Dismantling Silos: A High School Co-Teaching Master Schedule
Target Audience
- PK-12 Teachers & Student Support Personnel
- Higher Education Faculty
- Coaches/Teacher Support Personnel
- School and District Administrators
Grade Levels
- High School
- Alternative & Continuing Education
Topic Areas
- Assessment
- History/Social Science
- In-service Educator Preparation
- Math
- Multi-lingual Learners
- Policy
- Reading/Language Arts
- Science
- Special Education
- Student Supports
Description
The Co-Teaching Master Schedule is a practice that allows/empowers educators to take intentional, collaborative steps to create effective, just, equitable, and inclusive conditions for student learning.
Before creating the current version of the Co-Teaching Master Schedule, students from the general education population were assigned to classrooms first, followed by students with IEPs. Leaders found that this meant some classrooms held a disproportionate number of students with (dis)abilities, which led to some teachers feeling overwhelmed as they worked to meet the academic needs of all of their students.
With the new Co-Teaching Master Schedule model, students with (dis)abilities, as well as students receiving Tier 3 interventions, are the first to receive classroom assignments/placements. In addition, students with the highest academic need are placed with teachers with high levels of experience and knowledge. In this way, the Co-Teacher Master schedule allows district leaders to systematically and intentionally prioritize the needs of students from historically marginalized social groups, including students with diverse academic needs, and to set everyone in the school community up for success.
Opportunity
The Co-Teaching Master Schedule, at AUHSD, emerged, in part, through district leaders’ analysis of student data (e.g., graduation rates, college and career readiness indicators, backscores, overall grades by subject/teacher, a through g completion). Specifically, when they noticed that some students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) were performing at noticeably higher rates than their peers at neighboring schools, district leaders dug deeper to find out why this was the case. By engaging in dialogue with collaborators at the schools, they discovered two trends: (1) prioritized, and intentional, placement of students with the greatest academic need, which included students with IEPs as well as students receiving Tier 3 intervention (intensive, individualized academic support in small group settings) in the Master Schedule; and (2) use of the Master Schedule to create opportunities for general and special education teachers to co-plan and co-teach in the Tier 1 context (general education classroom). These insights, in part, led leaders to develop a district-wide Co-Teaching Master Schedule that worked to eliminate structural inequities among students (e.g., academic opportunity gaps) as well as educators (e.g., historic silos between general and special education).
Resource Files
Recommended Citation
Gomez-Najarro, J. & Lee, S. H. (2024). Dismantling Silos: A High School Co-Teaching Master Schedule. CSU Center to Close the Opportunity Gap (CCOG) Clearinghouse. https://ccog.calstate.edu/clearinghouse/dismantling-silos-high-school-co-teaching-master-schedule