1. Office of Professional Learning
BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Office of Professional Learning
Doannie Tran
Assistant Superintendent of Professional Learning
November 4, 2015
The Office of Professional Learning encompasses the Academics departments under the previous administrations, including Instructional Research and Development, Early Childhood and the Achievement Gap office. As Dr. Estrada noted last week, we are all guided by a shared set of values around collaboration and equity and so work closely with other departments including Student Support to improve the quality of Adult and student learning throughout Boston Public Schools.

2. Vision Acceleration Agenda BPS Graduates will be able to:
BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Vision
Convening:
Parents
Recent Graduates
Content Experts
BPS Graduates will be able to:
undertake strategic planning and problem-solving towards goals
go through cycles of learning, reflection and sharing
exemplify civic engagement (local and global)
are prepared for work/career
engage in life-long learning
Acceleration Agenda
Our team wanted to define a vision for a BPS graduate to help us focus our work. We believe in co-creation with key stakeholders. We invited parents and recent graduates to join us at a recent retreat and started with the existing BPS vision for a graduate created as a part of the acceleration agenda.
The list you see here is the result of that co-creation process and our team watches videos of instruction weekly to norm ourselves on the kind of teaching we think will lead to this vision.

3. Increasing Prevalence of Cognitively-
BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Vision
Increasing Prevalence of Cognitively-
Demanding Tasks in BPS
BPS Graduates will be able to:
undertake strategic planning and problem-solving towards goals
go through cycles of learning, reflection and sharing
exemplify civic engagement (local and global)
are prepared for work/career
engage in life-long learning
We believe that our first priority must be to ensure that students in every class in Boston Public Schools are engaging with cognitively demanding tasks that will set them up for life-long success.

4. BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
But how do we concretely define “cognitively-demanding tasks”?
One critical tool is Webb’s Depth of Knowledge scale, which delineates 4 levels of cognitive-demand.

5. We can start with a simple example to help illustrate how Webb’s DOK helps us define cognitively demanding tasks. This is a DOK 1 task.

6. This is a DOK level 2 task - notice that you are using knowledge of the fork to describe characteristics of it.

7. In this task, a student has to take knowledge about forks and use that knowledge to justify a claim. Notice that the number of possible correct answers has increased. There is more than one way to answer this question and therefore, students have to consider their approach to the answer, displaying strategic reasoning. Notice that this is not necessarily a “hard” question, but the way in which you use your knowledge of forks is more complex.

8. A “tine” is the name for each of the pointy parts of a fork
A “tine” is the name for each of the pointy parts of a fork. With a partner in the room sitting near you - try to brainstorm an answer to this task. To start your conversation, you may want to start by defining what “optimal” means in the context of a fork.
What did you experience as you engaged with this task?
You likely had to connect your knowledge of forks to ideas about efficiency, comfort, utility, and deeply engage with in depth problem solving skills.

9. Depth of Knowledge defines one aspect of “cognitive demand”
B0STON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Depth of Knowledge defines one aspect of “cognitive demand” 1 2 3 4
Our claim is that level 3 and 4 task are most reflective of what college and career will expect of students, and that DOK is a critical means for defining “cognitive demand”.
DOK

10. Bloom’s Taxonomy Defines another aspect of “cognitive demand”
BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Bloom’s Taxonomy Defines another aspect of “cognitive demand”
Bloom’s Taxonomy, friend to teachers for decades, also defines another aspect of “cognitive demand”, where creating something (top of blooms) is more “rigorous” than remembering something (bottom of blooms” Blooms focuses more on the verb used to describe what the students will be able to do or produce at the end of the learning, while DOK focuses more on the cognitive process that students use DURING the task itself. Another shorthand might be that Blooms is about the what (product) while DOK is about the how (process).

11. High Cognitive Demand
Create
Evaluate
Analyze
Blooms
Apply
So we have a 2 dimensional concept of “cognitive demanding tasks” - those that are high on DOK and high on Blooms. Presumably, we should be aiming for more tasks to be in this square.
Understand
Recall 1 2 3 4
DOK 11

12. Question 1: Restate the following sentence in your own words:
But it’s not quite that simple. Take a look at this task for a student. Is this a hard task?
Emphasize that restating or paraphrasing is a very low-level skill that doesn’t require much critical thinking. 12

13. Literal Meaning→Low on Bloom’s Taxonomy)
Question 1:
Restate the following sentence in your own words:
Literal Meaning→Low on Bloom’s Taxonomy) 13

14. Literal Meaning→Low on Bloom’s Taxonomy)
Question 1:
Restate the following sentence in your own words:
“The former render possible theoretical cognition according to principles a priori; the latter in respect of this theoretical cognition only supplies in itself a negative principle (that of mere contrast), but on the other hand it furnishes fundamental propositions which extend the sphere of the determination of the will and are therefore called practical.” 
Now read the sentence you are supposed to “restate”.
A low level task, with this excerpt from Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”, is actually a very difficult one.
Literal Meaning→Low on Bloom’s Taxonomy) 14

15. Question 2:
Read the following passage, then write a letter to the editor defending the moral values the main character displays with regard to animals.
Now consider this task. What does your first blush suggest about the difficulty of this task? 15

16. Synthesis→High(er) on Bloom’s Taxonomy)
Question 2:
Read the following passage, then write a letter to the editor defending the moral values the main character displays with regard to animals.
Synthesis→High(er) on Bloom’s Taxonomy) 16

17. "I don't see why he needs an ax," continued Fern, who was only eight.
“Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
"Out to the hog house," replied Mrs. Arable. "Some pigs were born last night.“
"I don't see why he needs an ax," continued Fern, who was only eight.
"Well," said her mother, "one of the pigs is a runt. It's very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it.”
"Do away with it?" shrieked Fern. "You mean kill it? Just because it's smaller than the others?"
But what if this is the text? The key idea here is that even a rigorous task done with below grade level text is no longer as cognitively demanding.
[Passage taken from page 1 of Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White.] 17

18. Blooms and DOK alone are not enough...
So we had a 2 dimensional concept of “cognitive demand” which left out the key piece of grade level texts and standards.
Blooms 18

19. The Sweet Spot of College and Career Readiness
Standards Aligned, Grade Level Cognitively Demanding Tasks
Text Complexity
DOK
When we think about text/grade level standards alignment as another axis to consider, we now have a “box” that defines the sweet spot of cognitively demanding tasks that lead to college and career readiness.
Blooms 19

20. So how do we consistently get inside this box?
Standards Aligned, Grade Level Cognitively Demanding Tasks
Text Complexity
DOK
So our most critical question becomes: how do we consistently get inside this box with instruction across the district? This is the core question of the Office of Professional Learning.
Blooms 20

21. The Foundation of Strong Curriculum
What to Teach
How to Teach It
Standards Aligned, Grade Level Cognitively Demanding Tasks
Curriculum
Curriculum Training
To get to the CDT’s we are looking for, we must be clear and supportive about what teachers need to teach and how they will learn to teach it.

22. The Foundation of Strong Curriculum
What to Teach
How to Teach It
Standards Aligned, Grade Level Cognitively Demanding Tasks
Curriculum
Curriculum Training
The work of the Office of Professional Learning, and more specifically the Instructional Research and Development team, is based on a foundation of rigorous curriculum and trainings to support high quality implementation of that curriculum.
Instructional Research and Development
Rich Student Curriculum and Teacher Training

23. Rich Student Curriculum and Teacher Training
National Equity Project
To build upon this foundation fo Rich Student Curriculum and Teacher Training, I want to talk about how we think about the right drivers for the work, drawing upon the work of Michael Fullan and the National Equity Project. This scholarship highlights the need to build capacity, not just focus on compliance and accountability. That we should focus on group quality, as opposed to the traditional focus on individual teachers as the change agents. The research also calls us to focus on instruction as the core work of the central office, rather than getting preoccupied with the operational challenges.
Finally, we are called to make sure that we create a coherent strategy rather than a series of 1 off initiatives.
Instructional Research and Development
Rich Student Curriculum and Teacher Training

24. Embed Curriculum into a System for Adult Learning
Review Outcomes
Adjust and Improve
Implementation
We believe that systems improve when every part of that system engages in cycles of learning and improvement. The curriculum and initial training is the starting place, but we will need to build the “habits” and “infrastructure” for collaborative improvement.
Instructional Research and Development
Rich Student Curriculum and Teacher Training

25. Strategic Investments in Adult Learning
OPL is coordinating systemic strategies
focused on developing collective capacity
to design and deliver cognitively demanding
instruction.
Our job in the Office of Professional Learning is to operationalize the research on right drivers by creating the systemic structures that build collective capacity in service of creating and delivering cognitively demanding instruction for every learner in the system. I am intentionally general here - we believe that every stakeholder in the system should be a learner, which includes faculty and staff, parents and community, but most of all students.

26. Strategic Investments in Adult Learning
Improve Instructional Leadership Teams and Common Planning Time
Principals as Instructional Leaders
Teacher Leaders as Co-Facilitators
This year, we are concentrating our focus on improving the group quality of school-based teams of educators - primarily through the vehicles of Instructional Leadership Teams and the Common Planning Time that connect teachers and administrators. We are investing heavily in developing resources and tools to support healthy teams and in the training of the adults that collaborate within them. Our Principal PD and Lead Teacher curriculum focuses on strong facilitation skills and instructional leadership knowledge necessary to enact this cycle of learning depicted to the right.

27. Because we believe in adult collaborative learning as the driver for instructional improvement, we have placed the School ILT’s at the core of our strategy. School ILT’s include administrators, teachers from each grade level and department and other members of the school community that intersect instructional issues. Our strategy focuses on building capacity, group quality and focusing their work on instructional issues as opposed to operational ones.

28. Example: Create and deliver tasks that require evidence-based writing
Identify the school’s Instructional Focus
We support schools to collaboratively and in a data-driven way, identify their instructional focus for the year. An instructional focus is an observable and specific change in teaching that will address an achievement gap and which applies to every teacher in the school.

29. Instructional Focus: Create tasks that require evidence based writing
Use Case for Strong IF
QSP
Parent
Engage- ment
CPT PD
Eval
ILT Work: Analyzed data, normed on strong examples of IF, looked at student work, read and learned together about research, identified rubrics
We believe that identifying an instructional focus is the key lever to supporting principal leadership. This slide shows how an instructional focus helps narrow and intensify the elements of a school’s work. We capture this strategic planning and work in the Quality School Plan (QSP).
Instructional Focus: Create tasks that require evidence based writing

30. Putting the school ILT at the center of the work, allows us to build systems around these teams of adult learners. I’ll talk about each in turn briefly.

31. Centrally, we convene a district level ILT that includes the heads of every department that intersects with instruction. This group coordinates supports for schools, making sure that the work of our departments is coordinated.

32. The amazing group of Principal Leaders observe ILT’s and classrooms and provide coaching to principals to help them more effectively facilitate adult learning.

33. Under the direction of Christine Cronin, our Director of Adult Learning, we also convene cross-departmental teams to build curriculum for adults that ILT’s and teacher teams use to learn more about their instructional focus and to support changes in how they teach.

34. Our content leads on Instructional Research and Development provide specific content PD aligned to the instructional foci.
All of these different groups help to plan professional development for principals. It is important to note that the Assistant Superintendents and Executive Directors of SPED, OELL, SEL, and Achievement Gap are critical partners who make sure that we create trainings and resources we create reflect the diversity of our student population and ensure success for all.

35. Initial Bright Spots
Today's PD helped me make progress on my school's instructional focus? (n=81)
There are significant initial indicators that our strategy is resulting in positive change.
We track how many times the resources we create have been accessed. The top graph here shows how many times the site that houses the tools we train principals to use in their ILT’s has been visited. In the past month, these tools have been accessed over 3000 times. If you include the resources from our August Leadership Institute, the number of hits approaches 20,000. This suggests that school leaders, teacher leaders are accessing the resources at high rates.
Quantitatively, principals report that our PD is having an impact on their ability to make progress on their instructional focus - an average of 3.8 out of 5.
Qualititatively, Dr. Chang and Principal Leaders are seeing our tools show up in ILT meetings and whole staff PD.
All of these data points are powerful leading indicators that instructional culture at schools is shifting and we look forward to continuing to monitor our progress and create a lasting system for instructional improvement.

36. Office of Professional Learning
November 4, 2015
I am happy to answer questions. Thank you for your time and attention.