By Karen Ruple, for the School Improvement Facilitators Network

Process Mentor Teams were developed in the summer of 2007 as the first intervention in Michigan’s Statewide System of Support for Title I schools not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Process Mentor Teams meet with the School Improvement Teams in Title I buildings in AYP Phases 1 and higher.

The School Improvement Facilitators Network (SIFN) and the Michigan Association of State and Federal Program Specialists collaborated to develop the process and the manual for the teams in the summer of 2007. In the fall of 2007, 14 ISDs/RESAs were identified as having Title I schools in Phase 1 and higher. All but one of the 14 ISDs implemented Process Mentor Teams to help school improvement teams focus on setting student short-term learning goals and collecting the data that evidenced student learning related to the goals.

These teams started meeting in buildings anywhere from October 2007 through January 2008. Consultants from ISDs organized and scheduled the Process Mentor Team visits in elementary, middle, and high schools across the state. Eight consultants representing seven ISDs shared their experiences in these buildings at the SIFN retreat in June.

Though the buildings, schedules, and levels of district support varied, there was one overwhelming commonality. Every building showed growth in some way. Sometimes it was as basic as writing a school improvement plan for the first time and others it was getting teachers focused on implementing instructional strategies and measuring student learning with formative assessments.

Even though some of these buildings did make AYP this past school year, this cannot be attributed to the work of the Process Mentor Teams. It will take two to three years to establish correlation between this process and student achievement. However, teaching and learning have improved and students have benefited from the positive light in which so many of these buildings have welcomed an outside team and the relentless focus on:

• What do we want students to learn?
• How are we going to know if they have learned it?
• What are we going to do if they haven’t learned it?
• What are we going to do if they have already learned it?

It is predicted that more ISDs will have Title I buildings moving into AYP phases in the 2008/09 school year. They have colleagues with the experience and advice that can provide insight and support to new practitioners. Michigan will be supporting not only the buildings in AYP phases but also the consultants in the ISDs that will be working in these high priority buildings.