Rationale for a Schoolwide

Focus on Literacy

S chool leaders like you are charged with improving student achievement and
increasing graduation rates. This, as you know, is a daunting task. As
students move through the grades, the task of providing high-quality edu-
cation at all levels requires multifaceted and systemic decision making that
often makes it hard to know where to start and, once started, how to stay on
course.
However, we know that schools that specifically embark on a journey to
improve literacy and learning have a better chance of graduating greater
numbers of students who are active learners, proficient readers, and fluent
writers. These schools are willing to prioritize literacy as a central mission of
the school and to organize for action around this central theme. And in school
after school, it is working. Higher numbers of graduates, more engagement
with school by students and teachers, and higher test scores attest to the
promise of this route.
During the past ten years, we have observed school leaders who know a
great deal about what works in the essential areas of systemic school reform,
teacher professional development, leadership coaching, and use of data. The
key, however, is to put this body of knowledge to work as part of a schoolwide
literacy improvement effort that will directly impact student literacy and
achievement. Our work with school leaders throughout the country has
shown us how a sustained focus on literacy can be used as a lever for school
improvement. The literacy leadership process described in Taking the Lead on
Adolescent Literacy will support you and your colleagues as you work to
ensure students are prepared to meet their future as readers, writers, and
thinkers.

WHY FOCUS ON LITERACY?

In multiple studies and policy reports, literacy (or the lack of literacy) has been
closely linked to dropout rates, discipline issues, grades, employability, success
in higher education, civic participation, and 21st-century skills. Indeed, liter-
acy is essential for success in almost every area of life. Literacy is far more than
the ability to read and write basic text. Rather, literacy is the ability to read,
write, speak, listen, and think in order to learn, communicate, and make
meaning of increasingly complex print and online texts. Literacy and content

2
 RATIONALE FOR A SCHOOLWIDE FOCUS ON LITERACY
3
learning are deeply intertwined. If one struggles as a reader or writer, it is
nearly impossible to succeed academically.
Whether your school is large or small, in an urban, suburban, or rural
setting, your students will benefit from ongoing instruction and practice
that enable them to meet the literacy demands of college, career, and good
citizenship. As you think about students in your school, you know that
some are performing considerably below grade level. Others, however, may
be reading and writing on grade level but continue to struggle with the ever
increasingly complex texts they are expected to comprehend and respond
to. Some students may excel in the areas of reading and writing and, as a
result, need more rigor and challenge to avoid boredom and academic
apathy. Others may be unable to transfer literacy skills across
all content areas or read strategically, analytically, or fluently when
confronted with advanced texts. In all of these instances, it is critical that
as a school leader you are able to plan, implement, and troubleshoot a lit-
eracy improvement effort that meets the literacy needs of all students in
your school.
Ensuring that all students develop high levels of literacy requires schools to
make a concerted, coordinated effort to improve students’ proficiency as read-
ers, writers, and critical and creative thinkers. This, in turn, makes possible
increased student achievement, which leads to higher graduation rates. Our
premise is simple—and is borne out by numerous examples: a systemic literacy
improvement effort can be a powerful lever for school improvement. This sys-
temic approach to improving literacy in Grades 4 through 12 involves the
following synergistic actions:

• The development and communication of a compelling vision

• Ongoing collaboration between administrators and teachers
• Unflinching, data-based assessment
• The setting of clear, measurable goals that address important issues
related to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and school culture
• The development of a quality literacy action plan
• Active implementation of the plan
• Monitoring of progress toward stated goals

These tasks are challenging and complex. But they are doable.
Accomplishing these tasks through a focused, collaborative process can produce
dramatic results for improved student literacy and learning.

Support Provided by This Book

and the Literacy Leadership Process
This book includes field-tested and practical tools, approaches, rubrics,
resources, and strategies that school and district leaders across the country
have found helpful as they design, implement, and monitor a literacy ini-
tiative. Whether you are a building level administrator, a district or school
 PART I: THE MODEL, PROCESS, AND RUBRICS
4
literacy coach, a superintendent, supervisor, coordinator, or literacy team
leader, this book will give you and your colleagues a process to enact
systemic improvement of students’ abilities as readers, writers, and
thinkers. As you read this section of the book, you may be thinking the
following:

• Where do we start? I’ve already got more than I can handle. We do not
have a literacy team, and I am not sure what the team would do if we
had one.
• Another new initiative? We already have a school improvement plan. Our goal
this year is dropout prevention and raising test scores. How does this conver-
sation about literacy connect to these goals?
• Literacy is not my job. The English Department takes care of this.

You and your colleagues can use this book to guide you through a five-
stage, continuous improvement process. The process builds on best practices
outlined in the research-and-practice literature as well as the successful literacy
improvement efforts of many schools across the country. Using this literacy
leadership process, you can work collaboratively with other teacher leaders and
administrators to develop a literacy action plan and implement, monitor, and
evaluate its success.
As with all effective action planning processes, the literacy leadership process
described in this book is cyclical, beginning by assessing, implementing, and
monitoring, and ending by reassessing, reviewing, and adjusting for the fol-
lowing year. What makes this process more than a general action planning
template is the specificity of the materials. Everything in this process is designed
to support the design and implementation of an effective literacy action plan in
upper elementary, middle, and high schools.

Relationship of the Literacy Leadership Process

to the Taking Action Literacy Leadership Model
The literacy leadership process is based on the Taking Action Literacy
Leadership Model that was developed through a project funded by the
Carnegie Corporation of New York. The model was designed to answer the
question “What do literacy leaders need to do to successfully improve stu-
dent literacy and learning in Grades 4 through 12?” The model is based on
multiple data sources, including strategies that successful principals use to
improve student literacy in their schools, the research and practice litera-
ture, feedback from educational leaders throughout the country, and
reviews by a national advisory board. The model is fully described in Taking
Action on Adolescent Literacy: An Implementation Guide for School Leaders
(Irvin, Meltzer, & Dukes, 2007). The model incorporates two synergistic
components: goal areas (represented in the graphic by a center circle sur-
rounded by two concentric bands) and action points (represented in the
graphic by a five-point star).
 RATIONALE FOR A SCHOOLWIDE FOCUS ON LITERACY
5

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Taking Action Literacy Leadership Model

Understanding the components of the Taking Action Literacy Leadership Model

helps a literacy team understand the larger picture of school change that leads to
a sustainable literacy improvement effort. The set of six literacy action rubrics that
are the centerpiece of the literacy leadership process are aligned with this model.

Goal Areas of the Model

The goal areas of the model correspond to the three critical outcomes of a
schoolwide literacy improvement effort. At the center of the literacy initiative is
Student Motivation, Engagement, and Achievement. When students are motivated
and engaged to read and write in school, they can improve their abilities as read-
ers, writers, and thinkers. Improved achievement follows, both in content
knowledge and in literacy and learning skills. The second goal area is Integrating
Literacy and Learning, which focuses on the school’s instructional offerings and
has two components: Literacy Across the Content Areas and Literacy Interventions.
Literacy Across the Content Areas includes the content-focused courses that stu-
dents take as they move through the grades (e.g., math, science, social studies,
English/language arts, art, music, and foreign language). Students grow as
 PART I: THE MODEL, PROCESS, AND RUBRICS
6
readers and writers when they learn to apply literacy skills (such as activating
prior knowledge, summarizing, questioning, and sequencing) to complex con-
tent area text. Literacy Interventions targets those students whose performance is
significantly below their grade placement level. Literacy interventions can be
offered in many formats, including an academic literacy class, an English lan-
guage learners (ELL) teacher team teaching with an English/language arts
teacher, or before and after school tutoring sessions. Whatever the format, liter-
acy interventions are intended to provide targeted assistance to under-performing
students so that they become more proficient readers and writers. Addressing
the literacy and learning needs of all students in a school typically requires a
focus on both components (content area and intervention) of Integrating Literacy
and Learning to meet students’ literacy and learning needs.
The goal area represented by the outer band, Sustaining Literacy Development,
represents three important components necessary to sustain and promote a
school-based literacy improvement initiative. First, it is critical to establish a
Literacy-Rich School Environment. This includes a school climate that actively
communicates to students that they are important contributing members of the
school community through displays of current student work in hallways and
classrooms, evidence of literacy-related student activities, and celebrations of
progress. The school environment is also, of course, positively or adversely influ-
enced by the policies, structures, schedule, and practices of the school. When
these policies and structures focus on supporting all students to grow as readers,
writers, and thinkers, a literacy-rich culture can be developed and maintained.
Parents and Community Members can also provide critical resources for stu-
dent literacy development. When schools work collaboratively to invite and
access the support and opportunities provided by their families and through the
community, students get the message that they and their futures are seen as a
valuable asset worth investing in.
Finally, District Support can mitigate the many roadblocks and pitfalls that
often accompany fledgling initiatives. Districts can broker resources across
schools, establish literacy improvement as a priority across the district, and
facilitate school-based efforts. District leaders can provide schools with
resources to support teachers as they embark on a new instructional model
where a strict focus on content delivery shifts to an expectation that teachers
provide literacy-embedded content instruction. District leadership can also pro-
vide direct support to instructional leaders through professional development
and to school-based literacy leadership teams as they carry out their literacy
action plans.

Action Points of the Model

The five action points located in the center of the model describe the actions
that literacy leaders need to take to initiate and sustain a literacy improvement
effort successfully: (1) implement a plan, (2) support teachers to improve
instruction, (3) use data, (4) build leadership capacity, and (5) allocate
resources. These action points are not necessarily sequential. However, our expe-
rience with schools has shown us that designing and implementing an effective
literacy action plan is critical to achieving results. Without a solid plan, the good
 RATIONALE FOR A SCHOOLWIDE FOCUS ON LITERACY
7
intentions of teachers and leaders may evolve into random activities that lack
cohesion and purpose. But developing and implementing a plan to improve lit-
eracy can be complicated and time-consuming. Further, many plans get devel-
oped that do not ever get implemented. The quality of the plan only matters if it
is put into action to improve students’ literacy and learning. A guided process for
developing and implementing an effective literacy plan is, therefore, the central
topic of this book.
Literacy leaders take many different approaches to initiating and sustain-
ing literacy improvement. Some begin with professional development and sup-
porting teachers to improve instruction, some begin with collecting and
examining the data, some begin by establishing a literacy team and building
leadership capacity, and some begin by locating resources to support the effort.
Sooner or later, we found that a successful literacy improvement initiative
requires all five of these actions.
These actions correspond to the five action points on the graphic of the
Taking Action Literacy Leadership Model. You will learn more about these action
points in Chapter 4 (Stage 4) when the team uses the action points to trou-
bleshoot issues and challenges that can accompany the plan’s implementation.
The action points are highlighted again in Chapters 6 and 7 where they are
used to show action steps that school and district leaders can take to ensure
adequate support of school-based literacy improvement efforts.
A second book, Meeting the Challenge of Adolescent Literacy: Practical Ideas for
Literacy Leaders (Irvin, Meltzer, Mickler, Phillips, & Dean, 2009), is also aligned
to the Taking Action Literacy Leadership Model. This book was written to assist lit-
eracy leaders as they address common challenges and barriers to literacy
improvement from an issues-based perspective. Using the action points of the
Taking Action Literacy Leadership Model, the book provides ideas and approaches
that literacy leaders can use to address sixteen critical issues. The tools included
in Meeting the Challenge of Adolescent Literacy may be particularly useful to you
during the implementation stage of the action planning process (Chapter 4,
Stage 4). Resource E at the back of this book contains a matrix showing
resources from the first two books, Taking Action on Adolescent Literacy and
Meeting the Challenge of Adolescent Literacy, and how the resources correspond
to the five stages of the literacy leadership process.

HOW THE LITERACY LEADERSHIP

PROCESS WAS DEVELOPED
The four authors of this book have spent many years working in schools and
districts helping educators develop, implement, and monitor schoolwide liter-
acy action plans. In our work with literacy leadership teams, we have noticed
that well-meaning team members often want a quick solution to their literacy
challenges. As a result, administrators or teacher leaders tend to identify a need
and then procure a new program or add an additional course to meet that need.
This fragmented approach, while well intended, often becomes narrow in focus
and fails to put in place the structures and policies that make meaningful
changes sustainable.
 PART I: THE MODEL, PROCESS, AND RUBRICS
8
Over the past decade, we have developed a process that helps literacy lead-
ers build a comprehensive, sustainable literacy improvement effort. This liter-
acy leadership process is based on six literacy action rubrics that are aligned to
the goal areas of the Taking Action Literacy Leadership Model. These rubrics have
been field-tested over the past several years with school-based literacy teams in
several states across the United States.
The next section of this book, Introduction to the Literacy Action Rubrics,
introduces you to the first five literacy action rubrics that are school-based (the
sixth rubric describes the district’s role in supporting school-based literacy
improvement efforts and is discussed in detail in Chapter 7). The components of
each rubric are summarized so you can get an overview of the elements that are
critical to a schoolwide literacy improvement effort. Descriptions of what these
components look like in action at the upper elementary, middle, and high school
levels can be found in Resource C. Literacy leadership teams that are charged
with developing and implementing a literacy improvement plan will use the lit-
eracy action rubrics in both Stage 2 (Chapter 2) and Stage 5 (Chapter 5) of the
literacy leadership process. Team members will find it helpful to refer back to the
rubrics frequently to identify further needs, troubleshoot implementation, mon-
itor progress, and refine action steps. School and district administrators can use
the literacy action rubrics to come quickly up to speed with what needs to be
addressed as part of a systemic focus on improving literacy. District administra-
tors can use Literacy Action Rubric 6 to develop a districtwide literacy action
plan that supports ongoing, school-based literacy improvement efforts.

THE FIVE-STAGE
LITERACY LEADERSHIP PROCESS
You may have read school improvement plans that are well written and speak to
the many needs of a school. We have found, however, that many improvement
plans fail to specifically target literacy improvement as central to the school’s mis-
sion even when literacy has been identified as an area that needs to be addressed.
We find that many improvement plans also prescribe changes unrelated to the
specific strengths and needs of the school or that the changes that are planned,
while well-meaning, will not lead to the desired increases in student achievement.
We suspect that in many cases those charged with improving student literacy and
learning are not certain which steps would be most helpful to take.
The literacy leadership process outlined in this book is quite different
from prescriptive approaches. We do not define your school’s literacy needs,
nor do we dictate which components your school literacy plan should
include. Instead, the literacy leadership team assesses the literacy strengths
and needs of the school using the literacy action rubrics that focus the team’s
attention on important components of literacy improvement. As the team
proceeds through the five-stage process to develop and implement a cus-
tomized plan, they address the needs of students and build on the existing
capacity of the school. The five stages of the continuous improvement
process described in this book represent the cyclical nature of assessment,
planning, implementation, monitoring, review, and revision.
 RATIONALE FOR A SCHOOLWIDE FOCUS ON LITERACY
9

Stage 1
Get Ready

Stage 5 Stage 2
Sustain Assess

Stage 4 Stage 3
Implement Plan

The Literacy Leadership Process

In Stage 1, you and your colleagues build the literacy leadership team and
establish the need for a literacy improvement effort. You create, reestablish, or
affirm the literacy leadership team and build a data-driven vision for a culture
of literacy that will inspire the entire school to join forces in the literacy
improvement initiative.
In Stage 2, the literacy team identifies the strengths of your school,
examines your school data, uses the literacy action rubrics to assess your
school’s capacity to support systemic literacy development, and converts the
self-assessment into measurable literacy action goals. This step-by-step process
will help you and the other members of your literacy leadership team deter-
mine the scope of your literacy improvement effort and establish appropriate
literacy action goals for your school.
In Stage 3, the literacy team develops implementation maps for each of the
literacy action goals using the literacy action rubrics as a guide. We provide you with
an implementation map development protocol so that you have a step-by-step
process for developing your more formal literacy action plan. We also provide you
with a sample implementation map to give you an idea of how action planning links
to the goal areas and literacy action rubrics of the Taking Action Literacy Leadership
Model. We suggest ways of soliciting feedback on your goals and your action plan
from the entire school community and a process for finalizing your plan.
In Stage 4, you begin implementing your literacy action plan. The book
provides support as you monitor and troubleshoot the implementation of
the plan and assess the progress you have made toward your goals during
the year. Since your plan has been designed by your literacy leadership team
based on data and the team’s collective understanding of your school,
chances are it will not end up on a shelf gathering dust. Just to make sure,
 PART I: THE MODEL, PROCESS, AND RUBRICS
10
however, we provide you with processes and tools to keep your plan’s action
steps front and center in the minds (and actions) of teachers and staff. We
suggest strategies that the team can use to organize for action and generate
more active participation in the initiative by students, teachers, and admin-
istrators. We provide you with strategies to troubleshoot implementation
when the data suggest that progress is slow toward one or more of the action
goals. We also remind you of the importance of celebrating progress, and we
provide some ideas on how you might involve the school community in
these celebrations.
In Stage 5, the literacy leadership team reviews summative data as outlined
by the literacy action plan to determine if the goals have been met. Based on the
data, the team decides whether to keep a specific goal and revise the action steps
as needed, discard the goal, select a new goal, or perhaps to move to another
goal area from the Taking Action Literacy Leadership Model. You will revisit the lit-
eracy action rubrics and will complete new implementation maps for new and
revised goals. In this stage, we also provide strategies for evaluating the efficacy
of the team and for sustaining momentum as you move forward with the liter-
acy initiative into the next school year.

HOW TO USE THE LITERACY

LEADERSHIP PROCESS
Taking the Lead on Adolescent Literacy is designed as a comprehensive support for
developing, implementing, and monitoring a literacy action plan for your
school. If you are at the very beginning of this effort, you will probably want to
follow each of the steps sequentially. If you already have a literacy plan, you
may wish to scan Stage 1 and see if you want to conduct any of these activities
before moving on to Stages 2 and 3. If you proceed to Stage 2, you may wish to
choose one or two rubrics, conduct a schoolwide assessment, and use this infor-
mation to revise, refine, or update your current literacy improvement goals. If
your school has been engaged in a literacy improvement effort for two to four
years, you might scan the information in Stages 1, 2, and 3 to determine if you
want to engage in any of these activities but may wish to focus your efforts on
Stages 4 and 5.
We have field-tested the components of the process extensively to be sure
that the process is both efficient and effective in supporting literacy improve-
ment. Although you may begin at different stages of the process, it is essential
that you carefully consider where to begin and what to include. Often, the omis-
sion of steps in the process will make more work in the long run. For example,
taking the time to build consensus on important issues and sharing ownership
of the literacy action plan facilitates implementation and ensures that there is
greater participation by members of the school community.
Good luck! We hope Taking the Lead on Adolescent Literacy will provide the
ongoing guidance you need to establish or sustain a robust literacy improve-
ment effort in your school or district.