Susan Miller, associate superintendent of curriculum and staff development for the Archdiocese of New York, loves teaching teachers.
Since joining the archdiocese in 2017, her focus has been on ensuring every teacher she works with feels confident their instruction is helping students grow. Her three-part action plan helped her make that happen—and it’s responsible for four straight years of improvement on New York state scores.
Part 1: Use a reliable assessment tool
When Susan started at the archdiocese, state scores for their 121 K–8 schools were “kind of a mystery,” she admits. So the archdiocese turned to MAP® Growth™. They piloted the assessment with 14 schools during the 2016–17 school year and went all in with the remaining schools for 2017–18.
“After using MAP Growth, we were actually able to predict our New York state scores and we were dead on,” Susan says.
Part 2: Involve administrators early
Aligning leadership in such a large archdiocese can be tricky, but Susan knew it was important for MAP Growth to be a success. She reached out to her partner at NWEA, Jessica Knierim, for help bringing school administrators into the conversation. They began by training regional superintendents on how to use data and training principals on goal setting. Principals, in turn, were in charge of training their own teachers.
Part 3: Partner with teachers to use data
Susan and her team have been working with teachers regularly to determine which instructional methods are effective, and which aren’t. Going deep with data is a critical part of the process. Susan explains it best in the following video.
Get a copy of Susan’s MAP-ing Our Success Flowchart (PDF). And read our case study to learn more about how Susan and her team partnered to help kids grow.
