How our district turned failing schools into excelling ones (and others can, too)

Just a few years ago, the Avondale School District had a number of struggling schools, with no A schools and several receiving a C, D and even one F grade.

As superintendent of the district, I’m proud to be able to report that as a result of the work of our community, we have turned around many of our schools. Our district currently has the highest percentage of A rated schools in the southwest Valley. We consistently outpace growth in English and math as compared to the state, and we continue to progress daily.

Additionally, several schools in the district were recognized this year in U.S. News & World Report’s first rankings for elementary and middle schools.

So, how did we do it? There’s no single strategy, but instead a number of factors that are layered together that allow us to focus on student growth and achievement.

What worked for Avondale?

What we’ve learned is that having an intentional focus on the success of every student held by every teacher, leader and staff member makes all the difference.

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Our team rallied to identify approaches that would increase achievement, then wove them into our mission and our work every day. This shifted how we do business and allowed us to focus on providing the highest quality education for our students.

It also allowed us to lean in on each of these promising practices critical in turning around our schools:

Growth opportunities, ongoing feedback

The foundation of our work has been investing in our educators with systemwide, meaningful professional development. We use early release time each Wednesday to dedicate time to provide ongoing opportunities for growth for our teachers across grade bands, subject and by content area.

We partner the growth opportunities with ongoing feedback that we provide to our teachers using a research-based model.

Sound teaching methods and content

We invest in teachers to ensure we have consistency on the content we are teaching, what students are learning and how we measure that progress. At the heart of it all is a desire to ensure that pedagogy and content are strong in every classroom.

Data-driven collaboration

We review ongoing benchmark data from pacing assessments and common formative assessments every two weeks. Our teachers also hold cooperative team conversations by grade level to check in on how students are doing and share promising practices with each other.

As we do, we are able to recognize areas of opportunity for our students to grow and places where educators can shift instruction to meet their needs.

Relentless, continuous improvement

Every day, our district staff is committed to being better today than we were yesterday. We believe in the spirit of continuous improvement – regardless of our school letter grade.

We layer this approach to all of the key strategies and use data, feedback and professional development to drive improvement.

A shared responsibility for student success

Our leaders, teachers and students possess a shared mindset that every student is capable of success.

We believe that each one of us, no matter our role or position, shares a responsibility to help students grow. We embody the idea that we are collectively responsible and strive to ensure that not just our own school and students are successful, but so is every other student in each of our schools.

For us, the magic in this work is in the relentless pursuit of this process and our deep commitment to invest in quality teaching and learning. There are no silver bullets or quick fixes. This work takes multiple years and a commitment from our leaders, educators and families to make it happen.

Schools need resources, time to implement ideas

As conversations continue at the state Capitol about how to turn around schools with D or F letter grades, we should prioritize these strategies and ensure schools have the financial resources and time to implement them with fidelity.

As a part of our turnaround process, we have been leading a proof-of-concept model through a public-private partnership called Project Momentum to grow every member of our team.

This approach has shown effectiveness in our district and now is being replicated in others, including Wickenburg, Paradise Valley, Liberty, Union, Buckeye and Deer Valley school districts – and could be scaled to serve others.

The strategies and commitment to student growth don’t just benefit struggling schools, but are good for all schools.

Betsy Hargrove has served as superintendent of Avondale School District for the last 10 years. Reach her at superintendent@chooseAESD.org.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How our schools went from failing to excelling (and others can too)