Below I am sharing with you the response that I recently wrote on August 26, 2008 to the Yahoo Small Schools Workshop Web Site. The question being asked is "Do SLCs Move the Needle?"
"As the point person for LAUSD for the past four years driving the
effort to redesign our high schools in Los Angeles, I have come to
some conclusions regarding this question. My first conclusion is that
this is the wrong question for me to answer? The question that I
found that needed to be answered is more like, "What will we
systemically do in each of our high schools that will lead to
increased academic achievement for all students?" My work was to
drive the SLC/small school effort, and we did that. As I retired from
the district on July 1, we had moved all but two LAUSD high schools
into a series of SLCs or small schools. The schools were at different
levels of implementation, so it was difficult to say whether it is
making a difference yet. We did have some indicators that showed
marked improvement in some areas, but not yet in all academic areas.
My experiece has taught me that in order to change schools, as John
Watkins says, we have to include everyone in the process. The key to
starting real change is creating shared vision. Doing that is not
easy with the staff transiency that occurs in many large urban high
schools. The improvement of academics builds off of this common
vision. If a district says, "we will have SLC in every high school'
without consideration as to what that means, we probably won't much
improvement in our student outcomes. When schools put too much effort
into creating structures, such as SLC, without connecting those
structures to the instructional and personalization needs of the
students, the SLC will have minimal positive effect. If the SLC/small
schools are created around the specific instructional and
personalization needs of the community, they have a better chance of
reaching the established academic goals.
It is for this reason that I see charter schools and small schools as
easier structures for reaching the academic outcomes expected. The
common vision is built into the structure, where it is a very
difficult conversion process for SLC, especially if those SLC are part
of the big school where an existing vision for all SLC already is in
place. (You might find interesting the ongoing success being seen at
the Student Empowerment Academy, a New Tech model high school, on the
campus of Jefferson HS in LAUSD).
I further learned that when good hearted educators sit together and
hold conversations around the needs of students, common vision can be
created. Parents and community leaders need to enter into these same
conversations with the educators. From these conversations come
plans to meet the specific needs of a group of students in the area of
instruction and personalization. Then, and only then, can educators,
parents, and community leaders determine the structure that will best
fit the plans that have come out of a shared vision and common
conversations. It may be that on one campus SLCs are the answer, on
another site, something else will be the look of a new structure.
What we cannot do in our urban communities is continue to run high
schools as we have for the past 100 years, because our society's
needs, our family's needs, and our students' needs have changed.
Without connecting our kids to content and people, we cannot make a
positive difference in the life of these students. Can SLCs do that,
of course. Is the SLC structure the only structure that will do that,
no. So, the question of whether SLCs move the needle or not, does not
tell us enough. They can move the needle, and in some places they may
be doing so, but they are not the only way to move the needle, and in
some school communities they may not be the best way to move the
needle.
I know that although retired from my careeer with LAUSD, I will
continue to help schools and school systems to find the way to move
the needle, whether it be through SLCs, small schools, or some other
yet to be determined structure. However, I will not look for one
answer to moving the needle, I will try to stay open minded as I work
with educators and community members in this important process."
I hope that in my previous muses and in future comments on this blog that I explain in greater detail what I am saying to this national group of educators who are leaders of school reform around the nation.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Leadership Needed for School Change to Occur
Prior to becoming a principal of a middle school in 1989, I would not have said the following, but after eleven great years at my school, I have come to the following conclusions about school leadership. I have observed many schools since leaving my position as principal and becoming a supervisor of principals that substantiated what I believed to be true. I am listing several of these learnings below, but you can find Michael Fullan and others stating the same comments, but they researched what they learned, they did not necessarily live what they learned. Both ways of getting to the same conclusion reinforce what I will share.
We can discuss these comments further down the road, but I do feel it is necessary to focus back on how important the role of the principal is when trying to change a culture that is not conducive to student achievement. Without a strong principal in place, schools will flounder and people will continue to do whatever it is that they have been trained to do over the years at this location in this profession. Continuing to act in the same way will only lead to the same results unless pressures are placed on the school as a system to tweak or dramatically change direction.
More to come on this topic.
- Being the principal of a school is very difficult work. It is full of anxiety and stress. However, when successful in moving toward your vision, it is the most rewarding job in our society.
- A principal without a strong vision that is based on the existing community and culture of the school is not going to find success in that position at that particular site.
- If the principal does not bring others, including faculty and community, along with him/her toward the vision, the efforts of school redesign will be short lived.
- The principal must play of the role of the protector of the school/community vision, and must do whatever it takes to develop a common vision that all in the community can agree is worthwhile. Therefore, the vision is not specifically the principals, but the principal must protect it once it is clearly and universally developed.
We can discuss these comments further down the road, but I do feel it is necessary to focus back on how important the role of the principal is when trying to change a culture that is not conducive to student achievement. Without a strong principal in place, schools will flounder and people will continue to do whatever it is that they have been trained to do over the years at this location in this profession. Continuing to act in the same way will only lead to the same results unless pressures are placed on the school as a system to tweak or dramatically change direction.
More to come on this topic.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Professional Development of Value
In order for change to occur, we as educators need to do more than feel that our gut tells us the right thing to do. We have to be able make a case to our peers and to the public that supports our beliefs. This requires that we know the data of our own educational institution, and that we understand the culture in which we work. Having participated in and led professional development for thirty-seven years, I feel qualified to make some comments on delivering professional development in a way that actually effects the behaviors and actions of those who receive it.
I always felt that this sounds funny, to think that with all of the money and time that schools and educators put into professional development, it is automatically true that it impacts behaviors and actions of adults. Through observation and my own experiences, I have come to realize that professional development only can impact educators when it reaches them more deeply than we have thought necessary in the past. For this reason, I am suggesting that just like our students, our educators need to be provided information and hands on experiences with support if we want professional development to positively effect student learning.
I have shared with my college level students, district administrators, teachers, and parents that I see two types of learning experiences in place. First, is what I call academic learning experiences where the educators listen to or read the information that they are being expected to know and use. The second type of professional development, I call hands on learning because it requires educators to interact with the information in a variety of ways.
Hands on learning should include conversations between professionals; collaborative groups working through case studies or real current educational situations; or watching and discussing what the educators actually can see occurring at their own educational location. As an administrator or teacher, if I am faced with a sudden and unplanned crisis in my school or classroom, I can't respond by saying, "Let me see, Richard DuFour says in his book on page 66 that I should react in this way." This is not what happens in real life. What does happen is that we respond to crisis based on our own life experiences that are the same or similar to what we are now experiencing. Therefore, to prepare educators, we must provide them opportunities to work with hands on activities and within real situations as much as possible.
Professional development without the wisdom of research and experiences of others would provide us little value. We need to know what our options are. We need to have a toolbox as full as possible. But the full toolbox without the opportunity to use it, leaves us weak.
This is all leading me to the need for professional development around the topic of "culture change" in our schools and district. We cannot ask educators to make the changes that are perceived to be necessary without providing them with the training, understanding, and supports that will allow for cultural change to occur successfully. We cannot train educators solely by telling them what has to be done, and how to do it. We can give them added tools for their toolbox, and then provide them thoughtful opportunities to practice using the toolbox.
Change for the sake of change is useless and probably a waste of time. However, maintaining the status quo because we do not know of other options available to us is a greater waste of time and resources; and perhaps more scary. If our students are not reaching the level of academic achievement that we want for them, and expect from them, then we cannot continue to do the same old things in the same old way. We need to look at ourselves, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of what we do in our institution and then find the research and best practices that can help us to overcome the barriers that we have identified.
Learning for most people is a social activity. We learn and understand best when we discuss what we are asked to learn, and resolve issues in groups. Collaboration among educators is so important. Sharing leads to new thinking and new thinking amongst a small or large group will ultimately lead to a common vision of where we want to move for the good of the kids. Professional development that asks adults to sit and enjoy (or not) whatever is being presented for one hour is not professional development. We have to give people time to absorb and internalize, and I believe that only comes through shared experiences.
Perhaps your comments can help all of us learn of new ways to provide professional development to our peers. My guess is when we learn the best ways to educate ourselves, we will have found the best way to educate our students, as well. That we will leave for a later topic.
I always felt that this sounds funny, to think that with all of the money and time that schools and educators put into professional development, it is automatically true that it impacts behaviors and actions of adults. Through observation and my own experiences, I have come to realize that professional development only can impact educators when it reaches them more deeply than we have thought necessary in the past. For this reason, I am suggesting that just like our students, our educators need to be provided information and hands on experiences with support if we want professional development to positively effect student learning.
I have shared with my college level students, district administrators, teachers, and parents that I see two types of learning experiences in place. First, is what I call academic learning experiences where the educators listen to or read the information that they are being expected to know and use. The second type of professional development, I call hands on learning because it requires educators to interact with the information in a variety of ways.
Hands on learning should include conversations between professionals; collaborative groups working through case studies or real current educational situations; or watching and discussing what the educators actually can see occurring at their own educational location. As an administrator or teacher, if I am faced with a sudden and unplanned crisis in my school or classroom, I can't respond by saying, "Let me see, Richard DuFour says in his book on page 66 that I should react in this way." This is not what happens in real life. What does happen is that we respond to crisis based on our own life experiences that are the same or similar to what we are now experiencing. Therefore, to prepare educators, we must provide them opportunities to work with hands on activities and within real situations as much as possible.
Professional development without the wisdom of research and experiences of others would provide us little value. We need to know what our options are. We need to have a toolbox as full as possible. But the full toolbox without the opportunity to use it, leaves us weak.
This is all leading me to the need for professional development around the topic of "culture change" in our schools and district. We cannot ask educators to make the changes that are perceived to be necessary without providing them with the training, understanding, and supports that will allow for cultural change to occur successfully. We cannot train educators solely by telling them what has to be done, and how to do it. We can give them added tools for their toolbox, and then provide them thoughtful opportunities to practice using the toolbox.
Change for the sake of change is useless and probably a waste of time. However, maintaining the status quo because we do not know of other options available to us is a greater waste of time and resources; and perhaps more scary. If our students are not reaching the level of academic achievement that we want for them, and expect from them, then we cannot continue to do the same old things in the same old way. We need to look at ourselves, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of what we do in our institution and then find the research and best practices that can help us to overcome the barriers that we have identified.
Learning for most people is a social activity. We learn and understand best when we discuss what we are asked to learn, and resolve issues in groups. Collaboration among educators is so important. Sharing leads to new thinking and new thinking amongst a small or large group will ultimately lead to a common vision of where we want to move for the good of the kids. Professional development that asks adults to sit and enjoy (or not) whatever is being presented for one hour is not professional development. We have to give people time to absorb and internalize, and I believe that only comes through shared experiences.
Perhaps your comments can help all of us learn of new ways to provide professional development to our peers. My guess is when we learn the best ways to educate ourselves, we will have found the best way to educate our students, as well. That we will leave for a later topic.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Two Issues in School Redesign Work
I have found that when schools are asked to make the changes necessary to meet the needs of their students, two problems quickly arise. I would like to address both of these issues. As school-based educators, you can appreciate both issues, but you will only have control of one of the issues. As a central office educator, you will only be able to control one of the two issues, but your actions may make the school-based issues easier to address for a staff and a school community.
Issue number one is that when schools are asked to make changes, they often look for quick fixes. Richard Elmore, an education professor from Harvard School of Education, calls this the low hanging fruit of public education. School-based educators can find this low hanging fruit and adjust their work. However, I have learned that going for the low hanging fruit, which is often essential, does not change the overall success of a school in reaching out to educate all students. It is my belief that schools need to be looked at as systems. You can't look for fixes if the system is in need of adjustment. For example, LAUSD in the late 1990s gave me a good example of the difference between a systemic change in a school and a fix. The Superintendent, with the best of intentions, provided schools with significant amounts of money for what was called "intervention" programs. We were not given training, a curriculum to consider, or any other support for this badly needed money. As a result many schools developed after school and Saturday tutoring programs. We did the right things at the school site, we thought, but the right thing was not making a significant change in student achievement. There were a number of reasons for this result. First, tutoring programs that were quickly established do not address the California State Content Standards which kids are not learning during their first teaching experience. Second, the curriculum that was created on a spur of a moment at each school, did not take into account the specific needs of each child. Third, these programs were set up so quickly that they were more to meet a requirement than to help students in need. Fourth, the right kids were not the ones often taking advantage of the opportunity being provided to underachieving students. Richard DuFour in his book, Whatever It Takes, talks about the need of intervention programs to be short term, specific, and immediate. We were not prepared to create an intervention program that supports his research. As a principal, I saw what we were doing as a fix to a major problem, but it was not coordinated, at first, with other structural and practice changes that we were making in our school. Once we tied our intervention program into our other redesign efforts, we found much greater levels of success and our results were evident in our California State Standards tests, in student classroom achievement, and in other measures we used at our school site. Intervention was not our only change, but it was included as part of a bigger systemic program that our school implemented.
The second issue relates to the need for central offices to support the structural and practical changes that are requested of schools. For the last four years I have worked to change the mindset of central office personnel. I had some success with some offices and less with others. I learned during the 1990s, as a principal of a school that went through major redesign, that if we are to change the structures and practices that have existed in our secondary schools for over 100 years, we have to make changes in the practices of the central office. I have learned that the practices, policies, and procedures created in central offices are an evolutionary outgrowth of events in schools over time. However, once these are implemented, these central office behaviors rarely change. The people in place presently, frequently were not in those positions when the behaviors originated, and there is no current reason for some of those practices to continue as they were initiated. However, the fear of change is very strong and keeps people, including those in central office positions, from looking at themselves and finding new and better ways of supporting the work of schools. This is critical if we are asking our schools to make dramatic change for the good of the students. Stanford University's School Redesign Network, led by Linda Darling-Hammond, has been researching and writing on this topic for the past four years. They do have a publication out with recommendations for central office support of school redesign efforts.
Changing secondary schools is not easy for many reasons, but if we can be thoughtful in our work at the school site, and provided appropriate support from the non-school site, we will have our best chance to create 21st century schools that are able to prepare our students for the 21st century world.
Please provide your input on today's topic and other topics, past and present. I hope that we all find ways to do our job better through the online conversations that occur. The kids need us and we need each other. We have to be lifelong learners for the good of students, and for the good of our society.
Issue number one is that when schools are asked to make changes, they often look for quick fixes. Richard Elmore, an education professor from Harvard School of Education, calls this the low hanging fruit of public education. School-based educators can find this low hanging fruit and adjust their work. However, I have learned that going for the low hanging fruit, which is often essential, does not change the overall success of a school in reaching out to educate all students. It is my belief that schools need to be looked at as systems. You can't look for fixes if the system is in need of adjustment. For example, LAUSD in the late 1990s gave me a good example of the difference between a systemic change in a school and a fix. The Superintendent, with the best of intentions, provided schools with significant amounts of money for what was called "intervention" programs. We were not given training, a curriculum to consider, or any other support for this badly needed money. As a result many schools developed after school and Saturday tutoring programs. We did the right things at the school site, we thought, but the right thing was not making a significant change in student achievement. There were a number of reasons for this result. First, tutoring programs that were quickly established do not address the California State Content Standards which kids are not learning during their first teaching experience. Second, the curriculum that was created on a spur of a moment at each school, did not take into account the specific needs of each child. Third, these programs were set up so quickly that they were more to meet a requirement than to help students in need. Fourth, the right kids were not the ones often taking advantage of the opportunity being provided to underachieving students. Richard DuFour in his book, Whatever It Takes, talks about the need of intervention programs to be short term, specific, and immediate. We were not prepared to create an intervention program that supports his research. As a principal, I saw what we were doing as a fix to a major problem, but it was not coordinated, at first, with other structural and practice changes that we were making in our school. Once we tied our intervention program into our other redesign efforts, we found much greater levels of success and our results were evident in our California State Standards tests, in student classroom achievement, and in other measures we used at our school site. Intervention was not our only change, but it was included as part of a bigger systemic program that our school implemented.
The second issue relates to the need for central offices to support the structural and practical changes that are requested of schools. For the last four years I have worked to change the mindset of central office personnel. I had some success with some offices and less with others. I learned during the 1990s, as a principal of a school that went through major redesign, that if we are to change the structures and practices that have existed in our secondary schools for over 100 years, we have to make changes in the practices of the central office. I have learned that the practices, policies, and procedures created in central offices are an evolutionary outgrowth of events in schools over time. However, once these are implemented, these central office behaviors rarely change. The people in place presently, frequently were not in those positions when the behaviors originated, and there is no current reason for some of those practices to continue as they were initiated. However, the fear of change is very strong and keeps people, including those in central office positions, from looking at themselves and finding new and better ways of supporting the work of schools. This is critical if we are asking our schools to make dramatic change for the good of the students. Stanford University's School Redesign Network, led by Linda Darling-Hammond, has been researching and writing on this topic for the past four years. They do have a publication out with recommendations for central office support of school redesign efforts.
Changing secondary schools is not easy for many reasons, but if we can be thoughtful in our work at the school site, and provided appropriate support from the non-school site, we will have our best chance to create 21st century schools that are able to prepare our students for the 21st century world.
Please provide your input on today's topic and other topics, past and present. I hope that we all find ways to do our job better through the online conversations that occur. The kids need us and we need each other. We have to be lifelong learners for the good of students, and for the good of our society.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
New Blog By Secondary Educators for Secondary Educators
This new blog will address issues that arise in secondary schools that have in the past led to low performance by our students. It comes from the point of view that educators in secondary schools around the nation face many difficult issues that make the teaching of secondary students a great challenge. However, it also comes from the point of view that whatever challenges we face, we have to find ways to reach more and more of our students, no matter what they bring to our schools and classrooms. If we can't find a way to reach these students our entire society, socially and economically, will suffer. For many of our students, we the educators are their last opportunity to find a future of happiness and stability.
As a successful former teacher, principal, and district administrator for a large urban district in the USA, I have learned many things that I believe can help all of us to find ways to reach out to many more students, and accept their challenges as our challenges, and find ways to work with those students and their parents in order to raise the academic achievement opportunities for every secondary student.
If you agree with the goals of this blog, I hope that you will join me in ongoing conversations around what we have learned, can learn, and will learn from each other. I will place articles aligned to this topic from educational periodicals and articles that I have or others have written. Your additions to this blog will be greatly appreciated and will assist us all to deepen our own knowledge and build our own tool chest for improving our own work as we create the conditions for all students to achieve and for all adults to feel greater satisfaction in their career.
Thank you for reading and participating in this blog.
Larry Tash
As a successful former teacher, principal, and district administrator for a large urban district in the USA, I have learned many things that I believe can help all of us to find ways to reach out to many more students, and accept their challenges as our challenges, and find ways to work with those students and their parents in order to raise the academic achievement opportunities for every secondary student.
If you agree with the goals of this blog, I hope that you will join me in ongoing conversations around what we have learned, can learn, and will learn from each other. I will place articles aligned to this topic from educational periodicals and articles that I have or others have written. Your additions to this blog will be greatly appreciated and will assist us all to deepen our own knowledge and build our own tool chest for improving our own work as we create the conditions for all students to achieve and for all adults to feel greater satisfaction in their career.
Thank you for reading and participating in this blog.
Larry Tash
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