Turning Points - Transforming Middle Schools

Principles & Practices
Services and Support
History
Turning Points Schools
Vision for Students
Beliefs About Teachers

In Lowell Massachusetts, Turning Points and district staff have worked hard to create an effective partnership for improving all district middle schools. Prior to the partnership with Turning Points, district facilitators worked mostly in isolation and juggled as many as 15 schools. District facilitators were responsible for particular areas of focus such as Title I, bilingual education, special education, etc., but rarely communicated with one another. In collaboration with Turning Points, the district decided to organize facilitators into teams sharing the same group of schools. Turning Points staff organized professional development for district facilitators on a range of Turning Points practices and strategies, including using protocols for looking at student and teacher work, building teacher teams, and effective facilitation. The results have been striking, with much greater coherence and coordination in the district's approach to school improvement. District facilitators are still responsible for their areas of focus, but now they share a common set of tools and they communicate with their colleagues about school needs on a regular basis. As a result, individual schools and teachers receive more focused support from district staff.

Individual schools require strong district-level support and conditions of flexibility and autonomy if progress is to be widespread and lasting. Turning Points staff assist schools in engaging in district-level planning and advocacy to support Turning Points-based reform. For example, the staff may assist in crafting a district vision for middle grade reform, developing a district wide professional development agenda based on self-study and other data, and discussing policy changes that will assist middle grade schools in the reform process.

Strategies:

Building the district capacity to better support whole school change (e.g., developing vision, preparing staff, redirecting resources)
Collaborating with the district to pursue means of flexibility and autonomy that allow the school to be more innovative (e.g., lump sum budgeting, policy flexibility, staffing flexibility)
Collaborating with the district on professional development, research and evaluation, and advocacy for middle grades reform

Click on the links below to learn more about other Turning Points practices.

Improving Learning, Teaching, and Assessment for All Students -->
Building Leadership Capacity and a Collaborative Culture -->
Data-based Inquiry and Decision Making: How Are We Doing?-->
Creating a School Culture to Support High Achievement and Personal Development-->
Networking with Like-minded Schools -->
Developing District Capacity to Support School Change