How to Improve Education at Scale

The heavy use of data for accountability in K–12 schools, particularly excessive high-stakes tests, has left many educators wary and even sometimes fearful about how a laser focus on numbers can impact their work in negative ways. Data has often been used not to improve teaching and learning but to judge and compare students and teachers in high-pressure environments, according to Kathy Boudett, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As the director of the Data Wise Project, Boudett and colleagues have long helped educators around the world use the Data Wise improvement process with the goal of better understanding and using data to create equitable schools where all students can thrive. Now, a new book, co-authored by Adam Parrott-Sheffer, Carmen Williams, and David Rease Jr., and Boudett and published by Harvard Education Press, expands the effort, with guidance and tools for leaders who support schools at the system level. System Wise: Continuous Instructional Improvement at Scale, includes a newly updated Data Wise framework which can be used by educators at the school and system level.

Boudett recently shared tips for making improvements across a school system:

1. Take a humble approach. 
   Leaders who are “system wise” acknowledge the problems that exist in their school districts and the need to get better, and they also recognize that teachers are closest to the learners that everyone is trying to serve well and give those teachers the necessary space to use their expertise, explains Boudett. This work is not about leaders at the system level sharing their wisdom and expecting others to follow, she says.
2. “Cultivate the soil” by creating the space and conditions for all teams to be successful.  
   School-based staff need to know that their efforts are not part of a compliance exercise and that district leaders trust them. They need resources and protected time carved out of their schedules to gather evidence with others in their school and access to experts who can assist them with analyzing data and developing strategies for improving practice. If a team is trying to boost its students’ writing skills, for example, it might be important for teachers to have access to a literacy coach for strategies, explains Boudett. Educators can examine existing data, such as student writing scores, but they will also need time to collect more nuanced evidence  from their students as part of their inquiry work.
3. Build a culture committed to equity and improvement. 
   The “ACE” habits of mind originally identified in Data Wise are every bit as important at the system-level as they are for schools. Developing these three habits promotes equitable collaborative data inquiry work and supports advancement in student learning and outcomes. The habits include:
   • A: A shared commitment to action, assessment, and adjustment allows educators to do experiential learning, to learn from their mistakes, and to remain goal oriented even during times of challenge or crisis. (Leaders are encouraged to expect and plan for the unexpected.)
   • C: Intentional collaboration focuses on relationship building, shared leadership, and doing work with others, as well as bringing all voices to the table, including those at the margins.
   • E: Relentless focus on evidence means leaders set aside their initial gut reactions, biases, and opinions, and consider many types of data with a view to making evidence-based inquiry work a part of everyday culture, system wide. 
4. Be the change you hope to see. 
   Leaders should bring a vision of coherence and symmetry to learning experiences, as well as model the change they wish to see in their schools. Boudett and co-authors compare the symmetrical work of scaling up improvement at a system-wise organization to a fern whose leaves have repeated patterns throughout the plant. For instance, just as school-based staff focus on analyzing their own practice for clues about why student data looks the way it does, then central office staff such as principal supervisors might look at what they are doing – or not doing – that may be leading to the performance of principals, explains Boudett. Places where everybody is in charge of somebody else’s learning can create “some really nice symmetry,” she says. “As a teacher, I’m both a person that is facilitating learning and I’m the one whose learning is being facilitated,” through professional development, for example.
5. Be aware of initiative fatigue and pay attention to dimensions of scale. 
   A “system wise” approach requires leaders to manage a significant change process and cultural shift in schools, and there may be resistance to a process that can be messy, challenging, and hard work, says Boudett. Educators may also have fatigue about new initiatives and approaches because of challenges related to scale, where success in the past has been measured solely by quantity versus other dimensions such as: depth, sustainability, spread, shift, and evolution. System-level leaders need to understand these different dimensions of scale and be intentional about how and when to use each one.
6. Practice radical inclusivity. 
   Leaders who are “system wise” understand the power of hearing lots of different perspectives about a problem, including voices across all levels of the system and community. By listening to people who are looking at problems from different angles, including those who may have been historically unheard or marginalized, leaders can develop a better sense of both how and why things are the way they are in schools and how they need to change.

There is a lot of vulnerability in “data wise” and “system wise” work. It’s “like stepping onto ice,” explains Boudett. “We ask people at every level to be willing to look at evidence about their learners that might break their heart, to look at their own practice and realize that actually, the things that I've been doing that I thought were serving students may be actively harming somebody. And then to tell others about that. That’s why building the culture is so important. Educators need to know that if they step onto that ice, it will hold. And the whole community will benefit from their courage.”