Profiles in Transformation: Strategic Learning Initiatives Reform within Chicago Public Schools

STRATEGIC LEARNING INITIATIVES REFORM WITHIN CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Overview

Strategic Learning Initiatives (SLI) is an external organization that specializes in school transformation. SLI has worked in a network of Chicago schools for more than five years and has shown significant success.

SLI’s work demonstrates that change can come from inside a school and need not be externally imposed upon a school or require the removal of current school staff. The key tenets of SLI include:

A focus on research-based strategies to transform struggling schools.
A commitment to transforming the schools from the inside out, working with existing staff, leadership, and curriculum, rather than replacing existing staffing and procedures.
Giving leadership to teachers — asking them if they want to participate and ensuring that teachers take the lead in changing instruction and school culture.
Giving school staff ownership of their jobs — through addressing schooling problems, improving student learning, and ensuring student success.

Strategic Learning Initiative Principles

The SLI model is built of the “five essential supports” identified by researchers at the University of Chicago (Bryk 2006) as key to school improvement:

Shared leadership
High-quality professional development
Rigorous and focused instruction
Parent engagement
A culture of trust and collaboration among teachers, administrators, parents, and students.

In addition to creating the infrastructure to develop these five supports, SLI also adds two other components: the creation of a network of participating schools to facilitate sharing of strategies, challenges, and successes across schools and a cross-district problem-solving team to support school leaders and help remove barriers to reform.

In Practice

One key program requirement is that a school’s teachers must initially agree to SLI’s involvement. SLI engages in a school turnaround effort only if 80 percent of the teachers approve the choice through a secret vote. SLI believes that existing staff can and must take responsibility for the reform if it is to be successful and sustainable. School staff must be viewed as assets, not problems.

When SLI engages a school or a network of schools, an SLI team works with the school to help them build and sustain the reform. The teams include retired principals, teachers, and parent leaders.

The reform focuses heavily on frequent assessments of students to determine who needs additional time or study in particular areas. Teachers work collaboratively to review weekly assessments to make adjustments in lesson plans where indicated. Students who are identified as needing extra support work with teachers in small-group sessions and receive additional tutoring as needed.

Teachers work in “learning teams” to develop and constantly adjust lesson plans. The goals are to encourage collaboration and reduce isolation.

Parents are engaged as well through skills workshops that teach them how to help their children at home and encourage them to develop relationships with other parents, teachers, and staff.

Costs

In Chicago, the Strategic Learning Initiative costs less than $200,000 per school in a network of ten schools. SLI compares this to estimates by the U.S. Department of Education that its “turnaround model” (replacing the leadership and half the school’s staff) can range from $250,000 to $1 million per year for at least three years. SLI notes that the substantial costs of replacing a school’s staff are avoided in the SLI model.

Results

In Chicago, ten schools involved in the SLI initiative improved their student reading gains significantly more than the Chicago city average. Two SLI schools were the “most improved” schools in the city (out of 473 elementary schools) in the first and second year of the initiative. In addition to student academic gains, SLI defines success as introducing major change to school culture so that teachers, parents, and principal work together in an atmosphere of trust.

Additional Information

Strategic Learning website
www.strategiclearning.org
A Turnaround Success Story: How Eight Failing Schools in Chicago Were Turned Around Within Three Years. Strategic Learning Initiatives.
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Validating the Impact of Strategic Learning Initiatives’ Focused Instruction Process. By Steven Leinwand and Sarah Edwards. American Institutes for Research. July 2009.
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Reference

Bryk, Anthony S., Penny Bender Sebring, Elaine Allensworth, Stuart Luppescu, and John Q. Easton. 2006. Organizing Schools for Improvement. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.