November 2, 2008 · 9:13 pm

Wolf Blitzer Projects Win for Punahou School

Educators are supposed to be disciplined at presenting issues and election themes and even presidential candidates to students in a wholly neutral way. We want students to weigh the facts (what are the facts?) and think for themselves. It is an exercise in democracy and critical thinking. Even if they are only eight. We are conditioning them to one day take their place among the discerning electorate. 

That’s not the only reason why public school educators are obliged to neutrality in matters of politics. Our eight year olds are impressionable but their parents are the electorate and they will not abide any hint of indoctrination. Besides, what faculty is unanimous in their support for one presidential candidate over the other? So at my school, just two days from an historic national election, we have fulfilled our unspoken commitment to neutrality. 

But it gets harder by the second.

On this somewhat overcast Sunday Southern California morning, I am in a state of deep reflection. We have every television in the house blaring different cable news channels. I haven’t watched an NFL game in weeks (though I caught part of the World Series during Rachel Maddow’s commercial breaks). It is the not-so-calm before the election storm. I can’t wait.  I can barely sleep.  Something is happening here that has resonated with many educators, myself included, on a deep, deep level.  

I am guilty of having told students– for the past 30 years– that if they work hard, study hard, stay focussed… they can achieve anything in America. I said it in the 1980’s as an English teacher for children who were bussed across town in the name of the court-mandated desegregation program. I said it in the 90’s to children in the juvenile court schools as they finished their GED’s in the custody of California’s Probation Department. I have said it for the past ten years at Mueller Charter School where 95% of our students are Latino and most will be the first members of their families to go to college.

Many of us also knew that if we were going to make promises to children about the benefits of hard work, we would have to do our part. We would have to redesign our schools so that they were more inclusive, more vigorous, more meaningful, more effective. We would have to eliminate gaps in learning outcomes that persist along racial or ethnic lines. 

So today we bear witness to the ascendency of one presidential candidate who took the advice of his teachers. He worked hard. He took inspiration from his family roots, his mixed-race identity, his lack of resources. He was beneficiary of neither short cuts nor favors. This morning he stands on the edge of history with the potential to unite a nation in desperate need of hope and optimism. He is poised to bring a new level of meaning for those of us who have committed our life’s work to the service of children in public schools. 

In California we will have to wait until the wave rolls past on Tuesday night. But I will be awake at that historic moment.  I’ll wait for Wolf Blitzer to tell the nation that CNN has projected a winner. And on Wednesday morning I’ll go back to work and outwardly maintain my political neutrality– as if we can’t say his name and shout for joy in the same expression of congratulatory praise. But if the pre-election punditry holds– if those televisions normally reserved for Sunday’s NFL speak hope to power– “we have a righteous wind at our backs.”  And I will for the first time feel a personal sense of vindication among children. I will honor the educators of Punahou School in Honolulu who during one faculty meeting or another were no doubt told that you have to have high expectations– you have to treat every student like they may one day be poised to change the world. I will believe it is finally true: that if our students work hard, study hard, and stay focussed…they can achieve anything in America. 

They can even become President of the United States.

    

(Cross posted on Leadertalk)

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October 20, 2008 · 7:56 pm

BLACK BELT MUSINGS TO A BAG OF ICE

There are schools all across America where 100% of the students are performing at their “grade level” as they always have… and always will. They don’t have to wait until 2014 or whenever NCLB shames every school into compliance or dire consequence. Your school could have every child at grade level too. By this Friday! 

The schools are academies for Tae Kwon Do that employ a fifty year old curriculum consistent with the Jhoon Rhee System. Students are at their level because in Tae Kwon Do the instructors are not bound by NCLB or the arbitrary practice of grouping students according to their age. Rather, each student earns a color belt that represents the level, along a continuum of learning, which they have earned through through their effort and performance. When they are ready to move to the next belt– the next level- they demonstrate their mastery of forms, fundamentals and fighting techniques that are required for promotion. Some students move faster than others. But most are motivated to test and advance toward the highest possible level– the black belt. The role of the teacher in this system, is to differentiate instruction and provide each individual student with the knowledge, skills and support they need to make continuous progress.

If our schools were organized like the schools in Tae Kwon Do, our students would not be grouped by their age. Their age would be irrelevant. Instead we would ask: What have they learned? What are they ready to learn next? How can teachers accelerate students and provide authentic opportunities for them to achieve mastery?

The grade level system that we inherited from the Industrial Revolution has been in place for nearly 150 years. There have been plenty of studies to challenge the wisdom of grouping kids by age rather than achievement. Those studies are often used to provide a rationale for multiage and ungraded classrooms. And while there may have been some momentum behind the transition to multiage classrooms in the previous three decades, that momentum has dissipated mightily in this era of accountability. Too bad.  

In California (and, I suspect, in your state, too) the year-end, summative assessments are designed to be administered to children according to their grade. Our data comes back organized by grade level trends. We learn that 61% of our 5th graders scored at grade level in math while 46% of our English learners in 3rd grade were proficient in language arts. You can compare our 6th graders with your 6th graders and this years’ 7th graders with how they performed as 5th graders. It all tells us something but I wonder if our kids are really learning to the extent that they are capable of learning.  

At the end of this school year we will promote a few hundred kids to the next grade level even though they haven’t demonstrated mastery of their current grade level. We will  promote them because it is June and all their classmates are being promoted and the research on retention is so daunting that it forces us to choose our poison. In Tae Kwon Do if you promote a student who has not mastered the competencies of the curriculum, they will be thrown in with advanced students with whom they can not compete. One day they will catch a flying heel kick on the side of the head and it will remind them that earning a black belt is not a race.

We flirted, just for a moment, with the idea of grouping our K-8 school of 1000 students by their academic proficiency level instead of their age. We are a charter school so we can do it if we want to. We use MAPS for formative assessments and have a high degree of confidence in its alignment with California’s content standards. We’d get them grouped right. And every student would be instantly at grade level because they would be at the grade level that they are ready to master next. There would be multiple age groups in a classroom but the curriculum standards wouldn’t change. We differentiate instruction anyway… so children would still be treated as individuals.  

Then we realized that if 100% of our students were suddenly at grade level, there would be no need for the threats and sanctions of NCLB. We would never miss AYP target goals. Our Academic Performance Index would be the highest in the state. There would be some logistical challenges but none as formidable as the challenge of convincing the state of California that we were not just gaming the system. So we decided against it. We still have our students out in classrooms according to their age. And though thousands of new schools will fall into Program Improvement each year as the AYP threshold rises, we will keep forcing the grade level system that makes little sense when it comes to teaching or learning. Or testing. 

Innovations, like revolutions, are often inspired by the desperate needs of organizations that can no longer thrive in antiquated systems. Assuming that the provisions of NCLB remain unchanged, should we continue to force schools to fit a timeline of achievement… or use that timeline as the motivation for fundamental change in how we organize our schools?  

And here is an Epilogue (of sorts):

I broke a bunch of boards when I tested for my black belt.  By the end of the day my hands were swollen and I needed some ice.  In Tae Kwon Do there are no social promotions.

  

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October 12, 2008 · 9:06 pm

AN EXTRAORDINARY TIME– A TEACHABLE MOMENT

I noticed the other day as I conducted my walkthroughs in all of our classrooms throughout our K-8 campus, there was little evidence that we are in the final weeks of an historic Presidential campaign. For that matter, there was little evidence that we were in an economic meltdown or even the baseball play-offs.

I wondered: Why is it that we continue with our text books and lesson plans and curriculum maps regardless of the compelling teachable moments that are occurring outside the classroom walls? The experts can’t explain the collapse of Wall Street so I am not sure our kids would understand it either. But there are math lessons in abundance:  liabilities v assets, percentages and interest, how much is a billion (700 billion?).

And like the stock market, baseball is a game of numbers and mathematics, too. As are the polls and surveys and data trends leading up to the election. But it’s not just the math. There are civics lessons, history and social studies lessons and engaging models for teaching science and the strategies of debate. These exciting times ought to translate into exciting classrooms… classrooms that are for many children their one reliable window to the real world.

Then something startling happened later in the week. I was watching CNN and saw the anger and vitriol and racism coming from the McCain and Palin rallies and it was frightening. It called to mind the dangerous events of the 1960’s. And while on the one hand I thought perhaps we should pull the blinds down and shield our children from that particular “window to the world”…  I realized that this too is a teachable moment.  

Are we teaching children how to debate and disagree with one another in a civil and respectful way? Are we teaching children to listen to alternative viewpoints? Are we teaching children about the fundamental strengths of our democracy– the blessings inherent in living in freedom balanced against the obligations that accompany free speech? Are we teaching them that hate speech and violence (and the threat of violence) have no place in our political discourse?

On CNN, I heard threats aimed at one of our Presidential candidates and I immediately thought of the prophetic speech of Robert F. Kennedy called the Mindless Menace of Violence. Check it out. Share it with your teachers and students. This is, after all, an extraordinary time…a teachable moment.

(Cross-posted at http://www.leadertalk.org/)

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September 29, 2008 · 6:34 am

THE NEVILLE BROTHERS PLAYED “YELLOW MOON” AND WE GOT A LITTLE BIT BETTER THIS WEEK

Last week Anne and I drove up to LA to see the legendary Neville Brothers at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard. The Neville Brothers have been performing together for thirty years. They started playing their own brand of New Orleans funk in the clubs on Bourbon Street and now play at jazz festivals and concert halls and venues all over the world. Wherever they want. If you have been to a Neville Brothers concert you know that they start with loyal followers standing around talking about where they last saw them play:  “I saw them with Carlos Santana” and “I saw them in a little club on the east coast” and “I saw them the last time they played at Preservation Hall.”  

And if you have seen them perform you also know they don’t leave until Aaron Neville closes the show by singing Amazing Grace.  And when Aaron Neville sings Amazing Grace, or anything for that matter, you are reminded that if all the angels in heaven channeled their voices into one human being… like some kind of celestial karaoke…  it would sound like Aaron Neville.  

I look for metaphors for excellence everywhere and of course if you can consistently make music like the Neville Brothers it’s more than just a metaphor. But as I watched them I thought about what we could learn from them.  Maybe we over-engineer our school organizations.  Maybe Mark Sanborn is right when he describes the “encore effect” in his book by the same title– “The Encore Effect: How to Achieve Remarkable Performance in Everything You Do.”  

• What keeps these people coming back to watch the Neville Brothers perform? • What makes them so loyal?
• Why do they go away and tell their friends about this near-spiritual experience?
• Why are they so enthralled that they don’t notice the little mistakes… if there are any.
• Why can you hear the same song a thousand times and never experience it the same way?

Sanborn talks about five traits associated with high level performance: 

passion, preparation, practice, presence & polish

Aside from the obvious alliteration and convenient formula, Sanborn may be on to something. Schools–like so many organizations–  have complicated the process of creating consistency and excellence.  I saw a post on the same topic on Leadertalk  the other day and had to read it five times before I got the point.

As a Baldrige alumni examiner and a Six Sigma supporter, I thought I really understood processes. Our school system had flow mapped over 100 processes. We have in-process measures linked to strategic measures. However, what I am discovering is that I knew just enough to be dangerous. I have a number of examples where working on the measures of one process have actually negatively impacted other processes. Working on processes while continuing to manage the organization through a function based organization chart often leads to fragmentation, lack of alignment, and unintended consequences.

With a process management approach, our school system is moving away from a traditional function centered organization into a process centered organization. 

Holy smokes. It doesn’t have to be that complicated. Just listen to Yellow Moon and recognize that people have a thousand compelling choices of what to do along Sunset Boulevard on Saturday night. And given all of those choices they are right where they want to be. And what they are hearing, however sophisticated, is not a by-product of Six-Sigma methodology introduced to the bayou. It’s passion and polish.  

Likewise, Mueller Charter School is a school of choice. We are El Milagro or nothing at all. Parents come back or they do not. They stand for the encore and take pictures with their cell phones and scream until the musicians come back out on to the stage. Or they walk away. And they take their children with them.

So prepare as if you are scheduled to play at the House of Blues tonight. You have to enjoy your own music. Play for the fun of it. And sing like the angels approve.  

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September 22, 2008 · 5:54 am

STORE BOUGHT TAMALES

In August the air in San Diego is temperate and still warm enough to remind us all of the beaches that we left so hastily. We report to school in mid-July.  It is our calendar.  We offer our children 20 extra days of school because we can. We are a charter school and we create our own calendar and and we create our own way.  

Our students come from low and modest income homes.  95% are Latino. At night, from the front lawn of my school, you can see the lights of Tijuana flickering in the distance, some seven miles away. The lights call to many of our families to come home– and to others they are a desperate reminder of what they traded for economic opportunity in America.

Sometimes I wonder what my Irish ancestors would have done if they could have commuted between poverty and the hope of new life. How different the Irish diaspora might have looked if they were merely one long and inconvenient wait at a border crossing to go home. In any case, our students represent the multiple generations of Latino immigrants that Lou Dobbs has somehow come to hate. His nightly vitriol about leaking borders doesn’t matter much to us. We are a relatively high performing school in spite of demographics and conditions and community expectations that might predict otherwise.  

For all of our innovations and methodologies and state-of-the-art technology, our children excel because of human relationships. Remember “Megatrends?” Back in the early 1980’s John Naisbitt predicted that the on-coming trend toward technology would demand  attention to human relationships. High Tech-High Touch. So in this era of data and NCLB and computer generated calculations of school competency– we build relationships. In the first weeks of the new school year, right in the heart of summer, our teachers begin their Home Visits.  

Home Visits. They are parent-teacher-student conferences conducted in our children’s homes. The goal for every teacher is a conference with the parent or guardian of every child in their class. They pursue nothing less than 100% participation. They keep exact records. They create precise schedules– shaving minutes and driving house to house until they get them all in. It is an extraordinary commitment of personal time and energy for a simple goal:  to build a lasting relationship between home and school.  

It takes some teachers nearly 4 weeks to schedule and re-schedule all of their families. Some parents forget their appointment and leave their child’s disappointed teacher literally standing on the doorstep. So they re-schedule. 1000 students. Their homes are scattered all over Chula Vista and San Diego’s South Bay area. We visit houses, duplexes, apartments, trailer homes. There are large and small homes and tight living quarters with multiple families– children sharing few beds. There are families who live in the garage of other families.  Some live on boats in the marina a few miles away. There are homeless families who will literally meet you wherever they can. There are parents who don’t quite trust that the teacher merely wants to meet them, so they request that the conference take place at school. And that works too.

The flurry of after school activity takes us right up to Labor Day. So virtually every day after school you can see the teachers headed for their cars… their back packs filled with MapQuest directions, digestible copies of grade level standards, the Parent Compact, the list of activities and highlights for the upcoming year. It makes you wonder: Why would these teachers make this kind of effort every year? They drive their own cars, often on their own time– at night time and even on week-ends– to hold parent meetings that could just as easily wait until October and could, much more conveniently, be held on campus.

They make the effort because there is something extraordinary about meeting a child’s family in their own home; sitting on their couch to discuss the demands and the promises of the new academic year. Naming their pets. Enduring “show and tell” with a closet full of prized possessions while simultaneously talking about the relative importance of skills like adding fractions and identifying topic sentences. Home Visits provide CONTEXT for our teachers who desperately want to leverage every advantage to help their children excel. They are diagnostic. After a Home Visit we seem to alter so many of our initial assumptions about our students’ home lives. We realize that some of our students have everything they need to excel in school. We realize that some of our children have virtually nothing. And as veterans of nearly a decade of Home Visits, we have learned how fast life circumstances can change; how quickly the context for learning changes.

Home Visits are a tradition now at Mueller Charter School. Our parents and our students expect them. Our teachers gather treasures to bring to their students and tighten their conference agenda for increased efficiency. We get better at Home Visits every year. Of all of our innovations, Home Visits may have produced the most dramatic results. By Labor Day, we know our students and our parents. We have conferenced with all but a handful of hold-outs. We have long held that– NCLB notwithstanding– we are not in the business of raising test scores… we are in the business of raising children. And we notice that in the process of building strong relationships, meeting our families wherever they are, the test scores seem to take care of themselves.

One side benefit of Home Visits that our teachers enjoy is that so many of our families want to keep them for dinner! Sometimes teachers have 5 or 6 Home Visits scheduled in one afternoon but parents insist that they stay anyway.

“We have plenty of food. Here, try these nopales.”

They are, of course, irresistible. The smell of fresh spice and peppers fills the air. Angelina, a fourth grader, cooks with her Abuelita in the kitchen while her teacher  finishes the last details of their parent conference on the living room couch. Lou Dobbs’ angry voice can be faintly heard coming from a backroom television, but the bustling household drowns him out. All is right with the world.

“Will you try some of these Tamales, maestra?”

“Oh no, really, thank you so much.  I have to get to my next conference.”

“Well here let me wrap a few up for you to take with you.”

“They smell so good.  They are homemade, yea?”

“Oh, my goodness, no.  I work 14-hour shifts… I hardly have time to make anything! They are from Costco!”

So a teacher and another working mom share a laugh in the kitchen of a modest home in Chula Vista. And as a result, Angelina is just that much more likely to some day find her way to USC.

(Cross-posted on LeaderTalk: http://www.leadertalk.org/)

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September 14, 2008 · 12:56 am

Horrible Storms… Exotic Names

Television coverage of Hurricane Ike has dominated the airwaves in the last several days, just as it had with Hurricane Gustav a few weeks ago and Katrina three years before that.  I watched the coverage through the same lens that many Americans do:  With a prayer for the people enduring the crisis and an occasional inward glance… speculating on what I might do if the winds were coming to my neighborhood and the authorities recommended evacuation.    

Horrible storms.  Exotic names. 

It’s so easy to be cavalier when your only experience with a Category 3 tropical storm is watching those ridiculous clips of obscure CNN news reporters being blown across an abandoned interstate in the face of the howling gale.

The truth is I have been evacuated once– and packed once– for the Southern California counterpart to hurricane season.  In 2004, the October wild fires burned through our canyons and 50 feet from our driveway.  We spent exactly one day at our in-laws.  (Then I decided I would rather take my chances breathing acrid and lung-clogging ash that hung in the air like wet cotton– than spend another minute watching local fire coverage with my in-laws!  So we skirted the police barricades and went home.)

Both the 2004 and 2007 wildfires caused my school to be closed for a week.  The school itself was never in danger, but the community was deeply impacted.  Teachers and family members lost their homes all across the county.  

And it makes you think:  As a principal… am I prepared to lead my school… with 1000 children, 100 staff members, and countless daily volunteers and visitors–  through a full-scale catastrophic emergency?

Like all schools we have the boilerplate “Disaster Preparedness Plan”.  We have done the obligatory disaster drills complete with Search and Rescue simulations and teachers chirping because they “got stuck on the Sanitation Team and Ms. Agnew– who has never even been a life guard–  gets to be on the First Aid Team.”

“I think this is proof that you just don’t see my leadership potential, Dr. Riley.”

Sears used to sell green trash cans filed to the brim with earthquake tools: batteries and flashlights, shovels and axes, name tags, caution tape and first aid kits.  Just as those CNN reporters leave that lasting visual memory of the televised storm (red jackets flapping and ballcaps pulled tight to their ears “I …can’t hear….you…  Anderson….  the….  wind is now…..lifting me….  off the ground….”  ) —  so too do I have the memory of Ms. Ingersoll– an otherwise classy veteran 5th grade teacher– patrolling up and down the hallways with a hatchet and an ill-fitting yellow hard hat–  searching for survivors.  

She never found any.  

My school sits on the side of Interstate 5.  We have ghoulishly inventoried all of the potential crises that could happen at any moment as we sit surrounded by freeways and major thoroughfares: firestorms, helicopter crashes, poisonous gas wafting across the playground from truck or train accidents, terrorist attacks on the nearby naval base, snipers, Africanized honey bees (hey don’t laugh… swarms of bees fly across our playground every Spring!) And of course… the feared shifting of the Rose Canyon fault.  We are even prepared for Tsunamis.

We have bells and signals and codes and plans for a whole host of potential disasters.  

But am I ready to lead through a crisis?  Are you?

In nearly 20 years as a school administrator I have only been tested once. Back in 1996, A 5th grade student at my school in Solana Beach decided to remove the brakes from his bicycle.  Then one Friday afternoon he decided to ignore the direction he had just received from a parking lot supervisor who told him to walk his bike off campus. Instead, he coasted down the steep hill next to our parking lot that flowed out onto Loma Santa Fe at 3:30 in the afternoon.  And on the way down the hill, he took a jab at a classmate who was  innocently walking along the sidewalk.  And in the effort to needle his classmate, he lost control of his bike and shot out into the on-coming traffic like a nightmare rocket spinning wildly off course. Loma Santa Fe is 400 lanes of cars moving at the speed of Southern California commuters who just want to be home.  Our guy didn’t have a chance.  He slammed into the side of a bus and suffered catastrophic head injury.  

I remember kneeling at his side with a nurse who happened to pull over to assist him.  He wasn’t breathing well.  As Life Flight flew overhead looking for a place to land, we climbed inside his bike that had exploded on impact and whispered to him while the nurse began CPR.  “It’s ok, buddy.  We’re going to help you. We’re here to help you.”

Long after the paramedics had loaded him into Life Flight and taken him away, children and police and curious on-lookers were still examining the accident scene.  The deep red pool of blood had already started to harden and dry in the street.  And on the knees of my pants.  In my office I debriefed with office staff. Everyone had remained calm.  Everyone swung into action to manage the students, keep traffic flowing, contact paramedics and the superintendent’s office.  Many staff members did what they thought needed to be done to protect all our students.  In the end, we attributed our reaction to the recent Disaster Plan simulation– to Ms. Ingersol and her yellow construction hat and how earnestly she looked for make-believe victims of a make-believe earthquake.  Perhaps that simulation had just saved a child’s life.

So I learned from a 5th grader’s late afternoon collision with a city bus that sometimes disaster plans morph from simulations into real events.  And that if adults are prepared… their instincts will do the rest. 

And I learned that you can NEVER be prepared to hold a child who is dying in your arms. (10 years later, and I am still here writing about it, thinking about it– agonizing over it:  “Was there something I could have done to prevent that accident?”)  

And I learned that leading through a crisis is one of those “other duties as assigned.”  (Have you ever seen it listed in a job description?)  

And I learned that the simulated disaster and full scale practice drill– if nothing else–  is good for parent confidence, student amusement, and staff esprit de corps.  

And I learned that they damn well better be prepared where my own kids go to school.

And I learned from watching the Katrina response that we will not necessarily be able to count on outside help in the wake of a large scale emergency.  We will have to survive on our wits and our commitment and our preparation. 

And I learned that when you lead a school through a crisis you have to keep leading long after that crisis recedes, long after the CNN storm reporters find their feet again, long after the ash is swept up from lunch tables and rooftop air conditioners– long after the blood stains in the street are washed away.

And I learned that you have to lead through the healing too.

(Simultaneously posted at http://www.leadertalk.org/)

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September 6, 2008 · 6:30 pm

PUZZLE FIT THE THE PIECES…OF TOGETHER

Like the title of this post, we had many of the puzzle pieces, but they weren’t quite fitting together.  

We were searching for ‘alignment’ in our teaching… what Richard Ellmore refers to as “internal accountability”.  And we were coming up short.  Not for a lack of effort or expertise. 

We know that our tipping point as an organization lies in the quality of our teaching.  (I suspect it is your tipping point too and if you haven’t discovered that yet, you inevitably will!)  We are a very innovative charter school that has implemented multiple initiatives and creative programs over the past decade. Collectively, those initiatives have driven huge academic gains– but we were so low ten year ago those gains were inevitable.  Now we know with certainty that continuous growth for our students will not be forthcoming unless we significantly improve our TEACHING–  every teacher, every classroom, every day.

So this past week I met with each teacher to talk about their professional goals for the year.  (We do not use a traditional evaluation system– our teachers develop their own growth plan and then tell me how I can help them achieve it.)  During one of those meetings Ms. Michele shared a conversation she had had earlier in the week with her 3rd grade students.  She has a wall display that depicts each child’s academic growth according to MAPS– our formative assessments.  Each student has a flower on the wall chart that grows toward a line, and the line represents being “at grade level”.  The promised land.

“What does this line represent?” Ms. Michele had asked her class.
“It means we are at grade level,” they replied.
“And what does being ‘at grade level’ mean?” she asked.
“It means we were Proficient on the test,” offered Angelica– because no one else could quite articulate it.
“And how do you score Proficient on the test?” Ms. Michele asked no one in particular.
“You color in the dots,” said Isaiah at long last.

You color in the dots.  Bingo.

Ms. Michel and I had a simultaneous epiphany in our meeting that was transforming into MY goals meeting right before our very eyes:  “Our students have no idea what it means to be ‘at grade level’… do they?” No…they don’t. Neither our 3rd graders or our 8th graders, neither our parents nor even all of our teachers can really define what it means or what you NEED to be ‘at grade level.’  They cannot tell you what knowledge, skills or competencies must be mastered in order to consistently color in the right dots! 

It was as if someone had just knocked over a table bearing all of the pieces of a very stubborn puzzle, and when they hit the ground, they somehow fell into place.  We had been talking to kids for years about the importance of getting “to grade level”. Many had routinely formulated annual learning goals:  

1) make new friends 
2) get perfect attendance 
3) be an honor student at least five times 
4) be at grade level  

But “being at grade level” is an abstract goal at best.  We could measure whether they achieved their goal or not– but it is a relatively meaningless measure if students don’t really understand HOW you achieve it.  

So Internal accountability, at least for my school, requires this:

• Virtually every student, every teacher, every parent must be able to articulate the essential, non-negotiable  standards and competencies that must be mastered in order to perform ‘at grade level’ in May;
• The formative data from MAPS must be clearly understood by each student so that they know exactly where they are along the continuum of mastery as the year goes on– and even more importantly– so that they know what they need from their teacher ( the very definition of engaged, independent, self-reflective students!)
• Every lesson must be tightly designed so that children always know the purpose and learning goals for that lesson;
• Every lesson must feature research-based instructional strategies that simultaneously target and differentiate for every learner… at whatever level they may be along the continuum (see: Gradual Release of Responsibility!!!);
• Teachers must be able to use all evidence available– MAPS data, student work samples, etc. — to make strategic and on-going adjustments for each child. 

There are other elements too that produce the “alignment” we are searching for.  But you get the picture when: The Pieces of the Puzzle Fit Together.

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August 31, 2008 · 8:16 pm

BLINK

For as long as I can remember– and throughout me career as an educator– there has been one consistent complaint about the complex task of teaching children:  THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH TIME!

The six and a half hour school day speeds by at a blinding pace.  The unexpected delays, the daily interruptions, the fragmented schedules, the long lunch and recess breaks, the endless transitions– all steal time… the precious capital that is fundamental to effective teaching.

The nine month academic year starts at a frenzied late-summer pace.  Then it’s Halloween, then Christmas, then we are preparing students for the annual assessments in May.  

Pretty soon graduation ceremonies start to blend together–  along with cycles of crises, issues of the day, trends and fads and national priorities.  And, sadly, the faces of generations of children.

All in the blink of an eye.

There is never enough time, and yet, time is all we have.

At El Milagro we added 20 days to the instructional year a long time ago.  Our students now return to school in late July, one full month ahead of their counterparts who attend schools which feature a traditional academic calendar.  We have seen great growth from this development because we use the month of August strategically:  1) We conduct extensive formative assessments for every student using MAPS; 2) Our teachers meet 100% of our parents in conferences that set the tone for the year and insure that our parents (and thus our students) have a clear understanding of the standards and expectations for the year; and  3) Significantly, 75% of these meetings are HOME VISITS… so the partnership between home and school are well established by Labor Day.

This year the teachers went one step further.  We implemented a new school schedule that adds 60 minutes of instruction to every school day! This too was done strategically.  By adding instructional minutes we were able to 1) Protect a 3-hour, language arts time block; 2) Protect a 90 minute, math time block; 3) Guarantee a 45-minute ELD block for every student at every grade level; 4) Guarantee 75 minutes of active writing every day; 5) Eliminate the broken fragments of time; 6) Protect our RIT groups– a school wide strategy for differentiating instruction; 7) Protect the arts, social studies, science and physical education; 8) Extend learning time for accelerated students through an enrichment curriculum; and 9) Create a 45-minute daily time block to work with much smaller, targeted groups of students.

Our teachers responded to the age-old need for more time by carving out more time.  This could only happen in a charter school, where staff can respond to the needs of our students first– then worry later about how everyone might be fairly compensated for their time.  Even on this issue they reached consensus:  “Let’s make sure that what we implement is working.  Investing more TIME to get the same results is not acceptable.”

The new schedule starts on Tuesday, the day after Labor Day.  There is tremendous optimism and a sense of profound appreciation from our parents who recognize a gift when they see one.  Their children will be accelerated if we all do our jobs right.  Our students now have a fighting chance to benefit from a far more comprehensive and content-rich curriculum.  And it comes not a moment too soon.


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August 22, 2008 · 5:17 pm

STEWARDS OF THE SOARING

Wow I didn’t realize how hard it would be to keep up with blogging once the school year starts up! Nevertheless, my wife passed along this article that is being reviewed by senior leadership at Intuit.  It is called “The Uncompromising Leader” (Eisenstat, Beer, Foote, Fredberg, and Norrgren) and appears in the July 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review.

“High Commitment-High Performance CEOs somehow seem to comfortably bear the tension of reconciling the relentless demands of the market with their role as steward of their people. These leaders are clearly energized by delivering on their larger mission, by soundly thrashing their competitors in the marketplace, and by directly connecting with the people in their firms.” 

It really underscores the struggle across all kinds of organizations– literally all over the world– to find the balance between achieving high “performance” and keeping people whole and healthy. Stewards of the People.  “Leaders of high commitment and high performance organizations refuse to choose between people and profits.”    

It also calls to mind the tension described in my previous post.  Are we about raising test scores or raising children?

And I again come to the conclusion that if we expect our own children to excel in school, why would we not expect the children who are entrusted into our care as educators to excel? Academic excellence is a gateway to a lifetime of opportunity.  Those who argue that we have dehumanized our schools in the “Age of Accountability” are projecting the expectation that children cannot rise to the level of high standards and high expectations.

We refuse to choose between people (which includes our students) and high productivity in the form of academic achievement.  As a result, our children soar. 

                                                                                                     

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August 11, 2008 · 9:17 pm

THE MIRROR

One of my teachers said:  “When you first came here you were all about kids.  lately, it seems that all you talk about is test scores.”

Sometimes we have to have someone else hold up the mirror for us.  In the climate of NCLB,  it is so easy to lose our way.  But I know this, “caring about our students” and motivating high levels of academic achievement are not mutually exclusive goals.  There is no reason why my students can’t excel on any academic achievement test.  Not enough of them do, and that means they are not performing to their full potential.  And when a person fails to achieve their full potential,  we all pay.  But none of us pay as dearly as our students do.  So there is a moral, ethical, professional obligation to monitor how our students perform on these tests and try to help them do as well as they can.  There is an obligation to learn from the data, to make good adjustments, and to improve our programs and services.  

I wondered…  Isn’t that what being child-centered means?  We can care about kids AND how well they achieve in school without sacrificing our humanity.  

Or theirs.

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