The quality of school culture is the most crucial factor in shaping and driving student achievement and in improving overall student and staff morale. Accurately assessing culture and gauging the degree that district/schools provide equitable learning environments are are important first steps to address this issue. Millennium offers two options to assist districts/schools with these first steps:

• Option 1: A train-the-trainers model that allows local district staff to conduct assessments of district schools.
• Option 2: Guided assistance in the assessment process including assistance with report writing/editing.

This process is very similar to the cultural/equity assessment with some notable exceptions. Both options one and two are available for this process. The main difference in the two processes is that scholastic assessments focus more deeply on curriculum, assessment, instruction, effective monitoring, planning and certified evaluation practices and processes.

The quality of district/school leadership is paramount in driving district/school improvement. While some people are born with natural leadership qualities, most must undergo a growing and maturing process. Our team can lead this process and assist in developing teacher/student leadership teams that can produce effective changes in student achievement.

It has been said that “failure to plan is planning to fail.” Many district/school improvement plans are vague. Goals are often unclear and measures of effectiveness are lacking. Using the SMART Goals concept our team can lead districts/schools in a systematic process to ensure that plans are developed so that implementation and impact process for strategies is readily assessable.

Educational research increasingly points to an effective continuous assessment program as key to bringing about improvement in instructional practices and student achievement. An effective program places emphasis on the use of assessment as a tool to refine teaching practices, curriculum development and implementation as opposed to a process to sort students from lowest to highest and to provide a letter grade. Assistance in developing both formative and summative assessments is an important component of this training/assistance.

Truly successful school districts and schools have taken on the qualities of professional learning communities although they may not have done so deliberately. Adult centered institutions that value teaching more than learning and that blame the victims (students, parents, the community, etc.) for low performance are all too common. Changing these schools to student centered environments with positive cultures that emphasize student learning is extremely vital to increased student achievement. Research again points to a body of knowledge and specific actions that districts and schools can take to change into effective high achieving learning environments where all children can learn and flourish.

Teachers teaching from an aligned curriculum is the number one factor in producing the biggest gains in student achievement according to the research of Dr. Robert Marzano and others. The Millennium Learning Concepts team can use your state/district curricular framework and assist districts with putting together a document that is teacher friendly and that will produce learning results.

This training is built around best practices and is based on the work of Dr. Harry Wong, Robert Marzano and effective school/classroom principles.

This training involves assisting principals and faculties in developing effective school-wide behavior plans. The focus of this assistance is to help faculties decide what behaviors and routines should be taught and which should be dealt with in terms of consequences. It includes elements of the CHAMPS program but can be tailored to meet each school’s needs.

This training addresses cultural differences, managing diversity, instructional equity, leadership and cultural shifts. All of these topics fall under the auspices of student achievement and school improvement.

Successful schools work continually to develop a culture of student, teacher and leadership learning success. Cognitive Coaching is integral to this. Cognitive Coaching assist leadership teams in developing stronger professional relationships with staff and faculty. Participation in this intensive workshop will help you and members of your team with a set of strategies, which invites self and others to shape and reshape their thinking and problem solving capacities to achieve learning success.

MLC assist schools in developing a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and administrators know what they need to do to help them. The common core standards are designed to be rigorous, relevant and responsive to the needs of students who operate in a global society. We help teachers break down those standards to maximize learning.

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