In 2017, the Barr Foundation launched Engage New England (ENE), an initiative that provides a unique opportunity to develop innovative school models designed to serve students who are off track to high school graduation. We are honored to work alongside Barr Foundation to support school-based partners through a yearlong design process and three additional years of support.

SRI Education, the research partner for the ENE initiative, regularly captures learnings from the initiative. A recent cross-site learning brief focuses, in particular, on how partners worked to improve their instructional systems. Data was collected from September 2019 to mid-March 2020 through interviews of school leaders, school staff members, and external partners as well as student focus groups and staff surveys. 

From its inception, the ENE initiative’s theory of action has centered on the idea that designing schools around the tenets of Positive Youth Development (PYD) would create learning environments that offer all students the opportunity to thrive. Springpoint’s planning support for the first two cohorts led partners through a whole-school design process guided by the PYD tenets. Over the first two years of the initiative, we saw partners excel at fostering strong teacher-student relationships while needing additional support in creating consistently engaging and rigorous learning experiences. 

The brief describes common themes and challenges experienced by schools as they work to further strengthen their instructional systems. It also provides some promising practices that schools can use to support instructional efforts and address challenges. Four categories of learnings are highlighted in the brief:

• One learning centered on the implementation of project-based units of study that promote deeper learning and develop college and career-ready competencies, which we call Transformative Learning Experiences (TLEs). Leaders and teachers discussed how TLEs shifted their approach to instruction, raised expectations of student work, and resulted in higher attendance rates and improved student writing. Further, the TLEs pushed educators to raise their expectations for students and student work. One leader noted a particular TLE as the place where they saw “rigor being met and sometimes, beyond expectations.” Learnings for successful implementation included the need for adequate scaffolding due to the increased rigor of TLEs, finding more opportunities to infuse SEL development, and empowering and supporting teachers to adapt TLEs for their classrooms.
• Another core learning pertained to developing competency-based education (CBE) systems. The majority of ENE partners are implementing CBE systems and reflected on that process, noting the importance of adopting or adapting existing CBE systems, prioritizing a smaller number of competencies, and supporting students throughout the shift to CBE.
  

• Most partner schools instituted a Looking At Student Work (LASW) protocol as a key mechanism for improving instructional practice. One teacher was grateful for the “space and the time to look at student work with colleagues” which they found “really, really helpful.” Emerging learnings centered on the need for consistent, structured, and protected time to conduct LASW meetings and the use of strong student work to facilitate teacher alignment and establish school-wide quality standards.
• Finally, ENE partners saw the importance of building strong instructional leadership. Partner schools reflected on the need to dedicate time and resources to this critical strand of work, and to provide detailed, in-depth feedback to teachers that takes into account their individual needs and experiences. Some strong coaching moves emerged including co-developing high-quality mini-lessons alongside teachers and having adults role play lessons as students. One leader reflected: “[W]e played student and I found that some of the teachers’ most powerful lessons resulted from experiences where they did the assignment.”

Read the full publication for even more details about schools’ learnings and emerging strong practices focused in these key areas.