'Coaches' Designed to Help Struggling Schools

When Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and the State Board of Education called for greater efforts to help urban and other schools identified as high priority by the federal No Child Left Behind Act and state Education YES! accreditation process, Assistant Dean Barbara Markle was ready.

As director of the college’s Office of k–12 Outreach, she led a consortium of educational organizations in the state to train a cadre of “coaches” who would be capable of helping the struggling schools meet the school improvement requirements.

“The idea is to have experienced educators go into schools as coaches and help these high-priority schools understand the challenges they face and then think about new ways to meet those challenges,” Markle said.

Known as the Alliance for Building Capacity in Schools (ABCS), the initiative involved a number of College of Education faculty in developing the curriculum, which focused on preparing coaches to work with the principal, teachers and support personnel to analyze student demographic and achievement data, identify school needs and goals, and establish a sustainable plan of improvement.

Over the course of three months, the 78 educators selected to take part in the program participated in over 100 hours of intensive professional development in the most important issues facing priority schools: instructional coherence, school climate, parental involvement, the use of data to inform practice, school leadership, and new grade-level content expectations in mathematics and literacy.

Markle said that urban education was also a critical issue. In fact, as part of the training, a number of urban principals discussed their schools with the coaches and told them what help they most needed.

Once all the training was completed, the candidates had to pass a face-to-face assessment in order to be listed in the state’s coaches registry for employment by schools.

Markle said the project has greatly expanded the state’s ability to help those urban and other schools that struggle with student achievement. The coaches completed their coursework and assessment in the summer and began helping schools in the fall.