Beyond Textbooks: Vail School District Shares its Playbook

Kevin Carney

At first glance, Beyond Textbooks, seems to be all about digitizing education, and while that is part of it, it is really about best practices and developing a systematic framework that leads to success.

Vail Unified School District’s Kevin Carney told of the success story of the district’s turnaround from a failing school district to the top district in the state.  Instruction was all over the board, he recalls, but through a common vision and structure, the district has packaged an approach that has been adopted by over 100 school districts.  They identified what the most successful schools had in common and found: outstanding leadership, quality teachers, a systematic approach to learning and high expectations for students.  Asking these questions, developed by Professional Learning Communities guru Richard DuFour, schools will succeed.  1) What do we want students to learn?; 2) How will we know when they learn?; 3) What happens when they don’t?; and 4) What happens in a school when students meet proficiency? 

A breakthrough in Beyond Textbooks came in 2005 when Empire High School went textbook-free.  Teachers were forced to collaborate more, go to the Internet for content, find digital resources and ultimately, teachers creating their own resources and lessons.  Instead of binders and books, the district started to catalog lessons, resources, curriculum calendars online and a wiki page allowed teachers to share lessons, documents and other resources.  As long as teachers were teaching the essential standards, the when and how they taught was up to them. 

That catalog continues to grow and is shared with thousands of teachers throughout the state.  Thirty new resources are uploaded every day.  As Carney said, there are two ways to learn: How we learned best, and, more importantly, to see how others teach. 

He warned districts not to rush out and purchase resources for Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards.  It is the framework, not the content.  It is asking those four questions, that is the answer for ultimate success. 

Craig Pletenik
Phoenix Union High School District