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Voices in Urban Education
Archives
High School Redesign
VUE Number 8, Summer 2005
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
Tackling Instruction Head-On:
The San Diego Strategy
By John DeVore
John DeVore is high school reform administrator of San Diego City Schools.
> Author’s Biography
By developing districtwide curriculum maps and assessments and engaging teachers in creating units of study, San Diego has attempted to strengthen the rigor and reduce the variability in high school instruction.
San Diego City Schools has earned a national reputation for focusing on improving instruction in every classroom. Data suggest that these efforts have paid off in improved performance at the elementary school level. As in most cities, high school performance in San Diego has continued to lag.
As part of Carnegie Corporation of New York's Schools for a New Society initiative, a seven-city effort to redesign high schools, San Diego has elected to build on its foundation of instructional improvement and to focus its high school redesign on teaching and learning, concentrating initially on the ninth grade in each of ten high schools. The district created curriculum maps – linked to district standards – and end-of-course assessments. The district also organized teams of teachers in each school to develop units of study, guided by the maps, that are aimed at enabling students to demonstrate that they have achieved the standards.
VUE editor Robert Rothman spoke with John DeVore about his district's instructional-improvement efforts, the successes and challenges it has faced, and its plans for the future.
Much of high school reform has focused on structure: creating small schools and breaking down large schools into smaller units. You've focused on instructional reform in San Diego. Why did you choose that route?
When [former superintendent] Alan Bersin got to San Diego City Schools in 1998, he developed a theory of action that revolved around building instructional leadership of the principal and building the capacity of school sites. It was a theory of action that instruction was going to be the way to improve achievement. Building off of that, what we attempted to do, using Carnegie money,was create structures that would allow us to get at deepening the instruction. So, first, it was about continuing that theory of action.
Then it was about building teams of teachers so that people were not in isolation – so that there was a lot of participation by teachers. Teachers were part of the design of the units of study while they were being framed and calibrated at the district level.
Alan's Blueprint for Success had a lot of positive impact in the elementary schools, a little bit in middle schools, and almost none in the high schools. Our theory of action was that the reason it didn't take in the high schools was that it didn't really talk about standards; it talked about strategies. We needed to get more rigor into instruction on a day-to-day basis. One of the big needs I saw the first six months I was here was that instruction was not rigorous. The second thing we saw was that every teacher had a different approach. We felt we needed to lead the English 9 teachers in the design of rigorous instruction that would help kids demonstrate proficiency in gradelevel standards.
We tried to bring all the English 9 teachers to the table – we got them a common prep period – to design how to approach teaching toward a standard. And they created a common road map at the school site for teaching toward each of the standards.
Archives
High School Redesign
VUE Number 8, Summer 2005
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
Tackling Instruction Head-On:
The San Diego Strategy
By John DeVore
John DeVore is high school reform administrator of San Diego City Schools.
> Author’s Biography
By developing districtwide curriculum maps and assessments and engaging teachers in creating units of study, San Diego has attempted to strengthen the rigor and reduce the variability in high school instruction.
San Diego City Schools has earned a national reputation for focusing on improving instruction in every classroom. Data suggest that these efforts have paid off in improved performance at the elementary school level. As in most cities, high school performance in San Diego has continued to lag.
As part of Carnegie Corporation of New York's Schools for a New Society initiative, a seven-city effort to redesign high schools, San Diego has elected to build on its foundation of instructional improvement and to focus its high school redesign on teaching and learning, concentrating initially on the ninth grade in each of ten high schools. The district created curriculum maps – linked to district standards – and end-of-course assessments. The district also organized teams of teachers in each school to develop units of study, guided by the maps, that are aimed at enabling students to demonstrate that they have achieved the standards.
VUE editor Robert Rothman spoke with John DeVore about his district's instructional-improvement efforts, the successes and challenges it has faced, and its plans for the future.
Much of high school reform has focused on structure: creating small schools and breaking down large schools into smaller units. You've focused on instructional reform in San Diego. Why did you choose that route?
When [former superintendent] Alan Bersin got to San Diego City Schools in 1998, he developed a theory of action that revolved around building instructional leadership of the principal and building the capacity of school sites. It was a theory of action that instruction was going to be the way to improve achievement. Building off of that, what we attempted to do, using Carnegie money,was create structures that would allow us to get at deepening the instruction. So, first, it was about continuing that theory of action.
Then it was about building teams of teachers so that people were not in isolation – so that there was a lot of participation by teachers. Teachers were part of the design of the units of study while they were being framed and calibrated at the district level.
Alan's Blueprint for Success had a lot of positive impact in the elementary schools, a little bit in middle schools, and almost none in the high schools. Our theory of action was that the reason it didn't take in the high schools was that it didn't really talk about standards; it talked about strategies. We needed to get more rigor into instruction on a day-to-day basis. One of the big needs I saw the first six months I was here was that instruction was not rigorous. The second thing we saw was that every teacher had a different approach. We felt we needed to lead the English 9 teachers in the design of rigorous instruction that would help kids demonstrate proficiency in gradelevel standards.
We tried to bring all the English 9 teachers to the table – we got them a common prep period – to design how to approach teaching toward a standard. And they created a common road map at the school site for teaching toward each of the standards.
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