Attendance is to school what rebounding is to basketball—it is hard work, requires effort and persistence, and it often goes unrewarded and unrecognized, but schools can’t be successful without it.
Archive for the ‘Personalization’ Category
Icebergs, The Titanic, and School Culture
May 11th, 2012
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What we do, our behavior, is an overt manifestation of what goes on below the surface–our thinking, values, beliefs, attitudes and mindsets. It is that invisible aspect that drives our behavior. It is our OS, our operating system.
The Wrong Message
January 25th, 2012
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Raising the age to 18 sent the right message to our students. Education is critically important!
Miss School and Miss Out
January 11th, 2012
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9/11: What was it like to be a principal on that day?
September 10th, 2011
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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 [...]
Pay-for-Play: Balancing Budgets on the Backs of Poor Students
April 25th, 2011
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"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 [...]
The Ultimate Essential Question
April 25th, 2011
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"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 [...]
Ask the teachers!
December 21st, 2010
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Recently, Jay Mathews of the Washington Post, in preparation for an article on the accuracy of school incident reports, asked me to respond to the following question: "Do security incident reports adequately describe the climate of a school?" Here is my complete response. The answer is simple. No single data point can accurately depict student [...]
Jobs for Students: Lowest Since 1948
December 15th, 2010
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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 [...]
Class Size: As Though They Were Our Own
December 13th, 2010
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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 [...]
