Laser-like focus or a broad-strokes approach?

As we've been working with Dr. Ray Smith from Visible Learning he has said some things that have really resonated with me.

Today he said, "80% of your impact comes from 20% of your practice. You need to be sharply focused not well-rounded." He followed this comment up with, "Sharply focused means you must be very selfish as to where and how you use your time. Practices have disproportionate impact!"

This last week or so, we've been looking at our mid-year reading data for our students. We haven't made the growth that we had hoped for and began doing research into why not. There are many things we do well but the research provided some ways we can be doing better:

1. If we want to see measurable gains in reading, our master schedule needs to reflect reading as a priority. It didn't. But it will next week. We have revamped it to identify 90-minute reading blocks for 1st and 2nd and 90-minute literacy blocks for K. This will provide teachers with more time to intervene with their lowest students. We can coordinate better with our reading support program to make better use of their time pushing into these classes. 
2. Our afternoon intervention time will be focused on our most struggling readers. Yes, we'll still provide enrichment opportunities for those students who are already at or above grade level, but our job is not finished until we get all students above that line. 
3. The most effective reading intervention is good teaching. If we want our students to become better readers, we must become better at teaching reading. Starting this month we will have a full-time reading support coach. This position will not be to work directly with the students, per se, but more focused on helping teachers who want to become better. We have several new teachers this year and this will be a resource for them on how to allocate time, how to group students for small groups, and how to teach more effectively in small groups. The same also applies to our veteran teachers. Research is clear on how to most effectively deliver reading instruction and our reading coach is hands-down the most up-to-date person in our building, probably even the district, on reading research.

Change is uncomfortable. Change in the middle of the year is even tougher. But change, based on best practice, centered around improving student reading is a no brainer. :)