Video: Lee Academy: A school focused on closing the achievement gap
HGSE Lecturer Richard Weissbourd

Video 1: Richard Weissbourd Part 1

RICHARD WEISSBOURD: I'm Rick Weissbourd. I've been working in the Boston Schools over the past ten years. And in Boston, we've been very focused on closing the achievement gap. And I do a lot of work with the mayor and with the school system. I've been very focused, especially on improving literacy in the city. I'm the founder of Read Boston. I'm the founder of Write Boston as well.

And the good news here is we have a lot of energy and a lot of momentum around closing the achievement gap. The bad news is that, you know, after ten years and a mayor who's very committed to closing this gap, and a terrific superintendent, the gap really remains large. It's a very stubborn, complex problem.

And because of our difficulties making big headway in closing this gap, about three years ago, I got together with Jake Murray who worked with me at the time here at the Ed School, and with a couple of students, and we put our heads together and we asked this question: What would it really take to make big process on the achievement gap?

And where we ended up is that we wanted to start a new school. And we wanted the school to begin with kids at three years-old. And the reason for starting at three years-old is that the achievement gap is already quite large by the time that kids enter kindergarten. Actually about half the achievement gap exists at this point of kindergarten entry.

So our thought was, first, let's start a school that begins with kids earlier, at three years-old, and maybe even eventually at two years-old. But the idea here was not just to start a new school. A lot of people are starting new schools. And there are even new schools that begin with kids early. It was to do a set of things really well and to do a set of integrated things really well that we thought would make a big impact on the achievement gap.

So one of those things was having a very high quality program for three and four year-olds. And key to creating a high quality program for three and four year-olds is being able to compensate people well. Most people who work in childcare and preschool programs out there work for $14,000 dollars a year. It's very hard to attract people at that level of compensation. It's very hard to keep them over time. Huge turnover in the field.

And in our school, we're able to pay people somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000 dollars a year, so almost three times as much. And so we get very high quality applicants. They're much more likely to stay.

In addition, they're able to be part of an instructional community. They're able to work with other teachers on their instruction. They're able to think about alignment with these teachers, too. So we're really able to see from three years-old, all the way up through fifth grade eventually what curricular alignment should look like, how we can scaffold kids' learning. We can really create a ladder of rich literacy and math over this whole grade span from three years-old all the way up through fifth grade.

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Video 2: Richard Weissbourd Part 2

RICHARD WEISSBOURD: The third principle that we're very focused on-- and this is really quite different from other schools-- is that adult development is very much at the heart of kid development. What we're seeing in schools these days is that teachers are burning out, that about half of teachers are leaving the profession within the first five years, that we're losing our best teachers within the first five years, that teachers often find their jobs monotonous, that they're doing the same things year in and year out. And they're really looking to develop professionally, to develop emotionally.

And we're trying to create a culture in the school that really supports adult development. So part of that is really creating a really intellectually vibrant and rich culture in the school where adults are thinking about student work and talking to each other about student work, thinking about the relationships with kids and talking to each other about their relationships with kids, talking to each other about the stresses they're feeling, about the burdens they're feeling and how to deal with those stresses, talking to each other about their ideals and about their disillusionments, and really creating a professional culture that supports that, giving those adults access to consultants, too, not only literacy and math, but on how to develop social, emotional skills, and about their relationship with kids, too, and the state of their relationships with kids, and the state of their relationships with each other.

So these three things – family engagement and taking it to a different level, social/emotional development, taking it to a different level, and adult development – are all things that we're trying to do at a higher level and a different degree of depth.

Let me say finally that there's a framework that really underlies this work. And it's prevention/resilience framework. And the other things that's going on in schools now is there's a tendency to focus on the ways in which kids are failing, the ways in which they're weak, on their defects and flaws, and to try and fix those defects and flaws. And we're really trying to create a school wherein very natural and reflexive ways teachers are identifying strengths in kids and building on those strengths.

So just a simple little test that I hope one day every teacher in our school will pass – can you name three strengths in every kid that you work with? Do you have a plan for working with those strengths? And I think that strength building is at the heart of social/emotional development and literacy development. It's also at the heart of the work with parents, though, too.

So it sets a parent/teacher conference on entirely different path. If you can start a parent/teacher conference by saying, "This is a way, a strength that I know in your child. Your child has many strengths. Here are three strengths that I know in your child. And here is what I do day-to-day to work with those strengths," it sets the relationship between parents and children-- parents and teachers on a different path if you're able, not just to call parents when their kids have messed up in some way or when there's a crisis, but when you're calling parents regularly about wonderful things that kids do, real accomplishments they've had, talents they have, and you're engaging parents regularly around talents, accomplishments, strengths.

So it's that prevention/resilience framework that we hope underlies all this work. So one final thought. From the outset, from the get-go, those of us who were part of conceptualizing this school really did not want to create just another boutique school. I mean, you can look at almost any big school district in this country and you can find one very high quality school.

But that has not been the hard nut to crack, in a sense. The hard nut to crack is, figuring out how to take high quality practice from those schools and to transfer it to other schools. That's what's been really difficult. So from the beginning, we try to think about, how can we make this school a rich resource for other schools? And we thought about a set of strategies. And one of those strategies is to only do things that are affordable and replicable.

So we're not trying to spend gobs of money at this school. We're trying to inexpensively do things that we think will be high quality, and really trying to pay attention to cost, so conceivably, any school in the district could pick them up.

We're also trying to be a rich resource for other schools. So we're trying to be as inviting as we can to other teachers in the district who want to come in and see certain practices that they might be able to learn from. Over time, we're hoping to videotape practices in our school so that those videotapes will be available to other teachers in other schools. And over time, we're also hoping to create rich partnerships with other schools. So teachers from other schools might spend part of the year in our school. We might spend part of the year in their schools.

But we get beyond the usual teacher networks and we really create deep, rich partnerships with other schools. And all these things we think will be very important for scalability and for replicability.

So in the end, when I think about the school, there are really two measures of our success. One is, can we do all these things I've named beginning with kids at three years-old, doing these elements all very well in an inter-related, synergistic way? Can we do all these things very well and in a way that will close the achievement gap? And the second measure is, can we be helpful to other schools and other school systems? Can we really be a model? So those are the things that are really at the heart of this enterprise.

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