Changing the National Definition of Reforming Public Education

I continually read in periodicals and maganzines that public education requires reforming if we are to improve student achievement in this country. We are hearing similar comments at the federal level from Arne Duncan and President Obama. We are hearing the same reform talk in California state government from the governor and from big city local mayors. I have heard similar comments from higher education leaders as well.

I have not added to my Secondary Educators Blog for some time. There are many reasons for this. However, after lots of coaxing by friends and from some people I do not even know, I am going to resume adding to my discussion on improving secondary education. This topic of "school reform" and how it is defined is frequently on my mind. I hope that all of you form your own opinions on this topic and respond to what I have to share in this blog entry.

So, what do I keep hearing about public school reform? I hear that merit pay is necessary. I hear that a longer school year is necessary. I hear that tenure must be ended. I hear that more money is needed to support public education.

I agree that all of these things to some degree can help to improve public education. However, I would not call this school reform. In my mind the only reforms that matter are the reforms that bring about change in practice by adults and influence the learning opportunities for students; and the encouragement that schools provide to parents so that they become partners in their children's educational experience.

From my observations, as a nation our leaders are focusing on the wrong "reform" issues. If changes in adult thinking and actions do not lead to changes in classroom practice, then increased student achievement will not occur. I believe this is why we read so many reports of charter schools, small schools, and small learning communities that are both successful and unsuccessful. Improving instructional practice, connecting kids to caring adults, and connecting kids to the content that they are expected to learn are the reform issues that really matter. The school structures, the pay schedule of teachers, the number of days of instruction are all secondary issues.

I feel badly that foundations that can have so much influence, like the Gates Foundation, have moved away from creating culture shifts in our most underperforming schools. I know that they did not see sufficient constructive change in student learning data to allow them to continue putting their funds into school culture change, so they have moved to other arenas of public education to explore and influence change. the Gates Foundation and other educational leaders in this country can have tremendous impact on the public education. I believe that what we are hearing from Arne Duncan, President Obama, Governor Arnold, and mayors of large cities are being influenced by entities like the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and many universities. I am glad that these entities keep the public conversation around improvement of student achievement active, but why not listen to less powerful educators who are working in the field and hear them share what I am sharing. The differences in student learning will come only when we improve our practices in the classrooms of America through a systemic review of our public education system.

We need to help our leaders and politicians to focus educators and the public on the right reform issues. We need to find the best practices that make sense; we need to help adults connect to students; and we must win the trust of the parents so that they are partners in our school work. I am sure that merit pay will work somewhere for some teachers to help students achievel. I am sure that if we extend the school year we will help many students to learn more. I am sure that we make tenure more difficult to earn, or do away with it, some students will have better educators teaching them. But if we wish to help all students by supporting educators and parents, then we have to focus on the "right reforms" and those have to do with the behaviors and practices in every classroom, no matter what kind of school is created, and no matter what the adults are paid, and no matter how many days those teachers meet with their students.

We all need to reach out to the leaders of our nation and share a common theme and that theme is real reform must occur in the classrooms and households of America by helping adults to change their mindset about how public education can best support our kids.

Focus on Five Instructional Areas for Raising Student Achievement

If you review many of my earlier posts, you will see that I believe that a systems approach to school change is necessary. Many of the schools that I worked with in my very large district have moved forward in someway. They have attempted to break their large comprehensive high schools into a series of small schools or small learning communities or both. It is gratifying to see this happening; however, what you will also find in most of these schools is structural changes with little change in instructional classroom practice. Without a change of mindset in the area of instructional practice, we will not see the kind of sustained improvement of student achievement that we want.

I was recently asked by principal friend to help him develop his thinking on how to focus greater attention on the instructional practices in his school. His school had just made outstanding gains on the California State Assessment tool (API), but he was not sure if their previous year’s efforts would sustain growth in academic achievement over time. This conversation helped me to reflect on my own instructional focus during my years as a principal and director.

I have always believed that if you want to change anything, you have to figure out how to get the changes clearly stated in no more than five bullets. I did that with my school change mantra that you can read about in other blogs, and I did that with my school vision as a principal. Now, I was being asked to think through how to focus an administrative team and a teaching staff on no more than five areas that will lead to improved academic achievement for all students. Since placing my thinking into writing, I have had many conversations and practice sessions with district and school based administrators and some classroom teachers. I learn a lot from these conversations.

I am providing you with the five bullets in this entry, and then over the next several weeks I will try and develop each of the bullets more fully. I also wish to share a follow up to my healthy school culture entry with another related document on evaluating a school for a healthy instructional culture. I know that none of this work is easy, but through frequent conversations, it is easier to develop educators thinking than one might believe. Unfortunately, we rarely see administrators and/or teachers holding instructional conversations in depth that will lead to changes in mindset and the building of a common instructional vision that all community members can agree to be part of at a school.

My five areas of focus for improving student achievement, and raising the level of rigor within a classroom are:

1. By raising the level of questioning within a classroom by teachers and students we can increase the instructional rigor being introduced into any classroom
2. By increasing the amount and type of feedback that teachers offer to students, and that administrators offer to teachers, we can improve teaching and learning opportunities for everyone.
3. By creating a common educational language around important educational concepts, we will improve the professional practices of all educators. Discussing common language, implies having behaviors in the classroom that match the language, as discussed by Richard Elmore in his newest book, Rounds.
4. By guaranteeing the existence of a safe and caring classroom environment where students feel safe to ask questions and make mistakes, we will improve student’s interest in learning.
5. By creating strong personalized connections between students and teachers, and between students and the content, we can use to our advantage the relationships that are built as tools for student motivation

I will attempt to explain each of these five areas in greater detail in subsequent blog entries. I see each of these five as being supportive of any instructional effort that a district or school is attempting to put into place. Differentiated instruction, project-based learning, reciprocal teaching, Socratic seminars will all benefit by consciously including the five areas above within the professional development work of these or any other instructional delivery models.

If you have any comment on my thinking in this area, I would enjoy reading your responses, and holding a conversation with others around this topic.

Educators Mindset May Be the Key to Improving Teaching and Learning

This week the LAUSD Board of Education is opening up the new schools to the best school developers that they can find, if the Board resolution is passed. The new school developers might be the LAUSD district, a group of educators who work for LAUSD, charter organizations, a group of parents, university leaders or management companies. All of this is in the hopes that someone or some group can find a way to really improve the academic achievement of all students in LAUSD.

There was a former superintendent who looked for silver bullets to change the educational outcomes for kids by believing that scripting the work of the classroom teacher was necessary. He came to believe that although there were some strong teachers within the system, there were too many who could or would not learn to teach in a research-based way. Unfortunately, as I have shared in my earlier blog entries, there is no way to change practice everywhere in such a big system without those implementing buying-in and understanding the reason for program or plan to be implemented. This minor step in the process of change is almost always overlooked in school districts. There are some reasons for its being overlooked but without this critical step, change to the level necessary to support our students will not occur.

A change in the mindset of the classroom teacher is the key to any successful change. The reason is simple, it is at the point of contact between the teacher and student where real teaching and learning occurs. So, what has to happen to change the teacher's mindset? Teachers must be clear as to why they are being asked to change. We look at data regularly within our schools, but most of it is “Public Data” and used mostly to compare schools to other schools, and to show change in gross test scores within a school over time. I do believe that there is a place for this type of accountability. However, I also believe that most of this type of “Public Data” is meant for the public, not for the classroom teacher and school-based administrator to really make a difference in their practice.

I have many educator friends in many school districts and I speak with them regularly about the value that they see in the periodic assessments that they are mandated to give to their students. I do believe that periodic assessments are a tool that is especially beneficial to improving student achievement and can help teachers dramatically if used with the right mindset in place.

The answers that I get from these secondary teachers range from: “they help me to know where my students are understanding and where they are not.” to “ I am glad that these have been given to us, we now have common unit and final exams.” to “I wish that I didn't have to give these, I don't have time the way things are to cover all of the necessary materials. Besides, I only give them because I have to and I don't want to get into any trouble.” I have found that some teachers in some schools actually use this data to change their instructional practice, and I am glad to hear that, but I am not sure that the use of periodic assessments in this way is yet the norm. Yes, they are being given, no they aren't being effectively used by all.

Once again, it is the mindset of our school personnel that will determine whether data such as this has value. No matter what structure we put into place, we have to begin with providing the necessary leadership, professional development for understanding, and modeling for success if we want to change practice. Changing practice is a matter of the classroom teacher believing that the change will make the learning of the student better and the life of the classroom teacher more satisfying.

How do we get to this point? First, I would encourage our training institutions (universities) to reflect deeply on their own teacher preparation efforts. Are they still preparing teachers to go into their own classrooms using 20th century strategies with 21st century kids? I would allow for professional development time that leads our educators through structured conversations about the teaching of students within their own community using the most personal data a school staff has available. We need leadership to guide these teachers who know the students best to connect what they know about their students with the research-based delivery models that are now available. We need to give our teachers information to work with their colleagues in a collaborative model as much as possible. Teaching and learning should not be a free for all where anything goes, but it can't be forced upon good educators if they don't see the value of the change.

Finally, I believe that creating personalized learning environments at all educational levels will benefit kids because they will be well known by adults and not fall between the cracks. But just as important, the necessary teacher conversations can occur around specific kids needs, because the group of teachers holding the conversations share the same group of students over an extended period of time. It gives our teachers and administrators more purpose for agreeing to change and sharing in the changes. They have greater control of their own environment, and hopefully share a common ownership for the academic outcomes of their students.
I don't believe that there is a single right answer for improving academic achievement for all students, but I do know that by working together and by sharing information, research, and personal knowledge, we can continue to increase the number of students being reached. Will it make a difference what structures our new school developers offer? It will only make a difference if the teaching and learning focus is the basis for what they put into place, and the silver bullet approach is avoided.

I look forward to hearing your opinion on this and other educational topics.

"Implementation with Fidelity", I Have a Problem!

I keep hearing from some national and local educational leaders and educational program developers that if you bring a specific program to a district, it can fix student achievement. Almost always it is then followed with a caveat, "If it is implemented with fidelity". Have you heard the expression, "implementation with fidelity" in your school or district? This is a very troubling expression to me, and hopefully to all of us.

I understand that when a research-based practice is well researched, a lot is learned about how to help kids achieve. However, what happens when a program is brought to a district and for many reasons, it is not implemented with fidelity? Do we blame the implementers, teachers and school-based administrators? Or do we look to the researchers and district leaders who only offer success if the perfect format for perfect implementation is followed?

The reality of my world that I have lived in for over 38 years is that we can never have perfect implementation of any program, no matter how hard we try. Perfect implementation requires that more than sufficient professional development is provided. You and I know that we fight for every professional development second we can find, and then it isn't enough for all that we need to learn as educators. Perfect implementation requires expert modeling of the program model, but this is a high cost item. Although we have had coaches in our schools for several years, they were not experts in every area that they needed to have expertise in. Perfect implementation requires a long term commitment with measurement of success over several years, not in one year. Our grading system, at the state and federal level, preclude us from having several years to measure whether we are moving in the right direction or not. Finally, perfect implementation requires that each teacher and administrator is in agreement that this program model will be better than whatever is currently in place in our schools. I am absolutely sure that we never take the upfront time to gain buy-in from our implementors. The result is that the teachers and administrators see each new program as a passing fad that will be moving on shortly, so why put much effort into supporting or learning it now.

The root of the matter is that without the teachers and school-based administrators buying into any program or plan for a school, it is likely to be implemented with less than the required level of fidelity. I am bothered because we don't work to alter the mindset of our educators before bringing in new programs. I am further disturbed because of the way we bring in these programs, they do not lead to the promised levels of success and some kids are further damaged by the educational system.

I cannot accept "implementation with fidelity" as a statement from educational leaders. We need to find ways to work with kids, educate kids, and support kids whether we have fidelity of implementation or not. We need to all believe that our job makes a difference to our students and to our society. We cannot settle for less than our best. We cannot settle for expecting less than their best of our students. We don't need perfectly implemented programs, we will never get them, but we do need well thought out, researched based programs that are explained to our educators, and given time to succeed. If they don't succeed, we need to figure out how to tweak the program so that we can continually help more children to achieve at higher levels.

The cop out of "implementation with fidelity" allows for educational leaders, educational researchers, administrators, and teachers to have an excuse for why these new programs have not reached a level of success that was expected. I want these researchers to keep researching, we need them. I want our district leaders to keep searching for the best fit our schools, we need them to. I want teachers and school-based administrators to continue to find ways to motivate and engage our students. But I want implementation to be about more than just "fidelity". I want these programs to figure out how to work when they are offered to schools that have many challenges facing them, and need much more than to be told "implement with fidelity".

If you agree or disagree, I would love to hear your comments.

Legacy is NOT About a Name

Since I retired on July 1, 2008, it has been a very interesting year for me. It has not all been good, but it has not been all bad either. However, the last year began with my accepting the fact that I was going to be retiring, something that I had never believed would happen. However, during the year, my mother and a very close uncle died, and many of my educator friends decided to join me in retirement.

My own retirement and my mother's death in particular helped me to define the word “legacy” for myself. I always believed that I had to leave a legacy when I left the world of education. I thought that I had failed when I retired. When my mother died, it brought the issue of “legacy” back to my attention once again. By defining legacy in the way that I will share , it made it easier to accept my own retirement and my mother's death.

Legacy is really not about my name being remembered for years to come. Sure some past educators have had schools named for them, and that certainly keeps a person's name alive in the system for a long time. However, just like a family, beyond grandparent, how much do we really know about the our parental ancestry. After one complete generation passes through a family or a school district, who will be left that really knows any past person, other than by hearing their name. One educator who has a school named for him certainly did great things for this district, but I believe that there are few people that can associate the name of the school with anything specifically that he did to help children or educators in the system.

So, in my mind, my legacy is not about being remembered as Larry Tash, educator. It is about the wisdom and experiences that I learned and that I shared with others, who carry my words and my teachings forward. Hopefully, they find the same level of success that I found. A legacy is really more about the ideas, experiences, and creativity that you have brought to the system and is passed on from generation to generation of educators. My name may be lost after one generation, but my beliefs and great ideas will hopefully continue to be passed on from educators to educators for many years to come.

How did this help me with my mother's death? I realized that I knew three of my grandparents to a certain degree, and because of their relationship, they were important to me. However, as important as they may have been to me, my two sons were not alive to know any of them. However, my grandparents are still present because what they taught their children (my parents) and what their children taught to me, is what I believe that I have taught to my own children. So, my mother's life continues through me, my boys, and hopefully through my boys to their children in the future.

This definition of legacy made it much easier for me to accept being retired from a job that I loved for 37 years. I know that I mentored several successful educators who carry within them some of what I was able to share. Hopefully, as mentors they will be as successful and will continue the thread of knowledge that came to me and that I passed on.

Was I ready to retire, no, but it was easier once I realized what it means to leave a legacy for the system or for other educators to follow.

I hope that this helps some others who will shockingly reach the time when retirement hits without realizing how fast the years move by.

MEASURING SCHOOL CULTURE

The issue of implementing significant change in our secondary schools is deeply tied into the existing culture that exists within our schools. I have spent several years thinking and discussing this issue with educators. I have come to the conclusion that much of the hard work for improving the teaching and learning conditions for students and teachers gets derailed or halted due to the culture that exists in schools. The good news is that a culture can be changed, so we do not have to feel that our work of improving student achievement is without hope.
I shared this document with my former superintendent who felt that it should be shared with all school leaders. The timing for sharing it was not right, but through this blog, I do believe that it can lead to conversations that can help all of us in our preparation for implementing change in our schools.

I know that if we offered the "silver bullet" for improving achievement for all students in our schools, we would have it rejected by many of our peers. The reason that this would happen are numerous, but the one that is most critical is that as secondary educators we have to believe that what is being offered, even the "silver bullet", must be known by us and we must in some way take ownership for its implementation. Unfortunately, we do not spend enough time building the ownership necessary for implementing any programs in our schools. As a result we have all seen the teachers and administrators that nod yes to accepting the mandate, but once they leave the meeting, they go back to their offices and classrooms, and practice business as usual.

So, how do we create the conditions for implementation of programs that have the best chance of helping our kids? We need to work on creating cultures in our school that I have identified as healthy. I am defining healthy in a very loose way on purpose. This definition requires that schools and districts develop the healthy school culture continuum and determine where each school is on that continuum.

What I am providing is a starting point for discussion as to what criteria should be considered by educators in determining where on the healthy culture continuum a school is. Below you will find the criteria for the two extremes of the continuum "healthy culture" and "unhealthy culture". I hope that we can begin discussions around this topic so that we can move all schools to the place where the implementation of best practices, strong programs, and local school ideas can easily be implemented with fidelity. Only this way can we hope to support the education of all students. I have developed similar cultural criterion for instruction and personalization which I will share in the future.

I hope that you find this interesting and stimulating. I hope you and your colleagues either through this blog or at your work sites have conversations based on the idea of building or sustaining a healthy culture in your school or district.

Healthy School Culture

• Will support a variety of teaching and learning practices and strategies
• Will support differentiated approaches to supporting student needs Faculty and staff accept responsibility for improving student achievement for all students
• Anonymity of any student is unacceptable and prevented by guaranteeing that constructive relationships exist between all students and school staff
• Shows signs of continuous improvement on multiple measures determined by school and district determined tools and discuss this data as a team or group
• Will support a positive “school story” that can easily and constructively be shared with parents and community partners
• School-based administrators and faculty have a strong, respectful, and cooperative working relationship and possess professional attitudes
• Active involvement of parents and school staff exists in developing and implementing school plans
• A safe and secure environment for students and staff is apparent and students feel comfortable and feel a connection to their school
• Equity and access issues are resolved for all students, with no tracking of students in a formal or informal manner
• Strategies, practices, and procedures are in place that support increased attendance, decrease in drop outs, decrease in discipline referrals, and increase in parent communication
• A “college going culture” is in place and efforts to include all students occur
  Strong connection to career awareness, labor requirements (SCANS Report, and State CTE Framework), and internship opportunities provided for all students
• School staff see themselves as continuous learners of educational pedagogy and practice
• School staff members accept responsibility and ownership of student outcomes, both for their success and lack of success

Unhealthy School Culture:

• Requires significant readiness preparation for implementing improved teaching and learning practices and strategies
• Requires changes in staff attitudes in order to support differentiated approaches to supporting student needs
• Many students remain anonymous and do not feel cared for by school staff
• Lacks signs of continuous improvement using multiple measures determined by school and local and district
• Unable to provide a positive “school story” that can easily and constructively be shared with parents and community partners
• Administrators and faculty have a poor working relationship with little trust or respect existing between the groups and little sign of educational professionalism apparent
• School plans written, but without the involvement of parents and staff and with low levels of staff knowledge or implementation
• The school environment feels unsafe and uncomfortable for students and adults, and students do not feel connected to this school
• Due to a lack of thoughtful review of equity and access issues, significant informal tracking is occurring within the school
• Strategies, practices, and procedures are not in place that lead to improved academic success for all students
• A “college going culture” exists for selective students only
• Few career preparedness opportunities exist other than for those students who choose to seek them out
• Staff does not act as continuous learners of educational pedagogy and practice
• School staff does not show a sense of personal responsibility for the successes or failures of the students

Raising Academic Achievement Two Models Tried

As I thoughtfully prepare for my next blog, I read many newspaper and some research articles that relate to my current thinking. Whenever I read, I try to connect what I read to my ongoing belief about what is necessary for improving academic achievement. Those who have read my previous blog entries know my mantra by now. I feel strongly that schools can only improve academic achievement if we look at schools as systems and if we try to correct the barriers that exist to student achievement by reviewing our current system.

Having been working very closely with several urban schools as a consultant since early February, I am able to better see where the needs for change are in most of our schools. I remember clearly telling one of our recent past superintendents, and his instructional superintendent that I would support anything that they chose to place in the school to improve academic achievement, but I also know that if we don’t make other changes in our school, this new great idea will not make a difference. I still feel the same way.

Interestingly, this morning while reading Smart Briefs by ASCD, two articles were summarized from two big city newspapers. They were timely and seemed worth commenting on at this time as we all try to figure out how to raise graduation rates, lower drop out rates, increase the number of students prepared and interested in post-secondary educational opportunities, and provide our nation and economy with students ready to enter the world of work successfully.

Miami-Dade County instituted a program several years ago with the hope of raising the achievement level of students in their lowest performing schools. The Miami Herald reported the following: “A $100 million investment in Miami-Dade County's lowest performing public schools failed to boost student achievement, according to the school district's final report on the program.

The School Improvement Zone was a three-year push at 39 elementary, middle and senior high schools throughout the county. Students participated in a specialized reading program and had a longer school day than students at other schools. They also had a longer school year.” As thoughtful educators, this research provides us with a wealth of conversational possibilities. Why might such a major effort, targeted at specific schools with lots of financial resources provided, not lead to better outcomes for the students in this School Improvement Zone?

A second article from the Baltimore Sun was included in the same ASCD Smart Brief today. It describes the fact that Maryland school districts are lowering the number of students who will not graduate in this the first year where a high school exit exam must be passed prior to students qualifying for graduation. Students not passing the exit exam twice after receiving required intervention support have the opportunity of completing bridging projects in lieu of passing the test. Some Maryland teachers are reporting that students who have completed the projects are actually scoring well enough afterward to pass the exit exam. A sample of one algebra bridging project can be viewed on the Maryland Department of Education web site.

By comparing the two articles, it appears that we have two different ways of helping students to raise their academic achievement levels. In Maryland they are finding early success, while in Miami the long term effort seems to not have been so successful. What can we learn from the two models?

The first thing that jumps out in my mind is that resources by themselves do not make a difference. There must be other systemic changes in a school for students to make marked improvement. Longer hours and expensive programs by themselves are not the answer. So, what might be the answer? Can Maryland’s experience teach us anything about the teaching and learning process? What can we conclude from the Miami experience as described?

Before answering these questions, I am going to stop my blog here for people to think about and perhaps share their thoughts together. My next blog will get into more of my in depth thoughts about the teaching and learning process. I would highly recommend that if you haven’t read, or read it a long time ago, the February 2008 Educational Leadership magazine on Teaching Students to Think, that you review it for your own learning. It is very interesting and provides us with a lot to discuss.

I hope to have my next blog on this topic completed and posted by the end of next week.

Cyber Summit June 1-12 Online and Free

I encourage everyone to register and participate as much as possible in the 21st Century Cyber Summit being sponsored by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills office out of Washington, D.C. The URL for registering is:
http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/cybersummit

I hope that we run into each other online during this cyber conference.

I am currently working on my next blog post. I want to thank those of you who are encouraging me to continue writing and posting. It helps to be encouraged. It feels good to know that someone is reading what I have written. I look forward to what I have to say when the post is completed.

Sincerely,

Larry Tash

Allowing Strong Teaching Strategies to Make a Difference for Student Learning

I have been very fortunate over the past several weeks to meet personally with some really outstanding professional educators who shared with me their passion regarding the way to reach our students through research-based instructional strategies. I learned a great deal about Project Based Learning and Thinking Maps from true professional educators. I know that if these educators were given the opportunity to work with school staff using their hands on active approach to professional development, we would see some outstanding teaching going on beyond what we can already see in many classrooms.

These discussions allowed me to reflect on my own thinking and to delve deeper into my beliefs about the strategies necessary for changing the instructional programs that we too frequently find taking place in our secondary schools. The discussions we had began around conversations of instructional strategies, but quickly turned to the need to look at many issues existing in our secondary schools if we wish to make real instructional change. We discussed how and why most teachers teach the way they do; the influence of peer pressure on teachers to conform in their teaching style with their colleagues; the need to provide professional development that allows the teachers to be active learners, not passive listeners; the hope that all higher educational institutions would someday come to the experienced educators and ask for teacher preparation advice; and we discussed the importance of strong leadership if we want real reform in our schools.

So, what did I take from these productive conversations? I came away believing that we know a lot about our profession and our work, but what we know to be successful has not been shared in a widespread way. I believe even more strongly now that we have to find ways to reach the mind and hearts of educators if we expect any change in school practice to occur. I believe that we can make big differences for students when the environment and learning conditions we create are supportive of the needs of our students. I have reinforced my belief that we can succeed with our students, but to do so, we can never settle for good enough, we have to push ourselves, our community, our institution and our students to be the best that they possibly can be. We may not succeed with every child, but we have to go into our job believing that we will succeed with every child. If we do not have this belief, it is too easy to say that some kids are “throw away” students because we can never reach them, no matter what we do. Administrators can’t settle for good enough. Teachers can’t settle for good enough. Parents can’t settle for good enough. Students can’t settle for good enough. Our society won’t succeed if we allow a good enough attitude to be pervasive in our educational system.

I know that strong teaching practices and the use of powerful teaching strategies are the only way to raise the level of academic achievement for our students, but I also know that these great strategies and practices will not make the difference for enough students unless other teaching and learning conditions are also in place. Kids need to be motivated to learn; and frequently the motivation needs to come from an adult that shows they care. Kids need to be shown a relationship between the content and their life goals and personal experiences. Schools need to feel safe for students and parents. Supports have to be put into place in order for these wonderful strategies to have a chance of succeeding with our students.

The conclusion I have come to is that educators are participating in a wonderful and noble profession. It is never boring and it is never easy. If it were not for the truly talented educators in our world, many people would be living with greater hardship than they already have. We have to find ways to succeed with all of our students. We know the difficulties and we have to work together to reach out to share or our society as we now know it may become a society that we don’t want for our children and grand children in years to come. We have the power to make a difference, but none of us can make a difference by ourselves.

Sixth Grade Data Influenced My Secondary Education Belief for Helping to Fix Our Schools

I have received several e-mails from colleagues asking me for the follow up to my last blog on fixing our secondary schools based on the data provided to me from the research and evaluation branch of our district. If you have not yet read the previous blog, I would suggest that you do so as I think that it will make more clear what I will be sharing here.

The research comparison of middle school and elementary school sixth graders was quite telling. As I stated in my previous blog, it would be easy to conclude that we should make our secondary schools more like our elementary schools, where a single teacher has the major responsibility for educating our students. This would be a simple conclusion for a complex problem. I supervised a school that was established to be a K-8 school, and I found the same secondary educational issues still in place in that model for the secondary students. So, first learning (stated repeatedly in past blogs) is that the structure that we create is not the solution to our achievement problems. The structure may support what we have found to be the missing pieces for our students. If we don't create a common vision, a common agreement on the instructional practices, strategies and procedures that we will use; and agree to build the necessary long term relationships (personalization) with our kids and their content, the structure will provide us with little change.

It was clear to me after visiting many elementary classrooms that a single teacher class leads to the teacher having real ownership for the education of their students. This is often not the case in our secondary schools. How can we recreate that sense of ownership without developing single teacher classes for our secondary students? The obvious, but not easy answer, is to create small groups of teachers who work with the same group of students over time. This model has been in place and shown success in my former district. We had magnet programs, academies, and schools-within-schools models. They do exactly what is described here. They provide a close approximation in a secondary model to the elementary school structure, where kids know their teachers over an extended time, and their teachers know their students well also. The problem that I see is that magnet schools, charters, public small schools, and other models in place around the country have met the needs of a small population of our students. Most of our secondary kids still are attending schools that look and act like comprehensive high schools. If the small school model is good for some kids, why isn't it good for all kids? If a comprehensive high school can produce the ownership necessary for outstanding student achievement, then that model is fine. Unfortunately, for much of the nation the comprehensive high school model has not met the needs of many students.

The second finding relates to instructional practice, procedures, and strategies. It was apparent that in a single teacher setting, the teacher has much control of the time allocated to each content area, the ability to make connections between content areas, and the freedom to create a good understanding of the instructional needs of each child to help them succeed. The teacher knows that sometime in the near future, the success or failure of the students, academically, will be placed on their doorstep. It is in the teacher's best interest to figure out how to help each child succeed at the greatest level possible. Of course this teacher only has 20 to 33 students in their classroom.

So, how could this model look similar but different in a secondary setting? First, we again look at a smaller setting where not only the students have the same teachers over time, but the teachers share the same peer group over time as well. The relationships between teacher peers can be incredibly powerful. I supervised a school that we moved into four small learning communities. After the first year, the trust I saw between SLC teacher members became very strong, with a SLC leader who had a strong instructional vision. These teachers visited each other regularly and had developed enough trust to allow for constructive criticism during their professional development time in a small group setting. It led to many teachers developing a similar instructional philosophy, providing students with common instructional strategies, practices, and classroom rules. Students did not see each teacher as being so independent of all other teachers. The teacher collaboration led to a very healthy work environment for both the adults and the students.

Instructional practices in the elementary school looked different than those in most secondary schools. The students were much more engaged in their work. They often had to be engaged because the teacher worked with small groups of students and the other students had to work independently for sometime. Also, time was not as much of a constant in elementary school as it is in secondary school. I often use the following phrase when speaking to secondary educators about bell schedule issues: "Do we want time to be the constant and learning the variable, or would we prefer that time were the variable and learning be the constant?" We know that in most secondary schools, time is the driver of our master schedule, our lesson planning, and our daily routines. We also know that not all students can learn in "the same way on the same day". (A quote that I have borrowed from Gary Soto, the former principal of Southridge MS in Fontana, a great educational reformer and leader). So, this led me to think through how we do more hands on and engaging work in our secondary schools, and how do we get away as much as possible from the secondary use of time, and try to create something that will help more students achieve? I need to include a comment that can be discussed in the future about the critical importance of intervention programs. Intervention is part of the change that must occur in our secondary schools. Frequently, I see intervention as being tutoring, and I do not believe that a tutoring program addresses the specific needs of students who require intervention support.

The final critical learning that I took from this study came when the R and E people took the study a year further and followed all sixth graders into seventh grade. A very interesting outcome arose. I always discussed this issue, but did not have much information to back up what I said until the results came out. The sixth graders from the elementary school, who outperformed the sixth graders in the middle school, had bigger academic dips in their achievement data in seventh grade than their middle school peers. This finding allowed me to conclude that transitions are extremely important to all students, and must be addressed to try and make every transition as smooth as possible.

These three findings on top of my research and personal experiences led me to where I am today in my beliefs about secondary redesign. Those in outline form look as follows:

1. We need to have a common vision agreed to by the entire school community.
2. We need to create an instructional plan that addresses the instructional needs of our students in an engaging way. We need to find a way where all students do not have to learn on the same schedule, but all must be held to learn the same materials.
3. We need to connect the adults in our schools to our students and parents. We also must connect our students to their content.
4. We must develop school structures that support our vision, our instructional plan, and our personalization plan.
5. We must consider all points of transition for our students. These points are not only from one school to the next, but from grade level to grade level, and program to program (ie. EL to regular education, and others)

Schools are systems, and systems can't be fixed by making changes to one part of the system without considering all parts of the system together. My conclusion is that we have to look carefully at many models that exist around our nation that have worked for educating large numbers of students. We can't hope that what we are doing is the right thing, we have to be sure that what we are doing is well thought out, researched based, and owned by everyone in the school community.

I would enjoy hearing from you if you have found success that could be shared with those who read this blog. As I have said a number of times, we all learn best through conversations around a common topic. If we care about kids, getting them educated is certainly a good topic for a public discussion.

Sixth Grade Data Influences My Secondary Educational Belief

In 2002 I was asked by our district superintendent to lead the work in secondary school redesign for our district. I was honored to be asked to take advantage of all that I learned as a teacher and administrator and use my experiences to benefit the students and staff in our large district. What I found could influence the thinking of all middle and high school educators.

One of my first actions was to ask our performance and assessment office to help me to research student outcomes of sixth graders in our district in language arts and mathematics. Board members and the superintendent were interested in finding out if we should continue our middle schools as grade 6-8 schools, or should we be moving the sixth graders back to the elementary school. I wanted to do the research because only in sixth grade could we compare practices and outcomes between school levels. Most of our sixth graders were housed in secondary schools, but we had a significant number of sixth grade students attending our elementary schools. I saw this as a possible way to compare the instructional and organizational practices of secondary versus elementary schools and the impact on student achievement.

Our data experts told me that within our district we could compare the two sub groups of sixth graders and there were enough students in both school settings to make the results useful and reliable. This study was done on two separate occasions and the results were remarkably consistent and revealing. These results provide secondary educators with some important information that should be influential in our discussions of secondary school redesign.

Our findings produced the following information:
• Demographic data of both groups showed that the student populations were very similar in both settings.
• Testing data for both groups showed that there was no appreciable difference in student achievement based on the district’s standardized tests for fifth grade.
• Sixth grade students in elementary schools outperformed similar students in the sixth grade middle schools by a significant margin in language arts.
• Sixth grade students in elementary schools outperformed similar students in the sixth grade middle schools by a significant margin in mathematics.
• Seventh grade students who were new to middle school had greater achievement declines than seventh grade students who originally attended sixth grade in a middle school. However, overall their achievement remained higher than the middle school group.

As a result of this data, I wanted to determine the difference in practices within the two school settings that may have resulted in the achievement differences that became apparent. I am a secondary educator and I was not interested in turning our middle schools into elementary schools, but I am interested in improving the secondary schools practices if it will lead to greater student achievement.

By going out and visiting schools, speaking with educators of sixth graders from both elementary and secondary schools, there were some interesting outcomes that I learned and those results have influenced much of what I now believe to be necessary for improving secondary student achievement. My findings are not about sixth grade, but really they are about what all secondary educators could learn from our elementary partners. Many of my own beliefs were reinforced, and new thinking became necessary. The research and data led me to these conclusions:
• Teaching in elementary school is much less bound by time with only one teacher responsible for instruction.
• Teaching in elementary school tends to be more engaging and hands-on instructionally.
• Since there is only one teacher the students become very familiar the strategies and practices that the teacher uses on a regular basis.
• Since students have only one teacher, students know the teacher very well and the teacher knows the students very well.
• Teachers feel a strong sense of ownership for their students’ academic outcomes since they are the primary (and often the only) teacher for their students.

My work on school redesigned has been strongly influenced by this research. It appears to be closely aligned to what educational leaders around the nation believe to be true. I will share what I believe and how it is embedded in all that I write and present in my next blog. I look forward to hearing from you, since I feel strongly that changes in thinking lead to changes in practice, and both occur only through conversations and discussions that continually occur over time.

VISION IS NOT A FOUR LETTER WORD

I am now working as an educational consultant, a process coach, for several inner city schools. I have spent two weeks visiting these schools in an effort to determine where I can be of the most assistance to small learning community (SLC)stakeholders. I am finding one common misplaced piece in each of the SLCs I have visited, a lack of common vision. By sharing with others what I am learning from this new experience, I hope that we can make a difference in the lives of our students, and in the working conditions for our adults through blog conversations.

My August 24, 2008, blog entitled "Need for Change in Our Schools", I describe a number of areas where change must occur, but none are more important for sustainable change than the development and group acceptance of an SLC vision. I recognize that many, and perhaps most, educators see the vision building process as “fluff” and overly time consuming. I see it in a very different way. It is my strong belief that the vision, when owned and accepted by the entire community, will drive the necessary changes in school practice and student learning that will be required in this century.

Why should vision even be discussed? Mark Twain is frequently quoted as saying, “He never let his schooling interfere with his education.” We are now in a period in the history of this nation that if our educational practices don’t meet the needs of our students as they prepare for a 21st century world, then there will be no need for formally educating our students at all. Our traditional public educational systems are being challenged by politicians, parents/guardians, and even by other educators. We frequently find that school staff members are living with an educational vision that no longer fits the world that we live in or the world that is evolving. Only by creating a current vision, can we hope to change teaching and learning in our schools in order to support our students who will live in a world that we can’t even define yet.

I helped school communities to develop school redesign plans for the last four years of my career. However, I am seeing that these plans that began with the development of a common vision are not changing our high schools from comprehensive to something new. I am seeing that the visions that were presented by SLC teams as the first step in their redesign planning were either not really accepted by the community, or have been forgotten very quickly.

A flexible and living vision that allows for constant change to meet the changing needs of the students in a community will be the driving force for moving our schools from lock step teaching institutions, to educational centers that provide for the differentiated needs of each child. The 21st century requires a new outlook on our work. It certainly requires a new set of goals for our children. We no longer live in an isolated world, and therefore, as a nation we must compete with other nations. This will require a new vision for everyone in all aspects of our nation. Perhaps a new vision has to begin within our schools, since our educational system is meant to prepare kids for the world of their future.

Formal and Informal Education for Our Students

This morning I woke up at 5:00 a.m. because I had to put on paper my feelings about a very special person. My uncle died this past weekend and I wanted to share with others the important role he played as a teacher in my life. After completing this effort, I thought about what I said about my uncle and how it relates to our work as secondary educators. This is what I wish to share with you today.

People are educated in two ways during their life, formally and informally. Formal education relates to learning at school through classroom experiences, reading, and discussions around specific curriculum and content. Informal learning comes from the daily experiences that we have in our lives that are not attached to classroom lessons with standards and specific learning outcomes in mind.

Most of our learning is actually informal, but some of those informal lessons are learned in school. This does not imply that informal learning is less important than what we learn in a formal setting. In reality, thinking about what I learned from my uncle was much more important than what I learned in any class. I may not have experienced academic success without the informal learning experiences that I have had in my life.

I often tell people that my academic high school experience did not prepare me well for UCLA, but it provided me perfect informal learning experiences for my career as a teacher and administrator. Our informal experiences are so important and sometimes we as educators lose track of the relative importance of the experiences gained informally by our students from us and from others.

When I think back on my school years, I remember almost every teacher. As an educator, I remember every principal or supervisor that I have worked for. I have learned a great deal from each of these people. Most of the time my informal learning has been positive, but sometimes what I learned was negative based on what I experienced and what I observed. I learned valuable lessons from both types of experiences.

As teachers, counselors, or administrators do we really spend enough time thinking and discussing how we impact our students, not in a formal, but in an informal way? We are role models because we stand in front of impressionable young people, this comes with the job. We may think that we have been hired to teach content to our students, but we have really been hired to teach children. Yes, we teach them content, concepts, and skills, but we also teach them informal life experiences as well.

My uncle taught me the importance of dedication, hard work, fairness, generosity, and how to relate to others. What he taught me was reinforced by my teachers and supervisors over many years. What kind of world would we be leaving our students if we teachers believed that we only taught math, science, English, social studies, the arts, physical education or other electives as defined by the scope and sequence developed by our school district? We teach so much more than that. But we have to be sure that we teach those other qualities thoughtfully and carefully because they are learned by students through their observations of us. They learn from what we say and how we act. Our responsibility is great and extremely important, especially if we are the best or only positive adult role model in our students’ life.

Successful students seem to have the ability to persevere and be resilient. They seem to be willing to accept constructive criticism. They seem to have developed some long term goals that are supported by their education. It may be that these qualities are more important in the learning experiences of students than the content we are hired to teach. In any case, how do we use the students' formal educational experiences to reinforce the qualities that successful students seem to have? Are we consciously supporting our students to be better people and better prepared people for their future world?

We rarely hear about the informal influences we have on our students’, but make no mistake, we are informal teachers to every student we have, and our teaching needs to provide a positive experience for every child we touch. If we are doing that, then we are doing a Herculean job of educating our students. But if we are not, then we could cause our students pain and suffering through out their life. Each of us has to make conscious choices about how we do our job as a teacher and how we use the power of being a role model for our students.

Cyber Safety

This post is unique as compared to other posts that I have listed on this blog. However, the topic is so important I thought I would share it with interested educators. I placed my article below on the school web page where I am currently working as the interim principal. I share this with teachers and administrators so that we can find ways to support parents in helping to make our students as safe as possible since 75% or more of our students are using cell phones, computers, or other cyber devices to communicate and to find information. Educators have an important role in helping parents to make students as safe as possible when in the cyber world.

CYBER SAFETY FOR OUR STUDENTS

"All parents of teenagers should read this article carefully. Our children have grown up with technology. Often they know much more about the use of cyber tools than any of us. After all they are “Cyber Natives,” most of us are “Cyber Foreigners”. Our children have never known a time without computers, the internet, cell phones, and they have grown up understanding the incredible use of these technology tools in finding and sharing information. So, as parents who do not have the same knowledge or skills as our children when it comes to the use of technology, what do we do? How can we be responsible parents? How do we face the latest parental issues that have developed?

“Teenagers are early adopters of technology–from the latest social-networking sites to the hottest new cell phones,” said Susan Schulz, special projects editor for Hearst Magazines (which publishes Cosmo Girl). “While this tech savvy can be seen as positive, our study reveals there’s also a negative side. Teenagers should be aware of the real consequences of this type of behavior, and we need to provide them with guidance and encourage them to make smarter choices.” Do parents even know all of the people that our children are communicating with online? Do the kids really know who they are communicating with online?

Our children are using technology to send pictures, messages, music, and join social groups. We know from news stories that have been made public by a variety of media sources that sometimes, this sharing of information, ideas, and pictures can have very negative outcomes for both the sender and the person being shown or discussed. As parents and as school staff we have a responsibility to help our children to make good decisions at all times. Furthermore, when they choose to make bad decisions, that are harmful to themselves or others, we have to turn those ill-advised decisions into learning opportunities so that those choices are not repeated in the future. Providing learning opportunities implies that there are consequences for our children’s choices, but there is also the opportunity for parents and/or school staff to sit and be sure that students learn from these mistakes and not feel that they were given consequences without purpose.

To help warn teens and young adults of the dangers associated with sending or posting inappropriate material online, a National Campaign to protect children from cyber mistakes has published a list of 10 suggestions. Please review each of the recommendations and share them with your children; it may save your child and your family from some very uncomfortable situation in the future.

For parents, the initiative recommends:

1. Talking to kids about what they are doing in cyberspace.
2. Knowing who kids are communicating with.
3. Considering limitations on electronic communication.
4. Being aware of what teens are posting publicly.
5. Setting expectations.

For teens:

1. Don’t assume anything you send or post is going to remain private.
2. There is no changing your mind in cyberspace–anything you send or post will never truly go away.
3. Don’t give in to the pressure to do something that makes you uncomfortable, even in cyberspace.
4. Consider the recipient’s reaction.
5. Nothing is truly anonymous."

Middle Schools or K-8, Which is Better?

The middle school debate has been going on the United States for sometime. Several years ago our superintendent asked me to begin researching whether our district should move away from middle schools to K-8 schools, or not. Last year our Board of Education set up a committee that I was part of to review the middle grade options for our district. Once again, I was involved with these discussions. As recently as yesterday, I was reading about the issues that are developing in NYC schools over the changes in middle schools through out their district.

I am more convinced than ever that how middle school goes for students, so goes their high school education. A recent educational article states, (I do not know if the numbers are accurate but they are worth repeating), that eighth graders who are academically successful have a 8 out of 10 chance of succeeding in high school and moving on to college. A student who is unsuccessful in 8th grade (I take this to mean gaining social promotion into high school) will have a 2 out of 10 chance of succeeding in high school and moving on to college.

Reviewing the research of MacIver, from Johns Hopkins University, and of Weiss, from Columbia University, it is clear to me that the wrong educational question is once again being asked. The answer to educating middle grade students is not found in the school structure, but rather in the planning and implementation of an instructional program, and personalization efforts made by staff and community for a particular school.

Both studies come to the conclusion that middle schools and K-8 schools provide similar outcomes for middle school aged students. The differences that they find are more in what is happening in the classroom and how students feel about attending their school and working with their teacher. If you read my previous blogs you will see how I would approach the middle school issue, so I will not restate it here. However, I will simply say that "Form must follow Function" in determining the structure of the school to be implemented. If a district determines that one size fits all when it comes to working with middle grade students, they will quickly find that they have some successes and some failures in the implementation of that model.

Both studies point out advantages and disadvantages found by their research. In my district we did our own research and came to similar conclusions. My district was large enough that the study had merit as we studied a variety of educational groupings that existed, and with minimal exceptions the academic outcomes were very similar in each setting. What I found interesting and will write about at another time is that there were significant differences for students in the 6th grade in an elementary school compared to 6th grade students in a middle school.

Education is a people activity. It is all about how people talk with, share with, treat, and present to other people. It is about administrators interacting positively and collaboratively with faculty and staff. It is about faculty and staff interacting with students and parents in positive ways. It is about faculty that are collaboratively learning from each other on an ongoing basis. It is about parents feeling comfortable enough to work with their child, their child's teachers, and the other staff members at their child's school. Student learning is a result of these interactions. The more positive the interactions, the more learning will occur.

If you are in a school district that is considering an end to middle school education, I would encourage you to respond to this blog and to read and share the studies by MacIver and Weiss before any final decisions are made. Educating middle school aged students is all about the kids, not the school structure that they attend.

(If you read this article before the links are placed in the article, please return after January 5 and the links will be included in the article)

Teaching the Net Generation in Secondary Schools

I recently read an article by Don Tapscott, a university president, that fits perfectly with what I have observed as a supervisor of schools over the past eight years and as a current middle school principal in Southern California. Speaking to my colleagues, I hear a similar story from around the nation.

This is a story about how our secondary aged students learn, as much as it is about how our secondary teachers teach. Why is this important? It is important to me because our job as educators is about student learning, more than it is about teachers teaching. What does this mean? I learned as a teacher and as a principal, it did not matter how exciting, dynamic, or refreshing a lesson was as presented by a teacher, if it did not lead to improved student learning. Once I realized this, it became more important to me to assess teachers on what students understood about the lesson being presented, what they learned from the lesson, and how would they show what they have learned from the lesson. This administrative style was a little nerve racking for some of my teachers at first, but once most saw that it changed the way teachers planned their lessons, taught their lessons, and assessed student learning, the easier it became for most of the school staff to accept.

Changing the paradigm of school and the classroom is not easy. It is for this reason that educators need to have a deep understanding of what the 21st century world looks like and what is expected of our students when they reach adulthood. We have not spent much time considering the experiences that our kids bring to school, and what our national workforce requires of them. These are not the same experiences that most teachers prepared for when they were in middle and high school.

Dr. Tapscott calls our current students Net Geners (Net Generation). They have known and grown with technology and the internet since they were born. They may have never taken a touch typing class but they probably are more fluid and much faster on the keyboard of a computer than most adults. I know that is true of my two sons. They use technology to find information, to use information, and to sometimes inappropriately share information. They multi-task all of the time using their cell phone, Nintendo, and IPod, all at the same time. They learn in a technology enriched multi-tasking world. At least they do until most of them enter the gates of school each day.

Most of our schools are educating 21st century students using 20th century instructional tools and assessments. For the good of our students, our city, and our society we need to reach out to our students with the learning tools that best fit their experiences and the countries workforce requirements. I have asked many principals over the past years if they were aware of the SCANS report, and most say they had not heard of it. And yet this report sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor that came out toward the end of the 20th century was telling educators of the changing needs of the workforce in America. How can schools change if the educators are not aware early on of what changes are needed?

Now we know more about the requirements for the 21st century. Many people have read The World is Flat and similar books that have been published in recent years. Many people have seen the video clip, Shift Happens, that is available on the web. Many people have viewed the video, 2 Million Minutes, the story of top academic students in the United States, India, and China, and shows the differences in life style and education for the three nations. Are we competitive now in the current global economy? Will we be competitive in ten, fifteen, twenty years from now in the growing global economy? Unless we can answer yes to these questions, and others, our nation will not hold the high level of esteem that most of us have believe existed since we were born.

Net Generation students do not learn as well using post Gutenberg model world instructional tools. They read differently, their attention is focused differently, and they question information differently. They will not be well prepared to work on an assembly line, but what will we the educators help them to be prepared to do? There may be few, but we do have school models that we can visit and learn from. One of those models that prepares students for the 21st century world is the New Tech High School model. I have worked with several of these types of high schools, and saw first hand that when implemented well, our students can achieve at levels beyond the expectations that many adults hold for them.

We need to see the urgency for paradigm shifting. This need has direct impact on our own economic well being, and on the well being of this nation. Without change the economy of this country will not be able to recover from the current depressed state that it is in. I hope that all educators choose to find time to discuss the issues that 21st century education requires us to have to have answers for. We need those conversations to occur now, not in the future. I hope that this topic will spark conversation on this blog and in faculty meetings around the country.

The Power of Reflection and Conversations

I have always shared with new administrators the importance of solving problems through conversations. I have also strongly encouraged administrators to find time to reflect on their daily work. In my latest new job as an interim principal in a small eastern Los Angeles County district, I have found that there is real value and real opportunity for greater learning when conversations and reflections are combined. I have not really done this in the past, but in my new position, I am working with two outstanding administrators who are willing learners, and want very much to better prepare themselves to become principals.

I have decided that the best way that I can provide assistance to both of these fine people is to think out loud with them, and then hold conversations with them around my thinking. They tell me that this is very helpful, and I am finding it very helpful to me, as well.

I have always worked under the premise that no one person has answers to every educational question or issue that arises at a school site, so only through a series of conversations can a group of people come to a possible and reasonable solution to the question that is presented. Through conversations, you can also build common vision (which I have written about in a previous post)and develop a common ownership for the decision. This common ownership will allow for the greatest chance for success.

Reflecting out loud really causes me to think more deeply about my decisions, my vision through which I filter my thinking , and provides me with deeper learning at the same time. The conversations that the three of us hold either deepens my belief in what I am thinking or causes me to rethink some of the decisions that I may or have made in the past.

This process has helped me to focus my professional development leadership for the staff of this school. In my first effort to lead the staff through professional development, I rolled out my overarching beliefs about the education of all students. The second professional development focused on the intersection of the instructional practice and the value of personalization in order to help raise the academic achievement for every child. In the development of this second professional development, the three of us came to the inclusion that we should include the staff in the discussions and we did more than had usually happened in the past. Now we are continuing our planning and moving toward the importance and value of understanding and teaching the 21st Century Skills. The assistant principals and I work together on this very closely, and now they lead the professional development, and I try my best to provide feedback. We also ask the staff to reflect on what they have heard and to commit to how they can use what was presented at this time.

Professional development is now deeper for everyone on this campus. With enough focus and time, I do believe that reflection and conversations will help the staff at this school, and lead to continuing the academic achievement gains that have been going on for the last five years.

Have you had any experiences around the power of combining reflection and converations that would help us all to grow? I look forward to hearing from you.

Merging a School Story with a Common Vision

In creating a healthy infrastructure for any school, it is necessary to look carefully at the school's current and past story, and find a way to merge it with a school's common vision, if that has not already occurred. This is rarely done in our current educational settings. However, school redesign will not lead us anywhere without finding a way to merge a strong school story with a commonly shared vision.

I see the school story as a perception of the past and present situation that exists on a school site. I know that many schools are able to live comfortably off of a past school story that is no longer real. I worked at a school where the school story had been very strong in the 1960s and 1970s, but began changing sometime in the 1980s. The school story is a group perception. It is often perceived similarly by the school staff and local community, including parents. The changing school story in my community was one that was leading to parents that could were choosing to leave for neighboring public schools or private schools. The reality was that a declining school story was resulting in a drop in enrollment, test scores, and public trust of this school.

This school had no vision of hope for a better future for the school or its students. Without a strong and commonly held vision, I saw a continued erosion of the reality of this school community. In this case the school story and the school's vision were merging, but they were merging in the wrong direction.

As a new principal, I had to try and help the school community to rethink and recreate the school's story, and to do this I had to help this same community develop a common positive vision. Although it did not happen overnight, we were able to merge the two. When we did our community and our school was recognized for its success. With the recognition came grant funds, donations, positive media stories, and increased sense of appreciation by staff and community for their school.

This school went from a school where parents evaluated it with their feet, by choosing to leave; to a school that became so popular that parents were looking for ways to come to the school, leaving neighboring schools and leaving private schools to come back. The school story became so strong that the school actually became overcrowded and had to go on a year round schedule. Fortunately, this year a new school was built in the area and the school was able to leave the year round calendar and move back to a traditional schedule.

The merger of a school story and a common vision is not easy, but extremely important if we want our schools to improve academic achievement for all students, and to be places that parents, students, staff, and the community can be proud of. It will require strong leadership and high expectations. However, this can be done, I lived the possibility and my community made their vision a reality.

Do SLCs Move the Needle?

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.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Creating a common vision is not easy. I spend a lot of time talking about the need and process when I speak at conferences or meet with administrators and faculty leaders. This topic is very closely tied to the previous blog regarding professional development. The principal needs to protect more than the vision, but also the sense of community that exists between staff of the school. If that sense of community is missing, it needs to be developed. If the sense of community exists, then it needs to be cultivated, so that when the current staff leaders retire or leave, the healthy culture does not leave with them. Young teachers need to be encouraged by a strong leader, the principal, to begin learning about the healthy culture and understanding its importance in making the school a good place for kids and adults.

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.