One-stop-shopping for school improvement

By Mark Hawkes

By now, you've no doubt experienced the joys and frustrations of searching for useful information on the Internet. How about a site dedicated to providing meaningful and current information for educators seeking to improve their schools?

That's exactly what we've tried to create with Pathways, an interactive World Wide Web site designed and managed by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, a nonprofit educational research organization in Oak Brook, Ill. Pathways provides the latest research in 19 critical school improvement issues--science, math, literacy, goals and standards, curriculum, governance and organizational management, school-to-work transition, parent and family involvement, safe and drug-free schools, community support systems, leadership, professional development, preservice education, learning styles, at-risk kids, early childhood education, instruction, assessment, and technology.

For each of these issues, the site includes an overview, realistic goals, action plans, analysis of the most frequently encountered pitfalls and how to avoid them, alternative points of view to conventional wisdom, illustrative case studies, and phone numbers and e-mail addresses to help school people get in touch with the appropriate agencies and experts.

A diagnostic feature called the "Trip Planner" helps make the site useful for school improvement teams. After you respond to questions about your schools, the Trip Planner develops a customized school improvement profile that directs you to specific information in the relevant area of improvement. The profile also serves as a baseline to check progress over time.

Since we launched the site in 1995, hits on the server have increased at a rapid rate, and that tells us educators are interested in our site. But why? How is Pathways being used, and what impact is it having?

To answer those questions, we identified frequent users from our server log files and interviewed them about their experiences using Pathways. Their stories--some of which follow--might give you ideas on how to use Pathways in your own school improvement efforts.

Curriculum and the big picture

Susie Olesen, a teacher in Iowa for more than 25 years, is a frequent visitor to Pathways. A high-end technology user who serves as curriculum coordinator for both the Bridgewater-Fontanelle and Greenfield Community school districts, Olesen also teaches a fourth-grade special education class composed of students from both districts.

Her favorite Pathways stop is in the learning section. When we contacted her, she was downloading text to send to a social studies consultant. Olesen serves on the social studies curriculum planning committee sponsored by the Area Educational Agency for the two school districts.

She engages her students in a fair number of science activities, so she has been spending a good portion of time in the science content area of Pathways. But she says the section on leadership has also been an excellent resource for her as she works on a master's degree in educational administration.

"I use Pathways for myself as a teacher to sort of drive my philosophy of teaching," Olesen says. "I read it regularly, I access the different links, and it helps me remember how my classroom needs to be constructed and the kinds of activities that really help children to learn.

"When I have conversations with people who have been online on Pathways, it has really driven a lot of discussion around teaching and learning," she says. "Pathways influences how we talk about kids and active learning.

"Today's a perfect example: I was talking to a teacher about the science curriculum we're developing right now. We agreed that we weren't going to be able to get too creative with the curriculum. I mean, come on, there are certain things you just have to teach, especially in elementary school. . . . But we finally started making sense when we talked about a curriculum that is driven by how kids learn and not so much what they learn. I don't think we could have reached that level of discussion of how children learn had we not been influenced by the kind of writing and things that are on Pathways."

What would Olesen like to see added to Pathways?

"I'd love to see a database on behavioral issues," she says. She'd also like to see other content areas in the social sciences.

"I think the thing that Pathways has really done for me," Olesen says, "is that I really start thinking in terms of, 'How does this fit into the grand scheme of things? How does what I am doing today really fit with my philosophy of education?'"

Casting a web around science

Science educators like Shelly Peretz are asking similar questions. Peretz, head of the science department at Thornridge high school in Dolton, Ill., is one of a handful of teachers at the school who have tapped the power of the Internet as a teaching tool.

In Peretz' classes, students created presentations on the discovery of the structure of DNA using the multimedia tool Life Story and explored DNA changes over time using the web site at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. The kids have also shared the benefits of online discussions with other high school biology teachers around the country.

Peretz is trying to serve as a pioneer who paves the way for other teachers to do more Internet-based projects. Slowly, her school is putting the pieces in place to make the Internet and other electronic communication tools accessible in all classes. But a huge job lies ahead in convincing and training teachers to use these tools. Peretz believes Pathways will be a key ingredient in any progress they make.

"I'll be using Pathways for staff development to establish the knowledge base for the Internet," she says. "We'll then subdivide our work along critical issues areas and use Pathways as the foundation for our research and the springboard for exploring other sites."

Already, Peretz has referred colleagues with access to the Internet to the policy paper on Pathways titled "Plugging In." She says this paper on technology use in schools is a favorite at her school.

"It's a really nice tool," she says. "The two checklists, one for engaged learning and one for high technology--[they're] like the Bible for us."

A technology master plan

Phil Biggs became a frequent visitor to Pathways after assuming responsibility for district technology development in the 37 schools on the Kenai peninsula of Alaska. Now, Biggs says he often turns to Pathways for assistance as districtwide technology planning gets under way.

"The big push for me came . . . as we were starting to write a district technology plan," he says. "I was looking for some really good research I could give to my people, and I found 'Plugging In,' downloaded it, and handed it out."

Biggs says his district has a three-pronged approach to building technology expertise and encouraging technology use. The first step is to conduct professional development activities that let teachers browse the Internet, participate in listservs, use e-mail, and access enrichment materials, lesson plans, and other resources they might find useful.

Concurrently, each teacher is encouraged to write one instructional goal and determine how technology can help achieve that goal.

The third objective--and one Biggs admits is a little a farther out on the horizon--is to have each of the district's 37 schools develop its own technology plans that use the district's technology plan as a model. And Biggs says "Plugging In" will be the assessment tool schools will use as they develop their technology goals.

Searching for success stories

Barbara LeBeau is an education technology consultant in a regional education service agency serving 213 schools and more than 6,200 teachers in Macomb County, which is north of the greater Detroit metro area. Administrators and school board members in the county have placed a high priority on technology access, so there is fairly widespread use of educational technologies in the county's 22 school districts. Over the past few years, the bulk of LeBeau's work as a curriculum specialist in the Intermediate Service Division has been to help schools use technology resources efficiently.

Part of the arsenal LeBeau draws on is the Pathways Internet server. "We all have to write school improvement plans that have to address certain areas and have to be in place in the next two years," she says. "We want . . . examples of what other people have done that works."

Because Michigan has an active statewide school improvement community with strong interests in school-to-work outcomes, that critical issue is frequently accessed by Michigan educators like LeBeau. She also makes frequent use of the sections on assessment and learning.

Although she sees the value of Pathways, LeBeau says teachers won't experience its benefits until they learn to appreciate how the Internet can be used in their classrooms.

"Teachers are having a hard time envisioning how they would use something like the Internet in the classroom and for their own professional development," she says. "It is something that is totally different from anything we have ever talked about or have ever used in the classroom. It forces us to take a really strong look at instruction and what we are doing in the classroom."

Renewal through professional development

Alice Harper--a self-described Internet junkie--is the curriculum coordinator and head of the gifted and talented program for the North Montgomery School Corporation in Linden, Ind. At first, Harper says, she used Pathways to look for applied research to help her with her doctoral studies. More and more, though, she found herself printing out and passing along information gleaned from Pathways and other servers, to her district colleagues. And before she knew it, Harper had been cast in the demanding role of on-site professional developer.

With this information source at her fingertips, Harper helped organize the districtwide Dream Project, a plan of educational renewal based largely on electronic information sources. In a process she equates to having an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for every district teacher, the project focused on acquiring resources that would prompt teachers to begin to question their traditional teaching practices and try new approaches.

Guiding the project was information about the process of education change that Harper found through Pathways. A Dream Project team was created, composed of middle school administrators and a few ambitious teachers. The team met with middle school staffers to diagnose their needs as educators and outline individual plans for professional development.

Harper says Pathways was a major ingredient of the changes that have made her district stronger. "Last year was the first year we had local networking and e-mail," she says. "When teachers started using it, it improved the communication among staff members in this building. What's been interesting is that more and more teachers have called and talked to me, asking me to give them some good addresses for sites they can link up to, places where they can get lesson plans and that kind of stuff."

A principal's information niche

Julie McCann's first visit to Pathways was purely by accident. But the new principal of Western View Middle school in Corvallis, Ore., is glad she found her way there.

The unlikely meeting of McCann and Pathways has made the server a key tool in the school improvement plan initiated at Fair Play Elementary School, where McCann was principal before taking over the reigns at Western View.

The information McCann funneled into the hands of her teaching staff at Fair Play was largely from online sources, including Pathways. At Fair Play, Pathways is still being used for activities and projects such as development of integrated instructional units, identifying performance statements and objectives for curricular areas, and motivating teachers.

"Some teachers move very slowly," McCann says. "For these teachers, the information on Pathways was tough to argue with. Pathways has allowed us to get people to look at what is happening in the classroom--the importance of data, the importance of aligning assessment with instruction, the importance of having kids engaged and not off task, and the connections and meaning for kids.

"The research on Pathways backed up what many of us know and feel is right to do. It was another voice supporting our way of doing things."

McCann says Pathways doesn't overwhelm busy teachers with too much information. And that's a big plus. "Menus at many web sites have been pretty lofty," she says. "They haven't seemed to attract me and help me find what I want. I need help in dealing with transition, change management, velocity of change, trying to move people quickly, relationships, conflict management. [Pathways has] little pieces of these things in the network that are helpful to me."

-- Mark Hawkes is evaluation and policy information associate for the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory in Oak Brook, Ill.