“If you really want systemic change, it needs to be embedded in an overall philosophy, in district policy, and be embraced by the district school board,” Kay said. “If you don’t build support of your teachers into this whole strategy, they’re never going to get excited and bring it into their classroom practice.”
The Virginia Beach public school system, with about 70,000 students, is in its fourth year of implementing the 4Cs and the seven steps, and “the framework has allowed us to realign our curriculum and incorporate the skills into Virginia Beach standards,” said Superintendent James Merrill.
“It has been the basis for determining what assessments we would use and aligns with what the community has asked [us] to do for its children.”
Merrill said following the seven steps ensures that all stakeholders are involved along the way, and that everyone has a chance to ask questions, offer opinions, and become used to the changes in policy and practice.
Virginia Beach school leaders began with a small focus group and worked up to larger community meetings as they embarked on their plan to incorporate the 4Cs into district practice. This culminated in a large meeting of about 1,000 stakeholders. During that large meeting, attendees used an electronic response system to agree on what the most important student skills were.
“Without that [stakeholder] foundation, you can’t sustain it when you get to the rough times, like budget reductions,” Merrill said.
“If you don’t lay the groundwork of shared expectations … it’s much, much harder to create innovative approaches to this kind of work, and have it stick and be sustainable,” Greenhill said. She pointed to the Catalina Foothills School District in Arizona, which put together a community group to help guide strategic planning for student outcomes, as an example of how to involve stakeholders at each step of the way.
Assessing the 4Cs and other student outcomes can be challenging, but Greenhill said new developments could help in this area. A draft of 4C rubrics has just been completed, and school districts across the country are giving their feedback on that draft before it becomes public.
Some schools are implementing assessments designed and used by teachers, and others are using student portfolios and portfolio defense as high-stakes assessment for high school graduation, she said. The Common Core movement also is driving assessment consortia to develop new methods of gauging students’ skills and achievement.
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