Four Lessons Learned in Rolling Out Teacher Career Progressions

Updated Competency Architecture on Nov 8, 2016

[Status as of October 2, 2016: KIPP LA has rolled out its new 2016–2017 performance management system manually via Microsoft Word templates. Teachers and school leaders are setting “performance goals” and identifying “competency focus areas” they want to develop for the year. The new system reflects the first version of competencies that will inform how instructional staff move through the Teacher Career Progressions. These performance plans will eventually migrate into the online performance management system which is a module in the Human Resource Information System KIPP LA is implementing.]

Teachers want opportunities for career growth and higher pay — without being forced to leave the classroom. KIPP LA is working to implement Teacher Career Progressions that lets teachers deepen their craft, assume more nuanced opportunities, and grow their leadership.

Easy, right? Not so much…

Here are four lessons that KIPP LA learned as it began to roll out its Teacher Career Progression system.

Lesson #1: Don’t skip to dessert. Start with your salad and vegetables.

A lot of systems need to be in place in order for teachers to see the promise and payoff of new career opportunities. This is one reason why KIPP LA refers to the One Home project as a 20-mile march; each of these pieces require significant effort and change management to implement. They include:

1. A performance management approach that is consistently applied across schools and the School Success Team (KIPP LA’s term for their central district office).
2. A coherent overall competency architecture or framework that maps the key behaviors expected of each role within the organization and outlines how these expectations change as team members take on roles with more responsibility.
3. Role-specific competency rubrics that help the organization norm on whether team members are exemplifying, demonstrating, developing or need improvement in key behaviors.
4. Development opportunities geared towards helping team members grow in target competency areas.
5. Manager training to norm on team member performance and promotion.

KIPP LA learned from other school systems who previously attempted Teacher Career Progressions, many rushing implementation before all the foundational pieces were in place. One school system created their role competencies in just two weeks before trying to implement their pathway systems. Another tried to tie the system to performance compensation in a manner that had little staff buy-in. While another school system implemented a competency framework without having meaningful development opportunities for teachers to improve their craft. The key lesson is to build out the foundation needed to support team members in their growth and development before rolling out the opportunities normally associated with Teacher Career Progressions.

Lesson #2: Show your team how everything fits together.

Develop a robust competency architecture or framework that helps teams members understand the differences between roles in the organization. For example, if the Teacher Career Progressions is intended to reward teachers for staying in the classroom, then the organization should be able to explain how a teacher leader role is equivalent to another administrator role in terms of prerequisite skills, responsibility, growth opportunities and pay. Or school leaders should be able to explain the difference between an instructional assistant, an associate teacher and a teacher leader in terms of responsibilities and expectations. These competency architectures or frameworks establish the pathways team members travel during their careers and the logic behind them.

Artifact:

KIPP LA Competency Architecture_16–17_Version 2_Updated 20161101.docx

Lesson #3: This is your brain. This is your brain trying to develop competency rubrics… [Sizzle, hiss, smoke]

Going competency-based seems like a great idea until you have to sit down and develop rubrics. Deciding on what the key behaviors should be, articulating them in ways actual people can understand, and then explaining the difference between exemplifying, demonstrating, developing and needs improvement is enough to make anyone want to break for tea with the Mad Hatter. Here are a few tips.

1. Get help. As a first step, KIPP LA partnered with Leadership Advisory Group’s Dr. Michelle Weitzman who specializes in competency design.
2. Engage teachers. KIPP LA created Design Teams of teachers to get their input on how the rubrics should be created. They met in facilitated sessions and explained in detail how lesson planning, for example, may differ between a new teacher and a master teacher. This input was critical in developing role-specific competencies.
3. Get clear on what teachers don’t want. The team writing the teacher competency rubrics was getting stuck on how specific the rubrics should be. KIPP LA coaches its teachers on very concrete instructional practices but no one wanted the performance evaluation to be a laundry list of instructional techniques. The competency rubric needed to go up one level in abstraction so it could guide and prioritize teacher coaching, but not dictate it. “I needed to get clear on what teachers didn’t want so I could spend my time in the right ways and get to a better state,” said Annie Blomberg.
4. Seek input from master educators. From the iterative discussions with teachers, Shannon Leonard, Director of Teaching and Learning, crystallized the architecture of instructional role-specific competencies.
5. Sanity check your work with real human beings. The team writing the rubrics have a kitchen cabinet of managers from other industries to “sanity check” their work. “It helps to have a smart, objective person with experience in another industry say, ‘This doesn’t make any sense,’” says Megan Gaon.

Artifacts:

KIPP LA Perf Plan Reflection_Instructional.Instructional.Assistant_16–17_Version 1.docx

KIPP LA Perf Plan Reflection_Instructional.Apprentice.Teacher_16–17_Version 1.docx

KIPP LA Perf Plan Reflection_Instructional.Teacher_16–17_Version 1.docx

KIPP LA Perf Plan Reflection_Instructional.Teacher.Manager_16–17_Version 1.docx

Lesson #4: Just Ship It.

At some point, spending more time locked away in a room trying to perfect the design won’t make your system any better, you have to put it out and see how the team reacts. You need to “ship it” to make the system better.

After working on the Competency Architecture and Role-Specific Architecture for the better part of six months, KIPP LA shipped them and made them part of the 2016–2017 performance management process for teachers. They are not perfect, but putting them into practice will generate the feedback needed to improve them further.

Another example of the “just ship it” mentality is with the overall performance management system. Initially, KIPP LA thought it would roll out an online performance management software module in time for Fall 2016, but it became clear that they needed to implement their core human resources software first. The team realized they could do a manual implementation of their performance management system using Microsoft Word templates and then migrate team members’ “performance goals” and “competency focus areas” into the online platform later. “Only about 10% of our performance management system was changing. We are swapping out open-ended development goals for competency focus areas,” says Annie Blomberg, “but everything else is basically staying the same so we feel good about moving forward.”

***

KIPP LA is now determining how to best create role-specific rubrics for School Success Team (“SST”) staff. SST staff are organized by functional area (e.g, finance, human resources, real estate, technology, etc.) which creates complexity when it comes to developing role-specific competencies.

Note: These lessons will be updated as KIPP LA continues its journey.