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The Scaffolded Apprenticeship Model (SAM) is a team-based school improvement and leadership development program in which participants earn graduate-level credits and school leadership certification[1]. One key component of the SAM program is peer coaching, where SAM participants, or “coaches,” partner with colleagues, or “peers,” in their schools to examine the peers’ instructional practice. In SAM, the term “peer coaching” is used …
Developing school capacity to continuously improve student achievement is essential to the success of New York City’s strategy to empower schools and hold them accountable for results. The Inquiry initiative is the New York City Department of Education (DOE’s) approach to developing this capacity. Its goal is to develop school administrators’ and teachers’ skills in …
Last week I was looking all over the house for a book called Strategic Inquiry: Starting Small for Big Results in Education by Nell Scharff Panero and Joan E. Talbert. I’ve been a fan of their work for quite a long time, and Nell gave me a call a few weeks ago to catch up and talk …
Strategic Inquiry is an innovative model for promoting teacher collaboration around identifying specific “learning gaps” that keep struggling students from succeeding. Gaps may include anything from the proper use of commas and conjunctions to concepts such as “slope” in math. The authors argue that addressing these critical learning gaps can lead to big changes in …
For years, nothing seemed capable of turning around New Dorp High School’s dismal performance—not firing bad teachers, not flashy education technology, not after-school programs. So, faced with closure, the school’s principal went all-in on a very specific curriculum reform, placing an overwhelming focus on teaching the basics of analytic writing, every day, in virtually every …
Professional learning communities that center on students, use data effectively, distribute expertise, and enjoy district-level leadership and investment are proving to have a powerful impact on school culture, instructional quality, and student outcomes. Professional learning communities (PLCs) have gained increasing attention from researchers over the last twenty years or so and have been present in …
In the Scaffolded Apprenticeship Model (SAM), a school improvement strategy in place in New York City; Boston, MA; and Oakland, CA, teacher teams improve their schools by studying and closing high-leverage learning gaps for small groups of struggling students as a strategy for systemic change. SAM’s goal is for each school to continually expand its …
