Allen Odden is a professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who claims to know how to turn around low achieving schools. In fact he wrote a book about the topic called “Ten Strategies for Doubling Student Performance”. He doesn’t work in schools, he studies those of us who do. So his premise is that school turnarounds are not a new phenomenon and that “we” know how to fix them, and “we know how to literally double student performance in low income schools, and in the process take huge chunks out of the achievement gaps that separate students along racial and socioeconomic lines.”
In a recent article in Education Week entitled We Know How to Turn Schools Around, Odden identifies 10 core elements he picked up from studying schools just like El Milagro. Here is Odden’s checklist:
ONE: Create a sense of urgency.
TWO: Set ambitious goals: (e.g.; to double student performance on state tests, to double the percentage of students scoring at advanced levels, to make sure that no student performs below the basic level at the end of 3rd grade, and that all students leave that grade reading on level.)
THREE: Throw out the old curriculum and adopt new textbooks, create new curriculum programs, and start to build, over time, a common understanding of effective instruction.
FOUR. Move beyond a concentration on state tests and use a battery of assessments, including formative and diagnostic assessments, common end-of-curriculum-unit assessments, and benchmark assessments. All of these enable teachers to make midcourse corrections and to get students into interventions earlier.
FIVE: Create and implement an intensive and ongoing professional-development program. (The best schools form collaborative teacher teams— aka, professional learning communities—that meet often, make use of student data, and work with school-based coaches to improve curriculum and instruction.)
SIX: Provide extended learning time and extra help for all students to attain proficiency. (e.g., Some combination of one-on-one or small-group tutoring for struggling students, together with extended-day and summer programs that emphasize providing academic help.)
SEVEN: Use time effectively. (Core instructional time for reading, math, and increasingly science is protected from intrusions; each minute is devoted to teaching the class. Literacy time often is extended to 90 to 120 minutes a day.)
EIGHT: Teachers lead grade- and subject-based professional learning communities. Most of the instructional coaches are the school’s best teachers, and they orchestrate the overall professional-development system. And principals provide real instructional leadership.
NINE: Staff members read the most recent research, reach out to experts in the field, look for and use best practices, and take responsibility for assessing the impact on student learning of what they do, improving instructional practices when student results are not what’s desired.
TEN: Recruit the talent needed to accomplish lofty goals and implement the collaborative and powerful educational strategies discussed here.
Ok. So that is his list. It just so happens that at El Milagro we have been down the path on all 10 core elements. They are in place. Maybe that is why we have never missed an AYP goal, never missed a year of positive gains on the API, and recently been named a Title I Academic Award Winning School in the state of California. Or maybe our success has come from going even deeper when initiating school reforms.
There are three problems with the good professor’s premise:
First, it assumes that a “turn around school” is one that is getting better test scores. But perhaps the bigger challenge in school leadership is protecting kids from the craziness of schools obsessed with higher test scores– while still getting higher test scores! It is harder to get results when you refuse to become a test prep academy or when your school still values the meaningful extracurricular activities that don’t always directly tie in to testing (like athletics, theater, the arts, and music).
Secondly, this article (and the publication of his book!) assumes a college professor has some authority on an issue he has “studied”… as opposed to a having actively engaged in the work of really turning a school around! It is much like hiring a sports writer to coach an NFL team to the Superbowl or a film critic to create an academy award winning movie.
Finally, in concentrating on these broader, more obvious initiatives that we already stumbled across years ago… Odden’s list misses (at least )10 core elements that run even deeper into the DNA of a successful school. For example, we have found that to turn a school around and sustain long term, continuous improvement, you must:
• Strike a BALANCE between raising students and raising test scores
• ENGAGE CHILDREN in their own learning and growth; help them to be experts in analyzing their own test data and set goals accordingly
• Lead parents in a community transition from parent involvement to PARENT ENGAGEMENT— where parents’ energy is first and foremost directed toward helping their child be a successful learner
• Integrate successful TECHNOLOGY solutions that bridge the digital divide and simultaneously accelerate learning
• Create systems that support STUDENT WELLNESS (academic, social, emotional, mental, medical, dental), especially for students who are otherwise at high risk
• Promote healthy NUTRITIONAL HABITS and a climate that promotes daily exercise
• Maintain a BEHAVIOR POLICY that is clear, democratic, humane, and prudently applied (as opposed to “zero tolerance”)
• Promote COMMUNITY SERVICE and each students’ capacity for contributing to others
• Create a sense of individual EFFICACY among staff and students
• Foster RESILIENCY in individuals and in the school organization as a whole.
Those are my ten. For now. There will be more innovations for professors to study in how we turn our schools around.
This is the 
And one student tugged at his tennis shoe while two girls continued their conversation and a third girl looked out toward the San Miguel Mountain with her eyes fixed on absolutely nothing and two boys pretended to swat each other with their paddles and one child appeared to absolutely strain to come up with a respectable answer for Harry the Kayak Guy.
After all, wasn’t it just this past month that we all witnessed full-grown Americans yelling at each other and threatening and pointing fingers and waving guns and shouting with spit flying and jugglars bulging? Their anger and incivility prevented all meaningful discourse. 
On Tuesday we launched seven of our 8th grade girls into the bay. The Nature Center is an extraordinary lab for studying the the marshes and reservoirs and natural bayfront ecosystems, but nothing compares to being in the water itself. Splashing through the mud-decked channels in the shadows of the powerplant. Battling the currents. Reading the tide. Checking the waterproof bird guide against strange-beaked egrets and massive herons. 
So we launched from the boat ramp: Harry, seven students, Conchita (our office manager) and me. Into the calm marina, out past the last moored pleasure boats, a hard left around the jetty, and into the open bay. The day before we had taken seven of the boys so we anticipated a :30 minute paddle across the water to reach the isolated channels on the other side.
I could model the technique for them. And so I did. But they still pushed close to the rocks. So I tried to explain the technique– but now their kayaks were relentlessly pressing against the jetty edge. Then I tried to encourage them… but my voice was muffled by the momentary panic, the surging water, the steady roar, the helpless on-lookers.
Finally, the light bulb clicked on. Maybe they were tired of being so far behind. Maybe they felt a sudden urgency to catch up with the others. Maybe they didn’t want to get left out there on San Diego Bay all day. Maybe it was just a developmental thing– they just needed to practice and fail and adjust and fail some more. But they didn’t quit. And just when it looked like we might spend the rest of the academic year out there trying to move in one direction or another, two middle school girls somehow turned into kayakers and found the rhythm to power across the water and catch the others just as they entered the channel.
And that is the story. And when I shared it with our teachers yesterday they could clearly see the metaphor:
This is the 
It is the first day of school and so our students return. It is mid-summer… most school districts will not call their students back until after Labor Day. Not El Milagro, though. We start early. So ready or not, they are are descending– in droves. Record high enrollment and a long waiting list means business is good.
The Nature Center is our reminder that we are out of whatever “the box” is and our students could be the beneficiaries. 
• SECOND: Beyond basic skills, we would work just as hard to provide a more authentic, thinking curriculum that allows children to discover their natural gifts and interests. A curriculum that features the interesting stuff that engages students every day. Like the Nature Center and all its wind-framed beauty and ocean air; its banks of slippery seaweed, its deep fish tanks that stink. Or the tidepools, tucked snugly up against shallow marshes that splash mud and seawater on kid’s school clothes when the tide is up. Or rare creatures on loan from their fragile ecosystems; sometimes strange life-forms that can make kids smile when they hold them in their hands.
Meanwhile, I noticed that the state of California still doesn’t have a budget agreement and that there is now a $26.3 billion deficit! The system is broke and it doesn’t appear that we are even 
As a matter of fact, I notice that the further away you get from actual classrooms where children and teacher live every day, the more delusional leadership becomes– like dancing in front of funhouse mirrors. 
Then he fought against the rising waters and pulled bodies from the canal. Then he fought against the bureaucracy and incompetence of state and federal organizations to create food lines for people who had otherwise been abandoned. 
Then he fought against a police force in chaos– marauding officers that looted the Red Cross food supplies so they could stock their own hunting lodges. Then he fought against the mounting anarchy– that moment in a crisis when good people bet the strength of their own resiliency against whatever force is trying to assure their destruction.
Habitat for Humanity provides some basic tools and building materials for their volunteers. And they provide a site foreman like Terry Cooney who has to take a very diverse group of people with different work ethics and skills and physical fitness and preparation and experience and lead them to some level of productivity. He has had all kinds of volunteers from celebrities to church groups to not-so-motivated teenagers to company CEO’s and corporate superstars that haven’t done a day of physical labor in 20 years– if ever. 
On Tuesday morning one of the high school groups was packing up to leave. They were exhausted. They gathered for their group meeting along side the circular saw and waited for Terry to release them. Then a sudden piercing hum rose well above the cicadas and construction sounds. And around the corner came their leader, with bagpipes wailing the Marine Corps Hymn. All other sound and activity momentarily ceased. 
“You should be proud of your work here,” he told them. “I know your parents would be very proud of you too. On behalf of the Habitat for Humanity organization and the people of New Orleans, I want to thank you for your service. You made a difference here. I want to play another song that is dedicated to each and every one of you.”
In fact I wondered if they had found the Holy Grail. I wondered if maybe my ideas about insuring that kids mastered the standards before they moved to the next grade level… might be a little draconian; maybe even unnecessary.
I read that they have, by design, no lab equipment, no computers, no televisions, no games at PE. They mock multicultural curricula (“the demagoguery of tolerance”) and reject efforts to build children’s self esteem. It shows. The director refers to students of color as “darkies”!
So today I am throwing the first brick in the revolution. Right through the freaking window. Today it will be one brick. Tomorrow another. And then another. And I’ll invite you to pick up a brick or two as we get the momentum leaning our way. We are going to change El Milagro. And this blog is going to chronicle the change– the revolution– brick by brick by brick. 
"El Milagro Weblog" 