Overview

New Visions is committed to developing solutions for the toughest challenges its schools face. It adopted a model of 90-day innovation projects from the health-care industry. In a concrete time period, the projects engage staff, schools and partners to address systemic obstacles to students learning and graduating prepared for postsecondary success. The process includes:

• intensive analysis of school data
• discovering effective practices at New Visions schools and other sites
• scanning related research 
• designing new approaches based on shared knowledge 
• disseminating resulting strategies, resources and new services.

Highlights from our first year of this work include:

College Access

The college access team investigated the critical benchmarks and systems that, according to research, schools must put in place from ninth to 12th grades to ensure that students meet the requirements and take the steps necessary to enroll in college. The team’s work included a review of what New Visions schools are doing, identification of common needs, and analysis of potential additional approaches and opportunities. The project resulted in new college access partnerships with organizations such as Roads to Success.

College and Career Readiness (CCR) Campaign

A 90-day project on a college and career readiness campaign drew from effective stakeholder engagement initiatives, particularly with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. The project investigated the components of college and career readiness to engage constituents in the urgency of preparing students for postsecondary success. The team interviewed local and national practitioners and researchers to:

1. identify the critical obstacles students face in becoming prepared for college and careers;
2. develop benchmarks students should meet at the end of ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th grades to be college and career ready
3. outline a set of low-cost, high-impact strategies.

Using this work, New Visions is launching the Good to Go campaign — a commitment to ensuring at least eight out of 10 students in New Visions schools graduate prepared for college or career by 2013.

Grading Policy

A grading policy project explored the potential for schoolwide grading policies to serve as a lever to change teaching practice and improve student learning. The project reviewed examples of grading policies, the school-specific contexts behind grading policies and evidence of their impact on classroom practices. The project provided school leaders with a synthesis and analysis of related research and effective practices to use to inform their work in designing grading policies.

Individual Student Goal Setting

The team on individual student goals is developing supports for teachers in setting individual student learning goals. The theory is that the process of individual goal-setting makes explicit to students the specific skills and benchmarks they must meet to stay on track. The process also helps teachers to differentiate instruction based on students’ identified needs and goals. To help facilitate this effort, the team is working with schools to develop and pilot a tool for individual goal-setting.

Interim Assessments

This team sought to gain a better understanding of how high schools use interim assessments to identify barriers and design supports. The project produced a synopsis of the research on interim assessments, a scan of how New Visions schools are using interim assessments and a plan for supporting schools in their use.

Global Studies Instruction

The “global gains” project team is investigating how schools can revamp high school global history instruction to improve student learning of concepts and ideas in social studies. Building upon documentation about global studies, the team:

1. investigated current practices at New Visions schools around curriculum, assessment, instruction and scheduling in global studies
2. is researching practices and resources from other schools in New York state that have large numbers of students performing well on the global Regents exam
3. is connecting its findings to curriculum work facilitated by New Visions with its global studies teachers this summer. The result of this effort includes dissemination of vetted curriculum maps, units, lesson plans and resources to global studies teachers in New Visions schools.

Removing Principal Distractions

A project on removing distractions is based on the hypothesis that principals are overburdened with administration and compliance tasks that detract from their ability to be instructional leaders. This project identified time-consuming areas within the core set of principal administrative duties and is investigating solutions, system processes, resources and practices so that principals can dedicate more time to instruction. The project is resulting in maps that will help principals delegate and manage administrative and operations tasks, as well as build distributed leadership across their staffs.

Ninth-Grade Interdisciplinary Skills

The ninth-grade interdisciplinary skills team seeks to identify how New Visions can help schools create a common language and understanding of core interdisciplinary skills in which students should be proficient by the end of ninth grade. The team is:

1. investigating the current New York state standards and Regents exams to identify the common interdisciplinary skills across core subject areas
2. identifying the gaps between this data and other college- and career-readiness skills identified through research
3. developing tools and/or connecting to current school resources (e.g., observation tools, lesson plans) to make these skills explicit and help schools embed their teaching into their work.

Eighth- to Ninth-Grade Transition

This project researched the academic, social and developmental issues students face in the transition from eighth to ninth grades, looking specifically at the effectiveness of summer bridge programs on easing the transition. The work resulted in a synthesis of related research, a review of promising practices and resources, and identification of steps schools can use to ease students’ transition. One key finding was that schools should reframe “transition” as a year-long approach embedded during the entire ninth-grade.