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What Are the Building Blocks of Standards-Based Reform?
The Building Blocks Initiative seeks to build the capacity of school and district leadership teams to substantially improve student academic achievement. It attempts to do so by addressing, in new ways, two imperatives of school improvement that are not being (and have in fact never been) successfully met:
- Converting isolated, effective school improvement strategies into practical, efficient resources and tools. We are working to create one of the nation's most comprehensive, user-oriented resource bases of successful school and district organizational strategies to implement higher academic standards and produce better student achievement.
- Using those new tools to generate more effective organizational-change practices in schools on a broad scale. We use Building Blocks research to inform all of our policy, advocacy, research, and school-improvement services, in an effort to embed those effective practices into everything we do.
The inaugural group of Building Blocks "Vanguard" schools and districts was named in 2001 by a nine-member panel of judges, all Massachusetts educators and school reform experts. Vanguard models were selected based on their over-performance on two-year averaged MCAS data compared with other schools serving student enrollments with similar demographics; the coherence and promise of their articulated strategies; evidence of district support and scale-up beyond a single school; and evidence that these change models were not dependent upon factors specific to that school. New cohorts have been named each year since then, except in 2004 when we performed a reassessment of the first three cohorts.
More than 300 educators and other experts in school reform have helped to shape the research and technical assistance programs that have emerged.
The Building Blocks of Standards-Based Reform
The Initiative is organized around six basic "building blocks" of standards-based reform. They are:
- Building Block I – Curriculum and Culture
Implementing a higher standards curriculum and creating a culture focused on achievement.
A good curriculum has meaningful standards for learning and cannot exist without school culture that does not recognize that the two go hand-in-hand. Curriculum alignment with standards is vital; but cultural alignment around a shared goal of higher expectations must synchronize. Building Blocks research focuses on schools and districts that have successfully upgraded their English, math, and science curricula to match state frameworks, have built broad consensus around raising expectations for student learning, and have aligned resources in support of these goals.
- Building Block II – Effective Teaching
Higher standards teaching through strategic approaches to improving teaching capacity.
Developing high-capacity teaching requires attention in a comprehensive, coherent way to the entire teacher career cycle, to teachers, roles within a school, and to the ways teachers are supported and evaluated for their success in helping students attain the higher achievement standards now expected of them. Building Blocks research focuses on schools and districts that have implemented standards-based professional development, coaching, and teacher leadership structures.
- Building Block III – Effective Use of Data
Using data and assessment to shape teaching and drive higher learning standards.
It is important that schools evaluate the effectiveness of their work and provide the information needed to strengthen them and help individual students. Successful schools use data well. Focus: schools and districts that enable staff to create and use assessments, not only to systematically analyze results, but to shape instructional approaches.
- Building Block IV – Targeted Student Intervention
Providing academic support programs for students who need extra help.
Because of the rigor and quality of curriculum and instruction, some students' needs will not be met through regular school-day programming. Effective intervention strategies must be put in to place to provide more time and different forms of attention to those students who need the extra help.
- Building Block V: Organization of Leadership
Organization of leadership can impact how successfully a school or district implements its reform efforts.
Administrative structures and operating habits at the district and schools levels support and are well aligned with achievement goals. Well-defined central office and school leadership teams support continuous improvement in the district's pursuit of all of these Benchmarks.
- Building Block VI: Allocation of Resources: Money, Time, and Staff
The district's (and school's) high-expectations, standards-based orientation is reflected in the ways it secures and allocates key resources: money, time, and staff.
The district or school pro-actively and successfully seeks to generate revenue and create external partnerships to specifically support its achievement goals. Moreover, a school or districts decisions about where its resources are best allocated, can meaningfully impact the success of any reform effort.
Many effective-school programs include other components, such as parent and community involvement, safety issues, etc. We elected to focus on these six – curriculum, teaching, assessment, intervention, use of resources, and leadership – because together, they directly shape every student's educational experience in school. Parent involvement and safety are important, even vital, but they are not principal elements of this research in the same way that the other six are.
Emerging Themes From the Research
Our analysis of the Vanguard models is producing a range of observations about effective standards-based reform that is manifested in the structure of the online database of effective strategies. Among the conclusions are that:
- Consistent, committed use of data to inform decision-making about budget issues, time and scheduling, curriculum, and student intervention is one of – and perhaps the most important – hallmark of effective schools.
- Standards-based reform is creating new leadership roles for teachers out of sheer demand for help with curriculum alignment, coaching, and mentoring.
- Progressive reforms such as inquiry-based education, interdisciplinary curricula, and cooperate learning can lead to higher test scores if those reforms are conducted within a culture focused on higher student achievement – and if the tests measure real skills.
Finally, Building Blocks researchers seek out a wide range of "artifacts" from Vanguard models – documents, schedules, budgets, and other working tools that can be posted on the Building Blocks website for downloading by educators in other schools and districts.
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