Template introduction
Attached is the three-stage SIM informal proposal template. This template should not be submitted as a lone document. It should always accompany the overview of the appropriate year and grade level for the response. The overviews include the following:
Elementary Stage 1 / K–8 Stage 1 / Secondary Stage 1Elementary Stage 2 / K–8 Stage 2 / Secondary Stage 2
Elementary Stage 3 / K–8 Stage 3 / Secondary Stage 3
This is a word document so you can work in the document to include the customer’s name and your contact information. Any information that is highlighted needs your attention before you submit the proposal. Either fill in the information needed or delete the comment and text if you choose not to include the information in the proposal.
Customization
If you need to add/delete/change any of the information in the template for a more customized response, Iowa City Proposal Services can help you edit the template to meet your needs. Fill out the appropriate form on Salesforce.com or contact Mary Beth Rozmus, Proposal Manager, at , JoAnn Goerdt, Proposal Writer at , or Nicole Schrobilgen, Proposal Coordinator at .
Proposal for Name of District
Date
School Improvement Model
Pearson
VPBD or PDAE Name
Title
Phone Number
Name of School/District (Arial 9pt Bold) | Proposal Title (Arial 9pt)
Executive Summary
Pearson delivers proven education services with lasting results, supported by the strength of the industry’s top education thought leaders and authors. Our core mission is to help educators navigate fundamental and dramatic shifts in leadership and classroom practices, enabling states, districts, schools, and teachers to support and sustain the transformation and quality of instruction required for students to achieve college and career readiness in a competitive global economy.
For more than 20 years we have provided a deep portfolio of professional services that includes leadership support and intensive school- and system-wide instructional transformation services. Our expertise in schoolwide improvement has been developed through our work with more than 1,000 schools across the US. Our extensive scope of services, combined with our rich resources, knowledge, and skill set, make us well suited to provide school improvement services and supports. We offer the following:
§ Nationwide experience in effective instructional transformation using an approach supported by research and documented through student success
§ Expertise in working with chronically low-performing schools to increase instructional capacity and student achievement
§ A staff of highly experienced, dedicated educators with years of work in public schools who have completed an intensive, rigorous certification program through the Pearson national College, our internal corporate university
§ Broad, deep resources and the capacity to address instructional needs, at the district, school, and classroom level, including leadership and a shared schoolwide responsibility for student achievement
Pearson’s Schoolwide Improvement Model
Pearson’s Schoolwide Improvement Model (SIM) is an innovative and customizable standards-based framework of comprehensive school improvement services. SIM supports alignment between the educational system, its leadership, and its instructional practices with college and career ready standards and helps schools develop a data-driven, technology-supported culture of high achievement and engagement.
SIM is purpose-built to be responsive to the current needs and circumstances of schools seeking to improve their performance. It is focused on helping schools prepare all students for college and careers, taking its lead from the definition articulated in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the standards established by specific states.
SIM is designed to achieve schoolwide, high-quality instruction for all students in your school. Comprehensive and sustainable school improvement impacts—every day—teaching and learning for all students across all content areas (both core and elective) and leads to change in the systems that organize and link programs and practices throughout the school.
Key Benefits of SIM
A Focus on Literacy/ELA and Math
SIM provides targeted support for achieving high-quality, standards-aligned instruction in the content areas of literacy/ELA and math. It includes Foundation Curriculum Units that model such instruction and scaffolded support for creating standards-aligned curriculum using the school’s materials.
Schoolwide Instructional Focus
To engage the entire school around the goal of college and career readiness, SIM provides training to all teachers and administrators that preserves the uniqueness of each content area but builds shared supports and expectations. Schoolwide Instructional Focus (SIF) is designed to help all students achieve the following:
§ Learn to understand and use academic language—the language used to communicate complex and technical information—so that students will be prepared for the demands of college and careers
§ Develop college and career readiness learner competencies, enabling students to become self-directed, independent learners
To help all students meet these goals, SIF provides supports, in particular, for English language learners and students with special needs. Instructional routines, classroom rituals, and instructional practices that promote effective learning form the instructional foundations of SIF.
Embedded Support that Builds School Capacity
Pearson Education Specialists provide technical support throughout implementation on a systematic basis to create a loop of information and response to information that fosters a cycle of improvement. Pearson Education Specialists provide the following support:
§ Help get implementation practices underway
§ Monitor practice
§ Provide feedback on progress
§ Provide scaffolding as needed in order to maintain progress
§ Nurture the development of strong linkages among all of the school’s settings for SIM implementation
Gradual increase in the responsibility of school personnel for implementation guides the provision of technical support. Data is shared to support communication and problem solving. Education Specialists provide scaffolding in the context of a plan for passing responsibility to the principal or other staff member(s), as appropriate to build and sustain capacity.
Access for All
SIM was developed to be comprehensive and flexible. It includes high-quality instruction for all students while providing support for differentiation when needed.
English Language Learners (ELLs)
§ Promotes academic-language competency across content areas/disciplines
§ Builds and strengthens schoolwide capacity to teach ELLs
§ Scaffolds instruction for students
§ Engages students in academic instructional conversations through collaborative learning
Students with Special Needs
§ Engages students through varied modalities across all content areas
§ Builds teacher capacity in supporting all learners in content areas
§ Provides professional development for administrators in guiding, facilitating, and monitoring instruction and student engagement within content areas to increase success for students with special needs
Leadership Training in Effective Data Use
SIM’s leadership component serves as the engine that drives implementation and monitors progress towards student achievement. The team meets frequently to study and assess data, analyze student work, review data received from teacher workgroups, and triangulates all the information to frame performance problems and make implementation course corrections. The leadership team is guided in this process by SIM’s Data Culture Modules and the facilitation of a Pearson Education Specialist.
Technology
SIM uses the latest technology to support the work of school educators and administrators, increasing effectiveness and efficiency. The model includes the following tools and services:
§ Progress-monitoring capabilities using custom iPad-based protocols
§ Create a culture of using data systematically to guide ongoing instructional and programmatic improvements that drive teaching and learning
§ 24/7 online access to tools and resources
§ Dropout prevention early warning dashboard system for middle and high schools
§ Professional-development webinars on key topics
§ Professional development and technical assistance on effectively incorporating technology into classroom instruction
Daily Implementation of the SIM Model
SIM reform becomes reality through a schoolwide emphasis on introductory face-to-face trainings, embedded school services (coaching and modeling), and the development of collegial work groups that build rigorous and regular professional dialogue among staff. For schools lacking resources and time to engage staff in training, virtual or job-embedded services are available.
Five Components of SIM
SIM’s comprehensive, flexible approach to schoolwide improvement incorporates five components proven to be essential for creating sustainable student success.
Helping Students Succeed. The five components of the SIM model interact to promote academic success and to prepare students for college and careers.
Standards-Aligned Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
Standards-based learning and the alignment of curriculum, instruction, and assessment form the foundation of SIM. The model builds a collective commitment to systemic improvement by integrating content-area concentrations in math and English language arts with a schoolwide instructional focus on practices that support students’ development of college and career readiness, which are applicable to every classroom in every discipline. SIM fosters deep professional learning in content and pedagogy and helps teachers learn to align their instruction to the standards on their own.
Areas of Schoolwide Instructional Focus
SIM promotes the following areas schoolwide:
§ College- and career-readiness learner competencies
§ Academic language for all
§ Effective instruction
High-Performance Leadership, Management, and Organization
SIM trains leadership teams to support the school’s efforts at every level by empowering staff through distributed leadership, balancing support and pressure to help teachers transform their practices, and focusing the organization on schoolwide activities that are proven to positively impact student success.
Data-Driven Culture
SIM helps schools build and maintain an effective, data-driven, technology-supported culture. Schools use multiple measures to help teachers improve instructional practices and monitor individual student progress to inform a differentiated and personalized approach to learning.
High-Achievement and Engagement
SIM guides all constituents to focus on the same goal of college and career readiness. The model engages staff, parents/guardians, and the community in supporting high achievement for all students. It also includes the implementation of a validated Pearson early warning data system, which identifies at-risk students so that intervention services can be provided.
Sustainability for Continuous Improvement
Building school-level capacity to continue the improvement work independently is a priority of SIM from the start. The model supports schools in assuming responsibility for continuous improvement through a gradual transfer of responsibility from Pearson staff to school staff by way of establishing and supporting a school leadership team and teacher workgroups. This transfer is achieved through professional development, coaching, technical assistance, collaborative practices, and structures and processes for sustaining, monitoring, and adjusting the implementation over time.
SIM Capacity-Building Progression. By the end of Pearson’s engagement, the school district will be self-managed and self-directed.
Three-Stage SIM Implementation
In line with the latest research on schoolwide reform, SIM includes a three-stage implementation plan with milestones and realistic deliverables. Focused on results, the process moves your educators from a stage where support and scaffolding help drive the implementation of new aligned instructional practices to a stage where sustainable capacity-building work allows your teams to collaborate in self-managed and self-directed ways with a focus on schoolwide improvement. A three-stage overview can be found at the end of this document.
Stage One—Talking to Learn. Incorporates strategies for developing students’ capacity to reason and justify using the language of all of the content areas they study, to collaborate effectively on learning tasks, and to work productively without needing constant direction from the teacher.
Stage Two—Reading and Writing to Learn. Builds on Stage One. Incorporates strategies that support students’ reading and writing to learn. This includes a complementary focus on students’ planning and organizing their work and taking responsibility for self-assessment and revision to improve their work products and build Students’ Academic Language and College and Career Readiness Competencies
Stage Three—Learning through Research. Builds on Stage One and Two. The use of evidence to build and support claims and arguments are central to college and career readiness. This focus helps schools build research into learning across the curriculum. It incorporates strategies for building students’ capacity to determine priorities, reflect on their work practices, and set goals for learning. Supporting this focus are scaffolds to support students’ strategies and engagement that provide access to learning for all students.
The Progress Monitoring System
The Progress Monitoring (PM) system is a comprehensive approach to monitoring, measuring, improving and reporting on program implementation as well as short and long-term outcomes related to SIM. It is used throughout all three stages and includes a suite of data collection tools and reports that will provide school Leadership Teams and Pearson Education specialists with information to support, investigate, and track implementation throughout the year. Objectives of the PM system include the following:
§ Link explicit evidence of change in behavior/practice at the school site to outcomes
§ Collect and report data (using variety of tools and modalities) to identify strengths and needs related to implementation
The following description sets out the core organization for each stage of the SIM implementation. The core described below may be “flexed” to include additional components of school improvement or to increase the intensity of onsite support. Increased intensity of onsite support may be broadly implemented or limited to a select area, such as leadership support or support for a specific department. Any and all decisions relating to the flexing of SIM are made collaboratively with the school and district through the process of the Requirements Conference.
Requirements Conference
The Requirements Conference is a focused consultation between appropriate representatives of the school, the district, and Pearson. This consultation is guided by protocols designed to clearly identify the school’s needs and goals and to help determine the set of services and programs that offers the most effective match to the school’s requirements. The Requirements Conference sets the stage for development of a plan and contractual agreement. Implementation proceeds once an agreement is in place. It has three phases.
The Three Phases of SIM in Each Stage
During each stage, SIM follows a predicable implementation cycle, consisting of the following three phases, organized to support successful implementation:
Implementation Phase 1: Planning Conference
The Planning Conference takes place as soon as possible following completion of the contract to provide SIM. This conference is a full-day meeting of the principal and key school and district personnel with Pearson Education Specialists. The purpose of the meeting is to develop a detailed implementation plan, set a schedule of cooperative activities and project milestones, and establish shared accountability.