WEBVTT

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My name is Wendy Robinson, and
I am the assistant director

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of professional development in
Heartland Area Education Agency,

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here in Iowa, and one of
my primary functions is

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to help coordinate
our instructional

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decision-making project.

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In Iowa, we use the term
Instructional Decision Making,

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where in many other parts of the
country, that terminology is RTI

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or Response to Instruction.

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We think about having
three phases.

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We think about a commitment
and infrastructure phase.

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So what we recommend
is that for a full year

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that each building would send
a building leadership team

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to professional learning
to learn

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about the infrastructure
planning that they need to do,

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to think about all of the
questions that they would need

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to and the planning that they
would need to do to be able

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to start implementing
this in a year.

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We found without
the planning phase,

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we had very low implementation

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and we had very little
integrity among many

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of the things we were
trying to implement.

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One of the steps we had
them do is that they had

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to create a constituent
chart and they had,

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each person on the building
leadership team, had to identify

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who were the people that they
were to go back and communicate

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with and whose views they
would also bring back

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when they were making decisions.

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We found if we didn't do
that, what happened was

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after a year you had a
small group of people

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who had amazing conversations,
who made amazing decisions

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about kids, but they never
brought their colleagues along.

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When we are engaging in
this work, what we are going

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to say is that it's going
to really truly be based

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on the kids' data, so that you
could be possibly a second-grade

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teacher and you may get no
additional support if the data

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in your classroom would suggest
that your kids don't need

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that level of support.

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That is a very different thought
process, and it's easy to agree

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to until you actually see
that practical ramifications.

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That was something
that we really needed

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to bring Heartland
staff in to do,

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and we as Heartland
staff figured out,

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by telling other people's
stories was how we would go

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about doing it.

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For example, a school district
always had summer school

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and all grade levels
had access to it.

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Well, they started looking at,
well, was it worth the money,

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what were they getting
out of the summer school,

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and the budget had been cut.

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So the decision got made through
the building leadership team

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that only one grade level
would get their summer school.

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It turned out to be
the second-grade class,

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and there were 22 students
who really needed the help

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and they had the highest need.

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But what was interesting was,
the implications that had,

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because that meant that only
certain teachers could teach

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summer school; they
had to be trained

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in the instructional
techniques that the student had.

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With the support,
though, from an outside

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and more neutral party, they
were able to weather that storm.

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And the "So what?" of all that is 
you talk about these 22 kids

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who came for eight weeks,
three hours a day,

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very targeted toward
their needs.

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By the end of third grade, 15
out of the 22 were on track.

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Think about the power of that,
even if it wasn't your students.

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Districts get very good at
collecting the screening data,

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and they get good at sorting
kids based on the data.

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Where they struggle is
the instructional match.

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We have developed
very practical,

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reasonable, doable ways.

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One that we just tend to
call is our Four-Box method

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in the area of reading.

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The first thing we would
ask is, "Are they accurate

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at their grade level?"

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If the student is not accurate,

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the inaccurate kids would all
land in an instructional box.

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Now, within that box, we realize
that it could be basic decoding,

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it could be sight words, or it
could even be multisyllabic.

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There is another group of kids
who are very accurate readers,

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but they are not automatic
or effortless readers.

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Sorting even between an accurate

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and inaccurate are
two very different

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instructional responses.

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Now you could ask yourself,
"Do they read and understand?"

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or checking into their
comprehension skills,

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and you could dig deeper there.

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Once we got teachers
to understand that,

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they would even start to look
for those patterns and kids

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on a daily basis
and not just wait

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for the benchmarking
data three times a year.

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And now you've got teachers to
start to be more diagnostic.

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One concept that we found was
very powerful was the concept

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of something called
the Data Day.

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And what we encouraged our
administrators to do was

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to set these within a week

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after that the building
had screened all the kids

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and collected the
benchmark data.

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The primary focus is to get
each of the classroom teachers

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to look at their class, to
look at the instructional needs

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of their students, and to
be able to shift resources,

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to change instructional
strategies for kids,

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or to identify if there
were kids who were on track

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but now seem to be starting
to need more support

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in terms of looking at that.

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As schools get very good at
this, and this is once again one

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of my practical indicators
that we're there,

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is that we only spend a
certain percentage of time

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on our struggling kids.

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And they are starting to ask
what would be appropriate

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for their on-track kids and
their highly proficient kids

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or their highly able kids.

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Then we know that this has
become institutionalized;

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this is about all kids.

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What we have assembled
is a group of people

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who have a high knowledge
of the students themselves,

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a group of people who have
a high content knowledge

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of the data that we're about
to look at, for those students

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so we can make some really
good decisions about students.

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Part of the building leadership
team's job on a Data Day is,

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in addition to working with
your classroom teachers,

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is you want to look across
your grade levels and you want

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to look across your
whole building.

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Those are the kind of
things we have found

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that districts really,
or buildings,

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have to do if you are going
to sustain this and it's going

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to be the way that you
do business with kids.