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Measuring Academic Tenacity: New Visions for Public Schools Jared Carrano A district-like school support network in New York City is expanding its academic preparedness indicator and support system to include indicators for academic tenacity. Over the past three years, the important to note two key ways in College Readiness Indicator which New Visions is unique among Systems (CRIS) project has the CRIS team members. afforded New Visions for Public Schools an opportunity to reflect upon 1 CRIS is a partnership between the our college readiness systems and Annenberg Institute for School Reform at practices.1 Through our involvement Brown University, the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities in the project, we have been able to at Stanford University, and the University explore various strategies for ensuring of Chicago Consortium for Chicago School that our students graduate from high Research, with funding from the Bill & school ready for college and careers. Melinda Gates Foundation. See the inside front cover and the introductory article Before taking readers through our to this issue by Jacob Mishook for more CRIS experience, however, it is information. Jared Carrano is the school tools and systems developer at New Visions for Public Schools in New York City and site liaison for the College Readiness Indicator Systems project. 12 Annenberg Institute for School Reform The first is that we are the only CRIS on their credit accumulation, atten- site that is not a formal school district. dance, and New York State Regents As a nonprofit Partnership Support test pass rates after each semester. Organization, New Visions is respon- Our on-track metric has been extreme- sible for providing a number of ly useful in helping our schools identify district-like supports and services to which of their students are at risk of the roughly seventy-five New York not graduating ready for college. But City public high schools in our because it is based solely on academic network, although we do not have indicators, it only paints a partial authority over school-level decision picture. Given the growing recognition making or practices. in both the academic literature and The second difference lies in New policy circles of the importance of Visions’ early development and students’ noncognitive skills develop- adoption of a college readiness ment (known as academic tenacity by indicator, preceding similar activities the CRIS project) for college and career by our CRIS district colleagues. In readiness, New Visions has been 2005, New Visions created an “On- interested in finding ways to measure Track to College Readiness” metric to – and to incorporate such measures – support our schools with student- and into our college-readiness metric. The school-level planning and assessment. CRIS project enabled us to focus on The metric divides students into four this increasingly important work.2 performance groups – on track for college; on track for graduation; 2 See Nagaoka et al. in this issue of VUE for almost on track; and off track – based more on noncognitive skills. NEW VISIONS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS AT A GLANCE, 2013-2104 Director Robert Hughes School and student Partnership Support Charter Management information Organization Schoolsa Organization Schoolsb Total Number of schools 75 6 81 Student enrollment 48,229 1409 49,638 Free/reduced-price lunchc 77% 83% 77% English language learners 10% 10% 10% Special education 17% 18% 17% Hispanic students 41% 47% 41% African American students 30% 48% 31% Asian students 15% 2% 14% White students 12% 1% 12% Notes a Partnership Support Organization schools: New Visions for Public Schools provides a number of district-like school support services to these traditional public schools schools through a contract with the New York City Department of Education. b Charter Management Organization schools: New Visions opened its first two charter schools in 2011 and currently operates six charter schools. c Data for for 2012-2013; 2013-2014 data not yet available Data source: New Visions for Public Schools Jared Carrano VUE Fall 2013 13 LINKING ACADEMIC TENACITY able to articulate the Common Core TO THE COMMON CORE skills they were required to master, and they were able to pinpoint their strengths Early on in the project, we concluded and weaknesses and describe how they that beyond utilizing subjective student could improve on their deficits. self-assessment tools like surveys or other very rough proxies such as Although these student focus groups student attendance, no one had yet provided us with promising initial found any convincing measures of evidence to support our hypothesis, academic tenacity. Around the same we are limited in our ability to put it to time, New Visions had just begun further testing until the Common Core work on developing Common Core– is widely adopted across our schools, aligned curriculum modules in math and it is premature to operationalize and English, thanks to funding from this work. New Visions will continue both the federal government and the exploring the relationship between Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. tenacity and the Common Core as the As we engaged in these two strands of standards are rolled out across our work, we began to see a convergence network schools. between the two efforts. We proposed that true mastery of the SUPPORTING COMPREHENSIVE Common Core will require students to PROGRAMMING TO BOOST demonstrate academic tenacity, as the ACADEMIC TENACITY standards help students to understand the skills and knowledge that they need While we await the rollout of the Com- and support them in self-regulating mon Core standards, New Visions has their progress to mastery. For example, shifted our focus towards supporting Common Core writing standard #5 for comprehensive programming to boost English language arts for ninth- to academic tenacity, specifically through tenth-graders requires students to a program called iMentor, a school- “develop and strengthen writing as based mentoring program that matches needed by planning, revising, editing, public high school students with rewriting, or trying a new approach.”3 college-educated mentors in one-to-one Research also suggests that students are relationships. Each student receives more effective at self-regulating their a mentor who augments existing progress when they deeply understand guidance and college counseling the knowledge and skills that they are programs at their school. Mentor-men- required to master (Sadler 1989; Nicol tee pairs at New Visions schools are & Milligan 2006; Rust, Price & matched for all four years of high O’Donovan 2003). So we hypothesized school, over which time they exchange that engaging students with a Common weekly emails and meet in person on a Core–aligned rubric would help them monthly basis.4 to understand at a very granular level their performance on various skills and 3 See www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy how they can improve. CCRA/W. 4 For more on iMentor, see the Perspectives To test this, we conducted focus groups sidebar at the end of this article, “Supporting College Readiness through of both higher- and lower-performing Mentoring in New York City: iMentor,” students in four New Visions schools by Daniel Voloch. that were part of the same initiative to design and implement Common Core–aligned curriculum. Our initial findings suggested that students were 14 Annenberg Institute for School Reform The iMentor program seeks to develop programming aimed at developing seven core noncognitive skills: social students’ noncognitive skills. We are capital development, utilizing a growth also developing a data warehouse that mindset, perseverance, critical think- will allow us to connect many formerly ing, help-seeking and self-advocacy, isolated data sets and produce sophisti- optimism and excitement about the cated and nuanced data analysis to future, and curiosity and love of help our schools make informed learning. Mentors also help their decisions about programming and mentees develop college knowledge, resource allocation. We have also such as how to identify the best college begun to examine longitudinal college match, apply for financial aid, meet readiness data, tracking the four-year application deadlines, write effective high school trajectory of individual essays, and integrate into college life – students at each school in our network. all of which allows students to reach The data warehouse concept was important milestones on their path to facilitated by the CRIS project in that it college graduation. awarded New Visions’ Deputy Director Over the next several years, each of Research, Brad Gunton, a data entering student at eight New Visions fellowship, which enabled him to high schools will be paired with a participate in a number of data conven- mentor for four years, as part of a ings. Brad’s learnings through these six-year study of these schools by the convenings helped him to understand Research Alliance for New York City the critical role that a data warehouse Schools, which will be completed in could play in New Visions’ ability to 2018; the first annual report will be more quickly identify and address released in fall 2014. Approximately school- and student-level challenges 2,500 students will be mentored over to success. The data warehouse will the life of the project. enable New Visions to make compara- tive data accessible to our schools, unite traditionally separated data THE FUTURE DIRECTION OF strands, and conduct sophisticated COLLEGE READINESS AT NEW analysis over time. Beyond our current VISIONS capabilities, the warehouse will facilitate the integration of data from The CRIS project has enabled New multiple sources to encompass academ- Visions to explore new ways of ic information, behavioral history, improving upon our existing college teacher assignments, scheduling and readiness indicators and supports, program practices, grades and curri- focusing on the promotion and devel- cula, and budget and resource opment of academic tenacity in allocations. We also will be able to particular, and has created the space for create meaningful tools and user us to think deeply upon the challenges interfaces that coherently aggregate and opportunities we face. Three years this data to meet the diverse and later, as the CRIS project comes to an complex day-to-day needs of New end, we have identified some promising Visions’ organizational staff, school paths forward and are excited to continue staff, and the external providers that with this highly important work. deliver services to our students. Going forward, New Visions will Another promising strand of work continue to explore the convergence around college readiness is the tracking of the Common Core with the develop- of individual student progress over ment of academic tenacity and ways time, what we refer to as Stock and to support comprehensive school Flow mapping, developed by New Jared Carrano VUE Fall 2013 15 Visions’ director of research and REFERENCES organizational learning, Susan Fair- child.5 These maps show how a cohort Nicol, D., and C. Milligan. 2006. “Rethink- of students move between the various ing Technology-Supported Assessment on-track performance groups over their Practices in Relation to the Seven Principles eight semesters in high school. Large of Good Feedback Practice.” In Innovative movement, or “flows,” of students Assessment in Higher Education, edited by from a lower to higher category at a C. Bryan and K. Clegg. London, UK: Taylor particular point in time can provide and Francis Group Ltd. evidence that a particular intervention Rust, C., M. Price, and B. O’Donovan. is working. Conversely, large flows 2003. “Improving Students’ Learning by of students from higher to lower Developing Their Understanding of categories might suggest current Assessment Criteria and Processes,” programming or structures are not ade- Assessment & Evaluation in Higher quately serving students. We have only Education 28, no. 2. begun to scratch the surface of what these maps can tell us, and we believe Sadler, D. R. 1989. “Formative Assessment that they have the potential to become and the Design of Instructional Systems,” powerful tools for sustainably getting Instructional Science 18, no. 2:119–144. more students college ready. 5 See www.newvisions.org/blog/entry/stock- and-flow-a-school-level-vital-sign for more information. 16 Annenberg Institute for School Reform