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International High School
Long Island City, NY
School Type: Public
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School Setting: Urban
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Level: High
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School Design: Alternative
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Content Presented By:
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National Awards Program for Model Professional Development
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Replication Details
Replication Tips
NOTE: If you have not already read the "Design and Implementation" section, selecting that from the menu before reading further will provide a context for the replication details below.
The Basic Unit for Professional Development: The Interdisciplinary Team
The faculty and the student body are organized into six interdisciplinary teams. On each team, five faculty members (math, science, English, and social studies teachers) are jointly responsible for a heterogeneous group of about 75 ninth through twelfth graders. The faculty works with the same group of students for a full year providing a full academic program organized around themes such as "Motion", "Conflict and Resolution", or "The American Dream". Faculty time is provided for teams to provide affective and academic counseling.
The interdisciplinary teams provide an ideal infrastructure for professional development. Significant decision-making power over curriculum, budget, and scheduling is delegated to the teams, and three hours of meeting time are built into each faculty team's weekly schedule.
Cross-Team Professional Development
The policy-setting body for the school is the Coordinating Council which includes administrators, student government representatives, PTA representatives, the union chapter chair, and a representative from each interdisciplinary team.
Cross-School Professional Development
Several professional development days are built into the school year. Generally, these are held jointly with two newer schools, established with assistance from the IHS staff. Brooklyn International (established in 1994) and Manhattan International (established in 1993) also serve new immigrants through similar teaching methodologies, organizational structures and assessment strategies. These joint staff development days supplemented by regular meetings of representatives from the three schools provide opportunities to share and generalize successful practices across schools. Faculty also serve on the graduation portfolio panels at these sister schools, an effective way to jointly develop performance standards and share curriculum.
Congruence with the Mission and Principles of Professional Development
What makes this approach to professional development exemplary, is that, consistent with U.S. Department of Education's Mission and Principles of Professional Development:
- It is built, seamlessly, into the governance and instructional organization of the school.
- It gives teachers the necessary time and decision-making authority to support each others' professional development on and across teams.
- It supports individual professional growth and the sharing of best practice through peer coaching and evaluation by other team members, regularly scheduled teacher portfolio presentations, and team-teaching opportunities for new faculty members.
- It provides regular opportunities for collegial collaboration and the sharing of successful practice both within the school and with other schools serving similar students.
- It allows for regular, systematic interaction with the college and with businesses and community organizations, helping faculty constantly reassess how it is preparing students for higher education and the world of work.
- It shares best practices with the larger educational community through hosting a constant flow of American and international visitors, collaboration with outside researchers, membership in citywide and national networks, and faculty participation as instructors in various university teacher-education programs and as presenters at a wide range of conferences.
- Its content is determined collaboratively by representative bodies based on the school community's on-going assessment of the instructional program.
- It promotes a climate of inquiry and continuous improvement, as evidenced by a series of performance-driven organizational reforms implemented over the past 13 years.
- It is driven by a coherent long-term strategy working backward from graduation requirements to ensure that all students have the necessary supports to meet rigorous graduation criteria.
The faculty's peer support, review, and evaluation system became a powerful force in shaping a common set of strongly held values and principles for guiding both the design and the practice of student assessment. Over time, student assessment practices have evolved from traditional, periodic tests and quizzes to a continuous process of self-reflection, peer assessment, and teacher assessment organized around collaborative performance tasks and individual portfolio development.
Site Visit Documentation
International High School's success was recorded based on a site visit conducted by the National Awards Program for Model Professional Development in 1997:
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Evidence |
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There is clear evidence of the infrastructure, content, and process components of professional development.
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All components of professional development are evident in (a) documents (e.g., school schedule, school governance plan, PD plan, teacher PD plans and portfolios, meeting minutes); (b) observations (e.g., staff collaboration and student learning in team meetings and classrooms); and (c) interviews (e.g., staff stressed shared leadership and devotion to change and improvement of teaching and learning through PD).
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The professional development is comprehensive and long-term and not narrowly focused on one subgroup of students or staff.
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PD is designed to meet the learning needs of all students and achieve state standards and other student outcomes (e.g., attending higher education institutions). All staff and administrators and sometimes students participate in PD, and there are also ample PD opportunities for parents and community members. Staff and administrators shape their own personal and group PD through direct participation in Interdisciplinary Instructional Teams as well as through participation in many other groups in the school.
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There are clear professional development goals based on needs assessment and focused on improving ALL students' learning.
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PD needs are assessed through formal and informal inventories, interviews and discussions, observations and self-reports, and records of activities. Needs and goals are driven by student performance measured against standards and other factors related to student learning (e.g., parent involvement). For example, this year several instructional teams identified the need for stronger science instruction, and their team's PD focused at least in part on that need. Needs and goals are stated in the school's Comprehensive Educational Plan and were addressed in the team meetings we observed. Other documents, e.g., team, coordinating council, and steering committee meeting agendas; descriptions of whole school and partner schools PD activities; and individual PD plans which are required to connect PD goals to student outcomes, also include goals directly related to students' learning.
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The professional development goals and plan were developed through an inclusionary process.
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The school is organized in interdisciplinary instructional teams, which develop project-based learning in interdisciplinary instructional clusters. Cluster teams identify PD goals for their group based on student work and how effective the team thinks its instruction is. Individual goals may also be partly formed here. Teams propose schoolwide goals to the Coordination Council, which discusses PD needs and goals with the Steering Committee, which then sets schoolwide PD goals. Thus, individuals make decisions about PD goals for themselves, teams determine their goals, and the steering committee determines goals for the whole school. The process is bottom up. Staff recognize that everyone has expertise and can offer PD opportunities to everyone else.
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The professional development goals are part of a long-term school improvement plan.
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Professional development is aligned to the school's Comprehensive Educational Plan, which is the school improvement plan. The major purpose of all PD, stated in the plan, is to improve student learning and related outcomes. In our interviews, teachers and the principal also stressed this alignment.
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Professional development is comprehensive and applicable across students and teachers at all grade levels and in all subject areas.
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PD is constant, cohesive, and applicable to all students and to all teachers and other staff. The organizational structure of the school -- especially block scheduling and time for PD and commitment to shared leadership, along with multi-age grouping in all classes and interdisciplinary units that draw their strength from staff collaboration -- help ensure that PD is comprehensive.
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Professional development is integral to the school culture and promotes continuous inquiry and improvement.
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PD is based largely on reflective practice. Teachers take ownership of problems, focus on developing resolutions, and are not afraid to take risks to solve problems and try new ideas through various means (e.g., seeking advice or mentoring, conducting action research, taking classes, presenting ideas at team meetings). No request for personal professional development has ever been denied. Individual teacher styles are valued and disagreement is considered a necessary condition for learning and growth. Inquiry is evident in formal and informal staff interactions. When staff see a need for improving practice, they seek solutions among themselves or from experts outside the school. Parents receive handbooks written by staff and parents in English, Chinese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Bengali, and are offered ESL and immigration classes.
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The professional development activities reflect the best available research and practice in teaching, learning, and leadership.
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PD is based on a range of solid research. Content for current group and schoolwide PD, as well as PD with the two partner schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn, is the development of rubrics for student portfolios. This is a logical next step in ongoing work on developing appropriate activities and projects for student portfolios, other alternative assessment strategies, and graduation criteria.
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The specific content, instructional strategies, and learning activities are designed to reach the professional development goals.
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Links between content, instructional strategies, and learning activities and the PD goals are evident in many documents and are at the forefront of staff discussion and work. For example, staff explained that their goal for student collaboration was best reached by having staff collaborate as they expected students to do. Similarly, having teachers prepare their own portfolios helped them better understand student portfolios. Awareness of links among PD content, strategies, and activities was evident in the PRISM meeting (Partnerships Realizing the International Schools model) with the Manhattan and Brooklyn schools, whom IHS mentors and otherwise supports.
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There are processes for documenting and monitoring the alignment of school improvement plans, professional development activities, teacher and student outcomes.
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Ongoing assessments relate what the school is doing to teacher and student outcomes. The Coordination Committee, Interdisciplinary Instructional Teams, and Personnel Committee all monitor alignment. A very strong communication system for ongoing, daily monitoring is embedded in and supported by the organizational structures of the school. Individual staff and teams monitor at least weekly whether their efforts are aligned, are achieving PD goals, and are helping students and teachers self-assess their teaching.
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Organizational structures support the implementation of professional development activities on the individual, collegial, and organizational levels.
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Individual PD plans (written each year and benefiting from both collegial and student input) address individual PD. Collegial PD takes place nearly daily in Interdisciplinary Instructional Teams and in other collegial groups; PD occurs across teams as well (e.g., discussion, observation, team teaching). Other examples of activities are "critical friends", mentoring, action research, and Peer Review Teams (formed for each new teacher's review and less frequently for tenured teachers). The larger, representative teams (Coordination Committee, Steering Committee, PRISM) support PD at the school level and between schools. New teachers receive strong support through all of the above as well as through more formal efforts. PD at IHS is so outstanding that a local teacher college sends students there for their entire pre-service education. No new, or experienced teacher, need ever feel isolated or unsupported.
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The professional development design includes a comprehensive evaluation.
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A plan exists. Teacher and student portfolios provide much evaluation data as do more quantitative data collected by the school and district. Part of the teacher portfolio includes students' evaluation of teachers. Evaluation is an ongoing process in Interdisciplinary Instructional Team meetings and critical in the Peer Review process.
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The data collected are used to make appropriate programmatic adjustments to professional development.
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Formative evaluation is ongoing. When PD efforts are judged not to be working well, adjustments are made. For example, participants at a PRISM meeting determined that collaboration with partner schools on rubric development was problematic, and process changes were being planned. Rubrics, peer observation, feedback from students, and other sources of information are used to determine if program adjustments need to be made. Since information is readily available on an ongoing basis, timely changes can be made.
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There is adequate description of the infrastructure, content, and process components to understand and draw lessons from the professional development plan.
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Other schools and districts can benefit from the efforts of IHS. Many documents created by IHS can guide other schools setting up a similar program or a program that adapts one aspect of the school's efforts (e.g., Peer Review as PD, collaborative interdisciplinary curriculum development as PD). IHS Staff stress that strategies must fit the context into which they are being adapted, of course. The school welcomes visitors, and both teachers and administrators make presentations at conferences around the country. The NCREST report provides useful information about the development and effect of different instructional strategies and alternative assessment at IHS that can also inform other schools and districts.
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The lessons learned are useful for other schools or districts.
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Staff shared with us their convictions about factors that make their school successful: infused PD rather than add-on, peripheral PD; adequate time for PD; block scheduling; shared leadership; student collaboration and staff collaboration; alignment of all components, from needs and goals to teacher and student outcomes; reduction of teacher isolation; staff sense of high professionalism and being treated as professionals; teacher choice; counseling for students; and vocational education. They stressed an important intrinsic (their term) factor (staff share a common goal and mission) and two important extrinsic (again, their term) factors (a structure that lets people work to the best of their ability and a mixture of experienced and new teachers). Regarding the latter, they believe both new and experienced teachers are necessary for supporting change and ongoing vitality in a school.
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Costs and Funding
Since professional development is so important in the school, many resources are devoted to it. The school has an Annenberg grant and Title VII funds. 50% of discretionary funds, totaling about $80,000, is devoted to professional development. Each of the 6 Interdisciplinary Instructional Teams receives 1/6 of these funds. The other 50% of discretionary funds is for technology, and a part of those funds is used for PD in technology. Generally, the school speaks of fiscal resources in terms of time. All staff have the equivalent of a full day each week for team meetings. Each team has 500 hours to divide among its members for attending and presenting at conferences, taking courses, and pursuing other interests. Students are dismissed early one day per week, the remaining time is provided through block scheduling and coordinating classes so that teachers have time to meet. Noteworthy is staff commitment to share what they've learned while away from the school. Finally, some funds support the PRISM Partnership in which IHS serves as a mentor to the two schools that are beginning their work as alternative LEP schools.
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