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WHY FOCAL STUDENTS? A STRATEGY FOR LEARNING AND
SUCCESS
Have you ever tried to get good at seven things
at once and then reflected that if you had chosen one and done
it well, you would have learned even more? And not only more about
that thing, but lessons that you could apply to other parts of
your life? This is the basic premise of focal students.
The concept of focal students is a critical element
in the PartnersSI approach to continuous school improvement. Classroom
teachers in PartnersSI schools select three to five focal students
who are performing below grade level standard. Most often, focal
students are representative of the larger achievement and opportunity
gaps in the school. For example, if English Learners are currently
the school's lowest performing group, teachers will select focal
students from this group in their classrooms.
Teaching is a complex enterprise. Great teaching
that enables students to make dramatic learning gains is even
more rare. Because transforming schools relies so heavily on developing
increasingly effective teachers, focal students provide a way
to make a daunting task manageable. Focal students help teachers
develop the discipline of deeply understanding the students' needs,
adjusting their teaching to meet those needs, and in doing so,
impacting the rest of the classroom as the quality of their teaching
rises. We call this the "ripple effect."
Why focal students?
Working with focal students serves three important purposes:
1. Focal students reinforce an orientation toward
results. By setting specific goals for students and measuring
progress toward these goals on a daily, weekly and monthly basis,
teachers gather concrete evidence about the effectiveness of their
teaching and how to make adjustments to better serve their students.
2. Focal students keep the focus on student learning
and motivation. Focal students help teachers make the subtle,
but critical shift from, "How well did I teach it?" to "How well
did they learn it?" With focal students in mind, teaching is not
just executing a well-designed lesson, but it's checking to ensure
that the students achieved the objectives of that lesson. In addition,
focal students give teachers a critical window into the factors
beyond academics that influence learning. Factors such as what
motivates a student, the student's belief in himself, or his perception
of whether his teacher believes in him all impact learning. The
process of "researching" focal students enables a teacher to build
relationships with students who might otherwise have slipped through
the cracks.
3. By focusing on focal students, teachers become
more effective for all students. Preliminary data from teachers
in our partner schools in Oak Grove School District is telling
us that the ripple effect is indeed happening. Teachers who accelerated
3 or more focal students by 1-2 levels on the California Standards
Test also accelerated more students overall while allowing fewer
students to drop proficiency levels than they did in the years
before working with us. These data are debunking the concern that
focusing on a few students will take away from other students
in the classroom.
Using focal students to anchor teacher collaboration
When teachers discuss focal student learning in their grade level
teams the conversation becomes practical, anchored in data, and
specific. All of these elements make for a more productive learning
session and increase the likelihood that teachers can apply what
they've learned from a peer to their own classrooms. It's not
only important for teachers to examine focal students' academic
needs together, it's also important for them to talk about their
focal students' affective needs and build a collective commitment
to their success—not just raising their academic scores, but developing
young people with unique strengths, interests, experiences and
dreams.
By participating in a grade level conversation about
student learning, teachers can support each other's learning and
increase their capacity to meet complex student needs. According
to Mike Schmoker, author of Results Now, schools should
dedicate at minimum 45 minutes every two weeks for teachers to
discuss student data, set goals and plan instruction. "That way,"
he writes, "they can help one another ensure that they are teaching
essential standards and using assessment results to improve the
quality of their lessons." Our own experience suggests that an
hour a week of student-centered teacher collaboration has even
greater impact.
Centering coaching conversations on focal students
When coaches begin coaching conversations with teachers by centering
attention on focal students, the whole dynamic between the teacher
and coach becomes more collaborative. Instead of the coach critiquing
the teacher's instruction with reference to "best practice," the
two are working together to observe how the teacher's instruction
is affecting the focal students' learning and what s/he might
need to do differently to accelerate that learning.
We are seeing results
As Schmoker points out, "improvement is not a mystery." We are
finding that in the classrooms in which the teacher has adopted
what we call the focal student mindset—that is, a teacher who
continuously assesses learning of her focal students, examines
data and uses that information to plan instruction toward mastery
of standards—student achievement is accelerating. With sustained
attention to focal student learning and a determined effort toward
results, we can close the achievement gap.
Articles in this issue (March 2007):
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