Resources

As stated in our key assumptions above, DPS can go a long way towards helping all kids achieve and diminishing the achievement gaps just through the dedicated work of our teachers and staff. However, to give our children their maximum opportunities and to truly extinguish the achievement gaps, we will need the support of many individuals and the key institutions in our community.

Our theory of action for includes the mobilization of community resources in support of our children. This is often called building civic capacity, and it is a key element in the future success of our school system and our students. Some of these resources would be taxpayer funding for programs in our schools—like smaller class sizes, up-to-date technology for our students and teachers, support for our program of teacher mentoring, a longer school day, and more. Some of these resources would be provided for our students by institutions other than our schools—sometimes in cooperation with DPS and sometimes independently.

One of the most important contributions a mobilized community could make to the success of our students would be the development of a comprehensive system of early childhood education. By the time our students arrive at our schoolhouse door for kindergarten, we see vast differences in their readiness to learn. Some students have large vocabularies, for example, while some have few words at their command. If we are going to extinguish the achievement gap, we’ve got to start before our children ever walk into a kindergarten class.

Other critical community resources would include after-school programs and tutoring in community centers and churches, health care including mental health care, school-based health clinics, individual mentoring, and providing food to our hungry children and housing to our homeless children. A hungry, homeless child is likely to have a very difficult time achieving in school despite the best efforts of teachers. If we are serious about extinguishing the achievement gap—if we really mean it—we must work to mobilize the resources of our entire community behind our students’ need. 

This work is the responsibility of our Board of Education and our superintendent. We must mobilize the business community, the great universities located in Durham, the churches, the civic clubs, the agencies of city and county government, the groups that comprise our county’s System of Care, the taxpayers and individual volunteers to ensure our success.

Transforming the District

DPS already has in place many of the individual elements of MEET the Challenge. We have some of the key elements of managing instruction in place such as academic standards, benchmark testing, data feedback and pacing guides. We have some of the key elements of empowerment in place such as considerable freedom for teachers to choose their own pedagogy, and we are now initiating district-wide Professional Learning Communities. We have some of the key elements of resource mobilization in place such as the support of many churches, the universities, new business partners and many government agencies.

Still, these elements have not cohered into an effective whole. Our aim is to focus the work of our board and administration on these key aspects of our work through the articulation of this theory of action for change. Once we have focused on them, we need to implement them with great faithfulness across every school in the district. We must bend every effort towards the work of implementation—whether it be powerfully effective use of benchmark data or powerfully effective work by the Professional Learning Communities of teachers or powerfully effective marshalling of the System of Care to support our neediest students.

We have core beliefs and commitments we must live by—and live up to. We have a theory of action for change that reflects what we know about our community, what we believe about the rights of our students, and what we believe about the motivation of human beings to do their best work. We charge our superintendent and his administration to bring us policy recommendations, budgets and programs to support the reform envisioned in this theory of action for change. We charge our superintendent, as well, with the consistent, faithful, universal and effective implementation of this work across every school in Durham Public Schools.

The Board will review and readopt its Theory of Action at least every three years, with the first review in August 2011.

Legal Reference(s)
Adopted: October 23, 2008