Starting a NIC: Resource Round-Up

One of my goals for attending the Summit this year (that I wrote about last week) was to bring back an understanding of starting a NIC. What I’d like to do here is compile my notes, link resources, and highlight key ideas from the sessions. I’ve attempted to categorize them roughly into foundational/big ideas, what to do first, and then later considerations.

Foundational/Big Ideas

1. Formation of the network initiation team

Develop a theory of practice improvement
Understand the problem of practice – be there to observe, user-centered – take the test! What actually touches students as they learn?
Decide on a common and measurable aim (craft aim statement, more detail below)
Specify high leverage drivers (root cause analysis tools)
Attend to power relations (particularly supervisor/evaluative relationships) and other contextual politics
Do we have people from outside education?
Learning to use improvement research methods: the NIC team needs to support each other in building common practices. everyone gets the book!
Get an office staff person – someone to book rooms, schedule site visits, manage calendars, order coffee… this is a key role.

2. Focus on the Problem, or face “solution-itis.” Resource: Carnegie blog post

Solution-itis = get more enamored of a particular approach or philosophy with an unclear way that this will address the problem
The problem is the “anchor”
Not all questions are worthy of inquiry! (Ex. Having students turn homework in on time is not a meaningful problem to work on.
What is the unit of analysis? Okay to have it be one teacher’s classroom.

3. Crafting a “Network narrative”

Metro-map activity – help people talk about how they got here
Narrative as a way to mobilize people for the work (it’s not always just about the problem)
Networks are about influence, not control: Who we are and why we exist must be compelling

4. Thinking about Meetings

Improvement science as a social practice (Tony Bryk, opening keynote) – the meetings are where the network is instantiated
Meeting in person at first (commonly a multi-day summer institute) gives people opportunities to connect, around more than just the focus of the work – give people money to go out to dinner in inter-organizational groups
Schedule regular times, like weekly google hangouts
Use meeting protocols – this prevents one person from always speaking for a group or those traditionally empowered from dominating/controlling the conversation
Provide actuation spaces. We generally do not have problems that can be solved by more information. People need time and space to make sense together.

5. Building a Measurement System for Improvement

Evaluate short term needs, long term goals
Measurement is attached to the change process
Noncognitive measures resource from the Chicago Consortium on School Research
Traditional research methods (video/audio recording + coding) vs. 5 minute survey
Limit the amount of data

6. Role of the content expert

Bring in information to guide action once the problem is defined, ex. bring in literature
Balance between research, capacity building, and implementation
Role is different – need to provide opportunity where experts want to get involved (i.e. they get something out of it) but where they get on board with the direction it’s going and not just where they want it to go

7. Role of the network hub

Everyone needs to learn to use improvement research methods, but it’s the role of the network hub will be to support network members
Lots of strands running
Do the analytic work
Attend to social motivation

8. Leadership thoughts

You invent the work as you do it – being open about the complexity
A paradoxical mindset – engage with opposing interpretations, suspend judgement
Be eclectic about methods
Attend to both social pieces (facilitating a meeting) and technical pieces (cycles, due dates, action steps)
“Definitely incomplete and possibly wrong” mantra
This is the ANTITHESIS of strategic planning!

What to do first

Get into the schools!

Bias towards action. Get out and do something. Anything that gets done is going to be incomplete and partially wrong, so get started.
Test something – hunches, theories, ideas. Scale comes later.
This test might just be with one classroom – have initiation team be there

While you’re there,

Listen. This is a social practice. It’s about people and relationships first.
Listen to students!
Ask questions to understand the problem of practice

Research has to be rapid: 90 day cycles

First 30 days – be user-centered
Next 30 days – what does the literature say? Pareto 80/20 principle. focus on good theory with empirical warrant.
Last 30 days – PDSA begins – small interventions. where did it work, for whom, and under what circumstances? Report out

Later considerations

Build structures for local ownership

The role of the network hub may change over time. Think about a gradual transfer of leadership – building the agenda may be housed at the university at first, but eventually want to transfer this to the school.
Sometimes, get out of the way and let teams do their work

Build cross-team connections

make the network visible, reiterate the aim statement
find a common language, be sensitive to and aware of local politics
develop team norms, ex. assume everyone is doing the best they can
measure network health, ex. social network analysis – quick survey after every meeting with simple list of people asking who they have interacted with and how – trackable over time

Build “intervention bundles”

Everyone tried different things… what shows promise? How can these be combined?

Other resources

R+P Collaboratory webinar series – I have to go back and watch these! They cover topics such as “getting a partnership started” to “negotiating roles”.

Obviously, the Carnegie blog has a ton of resources, but they specifically have a series on starting a NIC. The first one by Jennifer Lin Russell offers a framework and cool diagram. Also coming soon in article format: Russell, Bryk, Dolle, Gomez, LeMahieu, Grunow – A framework for initiation of NICs, Teachers College Record (in press)

Org Theory Reading Reflection 2: Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages

From https://thosewhoteach.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/blameteachers.jpg

This week’s assignment was to choose one article to summarize and analyze.

Ingersoll, R. M. (2001). Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages: An Organizational Analysis, American Educational Research Journal. 38(3): 499-534.

Having not yet taken Intro to Quantitative Methods, I still feel like I don’t quite grasp the full picture of articles like this because I don’t understand all the methods, but it helps that the article’s argument is clear and laid out logically from the literature review. Ingersoll articulates how his research is a departure from what has typically been done, which has been studies of the characteristics of teachers, versus a study from an organizational perspective. Essentially, he asks whether there are organizational conditions of schools associated with turnover. He uses data from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the supplement, Teacher Followup Survey (TFS). Importantly, the TFS is a subset, those who had moved from or left their teaching jobs, were contacted after 12 months later to fill out a second questionnaire, along with a representative subset of teachers who stayed in their teaching jobs.

Some key findings:

Hiring difficulties were not primarily due to shortages in qualified teachers.
Demand for new teachers more often due to “preretirement turnover.”
School-to-school differences in turnover is significant: “Schools that do report difficulties in filling their openings are almost twice as likely to have above-average turnover rates” (p. 515)
Private schools have higher turnover rates than public schools.
Predictors of turnover, after controlling for teacher characteristics, are likely to be teachers under 30 or over 50.
In public schools, higher raters of turnover in high-poverty schools as compared to more affluent schools.

In particular, I liked the approach he took of distinguishing between “movers” and “leavers” because both have an impact on the schools they leave. I will say that quantitative articles always leave me hanging when they make interesting conclusions: but did you talk to any teachers? It feels like a first step in the study but an incomplete story in the process of understanding what is happening.

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Carnegie Summit Learning + Reaction 6

If you had asked me about standardized tests 5 years ago, I would have vehemently dismissed them as the wrong direction for education. While I still resist the Fitbit model of constant quantification of progress and self, this week I heard and read about compelling ways that data can be used to build professional cultures, see and support individuals, and the design of better systems.

One of the sessions at the Carnegie Summit that I attended was a panel on Doctoral programs that embed improvement science into their curriculum, including the program at UCLA with Dr. Louis Gomez, whom we heard from a few weeks ago. He said two things that struck me. First, in working on problems the same way, you build organizational culture. This is echoed in Halverson (2010) “Over time, teacher concerns about teacher evaluation seemed to ease as the principal made a significant time commitment to help teachers make sense of the MAP data reports in terms of math instruction. The Walker principal used MAP data in faculty and staff meetings to create a common vocabulary for Walker teachers to discuss student learning.” (p. 141) To me, this is what data can do for schools when it is approached from a mindset of possibility rather than fear. Further, I heard more than one person at the conference remark that using data was allowing their teachers to have conversations about instruction never possible before. As Halverson quotes of the Malcolm school leaders, “The beauty of data is that we can have these conversations” (p.144). Second, Dr. Gomez stated that improvement leadership is social justice leadership, precisely because it builds common culture focused on improvement for all kids. It changes the system to yield better outcomes rather than treating the symptoms of a system that doesn’t work.

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Pre-conference Reflections (or would that be PROflections?)

Here I am at the Carnegie Summit. What am I hoping to learn and come away with?

This reflection ends up just being more questions. This started last fall when I read the paper on Networked Improvement Communities, and it felt like it was a roadmap to how I want to work with educational systems. So I’ve come to the conference to learn more about it, hear what people are doing and what they’re thinking about, and find out how I can maybe get involved.

If I had to pick a content interest that I have read about and am interested in it would be the development of a strong teacher workforce, and how districts can use a framework like that to reflect on where they are focusing their resources to drive innovation. But in my role as a researcher, how can I work with districts and the improvement science model? What do improvement scientists need from researchers?

One specific aspect I want to understand are examples of measurement that practitioners are using other than test scores and aside from post-measures like retention rate or success rate. What can I measure in real time?

Sessions I’m looking forward to:
Pursuing Excellence: An In-Depth Study of the School District of Menomenee Falls
Preparing the Next Generation of Leaders as Improvers and Stewards of the Profession
A Powerful Engine for Change: Applying the Model for Improvement
From Aim to Action: Developing a Theory of Practice Improvement