Our Vision: A Higher Standard
Village Academies is building a network of public schools of the highest caliber. We are dedicated to the idea that an excellent public education is the birthright of all children.
We believe it is critical for students to master the basics, so we have designed a core set of standards with specific skills all students must master, specific exams they must pass, and specific content they must learn. While students enroll in Village Academies by open lottery, an average of 2-4 years behind grade level, they achieve test scores that rank at the very top of New York City public schools.
Yet we emphatically insist on an even higher standard for our students. We believe it is essential that students learn to speak, to write, and to think deeply, independently, and critically. We want them to ask and understand hard questions about texts. We want them to develop the habits of logical and analytical thinking, to understand the underlying premise of a mathematical procedure, to train and push their minds. It isn't enough to be able to write a five-paragraph essay; they must have full command of every element of the writing process, understanding the logic behind grammatical conventions, and the appropriate usage of advanced vocabulary. We want our students to work so intensely that the world outside the essay or problem or experiment seems muffled and far away. We want their work to leave them sweaty and exhausted and proud.
Village Academies wants our students to learn and practice the self-discipline required to accomplish excellence. This discipline initially comes from the school's expectations, but eventually grows out of the student's sense of what the work deserves. Students begin to ask for harder books, to pursue more difficult equations - and to prove that who they are today isn't limited by where they came from yesterday.
We are persuaded that the marks of a successful student are precise thought, the ability to speak rationally, summoning evidence to support one's arguments, the willingness to examine the grounds of one's arguments, and to accede graciously, when appropriate, to stronger opinions. The mastery of these arts and habits simultaneously requires and fosters the intellectual capacity and moral virtues necessary for students to become active and critical democratic citizens.
We deeply believe that all children - regardless of socio-economic background - can and must be held to this higher standard.
Strategy
In the summer of 2001, Village Academies developed a business plan based on the following strategy:
Village Academies believes that the single most important element of effective schools is effective people. We embrace Jack Welch's “people first” approach to organizational leadership. At Village Academies our core strategy is to recruit, develop, support and reward excellent people. Developing our people - principals, faculty and staff - is our passion.
We focus relentlessly on this strategy by recruiting talented, passionate educators and providing them with outstanding leadership training, systems that support instructional excellence, and a culture and system of accountability for results.
This strategy represents a dramatic departure from the traditional “product replication” approach to education reform. This approach, which seeks to ensure quality by replicating certain programmatic inputs, has yielded only incremental improvements over three decades.
| Village Academies | Traditional Education Reform | |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy | Developing People | Replicating Program (Product) |
| Drivers | Leadership Development Instructional Excellence Accountability for Results |
Identify Elements of Effective Schools Replicate Common Program Elements Monitor/Support Program Inputs |
Our strategy is backed up by extensive educational research. Dr. William Sanders' longitudinal analysis of six million students and 30,000 teachers demonstrated that “teacher effectiveness is 10 to 20 times as significant as the effects of [other factors which] pale to triviality” by comparison. More than any other factor, the quality of a teacher determines how well a student will learn.
Village Academies has pioneered a groundbreaking system that takes educational accountability to a new level. Teachers are accountable for what students learn (not just for covering material), and principals are accountable for school-wide academic achievement. Our culture of accountability attracts the best and brightest educators.
Standards & Goals: The starting point for an effective accountability system is to ensure that all members of the community understand what we are trying to achieve. We establish standards and annual goals so that everyone in the community - principal, teachers, parents and students - has a clear understanding of what each student should know and be able to do, at each grade level. Our learning standards have been developed thoughtfully, to incorporate critical thinking as well as ensure alignment with New York State assessments.
Diagnostic Assessment: Integral to the Village Academies accountability plan is our internal assessment system that drives quality instruction and keeps the faculty and staff intensely focused on student achievement. Students take diagnostic assessments that are aligned with course content and skill standards. These assessments are developed by faculty, together with Village Academies Network curriculum specialists. The results allow principal and faculty to pinpoint areas that need attention, whether by standard, by student or by teacher.
Performance Based Compensation: The Village Academies faculty and staff follow an internal Accountability Plan that delineates annual goals, school standards and clear measures. The plan provides for performance-based financial bonuses and promotion opportunities based on results.
Alignment: For an accountability system to function effectively, all aspects of the school organization must be aligned. We go to great lengths to ensure the alignment of our learning standards, curriculum, internal diagnostic assessments, external assessments, student grading and promotion criteria, professional development and staff promotion criteria.
Academic Rapid Response: The Village Academies diagnostic assessments form the basis of a rapid response system to quickly identify and address students' learning deficits. Teachers at Village Academies keep track of every student's level of skill mastery on a weekly and monthly basis. Teachers analyze data to identify precisely what standards students have mastered, and provide tutoring and targeted, small group instruction daily, focusing on areas of difficulty identified by the data. Students in need of extra help are easily identified and quickly receive the specific instructional support they need.
Kaizen and Feedback Loop: A culture of “kaizen” - continual improvement - permeates Village Academies. Through surveys, meetings, and other methods, we are continually seeking the opinions of our teachers, parents and others. Everyone in the organization knows we are genuinely interested in their ideas and opinions, and we strive to take action to solve problems quickly.
To learn more about teaching at Village Academies, click here.
To learn more about our results, click here.
