Articles

Coaching and Consultation; Independent School Case Study

by Dr. Richard Dana

Client: Suburban, selective, pre-K-6 independent school.

Client Type: Non-Profit, School

Overview: Worked with a faculty committee to confront difficult challenges about how the school addresses students with diverse learning styles; established a strategy, implemented policies, procedures, budget, and transition plan, and facilitated communications to the school's many constituencies. Consequently, our client is well positioned to serve its student body's needs for many years to come.

Services: Needs Analysis, Strategy Consulting, Change Management, Academic Support Services/System Design, Learning Style Differences Management Training, Learning Styles Services/System Design, Leading Presentations and Facilitating Meetings with Key Constituents

Challenge: Our client was a selective, independent primary and lower school. The school's faculty felt overwhelmed by the challenges they faced managing classrooms with widely ranging learning needs. The existing system to support these students was fragmented and inadequately coordinated. The faculty were spending a disproportionate amount of time with challenged students and less time with more capable or stronger students. Moreover, the faculty were unevenly skilled at implementing accommodations for various student needs. The school's leadership recognized that this was a challenge and brought in Dana Group Associates to facilitate teacher training sessions on learning style difference management.

Tacitly, the school also suspected that the issue might be more pervasive and systematic - caused by issues that could not be simply addressed through better classroom management and teacher awareness. Given the school's policies giving preferential treatment to siblings of current students, and children of faculty and trustees, there were a large number of students enrolled who would not otherwise have met the current admissions criteria. The school lacked formal policies regarding accommodations for special needs, and had, on occasion, made extensive accommodations leaving the School vulnerable to future legal challenges.

The school did not want to alienate any of several important constituencies, nor disrupt the learning of current students. The school faced a delicate balancing act, pleasing the demanding parents of the current student body, while attempting to re-shape the school to best admit and educate students in the long term.

DGA's Role: Dana Group Associates was initially contracted to provide faculty training on learning style difference management. After the initial training, it became clear to both DGA and the client that the school's issues were more systemic. DGA was engaged by the Head of School to help diagnose the full impact of learning style differences on the school's day-to-day functioning, and to develop a sustainable process and action plan that was sensitive to the needs of current students, faculty, trustees, and parents.

DGA worked closely with a faculty Committee to confront some challenging issues, and to research and develop a comprehensive approach for supporting students. Given the challenging, and potentially controversial nature of the issues the Committee faced, DGA played a key role throughout the process, helping the Committee to take a stance and make some critical decisions leading to:

• Recognition that in order to provide the best service to the student body overall, the School would need to make some difficult tradeoffs in their admissions policy
• Improved faculty education on teaching students with different learning styles
• Acknowledgement that the School could not keep students enrolled who required a full-time aide because they impinged on the rights of other students.
• A commitment to making necessary classroom modifications (teaching style, multi-modal teaching, etc.) but not curriculum modifications.

Throughout the project, DGA also worked closely with the Committee Chair to keep the Board of Trustees apprised of progress on the project, and led presentations to the full faculty, and the Board of Trustees, culminating in interactive workshops and presentations to parent groups.

Results: With DGA's assistance, the School developed and implemented several detailed policy and procedure changes and additions that were formally incorporated into the School's operations. The transition plan outlined by the Committee with DGA's assistance incorporated:

• Revised general admission and re-enrollment criteria, incorporating better screening of incoming four-year-olds, new evaluation instruments, and longer periods of observation.
• A new policy for siblings and children of faculty and trustees: they would continue to receive preferential admissions treatment, but would now have to meet the same academic profile and admissions criteria as all other applicants.
• Language stating that the school would make "reasonable accommodations" for special needs students, explicitly discontinuing the use of full-time aides
• A revised school Handbook, reviewed and approved by legal counsel
• Going forward, selectively counseling out students where appropriate, with provisions to grandfather (until graduation) current students who might not meet revised admissions and re-enrollment criteria
• Hiring of a full-time learning specialist, as soon as funding would allow
• A requirement that families provide a learning needs evaluation if requested by the school
• A transition plan and budget for the current academic year along with a proposal for the following year's budget to support the policy and strategic recommendations
• Co-ordination of internal and external support services and the development of individualized SLPs (student learning plans)

Although some families were concerned about the changes in the Admissions criteria, they ultimately recognized that the school was initiating change to help create an optimal learning environment to enable the students to succeed.

As many of their peer schools continue to struggle with stretched resources and an inability to meet needs across the learning spectrum, our client is well positioned to serve its student body's needs, and to continue admitting classes that will enjoy a comfortable classroom environment, required services, and teaching accommodations incorporating educational best practices.

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