During the mid-nineties Hoover Senior High School in the San Diego Unified School District was, by all accounts, a school in trouble. The school's achievement scores were the lowest in the state. Teacher morale was low and turnover was high. Crime, poverty, and basic skills were the most frequent topics of conversation on campus. At one point, a consultant suggested that teachers should not expect more from the student population of 2,200, 46% of whom are English learners, 100% of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, and 96% of whom are from minority groups.
School staff did expect more, however. Endeavoring to turn the situation around, they began by surveying the school's strengths, which included a health clinic, counselors, and a great library. Then the school established a staff development committee of Hoover teachers and administrators as well as colleagues from San Diego State University. They identified seven instructional strategies, all focusing on content standards, that could be used to permeate the school at every level. Committee members wanted the strategies to be transparent to the students and wanted literacy strategies in content-area instruction to become commonplace in English, science, social studies, art, physical education, music, and shop classes.
The school's governance committee approved the seven strategies. Every teacher in the school was expected to use them and the teachers were promised that priorities would not be shifted. Over the next three years, school leaders devised a professional development plan centered on the seven adopted strategies.
Today classroom observations continue to provide teachers with support and feedback for the refinement of their pedagogy. Lessons are often videotaped and used in teacher-led professional development days. Writing and sustained silent reading (SSR) classes provide additional opportunities for students to read and write. The library includes a full spectrum of reading levels in its collection, and library media staff collaborate with content teachers on classroom research projects. Most teachers identify block scheduling, featuring four 90-minute classes per day, as the crucial underlying structure that makes available sufficient time for in-depth, multifaceted instruction.
School leaders are staying the course by means of professional development and process accountability. As teachers have implemented content literacy instruction, student achievement has increased. Results from a variety of indicators show that Hoover High students are catching up; the gap is closing. Several reports about the school's success have been presented at conferences and have appeared in education journals. As one school leader wrote, "We're moving on up and reaching higher."
Schoolwide Literacy Goals
- To develop academic literacy through reading and writing practice across content areas
- To accelerate the progress of students who are below grade level
- To show yearly gains on the API
- To increase the number of students who apply to college
Criteria for Identifying Students at Risk of Below-Grade-Level Performance in Reading and Writing
- Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT)
- Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test
- California Standard Test (CST) and California Achievement Test, Sixth Edition (CAT/6)
- Informal Reading Inventory (IRI)
- California English Language Development Test (CELDT)
Content Literacy
- The staff development committee at Hoover High identified seven strategies for infusion across the curriculum
- Administrative accountability for implementation has been achieved through the use of an observation feedback form
- Anticipatory activities activate students' attention and prior knowledge before reading begins
- Read aloud develops understanding of the patterns and structures of written language, supports the joy of reading and the art of listening
- Shared reading demonstrates the reading process and strategies that successful readers use and shares the task of reading so that the entire class reads books that might otherwise be too difficult
- Cornell note taking is a system of double-entry note taking and response to content through questioning, categorizing, and summarizing
- Reciprocal teaching gives students opportunities to summarize, question, clarify, and predict
- Concept mapping helps students graphically display relationships between ideas
- Writing to learn helps students express in writing what they are learning about content
- Vocabulary development builds knowledge of key words and their underlying concepts
Library Media Program
- Read to Succeed, a program that recruits and trains volunteers from the community to serve as mentors and tutors to students at risk of academic failure
- Reading is Fundamental, a program that combines three essential elements to fostering literacy: reading motivation; family and community involvement; and the excitement among students as they choose free books that they may keep
- Collaboration with content area teachers on research projects
- Large collection of high-interest and culturally diverse literature and informational texts
- Full spectrum of reading levels
- Magazine and newspaper collection available to all users of the library
English-Language Arts Core
- Block scheduling of 90-minute class periods
- Curriculum mapping to content standards and pacing guides to ensure the coverage of content
- Consensus scoring, by all teachers, of timed writing prompts
- Writing elective in the 9th grade
- Senior writers workshop that is connected to the senior portfolio exhibition
Reading Interventions
- Genre reading course (competency-based Reading/Writing Workshop) for English-language learners and for 9th graders who are two years below grade level
- Reading intervention teachers, one-on-one instruction
- Tutoring by college students
Home/School/Community Literacy Partnerships
- Staffed parent center on campus
- Parent classes
- Synergy Services (Outside Source) after-school program
- Hoover High's EXPO night, during which students demonstrate their achievements to family and community members
- Home-school partnerships
Schoolwide Literacy Activities
- Peer tutoring program
- Intervention for struggling readers
- Sustained Silent Reading Program (SSR):
- Modeled on The SSR Handbook: How to Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading Program
- Task force composed of content area teachers to establish policies, provide book talks for teachers and students, and provide staff development sessions about SSR time
- Funding that is provided for classroom libraries
- Conferences that include students
Structured Time for Independent, Student-Selected Reading
- Independent reading time (20 minutes)
- A wide variety of literature in all content-instruction classrooms
- SSR
Professional Development/Ongoing Support
- Annual staff development plan
- Monthly staff development sessions during prep period
- Demonstration lessons videotaped for monthly staff development sessions
- Schoolwide classroom observations of literacy strategies and group conferences
- Collegial coaching
- Test preparation
- Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) involvement
- Field experience on campus for preservice teachers
- Classes for a master's degree program in education offered by San Diego State University (SDSU)
- Semimonthly team meetings of K-12 literacy leaders who meet for policy development and book study
- A demonstration and research class taught by professors from SDSU's Department of Education
- Three districtwide staff development days, including a full day of K-12 staff development presented by the City Heights Educational Collaborative Program.
- Writing and reading institutes
- Summer institute for professional development
Other
- Professional Development School (K-16) involving a partnership with SDSU to prepare future teachers
- 4 x 4 block schedule model in which students attend four 90-minute classes per day, allowing time for longer, more comprehensive lessons and for the completion of traditional yearlong classes in one semester
- Option of completing 16 or 12 credits per year (Because of the block schedule, students may take additional classes each year.)
- Daily 90-minute lesson planning periods
- Administrative accountability through the use of the Stulls teacher evaluation process and probes, and classroom-observation feedback forms
- Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) elective
Evidence of Success (as of 2003)
- A 50-point gain in API from 1999 to 2003
- Registered gains for all subgroups for three out of the last four years
- Increase in Gates-MacGinitie reading scores for the average student at Hoover High, from 5.9 to 8.2 (The average student now reads more than two grade levels higher than was the case three years ago.)
- Reduction of expulsion rate by two-thirds
- Decrease in dropout rate
- Higher Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test scores for Hoover High's 9th graders than for other 9th graders throughout the district during the years 1998-2001
- Collaborative decisions made by the staff development committee and school governance to help articulate a schoolwide focus on instruction
- Continuing professional development to build teachers' ability to implement each strategy
- Administrative incorporation of each strategy into the school's accountability plans
- Reports by teachers of increased talk among students about books and reading
Dissemination
- Fisher, Douglas. "Trust the Process: Increasing Student Achievement via Professional Development and Process Accountability," NASSP Bulletin , Vol. 85, No. 629 (December 2001), 67.
- Fisher, Douglas. "We're Moving on Up: Creating a Schoolwide Literacy Effort in an Urban High School," Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Vol. 45, No. 2 (October 2001), 92.
- Fisher, Douglas and Nancy Frey. Improving Adolescent Literacy: Strategies at Work. Columbus, Ohio: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.
- Fisher, Douglas and Nancy Frey. "Lessons for Leaders," Principal Leadership (November 2002), 53.
- Fisher, Douglas; Nancy Frey; and Douglas Williams."Seven Literacy Strategies That Work," Educational Leadership (November 2002), 70.
For More Information Contact:
Hoover Senior High School
Dan Diego Unified School District
Doug Williams, Principal
619-283-6281
dwilla@sandi.net
City Heights Collaborative
4283 El Cajon Blvd., No. 100
San Diego, CA 92105
Doug Fisher, Director of Professional Development
dfisher@mail.sdsu.edu
