Teaching Matters blogs

Is Every Teacher a Literacy Teacher?: Reading and Writing in the Content Areas

Lynette Guastaferro — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:07:35 +0000

by Dr. William L. Heller, Using Data Program Director
Cross-posted on the TERC Using Data blog

There is a growing philosophy that every teacher is a literacy teacher, a view that is becoming increasingly important as states prepare for the Common Core State Standards, which place an emphasis on content literacy.

But what does “every teacher is a literacy teacher” actually mean? Will science teachers be expected to put away the Bunsen burners and take out the Balzac? Will social studies teachers be responsible for teaching contractions alongside the Constitution? If we misunderstand the idea, we may misapply it, and it may even lead to resentment among teachers who feel they are being asked to take on another’s responsibility.

Part of the confusion may stem from the tendency to refer to the English Language Arts (ELA) class as Literacy class. I’ve done it myself. After all, that is the class where students ultimately learn how to read and write. But as we continue to examine the demands of college and the workplace, we are discovering the need to expand our understanding of literacy as a set of essential skills that are critical for success in every subject area. Teaching literacy in isolation misses the point of why we need to be literate in the first place.

The idea of reading and writing across the curriculum isn’t new. We already know that having students write in their content classes, say math, strengthens their performance in ELA assessments. But the critical shift in rethinking the idea of literacy is that we want students to read and write in math because it also makes them achieve better results in math. If they can construct a viable argument and critique the reasoning of others, they will be doing the real work of mathematicians. If they can’t, it doesn’t matter how good they are at calculating or memorizing facts.

There is no question that students need to learn a complex range of skills in reading and writing. But they also need to learn how to learn through reading and writing. When students in social studies class conduct research on current events issues and write letters to their elected representatives to express their opinions, they are exercising critical literacy skills. And yet, we would not deny that these activities are appropriate for the social studies classroom.

To further illustrate this point, imagine a hypothetical scenario in which we have the specific goal of only preparing students to be scientists. The purpose of K-12 education, in this scenario, is to make our students ready for a college experience where they will only take science courses, so that they can graduate and become scientists. They would still need to know how to cite evidence from informational texts to support an argument. They would still need to know how to write explanatory texts to convey complex information. They would still need to know how to prepare and deliver oral presentations and communicate with other scientists. World progress in science depends on literate scientists.

So if we can agree that content-specific literacy skills are vital to the work of the scientist, the historian, and the mathematician, we must then ask who is best prepared to teach these skills. Who should teach students how to write a story proof to solve a math problem? Who should teach students how to dissect primary source documents to learn about a historical period? Who should teach students how to use experimental data to construct an argument about a scientific principle? Confining literacy skills to the ELA classroom makes about as much sense as allowing students to use wooden pencils only in wood shop.

As a Using Data facilitator, I once conducted a session for all of the Data teams in one New York City school. Each Data team represented a different academic discipline. During this session, the teachers themselves answered the question about who has the responsibility to teach literacy. As we drilled down into the data for each subject area, every team except one independently discovered the exact same problem within its own content area—students were weak in the academic vocabulary of that discipline, which has a profound effect on content comprehension. And who better to teach the vocabulary of the discipline than the content experts, themselves? Interestingly, the only department to select a different student learning problem was ELA.

If students start at an early age to learn not only how to read and write, but also how to learn through reading and writing, their learning in all content areas will improve. Furthermore, they will be more prepared for college and the workplace; they will be more informed citizens and critical consumers; and they ultimately will be more prepared to become life-long learners. Is every teacher a literacy teacher? The writing’s on the wall!

TERC's Using Data is a school reform and professional development service that helps educators at all levels to understand and use data to improve teaching and learning. Teaching Matters is an official TERC partner organization, conducting Using Data institutes for New York City schools.

Rohatyn Prize for Schools Where Teaching Matters

Lynette Guastaferro — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 20:43:49 +0000

Teacher effectiveness is a hot topic these days, but lately the conversation and investment has focused on teacher evaluation. While measuring teachers’ effectiveness is a significant first step, more important will be to use this information effectively and strategically to develop, retain and reward effective teachers.

There is no question that teaching matters. Accordingly, this year’s $15,000 Elizabeth Rohatyn Prize will highlight innovations in the area of teacher capacity-building and effectiveness. Teaching Matters is seeking nominations to highlight replicable, school-based strategies that education leaders implement in this area.

Teaching Matters urges you to nominate a school principal whose leadership results in an academically rigorous and innovative learning environment. This year’s submissions will be accepted from all publicly-funded K-12 schools in the New York metropolitan area (within a 100 mile radius of New York City). The application and criteria for the Elizabeth Rohatyn Prize are available here. Teachers, parents, principals and network leaders are encouraged to submit nominations.

There are schools that inspire and develop great teachers. Do you know one?

Click Here to Nominate!

Nominations for Elizabeth Rohatyn Prize are Open

Lynette Guastaferro — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:12:22 +0000

Teaching Matters is now accepting nominations for the 2012 Elizabeth Rohatyn Prize for Schools Where Teaching Matters.

Rohatyn Prize nominations will be accepted between March 1, 2012 and March 15, 2012. Click here to nominate yourself or an innovative principal you know. Nominated principals, who meet the basic criteria, will receive a link to the complete application via email. Final applications will be accepted between March 15, 2012 and April 15, 2012.

Our panel of judges will review the applications and select ten finalists for The Second Annual Rohatyn Prize for Schools Where Teaching Matters. In late spring, we'll announce the Top Ten and open up online voting to the public.

The winner of The Second Annual Rohatyn Prize will receive a one-time award of $15,000 to support, sustain or further an innovative school learning environment, program or practice that has the potential to be replicated by other schools.

Even Nothing Can Be Something

Lynette Guastaferro — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:42:11 +0000

by Dr. William L. Heller, Using Data Program Director
Cross-posted on the TERC Using Data blog

There are often revelatory moments in the data inquiry process, where your analysis will lead to great insight and discovery in a way that challenges your assumptions and changes the way you think about teaching and learning in your school. There are other times when the data shows exactly what you were expecting, confirming your predictions and giving you valuable evidence in making your case to others. Many times, however, the data doesn’t show anything at all.

This can be somewhat dispiriting to an enthusiastic data team, but it doesn’t need to be. Sometimes the data may show nothing, but that’s still valuable information that puts you ahead of where you were before you looked. We don’t complain when our dentist finds no cavities, when the mechanic finds nothing wrong with our car, or when a medical test comes back negative. Similarly, in data inquiry, even a finding of nothing can really be something, if you know how to interpret what it means.

What does it mean when you find no achievement gap?

Counterintuitively, teams can be excited to find a significant difference in performance between different sub-groups within their schools. They’re not happy that a gap exists; they’re just glad that they’ve found it. But when you do the analysis and find no gap, you should be just as pleased, if not more so. Keep disaggregating the data using different criteria, but if you don’t find any achievement gaps in the end, enjoy the discovery that your school seems to be providing relatively equitable educational opportunities for all of your students.

What does it mean when testing data shows even performance across strands?

It’s a clear path to drill down into a content strand where students are clearly showing deficiency. But when strand data doesn’t provide easy answers, it’s time to start looking for pervasive problems that reach across strands. Could students be having trouble with multi-step problems in Algebra, Geometry, and Measurement alike? Are students having vocabulary issues, regardless of whether the question is asking for a literary response or critical evaluation? A deeper look within the individual strands can usually reveal more fundamental problems.

What does it mean when students leave answers blank?

While a telling distractor answer might give you insight into why students got the wrong answer, a significant number of blank answers can signal that students didn’t even understand the question. It also might indicate a problem with stamina, if students are leaving a lot of questions blank towards the end of the exam. A student guessing blindly has a one in four chance of making a lucky choice, but blank answers are often deafening in their silence.

What does it mean when surveys show ambivalence from respondents?

Surveys often measure participant attitudes using a Likert scale, a series of statements that the survey-taker can agree or disagree with to different degrees. Many researchers prefer to offer an even number of responses, so the respondent is forced to choose one side or the other. But if you neglect to include a middle option—the “No Opinion” choice—you are missing out on valuable data. The idea of a survey is not to force anyone to generate results that will be more interesting to you; the survey should be designed to collect the most accurate data possible, and that includes allowing respondents to express their ambivalence if that’s how they feel.

A data analysis that shows nothing is not the same thing as a lack of data or an inconclusive result. So the next time your hard-earned data analysis shows no results, go ahead and make a big deal out of nothing!

A Conversation with Linda Darling-Hammond

Lynette Guastaferro — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:34:51 +0000

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with Linda Darling-Hammond. She is being honored by Teaching Matters as our 2011 Champion of Education and Innovation. Below is an abridged transcript of our conversation on key issues in today's education landscape -- Common Core, Assessment, Teacher Quality and America's commitment to real education reform.

Guastaferro: In a recent speech, you mention several high performing school systems in other countries organizing their curriculum around problem solving and critical thinking skills. Would you say the US is moving in that direction with the adoption of Common Core standards?

Darling-Hammond: I think that there is certainly a lot of good language in the common core about good critical thinking skills and problem solving and so on, but the end result is going to depend on many other factors. It's going to depend on what we do around building curriculum materials, it depends on whether we transform assessments in very important ways. It depends on what we do about professional development for teachers and for school leaders, because you can implement the common core curriculum in a way that is much more focused on higher order learning skills or you can implement the common core in a way that just replicates a lot of the more rote-oriented teaching that we currently have in place.

I would say, especially important, if you look at the US in relation to other countries is rethinking the testing system. We're the only major country that uses multiple-choice testing to a large degree; all of the high-achieving countries test much less than we do, test almost exclusively in open-ended formats with writing and performances, scientific investigations, research papers, and projects as part of the examination systems.

Guastaferro: So assessment is the really critical structure that we have to get right, and then we must back into the right supports. What's your analysis of our national assessment strategy as it stands now?

Darling-Hammond: The assessments consortia groups PARCC and Smarter Balance will develop assessments of the common core, and that will likely move the needle to some extent in the direction of more thoughtful assessments. But they won't get us all the way to where countries like Singapore and Australia, Hong Kong and many other countries are already. PARCC and Smarter Balance are being asked to do every child/every year testing, again, which no other country does. These other countries assess every three years at most, and therefore they have the resources to do use deeper assessments that involve students in ambitious work that they may complete over several weeks, for example, and they can involve teachers in developing and scoring the assessments.

Just to give you a contrast, in our two new assessment systems, we may have extended tasks that last one or two days or class periods. If you were in Singapore, in nearly every science class you would have a several-month scientific investigation that students design, conduct, and analyze... And those kinds of expectations for students mean that students are continuously being asked to think, to analyze, to synthesize, to communicate, to evaluate, to do those things that they will have to do in college, in the world outside of school to persevere at big task, to frame and solve problems.

Guastaferro: I agree that good assessment is the lynch-pin to developing students higher order skills -- but what about accountability? Working in New York City schools, we see both the negative and positive effects of the accountability system. But prior to accountability there was not a systemic way to look at performance - and there were areas of true neglect - no one really looking under the hood. How do you strike that right balance?

Darling-Hammond: Used well, assessments can be apart of a very powerful instructional improvement system and an accountability system where the goal is to be transparent about what kind of outcomes we are getting. The tests have to be worth teaching to, the outcomes have to be the right ones, the process has to engage teachers in ways that makes them smarter about their teaching, and more capable of being responsive to students. In addition, there's a form of accountability that we have not been investing adequately in this country, which is 'professional accountability.' That is what happens in Finland, Singapore, Canada, and many other countries. With attention to professional accountability, everyone who wants to enter teaching is both highly selected and highly supported. Teacher education is high quality [and free to candidates]..and they have put a lot of attention into designing high quality preparation because they think that it is a good investment....

...We've been trying to put all of our eggs only in a testing-with-rewards-and-sanctions basket. And we've gotten as far as you could get with that model on accountability. We need to make the investments in professional knowledge and skills. Then we need to allow the assessment system to be a good measure of learning in which teachers could actually be engaged as part of the process of evaluating the assessments, scoring them, and thereby becoming better teachers.

Guastaferro: Do you think our accountability focus comes from the fact that this country has so much inequity in the education we offer our students. We've seen so much failure in our schools -- and are there examples where they have the kind of a real diversity in income levels, like the extremes that we're see in the United States?

Darling-Hammond: There are a lot of countries where almost all of the kids are poor. In Singapore, 80% of the kids live in public housing, and yet it is one of the highest achieving nations in the world. But, no kid is homeless.

Guastaferro: Yes a culture of poverty vs economic poverty.

Darling-Hammond: No child is without health care. No child is without food. We have one of the highest effective rates of poverty for children in the world. ...Also, in almost every developed country, schools are funded equally. In New York State, you have some schools spending three times what other schools are spending per pupil. And, so you've got those inequities, then you add to that we don't have a highly functioning early learning system, so kids come from kindergarten with radically different levels of vocabulary and skills. And then you add to that the fact that when schools are resourced inequitably, you have big distributional differences in the quality of teachers. And that's what you're seeing...is the affects of all of those levels of inequality. We were less unequal in this country in 1979, than we are today.

Guastaferro: In terms of urban schools, what have you seen that you felt has really built teacher capacity?

Darling-Hammond: Well, there have been some districts that have really done explicit capacity building initiatives, and those have really paid off. So, years ago there was a lot of attention to the work that Tony Alvarado was doing in district 2 in New York City, and a lot of what's going on now, including the work that Teaching Matters is doing that is so fabulous, really comes from the work that they started, which was figuring out how to wrap around a set of supports for learning about teaching that could get into the classroom level, that could figure out how to give teachers a knowledge base, that they may not have had the opportunity to encounter. How to do that in a way that builds common practices, and norms and standards and a discourse about teaching, where people could get regular access to a body of knowledge that they could then work on together with coaching and support and curriculum materials.

Guastaferro: It's so funny, I never made the connection between Tony Alverado in District 2 and Teaching Matters' model -- but that is the genesis.

Darling-Hammond: What we saw in that period of time there was a real effort to create instructional...coherent...comprehensive, instructional knowledge and supports. Where superintendents have had the understanding, foresight and resources to bring that together, it has been transformative for some urban districts. We saw a number of urban districts in places like Connecticut that tried to support that state-wide, really make strong gains in reading and writing by doing that.

I think again, with the current emphasis on the peripheral issues, there is less support for districts to do that--to bring together a coherent vision for instruction and professional development support, and make that a regularized part of what teachers could expect to get in their professional lives. And I think as a matter of equity and obligation, we should be organizing ourselves in this society to give teachers the knowledge and the skills that they need to have to get the job that they want and need to do.

Guastaferro: Thank you Linda, I really appreciate your time.

Darling-Hammond: You are very welcome.

Save the Date: Teaching Matters to Honor Linda Darling-Hammond on October 18, 2011

Lynette Guastaferro — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:50:47 +0000

On Tuesday, October 18, 2011, Teaching Matters will honor Linda Darling-Hammond as a Champion of Education and Innovation at our annual Champions of Education and Innovation celebration. Linda Darling-Hammond is an authority on school reform, educational equity and teacher quality. In 2007, Education Week named her one of the 10 most influential people in the field of education over the last decade. David Pogue, Emmy award winner and New York Times technology writer, will deliver the keynote address. The event will take place at noon at the Harvard Club in New York City.

Click here to purchase tickets.

For more information on the Champions of Education and Innovation celebration please visit our event page: http://teachingmatters.org/node/238

All Together Now: Common Core and the Necessity of Professional Learning Communities

Lynette Guastaferro — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 20:42:00 +0000

“The challenge confronting public education is not recruiting more good people to an ineffective system, but rather creating powerful systems that allow ordinary people to achieve success.”
-Richard Dufour and Robert J. Marzano

In almost all professions, except education, it is understood that group collaboration is the fastest way to excellence and innovation. In the medical field, research indicates patients perceive a higher quality of care in group versus solo practice. Trends in scientific research also point toward the benefits of teamwork. Thomas M. Koulopoulos, author of The Innovation Zone: How Great Companies Re-Innovate for Amazing Success, looked at Nobel prize recipients in the physical sciences and found that “[i]n the first fifty years of the twentieth century, thirty-nine Nobel prizes were awarded to individuals and four to teams. In the second fifty years, thirty-three were awarded to individuals as opposed to thirty-six for teams.” The problems of our day are more complex and group work toward a common goal is becoming a necessary factor for success.

As schools begin to develop Common Core-aligned curriculum and assessments, teachers will need new skills to teach to and assess the higher order skills embedded in the new standards and ensure consistent levels of rigor school-wide. In most schools, this will require redefinition of staff roles and responsibilities. In order to meet the challenge of the task ahead, schools will need a new model where teachers work collaboratively to push their students and their practice. The efficacy of educators will be less about the competencies of individual teachers and more about maximizing the shared knowledge, resources and skills of the collective.

In Leaders of Learning: How District, School and Classroom Leaders Improve Student Achievement, Richard Dufour and Robert J. Marzano provide a framework for building collective capacity using professional learning communities (PLCs). The establishment of PLCs necessitates a shift in culture from the individual teacher working in isolation to purposefully grouped teams of teachers working collaboratively to achieve shared goals. Dufour and Marzano define a PLC as “an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. Professional learning communities operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous job-embedded learning for educators.”

It is not enough to randomly group teachers and require them to meet on a weekly basis. A properly developed PLC has a shared vocabulary, group norms, and specific goals focused on the issues that will have the greatest impact on professional practice and student achievement. In addition, school leaders committed to the successful implementation of PLCs must provide teachers with the time, guidance and support structures necessary to meet their objective.The key to maintaining an effective PLC is to focus on the right work and to ask the right questions. Dufour and Marzano offer the following four questions as a starting point for any PLC:

What is it we want our students to know?
How will we know if they are learning?
How will we respond when individual students do not learn?
How will we enrich and extend the learning for students who are proficient?

After implementing last year’s Common Core pilot program, the Department of Education concluded, “ the importance of structures like teacher teams, common planning time, as well as support from school leadership, are integral to a school’s ability to make significant shifts in their everyday classroom practice.” Many principals intuitively know that teacher teams done poorly--without leadership support, clear goals and an outcome driven focus--are a questionable investment of scarce educational resources. It is critical that principals develop strong distributed leadership with specific goals tied to measurable outcomes. In some schools, it may be best to start with a few groups facilitated by strong teacher-leaders and grow from there.

What successes have you seen as a result of collaboration among teachers? What challenges does the PLC model present for traditional schools? What concrete or practical suggestions do you have for schools hoping to implement PLCs? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

If you would like to subscribe to our Summer Series, please click here to receive email updates.

Teaching Matters’ Common Core Summer Series
Monday August 1, 2011: An Introduction to Teaching Matters’ Common Core Summer Series
Monday, August 8, 2011: All Together Now: Common Core and the Necessity of Professional Learning Communities
Monday, August 22, 2011: Writing Matters Case Study: How Teacher Teams Led to Improved Student Outcomes in ELA
Monday, September 12, 2011: Innovation and Collaboration: Four Easy Ways Technology Can Support Professional Learning Communities

Suggested Reading
Leaders of Learning: How District, School and Classroom Leaders Improve Student Achievement
by Richard Dufour and Robert J. Marzano

Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work™, 2nd Edition
by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas W. Many

Learning by Doing Study Guide (free PDF download)
by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas W. Many

Additional Resources:
All Things PLC
http://www.allthingsplc.info

The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement: An Introduction to PLCs
http://www.centerforcsri.org/plc/index.html

Teaching Matters’ Common Core Summer Series

Lynette Guastaferro — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:28:38 +0000

As of July 2011, 43 states have opted to implement the Common Core State Standards--the national educational standards intended to raise the bar on student achievement nationwide. Much has been made of what these standards will mean for students, but what about teachers? What new proficiencies might teachers need to create tasks that meet the new standards and assessments that accurately gauge whether students have succeeded in the mastery of higher order skills? It's easy to know whether a student has correctly identified parts of a speech. Comparatively speaking, it's more difficult to identify whether a student has sufficiently demonstrated knowledge of synthesis. How will teachers come to a common understanding of what is needed to assess these higher order skills? And what kinds of structures can leaders put in place to ensure their teaching staff is prepared to meet the challenge of the Common Core?

While schools are not expected to fully implement the standards until 2014, school leaders know that experimenting early and often will ease the instructional transition. During the 2010-2011 school year, 100 New York City Schools participated in a Common Core pilot program. With the support of national education experts, teams of teachers and administrators developed Common Core-aligned curricula, including college ready performance-based tasks and assessments. Samples of tasks, student work, and related instructional supports can be found on the Department of Education website. The DOE has also posted citywide instructional expectations for the 2011-2012 school year, during which all schools will be expected to engage students in at least two Common Core aligned-tasks, one in literacy and one in math, and look at student work in teacher teams.

Over the next few weeks, Teaching Matters' Common Core Summer Series will examine the implications the new standards will have on teacher practice. We'll also explore how professional learning communities (PLCs) and teacher teams can support school implementation of the new standards. Finally, we'll examine a few technologies that enable teachers' collective capacity--supporting collaboration around Common Core outcomes and improving teacher effectiveness. We hope you'll join the conversation by sharing your ideas and experiences.

If you would like to subscribe to our Summer Series, please click here to receive email updates.

Teaching Matters’ Common Core Summer Series: Upcoming Topics
Monday August 1, 2011: An Introduction to Teaching Matters’ Common Core Summer Series
Monday, August 8, 2011: All Together Now: Common Core and the Necessity of Professional Learning Communities
Monday, August 22, 2011: Writing Matters Case Study: How Teacher Teams Led to Improved Student Outcomes in ELA
Monday, September 12, 2011: Innovation and Collaboration: Four Easy Ways Technology Can Support Professional Learning Communities

In the News: Teaching Matters at Chelsea High School

Lynette Guastaferro — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:18:06 +0000

Teaching Matters’ work was recently featured in a WNYC News report about academic gains being made by students at Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School. Over 90 percent of Juniors passed this year’s English and US History Regents exams, with comparable gains seen among Sophomores who took the Science Regents. Teaching Matters has worked in partnership with Chelsea High School for three years to help build a school culture of professional learning, planning and collaboration.

During the 2010-2011 school year, Senior Educational Consultants Jelbin DeLaCruz and Judith LeFevre worked with 18 teachers across grade levels and subject areas, with a specific focus on improving student writing outcomes. DeLaCruz and LeFevre supported staff in the creation of grade specific writing prompts and rubrics, aligning the curriculum to the school’s instructional priorities. Using Writing Matters as a model, the school administered a baseline writing assessment to identify deficiencies and strengths among the student population. Throughout the year, teams came together to check-in on student progress and revise instructional resources as needed. According to DeLaCruz, “When we administered the end-of-year assessment, we saw a measurable improvement in students’ writing skills in the problem areas we’d identified in September. We also noticed more students taking ownership of the writing process, fostering an atmosphere of self-directed learning.”

Teaching Matters is committed to helping schools produce career and college ready learners. We are pleased to support the work of Principal Brian Rosenbloom and the dedicated teachers at Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School.

Click here to read the full WNYC article.

Teaching Matters Awards First Annual Elizabeth Rohatyn Prize to Jeanne Rotunda, Principal of West Side Collaborative

Lynette Guastaferro — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 02:55:28 +0000

NEW YORK, July 11, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/-- Teaching Matters is pleased to announce that Jeanne Rotunda, Principal of West Side Collaborative (MS 250) is the recipient of the first annual Elizabeth Rohatyn Prize for School Innovation. The $15,000 prize was presented to Rotunda by Elizabeth Rohatyn at Teaching Matters Fourth Annual Summer Forum for Principals. West Side Collaborative's online collaborative community fosters the staff's ability to differentiate instruction for students, share resources and lessons and strategically use assessments. Rotunda plans to use the award to build teacher effectiveness through the expansion of the school's online system.

The goal of the Rohatyn Prize is to recognize a school leader who has launched innovative practices in his or her school and to provide funding to support efforts to expand those practices. Before presenting the prize, Elizabeth Rohatyn addressed the crowd of over 100 principals and school leaders. "When we started Teaching Matters 17 years ago, we did so with a vision of today in mind. A today defined by all of you -- hard working, imaginative and committed school leaders who creatively promote good instruction and student success by applying the innovations made possible by technology," Rohatyn said. During her acceptance speech, Ms. Rotunda thanked her fellow nominees. "This is a terrific recognition for our school community. We are so thankful for this award and we learned a lot in this process. There are so many schools doing thoughtful, innovative work. It is nice to be a part of such a significant network of schools. Thank you for letting us learn from all of you," Rotunda said.

Elizabeth Rohatyn is a champion of innovation and education. Driven by the belief that technology could be used to engage urban students struggling to read and write, Mrs. Rohatyn joined forces with former teachers, principals and technology experts and founded Teaching Matters in 1994. Funding for the Elizabeth Rohatyn Prize for School Innovation.is made available by contributors to the Elizabeth Rohatyn Innovation Fund. The Rohatyn Prize trophy is a perpetual award that will be passed on from year to year. Each year the new recipient's name will be engraved onto the award. West Side Collaborative was one of five finalists--including Academy Street Elementary in Bayport, Long Island. Bell Academy (Q294) in Queens, NY. Chester Park (PS 62) in Queens, NY. Peekskill Middle School in Peekskill, NY and West Side Collaborative (MS250) in Manhattan, NY--representing schools within a 100 mile radius of New York City.

The Prize was awarded at the Teaching Matters' Fourth Annual Forum for Principals which featured a talk by Bena Kallick, entitled Putting the Learner at the Core, How Common Core Reshapes our Thinking About Assessment.

Contact:
Naomi Cooperman, Ed. D.
Director of Curriculum and Instruction
Teaching Matters
ncooperman@teachingmatters.org
Include the subject line: Elizabeth Rohatyn Prize