"A dozen experienced Fairfax educators and a state delegate have proposed the Fairfax Leadership Academy; could a charter school in Fairfax actually happen?"--Jay Mathews

Jay Mathews' skepticism may be just the kind of reverse psychology needed to earn approval for the first public charter in Fairfax County (VA), an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C. 

I know Jay and he has a passion for schools that serve the under-served and under-resourced students that the Fairfax Leadership Academy targets. 

A few years ago, we would have referred to the Fairfax Leadership Academy as an "alternative school." Today, we call it a public charter school. If nationally renowned Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (VA) opened today, it would open as a charter school.

I am not a fan of any school that controls the admission and withdrawal of students, skims off the best students, gets rid of low-performers, and then compares its students performance to neighborhood public schools, who serve anyone who shows up at their door. According to the staff, the Fairfax Leadership Academy will take applications, but will only "screen" on the basis of potential transportation issues. After all, this school will be located in the middle of the most congested traffic area in the country, and they don't want students who have to 90-minute commutes each way. It just won't work.

A Proven Formula

Those active in starting this Academy know exactly what they are getting into. They know full well that they will work longer and harder than their colleagues in more resourced schools. They have a proven track record of working with under-served, under-resourced students in what National Geographic Magazine called "the most diverse high school in America." Their school, J.E.B. Stuart High School, was a "national model" for excellence winning recognition as "Model School," a "Breakthrough School," and winning the International Baccalaureate's first Inspiration Award.

Recipe for Success

The Fairfax Leadership will employ best practices that have been proven to level the playing field of under-resourced students, which will dramatically increase the number of students who graduate college and career-ready including:

• Small Learning Communities - 75 students in each grade level
• Increased learning time - A longer school day and a longer school year equivalent to 55 more days in a school year.
• AVID - Advancement through Individual Determination will provide the additional support that these students need in order to handle rigorous college and career prep program
• International Baccalaureate Program
• Service Learning - Each student will be required to complete a community service requirement.
• Collaboration among the staff will shared decision-making and distributed leadership.
  

The Bottom Line

When Albert Shanker first talked about charter schools, he envisioned a school like the Fairfax Leadership Academy--a school that serves the under-served and one that acts as a laboratory for best practices.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:06 PM | Permalink

"To qualify for a national merit scholarship, students in different states have to take the same exam, but they don’t have to get the same scores to win."--Valerie Strauss

We know that it is impossible to compare schools and students in different states based on the results on state tests. For example, the highest performing district in one state had 67% of its student score at "proficient" or above, while one of the schools in another state identified for SIG funds as a "low-performing" school had 82% of its students score at "proficient" or above in reading. In another example, one of the lowest performing high schools in one state, would be among the top performing high schools in ten states.

Now we learn that we also cannot compare National Merit Scholars in different states.

Here are the highlights of Valerie Strauss' piece in the Washington Post, which I have filtered for review by busy school leaders:

3.5 million high school students take the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) as a preparation for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).

In addition to serving as a practice test and indicator of college readiness, the PSAT is also used as the qualifier for the prestigious National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

"About 50,000 students qualify based on their PSAT scores, and that number is whittled down to about 16,000, who become semifinalists (the 34,000 others get letters of commendation). About 8,500 are named finalists, eligible for a scholarship of varying amounts, based on test scores as well as other criteria including academic performance."

However, "the initial cutoff scores separating the possible winners from the definite losers are not the same in each state."

"Students can wind up winning with lower scores than students who didn’t make the cut in their state." For this reason, the University of California system decided to stop funding National Merit Scholarships in favor of other "merit-based" scholarships.

States With Highest Cut Scores: D.C. New Jersey, and Massachusetts

States With Lowest Cut Scores: North Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming

National Merit Scholars can live in one state, but go to school in another. The state where the school is located gets the credit. For example, "National Merit winners in the past who have been listed as coming from Washington D.C. go to private schools in the city, but live in Maryland or Virginia."

Cutoff Scores by State

"An unofficial list of cut scores for the class of 2012 assembled by the Web site College Planning Simplified, which provides free college planning advice, shows these."

Alabama 211


Alaska 212


Arizona 213


Arkansas 205


California 221


Colorado 215


Connecticut 220


Delaware 217


District of Columbia 223


Florida 214


Georgia 218


Hawaii 216


Idaho 211


Illinois 216


Indiana 214


Iowa 210


Kansas 214


Kentucky 212


Louisiana 209


Maine 212


Maryland 221


Massachusetts 223


Michigan 210


Minnesota 215


Mississippi 205


Missouri 213


Montana 209


Nebraska 209


Nevada 209


New Hampshire 216


New Jersey 223


New Mexico 210


New York 219


North Carolina 217


North Dakota 204


Ohio 214


Oklahoma 209


Oregon 216


Pennsylvania 215


Rhode Island 213


South Carolina 211


South Dakota 206


Tennessee 214


Texas 219


Utah 208


Vermont 217


Virginia 220


Washington 220


West Virginia 204


Wisconsin 209


Wyoming 204

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:45 AM | Permalink

The following highlights are filtered for the convenience of school leaders.

These are highlights of a draft re-authorization proposal released on October 11, 2011 by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee as reported in Education Week by Alyson Kline.

No AYP - Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP is eliminated.

No Achievement Targets - There would be no specific achievement targets, either for entire groups of students, or for particular subgroups, such as minority students, English-language learners, or students with disabilities.

Continuous Improvement - States would have to ensure that all students are making "continuous improvement" in student outcomes.

Intervention - States would decide how—and whether—to intervene in schools.

Continue the following initiatives: the Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, and Promise Neighborhood programs

Testing remains in place, but eliminate the 2013-14 deadline for bringing all students to proficiency in math and reading.

Teacher Evaluation - States will be required to develop new teacher evaluation systems and teacher and principal evaluation systems based on multiple factors, including student achievement and classroom observations.

"Value-added" no longer a requirement - Evaluations would not need to incorporate "value-added" testing, but states would need to have at least four levels of ratings.

Not in personnel decisions - Schools would have to use the evaluations to inform professional development, but not necessarily to help make personnel decisions. That would be a shift from the administration's waiver package, which specifies that evaluations have to be used for personnel purposes, although the waiver guidance is silent about whether that would specifically entail hiring, firing, and pay bonuses.

Low Performing Schools

Bottom 5% - States also would be required to identify the 5 percent of lowest-performing high schools, as well as elementary and middle schools. The interventions would be similar to the four options spelled out it in the regulations for the School Improvement Grant program. And under the "restart" option, a school could choose to convert to a charter school or become a magnet school.

Dropout Factories Targeted - There would be more intensive interventions for those schools, as well as for so-called "dropout factories"—high schools with graduation rates below 60 percent.

35% of Teachers Replaced - There would be some changes and some additional options. For instance, under the strategy known as "turnaround" schools could keep 65 percent of their teachers on the job (right now, it's 50 percent).

Achievement Gaps - States also would have to identify the 5 percent of schools with the biggest achievement gaps between subgroup students and other students, and develop a plan for addressing the problem. Districts with achievement gap schools that aren't able to close their gaps would lose the ability to get a leg-up in federal funding competitions.

"Whole School Turnaround" option - Schools also would be permitted to employ a "whole school" turnaround. They would have to partner with an organization that has a proven track record of success, as demonstrated by rigorous research, according to a committee aide.

Common Core State Standards

• States will be required to set college- and career-readiness standards, either with other states or alone.
• The adoption of the standards shifts the role of the federal government into "partnership with states."
• The Standards "take away the need or achievement targets because CCSSO has agreed to adopt "performance goals."

Change of Focus

Sen. Harkin said the strength of the bill was that it "focuses on teaching and learning, not testing and sanctioning."

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:35 PM | Permalink

What are the pros and cons of tracking? That's a question that I am frequently asked as I work with school leaders around the country. Instead of answering the question, I ask them a question in return. What do you mean by tracking? Instead of an immediate reply, I invariably get a confused look?

What is tracking?

There are several different forms of grouping, also known as tracking or leveling:

• "Within-class ability grouping" is typically found in elementary schools and not in high schools. One example might be multi-level reading groups.
• "Between-class grouping" - Students spend most of the day in “high,” “middle,” or “low” classes and use the same or similar curricula supported by the same set of standards. Schools often refer to these between-class groupings as "advanced" and "standard" courses.
• "Formal Tracks or Levels" - Students spend most of the day in ability tracks and use curricula substantially adjusted to their ability levels which are often supported by a differing set of standards and expectations.

Many schools and school systems have already or are actively eliminating the third form of grouping students, a system of "formal tracks or levels," because research has shown that this form of grouping actually harms poor, disadvantaged, under-resourced, and struggling learners.

The second method of grouping students--"between class grouping" has been shown to benefit high-achievers but does not have a negative impact on the performance of low-achievers.

My Take On Grouping

I favor an approach that provides two groupings--standard and advanced. Within those two general groupings, schools should provide tiered interventions, which provide additional learning time and support to ensure student mastery of course content. For example, students enrolled in an "advanced" AP course may need additional learning time in the form of after-school tutoring or additional review sessions (tier 2) in order to master course content. Likewise, students in standard English 9 may need additional after-school tutoring or review (tier 2), while some students may need a reading course (tier 3) in addition to their English class.

Students should be able to self-select into standard or advanced courses. In other words, enrollment in advanced or standard courses should be open to all students based on their identified strengths and weaknesses as well as their interests and motivation. For example, a student could be enrolled in and AP English class, but in a standard Algebra II course.

Courses that fall under the "advanced" label could include courses specifically labeled on a local level as "advanced." These advanced courses might include Advanced Algebra I, pre-IB, pre-AP, or Honors. The "gold standard" of advanced courses is the externally moderated courses such as ACT Quality Core, University of Cambridge International Examinations, Advanced Placement, or International Baccalaureate.

Locally labeled advanced courses should never be offered in competition with externally moderated courses. For example, a high school should never offer an Honors Senior English in competition with AP or IB English.

Why not offer locally labeled honors courses in competition with externally moderated advanced courses?

First, most locally labeled advanced courses are not monitored. They are honors in name only. In some cases, these so-called honors courses are merely a way to segregate students because their parents don't want them in classrooms with "those kids." The teacher generally decides the curricula in these locally labeled advanced courses, and there is little or no consistency from classroom to classroom, from teacher to teacher, or from school to school. Unless there is a defined curriculum, accompanied by common formative and summative assessments, there is no way to ensure that honors courses are any more rigorous than standard courses.

Second, advanced courses are offered for advanced, college-bound students. Some parents may complain that externally moderated, AP or IB, courses are too difficult for their child. Allowing students to choose the less rigorous honors course instead of an AP or IB course deludes parents into believing that we are preparing their child for college when we know that all we are doing is placating them and their child. If a student is college-bound, why wouldn't that student be enrolled in the externally moderated course.

Third, generally speaking most AP and IB courses proceed at half the speed of a college course. What takes a year of high school to complete would be undertaken in one semester in college. True, some colleges award more than one 3-hour credit for some AP science courses. Likewise, universities frequently require additional lab time in science courses and they provide additional credit hours for successful completion of that science course and lab. Here is the essential question. If students cannot succeed in a half-speed course in high school, how will they handle a full-speed course only a few months later in college?

The Bottom Line

• Schools need to "push" students to take a rigorous course of study that prepares them to be college and career-ready.
• Labeling courses as advanced to placate parents is tantamount to malpractice.
• Offering honors courses as an alternative to AP or IB courses at the junior and senior level is a big lie. In no way are honors courses preparing students to do college-level work. The only way that I would agree to such a proposal is that these courses were externally moderated. They would have a standard course description and syllabus with accompanying district-wide common and formative assessments, which would make the whole idea very expensive.
• If we really have the best interests of our students in mind, we would ensure that they were adequately prepared to succeed in the most rigorous course that we could offer them.
• Finally, the Common Core State Standards and the accompanying assessments renders "formal tracks or levels," all but obsolete. The adoption of the Common Core State Standards means just that. We now have one common set of standards, which prepare all students to be college and career-ready, and which all students are expected to meet before leaving high school.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:07 AM | Permalink

In "It's Poverty, Not Stupid" I proved that we should seek to raise the achievement of all students, but that our national focus should be on our poorest, under-resourced schools and students, who are the reason for our "average" international ranking.

The following post includes excerpts from an article by Marcus Pohlman in the Washington Post and by my personal experiences leading two high-poverty schools:

"Those who believe that “great teaching” alone can overcome the effects of living in poverty are underestimating the toll that difficult home lives have on children."

Q: Why do school reformers ignore poverty?

A: If they acknowledge poverty as a factor...

1. They have no one to blame.

2. They themselves might have to take action instead of standing on the sidelines.

"Some school reformers are fond of saying that “great teaching” can overcome the effects of living poverty on children, and that those people (me included) who insist that poverty matters are only supporting the status quo."

Q: What are the affects of poverty on children?

A: Poverty does nothing to help and everything to undermine a child's education:

1. Focus - When survival and finding something to eat become the focus of a child's life, education takes a back seat.

2. Stress - Money problems increase family stress.

3. Hunger - Students come to school hungry and some don't eat from Friday, when they leave school, until Monday, when they return.

4. Health- Poverty leads to poor nutrition and medical care. As a principal, our staff spent a considerable amount of time obtaining eyeglasses and hearing aids for our indigent students.

5. Literacy - Children living in poverty are talked to less and end up with vocabularies that are about half that of middle-class children.

"Research suggests that the first years shape a child’s capacity to learn. Science tells us that it is essential to brain development that babies are spoken to, read to, cuddled, and allowed to engage in physical play. National Institute of Health studies have indicated the foundations necessary for higher learning — working memory, vocabulary, spatial recognition, reasoning, and calculation skills — are set by the time a child reaches puberty."

6. Mobility and Instability - "Children in poverty move from place to place, often several times in a year.  Children “churn,” which means they start at a certain school but will not be there by year’s end. 

7. Lack basic necessities - Under-resourced children are just that, under-resourcesd. They come to school unbathed, inadequately clothed, and without books and supplies.

8. No support system - Frequently, one parent is absent either incarcerated, or otherwise not present. Many under-resourced children are "raised by aunts barely out of their teens, or grandmothers who have watched a family disintegrate from a collective inability to fight the powerful currents of poverty."

9. 9% solution -  "Through the 18th birthday, the average child will spend less than 9 percent of life in school. That leaves most education occurring outside the schoolhouse. A poll of kindergarten teachers showed that their classrooms would improve if all families had access to quality pre-kindergarten programs." 

Strategies 

While educators cannot cure poverty, we can recommend strategies that will create a level playing field so that under-resourced students are provided the resources they need to bring them up to par with their middle class counterparts. 

1. Early Childhood Education - If we know that children in poverty will arrive at school two to three years behind, why do we wait for the train wreck? "The bipartisan New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce has recommended that public education begin at age 3 for American students. And studies show that the best early childhood programs are staffed by teachers with college degrees and early education certification, offer developmentally appropriate education, include a focus on language development and comprehensive services such as meals and health and developmental screenings and encourage parental involvement." 

2. Best Teachers and Principals - Provide incentives for teachers and principals to work in under-resourced schools. The current strategy of "blame and punish" only serves to drive out the most qualified.

3. Funding - Finally, we must acknowledge that it simply costs more to educate some students. We already admit that it costs more to educate special needs and language-learners, why not poor students?

4. Literacy - Reading and writing skills are the great equalizers helping under-resourced students achieve at middle class levels. We know that poor children lack literacy skills, and, therefore, we must provide direct, explicit literacy instruction beginning the day they first arrive at school and every day thereafter.

5. Time - In order to level the playing field, we must provide under-resourced students more time to learn. It's not about ability. These students don't lack ability. They lack resources and supports. Time is the key. If we hold learning time constant, student achievement looks like a bell curve. We need to provide longer school years, after school tutoring and tiered interventions for all students but particularly for children living in poverty.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:42 AM | Permalink

Author Laura Goodrich is always Seeing Red Cars.

"Here's the metaphor: You buy your dream car and it happens to be red. Suddenly you see red cars everywhere you look. Why? Because you're focusing on red cars... (RT @LauraGoodrich: You get more of whatever you focus on!"

Seeing Red Cars has two important messages for school leaders:

1. We get more of what we focus on. Why? Because we are "teleological" beings--we move toward and become like that which we think about and focus on. The problem is that most school leaders don't have a clear vision of what they do want, in part because they spend so much time putting out fires in the present that they don't have time to think about the future.

2. Most people spend more time focusing on what they don't want as opposed to what they do want and as Wayne Dyer says, "We never get enough of what we don't want." The sad truth is that most school leaders have a lot of detail about what they don't want. In other words, they have a clear vision of what they want to avoid. So, if we are focusing on what we don't want, we are moving inexorably toward it. That's precisely how we get stuck in a rut.

Don't believe me. Check it out for yourself. Begin asking people about "what they want." Most will immediately begin telling you what they don't want, which is a clear sign that they are in a "stuck state."

Action Step: Instead, begin talking with your staff about what you do want and the things that you can control. Begin today to develop your vision for every aspect of your school from the cafeteria and hallways to classroom instruction. If you can't picture it, you won't see it!

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:55 PM | Permalink

"Innovation without adequate implementation support is like attempting to drive a car without any gasoline in it."--Dean Fixen

In "Some Thoughts on Education Nation," John Merrow declares "enough already" to all the enthusiasm for innovation. "Please give equal time to ‘imitation.’ We have lots of good schools and good programs and good teachers, stuff that can and should be copied."

Merrow might be on the right track when he calls for less innovation and more imitation. However, he misses the point. The problem is that schools are innovating and imitating too much!

All Diets Work

The fact is that very few school improvement initiatives actually work, not because they are not viable, but because they are never implemented. In most cases, schools are not given sufficient time and resources to properly implement what turn out to be multi-phase projects.

Year after year, schools are asked to rush for one latest and greatest innovation to the next. Even before the last initiative is properly or fully implemented, schools are forced to switch gears and move on to the next fad.

Chaos Increases Turnover

The chaos of "flavor-of-the-week" changes frustrates and demoralizes teachers to the point of driving them from the profession. Fully half of all new teachers become frustrated and leave the profession within three to five years, while the veteran teachers and school leaders "left behind" learn to survive and ride out the current wave until the next silver bullet de jour comes along. Ironically, the obsession with change and cosmetic innovation results in everything remaining pretty much the same.

Some of this "change obsession" is due to the extremely high turnover of superintendents and school principals. New leaders are hired because they promise new and better. They believe that they are expected to do things differently.

Churning Leads to Confusion

Another reason for the "change obsession" is the belief that "we aren't working hard unless we are doing something new and innovative every year." I run into this all the time. In fact, even in high-level policy discussions I hear, "but we have to do something different." It doesn't matter what "it" is or if "it" has any chance of success. It just matters that we do something.

The Right Way

Advocates for "responsible change," who seek to change the culture of a school over a period of three to six years, are accused of favoring the status quo. In reality, there is no status quo, unless of course you refer to the constantly shifting sands as the status quo.

Merrow is correct when he says that we need more imitation. We need to do what successful, high-performing schools have always done. These schools collaboratively develop an approach to improvement that is supported by research but customized to the unique DNA of their school and community. High-performing schools determine what their students need in order to succeed and they do it over and over again, day in and day out, year in and year out in every classroom. In other words, successful schools implement with fidelity!

Next: School Improvement: What or How?

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:45 AM | Permalink

In a recent webinar for the National High School Center, Brockton High School (MA) Principal, Sue Szachowicz, attributed her school’s success to the purposeful and hard work initiated by the staff.  “Making change takes tenacity, not brilliance,” she said.

Szachowicz "discussed her school’s experiences in planning for and implementing school-wide literacy, which has resulted in dramatic academic gains in student achievement for both Reading and Math.

Sue's 10 Keys to Literacy Success (in my words):

1. Literacy is the key to raising academic performance.
2. Improving student literacy skills requires the involvement of the entire school.
3. Focus on building teacher capacity over time.
4. Identify, clarify, amplify, and model good instructional practices during professional development.
5. School wide instructional practices that are both "defined" and "aligned" benefit all students by providing each student with repeated exposure to research-based practices throughout the school day.
6. Data-informed initiatives ensure that the focus remains on student needs instead of adult "wants."
7. Change takes time, years in fact. Look at a school wide literacy initiative as a long-term process by building layer by layer, year after year.
8. Any long-term initiative should grow and evolve over time. A literacy initiative should look different in year five than it did in year two.
9. Changes and modifications to any initiative must be based on the assessed needs of the students.
10. "Schools cannot wait for teacher buy-in. Results are what convince the staff." If leaders approach a school wide literacy initiative as a long-term process, there is no need to wait for total agreement before beginning nor is there a need to force everyone to be at the same level all at once.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:12 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

On August 31 “NBC Nightly News” Brian Williams moved into a commercial break with a tease of his next segment.  “As more and more school districts are moving to a four-day week, parents are asking, ‘What are we supposed to do with our kids on that extra day?’.”  While enduring two minutes of upbeat advertising for medications to lessen the impact of a variety of hideous diseases, I was extremely upset.  “Good grief, the school week is being cut to four days and the number one parental concern is daycare,” I thought to myself.

When the actual story unfolded it quickly became apparent that it would exceed my worst fears.   The actual focus of the piece was a series of comments by educators praising the benefits of the abbreviated school week.  A principal at an Oregon high school explained that due to budget problems the district had moved to four longer days of school in lieu of the traditional five-day week.   He was quick to point out that the students would be in school the same number of hours and not to fear that any taxpayer money was being wasted teachers were required to come to work on Fridays to do planning.  He then began to explain how student performance was improving under the new plan.  “It’s a paradox, less is more, less is more for these kids’ learning.”  The piece continued with several more references to how this seemingly contradictory set of circumstances was a positive for the students in the system.   In another school system preparing to move to the shortened week, an educational leader explained that this change was not about saving money but rather improving education.

A defiance of logic and reason

Perhaps these folks have never heard of the “Hawthorne Effect” where individuals tend to improve their immediate performances as the result of increased attention or change whether it is positive or negative.   Arguing that the addition of another day away from school will result in improved academic performance is ignoring the fundamentals.  Assuming that these high schools are on block scheduling (if not imagine an adolescent taking seven classes every day over a ten-hour period) the four-day week would have the typical student taking a math course on Monday and Wednesday and then setting that curriculum aside until five days later on the next Monday.  Throw in a holiday and there will be nearly a week between classes.  The same problems would exist for any discipline requiring retention of skills such as foreign language or music.

There would be equal problems for after school activities.  Picture trying to whip a marching band into shape after a school day that has lasted from 7:30 in the morning until 5:30 that evening?  Would dinner be served before or after rehearsal?

Research shows that human beings have limited attention spans.  For teenagers those numbers can usually be cut in half.  Going back to that class schedule, how academically effective would an extra 25 minutes be in those 115-minute blocks?  And who would want to be teaching osmosis or how a bill becomes a law in hours nine and ten of that elongated school day?

Finally, the principal in the story announced that attendance at his school had also improved.  That can happen when you reduce the number of days by 20%.

The much bigger question

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the financial circumstances facing states and communities are going to improve in the near future.  More and more difficult budget decisions are going to be required.  If the past is any indication, much of that burden will be placed on education.  Such a course of action is wrong; making arguments that it will make learning better is worse.  The current unemployment numbers reveal the folly of this approach.  The correlation between employment and education is clear.  Individuals without a high school diploma are three times as likely to be jobless than someone with a degree.  The core problem in this country is not a lack of work; it is a lack of appropriately trained workers.

Taking the wrong path

To perfect one’s serve in tennis which approach would be better—practicing one hour a day, seven days a week or just hit the ball for seven hours on Monday and take the next six days off?   The better path is obvious.  Those folks in Oregon and the more than 100 other communities that have moved to a four-day week seem to believe that the truncated school week is a model for improving their schools.  It is not.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:15 AM | Permalink

Principals and teachers working in diverse, high-poverty schools are constantly challenged, even on a normal school day. In addition to the need to raise the achievement of each and every one of our students, our school had to overcome a number of externally imposed challenges. In fact, our teachers designed a t-shirt to commemorate our decade-long series of ordeals.

The back of the shirt read:

WE SURVIVED...

Seven years of renovation

SOLs (Virginia Standards of Learning)

Columbine

September 11, 2001

The Beltway Sniper

The War in Iraq

The Winter of 2003

No Child Left Behind

"The Worm" (a computer virus that virtually shutdown our entire school system)

Hurricane Isabel

Lead in our water

"The Meltdown" (We lost all power to for an entire day.)

The front of the shirt read:

AND WE THRIVED!

J.E.B. Stuart High School

A Breakthrough High School

Without a doubt, of all the events, September 11, 2001 sticks out in my memory, just as it does for many Americans, most of whom will never forget what they were doing and where they were on that fateful day.

Ten years ago, our diverse, high-poverty school was basking in the light of being featured in highly complimentary article titled "Changing America" in the September, 2001 issue of National Geographic Magazine. The article was the culmination of a two-year long vetting by the Magazine's writers and photographers, who were given 24/7 access to the school and homes of our students.

The article, which was initially intended to focus on the difficulty that immigrant populations had assimilating into American culture, ended up being a celebration of the culture of our school as a focal point of our diverse community. If anything, and I mean anything, wasn't working in our school, the writers and photographers would have found it. It was as though we had gone through a two-year long audit of our school culture.

National Geographic Magazine, I later learned, is renowned in the field of journalism for their thoroughness. Yes, this was risky, but we came through with flying colors, and we all breathed a big sigh of relief when the issue was finally released. Although we didn't know it at the time, we wouldn't have long to enjoy our success.

Expecting the Unexpected

There are some things that happen in schools that simply cannot be anticipated. We conduct fire drills and bus evacuation drills. We plan for bomb threats and chemical and biological attacks, but sometimes things just happen and our work is put to a real-world test, not a multiple choice or fill in the blank test, but a real honest-to-goodness test. If and when the unexpected occur, and we, as school leaders, and our staff have done our jobs, we pass the test with flying colors. If not, things could get pretty ugly.

September 11, 2001 was just such a day. For our school, it was the mother of all tests. We never could have anticipated the tragic events of that day. It was one of those days that put everything we did in a school to the test. If we had done our homework in building strong relationships, and a warm, inviting school culture, and made enough deposits into our "emotional bank account" we would get through this unscathed. If we thought that National Geographic had been a test of our work, we hadn't seen anything yet. Working in America's "most diverse high school" on September 11, 2001 was a day that I will always remember.

Shock and Disbelief!

Our school resource officer burst into our weekly staff meeting and announced that we were under attack. We immediately turned on the television in time to see the second plane fly into one of the Twin Towers. Like everyone else, including the network reporters, we were confused and horrified. There were many false reports made that day. So, we had to try to sort rumors from reality. For example, our resource officer received reports that one of the nearby apartment buildings, in which many of our student lived, had been bombed and that vehicles were exploding on the highway near the school. Both turned out to be false. However, when I looked out of my window, I could see smoke billowing overhead. We didn't know it at the time, but that smoke was coming from the plane that had crashed into the Pentagon. In the following days, we learned that we lost several parents who worked there.

Compounding the fears of everyone was the fact that all the cell lines were jammed. It was impossible to reach anyone. We felt isolated and we learned early on that we were on our own.

We knew couldn't control what happened outside of the school, but we could impact what happened inside the school. We had to be calm and to maintain a sense of business-as-usual. Our first thoughts went out to our own families, but we had to keep our focus on our responsibility to protect and care for 1,500 other peoples' children.

We knew that everyone would be watching us and taking their cues from us. Despite the confusion and turmoil that we all felt on the inside, we knew that we had to be visible and put on a positive face. We had no choice. We had to hold it together!

As soon as I could, I went on to the PA system and made an announcement informing everyone of what we knew at the time. We immediately went into action circulating through the building to take the pulse of the teachers and students. Many of the classes had already turned on their televisions, and the students were fixated on the screens.

Our school was undergoing a major renovation and we had a number of construction workers in the building every day. As soon as the news of the attacks circulated, they could be seen literally running from the building.

After a while, it became apparent to us that we needed to limit prolonged viewing of TV news coverage, because it was too emotionally gut wrenching for our students to helplessly watch constant reruns of scenes of planes flying into buildings and people jumping to their deaths. So, early on we decided to limit the number of cable stations available to the classrooms and to have our librarian watch all the major networks, take notes, sort out truth from rumor, and provide me with periodic reports, which I delivered to the entire school.

Our teachers were doing a fantastic job of holding things together in the classrooms. Our concern focused on the times that the teachers were not with the students. We knew that class changes and lunch would be our critical times. If we could get through the lunch periods without a melt down, we would be home free. We were all present in the cafeteria and we recruited some teachers to be available to talk with students.

Everything was going smoothly until some of our parents, who had left their places of work, arrived. Some had come with the intention of taking their children home. Some even bypassed the main office and rushed into the cafeteria sobbing. I am proud to say that it was the students who calmed their parents. I distinctly remember the daughter of one local official telling her mother, who had come to pick her up and take her home, "Calm down. I don't want to go home. We are safe here! Everything is okay. I want to stay here with my friends." When I heard that statement, I knew things would be all right.

At the End of the Day

Eventually, the school day ended without incident. The construction workers left, and many parents departed their places of work to come to the school to pick up their kids. However, despite the fact that we all had our own families and children, our entire staff remained at the school. We knew that we were all that our kids had that day. If our students needed calming down and comforting, we were the one who would do it. As far as we knew, we were all they had.

9/11 was a big test for our school. We had to make a huge withdrawal from our "emotional bank account" that day. Fortunately for all involved, our teachers and staff had made so many deposits with so many kids that this withdrawal was hardly noticed. Our students trusted us, not because of who we were. They trusted us because of the relationships we built with them every day, day in and day out.

Our students knew that we cared about them, because we demonstrated it to them in so many ways ranging from a simple smile or holding a door to providing a clean, safe and inviting school environment where they felt wanted and, more importantly, where they wanted to be. In retrospect, we passed all the big tests our school faced because of all the little things we all did every day.

The Bottom Line

When the unexpected occurs, and it will, schools can't fake it. We have either earned trust or we haven't. Ultimately, we have either done the right thing, the right way, for the right reason or we haven't, and our students know it. Believe me! They know it and they will show it!

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:36 AM | Permalink

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:07 PM | Permalink

A late school start aimed at tourism revenue undermines the efforts of college-bound students and parents.

After a friend of mine personally witnessed the horrific traffic in the Washington, D.C. area, he said, "the people here must have a really high tolerance for this craziness."

Recent articles in area papers reminded me of three major barriers to college readiness and admission. Late school openings, university admission policies for out-of-state and foreign students, and the misuse of honors courses represent barriers that sabotage years of work and effort on the parts of college-bound students and their parents. My friend was correct. These people must have a high tolerance.

Barrier #1: Late School Starts

Like many other areas of the country whose population consists of a high percentage of college graduates, the D.C. area, with several of the wealthiest large counties in the nation, demands that its schools and school systems prepare students for admission to the most competitive colleges and universities, particularly those in-state schools with lower tuition rates. In fact, test prep programs begin in elementary school preparing students for admission to the regions elite public magnet high school for the gifted, Thomas Jefferson. It is widely believed that admission to Jefferson guarantees admission to the State's most competitive and highly regarded university, The University of Virginia (UVA).

The reality is that attendance at Jefferson may actually reduce the chances of being admitted to Virginia, because the school's admission policies and desire for a diverse student body will not permit admission of a large number of students from the same high school. Actually, students who take a rigorous course of studies, which includes Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses, at any of the area's surrounding high schools and who achieve at high levels probably have a statistically better chance of admission to UVA than do the "elite" Jefferson students.

Parents operate under the assumption that taking a heavy dose of Advanced Placement or IB courses and obtaining a passing score on the exams translates into earning college credits, which not only increases the chances of college admission but also ensures a significant cost savings, because the students will graduate sooner.

The problem is that Virginia's late school opening date makes it much more difficult to earn better scores on AP and IB exams. Virginia students are placed at a distinct disadvantage by a State law, called the "Kings Dominion law", which was passed in 1986 to protect the tourism industry. The law prohibits schools from starting before Labor Day. Because both AP and IB exams are administered beginning in the first full week of May, Virginia students have two weeks less instruction and preparation than many of their counterparts around the country, most of whom begin school in the third week of August. Virginia students start behind and the teachers spend the entire school year trying to catch them up.

Officials in Loudon County (VA), the nations' wealthiest large county, get it.  According to a Washington Post article, "Loudon (County) officials argued that starting in August would give students more time to learn what they need to know for Advanced Placement and state Standards of Learning exams, which are generally administered in May or June. “The more we can do to prepare our kids in advance of those tests, the better off they’ll be,” said School Board Chairman John Stevens (Potomac)."

On one hand Virginia has made a sizeable investment in a system of high stakes testing and accountability that is one of the most rigorous in the nation. On the other hand, Virginia law places its own students at a disadvantage on national and international assessments. According to the report, Virginia's position was succinctly expressed by "Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax). He said sending students back to school early would cut into Labor Day weekend’s substantial sales tax revenue, and he hasn’t heard a compelling argument for giving up those dollars."

Other Peoples' Kids

Virginia's late school start date undermines years of parental encouragement and involvement and puts students at a two-week disadvantage when it comes to AP and IB exams. Would any of us set up a system that places our own child two weeks behind before the school year even begins? I think not.

Next: Barrier #2: Admission policies at state universities

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:26 PM | Permalink

"It's a huge transition. They come in at 14 and they leave as adults."

Ninth Grade-Our Last Chance

I learned from experience that a successful ninth grade experience predicted future high school success. Conversely, I learned that when students struggled in ninth grade, they rarely graduated. 

According to a recent report from the Nation­al High School Center, "the freshman year of high school is the “make or break” year that deter­mines whether a student will graduate. Course performance and attendance dur­ing freshman year are among the “most power­ful predictors” of student success, according to Developing Early Warning Systems to Identify Potential High School Dropouts.

Previous research has indicated that the big­gest risk factor for failing ninth grade is a student’s absenteeism during the first 30 days of high school.

In addition, in 2005, the Consortium on Chi­cago School Research released the “on-track indi­cator” that combined two correlated risk factors that helped predict with a high degree of accura­cy whether a student will drop out: course credits earned and course grades during freshman year."

Ninth grade has been referred to as a "make or break" year and a "rite of passage." Regardless of what we call ninth grade, it should be a focus of our efforts to improve student performance and increase graduation rates.

According to this report, ninth graders must face the following:

Overwhelmed - Most new ninth graders are unprepared for the sheer size of the of the high school compared to their middle school.

Bottom of the Food Chain - Another shock! Last year they were on top.

Navigating a larger campus

Changing classes

Facing more difficult course work - Their increase in difficulty of their new textbooks is even greater than the jump from high school to college.

Fitting in among older students - Many of the students are legally adults.

Hazing - "Fear of being tormented by older, bigger students" on "Freshman Friday."

"Fear of Abuse" - Fear of abuse goes beyond Freshman Friday. "Kids I see are really afraid of the gangs in school." "Some ... have changed schools because of this fear."

"Strict teachers" - "Get on your teacher's good side. A lot of high school teachers are a lot more strict. You don't want to be on their bad side the first week of school."

Questions

Do you know your at-risk ninth graders?

Are you going to wait for new ninth graders to emerge with problems, or are you going to get out in front of them?

My Tweet

9th Grade: "Nerve-wracking rite of passage" on 1st day of high school. sacbee.com  http://t.co/vOlR7lN

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:27 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

When No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was first presented in the early years of the Bush Administration it represented a significant shift in educational policy.  End-of-course exams like Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL) were soon to become a measure of a school’s success.  The initial requirement of a 70% pass rate in English and Math appeared challenging but reasonable.  Of course, most educational professionals acknowledged that such a level could only be a starting point.  When the SOL exams became a barrier to graduation, no one would have been satisfied with such a low target.  As the Fairfax County Public Schools (VA) Coordinator of Math told me at a department chair meeting at the time, “We have to be striving for something closer to 100%.” 

In the first few years before NCLB went into effect, most systems struggled to reach the 70% level but each year brought higher scores and by the time this requirement had become mandatory the majority of schools were deemed to be making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).  In slow, realistic increments the benchmarks began to rise.  These initial goals continued to be well within reach.  

The collision of idealism and reality

There is, however, a time bomb planted deep inside the legislation.  The necessary pass rate for AYP reached 89% last year, a point that became difficult to attain for an increasing number of schools especially in the sub-groups of Special Education and some minorities.  But more importantly, there was a lack of common sense at the endpoint of this relentless march upward. 

In 2014 the requirement for AYP will become 100%.  While such a percentage would literally leave no child behind it also empowers certain students to hold an entire building hostage by choosing to fail a test or at least not giving it their best effort.   

Why would a student not give his best on a standardized test?  Because some tests, although the results are included in the school’s data, are not considered barrier tests for the student.   It doesn’t matter what the student makes, but it can be devastating for the school’s statistics and their AYP.

Surprisingly, as 2012 testing comes into focus, there has been plenty of activity but little effort to address this reality.  Instead of facing the obvious—some children are going to be left behind regardless of the effectiveness of a school— band aids are being applied to the program.  In lieu of adjusting impractical expectations, special temporary exemptions are being issued.  Schools are being given additional time to reach an unreachable goal. 

The irony in all of these machinations is that if the majority of schools did attain test results with no failures, it would be likely that the methods of assessment and/or grading would have to be considered suspect.  Virtually every outcome of 100% is a source of concern.  When Saddam Hussein would win an election with 99.1% of the votes everyone knew the results were rigged.  Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon children are all “above average”, a statement which is intended to be satire, not reality.  Expecting a typical school to have a perfect pass rate is equally ridiculous.  The result of such expectations will be to place inordinate pressure on the school staff and test creators to find ways to pass even the most recalcitrant of students.  In such a case the validity of all test scores will be diminished.  In addition, the recent spate of cheating scandals would likely increase in the wake of such outrageous expectations.  Ask a successful teacher what they would think if every student in all of their classes made an “A” on their final exam.  The answer would reflect on the quality of the test and/or whether it had somehow been compromised. 

Listen to the coach

Vince Lombardi wrote, “Always strive for perfection.  Though you will never achieve it, you may pass excellence along the way.”  Apparently, the authors of NCLB did not read the coach’s book.  Everyone wants all students to be successful.  But this is an aspirational goal, not a realistic one.  Any 100% rule can neither be implemented nor enforced.  However, instead of changing the rule to reflect authentic academic success for as many students as possible, there has been a flood of exceptions, exemptions and excuses.  It is time for a more realistic approach.  While it is true that a rising tide will raise all ships, exam grade inflation will not do the same for actual student performance.   A requirement of a 100% pass rate will surely lead to a disastrous scenario.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:17 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

I am starting to feel like many educational leaders are approaching the instruction of math as if it were a game of “Jeopardy”.

            “Bill, it’s your turn to choose.”

            “Alex, I’d like to move to ‘Math Solutions’ for 200.”

            “Starting a new category, the answer is…‘8th grade Algebra’.  Bill, you buzzed in first.”

            “What is the solution for every math concern?”

            “That is correct”.

            “I’ll take ‘Math Solutions’ for 400”.

            “Continuing in the same category the answer is…‘8thgrade Algebra’.  Bill you’re first again.”

            “What should every student be required to take to improve math education?”

            “Correct again, you’re on a roll!”

            “Let’s take ‘Math Solutions’ for 600.”

            “Staying in the same category, the answer is…‘8th grade Algebra’.  Bill again.”

            “Uh, what, uh, what will guarantee admission for every student to any university in America?”

            “Right again, please continue…”

While this scene may seem hyperbolic or ludicrous, the reality is not too far behind.  The prevailing attitude in math education appears to be that the best solution is the 100% rule—academic policies must apply to “everyone”.   As Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger did it when he decreed that every student in his state must take Algebra 1 by the eighth grade.  My former school district took the same path five years ago when it announced that the goal of the system was to have all students take Algebra 1 prior to entering high school.  Similar sentiments have been voiced all over the country.  But as Mel Riddile points out in a recent post, a story from California demonstrates the potential pitfalls of such an approach.

A tale of two school districts

The Dailybreeze.com a site that covers stories in the Southern California area reports:

“The Manhattan Beach Unified School District boasts the third-highest test scores in the state of California. So it would be natural to assume that a relatively large share of its eighth-graders is on the accelerated track in mathematics. Conversely, the Lennox school district has the highest rate of poverty in the South Bay. One might assume that a disproportionate number of its eighth-graders take it slower in math.

“But the opposite is true.  In affluent Manhattan Beach, 44 percent of eighth- graders took algebra I or higher in 2009-10, the latest available data from the California Department of Education. The corresponding figure in Lennox was 94 percent.”

While it is surprising that the far wealthier of the two districts has the lower percentage of students enrolled in 8th grade Algebra 1, the outcomes are not.  In 2009-10 only 27% of the students in Lennox scored proficient on the state’s Algebra 1 end-of-course exam.  That translates into three of every four students in the accelerated math failing the test.   Meanwhile the scores for Manhattan Beach soared.  According to Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute, "If you're a student from a disadvantaged background - and are African-American or Hispanic - you are more likely to be placed in an algebra class in eighth grade than if you are a white suburban kid in an affluent district".  Such results are not isolated to California.  Three years ago Loveless conducted a study of eighth-grade students across the country.  Based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores he found that among the lowest 10% of students tested, one-third were enrolled in Algebra 1 at the time.

A better way to go

So if the Manhattan Beach Unified School District is not pushing all of its 8th graders into Algebra I, how are they achieving such high test scores?  More than 30% of the eighth-graders in these schools take Algebra 1 part 1.  They then proceed to Algebra 1 in the ninth grade and with a solid two-year foundation in the subject then move on to Geometry, Algebra 2 and Pre-calculus.  John Jackson, principal of Manhattan Beach Middle School, is unapologetic about his school’s percentage of Algebra 1 students and two-year approach to the course for a significant portion of the eighth grade. “Our job is to get them ready for high school, and that's what we do really well.”

And then there is the science

A recent article in the Washington Post discussed the neurological reasons that some students are not prepared for Algebra 1.   The author, Rob Coppock, has a unique set of qualifications—he taught middle school math after a career as a research scientist.  Now retired from education he saw first-hand the potential damage that pushing the wrong students could cause.

 “To oversimplify the neuroscience, the cortex, or outer layer of the brain, matures from back to front. Parts of the brain associated with more basic functions, such as motor and sensory functions, mature first, followed by areas involved in spatial orientation, speech and language development. Areas involved in attention, evaluation and motor coordination develop last.

“The problem is that the normal pace of development for some students means their brains are physiologically not capable of understanding algebraic abstractions.”

The price of failure

What seems to be lost in the drive to push unprepared students into taking Algebra in grade 8 is the cost in terms of student self-confidence.  On a recent HBO “Real Sports” episode, Tiki Barber was asked how his troubles transitioning from pro football to broadcasting had affected him.   “I really tried, but when you try and fail, it’s hard to keep trying.  I would sit in my office and do nothing after that.”  Barber was 34 years old at the time his NBC career ended.  He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and during a brilliant NFL career participated in multiple Pro Bowls.  If someone with those credentials was devastated by being unsuccessful, what are the expectations for fourteen-year-old eighth graders who are overwhelmed by a curriculum in which they experienced scant success in the past?   Tiki Barber is preparing to return to his athletic career; what are the options for an adolescent in a similar mindset?   How many 8th graders are learning to hate mathematics, viewing success in school as beyond their abilities and ultimately beginning to consider dropping out as a dignified retreat?   

Final Jeopardy

If I were a contestant on my imaginary game show, my response to the answer “8th Grade Algebra” would be, “What course should definitely be taught in the eighth grade, but only for those students who are prepared academically, emotionally and neurologically to succeed?”  And then I would change categories.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:04 AM | Permalink

A while back, I was having a conversation with a member of our school community lamenting the fact that no one every bothered to check to see if the school programs in place were actually working for our neediest students. She looked at me quizzically and replied, "Mel, you don't get it. This is the South. Here it's about appearances. It's not about if something works. It's about saying that we are doing something."

Activity Does Not Equal Success

I interpreted her statement to mean that "activity equals success." Fortunately or unfortunately that type of thinking is not confined to the southern part of the country. Truth be told, the "all show, no go" approach to education has been going on for too long in too many places.

For example, according to a report, some California middle schools have close to one hundred percent of their 8th graders taking Algebra. You may recall that the previous Governor of California thought it would be a good idea to mandate that all 8th graders be enrolled in Algebra 1 or at least a course that was labeled Algebra 1. It didn't matter if the 8th graders were prepared or ready for Algebra1. "More and more eighth-graders in California are taking algebra I or higher, regardless of whether they are ready for it." The residents of California could now sleep soundly knowing that no 8th grader was being denied the opportunity to enroll in Algebra.

The report compares affluent Manhattan Beach with an 8th grade Algebra enrollment of 44% to much less affluent Lennox with a participation rate of 94% and an embarrassingly low proficiency rate of 27%. The 44% participation rate doesn't concern John Jackson, principal of Manhattan Beach Middle School. "Our job is to get them ready for high school, and that's what we do really well," he said. Bingo! Principal Jackson's mission is to help students learn so that they will succeed in high school not to fill seats with underprepared students. What a novel idea!

According to researcher Tom Loveless, "the comparison of Manhattan Beach and Lennox mirrors an odd trend that is happening statewide. While the overall rate of eighth-graders taking algebra is skyrocketing, the change is most dramatic among low-income school districts serving disadvantaged minorities."

"According to Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, and a critic of California's algebra rush, "If you're a student from a disadvantaged background - and are African-American or Hispanic - you are more likely to be placed in an algebra class in eighth grade than if you are a white suburban kid in an affluent district. The schools in the suburbs still have standards for entrants."

Loveless' research uncovered some other interesting findings:

- In the bottom 10th percentile of U.S. eighth-graders in mathematics about a third of the low scorers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress were enrolled in algebra I or higher.

- "A large percentage (of algebra I completers) is functioning at the second- to third-grade level. For instance, they don't know fractions."

- A third of students who performed poorly in regular seventh-grade math were nonetheless placed into algebra I in eighth grade, "with almost no chance for success."

- The study concluded that while taking algebra in eighth grade serves the most prepared students well, it also has set many students up to fail.

I am a big proponent of students taking Algebra in the 8th grade. I spent two years in my last school district campaigning for a doubling of the number of 8th graders taking Algebra. To accomplish this, I proposed that our district align the math curriculum K-7 so that by design all students would be prepared to succeed with a grade of C or higher, in Algebra I in grade 8. At the time, we had only 20% of our 8th graders taking Algebra, which was one-half the average participation rate of the surrounding school systems--40%.  While I knew that an aligned curriculum would include all students in our efforts to prepare them for Algebra, I knew that not all would, in fact, be ready. However, I believed that we had a moral and ethical responsibility to give all students the same chance at readiness. Previously, only students in the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program were enrolled in a curriculum designed to prepare them for Algebra 1 in grade 8.

Now, it is a long way from 40% to 100% even in one of the most affluent regions of the country. I knew that successful, and I emphasize successful, completion of Algebra in grade 8 is one of the best indicators of college success and graduation. Notice that I didn't say college admission. I said college graduation.

In addition, I know that students who take at least one math course beyond Algebra II score significantly higher on college admission tests, and, therefore, have a better chance of gaining admission to the more competitive colleges and universities.

I have high expectations for all students. I want all students to be college and workplace-ready upon graduation from high school. I am for increased rigor. I strongly favor a standards-based, mastery learning approach. However, I am not for filling seats so that I can brag about how many students are enrolled in a specific course.

Throw them in the water and see if they can swim

The approach now being taken with 8th graders and Algebra I is the same approach that many high schools took and are taking to increasing enrollment in Advanced Placement courses. Don't undertake the years of hard work it takes to build math and literacy skills so as to prepare students to succeed in these courses. Just assign students to the courses and brag about your participation rate. If and when you are questioned about low passing rates, blame the teachers. This convoluted thinking has resulted in a disastrously low national pass rate on AP exams of 15.9% as well as many frustrated and demoralized teachers.

Access without excellence is malpractice!

To me it matters that these students succeed in these courses because I believe in them. They have the ability. It is our job to teach them. When they fail, it undermines their confidence. Also, within a few short months, these students will be enrolled in college courses that are moving at twice the speed of a high school AP course. If they can't handle half speed courses, how will they handle full speed?

The Bottom Line

School leaders should seek to increase enrollment in Algebra I and all higher-level courses. However, let's do it the right way by building the pipeline. The development of literacy and math skills is a PreK-12 issue. That means that we need to have high expectations and the will to do the hard work of building literacy and math skills from day one. Simply placing students in courses regardless of their readiness level is akin to malpractice. No longer is it our job to sort students. It is our responsibility to raise them up to higher levels. Whatever it takes!

Posted by Mel Riddile at 12:21 PM | Permalink

"We should not be contemplating for whom “no excuses” schools are appropriate because “no excuses” schools are not appropriate for any children in a free society." - Paul Thomas, an associate professor of education at Furman University writing in The Answer Sheet

Under-resourced students, those who live in poverty, don't lack ability. They lack learning resources--language enriched home environment, involved parents. These students begin school significantly behind their middle class counterparts and they often never catch up. In order to make up their resource deficit they need more learning time, high levels of engagement, and smaller classes. Instead, these students are often expected to progress at the same rate in overcrowded classrooms in under-equipped schools.

Some believe that a KIPP-style education may be just what these students need to catch up. However, KIPP is not a silver bullet. Participation by students, parents, and teachers takes a special level of commitment and the approach has proven costly in terms of high turnover of students and teachers. Dropping out of middle school could be a wake-up call, or more likely, another disappointment.

If education is to be a means of raising young people from a lifetime of second-class citizenship and marginal employment, we may need to go to extraordinary, KIPP-like lengths. However, anyone who believes that the solution to improving education is to install a KIPP-like approach in every school is sadly mistaken. Some will opt-in. More will opt-out. Many will totally reject the idea.

KIPP students spend 68% more time in core academic classes than their contemporaries. They have a longer school day, a six-day school week, and they attend school for two weeks in the summer.

Our real challenge

We must keep in mind that our biggest education challenge is rooted in poverty. We can either cure poverty, which, in turn, will solve our education problems. Or, as what occurred in my own life, we can use education as a lever to improve the plight of the poor.

The truth

When we compare apples to apples in international education, we find our schools at comparable poverty levels are not only on par with the best in the world, our low-poverty schools are the best in the world. We know how to educate middle class students better than any other country. Our education challenge is identical to that of every other nation--educating our poorest, most under-resourced children. The refusal of the so-called experts to acknowledge this fact is distracting us from our true challenge--raising student performance in high-poverty schools that serve under-resourced students.

Poverty: An Excuse or a Reason?

Poverty is no excuse for the low-performance of many schools. Rather, poverty is a reason to provide the students who attend these schools with the additional resources they need to catch up to their middle class peers. If we don't provide those resources, who will? If we think that some magic bullet will make up for what these students don't receive in their homes or communities, we are sadly mistaken. This isn't about a handout. This is about a hand up. Raising the achievement of these students is about hard work, long hours, and a level playing field.

The Bottom Line

When it really comes down to it, if we would simply treat other peoples' children as though they were our own, many of our education problems would disappear.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:58 PM | Permalink

Background: The Washington Examiner reports that "Fairfax County (VA) Superintendent Jack Dale is planning to tell principals to ease teachers' workloads outside the classroom, following months of complaints from school employees who say they're overworked and overwhelmed."

I was attending a principals’ meeting held in a neighboring high school. When the meeting ended, I walked through the halls to the rear of the school where my car was parked. At the end of the hall sat a teacher. I exchanged greetings and asked her what she was doing. She explained that it was lunchtime and that she was assigned to sit there every day to prevent students from leaving the cafeteria area and walking through the halls and disturbing classes. I said jokingly, “You should come to our school. Our teachers don’t have hall duty. They used to, but we learned how to train fleas.” “Train fleas,” she asked?

Flea Trainers

I explained to her that if you put fleas in a jar (an old Zig Ziglar story) and put the lid on, and later removed the lid, the fleas wouldn’t jump out, because they were trained that, if they tried to jump out, they would bump their heads on the lid. She laughed. I went on to explain that for years our teachers were assigned to stand or sit in the hallways during lunch to prevent students from walking the halls, but one of the things that I am proudest of was how we dramatically cut extra duties for our teachers. I wanted our teachers to focus on teaching not hall duty.
With a confused look on her face, the teacher asked me how we kept the kids out of the halls. “Easy,” I said. As certified flea trainers, we replaced the teacher with a sign that read “No Students Beyond This Point.” We replaced the teachers with a sign, and guess what? After a “getting-used-to-it” period where we had to patrol the hallways, we received excellent cooperation from the students and there were no more students in hallways than when the teachers sat on guard duty.

Mixed Messages

Shortly after arriving at the school I decided that, if we wanted our teachers to focus on teaching, we had to show them that their time should be spent focusing on teaching. It was a mixed message to say, on one hand that teaching was the most important work in our school, and turn right around and assign teachers to numerous non-teaching duties. So, we removed teacher duties, including lunch, and what our district referred to as “extra-duty assignments,” which were actually part of the teachers’ contracts. I decided to unilaterally eliminate those assignments to give teachers more planning time.

The Bottom Line

Raising the achievement of each and every student is not easy and certainly not convenient. Even when we focus one hundred percent of our time on teaching and learning, we still have a long way to go. Leading schools today is not like it used to be. It's not about the ABCs (Administration By Convenience). It is convenient to assign teachers to extra duties, but we must recognize that doing so dissipates the energies of our teachers and detracts from our true mission--teaching and learning.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:48 AM | Permalink

I could have sworn that goalie Tim Thomas was talking about the evaluation of principals when he met with the press following the Boston Bruins victory in the Stanley Cup Finals. Thomas, whose meteoric rise from minor league obscurity to Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the National Hockey League Finals, had a reaction that reminded me of how I felt when I received an "all exemplary" evaluation a few years ago.

When the press asked Thomas how it felt to be the MVP, he matter-of-factly responded that 'if I get off to a bad start next year, the MVP may buy me some extra time, but I know that if I don't produce, I will be gone.'

I felt no joy from my A+ evaluation. Most high school principals have learned over time that when something good happens, something bad will come along to bring you back down to earth. When our school was honored with a Presidential Visit, to the surprise of my staff, I decided to hold the regularly scheduled Faculty Advisory Committee meeting that same day. When asked why, I responded, "They will make certain that I am brought back to earth."

Why no happiness from a stellar evaluation? First, I felt more of a sense of relief than joy. I had taken a big career risk going to work in a high-poverty school just as our State (Virginia) decided to become a high-stakes accountability state, and I had paid a heavy personal price for it. I didn't have a good night's sleep for over five years.

Nevertheless, nothing could have been more rewarding than working with an outstanding group of teacher leaders, all of whom had years of service in that school, to turn the school from the ranks of the condemned to that of the commended. Second, the opinion of the people in our school was more important to me than the evaluation mainly because the evaluator had no idea what I actually did. Finally, and most importantly, like Tim Thomas, I knew that the evaluation wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. I knew that I served at the pleasure of the Superintendent and the School Board and that I could be removed and replaced on a whim. Something could go wrong the next day, and, if it was expedient to do so, I would be unceremoniously thrown under the proverbial bus without hesitation.

My attitude toward the current discussions about better ways to evaluate principals is simple. Bring it on, because it doesn't matter. As one of my first principals told me, "you can delegate responsibility, but you can never delegate accountability." The principal is solely accountable for everything that goes wrong in a school, and believe me, there is a lot that can go wrong in a school.

Being a principal is similar to being a coach in a professional sport. When things go wrong, it is the coach's fault. When things go well, it was because the team had good players. In school, when things go wrong, it is the principal's fault. When things go right, it's because the school has great teachers.

The Bottom Line

The principal must answer for everything that happens in a school. The evaluation methodology will not change the culture, which is set up to squeeze those in the middle--the school principal. True, over time, principals can earn some extra credit that may buy a little extra time, but a principal can and will be removed at a moment's notice irrespective of their most recent evaluation.

Instead of focusing on evaluating principals, the emphasis should be first on building the capacity of current principals to do their jobs and secondly on reducing principal turnover.  However, building capacity and reducing turnover will require more effort than I believe the so-called experts are willing to exert or fund.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:03 AM | Permalink

In a recent post on this blog, Stu Singer, The Teacher Leader, writes, "Jay Mathews has proposed a plan that he believes would increase rigor in schools. In a recent Washington Post article “Why not honors courses for all?” he addresses a concern of some parents that their school district is moving away from the traditional three tracks—regular, honors, and college level—by eliminating honors classes.  Mr. Mathews’ solution is a different two-track approach: “Instead of insisting on the old three tracks, tell the schools to keep the honors option and eliminate the basic course.”" The Teacher Leader goes on to propose that a better solution would be not be a choice between basic or the honors classes, but, rather, making the current three options more appropriate.

What is tracking?

There are several different forms of tracking or grouping of students:

1. "Within-class ability grouping" is typically found in elementary schools and not in high schools.
2. "Between-class grouping" - Students spend most of the day in “high,” “middle,” or “low” classes and use the same or similar curricula.
3. "Formal Tracks or Levels" - Students spend most of the day in ability tracks and use curricula substantially adjusted to their ability levels.

Many schools and school systems have already or are actively eliminating the third form of grouping students, a system of "formal tracks or levels," because research has shown that this form of grouping actually harms poor, disadvantaged, under-resourced, and struggling learners.

It is on the second method of grouping students--"between class grouping" in which most of a student's core course work is taken in groupings identified as basic, honors, and college-level--that Jay Mathews and Stu Singer disagree.  This method has been shown to benefit high achievers but does no harm to low achievers.

My Take On Grouping

First, Stu Singer and I worked in the same school, and, from my perspective, we had only two groupings--standard and advanced. While we had three different labels, in the end, we only had two levels of rigor at each grade level from which students could choose. Courses that fell under the "advanced" label included some courses specifically labeled as "advanced" such as Advanced Algebra I, and, since we were an International Baccalaureate school, pre-IB courses. Pre-IB courses would have been labeled "advanced" or "honors" or pre-AP (Advanced Placement) in most high schools. "Advanced" or "honors" courses, and here is the key, were only offered at the ninth and tenth grades and never in competition with IB courses, which were the only "advanced" courses offered in grades 11 and 12. So, our students were enrolled either in standard-level or advanced-level courses in which enrollment was open to all students. It is also important to note that students self-selected into standard or advanced-level courses. A student could be enrolled in and IB English class, but a standard Algebra II course.

Readiness not Ability

In a perfect world, I would prefer only one grouping and that would be "advanced." However, like most high schools less than 20% of our students arrived at our doors in ninth grade on-target for college. Like my good friend Jay, most proponents of eliminating groupings forget the realities.

The tragedy is that the off-target students had the ability, but for a variety of reasons were barely capable of doing high school level work let alone college-level work. In fact, our initial school wide reading diagnostic assessment revealed that 76% of our students read more than one standard deviation below average, which meant that they would have difficulty comprehending their high school textbooks. Some of these students were so far behind that graduation from high school, not college, was our goal for them.

Simply placing unprepared students into college-level courses would be like throwing a group of beginning swimmers into the river and telling them to swim across. Admittedly, a few would make it, but many would drown. Throwing capable but unprepared students into Advanced Placement or IB courses, as many schools do, is tantamount to malpractice and is akin to colleges admitting students who they know have little or no chance of graduating. They gladly accept their money and send them home saddled in debt. To put it bluntly, this practice of setting students and teachers up to fail is both unethical and immoral.

No honor in "honors"

A while back, at a district-wide high school principals' meeting, one of my colleagues proposed that his school be allowed to create a third course level by offering "honors" courses to eleventh and twelfth graders as an alternative to Advanced Placement courses.

My response was to the point. "First, these so-called honors courses are merely a way to segregate students because their parents don't want them in classrooms with "those kids." Second, unless you have a curriculum, and common formative and summative assessments, there is no way to ensure that honors courses are any more rigorous than standard courses. They are honors in name only. Third, allowing students to choose the less rigorous honors course instead of an AP or IB course deludes parents into believing that we are preparing their child for college when we know that all we are doing is placating them and their child. Finally, AP and IB courses are college-level, but they proceed at half speed compared to their college counterparts. If a student cannot succeed in an AP course at half speed, what will happen when that student takes the course at full speed in September?

"Honors" as an alternative to AP or IB courses at the junior and senior level is a big lie. In no way are honors courses preparing students to do college-level work next year. The only way that I would agree to such a proposal is if these courses were externally moderated. They would have a standard course description and syllabus with accompanying district-wide common and formative assessments, which would make the whole idea very expensive. If you really had the best interests of your students in mind, you would ensure that they were adequately prepared to succeed in the most rigorous courses that we could offer them.

Next: Building a Pipeline

Posted by Mel Riddile at 04:07 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

The academic goals of educational leaders are virtually identical.  They all want to create programs that will produce high school graduates who, as a result of a rigorous sequence of courses, will clearly and measurably exhibit mastery of all of the core subjects—English, Math, Science and Social Studies—in addition to being fluent in at least one foreign language, possessing an appreciation of the arts and maintaining a high level of physical fitness.   High school graduation rates would be near 100% and all students would be prepared for college level work. The objectives are the same; the debates revolve around the proper path to that ideal plan.

When idealism and reality collide

Jay Mathews has proposed a plan that he believes would increase rigor in schools.   In a recent Washington Post article “Why not honors courses for all?” he addresses a concern of some parents that their school district is moving away from the traditional three tracks—regular, honors, and college level—by eliminating honors classes.  Mr. Mathews’ solution is a different two-track approach:

“Instead of insisting on the old three tracks, tell the schools to keep the honors option and eliminate the basic course.”

It is important to note that Mr. Mathews is talking about classes in the eleventh and twelfth grades not entry level courses for freshmen.  On paper his arguments make some sense.  No educator would categorically reject increased rigor for students.  The better solution, however, is not the elimination of the basic or the honors classes but rather   making the current three options more appropriate.

Building a house of cards   

One of the fundamental problems with the current three-level approach is the ripple effect created by the oversimplification of the basic curriculum fostered by incessant pressure on teachers and administrators to eliminate poor grades.  To reduce the number of failing grades for unmotivated or poorly prepared students, many basic or regular classes in middle and high school have been made progressively easier.   This “dumbing down” of the curriculum does not go unnoticed by students, parents and teachers. Students who have limited academic skills are routinely enrolled in honors classes rather than regular classes. Once again the influx of under qualified students and the need to maintain high grades requires a lessening of the rigor of the honors classes.   The next step in this precarious sequence is the college-level courses.

Building a strong foundation

If one adheres to the principle that “given adequate time and attention, all children can learn”, a proposition that Mel Riddile and I have espoused at every opportunity, an approach in which all courses, by necessity, are taught at hyper-speed is unlikely to meet the needs of many students.  Student learning styles are almost as diverse as snowflakes and reducing options is a step in the wrong direction.   

While disagreeing with Mr. Mathews’ solution, I am equally at odds with those who take the opposite view.   They contend that when students struggle they tend to then drop out of school.  Using that as the prime consideration, it is argued that care must be taken not to frustrate anyone as they move through high school.  Any school system that is predicated on the desire to make sure that failure is nearly impossible is not going to result in a quality education.  As “Tiger Mom” author Amy Chua has said, building a culture of “inauthentic self-esteem” will not lead to academic improvement.

The better option is to create regular classes that are far more rigorous with higher expectations.  The same changes need to be instituted in honors and college level courses.   The next step would be to establish the proper placement of students and then push them to excel.  Offer students more time, more attention and more meaningful work while refusing to accept failure.  Support teams consisting of counselors, mentors and tutors must be formed to help guide students and parents through the difficult times.  Students can be allowed to fail a specific class; they cannot be allowed to fail to acquire an education.  The message has to be loud and clear.  Dropping out of high school is vocational suicide.

A key component of this approach would be a clear commitment that these three tracks do not constitute “tracking.”  There must be free flowing movement for students at all times.  When students strengthen their academic skills to a point where a regular class is no longer challenging they should be moved to the corresponding honors course.  This fluidity should be true in either direction and at any level.

If the basic foundation of the educational structure is strong, the rest of the construction will be equally effective.  This is a message that must be sent early and often throughout the entire school community. 

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:33 PM | Permalink

Budget shortfalls are forcing major reductions in the teaching staff in many schools and districts across the country. At the same time, some schools are fortunate enough to be filling vacancies.

For those fortunate few, I have compiled a list of posts from this blog that relate to interviewing and hiring teachers.

Hiring Teachers: Control or Cooperation

Building the Best Educational Staff: Part 1

Building the Best Educational Staff: Part 2

Building the Best Educational Staff: Part 3 The Interview

Building the Best Educational Staff: Part 4 Evaluation

Defining A Good Teacher

Finding the Best Teachers: Who's Interviewing Whom?

Finding the Best Teachers: Interviewing Follow-up

Finding the Best Teachers: Part 1

Finding the Best Teachers: Part 2

Finding the Best Teachers: Part 3

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:27 AM | Permalink

Is the title of this Washington Post article a rhetorical question? Of course students will blackmail teachers and schools. I know they will because they already are holding teachers and schools hostage all over the country and the so-called experts don't have a clue.

Why? Because, while many states are perfectly willing to close schools, fire teachers, and fire principals, they are not willing to hold students accountable for the results of their state assessments. They are not willing to take the political risk of making state assessments barriers to graduation. They lack the moral courage to stick with their stated values about the need for a quality education for all, because they don't truly believe in their own students. They fear that many students are not capable of achieving at higher levels. Legislators are running from the inevitable political fallout that will result from what they fear will be dramatically declining graduation rates.

Fear not all ye faint of heart! One state, Virginia, stuck to its promise and required all students to pass six of eleven end-of-course exams, which were used to calculate adequate yearly progress. Despite the most rigorous standards and assessment system in the country, graduation rates and proficiency rates continue to improve.

It is common knowledge to anyone who has worked in a high school in the last decade that students routinely "flag" or "Christmas-Tree" tests. Teachers and principals in many states have based their careers and the fate of their schools on the hoped for, good will of their students. Unfortunately, even if 90% of the students put forth 100% effort, which is unlikely, the remaining 10% will undermine even the best efforts of teachers and school leaders to raise test scores.

One principal in another state lamented to me that, despite having one of the best college admission rates in his entire state, his school is now on the "needs improvement" list because his seniors thought it would be funny to draw Mickey Mouse on the answer sheets on last year's assessments. The joke was on the school.

From another perspective, many of these students have been repeatedly tested since the third grade and they have reached the breaking point. They are sick and tired of spending long hours taking tests from which they never receive feedback. By high school, they have figured out that these tests have no direct effect on them. Colleges will never see the results and their grades will never suffer. Consequently, if they don't "feel" like taking the test seriously on a given day, they don't. So what? Well, the principal gets fired and the teachers are transferred that's "so what." Meanwhile, those seniors are away at college having a good laugh at the expense of their alma mater back home.

The Bottom Line

Unless everyone in a system including state officials from the governor on down, district offices, schools, principals, teachers, and students are held accountable and hold themselves personally accountable, there is no system of accountability. What we have in many states is not a system of accountability but rather an excuse to scapegoat convenient targets of opportunity--principals, teachers, and "failing schools."

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:04 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

It would seem logical that a local community college would be an excellent source to evaluate the quality of the education high school students were receiving.  Kristen Amundson, a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates and current communications manager for Education Sector, relayed some chilling data concerning the shortcomings of Virginia schools in a recent article in the Washington Post.  According to Ms. Amundson:

“At NVCC (Northern Virginia Community College) 2,913 of the 4,719 freshmen (62 percent) require remediation in one or more subjects. In other Virginia community colleges, as many as 80 percent of students arrive on campus needing at least one remedial class.”

Over the years Northern Virginia Community College has received national respect for the success of its students.  As a part of the Virginia Consortium students who earn grades of “A” or “B” in courses at the school can transfer those credits to any four-year state university.  Many talented individuals use two years at NVCC as a low-cost alternative for the first half of their college degree which they can complete at prestigious schools such as the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech. 

A disturbing imbalance

The fall schedule for NVCC reveals a major problem.  At the Alexandria campus there are 32 sections of Math I.  This is a non-college credit class that is designed as a remedial course that covers topics that should have been learned in high school.  Meanwhile Math 151, the freshman entry-level math course requiring a prerequisite of Algebra 2 and Geometry has a total of 11 sections.

The big lie

The state of Virginia thinks so highly of its Standards of Learning (SOL) end of course exams that the governor opted out of the Department of Education “Raise to the Top” competition because he believed the state’s standards far exceeded those of the federal government.  When one looks at the graduation requirements for the state, that contention seems valid.  To earn a diploma in the state students must pass three math courses at or above the level of Algebra 1.  In addition, they must pass at least one math SOL and in most cases two in order to “verify” those credits. 

On paper these requirements would appear to preclude any of the problems being encountered by NVCC.  The prerequisites for Math 151 are basically identical to those of a Virginia diploma.  And yet to meet the needs of the incoming freshmen, almost all of whom are products of Virginia high schools, there are three times as many remedial math courses as college-level.  The answer may be in how the state defines “mastery”. 

In May, 2011 in order to “pass” the Algebra 1 SOL exam a student must correctly answer 23 of 50 multiple-choice questions.  While on the surface that requirement might seem low (it equals to a 46% score) the reality is much worse.  On average random guessing on four-option multiple-choice questions will result in correct answers one-fourth of the time. Thus, a student can earn a passing grade by knowing the correct answer for 15 of the 50 questions (30%) and then by guessing on the remaining 35 questions net 8 or 9 more which will then total at least the required 23.  Though this level of knowledge could hardly be considered “mastery”, it does receive the label “passing”.  Even more disturbing is the fact that a few years ago that required pass number had been 26.   Is it really that surprising that a student with these credentials is struggling as a college freshman?

It is time to demand more

Sadly, the Governor is correct.  The state of Virginia does have comparatively high standards.  The problem is they are clearly not nearly high enough.  Instead students are receiving a potentially dangerous mixed message. They are pushed to go faster by taking Algebra 1 in middle school and abolishing all non-honors courses.  When too many begin to falter the requirements for defining “success” are lowered. The result is a transcript full of wonderful sounding classes and a plethora of graduates with woefully inadequate academic skills. 

It is time to stop looking for semantic shortcuts and begin the difficult process of demanding more.  The mere act of placing wallpaper over the cracks in our academic walls is not enough. 

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:25 AM | Permalink

While the headlines remind us of the current obsession with firing principals and teachers, some around the country have actually read the research and have come to recognize that the answer is not firing, but recruiting and retaining school leaders. They are taking a more enlightened, long-term approach to school leadership by seeking to reduce turnover and help shorten the learning curve for new principals.

According to a recent report in Edutopia, "school districts are seeking new ways to attract and retain effective administrators. One solution has been to provide mentors. With "40 percent of U.S. school principals reaching retirement age in the next decade, the increasing complexity and pressures of the job, and a growing student population," there simply aren't enough effective leaders out there and the current climate may be deterring future leaders from pursuing the principalship.

Takeaways

Mentors can help new school leaders face a number of critical issues:

Complexity - Leading a school is a complex task that "encompasses so much that it's impossible to write down in a job description."

Learning Curve - Time pressures are real. While experts agree that it takes 4-6 years to change the culture of a school, the reality is that most new school leaders are expected to show improvements in student achievement right away.  Thus, the old "sink-or-swim method" which "often delays mastery of the job for teachers, it can also impede the success and job satisfaction of principals." Mentors can help get new principals up to speed quicker by helping them make use of OPE--Other People's Experience.

Isolation - New principals discover quickly that loneliness comes with the job. A mentor can help soften the effects of feelings of isolation by providing a sympathetic ear and a voice of experience.

Formal and Informal - Albuquerque Public Schools has established a formal mentor program that pays the mentor a small annual stipend. Online chats are another way to support both new and veteran school leaders.

Overcome Barriers - "Eager new principals who begin with big plans for immediately revamping instruction and turning the school into a first-class academic institution find that their dreams often take second place to a host of less pleasant endeavors: dealing with an ocean of bureaucratic paperwork; reacting to federal, state, and local initiatives such as zero-tolerance policies for drug abuse and sexual harassment that they may or may not agree with; being aware of the litigious nature of society today without resorting to nonsensical policies to avoid lawsuits; responding calmly to sometimes outrageous parent demands; riding herd on uninspiring or incompetent teachers while maintaining morale among the able and outstanding teachers; working long hours with night and weekend school-related activities, and taking pains to ensure that violence doesn't erupt at the school while keeping in perspective the thought that Columbine could happen anywhere. And financially, it often doesn't make sense to move from master teacher to principal."

Skills - The article cites four important skills that new principals need to learn and mentors can help teach: delegation, time management, ability to see the "big picture," and dealing with all kinds of people. Notice that instructional leadership is not mentioned.

Bottom Line

As a young administrator, I was fortunate to work in a school system in which the culture placed a premium on principals growing future principals. Having an assistant promoted to the principalship was a badge of honor and symbolic of the skills of that veteran leader. The best principals grew new principals.

Somehow, over the years, the importance of leaders growing leaders disappeared. However, I learned that growing future school leaders was more about making it a priority than it was about having a specific expertise or specialized training.

I found a particularly important piece of advice from a veteran principal hidden away in the article. "If you select one change that is most important to you and focus on that, your chance of being successful is greatly enhanced." This not only applies to new principals, but to veteran principals as well.

Too many schools are working on too many initiatives. As a result, their energies and efforts are dissipated to the point that nothing gets done. Have a clear focus. Make it simple. Repeat it over and over. Work on it, for years if need be, until you have it right before moving on to other things. In one school the focus may be literacy. In another, the focus may be attendance. In another, the focus may be a student advisory. While high-performing schools may not all have the same focus, they consistently make their main thing, the main thing.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:46 PM | Permalink

Disclaimer: I do not receive funds from major educational foundations or corporations to promote their opinions and objectives.

Given what I just read in the New York Times, it may be a requirement that I begin every blog post with the above disclaimer. In the spirit of open thought, I will allow you to draw your own conclusions. However, just as we recognize the need to teach our students to make judgments about information on the Internet, we, as school leaders, need to be able to filter information based on the source. Decide for yourself.

While you are at it, read this!

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:35 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Developing an Effective Interview Process

Academic success has been directly linked to the quality of a school’s teaching and administrative staffs.  Prescriptions are continually being proposed to improve educational personnel.  These plans have included merit pay, improved evaluations, and easier termination policies among others.  But this goal is too complex to be accomplished with singular solutions.  What is required is a multi-faceted program that will address a variety of shortcomings in the current hiring system.  Previously, I have compiled eight fundamental areas that need to be reassessed in order for districts to be able to hire, improve and retain the most talented educators. 

This is the third in a series of articles that will detail the steps needed to implement those improvements.  This post will focus on the interviewing process.

Rule 1:  The interview begins with the resume

One of the most important components to the interview process begins before any face-to-face meetings occur.  Choosing the best interview candidates from among dozens of resumes can be difficult.  No single piece of paper can tell the complete story of an applicant’s strengths or weaknesses.  But there are some items that deserve extra attention. 

What is the candidate’s academic background and teaching experience?

Only applicants with a strong academic background in the subject area should be given serious consideration.  While a major in the field would be preferable, the minimum requirement would be a significant number of successfully completed courses in the curriculum.  In many states the requirements for certification are unrealistically low.  For that reason there should be a thorough examination of the candidate’s GPA particularly in the subject area.  If this information is not contained on the resume, a transcript should be requested.   This extra step can reveal a great deal about a prospective teacher.  For example, one individual who applied for a Chemistry position at my former school had a reasonably good overall GPA.  However, a detailed look at the candidate’s transcript revealed that every course in Chemistry was “C” or lower including a few that had to be repeated.   This information is not trivial.

Previous employment, summer jobs, and areas of interest should also be carefully examined.  Matching an educator to a school is a subtle process.  Different student bodies require different strengths.  Evaluate prior experiences in terms of preparing the candidate for the school’s particular needs.  After determining the top choices the interviewing process should begin.

Rule 2:  Have the right people doing the interview

Teacher interviews should be conducted by the two individuals most directly involved in the development of new staff—the department chair and the supervising assistant principal.  If one of the two does not attend an interview no hiring should take place until both have had an opportunity to talk with the candidate.  Offering a position should require a 2-0 “vote”.  

The inclusion of the chair is particularly important.  No one understands the exact needs of a department as well as a person who works with this group every day.  In addition having a teacher in the process gives the applicant an opportunity to ask specific questions concerning working at that particular school.  While an AP has first-hand knowledge of the learning environment, it is not the equivalent to that of a full-time teacher.  Moreover, if the department chairs have a voice in the hiring, they will also have ownership and accountability.  It is now incumbent on them to make this hire work.  And finally having both the AP and department chair conducting the interviews makes the process more consistent, allows them to develop a coordinated working relationship and gives this somewhat subjective decision making process more objectivity.   

Rule 3:  Everyone should be asking questions

An effective interview is one that allows information to flow in two directions.  As the interviewers assess the qualifications of a candidate through a series of questions, the applicant should be seeking information about the makeup of the student body, an overview of the department personnel and educational philosophy and administrative support and expectations.  This understanding of the educational environment within the building is critical.  Hiring the right teacher is not always about hiring the most talented one.  Good teachers and successful schools are not automatically a perfect fit.  I have known many underperforming teachers who have found great success after transferring to a new location.  People often underestimate the importance of personal chemistry in teaching success. 

Rule 4:  Ask questions that result in meaningful answers

The inquiries posed during an interview should elicit introspection of one’s beliefs about education.  The goal should be to determine the applicant’s beliefs regarding why some students fail to achieve, how to reach different learning styles within a classroom, the most productive student/teacher relationship, and classroom management approaches.  Some of my personal favorites include:

• Within your curriculum what is your favorite topic?  How would you share that enthusiasm with your students?
• Next October when I visit your class, what facet of the lesson I observe will be the most impressive?
• During that visit what will be the most notable aspect of the classroom environment?
• What teaching issues would most likely require you to ask for advice from your colleagues?

A series of such questions should be created that will give true insights into the philosophies and beliefs of the candidate and also express the academic direction of the school.

Rule 5:  The questions are only the beginning

The give and take of the interview should be only a portion of the process in determining who is offered a position.  A comprehensive interview would include the following:

• Writing sample.  The most basic skill required of a successful educator is the ability to communicate.  This talent must exist both verbally and in writing.  Having applicants express their views in words can reveal additional information not necessarily apparent in a question and answer setting.  Sample questions could include “What motivates you to be an educator?”, “What was the primary reason you applied to this particular school?” “Think of your favorite teacher.  What made this person so special to you?”  A written answer to any of these inquiries could give some extremely important insights.
• Teach a lesson.  Tell the applicant in advance that they will be asked to teach a fifteen minute portion of a lesson they have done in the past.  They should be prepared with handouts, power points, board work, etc.  If they are uncomfortable with this request, what does that say about their future in front of a classroom of students?
• Tour the school and visit classrooms.  Remember this is a two-way interview.  Give them a genuine feel for the educational environment.  An interviewer can gather insights about a candidate by observing their reaction to a classroom visit. After one of my interviews a teacher asked me when the students would be dismissed.  She then situated herself in the main office and watched the students as they left the building.  She later told me that the manner in which they conducted themselves and their interaction with adults convinced her that she wanted to be at this school. 
• Make a lunch date.  Prior to offering a position, a highly-rated candidate should be invited to have lunch with the department during a school day.  This setting provides a wonderful opportunity for interaction with potential future colleagues and often served as the final stage in the entire process. 

Rule 6:  Aggressively contact references and previous employers

Some of the worst information acquired during the interviewing process is obtained from references.  Too many people are loath to give honest appraisals or worse they want to get rid of a problem teacher.  Consequently interviewers need to ask pointed questions when contacting these individuals.  The importance of their input needs to be clearly stated and emphasis be given to the need for candor.  Books could be written about the harm caused by misleading references.   Consequently, it is a process that must be undertaken carefully and with caution.

Rule 7:  Use your new hires as a resource

Your new hires can help in improving the interviewing process.  I always asked them why they chose to accept our offer and how our process compared to others.  These conversations revealed some important insights that were used to strengthen our work in the future.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 05:17 PM | Permalink

The Teacher Leader viewed hiring as his most important responsibility. Sadly, many schools never allow teacher leaders the opportunity to step up and share ownership of their school. When it comes to the important decisions like hiring and scheduling, teacher are too often shut out.

Leaders Grow Leaders

High-performing schools understand that 'hiring the right people and putting them in the right seats on the bus' is critical to laying a solid foundation for continuous school improvement. When asked about the importance of hiring teachers, most school leaders put it at the top of their list. How they deal with hiring new staff is a dead giveaway to their willingness to share decision-making and to distribute leadership and tells us just how collaborative the school really is.

Behavior Doesn't Lie

The real test of a school leader is what the leader does when the pressure is on. How does that leader deal with the critical issues like hiring? Every school leader I know believes that they have a collaborative school environment, but many view hiring as their purview and under their total control.

Accountability Demands Involvement

I love the Bill Parcell's quote, "If you want me to cook the meal, let me shop for the groceries." If we want teachers to hold each other accountable for student achievement, we are going to have to give up our need to control. Notice that I did not mention holding teachers accountable. Holding teachers accountable is about control. High-performing schools seek cooperation not control. They practice shared decision-making, which results in shared responsibility and shared ownership.

If we want voluntary cooperation, we must lead as though we are seeking cooperation. If we want teachers to take ownership, we must treat them as co-owners who have a part in making the key decisions that affect them on a daily basis.

Our teachers always expected more of themselves that anyone ever would. No one could ever compel our teachers to work as hard or care as much as they did.

Yes, it is a scary proposition for a school leader, whose head is on the chopping block every day, to give up control of the destiny of the school. However, I learned from experience that there were tremendous benefits to involving teachers in the hiring process:

They took more time. For me, it was about filling a position. For our teachers, it was about finding the right person, the right fit. Our teachers understood the skills and background knowledge required of the applicant as well as how the prospective teacher would fit into their team.

Better decisions - Our teachers pooled their collective experience and multiple intelligences to make better decisions, and they did.

Ownership - Teachers took ownership of the new hire, because they made the selection. They were invested in the new teacher's success and they did everything possible to help.

Our teachers took hiring personally. Listen to how The Teacher Leader approached hiring process.

"I approached the process as an intense form of competition. In a manner similar to college athletic recruiting or drafting in professional sports, the procedure consisted of carefully studying applications to locate the best candidates, an extensive interviewing process to narrow the focus and then an aggressive recruiting campaign to convince them to become a part of our math team.  I was also aware of the fact that not all of those other schools were as concerned with the endeavor. Hiring is recruiting! We believed that the interview went in both directions. We were interviewing the applicant and the applicants were deciding if they wanted to work in our school."

I often heard from applicants that our school was the only school to talk about what the school could do for them. 'All the other schools were only interested in what I could do for them.' High-performing schools tell applicants what they can do for them. They sell the school and the benefits of working there. They take pride in the school and in their team.

The Bottom Line

Do you have the courage to let go of your illusion of control over the hiring process? Are you willing to trust your staff?

Remember what the Gates survey of teachers found. Teachers most want supportive leadership. How a school leader handles the hiring process goes a long way to defining how supportive that leader really is. Keep in mind that when leadership is distributed throughout the school, we find a much more teacher-friendly school culture.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:39 PM | Permalink

As measured by gains in student achievement, teachers, even experienced, mid-career classroom instructors, improved as a result of their participation in a formal evaluation process. An Education Week report cites two studies conducted in Cincinnati, which has an extended history using a formal evaluation system consisting of four formal observations. In Cincinnati, teachers are given a rating relating three standards: classroom practices, classroom management, and questioning and discussion techniques.

In addition to discovering that 1. Teacher participation in a formal evaluation process improved student achievement, the first study concluded the following:

2. Classroom Management Improves Math Performance

The study found that "while overall teaching practice was the best predictor of student achievement, classroom management was more highly correlated with better math performance."

3. Questioning Improves Reading

Teacher use of open-ended questions was more highly correlated with student performance than classroom management.

In a second study, also conducted in Cincinnati, student performance not only improved in the year that the mid-career teachers were being evaluated, but the improvement in student performance continued and even increased in the years following the evaluation.

It is important to note that in the Cincinnati evaluation system teachers are not evaluated annually and that the evaluation process does not use a value-added component. In addition, the Cincinnati teacher evaluation system connects to a career ladder for teachers, which may be a motivating factor.

Implications for School Leaders

- Teacher evaluation is not the most enjoyable part of a school leader's job. However, knowing that teacher evaluation improves student achievement makes the process more meaningful.

- If school leaders want to make a difference in student achievement, teacher evaluation is a no-cost way to do so.

- Teacher evaluation is most effective when the teachers are clear on what behaviors will be evaluated, and if both teachers and principals have had extensive, multi-year professional development. Cincinnati was chosen precisely because both factors were present. In addition, many states and districts are proposing similar evaluation models and Cincinnati's decade long experience should help inform future practice.

- Even more encouraging is the fact that student achievement continues to improve in the years following a meaningful evaluation process of even the most experienced teachers.

- It makes sense that questioning improves reading, but I wonder why classroom management makes a bigger difference in math classes. Perhaps the sequential nature of math demands continuous attention and student engagement--students miss out if they miss a step in the process.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:52 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

There is no easy fix

In order to retain its status as a global leader the United States must create a world-class educational system.  To that end, numerous efforts are being made to find the correct formula.  Charter schools advocate longer hours and teacher freedom; a New York City school offers starting salaries of $125,000; Bill Gates has spent millions to study teacher evaluation and policy makers stress the need for accountability by using standardized tests.  Recently Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell offered a new merit pay program designed to assist under-performing schools in finding good staffing.  A variety of other incentive plans have been proposed with the intent of attracting top-level talent. While these and other ideas have varying degrees of merit, individually they are insufficient.   

There is no simple solution

Building a winning team whether on the athletic field or in the classroom requires many ingredients.  Ask successful coaches for their winning secrets and their response will be complex.  They cannot point to one particular element that consistently results in a championship team.  Likewise, no one-dimensional approach can produce outstanding educators in every classroom.  Looking for a “quick-fix” only delays the formulation of the sweeping set of policies required to populate every school with an excellent staff. 

It is a complex problem

In a recent post Mel Riddile has made a strong case that money alone will not create great teachers.   Based on his thoughts and my own educational experiences I believe that the following seven issues must be addressed to guarantee excellence in teaching staffs:

1. A commitment to hiring policies that result in offering job opportunities to the most effective candidates.
2. Establishing an evaluation program that results in a fair, consistent analysis of teacher performance and both improves effectiveness while identifying underperforming staff members.
3. Formulating a policy for removing teachers in an equitable but efficient manner.
4. Abolishing “last hired-first fired”.
5. Creating meaningful staff development programs which have proven quantitative evidence of success in the classroom. 
6. Competitive salaries with common sense rewards for outstanding work that can be measured in a clear and accurate way.
7. Create leadership positions for teachers that will give them consequential input into educational policy.
8. Ensure that all schools, especially those with challenging student bodies, have outstanding staffs.

More philosophical than fiscal

Over the next few weeks I will address these eight issues and present a comprehensive approach for hiring, improving and retaining outstanding educational staffs.  At a time of limited budgets, an important aspect of this plan is the low cost.   The major expenditures are in time and commitment, not dollars.

Next:  Hiring policies and strategies that find great talent

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:41 PM | Permalink

If you have been reading my latest posts, you might jump to the conclusion that I am against accountability, including merit pay for teachers. Nothing could be further from the truth. I embraced accountability because it forced us to do what we should have been doing all along--hold all students to higher standards. As a principal, I worked in a high-stakes accountability state (Virginia), and that accountability system gave our school the leverage it needed to promote increased rigor and high expectations for all students.

What does a high-stakes accountability environment look like? In a high stakes accountability environment, everyone including students and schools are held accountable.

In too many states, there is accountability for teachers and schools, but no accountability for students. In those states, the destiny of the school and fate of the teachers rests on the good will of the students. If the students feel like taking the state test, they do. If they don't feel like it, they "flag the test." How can so many states hold everyone but the students, who actually take the tests, accountable? It makes absolutely no sense.

I worked in Virginia throughout the first decade of the SOL, Standards of Learning, assessments. Initially, the tests were set up to discredit and embarrass public schools. However, when just about every school failed the tests, the parents revolted and the state threw out the old guard and worked with schools to develop a fair system, which included the following for high school:

Schools were held accountability.

• Eleven end-of-course exams
• Schools had to achieve a 70% proficiency rate or lose state accreditation.
• Schools were held to graduation targets.
• Schools who failed to achieve prescribed targets were required to go through a school improvement process.

Students were held accountable.

• The end-of-course exams acted as barriers to graduation.
• Students were required to pass the courses and six of the eleven end-of-course exams in order to earn a diploma.
• At the urging of the Virginia Association of Secondary Principals, the State strengthened existing attendance laws and stepped up enforcement.
• No students were "Christmas-treeing" tests in Virginia. Students took the test seriously because they counted for them and, even if they had the six required verified credits, they cared because their teachers cared so much.

Note: There was no statistically significant change in graduation rates in the barrier year, 2004, because the State initiated a "Project Graduation" initiative that began in 2000.

Teachers were not held individually accountable.

There was no need to hold teachers personally accountable, because they held themselves to such high standards. Our teachers expected more of themselves than anyone else would ever expect of them. They felt a sense of shared responsibility and a commitment to their students, their colleagues, and to the school as a whole. They understood that test scores reflected on "our school" and on "our students." In fact, teachers were so committed to student success that we had to be very careful how we reported test results, lest we single out or inadvertently identify any one individual teacher. Our teachers took each test score personally. Instead of having to light a fire under our teachers, we had to hold hands and sooth hurt feelings, because they cared so much.

That is the kind of accountability environment we want. We want students to take the tests seriously. We want the teachers to care about the success of their students. We want a collegial environment that encourages collective effort and cooperation. We want the students to say that the "teachers would never give up on us."

Why Do We Need Merit Pay?

Coming from that experience explains why I don't understand the merit pay argument. Anyone who knows teachers knows that money is not a motivator. They don't need to be cajoled with promises of bonuses to dedicate themselves. In fact, like most achievement-motivated professionals, teachers are insulted and demotivated by the use of tangible rewards. Teachers want what Frederick Herzberg called "motivators"--recognition, challenging work, responsibility.

Pay teachers as professionals! Pay them in proportion to their contribution to society. Stop nickel-and-diming them with promises of meager bonuses!

What Teachers Really Want

Supportive Leadership - More than anything else, including higher pay (45%), 40,000 teachers surveyed reported that they want supportive leadership (68%). Supportive leadership ensures that all of the following are available to teachers in the school.

Sense of Purpose - In the long run, what most motivates teachers is a sense of purpose--the desire to make a difference in the lives of their students. After all, that is why we became educators. However, when teachers drive old beaten up cars and they can't even afford to live in the communities in which they teach, it is hard to talk to them about a higher purpose.

Mastery - Teachers want to feel that they are skilled professionals. They want to feel that they are continually growing and improving. They want quality professional development that actually helps them improve their practice.

Self-Direction - Teachers want input into the key decisions that impact their profession on a daily basis. They want opportunities to collaborate with their colleagues.

Team - Teachers want to feel that they are a part of a collective effort. Teaching does not have to be lonely endeavor. Schools work best when teachers are committed to each other and the success of their students.

Professionals - Teachers want to be treated as professionals. They want to be treated like people not workers.

The Bottom Line

Professionals keep score, but their score is actually a true reflection of actual performance. Some of the current practices, such as not holding students accountable for test scores, and some of the proposals like merit pay and value-added teacher evaluations fail to pass the reality test and set up schools to fail. For example, our school wide literacy effort made a big difference in student performance on State assessments. However, since literacy strategies were practiced in every classroom every day, it was impossible to single out an individual teacher to receive a merit pay bonus.

Team efforts should garner collective rewards. Merit systems pit one teacher against another competing for scarce resources--the merit bonus. We need to reward and encourage collective effort not the individual all-stars teachers, who exemplified 20th century assembly line schools.

School leaders want and welcome accountability, but lets make it a meaningful and fair system, not one that singles out individuals for rewards or punishments. School leaders rely on the voluntary cooperation of teachers, students, and parents if the school is to succeed. Set us up to succeed!

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:08 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

In an essay published in the Outlook section of the Washington Post, John Sener has decided that by successfully making 18 of 20 free throws in a gymnasium he has, using the same criteria used by analysts of standardized testing, successfully proven that he is a better basketball player than Michael Jordan.  Using similar logic he dismisses the poor performance of American students on the PISA test as irrelevant.   

When in doubt, ridicule

 When my former school posted outstanding scores in the state’s standardized tests I was surprised by the number of questions other educational leaders raised about our “ethics”.  Mel Riddile would explain to me that when you have poor outcomes you have two options—work harder and smarter or find a way to bring the competition down.  Unfortunately, the latter approach appears to be the one favored by Mr. Sener.

His argument is that standardized tests in general and the PISA international test in specific are inaccurate indicators of the quality of a country’s educational system.  He begins with sarcasm and then drifts into the surreal.

“Once you truly understand the awesome power of test scores, you will embrace them, as I have done — especially after realizing how standardized testing proves that I am a better basketball player than Michael Jordan.

“Don’t laugh; I have the test results. I read something in a blog somewhere about how MJ recently made 16 out of 20 free throws in a friendly shooting contest. Pretty good, but I thought I could do better. So I went to my local gym and practiced and practiced until I achieved my aim: 18 out of 20 free throws! I’ll send you the video, if you like. (Or you could do what most people do with PISA scores and simply take my word for it.)”

Making the basket; missing the point

Based on his free-throw shooting (real or otherwise) Mr. Sener reaches several conclusions about the PISA test scores in the United States.

“You may argue that it’s not a fair comparison, but that’s what so great about this — simply use the same rules we apply to judging PISA scores, and it’s perfectly fair.  So what if it’s not a head-to-head competition? PISA’s not a head-to-head competition. The students take the tests at different times in different places under different conditions. Heck, they take the reading test in different languages.”   

His second explanation of the poor performance of U.S. students is their lack of interest.

“…what makes you think that American students take PISA seriously? When I tested my teenage son’s knowledge of the PISA exam, he just looked at me quizzically, since he’d never heard of it…Do you really believe that every student who takes the PISA has the same amount of practice?"  

To assess for yourself whether increased practice would affect the outcome of US students’ scores on the PISA tests, go to http://pisa-sq.acer.edu.au/ .

Not all air balls

Mixed into the misguided basketball analogies Mr. Sener does make some excellent points which should be emphasized.

“Standardized tests don’t measure most skills, yet opinion leaders and policymakers constantly tell us how America’s education is going down the toilet based on those scores...There is no place in standardized tests for creativity...You would be wise to ask these questions, even though standardized tests don’t care about curiosity, either.”

Ignored problems do not go away

There is no question that standardized testing does not answer all of the questions of how to measure learning and good teaching.  I have long argued that the Standards of Learning (SOL) exams given in my state (VA) did not indicate mastery of a subject and the method of administering the tests was poor.  But I also knew that though imperfect this new accountability was a step in the right direction.  Prior to such tests there were virtually no quantitative measures of the relative performances of students from classroom to classroom, school to school or district to district.  These results clearly indicated discernible patterns that, if used correctly, could be of great value. 

While this standardization did not equate to the level of precision that would be optimal, it did offer critical insights into the quality of teaching.  In every school the staff forms subjective conclusions as to which teachers are effective and those that are not.  During the ten years I observed SOL testing (VA) the results of these exams closely matched these informal evaluations.  Based on substantial data, the students of certain teachers routinely outperformed others.  While such statistics can and were misused, they did provide a limited amount of quantitative proof of student comprehension, weaknesses and the quality of the work of their instructors.

These outcomes were not enough.  The testing methods need to be improved to better reflect the actual knowledge acquisition.  They must demonstrate a legitimate understanding of a wide range of material.  This process is still in its infancy and far from a finished product.  The potential for improvement is present if the willingness to keep an open mind is maintained.

But simply ignoring any measurement that indicates a serious problem in American education is reckless.  A country where more than three of every ten students drop out of high school and only 30% attain a college degree is hardly in a position to dismiss a poor global performance with sarcasm and ridicule. 

Note: At the high school level, Virginia administers eleven end-of-course (EOC) exams, which are used both as barriers to graduation and to calculate adequate yearly progress (AYP). Only a few states use EOC exams for accountability purposes and as barriers to graduation.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:11 AM | Permalink

"Some things are worth more than money," Wayne Washowich, School Board President, McKeesport, PA

A colleague recently asked my opinion of charging students fees for participating in sports and other activities.

Background

I grew up in Western Pennsylvania and I know that high school sports are "an integral part of many communities." According to an article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, "athletic fees started in California and New England in the early 1970s as a result of state budget issues. For decades, the fees remained isolated in a few areas of the country. A 2005 study from the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association found that about a third of their member districts reported charging athletic participation fees, with 80 percent of the fees below $50.

My Take

Schools across the country are in the midst of huge budgetary shortfalls. School officials admit that charging fees for participating in sports will not bring in enough revenue to balance a district budget.

Charging any fees is a regressive approach to balancing the budget, because fees target the poorest and most under-resourced students and schools. To middle class families, fees are an inconvenience. To poor, working class families, fees are the difference between participating in sports, clubs, or college-level courses and not participating.

The good news is that some officials understand that "many students wouldn't be able to pay the fees and would not participate in sports or activities if it required any payment. We might as well tell the kids, 'Go ahead and walk the streets because you can't play,' and we'd never do that."

Posted by Mel Riddile at 12:13 PM | Permalink

"As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." James Allen

Here is the ultimate essential question posed in a New York Times article titled When Math Makes Sense (To Everyone): To what degree are our beliefs about children’s abilities determined by the results of our current education system?

The article was a follow-up to a previous piece on Jump Math's founder John Mighton, who expressed some interesting viewpoints on education and math instruction.

“Our belief in hierarchies is producing the hierarchies.” In other words, our belief that some people are naturally better than others in some areas produces an education system characterized by hierarchies designed to sort students. Formalized academic tracks would be the most extreme example of these formalized hierarchies. A math curriculum gamed to ensure that only "gifted" students could take Algebra in eighth grade, and thus, prevents many capable students from taking calculus in high school, would be a less obvious, but just as insidious, example.

Using Mighton as a case in point, the article postulates that we may not know what we are capable of achieving. "As a youth, he (Mighton) was fascinated by math, but he wasn’t a natural. He almost failed his first calculus course. But he trained himself to break down complicated tasks and practice them until things that initially confused him became second nature. He went on to do a Ph.D in mathematics."

"Research on experts – whether in chess, cello or computer programming – indicates that natural ability is less a predictor of success than effort and deliberate practice. A big part of what we call “giftedness” is “task commitment” – and that can be encouraged."

My Take

Our beliefs act as our auto-pilot that drives our behavior. What we believe about the capabilities of students to learn and teachers to teach directly impact the approaches we take. We can quickly discover what teachers and schools believe about students by examining four areas, which gives us insight into both a teacher's and a school's auto-pilot:

1. Grading - A teacher's philosophy of grading reflects the teacher's beliefs about human nature and how students are motivated. In fact, one of my favorite interview questions for prospective teachers was to ask about their philosophy of grading. Their response told us more about them as a person and as a future staff member than just about any other question we asked.

Teachers who believe that work and effort predict student success use grades as a means of providing both feedback and encouragement to their students. Grades are viewed as a byproduct of learning. Their students understand that their grades are a reflection of their work and effort and that they have the power to change them if they choose to work hard enough and to put in the time needed to master the concept. These teachers view student learning as feedback on their teaching and they use that feedback to guide their instruction, to focus review efforts, and to target remediation, because in their classroom, the only way a student can fail is if the student either quits of gives up. Failure is not an option. Their students typically say that their teacher will not allow them to fail. They never give up on any student. These teachers often used standards-based grading practices that emphasize mastery. They believe that learning time is relevant and the outcomes and mastery is an absolute.

Conversely, teachers who believe that grades are a reflection of student ability, use grades as rewards and punishment and as a weapon hoping that the fear of failure will motivate students to do better. Instead of using student learning as feedback on their teaching, they place the blame for poor performance on the students. Review and remediation are not a priority for ability-driven teachers. If a student is doing poorly in their class it is because they "didn't do their homework," or they "don't belong" in the class.

Schools tend to take on one of these two belief systems or mindsets. They either believe that all students, given time and effort, can achieve to high levels or they believe that students are either born with "it" or they are not, and no amount of work or effort will raise them to high levels of achievement.

The school that believes in work and effort seeks to reduce course failures and to increase the number of students taking higher-level courses through enhancing their skills. Schools who believe that ability predicts performance resist efforts to reduce course failure or to encourage more students to take higher-level courses because they fear that they will have to "water-down" the courses to help students succeed in those courses.

2. Interventions - Teachers who view ability as the best predictor of success see no need to provide interventions because failure is viewed as a natural consequence. They believe that it is their responsibility to sort students and to weed out the capable from the less capable.

Teachers who believe that work and effort predict academic success view interventions as a natural part of their teaching and helping to raise student achievement. These teachers simply refuse to give up on students.

Ability-driven schools often have no 3. Math, or 4. Reading interventions for struggling students. When offering interventions for struggling learners, ability-driven schools do so begrudgingly. Conversely, schools that believe that time, work, and effort are the best predictors of student achievement, have numerous interventions in both 3. Math, and 4. Reading for students and some even go as far as to require students to attend extra sessions.

Final Take

The beliefs, attitudes, and expectations of teachers combine to form a collective mindset or school culture, which drives the behavior of individual teachers and schools alike. Four specific areas provide insight into those beliefs and mindsets--grading, interventions, math, reading. How teachers and schools view and address these issues are strong indicators of the school's culture.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:39 AM | Permalink

Washington State and South Carolina have recently proposed alternative paths to the principalship.

Apparently education is the only profession that believes that it can increase the quality of those working in the profession, teachers and administrators, by reducing the minimum qualifications to enter. Actually, education professionals are not making such ludicrous recommendations, because unlike most professions, education is not controlled by practicing professionals. Education is controlled by legislatures, state departments of education, and a few high-profile foundations!

Imagine that there was a shortage of physicians in a specific field or region and a proposal was made to increase the number of physicians by allowing anyone with a master's degree in any field to become a physician. Substitute attorneys, accountants, dentists, or airline pilots for physicians in the previous statement and you get the idea.

In reality, the proposals in Washington State and South Carolina represent the latest in a long line of reform recommendations based on the belief that "anyone can do it." Anyone can teach, even with only five weeks of training. Anyone can be a principal.

Washington State - Thumbs Down

In a recent editorial, NASSP Executive Director, Gerald Tirozzi, addresses the Washington State plan. Tirozzi writes, "The shrinking pool of school leaders is a complex problem for which alternate certification provides an answer that is, to borrow from H. L. Mencken, “clear, simple, and wrong."

Tirozzi goes on to make some salient points:

-"These principals will have no credibility with teachers."

My Take: Research proves that the major weakness of school leaders is the ability to set instructional direction--instructional leaders. So, the answer to correcting that weakness and to improving student achievement and eliminating the achievement gap is to hire principals with no teaching experience?

- "The least qualified leaders will land in the highest need schools."

My Take: No reputable school system or school would hire a principal with no experience. What that means is those school systems and schools that are the poorest and most remote will be the only ones in the market for these alternative route principals. Ironically, it is these under-resourced schools that need the best, most experienced leaders and teachers. They also have the highest turnover in principals and teachers.

- It is hypocritical to advocate one educational approach for the masses and another for your own child. "Many a legislator sends his or her child to highly personalized private schools staffed by well-trained and experienced educators who, free from the burden of test prep, capitalize on a child’s natural curiosity with a curriculum as robust in art and music as in reading and math. There’s no hypocrisy in that—every parent wants the best for their child. The hypocrisy lies in legislators using their day jobs to advocate for a different kind of education for everyone else’s child."

My Take: Not only have the so-called reformers not attended public schools themselves, but they would never allow their own children to attend public schools with larger class sizes and less-qualified, underpaid teachers. Their mantra is 'High-quality education for my child and what we can afford for your child.'

South Carolina' Proposal - Thumbs Up

You can probably tell that I am not a fan of alternative certification plans for teachers or principals, particularly those that take shortcuts. When I first started heard about South Carolina's alternative route proposal, I was feeling the same way until I read an article that outlined the key features. Currently, South Carolina allows someone with a bachelor's degree in teaching can become a principal by being a certified classroom teacher for at least three years, then graduating from an approved college program in school leadership. The new proposal would allow someone with a master's degree in any field to enter a program that involves being an assistant principal for three years, then passing an exam to become a principal. When I read the phrase "serving as an assistant principal for three years," it caught my attention and, at least, partially changed my mind.

My Take: If someone, who has been a successful manager in a business, is willing to take a pay cut to enter education and will serve a three-year apprenticeship as an assistant principal, I say bring them on! Keep in mind that these individuals would not only serve an apprenticeship, but they would have to exhibit exemplary performance in order for the district to appoint them as principal after three years.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:37 AM | Permalink

In my last post, I asked Should Your Child Teach? My intent was to point out that, just at the time when we need quality teachers the most; teaching is being made a less attractive profession. This needs to change! A veteran teacher wrote me saying the following:

"Let me start with "amen". This is personal for me.  My daughter-in-law in Texas (who has a degree in English and a master's in Library Science) has decided to pursue a career in Special Education.  She is completing the necessary coursework and testing and now is faced with not getting a job due to budget cuts.  She is very discouraged, as would anyone else in her position. My son in California wanted to be a teacher/coach with his math degree and athletic background.  He is currently earning several times more than a teacher in the private sector.  It was way too easy of a decision for him."

While the search for teaching jobs may discourage some, it turns out that finding a teaching job may be much easier in some regions than in others. This assumes that budget shortfalls will come to an end and local funds will be available to hire new teachers.

Education Daily reports that a recent study from National Center for Education Statistics indicates that public and private elementary and secondary school enrollment increased by 10 percent between 1994 and 2007 and will continue to increase by 6 percent through 2019.

The best place to find a teaching job will be in the South and West. A 12 percent increase in high school graduates is expected in the South and a 9 percent increase is expected in the West. Decreases of 14 percent in the Northeast and 7 percent in the Midwest are expected.

Among the findings in Projections of Education Statistics to 2019:

• Seven states are expected to see enrollment increase by more than 15 percent: North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and Utah.

• All of the New England states, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan are expected to see enrollment decrease by more than 5 percent.

• The number of new teacher hires in public schools is projected to increase 40 percent by 2019.

Essential Questions for School Leaders

What does it mean for schools if student enrollments are increasing at the same time that fewer are enrolling in teacher preparation programs? My guess is that, just as the Common Core assessments are implemented, there will be a severe shortage of teachers. Who will suffer the most? As usual, rural schools and schools in less attractive, high-poverty areas will again find themselves at the end of the line when hiring new teachers.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:33 AM | Permalink

I frequently use Reagan National Airport and my flight occasionally lands late at night. So, the story about two planes landing while the one and only air traffic controller on duty slept, caught my attention. Like many others, I was shocked to learn that more than a few airports, some of them considered major hubs, routinely schedule only one controller on duty.

My thoughts immediately turned to a recent airport experience. I was in an unnamed airport in a major city waiting in a long security line. For the sake of fairness, I must admit that, in most airports, security has gotten better in the past year. In this case, the line was getting longer and longer, yet there was only one security station screening passengers. I thought to myself, surely they will open more lines. I was wrong.

I counted thirteen uniformed TSA employees standing idle while they watched passengers screening through one checkpoint. It reminded me of when I was a kid listening to the adults joke about the state road crews. "One has a shovel or a broom and five others are watching."

I then imagined a scenario in which the one traffic controller on duty was sleeping while downstairs thirteen TSA employees observed one security checkpoint. Talk about misplaced priorities.

In my mind, landing planes takes priority over confiscating hair gel. Having more than one air traffic controllers on duty at a time is a non-negotiable. Clearly, some airports are majoring in the minors.

School leaders can use the misplaced priorities of our airports as a learning experience. Truth be told, most schools don't consistently do the things that improve student performance. We must decide on our priorities--two, no more than three, areas of focus. Next, we must say no to everything else. Our focus must be non-negotiable. Finally, we must continue until we have both mastered our priorities and accomplished our goals and objectives.

Ask yourself. What are our "must do's?" What are our "need to do's? What are our "nice to do's? In other words, what "must" we do every day in every classroom throughout our school in order to raise student performance? Once we determine our priorities, we must resolve to do those things with fidelity. We must do them consistently day in and day out, and we must do them over time, in many cases, for years.

Focus: Clear and Simple

For ten years, our school had a clear and simple focus. Note, I didn't use the word "easy," because there is nothing easy about improving student attendance and literacy skills. That is not to say that those were the only things we did. We totally revamped our approach to math, integrated technology, enhanced our ESL program, reduced suspensions, changed our school calendar to year-round, began mandatory after-school tutoring for any student with a "D" or "F" in a core academic subject, and list goes on and on.

If you asked our teachers about our school improvement plan, they would respond, "R-A-G-S to Riches"--Reading plus Attendance means better Grades and a Safe school." In other words, if we improved student literacy skills (Reading) and raised Attendance, student performance would improve (Grades) and discipline referrals and suspensions would go down (Safe). Here's the key. For almost a decade, our plan never changed. While we continually enhanced our strategies, our focus never changed. We never waivered.

The Secrets of High-Performing Schools

High-performing schools consistently do what other schools do not. No misplaced priorities here. No majoring in the minors either. High-performing schools have fewer priorities and they are obsessed with reaching their goals. At the recent NASSP School Showcase the presentations made by several schools made it crystal clear to me that schools serving large numbers of under-resourced students must have a student-focused obsession, and that obsession must relate to the specific needs of the population that the school serves.

The three schools all served under-resourced students. However, the three high schools varied in size, had very different demographics, and were located in states with very different economics and education policies. The context in which these schools operated was about as different as they could possibly be.

Although they were very different in appearance, the three schools had a lot in common. They each had a laser-like focus on student success that bordered on an obsession. In fact, these three schools were so obsessed with student success that they were willing to overcome any obstacle that got in their way.

Literacy: Brockton High School (MA) is a large (4,350) urban high school that has focused on raising the literacy--reading, writing, thinking, discussing--levels of ALL students, particularly its large ELL population. Principal, Susan Szachowicz, and a "handful of fellow teachers" organized a school wide campaign that brought reading and writing lessons into every class in all subjects, including gym. According to a New York Times article, Brockton's literacy-for-all success has defied the "small is better orthodoxy" proving that any school can beat the odds and raise student performance.

Attendance: The audience turned to each other with looks of disbelief when the staff of Arroyo High School (CA) posted their three-year attendance figures. Arroyo's average daily attendance was well over 96%. For a large, high-poverty, high minority, urban high school, 96% is phenomenal. However, I could see the enthusiasm abate as the staff spent about twenty minutes describing all the initiatives the school used to improve attendance. As I have emphasized over and over again, improving student attendance is all about hard work and will power, and the Arroyo staff have plenty of both. Arroyo's success formula is simple. Get the students to attend school every day and make sure that the students succeed.

Course Failure: The presentation began with a simple but very effective slide that pointed out that, over a three-year period, Barberton (OH) High School had reduced course failures from over 2,500 to 350. The staff at Barberton must have read Bob Balfanz's dropout research that points out that course failure is one of the best indicators of dropping out of school. Admittedly, a school could reduce failures by simply lowering standards. This was not the case at Barberton, where the focus was clear and no obstacle too big to overcome. The staff used small learning communities, flexible scheduling, a unique master schedule, student-led conferences, and an advisory program among other strategies to significantly improve student performance.

The Bottom Line for School Leaders

We simply cannot afford to waste time, money, and effort on programs and strategies that will not improve our schools. Schools cannot have fifteen priorities and do them well. The more we try to do, the more we spread out and dissipate our effort. Focus is power! The reality is that "we do more when we do less." Saying no is much harder than saying yes to new initiatives, but saying no is the right thing, the courageous thing to do. Resolve today to stop majoring in the minors! Become obsessed with your priorities.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:40 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

The students in the 11^th grade English class were given an assignment that would have been impossible to complete in February, 2006.  They were told to respond to a reading based on the work of Ernest Hemingway.  While the literature being studied was available well before 2006, the method of delivering the homework was not.  The students in this class had to send in the assignment using Twitter and as prescribed on that site, keep their responses to 140 characters.

Some positive responses

The teacher who made this assignment is very enthusiastic about the outcomes.  “Part of my job is to get the students engaged,” she related. “It’s easier to do that if I can link the homework to Twitter and Facebook. The hope is that when it’s time for the AP exam, what started as a novelty will translate into a real skill.”

Her students were equally positive.   One describe her writing as more efficient, declarative, even staccato. “It was a total breakthrough,” she said.  Some sentiments match precisely with the thoughts expressed in a recent Mel Riddile post—concise writing equals better writing.

Other teachers have embraced additional aspects of social networks for instruction using a powerful combination of Facebook and the Canterbury Tales to study Chaucer’s work.   One senior English student was so excited by such an assignment she said, “I had to write interests and status updates for the friar in the story — he was like a total frat guy.” She then added, “It’s the kind of assignment I found interesting because I could relate to it.”

Other Facebook groups have been formed to relay information, have discussions and encourage inter-active study. 

Making it relevant

I found that one of the greatest obstacles in teaching mathematics was the abstract nature of the curriculum.  It soon became clear that academic success increased significantly by making the subject more applicable to a student’s life experiences.  In my own classroom we would weave topics such as probability, parametric motions and sequences and series to events familiar to the students.  The mathematics of television shows like “CSI”, price selection in clothing, and calculating successful field goal attempts would be studied at length. 

The English teachers in this article are doing the same.  They are bringing 14th century literature to life using 21st century technology.  Not surprisingly, many of the students have embraced this new approach.

Not everyone is convinced

In sharp contrast to the enthusiasm of the teachers and students, many educational policy makers are not quite ready to endorse the use of Twitter and Facebook.  Many states, including Virginia, are concerned with one of the more highly publicized, negative aspects of social networks - sexual predators.   

Education officials in that state are primarily concerned with the possibilities that this approach will give potential offenders greater access to students.   In the past decade the state has averaged more than a dozen cases per year of inappropriate relationships between teachers and students.  According to Virginia Department of Education spokesman Charles Pyle, the “vast majority” of those cases included texting and other forms of digital communication.

Some people do not see a direct correlation.  “It’s not about the technology, it’s about how it’s used, about acceptable behaviors,” said Kathy L. Smith, chairwoman of the Fairfax County (Virginia) School Board. “Somebody who wants to relate in that way is going to find a way to do it.”

No one, of course, would take the potential of sexual misconduct lightly.  But the larger question is whether using these technologies in the classroom would contribute to any increase in such behavior.  The reality is that adolescents in huge numbers are already engaged in significant activity on these sites.  Demonstrating a positive and responsible utilization of these tools may send a message that could elevate their personal adventures on the web.  There would be no guarantees of such an outcome but the potential for increased academic success must also be considered.  

High school students live in their own unique world of social networking, video games, homecoming floats and YouTube.  The more connections that educators can make between that universe and education the more likely it would be that the message of the importance of academic success will be received.  Ignoring the social network will not make it disappear and will only serve to widen the cultural gap between teachers and students.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:52 AM | Permalink

In a recent public appearance a prominent American made the following comments:

"We have piled on a lot of standardized tests on our kids. Now, there's nothing wrong with a standardized test being given occasionally just to give a baseline of where kids are at."

"Too often what we've been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools."

"Let's find a test that everybody agrees makes sense; let's apply it in a less pressured-packed atmosphere; let's figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years; and let's make sure that that's not the only way we're judging whether a school is doing well."

"Because there are other criteria: What's the attendance rate? How are young people performing in terms of basic competency on projects?"

"I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you. And young people do well in stuff that they're interested in. They're not going to do as well if it's boring."

These are messages that more than a few teachers and principals want to hear--less testing, less pressure, less punishment of schools, more meaningful assessments, more focus on high-interest material.

If someone had told me that those were quotes made by President Obama In a town hall meeting hosted by Univision, I would have never believed it. Perhaps the fact that he has two school-aged daughters has helped reality sink in. We can only hope.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:24 AM | Permalink

By Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

I do not want to get into the politics of the situation.  If governors around the country feel compelled to battle unions, so be it.  I do not want to get into the specifics of balancing budgets.  I understand that states cannot print money so financial shortfalls mandate pain for everyone.   I do not want to talk about how much money other people should be paid.  That is an assessment employers should be making.  But when I am bombarded on a regular basis by a narrative blaming teacher avarice for much of the monetary ills of 2011, I have to speak out.

When stalking ineffective teachers is not enough

For the past few years, educational policy makers across the country have pointed to poor student achievement as a direct reflection of the inadequate instruction they are receiving.  Newspapers have publicly humiliated teachers by publishing their students’ test scores with the approval of the Secretary of Education and other school leaders.  Bill Gates has invested millions of his dollars to find better teacher evaluation techniques.  I, too, have endorsed the need to find ways to remove underperforming teachers from classrooms as quickly as possible.

But now, thanks to the budget wars in Wisconsin, what was previously a rational discussion between thoughtful adults has turned into something akin to an argument between children during recess.  The litany of complaints against teachers could be ignored as childish and silly if it were not so widespread and fraught with serious ramifications.  On national television, teaching has been described as a part-time job because they only work nine months of the year and teachers are home every day before 3 p.m.   Some talking heads have opined that teacher unions are capable of making demands that would be the envy of the Teamsters union.   One 24-hour cable news network vilified the Wisconsin teachers for causing $7.5 million in damages to the building they had occupied.  Two days later that figure was corrected to a still lamentable but significantly smaller amount of $350,000.   According to other pundits, the chaos wrought by educators is nearly biblical in nature.  Teacher pension plans are described as equivalent to corporate golden parachutes.  When it comes to teachers, simply having health insurance is considered an extravagance.   But possibly the most outrageous assertion of all is that teacher salaries are the primary state budget-busters for this fiscal year.    And to think, some teachers thought that assigning too much homework was the reason they were so often maligned.

A good time for some number crunching

Some of the “facts” being used to justify the attacks on teachers and their unions are inaccurate; others are either misrepresentations or worse.  A realistic discussion must begin with an analysis of the basics.  The salaries of teachers in Wisconsin are far from exorbitant.  Their average is approximately $51,000 per year.  That ranks 24th in the country and trails two nearby states - Minnesota and Michigan. 

The actual comparison to the private sector is an apples-to-oranges equation.  Trying to compare performance bonuses, stock options and buyout clauses to pensions is murky at best. Within this past week Borders Books as part of its bankruptcy agreement is requesting $8.3 million in bonuses for their employees.  The claim is that they are losing employees at a rate of five per week.  Incentive payments for the top executives would range from $4.7 million to $7.1 million each.  One of the company’s arguments is that many of these people have been with the company for less than a year.  Then there are retention bonuses to non-executives which average $37,000. Border’s attorney wrote, “The debtors have concluded that the critical employees are highly talented and that it would be difficult if not impossible to replace them given the debtor’s current circumstances.” When corporations fail, they use monetary incentives to retain their best personnel; when schools fail, the teaching staff is fired without regard to the level of talent.  And no one seems terribly concerned with the potential loss of outstanding teachers or the unlikelihood of finding equivalent replacements during the current fiscal crisis.   

Additionally, when comparing teachers to the private sector no one seems to be taking into account the educational level of a typical teaching staff.  Every teacher has at least a college diploma.  Normally about half have advanced degrees and many possess doctorates.  How does that compare to those other work forces? 

A mathematical reality check

It is time to talk about pensions.  I am receiving a very nice one.  It almost matches my salary when I retired.  This generous package is the result of paying 15% of my paycheck into three retirement plans—the state, the school district and Social Security.  Using the Wisconsin figures of $51,000 per year on average for my forty-year career I would have contributed $7500 per year for four decades.  That is a total of about $300,000.  Throw in the accrued interest and if I receive a very generous $60,000 in total retirement annually, one could argue that the first eight to ten years are on my own dime.  Could it be that teachers are not robbing the taxpayer?

A few other realities need to be discussed.  No one is going to become wealthy with an income of $51,000 a year.  The majority of the teachers I hired could not afford to live in the county where they taught.  The unmarried ones usually had roommates; those with children normally commuted more than thirty minutes to find affordable housing; some of my most talented teachers left the teaching profession for other, more lucrative careers.

Teaching is no more of a part time job than farming.  During the ten months classes were in session at my school the parking lot was full by 7:00 a.m. and the majority of those cars were still there at 4:00.  Evenings and weekends were often reserved for grading and lesson planning.  Summers were spent taking classes, refining classroom skills and networking with other teachers.  Some people had to find ways to augment their income by doing a variety of part time jobs.  Which leads to the question—how many bankers or lawyers must tutor or supervise recreation centers to help purchase a second car? 

The unkindest cut

Without doubt the most unfathomable part of this discussion is the manner in which the words “teachers” and “greedy” are used in the same sentence.  Teachers can be described in many ways but avarice or materialistic would hardly serve as a descriptor.  

There is, however, a context in which the word “greedy” can apply.  Over the years, I had the good fortune to work with more teachers than I can count who were absolutely convinced that their subject was the most important one in the building.  As a consequence they would grab for as much of their students’ time as they could to share with them their excitement about and knowledge of the curriculum.  To that end, they would engage in fierce battles with other teachers, coaches, parents and outside interests.  Some might describe that as greed; others refer to it as great teaching. 

These people do not deserve to be a political punching bag.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 04:46 AM | Permalink

"School districts, because they want the money, are finding creative ways to meet the requirements of the law."--Gerald N. Tirozzi, Executive Director, NASSP

You have probably heard the saying, "Principals don't retire. They just lose their faculties." Apparently, in Minnesota, where "ousted principals quickly find new jobs," as well as in many other states, fired principals simply get new faculties.

Dollar Chase Leads to Musical Chairs

District leaders were shaken when they learned that, in order to qualify for school improvement grant (SIG) funds, they would have to replace the school's principal. Three of the four school reform models called for the replacement of the principal. The idea of firing principals when few replacements were available, particularly in rural and inner-city schools, was inconceivable. However, district leaders quickly found a loophole. Instead of firing principals, districts simply transferred them within the district. According to the AP, "of 19 Minnesota schools in 12 districts that were awarded more than $24 million found that only a handful of principals have left education administration. The AP interviewed nearly a dozen school leaders, reviewed school board minutes and media reports and sought out displaced principals by phone and through web searches."

More False Assumptions

I have written before about the false assumptions that underlie current "school reform" models. Note, that, in order to propose firing teachers and principals and closing struggling schools, one would have to believe all of the following false assumptions:

1. "Merit pay" for teachers will improve student performance. One does not have to look far into the research to discover that there is no basis for merit pay improving teaching.

2. Experienced principals and teachers are anxious to work in high-poverty, struggling schools. High-poverty schools serving high percentages of under-resourced students have the least experienced teachers and administrators and the highest turnover. The retention rates for principals at low-performing schools and schools with high concentrations of poor students are even worse. "Twenty percent of newly hired principals at secondary schools with a high proportion of low-income students leave after a year."

3. The best teachers want to teach the neediest students. We already know that high-poverty schools have fewer applicants and higher teacher turnover. However, within the typical school, a pecking order exists among the teaching staff. Because the most experienced teachers have "earned the right" to teach the most desirable courses, those teachers typically teach the best students in the smallest classes. Conversely, the newest teachers teach the neediest students in the largest classes. Principals often struggle to convince experienced teachers to teach those students most in need.

4. There is an abundant supply of experienced master teachers and skilled administrators. Top schools compete for top teachers and the struggling schools get the leftovers, if there are any. A friend once said to me, "It isn’t about school leadership. It is about hiring the best teachers. That’s the key to improving schools.

All you have to do is hire great teachers.” I turned to my friend and said,  “Who do you think recruits, interviews, hires, and trains your great teachers? Teaching is a profession, and professionals learn and grow from experience. Teachers don’t walk into schools with all the skills and knowledge that they will ever need. Teaching is learning. All new teachers must rely on mentors and advisors, most of whom are provided by the principal.” Some believe that anyone could teach. These "anyone can teach" proponents incorrectly believe that experience does not matter. Why else would they propose hiring teachers who have only five weeks of training. Of course, inexperienced teachers are good enough for other people's children, but they would never be good enough for the children of the school reform experts.

Rural schools have the same supply problem that urban schools have. "Rural superintendents have had trouble for years recruiting principals (and teachers), let alone for the toughest schools. Urban and suburban districts pay better. Rural areas often don't provide a second job for two-career couples. The rural lifestyle often doesn't appeal to urbanites. And with the housing market downturn, top candidates often don't want to sell at a loss and buy new homes in small towns."

5. Schools are struggling because teachers and administrators are incompetent. If that were the case, why, when they had the perfect excuse to get rid of them, would the same district hire back incompetent principals? First, these people are not incompetent. Second, the reasons for schools struggling are more about poverty, the surrounding communities, and the under-resourced families and students they serve than it is about incompetent teachers and principals.

Who can we trust?

The more I read and research, the less I trust that we are or will be told the truth. You may recall the controversy over the PISA scores, which, according to "so-called experts," indicated that our schools were failing because our students scored in the middle of the international pack. In fact, in "It's Poverty Not Stupid," I pointed out that, our low-poverty schools are the highest performing in world.

We all want our schools to improve. False assumptions and half-truths only serve to distract us from the real challenge that we and other developed nations face--raising the performance of under-resourced students so that they have a chance to lead a happy, productive, and prosperous life.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:25 AM | Permalink

A few days ago I introduced my wife to the new iPad app The Daily. Yesterday, she wanted to show me how amazing The Daily was and how she was using it. She particularly liked the videos imbedded in the articles.

"What if you could make a textbook look like this? she said.

I told her to go to the Kahn Academy website and then check out this YouTube video featured on the PBS NewsHour.

A few minutes later, she came back, "This is amazing! This is a dissertation! How long have you known about this?"

I replied, "I tweeted about this a while back. Don't you follow me?"

"I don't know how to do Twitter," she replied.

"Do you know how to use YouTube, I asked? There are some great Twitter tutorials there."

She retorted, "I don't tweet!"

So, you are not interested into tapping into the collective intelligence of hundreds of other people? You think it is better to do it alone?

The Bottom Line

No more excuses - If you have an Internet connection, there is no excuse for not learning about something that you really want to learn about. Look it up!

Check out the Khan Academy. What began as the founder "making a few algebra videos for his cousins has grown to over 2,100 videos and 100 self-paced exercises and assessments covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history." It is a great resource for teachers and students.

Twitter is the best way to tap into the collective intelligence of many people with whom you share common interests.

Next: Revisiting Reverse Instruction

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:14 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

The teacher’s lament was plaintive.  He had just been informed that the principal wanted to meet with him about an undisclosed topic.  “I know exactly what he wants to talk about.  It’s my grades—too many “F”s.   I am working harder than I ever have.  I have created a dozen different interventions.  But I can’t change my grading policies.  I know what my students need to be successful.  They are failing because they don’t know the required material.  I’m just giving them what they have earned.”  Another teacher had told him that she had recomputed her grades to avoid “the meeting”.  He then closed with the inspiration of this post.  “I’ll tell you what it is.  It’s grade inflation by intimidation.”

Not as simple as it looks

Virtually every day a new proposal is introduced to save public education in the United States.  Too many of these plans are more focused on reducing failing grades than on the creation of more successful students.  The mere act of lowering the number of “D” and “F” grades does not automatically improve academic performance.  To the contrary, an argument could be made that by giving inflated, inaccurate assessments students are being mislead as to their skill level and misplaced in future courses. 

The grades teachers assign are an important component in assessing their work but it is not a precise tool.  Like every other statistical measure it must be utilized by someone who understands all of the factors at play in any particular classroom.  The broad conclusion that an individual “gives too many poor grades” can be a dangerous oversimplification.

A long inflationary cycle

The presence of grade inflation is not a new phenomenon.  More than 25 years ago teacher evaluation meetings at my school always began with an examination of the “D/F rate."  An assistant principal would look at a printout giving the teacher’s percentage of students receiving grades of either “D” or “F”.  Unfortunately those raw numbers did not always tell the complete story.  For some students a grade of “D+” was a triumph over adversity and past history; for others a “C+” was a reflection of little or no effort.  But for the teachers the former would count as a negative statistic while the latter was of little or no concern.  Without understanding the complete context, individual grades and D/F rates mean little.  But the message, however misguided, was clear—better grades indicate better teaching.

This pressure was relentless.  During a discussion of the topic in a math department meeting one teacher stated the obvious.  “Listen, we are all math people here.  We have the capacity to construct our grading in whatever way they want.  Just tell us what percentages to have and we can make it happen.”  Whether she was serious or not, her contention was accurate. 

Over the years due to a variety of influences the inflation of grades has occurred.  In a typical suburban high school in 2011, a GPA of 3.0 which in theory translates into a “B” which is above average will rank a student in the middle of their class.  Though nearly all measures of achievement clearly indicate little or no improvement by today’s students, at least on paper their academic performance is clearly on the rise.

Parents join the fray

When the AP Biology teacher walked into the parent conference, she was confident that her position on the matter to be discussed was secure.  The student had missed the scheduled mid-term exam to go on a family ski trip.   Prior to the vacation he had presented a form for a prearranged absence.   The teacher had checked the block that indicated she did not approve.  In addition she had written on the paper what she had told the student in person—he would have to take the exam on his first day back at school.  This timing was appropriate since it was in keeping with the class policy she had established on the first day of school and until he took the exam none of his classmates could review their results.  

Though the student had accepted these stipulations, when he returned he informed the teacher that he was not prepared.  She insisted he take the test as per their agreement.  His score was low and resulted in his grade dropping from a “B-” to a “C” for the quarter.  

Some parents are more equal than others

The student’s father was a highly-regarded physician in the community.  During the preliminary discussions at the conference he appeared disinterested in the arguments being presented.  After about ten minutes he held up his hand and said, “Let me be clear.  I really don’t care about all of these details.  I just want to know what it is going to take to make this grade into a “B”.  I don’t care if it is a retest or just exclude him from the mid-term or whatever, let’s find the answer.”  The teacher refused to alter the grade and was asked to leave the meeting.  Later that day the principal informed her that the “C” had been changed to the desired “B”. 

An issue of fairness

Based on this change, the teacher was faced with an ethical dilemma.  Giving this student a “B” would lessen the value of the grades earned by the other students in the class.  Consequently, she decided to proportionally raise everyone’s grades.  Once again, while no additional learning had actually taken place, on paper every student in the course had improved their academic performance.  Not surprisingly, as the details of this episode spread throughout the staff, teachers began to have second thoughts when enforcing valid policies that might result in lower grades.

A time and a place

Many school districts have designed creative methods to give the appearance of reduced disciplinary referrals, absenteeism and dropout rates.  Too often grades are also just another statistic to be manipulated in order to give the appearance of improved success.  There are some teachers whose grading indicates either an inability to correctly assess student performance or ineffective instructional skills.  Such situations must be addressed directly and corrected immediately if education is to be successful. 

But the danger is when lockstep grade expectations are placed on an entire faculty or school district.  There should be cause for concern when a conversation with a teacher who has years of successful experience begins with “you are giving too many bad grades”.   Grades are meaningless if they are not a legitimate reflection of student learning.  The key to truly improving grades is to ensure that students are gaining mastery of the subject matter.  When knowledge acquisition is attained, D/F rates will decline.  And more importantly, they will indicate real academic progress.  

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:37 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Like Mel Riddile, I saw the recent “60 Minutes” segment featuring the TEP School (The Equity Project) in New York City.   The opening tease about a school offering teacher salaries of $125,000 drew my attention.  The segment itself was riveting.  The discussions of hiring, firing and tenure policies in the report were persuasive.  The passion of the teachers and the school’s founder was palpable.  The stories of 80 to 90 hour work weeks were a testament to dedication.  The scenes with the students interacting with their instructors were exhilarating.  The evaluation process with peer involvement and regular administrative visits was inspiring.  I turned to my wife, a retired high school teacher, and announced “I think these people are on to something.”  That enthusiasm was significantly diminished during the final two minutes of the segment. 

Despite the high pay, long hours, classroom enthusiasm and attention to detail, student academic scores fell in the school’s first year.  Of course, one year is hardly a fair trial period but an actual drop in such results is a valid point of concern as well as a reason for some reexamination.

A benign dictatorship

I recently heard in a discussion on NPR that a global dictator would be required to ensure that the world would productively address climate change.  The rationale is that with an all-powerful individual making the decisions, the necessary policy adjustments could be put into place without the intervention of special interests.  It is a parallel analogy to the account that a dictator was the only person who ever successfully made the Italian trains run on time.   Democracy can be so messy.

The TEP model is also a one-man operation.  Its founder and principal, Zeke Vanderhoek, hires and fires the teachers, observes their classes on a regular basis and makes all policy decisions.   Because of his complete control he has been able to creatively increase salaries, easily remove underperforming teachers, eradicate tenure and quickly implement program changes.  All of these factors are positive steps toward improving education.  Plus, as a result of his immense power, his teachers do not have to deal with the same type of bureaucracy other educators face in traditional schools.  If they need an answer or wish to make a suggestion, they need only walk down the hall.   

What has gone wrong?

Working 80 hours a week is impressive.  That amount of time is a clear reflection of commitment but not necessarily a formula for success.  As much as I would love to play in the Major Leagues, even if I spent 12 hours a day, seven days a week in the batting cage, I am not going to successfully hit a Roy Halladay fast ball.  Likewise, a teacher who works twice as many hours is not automatically twice as effective.  Every experienced educator has worked with people who arrive ten minutes before the first bell, leave shortly after the buses and are remarkably successful teachers.  On the other hand, some of the most unproductive educators I have encountered spent voluminous hours in the building.  While no one is quite sure what they were doing, there was no doubt as to its ineffectiveness.  A school’s success is measured by student performance not by the time cards or paychecks of the teachers.  Though it is still early in the process the overriding question remains:  Why is the immense sacrifice of time by the TEP staff not yielding better results?

A potential answer could be found in the administrative structure of the school.  There is no question to the commitment of Mr. Vanderhoek.  It is readily apparent that his primary desire is to create a positive learning environment for the students and teachers.  But he is not unique.  There are multitudes of educational leaders whose passion to find a winning educational formula would match his.  And the majority of those individuals understand that the best recipe for success requires multiple ingredients.  (Here is an additional perspective by an NYC parent.)

Good education needs cross pollination

Portions of the TEP model should be replicated throughout school systems in the country.  Similar effective hiring, firing and evaluation policies must be created to form the best teaching staffs possible.  Highly qualified principals have to clearly possess the institutional power to implement their vision of academic excellence.  But this path needs to include a diverse and significant amount of outside input.  Teacher opinions should be constantly sought.  Other programs should be observed and studied.  Stories of success and failure must be shared at every level both vertically and horizontally.   Strategies that have been proven to work need to be utilized and refined; those that do not should be discarded. 

The lessons of the TEP School’s first year are that relying on only one person’s interpretation of best practices can thwart maximizing potential outcomes.  And when teachers are working 90 hours a week and significant student progress is not occurring it is a clear warning that something is terribly wrong.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:02 AM | Permalink

I received this message from a former colleague in an email this morning. "Did you see 60 minutes last night?  A school is paying teachers $125,000 per year and their student score are NOT going up!"

The title of the 60 minutes segment was "NYC charter school's $125,000 experiment: Does a non-unionized school that pays teachers a higher salary get better results?"

Background

Would teachers be willing to give up tenure and job security for a chance to earn a lot more money? "There's a school in New York City that's trying to prove just that. It's a bold new experiment in public education called "TEP," which stands for The Equity Project, a charter school that is publicly funded but privately run. It's offering its teachers $125,000 a year - more than double the national average." Zeke Vanderhoek is TEP's founder and principal.

"TEP aims to prove that attracting the best and brightest teachers and holding them accountable for results is the essential ingredient to a school's success. Could this school become a national model for the future of public education? That's the $125,000 question."

Demographics

TEP students are mostly African American and Hispanic, and almost all of them come from poor families. More than two-thirds of the students are reading below grade level when they get to TEP." There are currently 247 fifth and sixth graders and 15 teachers. That is a ratio of 16.5 students for every teacher.

Why pay teachers $125,000 a year?

"Because they're worth it, because teachers are the key, and if we can pay them this with the existing dollars, why aren't we doing it?" Vanderhoek replied.

"I don't think paying people more makes them a better teacher. You take a mediocre teacher, you double their salary, nothing's gonna change. So, if you wanna attract and retain talent, you have to pay for it. And that is ultimately how student achievement will be impacted," he added."

How are TEP teachers different?

According to the principal, "They're not. There are great teachers in almost every public school in the city. The difference is that they are often the exception, not the rule. So what we're trying to do is build a school where every teacher is a great teacher."

Student Engagement

Teachers must "produce some evidence that the students in their classrooms move from point A to point B," Vanderhoek explained. "In order for students to demonstrate that growth, they have to be into it. And so the teacher has to be able to engage students."

Closing the Achievement Gap

According to 60 Minutes, "the school's challenge is one that has bedeviled American educators for decades: how to get poor, minority, inner city kids to achieve at the same levels as kids from more affluent neighborhoods."

"The difference between a great teacher and a mediocre or poor teacher is several grade levels of achievement in a given year," Vanderhoek replied. "A school that focuses all of its energy and its resources on fantastic teaching can bridge the achievement gap."

Where does the money come from?

"There are no state-of-the-art facilities - classes take place in trailers. And the money that would go to pay for an assistant principal, reading specialist and other staff goes into teachers' salaries. But that means the teachers have to do those jobs as well."

Note: The report never indicated if the school requires students to apply, nor did the report indicate if the school served special education or ELL students.

Teacher Evaluation

Teachers are continuously evaluated by the principal and by each other.

Expectations of Teachers

According to one teacher, "The greatest benefit of working at TEP is that it's not okay to just be okay. And every lesson does need to be laser focused and super sharp so that you can get the best outcomes from it."

Students Say

"They actually care if we succeed and pass college."

"In my old school, I didn't really get that much attention and help with my class work, so I didn't do as well. Here, I'm getting As and Bs because the teachers stay on top of you and they actually help you when you need help," another said.

Teachers on Teaching

"You just have to believe in the kids. And I know that they can learn. And if there's a roadblock, if they're not getting it you know, look at me (teacher) first."

Tenure: If you have a pulse

Most charter schools like TEP are not unionized and don't offer teachers tenure.

"The idea that somebody could have a job for life no matter how they perform is not good for people in that job, much less for the students who have to suffer if that individual has gone downhill," Vanderhook said.

Asked if he thinks tenure should be abolished in general, Vanderhoek said, "Yes."

"If you have a pulse, you get tenure," former NYC Superintendent, Joel Klein said.

Can TEP be scaled up?

Klein says that traditional public schools can't follow the TEP model. Vanderhoek is able to make personnel decisions based on performance, but most schools can't because of tenure.

"It's virtually impossible to terminate an incompetent teacher. The process is so cumbersome that very few people will try. And so, as a result, we virtually get rid of no one for poor performance in the city," Klein said.

"In New York City more teachers have died while on the payroll than have been removed for cause. Over the past three years, out of 55,000 tenured teachers, only seven have been removed for poor performance."

Criteria for Evaluating Teachers

"Is the classroom managed in a way that supports instruction? Second, are the kids engaged? Are they on task? And third, is there evidence that students started at point A and grew to point B?" he explained.

Does More Mean Better?

Teachers indicated that it was not uncommon to put in 80 to 90 hours a week at TEP.

Disappointing Results

"When the fifth graders took the New York State math and reading exams, the results were disappointing. On average, other schools in the district scored better than TEP."

Note: There was no mention of the beginning and ending proficiency levels reached by the school.

It takes time!

"We don't have a magic wand. We're not gonna take kids who are scoring below grade level and bring them up in a year," Vanderhoek said.

"You're the head of the school, the principal. Why do you get to keep your job?" Vanderhoek was asked. "Ultimately to build an excellent organization is going to take time. And if that doesn't happen let's say four years from now, then I shouldn't keep my job," Vanderhoek said.

My Thoughts

- A school that has total control over hiring and firing and also controls which students attend and which students do not attend the school, in my mind, should show significant improvement. How can it not?

- Principal Vanderhoek is correct. It does take time to "build an excellent organization." The culture--attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and behaviors of the adults--must change and culture does not change in a year. TEP teachers were educated at the same colleges and universities as those teachers in other schools. So, why should they be any better or worse than any other teachers? The ultimate question is "Are the teachers better teachers for having taught in that school?" Are the students and teachers being set up for success? Does the culture of the school focus on student success or adult wants?

- There was a glaring omission from the schools criteria for teacher success--classroom management, student engagement, and improved test scores. Given the demographics of the school that consisted of large numbers of under-resourced students, the school staff should consider adding cross-content literacy instruction to their criteria for teacher success.

- The students are saying all the right things about their teachers. That combined with the fact that the teachers are working 80-90 hours a week and not getting results might indicate that they are not working on those things that raise student achievement and working longer will not produce better results. Activity does not equal success.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:27 PM | Permalink

When two highly respected teacher-leaders with over seventy years of combined teaching experience tell me something, I listen.

In my latest post, which was a follow up to Working Harder or Working Better, I quoted The Teacher Leader who stated, "Teaching successfully is easier and more satisfying but no less time consuming." I went on to argue that teachers and principals in high-performing schools are still working hard but they are getting a lot more done, and, even more importantly, they are feeling a lot better about their work. So, even if they are worker harder than their counterparts in other schools, it doesn't feel as though they are.

After reading the post, the teacher-leaders wrote me saying, "We both agree that the last paragraph of your latest post is "the essential philosophy that made you such an outstanding principal.  It is all about giving teachers the tools to succeed.  Keep spreading the gospel of Riddile!"

Trust me! If these seasoned pros say this paragraph is important, then school leaders should listen!

"The better students do, the better they do. The better teachers do, the better they feel about teaching. It is our job as school leaders to create a teacher-friendly environment and remove barriers in order to set our teachers up for success, and it is the job of the teachers to do the same for our students."

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:51 PM | Permalink

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day."

I recently posted a piece on Working Harder or Working Better, which responded to Bill Daggett's contention that teachers and principals in high-performing schools do not work any harder than teachers and principals in under-achieving schools. They simply work differently.

I asked The Teacher Leader, who taught math at our school, J.E.B. Stuart High School, for 40 years, if my memory was correct and here is what he said.

"I thought your blog was excellent and accurately captured what happened at Stuart High School during that time. The key message is that teaching successfully is easier and more satisfying but no less time consuming.  Finding strategies that work can be difficult, but they make the job so much more meaningful and the education so much better."

The Teacher Leader captures the essence of what I wanted to communicate. "Teaching successfully is easier and more satisfying but no less time consuming." In other words, we are still working hard but we are getting a lot more done, and, even more importantly, we are feeling a lot better about our work.

Here is another key point. When teachers are doing better that means that students are succeeding, or is it that when students are succeeding teachers are doing better and feeling better about what they do.

When students and teachers expect success, the positive, can-do feelings that emerge cannot help but enhance teacher-student relationships, which, in turn, improve student performance. In other words, success begets more success.

The better students do, the better they do. The better teachers do the better they feel about teaching. It is our job as school leaders to create a teacher-friendly environment and remove barriers in order to set our teachers up for success, and it is the job of the teachers to do the same for our students.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:10 PM | Permalink

This week I am blogging from the NASSP Conference in San Francisco.

"More is easy. Better is hard."

This morning I listened to Bill Daggett of ICLE talk about school improvement. Bill said something that I have heard him say many times before. In fact, I have used the same statement in many of my own presentations. What Bill said went something like this. "Teachers and principals in high-performing schools are not working harder than their counterparts in other schools, but they are working different."

I had to pause and recall our experience in moving from a good to a great school. I often describe the first three to five years as "dog years." Each year seemed like seven in terms of the stress and workload. However, the last four or five years were a lot different.

It seemed like we were working harder in the early years mainly because we were doing so much experimentation. We were trying to figure out a school wide approach to improving literacy and how to turn around our Algebra I performance. We were inventing things that no one else had done before. We were pioneers or "edunauts" as I called education improvers.

We were changing on a daily basis and that is stressful, but stressful doesn't mean working harder. It just seemed that way. Our teachers were already arriving early and leaving late and that never changed. From my perspective, I could not ask any of them to work harder.

We needed to get better and better is harder. What did change was that we were reaching "tipping points" and we started to see things change. We were actually making progress.

Our students were improving dramatically and it seemed like it happened in an instant. We would work and work and hope that we were doing the right thing. Then, all of a sudden, we would see improvement. We couldn't point to the exact moment when all the students were in class on time, or when all the teachers were teaching bell-to-bell, or when our reading performance and algebra achievement jumped, but it happened, and the positive changes began to gain momentum. Success became contagious.

I liken the school improvement process to an airplane taking off and eventually reaching cruising altitude. A lot of energy is expended in the takeoff and the climb to the desired altitude. However, at a point the plane reaches altitude and seems to ease off. Although the plane continues to expend energy, it seems to be taking less effort.

We never stopped working hard, but we were working in a different way, and different is hard, at least at first.

As we moved through the stages of change from forming, storming, norming on the way to performing, we were working just as hard but we were enjoying it more, and here is the key. We were making progress. We were making a difference with our students, and that made us even more determined. We simply refused to go back to the way it used to be, because the way it was was simply too much fun, and because we were having fun, everything seemed to be much easier.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:25 PM | Permalink

This week I am blogging from the NASSP Conference in San Francisco.

I used to say, "show me the data." However, it has gotten to the point that I no longer need to look at a school's data to know that a school is thriving or struggling. I can simply listen to what the staff of the school talks about. High-performing schools talk about students and how they are meeting their needs. Struggling schools talk about adult wants and adult needs.

Student-Focused

After attending three School Showcase presentations this morning it became crystal clear to me that schools serving large numbers under-resourced students must have a student-focused obsession, and that obsession must relate to the specific needs of the population that the school serves.

The three schools all served under-resourced students. However, the three high schools varied in size, had very different demographics, and were located in states with very different economics and education policies. The context in which these schools operated was about as different as they could possibly be.

Although they were very different in appearance, the three schools had a lot in common. They each had a laser-like focus on student success that bordered on an obsession. In fact, these three schools were so obsessed with student success that they were willing to overcome any obstacle that got in their way.

Literacy: Brockton High School (MA) is a large (4,350) urban high school that has focused on raising the literacy--reading, writing, thinking, discussing--levels of ALL students, particularly its large ELL population. Principal, Susan Szachowicz, and a "handful of fellow teachers" organized a school wide campaign that brought reading and writing lessons into every class in all subjects, including gym. According to a New York Times article, Brockton's literacy-for-all success has defied the "small is better orthodoxy" proving that any school can beat the odds and raise student performance.

Attendance: The audience turned to each other with looks of disbelief when the staff of Arroyo High School (CA) posted their three-year attendance figures. Arroyo's average daily attendance was well over 96%. For a large, high-poverty, high minority, urban high school, 96% is phenomenal. However, I could see the enthusiasm abate as the staff spent about twenty minutes describing all the initiatives the school used to improve attendance. As I have emphasized over and over again, improving student attendance is all about hard work and will power, and the Arroyo staff have plenty of both. Arroyo's success formula is simple. Get the students to attend school every day and make sure that the students succeed.

Course Failure: The presentation began with a simple but very effective slide that pointed out that, over a three-year period, Barberton (OH) High School had reduced course failures from over 2,500 to 350. The staff at Barberton must have read Bob Balfanz's dropout research that points out that course failure is one of the best indicators of dropping out of school. Admittedly, a school could reduce failures by simply lowering standards. This was not the case at Barberton, where the focus was clear and no obstacle too big to overcome. The staff used small learning communities, flexible scheduling, a unique master schedule, student-led conferences, and an advisory program among other strategies to significantly improve student performance.

The Bottom Line

These three schools demonstrate that there are no quick fixes. Even though these schools shared a student-focused obsession it took years of hard work, dedication, determination, and sheer will power to realize success. However, their obvious pride and sense of accomplishment make it obvious that the effort was all worth it.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:30 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

There are few lightning rods in the educational landscape of 2011 that rival the debate on the role of testing in the evaluation of student, teacher and school performance.  However, another perspective on this topic was addressed in a recent Mel Riddile post which discussed research indicating that frequent testing had a positive impact on learning.

According to Dr. Riddile, “A recent study summarized in Science magazine and reported in a New York Times article titled To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test may be a key to unlocking some keys to the teaching and learning process.”  This discussion does not concern the end-of-course barrier exams that are the focal point of most educational conversations.  The research revolves around the use of testing within a teacher’s daily lesson planning.  The study found “practicing retrieval produces greater gains in meaningful learning than elaborate studying.”  As Dr. Riddile notes, “In other words, the simple act of taking a test may improve learning better than any other studying technique including note taking and concept mapping.”

Perhaps the most compelling conclusion noted revolved around the retention of information.  “The Times article went on to say, The research, published online Thursday in the journal Science, found that students who read a passage, then took a test asking them to recall what they had read, retained about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods. One of those methods — repeatedly studying the material — is familiar to legions of students who cram before exams. The other — having students draw detailed diagrams documenting what they are learning — is prized by many teachers because it forces students to make connections among facts.”

The view from the classroom

For forty years I taught high school mathematics.  For the last thirty-eight I employed a teaching technique that paralleled the views expressed in those studies.  Whether the subject was General Math, Algebra 1, Algebra 2 or Pre-calculus I created a classroom strategy that was clearly focused on the concept of frequent and consistent testing.   It was a plan that was simple and direct. 

The centerpiece of the plan

Every class period included a quiz.  It always contained relatively simple questions that could be completed in ten to fifteen minutes.  Questions would be graded on a “right or wrong” basis with little partial credit involved.  It would be the math equivalent of a short-answer, fill-in-the-blanks question.  As the previously noted research found, the regular testing of information led to a number of extremely important outcomes.  Not only did the students retain the material better, they were also clearly aware of their academic status in the class.   A daily evaluation of one’s performance means no one is surprised by their ultimate success or failure.  The teacher also benefits from having a barometer of student learning in every class period.   A quiz that results in a significant number of poor grades requires more work on the topic.  One that indicates overall comprehension allows an educator to move forward with confidence.  Since it is critical that these papers be returned the next class meeting, they must be easy to grade.  The best utilization of time for the teacher is to be able to grade one set of papers while the next class is taking their quiz. 

A systematic approach

My overall classroom strategy was to introduce every topic in three consecutive classes.  The daily quiz was a key component of that plan.  This approach was used regardless of the level of the math or whether the school utilized a block or non-block schedule.  On day 1 a topic would be presented to the students.  An explanation of the concept would be followed by examples and then homework would be assigned to give the students practice.  Day 2 would begin with a review of the homework.  After that review was completed and all questions were answered, a quiz would be given.  Designed to cover this one concept, it was based on questions similar to those found on the homework.  On day 3 the quiz would be returned and reviewed.  

This philosophy was explained in detail to the students on the first day of school.  A typical class would be divided into four segments.  Part one was returning the quiz from the previous session and discussing any questions.  The next segment was reviewing the homework assignment.  Often a worksheet would follow to ensure understanding.  At the conclusion of that conversation the class was given a quiz.  The fourth and final element of the period was devoted to the next topic which would be then practiced in a homework assignment. The next class would be structured in the same manner.   By following this schedule every topic was discussed in three consecutive classes.

It sounds so boring

Obviously, such a highly-structured approach could be a formula for boredom.  Though the basic plan never changed, the challenge for the teacher was to create variety within the segments.  On some occasions I would have my “A” students write the quiz solutions on the board.  An “A” student was anyone who received a grade of “A” on that particular quiz.  Students quickly perceived this opportunity as an “honor” and since all students at one time or another would have a perfect paper I would take care throughout the year to have as many different students as possible receive this recognition.  It was stunning to watch otherwise sophisticated 18-year-olds become giddy when they had a chance to demonstrate their math prowess.  On other occasions, I would personally focus on any problem that was missed by a significant number of students. 

The review of the homework was also approached in different ways.  Volunteers would be solicited on some occasions; other times students were assigned problems.  A third option would have me do the work.  The practice worksheets could be presented as individual work, group projects, contests, or puzzles.  The outcome was always the same—practice—but the methods would vary from day to day. 

The introduction of the new topic would also be open to a variety of educational strategies.  Lecture, group discovery, question-answer and any other method available would be employed on different occasions.

Students love structure

People are most comfortable when they have a familiar routine.  When students feel comfortable in a class they become more confident.  By the end of the first week of school, my students understood the process and knew what to expect each day.  There were no surprises.   At the end of every year I would give my students the opportunity to complete an anonymous evaluation of the course.  When asked for the aspect that contributed the most to their success, the daily quiz was selected more often than all of the other options combined. 

The sincerest form of flattery

Over the course of my career a number of teachers adopted my “daily quiz” approach to teaching.  These individuals taught in courses all across the curriculum.  Many reported not only improved learning but also better communication in terms of student performance.  My wife, an associate Biology professor at a junior college, has successfully used the same strategy with her students. 

Clearly from my perspective those research studies are truly on to something.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:28 AM | Permalink

According to Dean Fixen, co-director of the National Implementation Network, the federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program is doomed to fail. SIG won't fail because the program is a bad idea. SIG will fail because the improvements will never be properly implemented. Even though the "intentions are great, the ultimate execution falls flat."

According to Fixen, schools have a 95 percent chance of failure when they use the standard school improvement approach:

1. Attempt too many initiatives.

2. Attempt to do too many things in too short a period of time.

3. Choose the latest popular strategies, even if those strategies have nothing to do with the actual needs of the students.

3. Provide one-shot training.

4. Pay little attention to "on-the-spot practice during training."

5. Fail to provide adequate targeted, follow-up coaching.

Fixen goes on to explain that "schools feel pressured to quickly hire more staff and pile on new evidence-based interventions. According to the data on implementation, those are pretty much the wrong things to do. It’s our tendency to add more things in hopes that we’ll find the right combination that will lead to a better outcome.”

A friend of mine recently lamented, "I told them (school) to keep it simple, but they keep adding more things." "Positive change is more likely in a turnaround school when you simplify the number of initiatives you take on and do a bang-up job implementing them, Fixsen said. A school reform grant program that emphasizes innovation without adequate implementation support is like attempting to drive a car without any gasoline in it, Fixsen added."

What or How?

In our obsession with the search for quick fixes and magic bullets we spend virtually all of our time deciding on the "what" and very little time on the "how" of school improvement. Ironically, we pay little or no attention to what has been identified as the major weakness of school reform over the past fifty years--implementation.

Fixsen points out that "The education field continues to reinvent a misshapen wheel, and the problem is not a lack of well-meaning, competent educators or best practices, he said. Rather, it’s that too few educators and policymakers know the basics of effective implementation." We don't need more research and more ideas we need to do a better job of implementing what we already have.

It's not just schools

Education is not the only field with implementation problems. Implementation "is the huge missing link in education and all of human services," Fixsen said. "We are as a human race just finding this stuff out. These are global issues."

Recommendations for School Leaders:

1. Choose a small number of major initiatives. I prefer two or three. The operative word here is "major." A school may have a number of strategies and practices supporting a major initiative. For example, a school wide literacy initiative may include a literacy council, diagnostic assessments, and cross-curricular vocabulary instruction.

2. Work with the "willing." Involve those staff members who have already have skills or an interest in a specific initiative. Let them test out possible approaches.

3. Grow leaders - Unless a school wide initiative has visible teacher leadership, it will probably fail.

4. Think both short-term and long-term. Big changes usually mean a shift in the school culture and will probably take years (3-5) to become permanent. However, it is important to realize some quick-wins early in the process. Vocabulary instruction may be a way to help students in the short-run, while building the collective capacity of the entire staff to integrate literacy into daily instruction may be the long-term approach.

5. Professional development should be consistent, ongoing, and job-imbedded. Think in terms of a multi-year training schedule. Build teacher participation and peer observation into your professional development plan.

6. Constantly monitor and measure everything you do to ensure fidelity of implementation--are we doing what we say we are doing and are we doing it the right way?

7. Insist upon fidelity. Refuse to move on to the next stage until you have successfully implemented the current strategies.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:10 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

I have always believed that great coaching and great teaching are interchangeable commodities.   This conviction was fortified when I read the story of a professor of Russian at Indiana University.  After watching basketball practice led by Bobby Knight in the school’s field house he turned to a colleague and said, “I just witnessed the finest teaching on this campus.” 

The life of another marvelous teacher/coach, Vince Lombardi, has been chronicled in an    HBO sports documentary “Lombardi”.  This riveting film provides important insights into a powerful battle plan for success in both academics and athletics.  Lombardi’s talents as a coach were clearly established by his record.  He inherited a team in Green Bay that had only one victory the previous season and had not had a winning record in more than a decade.  His initial season reversed that trend with seven wins and only five losses.  In the next eight he won five world championships.  One recurring theme throughout the discussion of his remarkable success on the football field was that Lombardi’s greatest strength was as a teacher.  His former players spoke with reverence of how this man had taught them to be both better players and better people. 

In the beginning

His skills as an educator and coach began at the high school level.  Lombardi began his career at a small Catholic school with an enrollment of 300.  The 26-year old taught Latin, Chemistry and Physics.   One of his former students recalled, “He was driven.  He was determined that every one of us would learn.  For the slower students he showed great patience. He took whatever time was necessary to make sure they would understand.  He demanded that we do our best.”  (Lombardi’s fiery personality on the field was also present in the classroom.  The same student related in vivid detail an incident that had occurred more than 60 years ago.  He recounted the story of how the teacher/coach threw an eraser at a girl who was talking in the back of the room.  He added that discipline was no longer a problem after that event.)

A similarly aggressive approach was taken on the football field.  Though the school was significantly smaller than the others in its conference, Lombardi insisted that his team could be better than their opponents.  “Every one of the other teams seemed to be at least a head taller than all of us,” related a former player.  “But somehow he convinced us that it didn’t matter.  He made us believe we could do anything.”  Playing against schools with enrollments ten times as large, his teams won six championships in eight years.  At one point they won 32 games in a row.

As I watched this story unfold it was quickly apparent how appropriate the methods utilized by Lombardi in his coaching would be in creating academic success.  His words were equally powerful on the field or in the classroom.

 “I can learn anything if I try.”

 Despite his great success in football, perhaps Lombardi’s most remarkable achievement occurred with the school’s basketball team.  Though he had never played the game, when there was a coaching vacancy, he accepted the challenge.  Armed with a book he had secured from the library on how to coach basketball, he began a second coaching adventure.  Combining his educational skills, motivational tools, and a daily rereading of the various chapters he found most appropriate, he was soon the leader of another championship team.  His lack of experience or knowledge of the sport was no match for his talents as a teacher.  This episode demonstrates how important it is to effectively convey information as an educator.  All teachers need to be equipped with the ability to communicate their subject matter and a vision of what their students need to know in order to succeed.  

 “You cannot coach them what they have not been taught.”

Every great teacher or coach understands that without a solid grounding in the fundamentals improvement cannot be attained.  Lombardi realized that he could not expect his players to excel until they understood the basics of everything he was trying to achieve.  It was reminiscent of another great coach and teacher UCLA’s John Wooden.  Wooden began the first practice of every season with a detailed lecture on the correct way to tie one’s shoelaces.  Wooden knew this speech was a source of amusement for his players many of whom had heard it for three or four years.  But he also knew that a player who had blisters on his feet was of little value. 

The same philosophy is required in education. Learning good study skills are just as important to academic success as the three-point stance in football or properly tying your sneakers.  Without a strong foundation in Algebra 1, reading, the scientific method, the first year of a language, or grammar, all subsequent courses will suffer. 

“Always seek perfection.  You will never attain it, but if you try you may pass excellence along the way.”

No detail is too small or unimportant.  Lombardi’s favorite play was his “power sweep.”  John Madden recalled a coaching seminar he attended that featured a lecture by Lombardi on the play.  “I went in there cocky thinking I knew everything there was to know about football,” reflected Madden who was a young assistant at the time, “and he spent eight hours talking about this one play.  He talked for four hours, took a break and came back and talked four more.”  Madden shook his head.  “I realized then that I actually knew nothing about football.”

Lombardi, an undersized offensive lineman at Fordham University who was immortalized as one of the “seven blocks of granite”, understood that he was an imperfect man both as a person and as an athlete.  What he also realized was that the sincere pursuit of perfection would result in continual improvement and ultimately success.  Consequently a winning season was not his goal as a coach.  A championship was always his ultimate objective.  As his teams worked toward achieving that aim, victories would follow.  The same strategy needs to be employed in teaching.   When expectations are low, minimal success will result.  Only when educators have the highest of expectations for their students combined with rigor to match will academic success be maximized. 

 “Winning is everything.  Anything else is losing.”

In later life Lombardi regretted making this comment.  He clarified that what he really meant was that “if someone gives any endeavor every fiber of their being, they can consider themselves a winner.”   If the similar demands were placed on our educators and students would not the results in our schools be the same as the Packers?  Should we ask anything less?

The formula is always the same

Vince Lombardi was not the first coach to win multiple championships nor would he be the last.  He did not invent a strategy that guaranteed victory.  What he did do was build a clear vision of what factors were the keys to success.    The plan was remarkable in its simplicity.  He only concerned himself with those aspects he could control.  He could not make his players inherently better athletes.  Instead, he stressed that every player was drilled on the fundamentals, knew his responsibilities, gave his maximal effort at every opportunity and understood that what was best for the team was what was best for him as well.  Lombardi would not allow for compromise on these beliefs or tolerate shortcuts to make the path less difficult.  He sought perfection and found excellence at almost every turn. 

Is this a plan that would work equally well for education?  Vince Lombardi’s record of success should make the answer to that question obvious.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:30 AM | Permalink

Several years ago the College Board announced a dramatic departure from past procedures and began requiring Advanced Placement (AP) teachers to submit a syllabus for approval. I viewed this as an attempt by the College Board to protect both it good name and brand. Up to that point, a course could be called AP, but the content of the course was strictly up to the discretion of the teacher. In theory, the AP course was designed to prepare students to take an AP exam. However, some schools were gaming the system by "offering more AP courses," but, in reality, many of the students enrolled in those courses never sat for the exams. Of those who did take the exams, the national rate of students scoring a passing grade of 3, 4, or 5 plummeted to approximately sixteen percent.

I remarked at the time the AP was trying to look more like the International Baccalaureate (IB), and I predicted that the trend would continue to intensify in the near future. According to the New York Times, that is precisely what is happening and I view this as a positive trend that will dramatically change the quality of the AP courses and take much of the guesswork out of the process for both teachers and students. However, these changes will stress out veteran AP teachers, who have become accustomed to doing their own thing. This means problems for school leaders.

Some of the changes, which take effect in 2012 and 2013 include:

• Reductions in the amount of material that teachers need to teach and that students need to know for the tests
• Providing a curriculum framework for what courses should look like
• A move away from memorization to a focus on bigger concepts and more analytic thinking
• A move away from multiple-choice responses to an emphasis on thinking and written expression
• More hands-on activities and experiments intended to help students think more
• An emphasis on going into greater depth on fewer topics, allowing students to "experience problem-solving, controversies and the subtleties of scholarly investigation.”

Instead of drawing my own conclusions about these changes in philosophy, I practiced what I frequently preach. I asked an expert teacher. In this case, I happen to know a master biology teacher who has a unique perspective. Sherry Singer actually taught AP Biology for approximately fourteen years and then switched to IB Biology for another fourteen years. In here own words, here is Sherry's take on the changes.

"Having taught both AP (Advanced Placement) and IB (International Baccalaureate), it is very clear to me what is happening.  The AP is moving more and more to the IB model.  This is a very good trend in my view. 
When I used to teach AP (and it sounds as if it hasn't changed very much if at all), I was frustrated by the amount of information that was to be taught in one year.  It necessitated students coming in before or after school, during lunch or on Saturdays just to meet the basic requirements of the course.  I could really empathize with the teacher who said that she hoped that she could retire her "swift marches through the organ of the day".  They only required 12 labs but we needed several days each to do them well and even at that, we never really had time to discuss the results or what could have been done to improve the lab.  The tests were largely multiple choice and the essay questions were so broad that it was difficult to determine exactly what the AP was looking for in an answer.
The first and most important difference with IB was that I could have two years.  (Something that the AP still apparently does not permit.)  What a joy to be able to have the time to perform labs well and actually discuss the results.  The IB requires laboratory work but the instructor can choose which labs will be performed and they must be at least partially developed by the student.  In other words, the student actually does research rather than performing a canned lab that was developed by a university professor.  Obviously, the benefits to the students working in this kind of laboratory situation where problem solving was critical transformed lab days for me and my students.  From the article, it sounds like the AP is going in this direction by having students develop their own hypotheses and figure out how to test them - very IB!
The other change that was mentioned was that they are going to give teachers a detailed syllabus stating what topics need to be taught and which can be left out.  If they do as good a job as the IB, this should be a great help to AP teachers.  I found the IB syllabus to be a huge help when designing my course.  (In fact I used to copy the IB syllabus and give it to the students to help them study for the exam.) If a topic, term or concept was not in the syllabus it was NEVER on the IB exam.  It allows teachers to have more time to develop concepts in depth.  I remember the first few years that I taught IB, luxuriating in the extra time to do labs well and have meaningful, in-depth discussions with students without feeling the clock ticking behind me. 
Finally, the IB tests were only 40 multiple-choice questions.  The other questions were data-based or essay.  The data-based questions often dealt with data that the students had never encountered before. This was done by design and was intended to help the graders determine which students could take their knowledge of biology and make sense out of totally new data - something that scientists have to do every day.  The third type of question was essay.  But the essays were always divided into sub-headings, which helped the students organize their answers and ensured that they delivered the information that the test designers were looking for." 

What school leaders should consider

• The changes in AP Biology and other science courses courses will require appropriately equipped labs, which, in tight budget times, may be difficult to implement.
• "Another concern is how well teachers — across the full range of A.P. subjects — will adjust to an approach that will require them to give up some control and let the students dictate more about where the class discussions go." Like IB, these changes in AP will require a considerable amount of professional development. As Sherry Singer once told me, "We are going to have to totally change the way we teach science."
• Both AP and the new Common Core assessments will require more writing by our students, which is known weakness in most high schools. We cannot wait until students take their first AP course to begin emphasizing writing skills. Ditto for critical thinking skills.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:59 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

In a recent article in the “Washington Post”, Jay Mathews lamented his inability to obtain accurate information concerning the number of discipline referrals that were being issued in various school districts.  He discovered that for public relations purposes many systems refused to divulge such data.  He asked Mel Riddile for advice on how to obtain the information.  The response was simple—“Ask the teachers. They are the ones who can tell you what the discipline is like in a school.”

It seems so simple and yet…

Obtaining accurate information does not have to be complicated.   To find out what it is like to be a baggage handler, ask a person who handles baggage not a passenger on the plane.  When seeking a good recipe for chili, query an individual who has successfully cooked the dish not the one who has tasted it.  If the goal is to understand how to be a successful high school principal, ask Mel Riddile whose resume clearly demonstrates he had effectively led a high school for more than a decade.  And to gauge the educational environment at a school, talk to the teachers.

But while this approach may appear to be both prudent and logical it is not always the method utilized in making educational decisions. Too many of the people who make critical choices concerning schools are using the same stonewalling tactics that frustrated Mr. Mathews.

Why not go to the source?

Why then, if accurate, firsthand information comes from the source, are teachers often the last group consulted?  One cannot help but hypothesize that a truthful, honest reaction may not be the desired one.  Solving problems can be difficult and time consuming.

Early in his tenure as a principal Mel began using monthly department chair meetings as a forum for gathering information.  The responses that he received may have created additional work for his staff but they helped to mold more effective educational philosophies in the building.    For example, the head of the science department once informed him that her department could not maximize student performance until attendance improved, facilities were updated (the laboratories had not been renovated since the school opened 37 years earlier) and the students could read at or above grade level.  To varying degrees the other chairs agreed with her assessment.  Plans were soon implemented that in time would directly address the three issues.

A geometry teacher lamented to me that she could not get her weak students to come after school for the thirty minutes of extra help that could make the difference between passing and failing.  Not surprisingly she had discovered that the lure of a better grade was not sufficient motivation to outweigh the other more attractive options available to students at the conclusion of a day. In many schools such concerns are directed back at the teacher with the implication that new strategies are needed to better motivate their students.  But this query became the focal point of a wide-ranging conversation that was dominated by a group of classroom teachers—the department chairs.  The result was a school-wide remediation program involving students, teachers and administrators in a coordinated and effective plan that that resulted in significant student improvement.

A different kind of leadership model

Mutually emboldened by these successes Mel and the staff began a collaborative effort to reconstruct many of the other existing policies within the school.  The ordering of faculty supplies was an excellent example of this approach.  For decades every teacher had been given a specific amount of money to spend in the spring on classroom needs for the upcoming school year.  The negative ramifications of this system were legendary.  Faced with a one-time only opportunity to order, teachers were determined to spend all of their allotted money and then hoard materials in the fear that they would run out.  The workroom grumbling was rampant throughout the year.  With strong teacher input, a new method was designed based on the tenets of trust and necessity.  Throughout the year teachers could order what they needed when they needed it.  The mechanism was to complete a purchase order and submit it to their department chair, who would then consolidate items when appropriate and pass it on to the finance officer.   The results were astounding.  The school spent less money overall; teachers openly shared supplies; and staff morale soared.  Instead of being doled out an “allowance” like an adolescent, teachers were treated like professionals and responded in a similar manner.   

The same collaborative model was used in a variety of other situations.  The in-service week prior to the beginning of the year had always been an emotional tug-of-war between the teaching and administrative staffs.  A survey was conducted which indicated that many of the teachers had to spend significant amounts of personal time on weekends and evenings to prepare for the first day of classes.  With this data in hand and a list of the district’s expectations for the week, a committee of teachers was convened that developed a plan that met the needs of all involved. 

The formula is straightforward

Teachers are the only staff members in the building that are in the front-lines of educating students day in and day out. Collecting their input is essential to truly resolving educational problems in a building.  It is an approach that may take a few more minutes at the outset, but the solutions generated are guaranteed to improve both teacher and administrator morale.  Why?  Only when problems are correctly identified by the people who are experiencing them, can they be eliminated.  Collaborative problem solving between administrators and teachers makes sense because it works.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 05:17 PM | Permalink

What impact will the recent changes proposed in the definition of a "highly qualified" teacher, which would allow those in alternative teacher preparation programs to be labeled as "highly qualified," have on the ability of schools, particularly high-poverty, under-resourced schools, to significantly improve student performance? How do school leaders feel about Congress making it easier to become a teacher? Will this change improve the supply of teachers and make it easier for principals in some smaller, more rural areas to recruit and hire teachers?

A friend of mine once told me that I was wrong about school improvement. "All we need to do is hire great teachers and our problems are solved," he said. Since he had never worked in a school, I had to remind him of what happened in the real world. First, great teachers aren't born. Teachers become great through the combination of ability and years of preparation and a lot of hard work. Second, teaching is a profession. As is the case in any profession, teachers are expected to grow and improve throughout their careers. Third, many new teachers have had only a few weeks of actual classroom experience. They need a lot of support early in their careers. Finally, the principal plays an important role in both the short-term and long-term growth of a new teacher and whether that teacher will remain in the profession.

The best teach the neediest

Some object to the use of poor and minority schools as the training grounds for interns, because "alternate route trainees are disproportionately concentrated in low-income, high minority schools," which turn into "exclusive training grounds" for alternative route trainees, who "learn on poor peoples' children--and then move on."

Schools need more experienced, better trained, and more skilled teachers. This is particularly true in under-resourced, high-poverty schools that typically end up with the least experienced teachers and ultimately have the highest teacher and principal turnover.

Instead of saying that "anyone can teach," we need to treat teaching as a true profession. We need to shift the culture away from downgrading teaching, blaming teachers, and encouraging the firing of teachers.

Just as the Peace Corp was a part of an overall effort to improve the economies of third-world countries, programs like Teach for America (TFA) are a part of a solution to help struggling, high-poverty schools. They are short-term fixes to long-term problems. Lowering the requirements for teachers only serves to preserve the status quo.

In the long-run we need real systemic changes including:

• Elevating the status of the teaching profession
• Improving the quality of the applicant pool by encouraging top students to enter education
• Enhancing the quality of teacher preparation programs
• Improving professional development
• Improving teacher compensation
• Improving working conditions

Thanks, but no thanks!

From a principal's perspective, increasing the pool of prospective teachers solved a short-term problem. I could fill hard-to-fill vacancies. However, in the long-run that convenience turned into a curse. I learned the hard way that, even if the alternative route teachers stayed long enough, it took a lot more work to get those people up to speed. In the meantime, their students had much lower success rates.

Schools will never exceed the quality of the teachers. Lowering the requirements to teach might improve the quantity of teachers but the quality will suffer and so too will student performance.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:05 AM | Permalink

"There are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics."--Mark Twain

The release of the 2009 PISA results this past week has created quite a stir and has provided ample fodder for public school bashers and doomsayers who further their own philosophical and profit-motivated agendas by painting all public schools as failing. For whatever reason, these so-called experts, many of whom have had little or no actual exposure to public schools, refuse to paint an accurate picture of the state of education.

Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, should be providing the nation with a proper vision and focus for public education. He knows our challenges all too well. He confirmed that he gets it when he recently wrote me saying, "We must build a culture nationally where great educators ... choose to work with children and communities who need the most help." I believe his message is sincere and heartfelt and it is spot on. However, overstating a problem in order to increase the sense of urgency around school improvement is just as bad as understating the problem.

This week, Duncan had a golden opportunity to use the PISA results to provide focus for our education efforts and to point us in the right direction. Instead, he dug himself deeper into the pseudo-reformers' hole--more charter schools, more reliance on competition and free-market strategies, more testing, more use of test scores to evaluate teachers, more firing of principals and teachers, more closing of low-scoring schools--when he said, "the PISA scores released this past Tuesday were "a massive wake-up call," because the scores show American students holding relatively steady in the middle of the pack of the developed nations taking the international exam.

There is, however, someone who recognizes that the data is being misinterpreted.  NEAToday published remarks from National Association of Secondary School Principals Executive Director, Dr. Gerald N. Tirozzi, that have taken "a closer look at how the U.S. reading scores on PISA compared with the rest of the world’s, overlaying it with the statistics on how many of the tested students are in the government’s free and reduced lunch program for students below the poverty line." Tirozzi pointed out, “Once again, we’re reminded that students in poverty require intensive supports to break past a condition that formal schooling alone cannot overcome.” Tirozzi demonstrates the correlation between socio-economic status and reading by presenting the PISA scores in terms of individual American schools and poverty.  While the overall PISA rankings ignore such differences in the tested schools, when groupings based on the rate of free and reduced lunch are created, a direct relationship is established.

With strong evidence that increased poverty results in lower PISA scores the next question to be asked is what are the poverty rates of the countries being tested?  (Listed below are the countries that were tested by PISA along with available poverty rates. Some nations like Korea do not report poverty rates.)

Leveling the playing field

A more accurate assessment of the performance of U.S. students would be obtained by comparing the scores of American schools with comparable poverty rates to those of other countries.

Schools in the United States with less than a 10% poverty rate had a PISA score of 551.  When compared to the ten countries with similar poverty numbers, that score ranked first. 

In the next category (10-24.9%) the U.S. average of 527 placed first out of the ten comparable nations. 

For the remaining U.S. schools, their poverty rates over 25% far exceed any other country tested.  However, when the U.S. average of 502 for poverty rates between 25-49.9% is compared with other countries it is still in the upper half of the scores.

Mathematically Speaking

The results of the latest PISA testing should raise serious concerns.  However, the overall ranking of 14th in reading is not the reason to be concerned. The problem is not as much with our educational system as it is with our high poverty rates. The real crisis is the level of poverty in too many of our schools and the relationship between poverty and student achievement. Our lowest achieving schools are the most under-resourced schools with the highest number of disadvantaged students. We cannot treat these schools in the same way that we would schools in more advantaged neighborhoods or we will continue to get the same results. The PISA results point out that the U.S. is not alone in facing the challenge of raising the performance of disadvantaged students.

Additional observations from PISA results:

·      Shanghai, China topped the list with 556 but is not included in this analysis because Shanghai is a city not a country and because only 35% of Chinese students ever enter high school and because "when you spend all your time preparing for tests, and when students are selected based on their test-taking abilities, you get outstanding test scores."

·      Of all the nations participating in the PISA assessment, the U.S. has, by far, the largest number of students living in poverty--21.7%. The next closest nations in terms of poverty levels are the United Kingdom and New Zealand have poverty rates that are 75% of ours.

·      U.S. students in schools with 10% or less poverty are number one country in the world.

·      U.S. students in schools with 10-24.9% poverty are third behind Korea, and Finland.

·      U.S. students in schools with 25-50% poverty are tenth in the world.

·      U.S. students in schools with greater than 50% poverty are near the bottom.

·      There were other surprises. Germany with less than half our poverty, scored below the U.S. as did France with less than a third our poverty and Sweden with a low 3.6% poverty rate.

·      Having recently listened to Sir Michael Barber talk about the amazing progress of the reforms in the United Kingdom, I was absolutely shocked to see that the UK, with 25% less poverty, scored below the U.S. average.

The Real Meaning of PISA: It's Poverty Not Stupid

If the so-called experts would have honestly and responsibly reported the PISA results, we might now be on the road to responsible school improvement instead continuing down the road of "reform de jour."

President Bill Clinton is famous for his campaign slogan, "It's the economy stupid!" When it comes to student achievement and school improvement, it's poverty not stupid! Researchers report that perhaps the only true linear relationship in the social sciences is the relationship between poverty and student performance. While there is no relationship between poverty and ability, the relationship between poverty and achievement is almost foolproof. To deny that poverty is a factor to be overcome as opposed to an excuse is to deny the reality that all educators, human services workers, law enforcement officers, medical professionals and religious clergy know and have known for years.

PISA reports average scores. The problem is that the U.S. is not average. While the U.S. is the top country in global competitiveness, we also have the highest percentage of students living in poverty and, regretfully, poverty impacts test scores.

To Secretary Duncan, poverty is not an issue that educators must address. At least he won't admit it in public. Apparently, he wants to take away all the excuses from teachers and principals. When I met with Duncan, I asked him if he had read the book or seen the movie, Blind Side. He indicated that he had and that he had enjoyed it very much. I reminded him of the pride and sense of accomplishment felt by the teachers in the private school attended by Michael Oher. In their minds, they had performed a miracle. I pointed out that, in high-poverty schools, a Michael Oher is the average student. In schools like ours we have hundreds of students like Michael Oher who depend on our school for everything including food, clothing, and emotional support.

The Bottom Line

School improvement is not an event. It is an ongoing process that has no end. As a principal, parents and community members would repeatedly ask me, "When can we stop our comprehensive school-wide literacy initiative? I would answer, "We will stop emphasizing reading, writing, thinking and speaking when our parents repeatedly complain that their children are reading too fast with comprehension that is too high and when our students' writing skills are so superior that they are regularly winning Pulitzers and other literary awards." Smiles would erupt throughout the audience. They got it. They understood that literacy skills can always be improved and so can our schools.

There are three compelling reasons why we must improve our schools:

1. We have a moral and ethical obligation to provide every student with the best education, the kind of education that we would want for our own children.
2. In a knowledge economy, the country with the best-educated populace will have the highest standard of living.
3. Every dropout as well as every graduate who is not prepared for at least some post-secondary education and training is and will continue to be an economic and social burden on their local community and on this nation for their entire life.

The challenge of ensuring that each and every student is a life-long learner prepared to contribute in a global community is daunting enough. We don't need more hyperbole, particularly from those education insiders who should know better. For those of us who are deeply committed to improving the performance of every student, this rhetoric is counterproductive because it seriously erodes our ability to hire teachers, obtain resources, and gain the confidence and support of our communities.

We count on our leaders to provide focus and direction. Sadly, our education leaders don't trust us enough to tell us the truth. The problem is that we will never solve a problem that our leaders refuse to admit even exists. The comparison of PISA scores by poverty clearly identifies our strengths and challenges as a nation. Our schools with less than 50% poverty) are some of the best in the world. Our extremely high-poverty schools, with over 50% poverty, are among the poorest performing internationally.

Instead of labeling all schools as failing, we must find a way to raise the performance of our students in under-resourced schools. Instead of looking to low-poverty countries like Finland for direction, we should be looking to take what we already know about educating students in high-performing, high-poverty schools like our Breakthrough Schools and scaling up their successes across the nation. We continually look for gold in other countries when, all along, we are sitting on Acres of Diamonds.

Truthfully, you and I know all too well that Secretary Duncan, who led schools in Chicago, is aware of the relationship between poverty and student achievement, but he doesn't trust us enough to tell us the truth. He is afraid that we will use poverty as an excuse and that we will forget about our disadvantaged students. Ironically, by not acknowledging poverty as a challenge to be overcome, Duncan is forgetting about our disadvantaged students. Duncan needs to deliver the message that all our students deserve not only access to an education, but access to an excellent education. He needs to repeatedly remind us that, when it comes to school improvement, it's poverty not stupid.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In difficult economic times the poorest and under-resourced schools and students suffer the most. A new report on workforce employment tells us what many high school teachers and principals already know--there are few jobs for our students.

The report points out that the number of people 55 and older holding jobs is on track to hit a record 28 million in 2010 while young people increasingly are squeezed out of the labor market, a USA TODAY analysis finds. The portion of people ages 16-24 in the labor market is at the lowest level since the government began keeping track in 1948, falling from 66% in 2000 to 55% this year. There are 17 million in that age group who are employed, the fewest since 1971 when the population was much smaller.

Impact on Schools

CTE and work-study programs have been struggling to find employment opportunities for students. Many of our students need to work to help support their families. The lack of jobs puts more pressure on the students and their families, which makes this time of the year even more challenging for teachers, counselors, and school leaders.

The Bottom Line

In difficult times our neediest students need us the most. They rely on us to provide a clean, safe, orderly, and inviting school environment. They count on us to do whatever it takes.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:43 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Recently the Washington Post ran an article featuring a high school sponsored poker club.  The article appeared to support the idea that poker clubs were a legitimate way to help students learn mathematical concepts. Although using the structure of poker to create a lesson in probability is a valid and effective technique; creating a club that is dedicated to playing poker and then claiming that it is academically suitable demonstrates extremely poor judgment on the part of the adults involved.     

Teaching the wrong things

When asked about the group, the principal of the school gave his support to the concept.  He told the Post:   

“We know the kids could play outside of school, but when they're here, we have the opportunity to show them how to play responsibly and to show them how the game relates to their education.”

While the rules of poker are based in large part on the laws of probability, teaching students how to play the game has far more to do with gambling than mathematics.  It was clear that the “math first” message was becoming obscured when posters advertising the club featuring pictures of poker playing dogs smoking cigarettes began to appear in the building.  The principal ordered them torn down.   This gesture eliminated the pictures but not the inherent problem.  

A very good teaching tool

When I taught probability to my pre-calculus students I regularly used poker hands as a portion of my lessons.  The standard deck of playing cards with its 13 different values, four suits and two colors presents unlimited possibilities for constructing problems and illustrations.  One of the classroom activities consisted of dividing the students into small groups to determine the probability of seven specific five-card poker hands.  After mathematically computing their answers, the results would be compared and the method for computing the correct probabilities was demonstrated.  The concluding activity was to rank the value of the hands correlated to the diminishing probability of their occurrence.  It was then determined that this student-created listing was exactly the same as the actual rules of the game.Instead of pulling out the poker chips after this worksheet was completed, the next step was to expand the understanding of the probability involved.  For example, it had been previously determined that the likelihood of having five cards and no matches was 50.7%; the chance that there would be one match was 42.3%.  It was now time to turn the process upside down.  If a person was given fourteen cards what were the chances of no matches?  The answer, of course, is zero since there are only thirteen different values. The follow up problem was how many cards must be dealt in order for it to be more likely to have a pair than to have no matches?”  (The answer is seven.  Variations of this question were given on the chapter test.)

While there were lengthy conversations about playing cards in my classes no deck was ever in the room.   We did not talk about any strategies for playing these games and most certainly would not encourage anyone to do so. The major point of emphasis was the purity of the mathematics involved. Because of their precision, these numbers have withstood the test of time in a game that has centuries of history. 

Sending the wrong message

Poker clubs designed with the alleged intent of teaching mathematics are found at colleges around the country.  The idea began at Harvard Law School.  There are, however, vast differences between the reasoning abilities of graduate students and those of high school students.  The high school math teacher who hosts the aforementioned club in his classroom speaks to the age difference, “The older kids realize that it's about odds and probability," he says, "the younger ones just want to win.”

High stakes gambling on poker has been glamorized on television and on the Internet.  Having teenagers play this game of chance and giving them any indication that they are becoming mathematically equipped to control outcomes is not only incorrect but potentially dangerous. 

Should educators be concerned about youth gambling?

The following are some conclusions from a study of 1000 randomly selected adolescents 13-17 years old by the Oregon Gambling Addiction Treatment Foundation.   (Carlson & Moore, 1998)

• Seventy-five percent of teens in the study reported having gambled.
• One in ten teens was an at-risk gambler.
• Rates of problem gambling among youth were 2 to 4 times higher than the rates for adult gambling.
• Youth can hide gambling problems well.  There are no outward, physical signs.

The article in the Washington Post quoted one seventeen-year-old who had a large pile of chips in front of him as saying, “I don't know whether math class is helping me with poker, or whether poker is helping me with math.”  A very good question that I am not sure the adults at his school can answer.   

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:37 PM | Permalink

Be careful what you ask for! Just about anyone could see this one coming. Cut school budgets and layoff teachers. Demand that teachers close the achievement gap. Tie evaluations to test scores. Threaten to fire teachers. Complain about teacher pay. Call schools failing. Then wonder why people don't want to be teachers.

School leaders and teachers face a new "perfect storm." The pressure to improve continues to rise and the resources continue to diminish.

According to a new report, "the number of Californians seeking to become teachers has plummeted by 45 percent over a seven year period – even as student enrollments are projected to rise by 230,000 over the next decade and as many as 100,000 teachers are expected to retire." Furthermore, "Teaching is clearly becoming a less and less desirable profession for Californians." While student populations continue to grow, the critics are going to get exactly what they asked for--more students and no new teachers.

I have said it all along. Our problem is not how to fire teachers, but rather how to recruit, train, and develop great teachers. This is confirmed by a report from the Center for Future of Teaching and Learning which warns about the brewing crisis:

"The disinvestment in building a top quality teacher workforce is at odds with rising demands for students' academic success. The fiscal crisis has so severely damaged the pipeline for recruiting and training new teachers that teaching quality may be put at risk for many years to come."

"Because of budget cuts, teachers are expected to do more with less, typically teaching in larger classes, with fewer counseling and other staff to help out with hard-to-teach children."

One expert put it bluntly, "Teachers are coping with lower compensation, fewer resources and increasing expectations of student achievement. "It is a reasonable expectation that a college sophomore or junior might think 'I might not even get a job, so perhaps I should look for another career."

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:16 PM | Permalink

When we were told that states had to ask for grant money just so they could hire consultants to fill out Race To the Top (RTT) applications, we had to know that the costs of administering and reporting would be high. However, no one guessed just how high those costs would actually be. Here are two examples:

• A school district in Geauga County (OH) calculated it would have gotten $100,000 but needed to spend $212,000 on the needed changes.
• In Rockville Centre Union Free School District on Long Island, Superintendent William Johnson estimates it would get less than $10 per student from the Race to the Top grant that New York state won, but would need to spend $13 to $15 per student for a new teacher evaluation system.

Read the full report to get the whole picture.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:58 AM | Permalink

Just before I went on stage to deliver a keynote speech on dropout prevention before over a thousand people, my host grabbed my arm and said, "See that large man in the front row? He controls the finances in the state legislature and he is very interested in what you have to say." I looked at him and said, "Thanks for not putting any pressure on me."

I began my speech by saying "Our school operated on a simple premise. Treat other peoples' children the way that you would want your own child treated. If every school believed that, we wouldn't be here today talking about dropout prevention." At that, the man in the front row stood up and began to applaud. I breathed a deep sigh of relief.

I always believed that many of our challenges in education could be corrected if we would simply treat other peoples' children as though they were our own. I would want my child in a small classroom with an excellent teacher. I would want my child to receive personal attention from the teacher. I would want my child to receive additional assistance should she fall behind. I would want my child to have an individual learning plan customized to her unique talents and interests. Our school accomplished many things for many students because we walked the talk.

Unfortunately, too many influential people refuse to walk their talk. They are locked into a do as I say not as I do mode. They talk about public education and the benefits of diversity and send their own children to elite private schools. They tell us that large class sizes and teacher pay don't impact student performance. According to Bruce Baker in School Finance 101 "private independent schools in particular, systematically outspend public schools in the same labor market by about 2/1" and their main point of differentiation is, you guessed it, small class sizes. In other words, small classes and high teacher pay for my child, large classes and low teacher pay for your child.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:25 AM | Permalink

I hesitate to address the sensitive topic of international comparisons with school leaders who have to face the reality of leading schools on a day-to-day basis. However, I wasn't subjected to the kind of attacks on public schools, teachers, and principals that we have experienced of the past year. In the past, when NAEP or PISA results were released, we simply shrugged our shoulders and moved on. Today, however, our teachers and community expect us to respond when asked. In fact, our silence on this matter could be deafening.

That is why I put together some talking points for school leaders on the 2009 PISA results. I have drawn from a number of sources including the Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD), which coordinates the international assessments and the Washington Post.

Background

• Begun in 2000, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a system of international assessments that focuses on 15-year-olds' capabilities in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy.
• PISA is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries. 38 OECD nations and 28 partner nations participated in the assessment.
• PISA includes measures of general or cross-curricular competencies such as problem solving.
• PISA emphasizes functional skills that students have acquired as they near the end of compulsory schooling.
• The U.S. sample for the latest results includes both public and private schools, with 165 schools and 5,233 students participating in all. Schools are randomly selected and 15-year-old students within those schools are randomly selected.

2009 Results

• Reading: The U.S. average score in reading (500) was not measurably different than other OECD countries. U.S. female students scored higher than male students.
• U.S. 15-year-olds had an average score of 500 on the combined reading literacy scale, not measurably different from the OECD average score of 493. Among the 33 other OECD countries, 6 countries had higher average scores than the United States, 13 had lower average scores, and 14 had average scores not measurably different from the U.S. average. Among the 64 other OECD countries, non-OECD countries and other education systems, 9 had higher average scores than the United States, 39 had lower average scores, and 16 had average scores not measurably different from the U.S. average. 

• Math: U.S. average score in math was lower than the OECD average. Male students, in general, scored higher than female students. Since 2006, U.S. has caught up with 9 countries.
• U.S. 15-year-olds had an average score of 487 on the mathematics literacy scale, which was lower than the OECD average score of 496. Among the 33 other OECD countries, 17 countries had higher average scores than the United States, 5 had lower average scores, and 11 had average scores not measurably different from the U.S. average. Among the 64 other OECD countries, non-OECD countries, and other education systems, 23 had higher average scores than the United States, 29 had lower average scores, and 12 had average scores not measurably different from the U.S. average score. 

• Science: 12 other OECD countries had higher average scores than the United States.
• On the science literacy scale, the average score of U.S. students (502) was not measurably different from the OECD average (501). Among the 33 other OECD countries, 12 had higher average scores than the United States, 9 had lower average scores, and 12 had average scores that were not measurably different. Among the 64 other OECD countries, non-OECD countries, and other education systems, 18 had higher average scores, 33 had lower average scores, and 13 had average scores that were not measurably different from the U.S. average score.
• Male students scored higher than female students. Overall score was higher than 2006, and the gains in science exceeded those for math.
• The US is one of three nations that give more money to highly advantaged schools than to disadvantaged schools.
• Overall, private schools do better on PISA...until you account for SES.
• There are number of high performing economically disadvantaged schools in the US: "success is possible against all odds."

U.S. Strengths and Weaknesses

• U.S. students showed the best relative performance in answering questions that judged students’ ability to reflect and evaluate information. On that measure, the United States ranked seventh out of the 34 OECD nations.
• The weakest area for U.S. achievement was in accessing and retrieving information, for which students tied for 19th place with France.

Behind the Facts

• The PISA rankings are determined by nations’ average scores. "Some researchers have suggested, however, that average score comparisons are not useful: even presuming that the tests have some meaning for future accomplishment, average students are not likely to be the leaders in fields of mathematics and science."
• In the last administration of PISA, the United States has 25% of all high-scoring students in the world. Among nations with high average scores, Japan accounted for 13% of the highest scorers, Korea 5%, Taipei 3%, Finland 1%, and Hong Kong 1%.
• The fact that one of four high-scoring students came from the United States and the remaining high-scores came from the other 58 countries participating "suggests that many American schools are actually doing very well indeed."
• "Well-resourced schools serving wealthy neighborhoods are showing excellent results. Poorly resourced schools serving low-income communities of color do far worse."
• The U.S. had many more students scoring at the lowest levels; these kids likely can’t compete for the good jobs in the country."
• "Americans in low-poverty schools look very good, even in mathematics. They would be ranked third in the 4th grade (among 36 nations) 6th in the 8th grade (among 47 nations). This is important because while other developed nations have poor children, the U. S. has a much higher proportion and a much weaker safety net. When UNICEF studied poverty in 22 wealthy nations, the U. S. ranked 21st."
• The highest scoring countries have less diversity and less poverty.

PISA confirms what we already know. The U.S. is quite capable of producing top performing students in well-resourced schools serving middle class neighborhoods. Under-resourced schools in poor neighborhoods do not fare as well.

Resources:

OECD

Are today’s students prepared for the knowledge economy of the 21st century?

PISA: Who made the grade? (OECD)

Washington Post

Do international test comparisons make sense?

Hysteria over PISA misses the point

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:54 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Previously, Mel Riddile has asked whether there is a schism within high school faculties as a result of the continual emphasis on standardized testing.   He quotes a teacher who believes there is such a problem—the core teachers feel they are receiving an unfair level of scrutiny while the non-core believe they are being ignored. 

A perfect storm of discontent  

There is little doubt that the public spotlight is squarely on a school’s standardized test scores and the teachers whose students produce them.  Schools are accredited, ranked, and publically evaluated based on the results of a few tests in a limited number of subjects.  Virtually every conversation concerning teacher evaluation begins, and too often ends, with a desire to use student test scores as a major component. With the misguided encouragement of educational leaders some newspapers have ranked teachers based on their students’ results. Virtually every discussion of merit pay includes student scores as a primary consideration.

It is not surprising that this fixation on certain numbers has split teaching staffs into two separate camps.  The pressure on those who are responsible for tested classes is immense and often oppressive.  As it ratchets up during the year, these teachers become increasingly resentful of their colleagues who do not have to deal with similar issues.  Intensifying these sentiments is the irony that so much attention is being given to a group that represents less than one third of a typical high school staff.

These ingredients result in the great disconnect within the teaching community.  If test results are a must in evaluation and merit pay, what does that say about those who do not produce such scores?  Many teachers are forced to ask some tough questions.  Do policymakers mistakenly believe that all educators produce such scores?   Or worse, do they feel that creating an evaluation for those teachers is not a critical concern?  Likewise, should they be excluded from merit pay consideration?  Regardless of the reasons, the message they hear is clear—if you do not create standardized test data within your classroom, you are relegated to a lesser status.

This educational caste system gets worse.  It turns out that not all standardized tests scores are equal.  NCLB focuses on only the results of math and English exams.  The exclusion of science and social studies from this mandate places the teachers of those subjects in a difficult position. While they have the same curriculum pressures as math and English colleagues, their work is clearly not considered as important. The state of Virginia has affirmed this stance.  While a score of 400 on the end-of-course exams is required for a “pass”, the state established a special policy for students in the two non-NCLB curricula—if a student takes the exam twice and scores at least 375 on one of the attempts, they are eligible for a “locally verified credit”.  The teacher and school are still charged with a failing score but a student who has mastered less than 35% of the material is declared successful. 

No cures but some ways to help

While it is impossible for any school to totally alter the educational culture, there are steps that can be taken to lessen the chasm between core and non-core teachers.  As Dr. Riddile noted in his post, the implementation of a literacy program at his school was woven into the entire curriculum.  This approach was the result of both necessity and design.  In order to be successful, this initiative needed to be incorporated into all subjects rather than implemented by the English department alone.  By asking every discipline to embed literacy into all of their classroom activities, staff members had an equal stake in a critically important program.  Every meeting, email or memo in regards to this program was appropriate for the entire staff.

The school took a number of additional steps to mitigate this problem.  The goal of each of these concepts was simple—demonstrate to all teachers that every class was important.  These included:

The end of year testing schedule did not negatively impact non-tested classes. Many schools adopted testing schedules that would involve massive disruptions to all classes for an extended period of time.  Considering that more than two thirds of the classes in our building did not have end-of-course exams such an approach was deemed to be unacceptable.  Our test schedule was designed to ensure that every class would meet during the entire testing window.  The length of the periods would be altered to allow appropriate time for the exams but no class was lost.  Also since testing was done within the period the subject was taught, no students were pulled from other rooms to test. 

Discussions of SOL (state assessment) issues were limited to staff members who were directly affected.  At department chair meetings, the core department chairs would meet as a group after the conclusion of the topics pertaining to all subjects.  Likewise, faculty meetings were focused on topics of general interest.

Another possible solution

Authentic success in almost any endeavor is the result of an outstanding team effort.  Improvement in standardized test score is no exception.  Why not acknowledge this achievement as a school-wide effort?  Instead of awarding merit pay to individual teachers whose students exceed certain standards, a practice that can cause divisions within a staff, reward the entire school when the student body attains prescribed benchmarks.  Either give a bonus to all staff members or make the award in the form of extra funding for the school and its programs.   While such an approach would not end all friction among teachers, it would certainly be a good starting point.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:04 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

For years Mel Riddile and I shared the belief that there were a number of factors that could have a significant impact on the success or failure of students on standardized tests.  When scheduling the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) exams we took great care to create a positive test-taking environment.  Now there is research that indicates such concerns were justified. 

A recent study of the results of SAT testing in Indiana has found that each change between daylight savings and standard time adversely affected student performance.  Indiana was chosen because counties in the state could independently choose whether or not to participate in daylight savings.  This option created data from two different groups of students—those who changed their clocks and those who did not. 

The Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics found that students who lived in areas which used daylight savings had scores that were consistently 16 points lower than testers who did not have a time change.  A loss of this magnitude could be critical and should serve as a warning to anyone responsible for planning test schedules.  

Some points to consider

While the SAT is different in many ways from end of course barrier exams, the lessons to be learned from this research are clear.  If a simple one-hour shift can demonstrably cause negative consequences, it is incumbent on school leaders to take great care in creating a plan for large scale testing.  Here are some suggestions that worked at my school.

Keep the testing areas small.   Many schools in our district would place hundreds of students in large testing areas such as the cafeteria or gymnasium.  As a direct result of their size these locations would have high levels of confusion, distractions and poor discipline.  To avoid those complications we designed our testing to place students into classrooms, computer labs, or small common areas.  The rule was that no more than three classes (about 75 students) could be placed at any one site. 

Maintain a testing schedule similar to the regular school day.  Rather than alter the normal sequence of classes we built our plan to work within the framework of the traditional day.  Classes met in the same order as they had all year.  The testing periods on a particular day would be lengthened to provide additional time.  No class whether it was an SOL course or not was eliminated during the entire testing window. More importantly this procedure ensured that students who had a tested course during the second block of the day took their exam in the second block of the day.  Schools that implemented special schemes for testing would often lose all sense of continuity.  Students who took a subject in the afternoon might take the exam in the morning or a morning class might be tested after lunch.  Could such a variation cause lower scores?   Think daylight savings time.

Have teachers proctor their own students.  Another advantage of maintaining the normal class sequence is that it allows teachers to work directly with their classes.  Special schedules will usually preclude this possibility.  There are many good reasons for keeping teachers and students together.   Students feel more comfortable asking questions of someone with whom they have a personal relationship.  Teachers will do whatever is necessary to ensure that their students have the best possible circumstances to test.  And there are far fewer discipline issues when proctors know the individuals in the room. 

Place classes from the same curriculum in a testing site.  The untimed SOL exams took dramatically different amounts of time to complete.  A typical Algebra 1 group would take more than two hours to finish while most Biology 1 students would be done in an hour.  Whether a school’s policy is to let early finishers leave or to require that those who are finished wait for extended periods of time, the academic climate in the testing area will be negatively affected.  Also, the initial verbal directions for tests can vary from one discipline to another thus adding to the confusion.  And finally, teachers from the same department are more likely to be able to work together smoothly.

Create the testing schedule well in advance.  In order to plan effectively teachers and students should be informed of the schedule as early as possible.  Whether an exam is on day one or day seven of an eight day testing window is significant.  Our goal was to always distribute the schedule at a department chair meeting two months in advance of testing and answer questions at a faculty meeting prior to the dates.

Not easy, but critical

A testing program that maximizes performance is especially important for certain groups of students.  Individuals in ELL or those with special needs are continually straddling the line between success and failure on standardized tests.  Every advantage or disadvantage a school provides in the design of its testing program can change the trajectory of these young lives.   Such an approach is often not the most convenient choice for the adults in the building.  A student-oriented scheme requires intricate planning, extensive explanations, multiple revisions and demands full participation by every staff member.  But these concerns are a small and reasonable price to pay for our students. 

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's a news flash. The National Assessment Governing Board has convened an ad hoc committee to study the motivation of 12th graders to take the NAEP assessments. I can save NAGB a lot of time and money. Ask any high school teacher or principal and they will tell you. If you are testing 12th graders, and the tests don't matter, forget it. It is a waste of time and money. However, like most issues in education today, no one bothers to ask anyone who works or has worked in a school. After all, what do they know?

Wake Up People

Kids across the country are "christmas-treeing" tests, not because they are not motivated, but because they are smart. This is not a protest against tests and testing. Students know what tests matters and what tests don't.

As I have reported in the past, teachers and principals across the country are being victimized by state testing programs that holds teachers and schools accountable but not students. The fate of public education in those states rests on the good will of the students. If students feel like trying, they do. If they don't feel like trying, they simply "Christmas-tree" the test by drawing patterns on the answer sheets.

I worked with one district in which all the high school principals were fired or replaced and hundreds of teachers fired or transferred on the basis of student test scores and that state had absolutely no student accountability.

In yet another state, a high school principal lamented that his students inexplicably decided that they were not going to put forth their best effort on the state tests. Despite the school sending record numbers of students to four-year colleges, the high school was placed on a state list of “low-performing schools.”

I worked in a high-pressure, high-accountability state that held high schools accountable by using eleven end-of-course exams to calculate adequate yearly progress. However, students were also held accountable. The tests were used to award course credit and as barriers to graduation. In this context, everyone, students, teachers, and administrators took the tests seriously. In the early days of the state program, only the schools were held accountable, and it was difficult to get the students motivated to take the tests.

Been NAEPed?

Three years ago, our school was "chosen" to participate in NAEP testing. A team for the state DOE descended on us and took complete control of the selection of students as well as the testing logistics and conditions. Our seniors were "randomly" selected to participate. The DOE team decided that testing would take place in the gym, a location that no one that was serious about the test would have chosen. The DOE team not me, the principal, delivered the charge to the students. I have no idea how our kids did, but I was certain that I didn't want my job to hang on the results.

No Feedback, No Effort

"Feedback is the breakfast of champions." Students know that neither they nor anyone else will ever see the results of their NAEP test. They know that their school will not be held accountable. They know that the results will not reflect on their teachers.

Don't Count = Don't Care

Diane Ravitch understands when she writes, "The students know that the tests don't count, that there are no individual scores, that no one will ever know if they did well or poorly, and they are not motivated to do their best. 

The public does not realize that NAEP is a sampling test, and it is not given to every student. They also don't realize that no student takes the entire test, only a portion of it. The seniors may not know that they are part of a national sample, but they know that this test will not affect their grades, their likelihood of graduating, or their plans after high school."

Others wrote comments supporting Ravitch's position.

Senioritis

"As a recently retired high school principal, I can attest to the fact that 12th graders, infected with "senioritis," do not care about the NAEP tests. They have mentally moved on from high school. In Arizona, until seniors had to pass our state assessment tests in order to get a diploma, they did not care about it either. If we are to use the NAEP tests, we will have to come up with something that is in the students' self-interest."

Fed Up With "Testing Nonsense"

"Diane is right that these particular tests are a waste of money. My high school senior and her friends are fed up with all the testing nonsense they've endured for years."

Sick of being guinea pigs

"Way back in 1983, as a highly motivated, successful high school senior at a competitive science/math boarding school, I was given the same standardized test several times over the year. By the last time we took it, my friends and I were deliberately choosing wrong answers because we were sick of being guinea pigs."

Christmas-Treeing Defined

Diane Ravitch gets the last word. "NAEP tests don't matter. And seniors know it. They doodle on their test papers, or they select answers with a pattern, like all B, or all C, or ABCD/ABCD. Or they leave questions blank, without even bothering to make a guess. The government should stop wasting money on this test in this grade, and the usual critics should turn their fire elsewhere."

The Bottom Line

If you work in a high school in a state that has no accountability for students, you will have to do everything possible to earn the good will of the students. Hopefully, you and the staff have a big "emotional bank account" from which to draw.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:07 PM | Permalink

Arne Duncan was right when he said to me, "we need to create a culture in which our best teachers and principals want to work with our neediest students."  The problem is that what we are doing is resulting in the exact opposite.

Not only are the best teachers and principals not working in our neediest schools, but the threats of penalties, sanctions and firings are driving them away in droves. Today, working in a high-needs school is more likely to be a career-killing experience.

However, the real damage that high-stakes accountability is having on public education may not be in what happens to those already in education, but in the fact that many will now never enter teaching.

Take special note of what 20-year veteran, Victoria Robinson, wrote in the Chicago Tribune.

"As an undergraduate, many of my non-teaching peers devalued my decision to pursue a teaching degree."

"Along with signing my first contract, I took a vow of poverty."

"The most hurtful public message was that I was to blame for just about every academic, social, economic and political problem in America. American students' test scores are inferior to students in other countries — blame the teachers. American kids are disrespectful — blame the teachers. The American work ethic is slacking — blame the teachers. And if my student doesn't earn all A's, it must be the teacher's fault. I am just a teacher."

"I am just a teacher in a society where nearly 30 percent of the children eat their only hot meal of the day at school. I am just a teacher in a country where out of more than 49 million public school students, 4.5 million have special needs; more than 1 million are abused, of which half are victims of neglect; and tens of thousands of families experience homelessness each night."

The Bottom Line

One leading expert once told me, "All we need to do to improve schools is hire great teachers." While it has never been easy to attract the best and brightest to the teaching profession, the current climate of "reform" is making that virtually impossible.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:18 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Imagine a principal and a high school with strong academic credentials. Together over the past few years they have demonstrated significant improvement in state mandated standardized tests.  The motives of the principal have never been in question. Teachers in the school feel that the principal “really cares about kids and has a great big heart for them.” How does a school like the one described above end up in “The Washington Post”, not because it has a team that is competing for a state championship, a teacher nominated for a national award or a student body raising record amounts for charity, but due to grading policy changes?   The principal’s odyssey began with an October announcement that he had banned the use of the letter “F” on first quarter report cards.  Within days it continued with a memo that announced another new initiative at the school—penalty free retests for students who had been caught cheating.   The media nightmare hopefully ended when an email was sent to the community stating that all of the programs had been cancelled. All of these policy changes were carried out in the full glare of the media.  There was even an editorial that referred to the new grading policy as a “gimmick”.  The most glaring problem, however, was not the specific proposals but rather a faulty vision of school leadership.    

 A failure to communicate

The main culprit in this episode was a fundamental lack of communication between the principal and his staff.  One person, regardless of his position, cannot make decisions as precedent shattering as allowing unlimited incompletes and retests for cheaters without significant input from a wide variety of individuals.  Any hope of an effective implementation is lost when such changes are announced with no advance notice or discussion.  Using email weeks into the school year raises more questions about the style of a leader when the conversation should be on the substance.

There is far more at stake for this principal than merely the rollback of his initiatives.  Successful leadership is predicated on vision, communication and the respect of your constituency.  In the world of sports, most coaches who are fired are indicted with the statement “they lost the locker room”.  Politicians are voted out of office when public confidence erodes in their ability to lead.  The principal in question here is in a similar position.  By failing to effectively communicate with his faculty and community he is placing their loyalty and support in jeopardy.  

A critical requirement

For principals to avoid this situation they must bring their faculties into conversations in the planning stages.  The desire to limit the number of students receiving a grade of “F” is not only noble; it is a shared pursuit by both the administrative and teaching staffs.  Though a solution may be elusive, an effective timetable to address this problem would be easy to construct.  A diverse committee of teachers, administrators and parents could have been convened in March.  Lively and informative discussions would ensue for two months.  In May a proposal would be presented to the faculty.  After encouraging discussion and further input another committee would finalize the wording over the summer.  A formal plan would be sent to all staff members several weeks prior to the opening of school with a notation that it would be the focal point of a faculty meeting during the in-service week. 

This plan will not work unless the principal is committed to ensuring that all of these conversations are open, honest and ongoing.  Everyone who is contributing ideas must believe that their opinions are being given substantial consideration.  This path is not about “safety in numbers” or “seeking cover”.   The key element is that involving the views of the people directly affected by a decision is always beneficial.  Ultimately the teachers will be the individuals who will be on the front lines using any such new proposed policies.  Roadblocks will develop unless the parents understand and support the changes.  

A formula for success…and support

Such an approach is neither simple nor easy.   No leader is completely comfortable when relinquishing significant control. But making that strategic decision will produce more accurate information and a smoother implementation. It will also enhance staff morale and the image of the school in the community.  Clearly this approach is vastly superior to having the arguments, accusations, and finger-pointing playing out in the Washington Post.   

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:43 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Winston Churchill may have defined it best.  “Success,” according to the former British Prime Minister, “is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”  As his country’s leader in the midst of a world-wide conflict, it is clear that he understood the critical importance of realistic appraisals.  Unfortunately, the prevailing philosophy in the upper echelons of the educational hierarchy does not share that view.  In schools throughout the country there are escalating efforts to avoid giving failing grades to under-performing students.  The problem with these approaches is that most are more focused on eliminating the appearance of the letter “F” on report cards than on finding approaches to improve actual student performance.  Such grading is not a zero sum game.  Barring teachers from giving valid feedback to failing students does not automatically result in a proportional gain in student knowledge acquisition.  To the contrary there is growing evidence that such manipulations are having the opposite effect.  Jay Mathews in the Washington Post explained how Montgomery County (MD) has found yet another method to avoid giving students an accurate assessment of their poor classroom performance. 

Framing the argument

Long considered one of the elite school systems in the country, Montgomery County Public Schools has legitimate reason to be concerned about the performance of their high school students.  According to Mathews, “The SAT and Advanced Placement results, put out so proudly by the Montgomery County school system, suggest that it is among the best districts in the country, but the county has seen no significant increase in math or reading achievement for 17-year-olds in 30 years.”

Dan Stephens, a math teacher in the district for twenty years, has a relatively simple explanation for the cause of that stagnation.  He believes that too many of his students are convinced that regardless of what they do in the classroom, they will still graduate. One of the primary reasons for this attitude according to Stephens is a final exam written and mandated by the county.  The tests are given in every core subject and are allowed to constitute as much as 25% of a student’s final grade.  The problem revolves around a decision that MCPS like many other groups had made concerning the percentage value of a failing grade.   No matter how poorly students may perform on these tests the lowest allowable score is 50%.  "The majority of my pre-calculus students”, says Stephens, “have never passed one of these exams in either Algebra 1, geometry or Algebra 2, all pre-calculus prerequisites. Nevertheless, they proceeded to the next level. . . . Students are well aware that failure, even pathetic failure, will not prevent them from going on to the next level. Most of my students have failed multiple final exams in other subjects as well, but they still earned credit for those classes.”

Even the most ardent supporters of the “50% conversion rule” have to accept the reality of this potential negative outcome.  However, regardless of any damage to student motivation, a growing number of schools are gravitating toward this approach as the best avenue to student success.

The problem is in the numbers

The main impetus for arbitrarily raising poor grades is the misguided belief that low failing scores can be overly punitive.  At first glance this assumption can appear to have validity.  Using a typical grading scale of 90-100 as A, 80-89 for B, 70-79 C, 60-69 D and below 60 as an F, it would appear that a score of 22% would unfairly skew the overall average.  Unquestionably a 22% would have considerably more negative impact than a 50%.  The follow-up argument makes some superficial sense.  If the other four grades have a ten-point range, why should the “F” have one of sixty?  Does that give a low “F” too much impact? 

Even if one accepts this premise there is still a nagging issue of fairness. One student works diligently to prepare for a test and earns a 58%.  Another who does little or nothing receives a well deserved grade of 22%.  After that grade is changed to 50%, is this a fair outcome for the dedicated student?  But this argument is usually trumped when someone trots out the traditional closing equation—three 100s (A) and one zero (F) average out to a 75 (C).  While this argument often ends the discussion it is not mathematically persuasive. 

It is all in the paradigm

 To understand the flaw in the “50% solution” it is necessary to re-evaluate how the grading scale is interpreted.  When assessing a student’s score on an assignment there are two potential outcomes.  A result of 60-100 is passing while one from 0-59 is failing.  When comparing these two potential options the disparity in size has diminished considerably.  The real difference is that in our traditional grading system we have designated four distinct grades for success and only one for failure.  To make the two categories parallel different levels of failure would have to be introduced—G for 40-49, H 30-39, etc.   While such a change would be of little actual value it does bring into perspective the overriding problem with ignoring poor grades.

What happens if passing scores were handled in a manner similar to failing ones?  Any grade below 90 (ten points below the highest possible score) would be converted to 90.  Thus a 92% would be unchanged but scores of 82%, 76% or 65% would be recast as 90.  The argument in favor of this fictitious approach would be “It is not fair to saddle a student with a 62%—that would make it almost impossible to earn an A.”  Clearly such a plan would be both unfair and unacceptable.  No one would argue that a student who receives a grade of 65% should be given equal status to one who worked to earn an 87%.  And yet we are implementing programs that are using precisely the same philosophy in the failure area of the grading scale. 

Unfortunately these arguments will have little impact on educational decision-makers.  They will continue with various plans such as requiring the use of a 0-4 scale for averaging grades (A=4, C=2, F=0) and the “50% conversion”.  The reason these policies will continue is because they are designed to cosmetically make student performance appear to be better.  Such superficial solutions will only result in thirty more years of negligible improvement.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 05:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Since Confucian times, China has adhered to a series of examinations that determined social and career advancement. Today, just as their predecessors did a thousand years ago, Chinese students prepare their entire lives for a series of examinations called "gaokao" that will ultimately determine their future. However, China may be moving away from that age-old model.

According to Newsweek, Chinese leaders are responding by moving education policies increasingly to focus on developing creative thinkers.

As one report points out "in the American education system, reformers are pushing the country toward a more test score-based model, with scores dictating how funds are doled out, how teachers are evaluated and more. Reformers in Los Angeles, New York City and other American cities have pressed for the "valued-added" system, ranking teachers based on their students' achievements on tests.

Newsweek reports, "When faculty of a major Chinese university asked [Professor Jonathan] Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. "After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud," Plucker says. "They said, 'You're racing toward our old model. But we're racing toward your model, as fast as we can.'"

The Bottom Line

Well-intentioned policies sometimes have unintended consequences. Perhaps it is time that we move forward instead of reinventing the past?

Posted by Mel Riddile at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

"The claim that experience doesn’t matter is flat-out wrong."--Matthew Di Carlo

I don't know about you, but I want an experienced airline pilot in command when I fly home in a few days. I also want an experienced physician and an experienced dentist. In fact, I can't think of any set of circumstance in which a lack of experience would be an advantage. When it came to my children's teachers, whether it was in elementary, middle, or high school, and even college, I wanted an experienced, skilled teacher. Come to think of it, I have never heard a teacher claim that he or she was a better teacher in year one than in year five.

Enter the omniscient Mr. Bill Gates, who would never dare hire inexperienced software engineers at Mircrosoft or have his child in school with commoners and inexperienced teachers, but who would try to convince us average citizens that, not only doesn't experience in teaching matter, but it is a liability.

Next, enter Secretary Duncan who insists that educators don't need education and who, "many times previously had backed eliminating experience as a criterion for judging and compensating teachers."

I don't ever recall so-called experts in any field claim that additional training was unnecessary. I have always found it ironic that the first cuts to education budgets are always professional education. What does that say about how we value education?

Think about it, budget cuts result in fewer teachers teaching more students. That means that, just to maintain the status quo, we need to increase teacher productivity. So, what do we do? Instead of increasing training to enhance the skills of teachers and principals, we tie their hands behind their backs by cutting professional development and then we motivate them by threatening to fire them if test scores don't improve.

Research Doesn't Matter?

Ironically the same folks--Gates and Duncan--who insist that others adhere to research-based practices don't read the research unless the research supports their preconceived notions of what needs to be done? Remember the last silver bullet, small schools? How did that go?

What does the research really say? Special thanks to Matthew Di Carlo who provides practitioners with an excellent synopsis of research that consistently demonstrates that experience matters a great deal in the early years on the job (also see here, here, here and here).  Here are some of the highlights:

Returns to experience are strongest in the first year of teaching.

After the first year, the rate of improvement starts to level off quickly – usually stagnating within about 4-5 years after which there is a leveling off.

Beyond the fifth year, most teachers tend to remain relatively stable in terms of their effects on student test scores (though a very large proportion leaves the profession before that point).

Context Matters

The relationship between experience and student performance is more consistent among elementary school teachers (especially compared with those in high schools).

"The effect of experience on teacher productivity may also be mediated by the quality of their peers in the same school – i.e., that novice teachers with more effective peers in the same school do better."

There is strong evidence that experience matters less – or less consistently – in poorer schools (also see here), which could be attributed to increased turnover in under-resourced schools and more student mobility.

Subjects Matter

Math teachers seem to improve more quickly (and consistently) than reading teachers.

Teachers who remain in the same grade for multiple years also improve more quickly.

"Experience is actually one of the very few observable teacher characteristics that is consistently correlated with achievement, and its effect is among the strongest, especially for some sub-groups, such as elementary school and math teachers.

Even those who think the magnitude of these returns is not commensurate with the role of experience in education policy cannot dispute that it is still a proven signal of quality, at least during the early years of teachers’ careers. And it is virtually certain that teachers also improve in other ways that don’t show up in their students’ test scores."

The Bottom Line

Experience does matter in teaching and in leading schools. We need to invest more in education--the education of our teachers and principals--so that we can increase their individual and collective capacity to raise the achievement of each and every student. Let's do for other peoples' children what we would want done for our own children. Let's give them the most experienced and skilled teachers and principals possible.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"If you want me to cook the meal, let me shop for the groceries."--Bill Parcells

I was standing in a high school cafeteria the other day and the principal and I were talking with a teacher who was discussing the firing of the head football coach at a neighboring high school.

"I wonder if they are going to let the new coach pick his staff? How can they hold him accountable if they (school system) choose his coaches?"

I responded, "You just described what it is like to be a principal! You have little control over who is on your staff and you are held personally accountable for their performance, even if they do not want to work for you."

His expression immediately shifted to amazement. "I never thought about it that way."

I replied, "I thought about it every day!"

Note: Not only can't principals pick their staff, but they are often forced to take staff--teachers and administrators--from other schools. In my district, this happened every year to new principals. Before the new principal came on board on July 1, the school system would transfer under-performing teachers and administrators into the school and then tell the principals that they had to raise test scores or be replaced.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Blogger's Note: At a recent meeting of NASSP's Assistant Principal Task Force, Keith East presented each member of the Task Force with a wooden spoon. The spoon is handmade by Maxie Eades, an 85 year-old Master Craftswoman. A handmade wooden spoon is an odd gift. However, I had a sense that Keith had a story behind the spoon, and he did.

The idea of using a spoon as a metaphor for teaching and learning came to mind after two separate and distinct conversations with educators from the international community.

The first was a math teacher from the west African country of Cameroon. When pressed by his American public school administrative team as to why his students were not performing well, he replied, “I cannot feed students who do not wish to eat.”  His statement piqued my curiosity as to what we as educators could do to convince students that they were hungry even if they did not realize it. 

The second conversation was with a British educator.   When interviewed he was asked why was it that students in the United Kingdom were not subjected to standardized testing as often as students in the United States.  His response was, “We simply believe that when students are hungry that they should be fed, rather than weighed.”  While “weighing” students has its place, it should not overshadow the fact that education is really about feeding the hunger for knowledge and enlightenment.

We acknowledge that it is anathema to “spoon feed” information to students merely to have them spit it back to us.  That is not a true teaching or learning experience. However, is it not true that the ultimate goal of all teaching is for the student to take hold of the spoon and feed themselves?

R. Keith East is Associate Professor in the School of Education at Southern Wesleyan University.

                                                                                                Central, SC 29630

Posted by Mel Riddile at 06:28 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Over the course of my forty-year teaching career, which included twenty-six years as a department chair,  and ten as Curriculum Coordinator, I worked with a significant number of school administrators and district leaders. This is the third in a series highlighting those individuals who in my opinion were the most effective in their particular roles.  The goal of these analyses is to illuminate those qualities that make professionals in these critical positions successful and maximize their positive influence in a school.

I had the good fortune to work with a number of extremely talented assistant principals.  Many moved on in their careers to become successful principals at either middle or high schools.  A few rose to the superintendent level in other districts.  I also interacted with many individuals who were lacking in either the skills or the experiences required to be productive.  Though they made my vocational life more difficult at the time, the shortcomings of these individuals allowed me to better understand and appreciate the strengths of the effective APs.

Due to the large number of excellent administrators I encountered, I have the wonderful dilemma of trying to parse out which one was the best.  As an indication of my good fortune, I have found that to be an impossible task.  Consequently, with apologies to many other worthy candidates, I believe that two individuals, David Smith and Cordell Gill best embodied the personal talents and skills necessary to be outstanding assistant principals and have a positive impact on both the math department and the school.

What attributes made them the most effective assistant principals?

The role of an Assistant Principal is very different from that of the Director of Guidance or Instructional Coordinator.  Both of those positions have a very specific focus, the students and master schedule for the former and a single curriculum for the latter.  In contrast Assistant Principals must be multi-taskers.  They must provide discipline, supervise multiple curriculums, evaluate teachers, and contribute to school policy, in addition to miscellaneous jobs ranging from hall duty to planning graduation.  Consequently their success cannot be explained with a list of specific personal qualities that produced effectiveness as was done for the previous “bests”.  For this position excellence is found in the mindset they took to their role.

In both casual and formal situations, Dave and Cordell never envisioned their position as one with an elevated status—neither perceived himself as owning a seat at “the head of the table” in a room full of teachers.  Their vision of the job of an Assistant Principal was not to give orders or make unilateral decisions.  Rather they saw their basic role as assisting teachers to perform more effectively. They listened.  To that end they solicited the needs and concerns of teachers and department chairs then worked in a collaborative manner to find solutions.  They realized that teachers were not interchangeable parts.  Each one possessed unique strengths and weaknesses that needed to be either nurtured or mitigated. 

Unfortunately this approach is not always the norm.  One of the most corrosive relationships that can be created in a school is a “we vs. they” mentality between the teaching and administrative staffs.  I once heard an AP tell a teacher who questioned one of his decisions concerning a student, “I find it hard to believe that a teacher would not simply follow the directive of an administrator.”  Another explained to a department chair, “Your role is to implement the policies of the administration”.  Such attitudes, which occur far too often, are one of the primary sources of low teacher morale. 

In a perfect educational world every department would be supervised by someone who is qualified to teach in that area.  While that situation can make an AP even more effective, in most cases it is not the reality.  Both Dave and Cordell had a narrow view of their role in determining curriculum policy.  They reserved such decisions for those who were certified in the subject area.   They understood that their area of expertise was in creating the best possible educational climate in the building, not in determining what topics were to be taught in each individual room or which teacher should be teaching a specific class.  They offered their services in a reactive manner—as someone who was a willing listener who would give suggestions and advice when solicited or necessary.   

To attain educational success there must be strong classroom management. Dave and Cordell understood that certain students could “highjack” the education of others.  When dealing with such individuals they sent a powerful and consistent message—such conduct will not be tolerated.  Both worked in a positive manner with all the involved parties.  They were always “pro-teacher” when working with the students.  When informing teachers of the outcomes they would become “pro-student” explaining in detail any circumstances that may not have been previously revealed.             

Like every great Assistant Principal I worked with I viewed these two men as my allies never as adversaries.  They handled every situation in a professional and even-handed manner. They approached all personal interactions whether with students or teachers with an open mind.  Most importantly they saw themselves as a person working behind the scenes to make the school better.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 04:01 PM | Permalink

"They’ll have better attendance, wreck fewer cars and be more agreeable. All we have to do is let high school students sleep in."

You know a school or a school district is in trouble when the strategic plan follows the principles of the ABC School of School Management--Administration By Convenience.  One of the best indicators of an adult-focused environment, one that is practicing the principles of ABC, is when research is blatantly ignored in favor of current practice. Last year I wrote, "At a time when the focus is on firing principals and teachers, here is an easy way to raise student performance by as much as 10%. Your start time dramatically impacts academic achievement, behavior, motivation, and student engagement. I pointed to a student-developed video that continues to be true "conversation starter."

A reader wrote me saying, "When my family moved out of the DC area, we went from a 7:20 high school start time to an 8:20 high school start time. My older kids had a VERY hard time with 7:20; my son, in particular, had a body clock that just wouldn't let him sleep before midnight. Now, my younger kids handle the 8:20 high school start time with no trouble at all. That hour has made all the difference in the world. If school bus routes are truly running these start-time decisions, then flipping elementary and high school times is perfect. Of course, those parents who use elementary school as a convenient day care would have trouble with the switch--but those problems should not be allowed to override brain science."

Science says, "Let them sleep."

Today, so-called experts insist that schools use research-based strategies to teach students. Those same experts consciously turn their backs on research that would be inconvenient for them to implement.

The consensus in the field — informed by a large Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of American teens — is that adolescents need about nine hours and 15 minutes of sleep a night. Most get less. "Teens are caught in a tug of war between their biology and rules and schedules put in place by adults. Biology is losing."

In Nurtureshock: New Thinking About Children, author Po Bronson points out a number of key scientific facts relating to teens, sleep, and achievement:

• 60% of high schoolers report extreme daytime sleepiness.
• 25% of high school students report that their grades have dropped due to lack of sleep.
• Between 20% and 33% of high school students are "falling asleep in class at least once a week."
• "Children--from elementary school through high school--get an hour less sleep each night than they did thirty years ago.
• Loss on one hour of sleep has been proven to impact academic performance, emotional stability, obesity, and ADHD.
• "The performance gap caused by an hour's difference in sleep was bigger than the gap between a normal fourth-grader and a normal sixth-grader. Which is another way of saying that a slightly sleepy sixth-grader will perform like a mere fourth-grader. A loss of one hour of sleep is the equivalent to (the loss of) two years of cognitive maturation and development."
• Loss of sleep can "impair children's IQ as much as lead exposure."
• "Tired children cannot remember what they just learned."

Over the span of my career, I have heard many a colleague attribute bad student behavior to hormones. However, when it comes to actually applying science to address hormones, adult convenience again prevails. "A Day in the Life of a Sleepy Student," points out that "hormones play a role. Our brains produce the hormone melatonin as they prepare to sleep. Synthetic forms are sold over the counter as a sleep aid. (Mary) Carskadon found that melatonin levels in adolescents don’t rise until about 10:30 p.m. Sending your teen to bed at 10 is likely to lead to tossing and turning but not much sleep until the body agrees it is time. If a child who can’t sleep until 11 p.m. needs to rise at 6 a.m. to catch a bus, that provides just seven hours of sleep — two hours less than the average adolescent needs."

Minneapolis, which moved high school start times from 7:15 a.m. to 8:40 a.m. during the 1997-98 school year is a rich source of data on the difference schedules make in teen health and achievement. Scientists at the University of Minnesota did extensive research on the effects and found the following:

• Students report fewer signs of depression than peers with earlier start times. Attendance improved.
• Student transfers dropped.
• Kyla Wahlstrom of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement at the University of Minnesota in an analysis of the schedule change. “Having a later start for the first hour of class appears to enable more students to not oversleep and to arrive at school on time.”
• Academic performance improved.
• Participation in sports and activities remained the same.
• Principals reported fewer discipline issues.
• A reduction in the number of students seeking help with relationship problems
• Parents reported that students were easier to live with.
• Students did not stay up later at night. 10:45 was the typical reported bed time.
• Most slept an additional hour each night.

According to Colleen Shaddox’s story titled “Delaying School Start Times Causes Alarm” , while some schools have acknowledged the science and moved back high school start times, the reason many more have not "lies in a mix of logistics and politics.

The Bottom Line

I spent my first 28 years in education with a 7:20 start time. For my last two years I moved to a school that had an 8:30 start time. I can personally attest to the fact that one hour made a huge difference in the mood of the students and staff. They were awake! If I had the choice, I would never go back to the earlier start time. The argument that I most often hear in support of the early start time is sports and activities. As the Minneapolis study found, student participation in sports and activities was not adversely affected by the later start time. In fact, in my last year, our boys' basketball team won the state championship.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

According to a recent report, the U.S. Department of Education is relying on a revitalized high school graduation initiative, and "betting nearly $50 million that it can help states and school districts find better ways to hang onto students who might drop out and bring back those who have disappeared without diplomas."

Key elements of the dropout prevention initiatives include:

• monitoring of student attendance
• monitoring student behavior
• building “early warning systems” that alert middle level and high schools to the need for early intervention.
• targeting students in need instead of demographic targeting
• emphasis on early intervention at the middle level
• addressing social-emotional needs of students
• bringing back recent dropouts
• identifying social service partners in the community

Early Warning Signs

• 10% or greater absenteeism
• failing a core course the previous year
• a grade-point average below 2.0
• one or more suspensions
• history of discipline problems
• reading in the bottom quartile
• retention at any grade level

Bottom Line

"A marginal middle school student will fail in high school."

School leaders don't have to wait for a federal grant. We know the warning signs and we have the data already available to us. Upon learning the warning signs, one principal immediately identified over 60 high-risk students who would be entering the ninth grade this year. Instead of waiting for those students to re-emerge later in the school year, the principal developed a plan to meet with those students on the first day of school and to provide continuous contact and support for them from day one.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:07 AM | Permalink

• 20% of eighth graders are on target to graduate from high school
• 20% of students earn passing scores on AP exams
• 20% of students are prepared to enter the military
• 20% of students have the writing skills needed for college
• 20% of current ninth graders will graduate from college in 10 years

"America has a moral obligation to prepare young people to become self-supporting members of society -- and national security also hinges on having enough youths fit for military duty."--Colin Powell

"Dismally, 70 percent of young Americans in the 17-to-24 age bracket are unfit to join the U.S. military, former Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell warns." While 30% of students are fit to join the armed forces, fully one-third of them lack the reading and math skills needed by our high-tech military.

Conversation Starter: The 20% solution has nothing to do with student ability, and everything to do with readiness. Our students can achieve to high levels, but they need us to prepare them.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:32 AM | Permalink

In the context of high-stakes accountability, schools must do two things very well. First, schools must have a focus that is so clear and concise that every staff member can articulate it to anyone. Too many schools are fragmenting their efforts and straining limited resources by trying to do too much at the same time.

Secondly, reduced budgets and limited resources demands that schools get the most out of the resources at hand. That means that increasing performance by having each and every staff member work together to help raise student achievement.

In today’s world, a graduate who lacks the skills needed for postsecondary education and training is essentially sentenced to a lifetime of marginal employment and second-class citizenship. Schools cannot reach each and every student working when teachers work in isolation as they did when we were sorting students for success. Reaching every student will require the focused effort of the entire staff.

Working in isolation, the math department can only do so much to improve student math skills in the limited time available. Because science, social studies, math and English texts are written much differently and present the student with different challenges, raising literacy levels of all students requires the efforts of every teacher in every classroom. Each teacher must teach the language of his or her content area.

Since no one has all the answers and every school has its own DNA, we will need to pool our collective intelligence and build our capacity to deliver solutions that are appropriate for our students. Tapping into that collective intelligence requires that every staff member takes ownership of school-wide initiatives and that requires that they have input into key decisions. The kind of top-down leadership characteristic of schools in the past will not realize the requisite level of teacher buy-in. For school leaders, that means working in partnership with teachers and listening to their input.

Everyone Working Together

Because most of our teachers obtained most of their educational experience when teachers worked in isolation and received recognition for singular achievements, overcoming resistance and getting everyone working together is a hard sell for many school leaders. We have the difficult task of convincing our teachers that different times demand different approaches and it is in everyone's best interest to work together.

Who better to talk about the importance of teachers working together than a veteran teacher? In “One for All and All for One—No Thanks,” The Teacher Leader provides principals and school leaders with one of the most poignant conversation starters in recent memory. The Teacher Leader makes a number of important points relating to the impact that teachers have on one another and the need for all of us to work together as well as the consequences of not doing so.

"No individuals in a school are as adversely affected by ineffectual teachers than the remainder of the staff." The Teacher Leader emphasizes that teachers impact their students, their fellow teachers, and their school in either a positive or negative way. Whether they realize it or not, they are part of a team and the team is only as strong as the weakest link.

Poor teachers act to "spread an infection throughout the building." A poor teacher creates classroom management problems for everyone." Poor classroom managers make it difficult for their colleagues to establish routines and high expectations for student behavior. For example, teachers who ignore tardiness undermine their peers who are trying to maximize learning time by ensuring the on-time behavior of their students. "It becomes a far more difficult task for teachers to enforce their own behavioral expectations when similar expectations are being ignored in other locations."

"A poor teacher will disrupt not only their own classes, but all subsequent classes in   courses that are taught sequentially." A weak Algebra I teacher makes life difficult for Geometry and Algebra II teachers.  "The worst case scenario for students is to pass a course with poor understanding of the required material.  These students are then doomed to struggle with all successive classes in that sequence."

"A poor teacher results in students losing time in other classes. Most administrators will tell you that suspensions are more frequently the result of misbehavior in a weak teacher’s room than in a strong one.  But a suspension results in students missing all classes not just the one where the infraction occurred. "

"A poor teacher can wreak havoc with the grading system." Consistency is the key to an effective grading system. When individual teachers fail to maintain high standards or are inconsistent, "other teachers will suffer."

The Bottom Line

Working together to "ensure student success" is everyone's job and perhaps the most important challenge confronting today's school leaders. Building unity of purpose means changing the culture of the school from a focus on individual teachers and their wants to a culture in which teams of teachers focus on the needs of each and every student.

While teacher evaluation systems are certainly important, the key to continuous improvement is not inspection of teaching practices, but, rather, in building quality instruction into the teaching process through continuous, connected, and ongoing job-embedded professional development.

I made a commitment to our teachers. Other than the knowledge of your content area, for which you hold a license the state, I will only hold you accountable for what we teach you. Whatever we expect you to know and be able to do, it is our responsibility to teach you. In return, I ask you to make the same commitment to your students. Whatever you want them to know and be able to do, it is your responsibility to teach them.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:06 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

At your next social gathering, bring up the currently hot topic of teacher tenure and you most assuredly will elicit many diverse opinions and emotions.  Some people are adamant that it creates and retains bad teachers.  Others are equally vociferous that without it good teachers are robbed of due process and are at risk of being fired on a principal’s whimsy.  One viewpoint will espouse that lifetime employment destroys motivation; the response will be that job security allows experimentation and innovation.

There is no question that many high-profile educators are firmly convinced that tenure is an absolute necessity.  In a recent post Tom Whitby, an invited participant at the MSNBC “Education Nation” forum, wrote about the critical need for tenure in all schools.  Mr. Whitby was particularly upset by the comments of a young educator who received a great deal of attention when  she stated that she did not feel a need for tenure because she was confident that her classroom performance would ensure her of continued employment.  Clearly, Mr. Whitby disagreed. 

“The sound of fingernails on the blackboard for that statement ripped into me. What she was asking for is what Tenure IS. It is a guarantee of due process. It guarantees that the only thing you can be fired for is that which you are responsible for in your teaching duties. What you CAN be fired for under the Tenure law is: Misconduct, Incompetence, Insubordination, Physical or Mental Disability, Neglect of Duty, or a Lack of Teaching Certificate. Additionally, it cannot be a blind accusation, it must be documented. It is also presented at a hearing with all parties under oath. This guarantees fairness in firing people. Why would any teacher say they don’t need that? If the world were as this young teacher assumes it is, having all teachers judged on the merits of their teaching, it would be a wonderful world. History shows us that it has not always been so.”

A difference of opinion 

While I strongly agree with Mr. Whitby that teachers must be protected against unjustified dismissals, I am not convinced that tenure is the best approach.  The ultimate goal of education must be to produce successful students.   Every day that a weak teacher is in the classroom has the potential of inflicting significant damage to student progress.   Any program that slows the termination process will have a potentially negative impact on academic success.  Thus, based on my own professional observations and after reading about the “rubber rooms” in New York City, I believe there are better methods than tenure to produce a high quality teaching staff.  What is needed is an efficient and effective plan to make good teachers more productive and reduce the number of weak ones.  Here is a four-step approach to building a teaching staff that will give superior results to one that depends primarily on tenure.

A comprehensive hiring process.     The act of selecting the correct candidates is one of the most important functions of a school.   The math of the situation is simple.  Hiring a higher percentage of excellent teachers dramatically lessens the need to find methods to remove poor ones. The job interview should include a sample teaching presentation by the applicant, multiple references, an on-site writing sample, and an extended question and answer period.  Great care should be taken throughout the reference process.  It should be the professional responsibility of all parties to be as honest and candid as possible when discussing the previous work of a candidate.  Far too many times when contacting references faulty or misleading information has lead to inappropriate hires.  The interviewing panel should include the department chair, assistant principal and a teacher from the subject area.  A follow up interview should have classroom observations by the candidate and time interacting with potential colleagues.  This approach will take a great deal of time.  But every minute spent finding the right individual can save hours of suffering with the wrong one.

Have rigorous evaluations during a teacher’s first three years.  The time to determine the potential of an educator is early in their career.  After three years it is highly unlikely that one will improve appreciatively.  But to be able to accurately determine a person’s potential requires a complex process.  Five or more observations by professional evaluators should occur each year.  Several of the sessions should be done by individuals who are certified in the subject area.  Videotapes of classes should be taken and reviewed by both the evaluators and teachers.   If at any point during this period a teacher is determined to be lacking the skills to be successful there should be a clearly established policy for termination.  Again, while such an evaluation system will be time consuming and expensive, dealing with the results of poor teaching will be far more costly and detrimental to students.

Create a continuing system of collaborative “teacher growth”.  After the initial evaluation period, the teaching staff should engage in an ongoing effort to improve each other’s skills.  This program would include a consistent interchange of ideas from colleagues who will observe each other’s classes, share ideas and suggestions, and when appropriate, carefully analyze student test results.  These groupings should include both teachers within a department and those from other subject areas.  It must be clearly understood that this is not an evaluation process but rather an opportunity to improve and refine teaching practices. 

Reduce the influence of the principal in the dismissal process.   I strongly agree with Mr. Whitby’s concern with a potentially capricious decision by a principal to fire a teacher.  (An example of this type of abuse of power will be presented in a follow up to this post)  I endorse two initiatives to eliminate the potential of such an occurrence. Requests for teacher terminations would be the responsibility of a committee rather than the exclusive domain of the principal.  In addition to the principal this committee could include the director of guidance, an assistant principal and the district coordinator of the particular curriculum.   In addition, greater care must be taken in the selection process of principals to ensure that individuals who would perform in an unprofessional manner would be excluded.  A process very similar to the one suggested for teachers should be adopted for administrative hiring.  Once again, the extra time and energy required for such a plan would be ultimately less costly than the damage caused by the wrong person being in this position. 

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

“Districts have to treat principals like they expect them to lead.”—The District Leadership Challenge

It’s October and it is National Principal’s Month. Congratulations, fellow principals! However, I’m confused. Are we actually honoring principals at the same time that the national plan for school reform is to fire principals first and fire principals often? I have heard stories of the preemptive firing of principals just in case their school would be placed on a state “under-performing” list.

In order to accept the authenticity of the current school reform blueprint, which, in every scenario, calls for the replacement of the principal, one must believe that principals act autonomously and that school districts have very little say-so regarding what goes on in a school. In reality, the opposite is closer to the truth. Many school districts are small and lack capacity, and, too often, principals are on their own in their efforts to turn around their schools. A recently released Wallace Foundation study indicates that “collective leadership”— “total amount of influence attributable to all the participants in a given educational system: teachers, parents, principals, district office staff, and community members”—is the key to higher student achievement and school improvement.

Teachers need and want supportive leadership to succeed in the classroom. Likewise, principals desperately need the full and active support of their district leadership in order to improve their schools.

As an SREB report on district-school alignment points out that “A central reason for the unending graduation and preparation problems is the failure of many public school districts to systematically provide the working conditions that well-trained principals need to succeed. Districts have to treat principals like they expect them to lead.”

Principals are being widely criticized for not firing bad teachers, but principals don’t control key personnel functions. The authority to hire and fire rests solely with the superintendent and the school board. Dismissing any staff member demands an often-lengthy due process procedure that some are reluctant to go through except in the most urgent cases. The dismissal process is so expensive and time consuming that some districts take the easy way out and move around weaker teachers. Principals do not have the authority to reassign teachers to other schools.

Principals who bring forward too many dismissal cases are seen as problematic. The same assistant superintendent who complimented me privately for dealing with poor performance commented in front of two school board members that I was sometimes “tough.” I responded, “You sent them to me because you knew that I would address their needs. You can’t come back to me later and say that I am tough.”

The Rubber Room

Almost eleven years ago, our high school was labeled a “failing high school” by our superintendent in a Washington Post article. I remember being compelled to sit in a room in the central office every Friday afternoon for several months with three other “failing principals.” This was our district’s version of the “principals’ rubber room.” The purpose of these meetings was for us “failing principals” to come up with a plan to turn around our under-performing schools. To this day, I don’t understand why our district would ask “failing principals” like us to come up with the solution to school improvement. That would be like a teacher asking her lowest performing students to advise the rest of the class on the best strategies for studying for tests.

On one memorable occasion, one assistant superintendent became so frustrated that she pounded her fist on the table and said, “You (principals) have to bring up your test scores.” Not knowing how to respond to this tirade, we just sat silently and stared at each other in disbelief. Finally, I spoke up. “Tell us what you want us to do and we will do it.” The assistant superintendent leaned forward, squinted her eyes and said, “That’s what we hired you to do, and, if you can’t, we’ll find somebody who can.”

Even though that outburst took place over a decade ago, incidents like that are occurring with increased frequency today. So-called experts, many who have never worked in a school, are demanding that principals improve their schools or face dismissal. ‘We have no idea how to change the culture of a school, but we’re going to fire you if you don’t.’ ‘We’re not going to train you. We’re not going to support you. We’re just going to threaten you and then fire you.’

If they have what it takes

Less than a year ago, I sat in meeting discussing one state’s strategy to turn around low-performing schools. A superintendent from a large district in the state was asked to speak to the group about his strategy to reform his district. His plan was simple and honest. “I hire principals and put them in the schools. If they have what it takes, they stay. If they don’t have what it takes, I find someone else.” By his own admission, this superintendent had no idea what his principals needed in the way of skills or training. In fact, he didn’t have the time to find out. He needed results now! He was simply going to hire and fire until he found the right person.

You are a principal?

When people asked me what I did for a living and I told them that I was a high school principal, they looked at me as though I had just landed from Mars. To most people, being in the mere presence of large groups of teenagers is intimidating. Most parents will readily admit that have their hands full dealing with their own teenagers let alone trying to work with hundreds or even thousands of other peoples’ kids.

We can’t wait for Superman

When I read the resolution honoring principals, I wonder how anyone could actually be a successful principal. In addition to a myriad of responsibilities, principals are being asked to do something that no one before us has ever done in any country--raise the achievement of all students, particularly poor and disadvantaged students, to high levels. And they are being asked to raise student performance by people who have never done it themselves and who, sad to say, have no intention of asking those who actually have.

An assistant superintendent for whom I have much respect once told me, “I was a good principal, but I never raised test scores. You are going to have to and I don’t know how you are going to do it.” Her remarks were honest and supportive, and I appreciated the fact that she was willing to partner with me to find a way to help our school succeed.

More than any other time in memory, principals are under attack, and so are our teachers. We are not the enemy! Threats of punishment and dismissal are not what principals or teachers need to help us improve schools. Instead of attracting us to work in our neediest schools, current policies are driving us away. What we need is training, support, and encouragement.

Our mission is critical to the future of our country and to the future of each of our students. We have a daunting but not impossible task. Success demands that we all work together in a collaborative partnership to improve every school. Why don’t we all admit that we don’t have all the answers and start working together to find them?

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:51 AM | Permalink

First, I will give you the bad news boys and girls. Superman and Santa Claus are not coming, at least not to public education any time soon.

Now here is the good news. Everyone is talking about the importance of education. New York Times op-ed columnist, Gail Collins, put it best when she wrote, “Right now, the public is engaged. The best charter schools are laboratories for new ideas. But the regular public schools are where American education has to be saved. We can do better. Superman hasn’t arrived. But we may be ready to fly.”

The Bottom Line

It is up to us to be the hope that our students need. From a high school perspective, we are the end of the line. No one stands behind us to help our students. Without the literacy and math skills needed to succeed in postsecondary education and training, our students will be relegated to a lifetime of marginal employment and second-class citizenship. We are the last and best hope that our students have to lead a better life.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the data. It biases the judgment." – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It has been argued that teachers should not be responsible for exam results if they have minimal or no input into the process.  When teachers lack opportunities for input into standardized testing procedures, frustration often results. But administrators and teachers do not always see eye to eye on this topic.   This fact was reinforced in a correspondence I received from a regular reader of this blog.   

“Last spring our SOL scores were dismal.  After a few days of remediation by teachers who volunteered to help failing students, the retest scores improved. But because the scores were deemed ‘good enough,’ there was no follow up by the administration.  They never looked at the reasons for the failures in the first place.   Were the failing students from specific teachers; were they from a specific subgroup, gender, etc.?     

I don’t understand why we aren’t studying the results?  Why aren’t we using the teachers who were successful to work with the (other) teachers? Won’t this problem occur again this year?  I know there are poor teachers, but many good teachers have their hands tied when the administration does not want to listen to creative ideas that could improve our scores.”

Understanding the teacher’s view

This is only one of many examples where the administrative and teaching staffs do not share a mutual vision of accountability. Why might that be the case?  Long before there were standardized tests, good teachers wanted to help students learn.  It is the main reason why most teachers enter the profession.  Of course, teachers want to have high test scores which will make them look good on their evaluations.  But the importance of these scores pales in comparison to   the greatest driving force for all excellent educators.   Any classroom failure is a highly personal experience for a teacher.  Each one has a name, a face, and a story.  Clearly these individuals are far more than mere statistics and will cause teachers to spend endless hours of self-examination as to what they could have done better. 

However, there is a strong sense that in many schools there is a disconnect between this view and the one of the administrative team.  Issues that are critical to teachers may be considered simply as a set of boxes to be checked off on yet another official form.  The mindset seems to be that if the results are good enough, we need not examine any issues that may be lurking just below the surface.  Why waste time fixing something that, based on a superficial inspection, is not totally broken?   

Focusing on the individual

Total school pass rates on barrier exams do not give a complete or an accurate appraisal of what is actually occurring within a student body.  An overall pass rate of 80% may satisfy some arbitrary requirement created at a meeting involving people who have never stood in front of a classroom.  But it does not explain why one of every five students did not succeed.  It does not put faces to those 20%, nor does it discuss their now imperiled futures.  It does not identify at-risk student populations, define educational problems, or find potential solutions. However, as described by my reader, it may empower some people to believe that a task has been accomplished and it is time to move on. The failure to explore all data to find important answers is a disservice to both students and teachers.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If a business increased its production by 44% with no drop in quality and no increase in equipment costs and with no additional resources, researchers would be beating a path to the company’s door and Jim Collins would be writing a “Good to Great” book about the company. Why? In the real world, simultaneous quantitative and qualitative improvements are rare.

However, when the number of SAT test-takers increases by 44% with an increase in math scores and no drop in reading or writing “there isn’t any huge news here.” Despite fewer teachers, more students, and big budget cuts, more and more students are taking both the SAT and ACT. When it comes to public schools, simultaneous quantitative and qualitative increases are apparently the new expectation.

I know that it is fashionable to bash schools, but the refusal to give any credit where credit is due undermines the credibility of the reporters and so-called experts.

Only someone who had actually worked in a school would understand that the additional 44% of SAT test takers probably does not include members of the National Honor Society. They have already been taking the tests for years. That 44% represents less capable students who, in decades past, would not have even considered taking the SAT.

The experts won’t say it but I will. We still have a lot to do, but great work teachers and principals!

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:00 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

This somewhat shocking question was asked in a recent story in The Christian Science Monitor.  Their article tells of a growing number of school districts located in cities including Detroit, Denver, Minneapolis and Boston where schools are being created without principals.  In this new format teachers are making the decisions on everything from curriculum coverage to cafeteria schedules.  While each city has a different program it appears they are being formed in response to a common problem—teachers believe that they are being held more and more accountable for student achievement while having little or no control over how their schools address the issues that impact classroom success.  According to the article teacher response to this scrutiny is basically, “Fine. Hold us accountable. But let us do it our way."  The writer, Stacy Teicher Khadaroo continues:

“While each teacher-led school is unique, the shared decision-making is what defines them. The teachers' participation tends to create a culture quite different from that in a traditional principal-led school: Teachers can't hide behind the classroom door or complain about policies, because they have to come up with solutions.”

While I applaud any approach in which teacher input is both solicited and implemented I am concerned about the wisdom of removing administrative teams designed to make decisions that are neither appropriate nor productive for teachers to make.  Time is a scarce commodity for teachers.  And using it to address such issues as school-wide student discipline, truancy, transportation, lunches, building cleanliness or budgets appears antithetical to the stated goals of these innovative, teacher-led institutions.  What I continue to fervently support, however, are schools where the teaching staff is deeply involved in the decisions that most affect them and their students.

Control or Cooperation

Mel Riddile has written on numerous occasions that for a school to succeed, principals need to be willing to trade some of their control for the cooperation of their staff. Based on my experiences as a department chair for twenty-six years and as a teacher for forty, I agree wholeheartedly.  I worked for a decade in a situation where it was clear that the opinions of teachers were considered and utilized; the department chairs had wide-ranging influence on the curriculum, hiring and the master schedule; and major policy issues were discussed at every level before implementation.  I have also worked in an environment where critical decisions were made behind closed doors and announced without discussion.  Department chairs were specifically told that their major responsibility was simply to carry out the policies of the administrative team.  I feel that the assertion by Ms. Khadaroo—if you want a school where the teachers are willing to be held accountable they must be an integral component in the overall process—is accurate. 

A Successful School with a Principal

Rather than getting rid of the principal, why not attempt to blend both worlds with certain specific arrangements which would ensure teachers accepting accountability and a hierarchy of leadership that would make the school function appropriately?  Here would be my picks for five areas of teacher influence:

Create a strong mid-management presence.  Give department chairs significant authority in the areas of hiring, scheduling, assigning rooms and generating academic policies.  The input of this group should be solicited and utilized on a regular basis.

Choose department chairs in a professional manner.  Schools should have clear and consistent criteria for selecting individuals to be department chairs.  In too many cases these selections are made based purely on seniority, favoritism or, worst case scenario, by whoever is willing to volunteer.  If the job is to be taken seriously, the appointment process must be equally serious.

Create teacher leaders throughout the building.  On every hall in any school there are teachers who have great ideas which could significantly improve academic success.  These views could have a profound effect both in the classrooms and throughout the curriculum.  Administrative leaders should encourage department chairs to solicit input from their members on all academic topics and should also approach teachers directly to request their thoughts and place them in leadership positions on influential committees.

Put classroom teachers into the evaluation process.  During my forty years of teaching math I was never evaluated by an administrator who had taught the subject.  Input from a fellow math teacher would have been welcomed and would have provided a unique viewpoint as would the thoughts of someone from a different department.  Evaluations need to be a collaborative process that includes individuals from the classroom.  Placing teachers into this process would provide an opportunity to make a significant impact on the improvement of both the teachers being observed and the ones making the observations.

Give teachers a voice in administrator evaluations.  In this new “flat-school” approach to education, teachers should have both informal and formal input in the assessment of the administrative staff.  Assistant principals should meet on a regular basis with teachers to have open and honest conversations about the positive and negative impact of their work.  In such a forum comments like “I like the way you handle student discipline for classroom misbehavior but your punishments for being late to classes appear to be inconsistent”, “If you would drop into our classes on an informal but somewhat regular basis I think it would send an excellent message to the students” or “I feel like you are not supportive enough of the teachers when working with your students” could result in constructive outcomes and interesting conversations.  On a more formal basis, teacher participation should be solicited and incorporated into the performance evaluation of all members of the administrative team.  Both of these avenues for frank and sincere dialogue between these two parts of the academic team could provide a significant improvement in morale and a greater sense of teamwork. 

Save the principals!

Principals and administrators should, in an ideal world, facilitate the job of the teachers.  If educating all children at the highest academic levels is our goal, then teachers need all of the help they can get.  They do not need more work or an enhanced job description.  If administrators are allowed to do their job of creating a positive learning environment then teachers can spend more of their time educating, inspiring, and enlightening their students

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:48 PM | Permalink

The new school year has begun and my principal friends are telling me that they are already hearing complaints about the behavior of this year’s senior class. After years of listening to the same complaints, I finally had heard enough and one day I said to our administrative staff, “If we don’t like how our students are behaving, we need to look in the mirror. We have had these students in this school for three years. What have we taught them? Instead of blaming the kids, we need to look at ourselves. If we want our students to change we have to change. They are only doing what we have taught them either by our actions or our inaction. It is our responsibility to teach them what we want them to know and to be able to do. We drive the bus!” From that day forward, whenever someone started complaining or blaming our students we would look at each other, smile and say, “we drive the bus.”

Like many high schools, our school had every excuse to fail—high poverty, high mobility, a large number of second language students, gangs, and a decaying facility. Blaming the poverty of our students and making excuses might make us feel better, but it did nothing for our students. It didn’t matter to them if we could explain away low achievement. After all, it was their lives and their future that was at stake.

The reality is that we, in high school, are the last in line. If we couldn’t help them, there was no one standing in line after us who would. Without our help, our students would be sentenced to a lifetime of marginal employment and second-class citizenship. Blaming students only distracted us and detracted from our mission of helping them graduate ready for postsecondary education and training.

That is why I read Robert Samuelson’s article in the Washington Post with stunned disbelief. Samuelson went through the usual litany of school failures including decades of flat NAEP scores, drops in student achievement from elementary to high school, teacher pay, and dropouts. There is nothing new here. We’ve heard it all before.

The source of our troubles

Samuelson gives two reasons for the failure of school reform efforts:

First, school reform is difficult. On this point, I agree. Meaningful, responsible, and lasting change is as difficult in schools as it is in most organizations. Here is where my disagreement with Samuelson begins. He contends that reforms fail because “no one has discovered transformative changes … that are scalable—easily transferable to other schools.” The operative word here is “easily.” Whereas Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, insists that there are no “silver bullets” when it comes to school reform, Samuelson seems to think that our failure is in not finding the quick fix that will help all schools improve.

Reality Check

We proved for years that we knew how to help some students succeed to high levels. We did very well with the students who should do well. We didn’t do very well with poor, disadvantaged, and under-resourced students, and in that arena we all have a lot to learn.

When are we all going to accept the fact that raising the performance of each and every student is a much more difficult task than anyone had anticipated? Successful students are not successful by accident. Success is about work, effort, and deliberate practice. Improving schools is difficult. It takes time and hard work by, parents, teachers, and principals, and it means a lot of hard work for students.

Reaching previously underserved students requires a change in mindset and subsequently a change in our culture from one in which success is a scarce commodity to a culture in which success is an expectation. Changing the culture of our schools means that we have to change our culture and no one believes that that would be a simple, one to two year, task.

It’s the kids, stupid!

While it may be human nature to want to discover the simplest solution to a complex problem, attributing low student performance to “shrunken student motivation” crosses the line from the rational to the absurd. Blaming students for the problems of education is like blaming a hospital’s problems on sick patients. “We couldn’t cure the disease because our patients wouldn’t get well.”

Think of it. This whole time the answer has been right under our noses. It’s the kids. It’s their fault. The debate is over. Let’s fold the tent and close the schools, because nothing we do will work with these danged kids.

“Who’s driving the bus?”

Experience has taught me that moderately dysfunctional schools blame the feeder schools. Dysfunctional schools blame the parents. Truly dysfunctional schools blame the students. Blaming the kids is a waste of time. In fact, if you are wasting your time blaming anyone, stop! It isn’t helping.

Blaming the kids is a last act of desperation by someone who has run out of answers. Let’s just admit that we don’t have all the answers and then we can get on with the work of finding solutions.

My career as a high school administrator spanned four different decades, and I can tell you that today’s students are the best of the lot. If you asked me to choose students from the 70s, 80s, 90s, or the 00s, I would not hesitate to choose today’s students.

Stop Blaming

Our schools must improve, but blaming parents, teachers, or principals, and especially the  kids won’t accomplish anything. The world, not just our country, is more competitive. We can no longer outwork or outproduce the rest of the world. Today, we must outthink and out create the rest of the world. Ideas, not land, trade, or factories, are the “wealth of nations.” If ideas are wealth, then schools are today’s factories.

Improve, we must, but we won’t get better taking the easy way out. The search for “easy” and “quick” needs to end. We are wasting valuable time and scarce resources as well as eroding public confidence with our obsession with quick fixes.

We must do the right thing, and, more often than not, the right thing is the hard thing to do. We must ensure that each and every student reaches mastery by teaching a rigorous and relevant curriculum in a warm and inviting school environment.

Students must be able to read, write, speak, think, and compute at high levels and to apply those skills in the real world. It is our responsibility to teach our students whatever we want them to know and be able to do.

Students will not exceed the quality of their teachers. It is not up to the kids to improve our schools. It’s up to us. We drive the bus!

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:22 PM | Permalink

High schools make the “dropout factory” list when then they have a 60% or lower cohort graduation rate over four years. Now, colleges and universities are under the microscope, and based on Jay Mathews report on a Washington Monthly article, they should be. While encouraging my students to take a rigorous course of study in high school, I have warned them for years that “universities are more than happy to take your money and send you home,” but never in my wildest dreams did I believe that a college could have a six-year, not four-year, graduation rate of 4.98%.

You have to see it to believe it. So, here is a listing of the bottom ten:

1. Southern University at New Orleans, La. 4.98 percent
2. Allen University, S.C. 6.09
3. Martin University, Ind. 6.67
4. Bellevue University, Neb. 6.99
5. Calumet College of Saint Joseph, Ind. 7.14
6. Baker College of Auburn Hills, Mich. 7.14
7. Visible School--Music and Worships Arts College, Ind. 7.50
8. University of the District of Columbia, D.C. 7.94
9. Saint Augustine's College, N.C. 8.24
10. Nyack College, N.Y. 7.9

My reaction is simple. You can’t make this up!

Share this with your counselors and encourage them to read the article. It is an eye opener.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 05:25 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

How many times have you heard Mel Riddile or I say that “given adequate time and assistance, every child can learn?”  Too many times to count, I am sure.  Why?  Mel Riddile sincerely believes that the key to success in education is maximizing contact time between teachers and students.  He even once bought t-shirts for his entire faculty with the statement “It’s about Time” emblazoned on the pockets.  And now there is more concrete evidence of the accuracy of these convictions.  A recent Washington Post editorial has shown that there is a clear link between student success and the use of increased class time and the KIPP program.  According to the paper:

“A NEW REPORT documents again that middle school students in the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) outperform their counterparts in traditional public schools -- and debunks some of the arguments often used to discount KIPP's success. One reason KIPP students learn more is that they are in school more.”

It is critical to note that the mere extension of time is not by itself a guarantee of improved student achievement.  What KIPP is doing and what others should emulate is that they are using their time in a far more efficient manner.  Some of their innovations would not be possible in the public sector due to the cost involved.  Their school day is from 7:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., which is at least two hours more than most systems.  Many KIPP schools have Saturday sessions.  In today’s economic climate the funds necessary to have similar programs in public education is, unfortunately, impossible.  (That situation will be the focus of a future blog.)  But the one KIPP innovation that deserves to be emulated is their approach to the summer.  Instead of having the vast amount of down time associated with the majority of public schools, the KIPP centers have placed several weeks of mandatory instruction right in the middle of the traditional break.

Inertia can be unproductive

American schools continue to cling to an agrarian calendar that was far more appropriate when our children actually planted the crops in the spring, tended to them in the summer and assisted in the fall harvest.  While most institutions have moved beyond the 19^th century, education, at least in structuring its calendar, is hanging onto the good old days.  And the public seems content with the status quo.  We have replaced working in the fields with trips to the beach, part time jobs, camps, and amusement parks.  In the state of Virginia there is a practice commonly known as “The Kings Dominion Rule,” which says that public schools cannot open until after Labor Day in order to ensure both the availability of a young work force and the possibility for families to visit the various state theme parks through the first weekend in September.  Combining this statute with a fluke in the calendar and in the summer of 2009 most students in the Commonwealth had twelve weeks without school.  Throw in standardized testing for the last few weeks of school and students are out of contact with direct instruction for more than 25% of the year.  Is it any wonder that the first month of most school years is spent on review?

Finding Solutions

The difference in contact time between typical public education and KIPP is immense.  The Post estimates it at about 600 more hours per year.  While it would be unrealistic to try to narrow that gap at this time, currently many districts are headed in the wrong direction and actually exacerbating the problem.  To save money, calendars are being cut, classes are being enlarged and programs are being cancelled.  In many districts remediation is being built into the day either through expanded lunch periods or separate periods, thus further reducing actual class time. 

There are, however, steps that can be taken to better utilize the time currently available.  These would not cost additional funds but would require courageous and determined leadership to break some long-held habits. 

Create a 12-month school year.  Put down the hoe and pick up a book.  Or rather, leave the beach and head for the classroom.  Create four ten-week grading periods.  Schedule breaks of two weeks in the fall and spring, three weeks in winter and five weeks in the summer.  Intervention sessions can be incorporated in the shorter breaks as well as teacher workdays.  Most summer schools have been truncated to less than five weeks so they can still be available if needed.

Schools should consider the 4x4 plan.  Instead of having six or seven classes, offer students four classes in each of the ten-week sessions.  These classes would meet in a full block every day thus completing a semester of work each session.  This change would allow students to enroll in eight courses in a calendar year.  The blocks would be slightly shorter than other schedules but by meeting every day review would be significantly reduced and ultimately create more class time for original work.

Every minute of the school day should be used for learning.  If the day begins at 7:20 and ends at 2:05 every minute should be utilized to educate.  Pep rallies, class and club meetings, and remediation will be held after school.  If they are important enough to disrupt teaching, they should be important enough to stay after to attend.  Creating a culture that believes that school activities can be consummated after the last class expands the day for everyone. 

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:19 AM | Permalink

Years ago, a principal friend of mine in a nearby high school was the subject of a student prank. The students pasted her head on a photograph of a naked woman and stuffed the picture into a display cabinet that was as far away from the main office as possible. By the time the key could be located and the picture removed many, many of the students in the school were able to view it. The picture created quite a stir. The picture demeaned the principal, distracted students and staff alike, and disrupted school for most of the day. Of course, the perpetrators had to brag about it and they were appropriately disciplined. Every student expected that there would be a consequence as did the staff and parents.

More recently, the news has been replete with stories about General Stanley Allen McChrystal, who was relieved of his command in Afghanistan as a result of comments that were reported in Rolling Stone Magazine. At the time, very few experts were surprised that he lost his job because he publicly criticized his boss. No one questioned the General’s right to say what he said, nor did they question the right of his superior to take appropriate disciplinary action.

Fast forward to the present and a USA Today article by Ken Paulson, president of the Newseum and First Amendment Center. I had to read the opening several times before I could believe what I was reading.

“While we've all benefited from the good teachers and school administrators in our lives, it's hard to shake the memories of those who either didn't teach us very well or treated us badly. Students in the pre-digital era pretty much just had to grin and bear it. We would grumble to our friends or complain to our parents, but we weren't going to get an audience with the school board. Times have changed. The current generation is armed with social media, and it's payback time.”

So, let me get this straight. If you don’t agree with or like someone, you have the right to use the Internet as a global printing press to undermine, demean, and slander that person all in the name of “payback.” It is one thing to stuff a picture into a display cabinet where it can be removed quickly. While the memories linger, there is no permanent record of the incident. It is quite another thing to be quoted in a magazine and universally posted on the Internet where everything is permanent.

I believe in the right of student expression and the need to include student voice as an integral part of school improvement efforts. As a principal, I never exercised my right of prior review over our student newspaper. Instead, I focused my efforts on recruiting, hiring, and retaining the best teachers whose job it was to teach and guide young journalists. It is true that some of our colleagues have exceeded their authority, which could happen in any setting. However, this article has taken the current fad of blaming and attacking teachers and principals to a new level. Teachers and school leaders are not the enemy!

Paulson contends that “sophomoric speech is free speech too.” He argues that students in two Pennsylvania schools were unjustly suspended for creating mock MySpace profiles featuring photos of their principals. While he admits that “both pages were profane and laden with sexual innuendo. Sample epithets from one: "Big whore" and "big steroid freak." Yet, Paulson insists that this behavior is merely a modern version of wearing a black armband (Tinker v. Des Moines) and that students should not be subject to any consequences or disciplinary action.

Paulson explains that, “While there's no question that these attacks on principals were sophomoric and insulting, we tend to forget that students also have rights. Too often, adults seem to believe that you get handed the Bill of Rights along with your high school diploma; that's not the case. It's tough to defend such insults by teens, but check out the comments section of any online publication and you'll find adults posting abrasive, degrading, racist and sexist opinions, all with the full protection of the First Amendment.”

Surprise! I agree with Mr. Paulson. Students do have free speech rights and they do have the right to print what they like. Likewise, as educators and parents, we have the responsibility to use these teachable moments to make education as meaningful and relevant as possible by connecting classroom learning to real-world situations. Students must learn that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, that every cause has an effect, and that every right is accompanied by a responsibility.

Mr. Paulson and I were both educated in the 20^th century and, those of us, myself included, educated in that bygone age have a tendency to believe that all the experiences gained and lessons learned are relevant to today’s schools. Some even believe that their experience working in schools whose goal was to sort students for success has relevance to current schools whose goal is raising all, not some, students to high levels of achievement.

In the good old days scurrilous notes and harmless pranks would reach a limited audience the memories of which faded quickly. There was no permanent record that could be accessed by anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Today, the success of every student is critically important and everything written and posted on the Internet is permanent. Every computer is a publishing house and every student has the potential to instantly be a best-selling author. It is high time that we all got our heads out of the 20th century where we were educated and put our heads in the 21st century where our children live. Wake up people! It’s a different world out there!

Finally, I have a suggestion for Mr. Paulson. As is your right, create a fake web page or MySpace page under the name of your Chairman, CEO, or any of your Board members. Be sure to include profane, obscene, and slanderous statements about them. For an added touch, add some racist or sexually explicit language. Wait a couple of weeks and contact me to let me know how that worked out for you.

Next: Part 2 of “It’s Payback Time.”

Posted by Mel Riddile at 12:37 PM | Permalink

The Teacher Leader just threw more gasoline on the fire. Algebra for all students in grade 8 is a hot topic that will only get hotter. The recent studies that cite Algebra I success in eighth grade as a predictor of college success will only fan the flames of controversy pitting policy makers who want to say that they are raising standards against teachers who want students to actually learn something.

I have some thoughts on the subject for school leaders:

One Size Fits All

Anytime someone in education suggests one approach for all students, I get very nervous. The very same people who want teachers to differentiate instruction in classrooms are the same people who refuse to differentiate their approach to district policy. Years ago, a district leader had the bright idea of eliminating earth science from the high school curriculum because the top university in the state did not consider earth science to be a laboratory course. Instead, all ninth graders would be required to take Biology. Previously, about 60-70% of all ninth graders took Biology, and of course, it was the top students. The logic here escapes me. We were going to suddenly raise the college readiness levels of 30-40% of our students, not by improving student literacy and math skills, but by not teaching earth science. This bright idea eliminated the jobs of hundreds of science teachers, increased the failure rate in Biology dramatically, and did nothing to improve college readiness. Incidentally, the timing was impeccable. Just as the environmental movement was gaining momentum, this school district eliminated the study of the environment. How’s that for meaningful and relevant?

Hurry Up and Learn

We are in such a hurry to accelerate students that we forget to ensure that they actually learn something. One school system insisted that all tenth graders take Chemistry. As an aside, I seem to recall that the U.S. approach to math had been criticized for a breadth over depth philosophy. For a decade the district staff harassed and criticized the Chemistry teachers, who insisted that students needed a solid algebra foundation in order to succeed in Chemistry. District staff believed that the Chemistry teachers were excusing their lack of pedagogical skills until they actually looked at the numbers. Thirty days after a fist-pounding tirade in a Chemistry teacher in-service program in which district staff said, “We are going to raise our Chemistry scores, and don’t tell me it’s the math,” the same people sat before thirty high school principals directing them to take all students who had not completed Algebra I with a C our better out of Chemistry. Why? “Because our analysis indicates that they will all fail the state test. That’s why.” Finally, someone had listened to the teachers. Of course, these people would never admit that they were wrong and that the teachers had been right all along. Nor, would they acknowledge the thousands of students who had been forced down the school district’s conveyor belt so that district staff could brag to their colleagues at national conferences “all of our 10^th graders take Chemistry.”

The Best or the Best Prepared

Without an aligned math curriculum that is designed to prepare students from K-7 to successfully master Algebra I in the eighth grade, all we are really doing is identifying the brightest students not the best prepared.

Screen Them Out or Raise Them Up

I was just talking with a friend who lamented that her high school English teacher did not recommend her for AP English and that she was forced to sit in classes in which a majority of the students were not highly motivated. This individual went on to attend and graduate from a competitive, four-year college. I will admit that I have a problem with arrogant elitists who believe that it is their responsibility to sort the capable from the less capable. This fixed mindset—the belief that talent and intelligence are inherited and that one either has it or does not have it--has and is causing serious damage in our schools and wasting talent that we cannot afford to waste. We need to develop a growth mindset in our teachers and staff—the belief that work and effort create ability and that success is the result of persistent, correct, and deliberate practice.

What Colleges Really Want – School leaders get mixed messages from colleges and universities. I have had two deans of prestigious engineering schools tell me that they did not want students to take Calculus in high school. They merely wanted the incoming students to have a solid foundation in Algebra. This made it clear to me that the admissions officials were not talking with their own faculty. So, here I am trying to get my students to take higher-level math and the colleges are telling them that it is not important. The only problem is that the admissions people demand more AP and IB courses and a more rigorous course of study as a condition for admission.

The Bottom Line

I spent an entire year of my life promoting the idea that our school system needed to double the number of 8th graders taking Algebra I. I want more and more 8th graders prepared to successfully master Algebra I. Notice that I said, “successfully master.” I have been through too many of these “up the ante” initiatives over the years that simply force more students into higher-level courses with no effort made to improve the preparation of the students. Then, when the failure rate increases dramatically, they blame the teachers. If we don’t care if our students learning anything, we can simply declare, like many districts have done, that more 8thgraders will take Algebra I. The truth is that more 8th graders successfully mastering Algebra I will not be accomplished by edict. It will take a lot of work and effort to align the curriculum and to properly train teachers in grades K-7. All students can achieve to high levels if they are given enough time and the proper preparation.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:59 PM | Permalink

In the last few years, I have heard some respected experts claim that the brains of this generation of adolescents have been re-wired so that they can multitask—the ability of a person to perform more than one task at the same time. These experts are telling parents and educators that, not only should we allow kids to multitask, but that we should actually encourage it.

Parents should allow kids to talk on the phone, listen to music, and watch TV while doing their homework. In fact, I even heard one expert say that, if we don’t allow all that stimulation, kids will get bored. Likewise, in order to “properly engage” students, teachers should encourage their students to simultaneously engage in multiple tasks.

I must admit that, at first, I started drinking the Kool-Aid. However, I was reminded of my study of biology and the fact that it has taken millions of years for our brains to evolve to their present capacity. It just didn’t make sense that Nintendo and iPods had achieved in a decade what millions of years of evolution could not. However, I kept sipping from the glass until yesterday when two separate events caused me to rethink the whole idea of multitasking.

First, as I was driving home from work, I noticed a red sedan with dealer license plates driving in the left lane and it was not keeping pace with the flow of traffic. Not only was the car not keeping pace with rush hour traffic, but it was repeatedly swerving over the dividing line. Years ago, I would have assumed that the driver was drunk. More recently, this erratic driving might have led me to believe that, either the car was operated by a poor driver or that the driver was elderly. I learned this while living in Florida. Today, that driving pattern is a surefire indication that the driver is talking on a cell phone. I managed to pull alongside the car, and to my dismay, I saw a 60-ish man texting, yes texting.

Later, after arriving home, my wife was watching an episode of Mythbusters episode titled “Cell Phone vs. Drunk Driving MiniMyth.” The question being asked was “Is talking on a cell phone as bad as driving drunk? To everyone’s surprise, the hosts talking on a cell phone actually performed worse than when they were under the influence of alcohol.

Do not confuse this discussion of multitasking with another topic related to student engagement—attention span. Multitasking and attention span are altogether different topics. While most experts agree that chunking-down lessons into segments that match the attention span of adolescents—13 to 17 minutes—is a good thing, allowing or even asking students to engage in multiple tasks is open to debate.

The Research Says

A Washington Post article concluded “even though American society is filled with multitaskers who think they are accomplishing more than ever, researchers say they aren’t doing as much, or as well, as they think.”

The Post cited Stanford researchers who added to the body of research that “proves your kids are also wrong when they say that they can study while they listen to music, text their friends and do all manner of other things.”

Cognitive psychologist, professor, and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” Daniel Willingham points out that, while kids are better at multitasking than older people “there is good evidence that multi-tasking is seldom a good idea. Doing two things at once is usually detrimental.” Willingham has produced a YouTube video to demonstrate his point that we should discourage multitasking if we are concerned about student learning.

Brain Rules author, John Medina, is not as diplomatic as some of his colleagues on the subject. “The brain cannot multitask. Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time,” writes Medina. Later, Medina adds, “To put it bluntly, research shows that we can’t multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously.”

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:54 AM | Permalink

As a high school principal, I used to think that it was my job to prepare our students for college. However, over the years I came to understand that colleges were only too happy to accept a tuition check and turn right around and send students home. Of course, the colleges kept the tuition money.

The reality is that, as principals, it is our job to ensure that our students are college-ready. By readiness I mean ready to succeed in and graduate from college.

Check out this video “Facts and Figures About College Readiness” produced by the Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools. The video points out some important facts relating to college success:

• The literacy and math skills needed to succeed in college are virtually the same as those skills needed to succeed in most occupations.
• 1 of 3 students take a remedial course in college.
• 42% of community college students take a remedial course.
• Remedial courses cost our nation $4.3 billion each year.
• Only 30% of the students who take remedial courses graduate from college.
• Less than 50% of all students graduate from college in six years.
• Black and Hispanic students are only half as likely to graduate.
• By 2014 half of all new jobs will require post-secondary education and training.
• 45% of new college students have the skills they need to succeed.
• Because of our shorter school year, U.S. students spend one year less in school (K-12) than students in other industrialized nations.
• 75% of workers don’t have the writing skills needed to succeed.

Next: The Keys to College Readiness

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

According to a recent report as well as the recently published AP: A Critical Examination of the Advanced Placement Program, “the percentage of high school graduates taking Advanced Placement courses in science and mathematics has risen sharply in recent decades.” In fact, AP enrollment has grown at a rate of 9.3 percent per year for the past twenty years.

Why the dramatic increase in AP enrollment?

- Schools are rated and ranked nationally based on the number of AP courses they offer and the number of students enrolled in those courses.

- High schools typically weight grades for AP classes.

- There is more competition for college admissions.

- Colleges and universities demand that students take a more rigorous curriculum.

- Many colleges weight AP courses, which gives students an advantage in the admissions process.

- Parents believe that obtaining college credits in high school will save money and shorten the length of stay in college.

- Many believe that increasing the enrollment of disadvantaged students in AP classes effectively levels the playing field and will close the achievement gap.

The Results

- The study of over 40,000 students who had taken AP classes determined that they were no more likely to graduate from college in four years than students who had not done so.

- Enrollment in AP shortens the time to earn a degree only for the small group of students with enough AP credits to enter college as sophomores.

- Students who participated in dual-enrollment programs, which allow them to take college classes while still in high school, managed to graduate from college sooner on average than peers coming out of traditional high school programs.

- Some students elect to retake the AP course they took in high school by enrolling in an introductory-level course in the same subject in college. Students who retook the AP course they took in high school did slightly better in the course in college.

- Students who had previously failed an AP test did no better in that course in college.

- “Students who take honors courses ought to receive an extra half-point on a grade-point-average scale of 1 to 4, while AP courses ought to be worth an extra point, and an extra 2 points if students pass the exam.”

- Once differences in students’ backgrounds were accounted for, AP students were no more likely to graduate from college than non-AP students. But the opposite was true for AP students who both took and passed AP exams.

- Exam failure rates were disproportionately high among African-American, Hispanic, and low-income students, the disadvantaged groups the policy aimed to help. Many of these students had to take remedial courses in college.

 Implications for school leaders:

- Students who take AP courses and receive a score of 3 or higher on the exam benefit in college.

- Those who fail the AP exams do not do better in college courses.

- Simply placing students in AP classes is not helpful. It is our responsibility to build the capacity of students to, not only take the courses, but to succeed on the exams. This is an issue of both equity and excellence.

- Students who receive college credits from AP exams do not graduate early from college.

Something to think about

While AP courses contain college level material, they move at half the speed of a college course. Within a few short months after graduation from high school, former AP students will be enrolled in college classes that are moving at twice the rate of the high school AP classes. If students can’t keep up with the pace of AP classes in high school, how are they possibly going to succeed in college? College-ready doesn’t mean admitted to college. College-ready means that graduates have the readiness level to actually succeed in college courses. That means that high school graduates must acquire the requisite reading, writing, and math skills. Reading gets students to college. Writing keeps them there.

When school leaders open enrollment to AP courses for all students our job has just begun. Now begins the long-term task of building student capacity so that they can benefit from the course and succeed on the AP exam.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things. Such is the case with the Algebra Project as described by The Teacher Leader.

The Teacher Leader introduces us to the teacher nightmare—failing students sitting in classrooms with no hope and no reason to try. Sound familiar? This time of the school year, failing, disengaged students are traumatizing their teachers and distracting their peers. We learn again that misery loves miserable company.

Waiting until March or April to solve the problem is too late. Once students fall behind, it is extremely difficult to catch them up. Students, teachers, and schools pay the high cost for student failure.

The key is not to let students fall behind in the first place. But that takes planning and the solutions are often not convenient or easy to implement.

The Teacher Leader was willing to pay the price to set up both students and teachers for success. His amazing breakthrough story reminds us that education and teaching are not zero-sum games in which some win and some lose. When students fail, we all lose.

From a principal perspective:

- The bottom line: In the first year of the state assessments only 32% of the students scored at proficient or above. The school’s Algebra scores had to be at or above 70% within two years in order to receive state accreditation. Not only did the Teacher Leader’s math teachers exceed 70%, but they consistently averaged in the high 90% range. These remarkable results were achieved with the same demographics including high poverty, high second-language, and high student mobility, and essentially the same teachers. National Geographic Magazine called this high school “the most diverse school in America.”

Collaborative Leadership – A successful school wide initiatives like the Algebra Project requires that multiple leaders work in partnership. Without a strong, respected and trusted teacher leader the math teachers would never have bought in. The principal had to lend full and active support with parents, counselors, other departments in the school, and the school district all of which had different reasons for questioning the approach. The head counselor had to convince the counselors that the much more complicated scheduling and re-scheduling process would be worth the time and effort. Any weakness among any of the three leaders would have ensured that the effort failed.

Student-focused – The key to the success of this effort was the mission-focus of the teachers, counselors, administrators, and the principal. Student achievement and student success took precedence over adult convenience.

Use data – The Teacher Leader used data to guide the effort. Intuition took a backseat to the facts. Students were failing and he wanted that to change.

Start small – The Teacher Leader started his “double block” Algebra Project with one or two teachers. When the results indicated success, the effort was expanded to include more teachers. Instead of mandating an approach to be followed by all math teachers, The Teacher Leader used volunteers to test out the idea. For example, in the first attempt almost half of the students who were failing algebra at the semester were earning Cs by the end of the school year.

Work with the willing – The Teacher Leader wanted the support of all the math teachers but he needed the participation of key volunteers who really wanted the program to work.

Whatever it takes – The Algebra Project was an experiment. No one had tried it before. Everyone involved had to be willing to do whatever it took to realize success.

Ultimately, the success of the Algebra Project was due to a commonly held set of core beliefs.

- All students can learn to high levels.

- All students can and should be held to high standards.

- Given time, all students can learn.

- Learning time is relevant. Learning outcomes are absolute.

- Failure is not an option. Students can only fail if they quit, because we (staff) will never give up.

- Never blame the students. Find another way.

- We (staff) drive the bus. Whatever happens here is up to us.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:58 PM | Permalink

At this time of the school year many secondary schools, at least those with a diverse mix of students from various racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, are concerned with the number of course failures and disengaged students. How many course failures are too many? The answer will vary from school to school, but the reality is that failing a core academic course is one of the best predictors of a student dropping out of school.

Like most challenges facing schools today, there is no simple answer or one single solution. Because schools are complex social systems, the solutions to problems are usually multi-dimensional and involve both short- and long-term approaches. This is the first in a multi-part series designed to help begin the conversation among teachers and school leaders.  

Students don’t grow physically at the same rate. Nor do students grow socially or emotionally at the same rate. However, students must all learn at the same rate. How do I know? In many schools across the country all students are afforded the same amount of time to complete their courses.

And how is that working out? The answer is not well by today’s standards. I often hear from teachers and school leaders about high failure rates in core courses. They are puzzled and mystified about what to do. I recently received this concern from a colleague: “We have many students who are failing more than one course at the semester; some are failing as many as two and three.”

When I ask teachers and school leaders if students all learn at the same rate, they always say, “No! Students learn at different rates.” Then I ask, “If they learn at different rates, why do we give them all the same amount of time to complete their courses?” Then I get this far away look as though a thousand light bulbs just went off in their faces.

The bottom line is that students learn at different rates and they learn different subjects at different rates. Some students learn math quickly, yet struggle with history. Other students remember everything they learn in biology, but can’t remember how to do the same math problem that they solved perfectly two hours earlier.

Some students simply need more time to learn and some teachers need more time to teach some students. When students don’t have sufficient time, they begin to fall behind. Once they fall behind, it is extremely difficult and expensive, in terms of time, effort, and money, to catch them up. We spend far too much effort and valuable resources on remediation and credit recovery and place too little emphasis on preventing students from falling behind in the first place.

Schools that hold time constant will ensure that a significant number of students never reach mastery in any particular subject. Running all students down the same conveyor belt at the same rate guarantees that many will fail.

Failure was fine in the industrial age in which schools were tasked with sorting students—some go to college, others to trade schools, most to the factories or mines. In those days, most jobs did not require postsecondary education or training. An individual could succeed through hard work. Success in today’s post-information, knowledge-based economy requires hard work accompanied by knowledge, training, and high level reading, writing, and math skills.

The problem for schools is that varying learning time is complicated. It requires a lot of thought and planning. Allowing students to demonstrate mastery in differing lengths of time requires that we differentiate our approach with each student and that we develop an individual plan for each and every student. That takes a lot of work. My question is how much work does it require to remediate failing students? How successful are remediation efforts? What impact do repeating students have on teachers and students? Do repeaters improve?

In the schools that you and I attended, time was a constant and achievement became the variable. Some did (succeed), some didn’t, so what? In order to raise each and every student to mastery, time must become the variable and achievement the constant.

“Time is relevant. Outcomes are absolute.” – Anthony Robbins

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)