The Story of Echo Glen

The Story of Echo Glen

by Doris Lyon

This is the story of Echo Glen. More precisely it is the story of Echo Glen and KEYS*. Echo Glen is a Washington state school that provides education for students in a juvenile detention center located near North Bend. It is part of the Issaquah School District, although it is located nearly 15 miles from the district office. The students, both boys and girls, are in this medium- to maximum-security facility for a variety of offenses, up to and including murder. They are under the control of the correctional staff in the facility and attend school on the grounds. They rarely see their families while they are in the facility and the student mix changes often as they enter and leave the facility.

The Echo Glen instructional staff, which includes certificated and classified employees of the District, is a relatively stable one. Once a staff member becomes part of the Echo Glen instructional community, he or she is unlikely to leave. One member of the staff, who has been working on administrator credentials, elected to stay at Echo Glen as a teacher rather than follow an administrative career in another school. Another Echo Glen teacher is second in seniority among all the teachers in the Issaquah School District. All of the staff -- teachers, classified staff and administrators – has made strong commitments to improve student learning in a very difficult student population.

KEYS (Keys to Excellence in Your School) became a part of their efforts in the 1997-98 school year, the pilot year of the KEYS program in Washington state. KEYS is an initiative of the National Education Association, designed to identify with national research the factors that are important in student achievement. In 1997, NEA had identified 35 building level factors. A questionnaire measured the perceptions, of the extent, to which each of the factors was in place in a particular school. School profiles were built by the NEA based on the data received and support for schools entering the KEYS process was the responsibility of the State and Local Education Associations. In Washington state, that support did indeed come from the Washington Education Association (WEA) and various local associations. Other agencies were also involved. Educational Service Districts, universities and administrators played an important part.

For Echo Glen, the KEYS process was clear-cut but demanding. Once they decided, as a school, to be a part of KEYS, they also had to decide who should complete the survey. For many schools, parents, students and community members are natural groups to participate in data collection. For Echo Glen, the parents of the students have little involvement in the school itself, given their distance from the facility. Staff, therefore, relied on their own perceptions to hold up the mirror of reflection as they started on their journey of change.

Their school profile guided the next steps of the process. The staff, with the help of WEA organizational specialists, established goals and objectives consistent with the school's mission. Their objectives (e.g., classroom personnel using 30% of instructional time to integrate hands-on learning and problem solving into the curriculum, the 6 traits of writing incorporated into lesson plans, lessons in life skills utilized and shared) focused on what students would be able to know and do, consistent with the Essential Academic Learning Requirements that had been established by Washington in its ongoing reform efforts. The school then reviewed the data gathered with the KEYS survey instrument to assess the strengths they brought to their objectives and the obstacles to student success revealed by the profile. Staff members pooled their efforts around each objective, drew on student data to measure the success of their work on the objectives and worked throughout the school year to put them into place.

At the end of that first year, the staff met to review the efforts of their work and establish objectives for the following year. This process has been repeated each year. When KEYS coordinators from the Washington Education Association discussed with building staff the work involved in this on-going process, it was clear that staff saw the strategic planning process as focusing their work. One teacher, quoted in WEA Action, a publication distributed to educators across the state, reflected the sentiments of many. "There was a sense of empowerment. We're learning from each other. At faculty meetings, every teacher shared something they did with students that was either hands on, or that was really effective." Echo Glen's administrators appreciate that the KEYS process helps them to meet district requirements for long range strategic planning and, within that, assess and adjust on a regular basis. Again, staff spelled out the reasons for the editor of Action. "Echo Glen staff identified two key reasons why KEYS outshines other reform efforts. Ideas for changes come from within the staff after studying the research results. And it's not merely a reform du jour. KEYS is a long-term philosophy."

Echo Glen tracked their progress with student data and repeated measurement with the KEYS instrument. The student data revealed that their objectives had paid off. The student academic progress reflected the coordinated classroom efforts and the student discipline referrals dropped by half. They also saw substantial gains on the KEYS factors when they completed a second round of data collection. The KEYS factors they had identified as helping or inhibiting their ability to meet their objectives for their students showed substantial improvement. Interestingly, as they addressed challenges and built on strengths in those areas, the second school profile showed that all KEYS factors had become a greater part of the school climate. Echo Glen staff is once again taking the new KEYS 2.0 survey this school year, which addresses the 42 building and now classroom factors that NEA has continued to identify as integrally related to student achievement. Their success continues. Here are some reasons why.

Portin and Knapp, in an article about KEYS schools in Washington, identify at least six conditions that mediate whether a school will find useful meanings in a reflective process such as KEYS:
· "A cadre of teacher leaders in the school who have time, capacity and inclination to assume responsibility for a self-reflective process and the planning and action that come from it
· A principal who is supportive and involved at some level
· Sufficient building-level autonomy and/or district support to engage in a self-reflective improvement process, as a way to realize district priorities
· Available resources for supporting this process from within the school to district (e.g., the allocation of time to collective staff work associated with reflection and improvement) and from the external environment (e.g., expertise in the teachers' association infrastructure or other support structures)
· A history of reform experience in the school that encourages staff to consider new challenges
· Some familiarity with self-study data, or ways to gain this familiarity." (2003:109)

The teachers, administrators and classroom assistants who form the Design Team at Echo Glen have changed as different people took leadership roles on the objectives, but four positions have remained constant. The two internal facilitators, selected and trained in the KEYS research and process in 1998 remain responsible overall for moving forward using the KEYS approach and resources. The Principal and Vice-Principal at Echo Glen in 1998 are still the administrators. Their support for the internal facilitators and their belief that KEYS could make a difference for their staff and their students has been an important contribution to the overall success of the effort.

The timing of the KEYS efforts at Echo Glen, and their distance – both physically and culturally –from the central office meant that the planning associated with the approach could address District AND State goals, within a sense-making framework that worked for the Echo Glen staff. The District was supportive of these efforts and approved wholeheartedly the building plans that resulted. As time has passed the resources for completing the work of KEYS have also expanded. This year the staff has early release days that are used for building work. This was not true when the staff first began KEYS. Well-trained and enthusiastic internal facilitators, knowledgeable external facilitators and self-assured administrators were important resources. More meetings for subject area teams, more time for professional development and activities common to the entire staff also underlay the progress the staff has made.

Echo Glen staff are comfortable with change, especially when that change is moving them toward long-term goals. One of the internal facilitators says it best. "People who had been here awhile had seen something new come in every year, and then the next year it was always something else. The thing people like about KEYS is that it is a continuous project." This month the staff will review the progress they have made on their building objectives as reflected in student pre and post tests, their new KEYS data and their resources. They will establish objectives for this year and they will move closer to the goal they have set – students with behavioral skills and an academic foundation that enables them to be successful in a community setting.

References

Bradley S. Portin and Michael S. Knapp, (2003) "Finding Meaning in the Mirror: Self-Reflective Improvement in Two Washington State Schools" in Portin, Beck, Knapp, and Murphy eds., Self-Reflective Renewal in Schools, Praeger Publishers.

Dale Folkerts, (2000) "Change that Works," WEA Action, October issue.

*KEYS was designed by the National Education Association to bring a strategic focus to student achievement, moving away from the separate, unaligned initiatives that often detract from school quality. KEYS is a research-based, field-tested process that provides schools the data and guidance to realize the ultimate goal of significantly improving student performance. In partnership with NEA, the Washington Education Association supports the implementation of KEYS in Washington state schools to emphasize continuous improvement processes at all levels of the education system through a deliberative, self-reflective approach essential to building a school and classroom climate where students have an opportunity to excel.

To obtain KEYS materials, navigate to http://www.wa.nea.org/member/keys/default.htm and click on "KEYS Information Request Form."

To read more about KEYS, navigate here: http://www.keysonline.org/guide/intro_overview.htm

About the author

As Research Analyst for the WEA, Doris Lyon works with colleagues to provide research support to members and staff in the area of instructional research, to design and implement studies of critical educational issues, and to maintain resources that assist the organization in supporting the teaching and learning process. She brings her research expertise to KEYS, helping schools engage in data collection, strategic planning, and organizational change that make a difference for students and staff. Email: dlyon@washingtonea.org

© December 2003 New Horizons for Learning

This information is provided by:
Office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Special Education
P O Box 47200
Olympia, WA 98504-7200
(360) 725-6088
Fax (360)586-1631
E-mail: dgill@ospi.wednet.edu