Category Archives: School Improvement Process

To Parents

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Could these words have been clearer?
From a Nation at Risk to Parents,
“You have the right to demand for your children the best our schools and colleges can provide. Your vigilance and your refusal to be satisfied with less than the best are the imperative first step. But your right to a proper education for your children carries a double responsibility. As surely as you are your child’s first and most influential teacher, your child’s ideas about education and its significance begin with you. You must be a living example of what you expect your children to honor and to emulate. Moreover, you bear a responsibility to participate actively in your child’s education.” (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983, p35)

Yes, the message could be clearer.

YOU are your child’s first and most influential teacher.
YOU are a living example for your child; stress the importance of education.
YOUR vigilance is imperative to our schools being the best.
YOUR responsibility is to participate actively.

To the Public: What door can you open?

To the Public: What door can you open?

Because I was given the opportunity to write for The Federalist Papers Project yesterday, I tried to make the message clearer, today.

Maybe opportunity does open the door to improvement. Please think about (and act upon) what doors of opportunity we can leave open for the next generation.

FYI – Listening

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If you want to listen so you really hear what others say, make sure you are not a:

Mindreader. You’ll hear little or nothing as you think “What is this person really thinking or feeling?”

Rehearser. Your mental tryouts for “Here’s what I’ll say next” tune out the speaker.

Filterer. Some call this selective hearing, hearing only what you want to hear.

Dreamer. Drifting off during a face-to-face conversation can lead to an embarrassing “What did you say?” or “Could you repeat that?”

Identifier. If you refer everything you hear to your experience, you probably didn’t really hear what was said.

Comparer. When you get side-tracked assessing the messenger, you’re sure to miss the message.

Derailer. Changing the subject too quickly soon tells others you’re not interested in anything they have to say.

Sparrer. You hear what’s said but quickly belittle it or discount it. That puts you in the same class as the derailer.

Placater. Agreeing with everything you hear just to be nice or to avoid conflict does not mean you’re a good listener.

Reading is silent listening.

Reading is silent listening.

Author – Unknown

Shake Before Lifting

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Now what?

Now what?

The people that always do the heavy lifting of community and/or school improvement are those in the trenches. You can’t mandate them to do it. You can’t twist their arms, as much as we might like to. People need to see the need, know they share a common problem, see a way to solve it, and believe they can. Can that be put into reform law? Yes, I not only know think it can; I know that the philosophy of helping people help themselves was put into education law in 1965.

Our common problem is that the education reform laws now are designed to “do to us” instead of helping us to improve. In Idaho, there are clearly ten Title I (low-income schools) that are falling behind the other 93% of Idaho’s Title I schools. The law did make us identify and label theses schools but we — not the schools — continue to fail because society isn’t providing them with the help they need to improve. Recent laws actually make that process harder.

We fail to serve the neediest of our schools because there are no people adequately representing these schools at “the table” were decisions are being made for them. We toss them a bone now and then, occasionally allowing them three minutes to testify and sometimes even inviting them to a conference. This is not allowing them to be part of the solution; it only serves to pacify them, momentarily. This is not full and continuous engagement in the improvement process.

What we need from real “reform” laws — laws that address the needs of schools most in need of improvement — are laws that provide direction, guidance, and assistance in evaluating the problems on the ground, educating the community about those problems and the array of solutions available to them, and making sure the public feels welcomed into the process of being successful with the plan they themselves created. After all, ordinary Americans are the real doers and shakers.

Time to shake it up?

Citizens, We Shape the Debates

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“You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.”    President Obama

If ever there was an enduring ideal, universal education is it! And quality matters! How about we shape a debate around that? By what means do we deliver on that promise, Mr. President? You know what quality education looks like; how can we regular citizens get that full-meal deal for our kids?

Let me answer that question for you: Since many of us live in states where rulers of education policy and practices have their heads in the clouds and their fingers in our pocketbooks, we need sensible federal education law to protect and serve us well. We need effective schools as the standard.

Characteristics of effective schools are:
“1) The principal’s leadership and attention to the quality of instruction;
2) A pervasive and broadly understood instructional focus;
3) An orderly, safe climate conducive to teaching and learning;
4) Teacher behaviors that convey the expectation that all students are expected to obtain at least minimal mastery; and
5) The use of measures of pupil achievement as the basis for program evaluation.”
(Ronald R. Edmonds, Programs of School Improvement: An Overview, Educational Leadership, Dec. 1982)

Two things will ensure these characteristics exist in all schools; improving teacher and counselor education and increasing the knowledge, skills, motivation, and desire (the capacity) of our leaders and communities.

The debate should be over the failure of leaders in addressing No Child Left Behind.485709

What is necessary is that people now push policy that is fair and balanced, represents our expectations, and focuses on providing high-quality personalized learning opportunities. For America, this is what opportunity looks like.

Are You Listening Secretary Duncan?

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“The problem here is not what the precise policy shall be but rather how shall decision on that policy be reached.” — Francis Keppel 1966

When the process of “reform” targets improving schools that need improving, it shouldn’t begin with a statement by Secretary Duncan that he stands firm on the idea of “competition” and that he is “holding the line” on what he has already set down for the nation. How does that work when he has also said he will listen? Listen, get people’s advice and input, but, proceed with what has already been decided? Is this how decisions shall be reached? This is a common on-going problem – nationally and in my state of Idaho.

In Idaho, voters turned down the “reform” ideas set by our legislature. So now, the governor is setting up a task force — but citizens need not apply. Only the “stakeholder groups” will be represented in the decision-making process. It appears all levels of government have forgotten their roles in education.

The U.S. Department of Education exists because there has always been unequal access to quality education and it was felt to be a national necessity that our citizens be properly educated. A highly-functional public education system is a proper and necessary function of our government. How does competition produce equal access when those most in need of assistance are dysfunctional when left to their own devices? The very existence of chronically low-performing schools is the proof.

And in a state like Idaho, where we underfund education and continue to document chronically low-performing schools, how can we think that putting the same warring factions together and excluding the public in the conversation will produce better policy? The process matters.

Are you listening Secretary Duncan?

Reform: Where to Begin?

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It would seem obvious, you begin where you are. But to really know where you are with education reform, you do need some assessments—these assessments are not what you might think. To really assess where you are, you have to step back to get a wider view of what is happening and what has happened that contributed to producing what now exists as your reality.

Unfortunately, this first step appears to be where the first mistakes are made. We need to spend more time at this point because our assessment of our current state of affairs, the status quo, will play a huge role in determining the beliefs and assumptions that will guide our actions.

Whether you are looking at the local level with school improvement or at state and national levels with education reform law, you must have a very clear and accurate picture of the conditions that need changing and how they were created.

So my advice on where to begin is to assess not just the students’ scores on tests but to proceed with assessing where teachers, parents, and the business community believe we can improve. That input should then narrow the choices for further assessment tools that can be used. For every aspect of reform that you may be concerned about, there’s an assessment for that!

Then with our principles firmly cemented in our hearts and our assessments in hand, we are there – where we begin.

Central to Progress: Conversations

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Previously in Actions Set the Standard, I discussed what should be seen as the ultimate of school reform conversations – the one that takes place between the primary adult in a child’s life and the child’s teacher. How it works out for the child depends on how well these adults can converse.

I’m afraid that art is going by the wayside. And without practice, we will not master the art of conversation and our society will suffer because we won’t be able to effectively put our heads together to solve problems.

I will be the first to admit that even after learning about some of the do’s and don’ts of dialogue and debate, I have trouble using what I know. When it comes to the topic of education reform, my passion gets in the way and I start to feel like I’m arguing instead of conversing. At those moments, I become part of the problem.

Education reform is all about a problem solving process that requires collaboration, cooperation, and the communications necessary to make those things happen.

I remember seeing a team shirt once that had the Henry Ford saying “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

Conversations are the essential glue which binds us together. Without them happening at all governing levels and in between …well, look what has happened…no child left behind? Right? Our so-called representatives have proved themselves incapable of taking the first step of coming together for the sake of this nation’s children.

When this year’s political pandering is history, we citizens need to have a serious conversation with each other and our representatives.

School Culture and Change

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When I began fighting for school improvements, little did I know  how important school culture is to success.

In my last blog (Understanding Change), when I asked the question “who will take control of the direction [of reform],” I wasn’t thinking about the movie I was about to see but it played right into the question.

The movie, Won’t Back Down, may not have been intended to be interpreted the way I did, but here it is. I saw the “union thugs” dressed in red (stop) and the parent-troopers dressed in green (go). I saw the protest signs for “choice” and heard the familiar words of the reform wars —tenure and bad teachers, can’t and won’t.

Swept up in the emotion, I cheered for the underdogs and shared in the pain of the parents portrayed on the big screen. I’ve walked in their shoes, but, without the fairy tale ending.

What I didn’t see was a law that will force schools to improve. Rather, what the movie demonstrated was the power of ordinary people. What I saw was the right leadership rising up, and, the question of control of the direction of reform was answered. I saw community organizing to support a public school; community stepped up. And I saw the “culture” of the school change from one of hopelessness to one beneficial to both teaching and learning.

“If culture changes, everything changes.”

T. Donahoe 1997

I saw the change we need, but, understand that the means to that end must not harm children, destroy neighborhoods, or undermine the strong foundation of our institution of public education.

“Dreams, visions and wild hopes are mighty weapons…” Eric Hoffer 1951.

Let’s hope they aren’t being used for the wrong reasons.

Discover more about school culture and change.

Understanding

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I went to bed last night thinking about what I understand and what I don’t. And in the middle of the night, I awoke with this thought, “The Crucial Voice of the People is important.” Or, it could be written that “the crucial voice of the people is important.” Readers will need to make that call. Maybe it can correctly be written both ways.

One thing I do understand is what it will take to really “reform” our system. I’ve studied what has and has not worked in the past and currently. And I have unfortunately witnessed and experienced what has not worked in my own schools. And I’m realistic about it. The system needs the people (the public) to engage in public education policy and be aware and vigilant as to how those policies influence practices.

Whether it’s locally, at the state level, or nationally, what can really make a difference right now is having people in charge of the education system who understand what is important in the process of learning and in the process of changing. We can’t have responsive and responsible change that leads to progress without understanding those basics. Understanding the learning process is central to guiding an improvement process, which is what reform should be — a focus on what children need. It isn’t just standards; it isn’t just instruction; it isn’t just providing materials. It is having it all and understanding how we can provide it.

So what I don’t understand is what looks to be unwillingness on the part of adults to work together to solve our education problems, even when the answers are laid out before us. Is it a lack of understanding?

Understanding the Choices

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The last two blogs written here for your consideration were titled “Choice in School Reform” and “Choice in Education Reform.” And no, I’m not fully losing “it” yet. My choice of words (no pun intended) was intentional. School reform and education reform are two different things but intimately importance to each other.

School reform should target the proven elements of effective schools. It’s an improvement process that directly affects students and includes; safe schools with classroom climates that nurture learning, school leadership fostering quality instruction, highly educated teachers expecting a level of mastery from all students and understanding the proper use of pupil assessments in monitoring progress. And last but not least, family and community support for schools and their students.

Education reform should be a focus on systemic reform – providing quality assurance and equal opportunity. And as I’ve stated before, reform starts with identifying the problems. Are all schools the problem? No. So why do the current powers that be continue to target all schools with one-size-fits-all “reform” laws? It isn’t the path we originally started down. This diversionary route we are on never made sense.

Education reform should not interfere with school reform. The only way to stop the ongoing harm and destruction is to understand what has happened and what we need to do to get back on the right path. For…”No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding” Plato — and this is where my book begins.