Supovitz, Jonathan A

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Subject: Educational Leadership ×

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 11
  • Publication
    The Heart of the Matter: The Coaching Model in America's Choice Schools
    (2003-05-01) Poglinco, Susan M; Hovde, Kate; Bach, Amy J; Rosenblum, Sheila; Supovitz, Jonathan A; Saunders, Marisa
    The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania was contracted by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) in 1998 to conduct the external evaluation of the America’s Choice school design. CPRE designed and conducted a series of targeted studies on the implementation and impacts of the America’s Choice design. This report coincides with the publication of three separate studies by CPRE on the impact of America’s Choice in a number of districts across the country using a variety of quantitative and analytic approaches. Those impact analyses and a stand-alone piece on classroom observations conducted in Cohort 4 schools can be viewed as separate pieces or as complements to the information presented in this report. Another recent CPRE publication from fall 2001 is a widely distributed report entitled, Instructional Leadership in a Standards-based Reform, a companion piece to both the impact reports and this report.
  • Publication
    The Bubble Bursts: The 2015 Opt-Out Movement in New Jersey
    (2016-09-01) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Stephens, Francine; Kubelka, Julie; McGuinn, Patrick; Ingersoll, Hannah
    The Bubble Bursts: The 2015 Opt-Out Movement in New Jersey analyzes the scope, factors, and context of the opt-out movement that occurred in New Jersey in the spring of 2015. Using test participation data released in February 2016 by the New Jersey Department of Education, we found that approximately 135,000 students did not take the state assessment in the spring of 2015. Depending on how it was calculated, this represented between 11-19% of the population of students eligible for testing in grades 3 to 11 in the state. There was also a positive correlation between higher district opt-out rates and wealthier districts. We found that several factors contributed to these trends. Predominant amongst these were an accumulated skepticism with high stakes testing in general and the new PARCC assessment in particular, concerns from the Common Core State Standards rollout, teacher union opposition to premature teacher accountability, and confusion in the messages of state policymakers about graduation requirements. These explanatory factors were based upon interviews with over 30 state policymakers, professional education association representatives, advocacy group leaders, school administrators, teachers, parents, and students.
  • Publication
    Instructional Leadership in a Standards-Based Reform
    (2001-12-01) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Poglinco, Susan M
    The spotlight of educational leadership is on instructional leadership. As pressure for improving student performance in the current standards-based accountability environment swells and test results are increasingly scrutinized, school principals are being urged to focus their efforts on the core business of schooling--teaching and learning. But what does it mean to be an instructional leader? What do principals that are instructional leaders do differently than other principals? How do they spend their time? How do they shape the cultures of their schools? How knowledgeable are they of subject-matter content? How do they work with, and develop, other leaders in their schools? In this study we sought to find answers to these questions by exploring the collective wisdom of several effective instructional leaders. Instructional leadership, not just by the principal but by a wider cast of individuals in both formal and informal leadership roles, can play a central role in shifting the emphasis of school activity more directly onto instructional improvements that lead to enhanced student learning and performance. By contrast, the status quo in most schools is diffuse attention to instruction scattered amidst a variety of environmental, social, and organizational distracters that lead to fragmented and uneven instructional focus. Principals are typically engrossed in organizational care-taking and the responsibility for instructional decisions falls to individual teachers. When individual teachers independently determine the kind and type of instruction in their classrooms, three things tend to occur. First, the instructional culture of the school tends to splinter, as there is no overriding instructional guidance and no coherent glue to tie instruction to a larger whole. Second, the quality of instruction varies widely, as teachers bring different experiences and have different notions of what is good teaching. Third, the content that students receive, even in the same grade, differs from classroom to classroom, as each teacher prioritizes what students ought to know.
  • Publication
    In Search of Leading Indicators in Education
    (2012-07-10) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Foley, Ellen; Mishook, Jacob
    Data have long been considered a key factor in organizational decision-making (Simon, 1955; Lindblom & Cohen, 1979). Data offer perspective, guidance, and insights that inform policy and practice (Newell & Simon, 1972; Kennedy, 1984). Recently, education policymakers have invested in the use of data for organizational improvement in states and districts with such initiatives as Race to The Top (United States Department of Education, 2010) and the development of statewide longitudinal data systems (Institute for Education Sciences, 2010). These and other initiatives focus attention on how data can be used to foster learning and improvement. In other fields, including economics and business, much work has been done to identify leading indicators that predict organizational outcomes. In this paper, we conceptualize how leading indicators might be used in education, using examples from a small sample of school districts with reputations as strong users of data. We define leading indicators as systematically collected data on an activity or condition that is related to a subsequent and valued outcome, as well as the processes surrounding the investigation of those data and the associated responses. Identifying leading indicators often prompts improvements in a district’s system of supports. To develop this concept, we describe four examples of how districts identified and used key indicators to anticipate learning problems and improve student outcomes. We also describe the infrastructure and other supports that districts need to sustain this ambitious form of data use. We conclude by discussing how leading indicators can bring about more intelligent use of data in education.
  • Publication
    Dashboard Lights: Monitoring Implementation of District Instructional Reform Strategies
    (2004-12-01) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Weathers, John M
    In this report, the authors describe the system implemented in Duval County Public Schools (Florida) to monitor the district’s instructional reform efforts and the influences of the system on teachers and school and district leaders. The system, called the Standards Implementation Snapshot System, was implemented by John Fryer, Superintendent of Duval Public Schools, in 2002. The snapshot system seeks to take a "snapshot" at a point in time of the depth of implementation of the district’s standards-based reform initiatives. This report is the story of the development and influence of the snapshot system.
  • Publication
    The Impact of the GE Foundation Developing Futures in Education Program on Mathematics Performance Trends in Four Districts
    (2013-04-01) Sirinides, Philip M; Supovitz, Jonathan A; Tognatta, Namrata; May, Henry
    Beginning in 2005, the GE Foundation initiated a commitment of expertise and financial resources to a set of urban school districts to improve public education and enhance student achievement in mathematics and science. With strong emphasis on stakeholder engagement, the GE Foundation’s Developing FuturesTM in Education program pursued a strategy of: (1) facilitating school board, union, and district leaders to work together to articulate system goals and priorities; (2) helping district leaders to build systemic change processes and develop internal-management capacity; and (3) supporting district science and mathematics initiatives through materials alignment, coaching, professional development, and other capacity-building measures. This report analyzes the impacts of the GE Foundation commitment to the partner districts by examining trends in student performance in mathematics over time in four districts. We hypothesized that the GE Foundation’s collaborative efforts with the district educators would produce detectable and significant improvements in student outcomes.
  • Publication
    Meaningful & Sustainable School Improvement with Distributed Leadership
    (2019-06-14) Supovitz, Jonathan A; D'Auria, John; Spillane, James P
    School leadership is broadly acknowledged to be the lynchpin for school success. Yet, amongst the countless demands that school leaders face, making wise leadership choices is increasingly challenging. On what should leaders focus their attention and how should they prioritize their improvement efforts? How can they identify, understand, and make headway on the difficult challenges that will substantially enhance the educational experiences of their students, and how can they bring their faculty together with commitment around these improvement efforts? In this essay we lay out a research-informed framework for advancing meaningful school improvement using a distributed leadership approach. This report was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Opinions in this paper reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, that of the funder.
  • Publication
    Building a Foundation for School Leadership: An Evaluation of the Annenberg Distributed Leadership Project, 2006-2010
    (2012-08-01) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Riggan, Matthew
    Leading school change is a challenging endeavor. Successful leadership requires strategic and sustained effort, particularly in the shifting and uncertain environment of urban public schools. The concept of distributed leadership—in which multiple actors tackle the challenges of school leadership in concert—is a promising way to strengthen professional practice and thereby improve the educational experiences of all students. The Annenberg Distributed Leadership (DL) project was one of the first efforts in the nation to deliberately take on the challenge of designing and implementing a concerted effort to build distributed leadership capacity in a diverse set of urban schools to improve the quality of teaching and learning. The DL project featured the careful selection of leadership team members to identify and lead instructional improvement efforts; ample professional development to build cohesive teams and help members understand the motivational, psychological, and pedagogical aspects of advocating instructional change; resources to apply to the task; and ongoing school-based coaching to guide leadership team efforts. This report describes the Consortium for Policy Research in Education’s mixed-method evaluation of the DL project. The evaluation featured a cluster randomized control trial, where schools first agreed to participate in the study, and then were chosen by lottery to participate in the DL project or serve in the comparison group. Overall there were 16 DL schools and 21 comparison sites in the evaluation.
  • Publication
    Mapping a Course for Improved Student Learning: How Innovative Schools Systematically Use Student Performance Data to Guide Improvement
    (2003-11-01) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Klein, Valerie
    To be useful to teachers and school leaders, test data must provide more than just a destination. Student performance results must also provide guidance that informs educators that they are moving in the right direction, while providing interactive and recursive feedback for mid-course adjustments. In order for student performance data to be useful to teachers and school leaders, and to make it worthwhile for them to make the extensive efforts necessary to learn to interpret and act upon what they learn, data feedback systems must rely on multiple sources of data collected and analyzed at regular intervals. This report is about building better roadmaps for teachers and school leaders in order to guide their instructional decision-making. The data required for more precise decision-making come from systematically exploiting a variety of student performance data at both the individual classroom and school levels. Rather than just relying on one individual test to provide guidance, innovative school leaders are building more comprehensive systems of assessments that provide better interim information from multiple perspectives. Through more sophisticated data systems, teachers and school leaders can foster a more inquiryoriented approach that involves ongoing and sustained investigations into the kinds of teaching that produce more powerful student learning. In this report, we show how innovative teachers and school leaders are creatively using their data to help guide their strategic decisions. Through their examples, we develop and describe a theory of what a system of school data use might look like.
  • Publication
    Evaluation of the GE Foundation-Supported Coaching & Demonstration Schools Initiative in Erie Public Schools, SY 2012-2013
    (2013-11-01) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Sam, Cecile; Newman, Bobbi; Darfler, Anne
    This evaluation report summarizes the evidence of the implementation and early impacts of the General Electric Foundation’s (GEF) Demonstration Schools Initiative in the Erie Public School district (EPS) conducted by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) during the 2012-2013 school year. The Demonstration Schools Initiative provided intensive support to four schools (two elementary, one middle, and one high) implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics and English language arts. Concurrently during the 2012- 2013 school year, EPS also continued their implementation of another GEF-supported initiative— the Coaching Initiative—using a cadre of instructional coaches in mathematics, science, and ELA for the other schools in the district. In both the Coaching and Demonstration School Initiatives, instructional coaches are key agents of change. Their function is to target and customize the support needed at the building, grade, and teacher levels to shift teachers’ understanding and practice to align to the CCSS. For the Demonstration Schools Initiative, coaches also focused much of their time trying to develop professional learning communities (PLCs) within their schools. This evaluation was designed to answer three overarching questions: Did teachers in the Demonstration Schools gain more knowledge of the CCSS as a result of their participation in the GEF-supported initiative? What were the impacts of the initiative for the teachers in the GEF- Foundation supported Demonstration Schools compared to the rest of the district? How did teachers perceive their respective coaches throughout the district?