Overview of SAM

SAM was developed through a partnership between New Visions for Public Schools and Baruch College and has helped many New York City public schools accelerate their students’ learning.  The core elements of SAM are now a required part of the improvement strategy in every New York City public school.  BPE’s SAM facilitators are working closely with SAM/New York leaders to adapt the approach to Boston’s context.

Piloted in five schools this year, SAM requires each participating school to form a team chosen by the principal/headmaster based on individual’s potential for leadership, excellence in teaching, and desire to be on the team.  The teams use data and deliberation to choose a subject area of concern to their schools and select a target group of students who have not been successful in that subject.  The teams follow a cycle of intervention design, implementation, and evaluation of effect on target students’ learning.  At the same time, team members learn leadership skills to create systemic changes in their schools so that the benefits of successful interventions extend beyond the target students.

SAM integrates key elements of the BPS “Six Essentials of Whole School Improvement” and the Dimensions of Effective Teaching—public practice, collaborative adult learning, use of data, shared leadership—in order to move students into the sphere of success. 

Rationale of SAM

At the core of the SAM theory of change are teams of school staff (principal/headmaster, teachers,

coaches, administrators) engaged in a cycle of action research to improve learning for all students, especially those who aren’t currently experiencing success. Together, the team uses data to identify a target group of students who are currently  unsuccessful, decide on high-leverage interventions, measure their effects, and refine the work.

Through seminars, readings, and individual and team assignments, members of the SAM team develop their leadership skills while leading their schools’ improvement initiatives—whether or not members hold “official” leadership roles. SAM’s definition of leadership says (a) all adults in the school share responsibility to help move students with whom the school hasn’t been successful in the past, (b) the work to accelerate those students’ learning is the work of leadership, and (c) the principal/headmaster is responsible for developing the leadership capacity of others on his or her staff.

The disciplined, data-driven process leads school teams to construct solutions to the unresolved challenge of persistent low performance among some students even as the district is making slow but steady gains. The program helps each school to become a professional learning community in which adults learn from each other and hold one another accountable for doing a better and better job of teaching all students, including the least successful.