District awarded funds to study success of coaches for teachers

For years teachers developed their skills by going off to conferences, listening to speakers and taking home folders of material in hopes of applying some of their new training.

In the past few years, Spokane Public Schools has been using classroom coaches, veteran peers who give individual feedback and guidance to rookie and longtime teachers alike.

Coaches in Spokane elementary schools are partially credited with the successes in raising test scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. This year, coaches are coming into high schools in greater numbers.

The National Science Foundation awarded Spokane Public Schools a $2.5 million research grant that will cover the costs of a five-year study focusing on the impact of science teachers’ professional development with instructional coaches.

The study will look closely at the impact of coaches on science teachers from six elementaries, six middle schools and five high schools.

“There hasn’t been a lot of empirical research on coaching,” said Scott Stowell, who led the research proposal effort. Stowell’s the district coordinator of science/health/human growth and development. “We are one of the few districts that have this kind of research going on.”

Spokane Public Schools began using coaches primarily in the elementary schools, to help educators teach the curriculum designed to help students excel at the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, or WASL. Coaches were then used in the middle schools.

The grant will fund two additional full-time coaches in the district. Currently, four full-time science coaches work in Spokane schools.

Eric Magi, an instructional coach at Rogers High School, is one of them. His job is often done behind the scenes, and parents don’t directly encounter the impact he tries to make.

“We’re like on-the-spot professional development people,” Magi said.

Magi said his tactics vary with each teacher.

“There are people who have done this longer than me who are thrilled to have someone else in the room,” Magi said. “There are other folks with much less experience who are much less open to it.”

What’s important to realize is that he’s not in any way evaluating a teacher, Magi said.

“We’re not walking into classrooms and taking notes and putting things in people’s files,” he said.