Ensuring the Staying Power of a School Improvement Initiative

It's an age-old story: A school district takes on a new initiative to address some pressing need; the effort seems to be working; then a new leader comes in or the funding changes, and soon the successful initiative is dropped as the district moves on to the next initiative.

In the Rutland-Windsor Supervisory Union in southern Vermont, the solution to this common problem was as simple as it is rare: Local leaders wrote the initiative into policy, ensuring its endurance and long-term impact. District administrators, school principals, and teachers had been so impressed with the initiative -- a new model for supervising and evaluating teachers, which they'd developed with guidance from WestEd's Susan Villani -- they decided to take the steps necessary to ensure its staying power.

"We essentially implemented a textbook-perfect staff development plan to create school improvement," says Frank Perotti, who began the initiative process with Villani shortly after he became the district's superintendent in 2004.

At that time, district and school administrators and teachers were unsatisfied with how teachers were being evaluated and supervised. As Perotti recalls, administrators were following a traditional, top-down approach that involved minimal observations of classrooms. Teachers were evaluated in a manner "based solely on contract language that had more to do with teacher discipline than anything resembling supervision and development," says Perotti. The approach was doing nothing to foster the growth and development of teachers in the district.

Rutland-Windsor's leaders began talking with Villani, who has more than 30 years experience helping teachers and administrators become more effective instructors and leaders. Her particular expertise in mentoring, collaborative coaching, and induction is captured in a recent book coauthored with WestEd's Kathy Dunne, Mentoring New Teachers Through Collaborative Coaching: Linking Teacher and Student Learning.

The book and a companion facilitation guide offer research-based insights on how mentors can understand the needs of new teachers, build strong relationships with them, and coach them through an ongoing process of improving their teaching practice. In her work with the Rutland-Windsor district, Villani applied many of the same principles and processes, but extended them to include the supervision and evaluation of all teachers, from new to experienced.

The process in Rutland-Windsor began when the district brought together a wide-ranging group of stakeholders to form a Supervision and Evaluation Committee. Rather than following the typical approach of administrators -- sometimes in negotiation with the teacher's union -- defining how to supervise and evaluate teachers, Rutland-Windsor's leaders chose to have this broadly representative committee create a new model from the ground up.

The change process included many layers. The first was simply developing a knowledge base and gathering information. The committee reviewed research and best practices and talked with constituents. Villani guided them in learning about peer coaching (also known as collaborative coaching), a process that promotes educators' reflection on their practice. As part of her emphasis on building reflective practice in the district, Villani helped the committee become familiar with Charlotte Danielson's A Framework for Teaching, which gave the district a tool for examining teaching and learning.

Building on what they were learning with Villani, committee members created a new supervision and evaluation model for the district. The model includes a mix of peer coaching with some more traditional supervision and evaluation. For any teacher who is new to the district, the teacher's principal conducts standard observation cycles to evaluate progress. But for teachers with more than two years experience in the district, the principal observes and evaluates them only every third year. During the years when teachers are not required to be formally observed by the principal, they have alternative options for being supervised and evaluated. Many have chosen peer coaching.

Villani also has helped set up a mentoring program for teachers who are new to the district. She has trained experienced faculty to become mentors and worked directly with pairs of mentors and the new teachers they were mentoring.

In 2005, the second year of her work with the district, Villani began leading professional development sessions to introduce the entire staff to the emerging model and the elements behind it, such as peer coaching and Charlotte Danielson's A Framework for Teaching. Staff responded positively, but they were skeptical about the model being sustainable over time. Villani recalls their skepticism as based on "a history of programs and models that were dropped when new administrators assumed leadership." In response, the Supervision and Evaluation Committee members created a model that would become policy and outlast any changes in administrative leadership.

This same year, helping to build more support for the emerging model, the district began piloting the peer coaching component. Villani provided professional development for teachers who volunteered to try out peer coaching. One teacher, who had initially expressed cynicism about "another program that everyone would have to learn and then would be put on the shelf," reflected at the end of the year that this had been "the best supervision and evaluation I have had in my 35-year teaching career." The committee used feedback from this pilot year to continue refining its supervision and evaluation model for the district.

During the 2006-07 school year, Rutland-Windsor's school board accepted Superintendent Perotti's recommendation that this new model become the district's official policy, thereby assuring its continuity through changing administrations.

"What is unique about this process is that it's now part of the culture of the district, and -- regardless of leadership changes -- it will continue to bring improved practice to the district," says Perotti. "We took the time and committed the resources to do it right."

Early in the process, the committee and district leaders realized that they would need more than a new model and new policy -- they also needed to develop long-term capacity within the district to carry on the work beyond Villani's assistance. To ensure staying power, the Supervision and Evaluation Committee set up a train-the-trainers process that began in 2007. Since then, Villani has been working with district trainers to build their skills and knowledge so they can continue to provide professional development for the district's mentors and peer coaches for years to come.

The district's commitment to building a lasting professional development model and infrastructure has already undergone one significant test: Frank Perotti left Rutland-Windsor in 2007 to become superintendent in a larger district in Vermont. So far, the supervision and evaluation model that he helped bring into being remains strong. One of its strongest advocates has been Karen Trimboli, Principal of Ludlow Elementary School, who was instrumental in securing funding for Villani to continue working with trainers and with the rest of the staff who had not yet been trained at the time of Perotti's departure.

Rutland-Windsor's current superintendent, Judy Pullinen, also is very supportive of the district's supervision and evaluation approach, and has committed the majority of her 2007-08 professional development budget to ongoing peer coaching and mentoring support.

"I've been impressed with the enthusiasm and dedication to the new supervision model by both teachers and administration. It's obvious that much time and effort has gone into this model, and that the staff want it to be successful," says Pullinen. "We plan to carry it forward, and we will continue to use it as part of our professional development process."

Lily French, speech and language therapist, also has noted the dedication to this model throughout the district. "We began with the vague knowledge that something was wrong with our supervision and evaluation methods. Four years later, we have a policy manual approved by all school boards in our district and used by all administrators; a fully trained staff actively using peer coaching and mentoring (even the early resisters are excited); and a district full of professionals talking to each other about their teaching practice. Isolation in the classroom is a thing of the past."