Summary Reports on Original Austin Blueprint Initiative: 2002-2005

Background

In 2002, the Superintendent, at the direction of the Board of Trustees, designed a comprehensive and aggressive intervention plan to improve student achievement in chronically underperforming schools in AISD. This initiative, The Austin Blueprint Schools Initiative: To Leave No Child Behind, involved in-depth, intensive interventions including: reconstituting school staff with experienced and fully certified teachers; placing proven leaders at each campus; utilizing best practices; and fostering a community of learners on each campus. Six campuses, four elementary and two middle schools, were identified for inclusion. The ten components of the Blueprint Initiative were drawn from the effective schools research and best practices nationally, namely:

• Guaranteed improved student achievement to meet rigorous state standards.
• More time for Reading, Writing, Grammar, and Math every day for every child.
• Required, rigorous, and proven curricula in Mathematics, Reading and Writing.
• Every new teacher with at least two years' experience. All teachers certified in the subjects they are teaching.
• Required, targeted training Ð including 10 additional days Ð and on-going support for teachers.
• Strong, experienced principals under the direction of a Master Principal.
• Frequent assessment of students and immediate interventions.
• Enhanced technology to monitor and improve student achievement.
• Partnerships with parents and community to assure student success.
• Signed compacts with principals, teachers, parents, and students.

The Austin Blueprint Schools Initiative was implemented in stages in 2002:

• Winter 2001-02:
  AISD explored contracting out to external companies to take over chronically underperforming schools; an extensive public review process was conducted to evaluate an Edison proposal; and it was judged to be too expensive and to have shown little academic success to date in other Texas sites.
• Spring 2002 (February):
  The Board directed the Superintendent to develop an aggressive strategy to address those schools experiencing a pattern of chronic underperformance in the academic areas of reading, writing and mathematics. Dr. Forgione and Ms. Tousek (newly appointed Director) developed the ten components of The Austin Blueprint Schools Initiative: To Leave No Child Behind.
• Spring 2002 (March):
  Superintendent identified the four (4) lowest performing and neediest AISD elementary schools (Blackshear, Harris, Oak Springs and Sims) and two middle schools (Dobie and Pearce) for inclusion in the newly designed Austin Blueprint Schools Initiative.
• Spring 2002 (April):
  Superintendent removed administrative teams at five (5) out of the six (6) schools and appointed an experienced and proven principal in each school. New administrative teams were recruited by each principal under the direction of Ms. Tousek. All staff positions were reconstituted and the principals selected new staff (teachers, custodians, et al.) who made a three-year commitment to serve on that campus. Over 200 teachers were reassigned to other schools. Fortunately, most secured positions through successful active interviewing for vacant positions in the district, but about 10% had to be placed in vacant positions across the district.
• Summer 2002 (July-August):
  Two major one-time investments were made to support the implementation of the Blueprint model: first, an extra ten days of staff development for every professional in July 2002 was funded with new NCLB federal Title I funds; and, second, new literacy materials were purchased for use in the Blueprint elementary schools at Grades K-2. Additionally, targeted support was provided with federal, local and private (RGK Foundation) funds for the initial three years of this intervention.

The enclosed evaluation reports (Middle School, Elementary School) provide a comprehensive review of the successes and challenges of the six original Blueprint Schools in implementing the ten required components of the Blueprint design over the three-year commitment (school years 2002-03, 2003-04 and 2004-05).

In 2004, the Superintendent expanded the Austin Blueprint Schools Initiative by incorporating two high need high schools, LBJ and Reagan, under the direction of Dr. Marcus Nelson. After a year of study (2004-05), it was determined that the high school reform work on these two campuses should be integrated with the districtwide high school redesign work being led by Dr. Rosalinda Hernandez, Associate Superintendent for High Schools. In August 2005, the Blueprint High Schools were put under the direction of Mr. Kent Ewing, and are now being administered under the Office of High Schools.

During January and February 2005, Dr. Forgione, Ms. Tousek, and Dr. Nelson held two individual forums at each elementary and middle school campus to discuss Blueprint Schools progress and next steps. A meeting was held with each school's faculty followed by a meeting with the school parents. It was decided that while the six original Blueprint schools would continue to use the original Ten Component framework of the Blueprint Plan to guide their school improvement work, adjustments should be made at each campus based on lessons learned during the first three-years of the initiative.

Beginning in school year 2005-06, upon the completion of the three-year commitment by the original Blueprint school staff (i.e., school years 2002-03, 2003-04, and 2004-05), direction for these schools should be turned over to the appropriate Associate Superintendent: Ms. Claudia Tousek (elementary) and Dr. Peggy Gordon (middle).

Progress Over Time

There has been outstanding success by the original six Blueprint Schools in supporting academic progress of their students in the three core academic areas of reading, mathematics and writing (see the accompanying Tables 1-6, as well as the charts in the evaluation reports under Component 1).

Next Steps

AISD is now in a much stronger position to support school improvement across the district than we were three years ago when we designed the aggressive Blueprint Schools approach. We have now implemented comprehensive and coherent approaches to address the academic achievement needs of all students and all schools, while aggressively focusing on closing the achievement gaps between groups of students. Our district education improvement plan is built upon demonstrated best practices, as advocated by the findings of Just for the Kids/National Center for Education Accountability and the Dana Center at the University of Texas, including:

• Curriculum aligned with state TEKS;
• Instructional Planning Guides (IPG's) that identify specific academic objectives for grades K-12;
• Emphasis on reflective teaching practices that are grounded in our Principles of Learning;
• Focused professional development to support quality teaching and learning and to develop strong instructional leaders and highly-qualified teachers;
• Use of student benchmark data to monitor student performance via School Net; and
• Defined struggling learner interventions to support student needs.

AISD is also currently engaging in highly important and critical work to redesign our eleven comprehensive high schools. The high schools in the Secondary Blueprint are now part of the AISD High School Redesign Initiative.

In addition, our commitment to a strong focus on quality teaching and student learning has been well served by organizing the supervision of our schools horizontally. By grouping our campuses at the elementary, middle and high school levels together, we have been able to achieve more focused grade-level support and the sharing of best practices across our schools. The heart of this new organizational structure is the Associate Superintendent function which reports directly to the Chief Academic Officer. This structure provides the day-to-day leadership to direct, monitor, and support our campuses toward high academic performance and progress over time for all students.

Beginning in school year 2005-06, we have realigned the Blueprint Initiative under the leadership of the Associate Superintendents. We have put in place a strong support system, titled "Focus Schools," also under the leadership of the Associate Superintendents. This is directing additional, targeted resources, as well as management and instructional support, to campuses whose TAKS results show substantial areas of academic need. The Associate Superintendents at each level, with the assistance of district curriculum support staff, are able to provide intensive ongoing technical assistance to high need campuses. This has eliminated the need to assign underperforming schools to the Blueprint Schools program.