Yet Another Commission

In yet another signal that the one-size-fits-all approach of NCLB is not working (as if we need one), policy makers in Ohio are pointing to an ever-growing number of college students needing remedial work. Of course, every such problem provides a chance to convene yet another ‘commission’; this one is called the "Regional Consortia for P-20 Alignment."

Their task is "to bring high school standards in line with the realities of higher education," according to our state superintendent. With 41% of college students taking remedial course in mathematics or English something must be done.

Really?

After thirty years in this world, spanning both K-12 teaching and district administration, serving as an elected school board member and as a tenured professor, I know not to trust what the experts say. So before the State holds hearings complete with gnashing of teeth over the sorry state of public education, I have a few questions for them to consider.

One, how do we know these college students actually need remediation? Just because a college says they need it, what is the evidence? I am sure more than one parent has been shocked by tuition billings for these courses and has wondered if they are getting their money’s worth.

Further, given that graduate students teach most introductory math and English courses on our state college campuses, maybe the problem is with the teacher and not the learner. My experience a the collegiate level was that very little time is spent with faculty helping them learn how to teach; they were mostly just lecturers. Oh, but surely the problem is with the kids - it always has been, as we have heard the ‘they need remediation’ complaint for as long as I can remember.

Second, haven’t we been testing the pants off our kids for the past two decades and they still can’t do math or write. Hmmmm, wonder what the lesson is here? OK, sorry, just had to ask.

Third, what counts as evidence of what would improve the college readiness of our students? My guess is that the consortia will come up with a bunch of stuff around higher standards, a few more tests, and more curriculum guides written by college professors and state staffers who have no idea how to teach this stuff to real live kids.

In the meantime nearly 60% of the kids are, apparently, ready for college. Is anyone looking at what these kids did on the way to college to be so well prepared? Aside from my guess that most of them are middle class or affluent, had homes where they were well fed, and had health insurance, etc., I would love to know about the school environments that prepared them.

Here is a novel idea - rather than gripe and moan about what some schools are not doing, let’s look at what many schools are doing well, and actually learn from them. The national Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) conducted just such a study (disclaimer, our high school was one such school studied) and when they looked at college transcripts they found that kids from schools that followed a CES model were doing quite well in college and on track to graduate on time.

These are schools that built strong personal relationships with students, had a focused curriculum, believed in assessment by exhibition, and engaged students in meaningful work. No matter, no one in any state has followed up on this study.

Why bother? We have named another commission.

Often I have complained that educational policy-making is an ‘evidence free zone.’ Once again I am afraid we are about to see another demonstration of this as the sages of Ohio’s educational bureaucracy will mandate yet another new curricular model, and more tests, and, well, just more of the same.

Our kids deserve better.

Glimmers of Hope

OK, I’m a ‘glass half full’ kind of guy. And to start this week, what I read in the press gives me just a little hope that thinking about our schools, at least at the state levels, might be a little clearer.

First there was Governor Jerry Brown’s veto of the education bill in California. In his letter, the governor chided the legislature for continuing to rely upon standardized testing as the only ‘data’ that counts when measuring schools success. In his own words: Finally, while SB547 attempts to improve the API, it relies on the same quantitative and standardized paradigm at the heart of the current system. The criticism of the API is that it has led schools to focus too narrowly on tested subjects and ignore other subjects and matters that are vital to a well-rounded education. SB547 certainly would add more things to measure, but it is doubtful that it would actually improve our schools. Adding more speedometers to a broken car won’t turn it into a high-performance machine.

And then, my favorite quote from his veto message: SB547 nowhere mentions good character or love of learning. It does allude to student excitement and creativity, but does not take these qualities seriously because they can’t be placed in a data stream. Lost in the bill’s turgid mandates is any recognition that quality is fundamentally different from quantity. There are other ways to improve our schools to indeed focus on quality. What about a system that relies on locally convened panels to visit schools, observe teachers, interview students, and examine student work? Such a system wouldn’t produce an API number, but it could improve the quality of our schools.

OK, I know, its California. But how about Iowa? Governor Terry Branstad has released a educational change platform there and while the devil is no doubt in the details, there is much here to like. Such as increasing teacher pay and training, providing mentor teachers and career ladders, freeing up principals to lead schools, and a new way to think about accountability that include, from the document, taking into account that healthy and successful children and more than just test scores making sure teachers and other educators have the supports they need to succeed measures parent satisfaction. In my mind all of this is a step well beyond what we have been hearing lately about NCLB.

Of course, I could be fooled again (with a nod to The Who). There are probably plenty of internal politics behind both of these agendas of which I am not aware. But I must say it was nice to start the week hearing Governors of two very different states share a common message it is time to see kids as more than a test score and schools as more than just test preparation mills.

All politics are, in the end, local. That may be what is really behind my ‘half full’ feeling this week. On Monday the staff of our school district gathered for a full day to share our practices and improve our craft. For several years we have been building a reading and writing across the curriculum agenda. We have invested in our teachers’ expertise, and have tried to build an approach from the ground up that invests in teachers, trusts them to do the right thing, and provides ways for them to share successful practices with students.

Monday was a testament to this work.

For a full day teachers shared with one another how they have been implementing the literacy agenda. They modeled what they have done in their classrooms, engaged colleagues in mock-lessons, and planned together where they will go from here with this work. (We also enjoyed a great meal prepared by our cooks with some local produce.)

This is what could happen if Governors Brown and Branstad really mean what they say. We could invest in the expertise of our teachers, find ways to assess the quality of our schools based on the quality of instruction and student engagement, and give schools the latitude to meet the needs of their students in ways that are context specific.

It is hard to imagine that the folks in Washington, guilty as they are for first passing NCLB and now refusing to amend/improve/abandon it, will see the error of their ways. But they could start by taking a look at what a couple of Governors are trying to do, and what one small school district does every day.

One Superintendent's Thoughts on Opening Day: "Keep Paddling through Rough Waters"

It is a tradition in our district to bring together the entire staff--teachers, aides, bus drivers, custodians, cooks, and secretaries--for an opening day meeting. Part of that morning is an address from the superintendent, and this year I gave my first such speech. There was much to say that was specific to our district, but in closing I had some things to say about the overall state of public education. Here are those comments:

The last decade has not been kind to us, or public schooling in general. While the needs of our kids have increased, our resources have decreased. At a time when the country needs a well-educated public, our schools—you and I—are seen as something to blame for our problems rather than the solution to them. When doubt in our public institutions increases, the media focuses on the occasional cheating scandal rather than upon the thousands of schools and hundreds of thousands of teachers, custodians, secretaries, aides, cooks and bus drivers who do their job well, day in and day out, with little or no attention.

I was thinking about this while listening to my son John describe his work this year. He is, in a credit to many of you, doing quite well as an instructor for Outward Bound. He specializes in teaching whitewater canoeing and kayaking and I overheard him telling a neighbor that he felt like he spent a lot of the summer telling students to ‘keep paddling.’

I asked him what he meant by that and he said that all too often, when faced with a new situation or with failure, his students would simply stop doing what they knew they should do.

They had the expertise, but they doubted their ability.

After several days of instruction, his students faced a new challenge. They were sent down the river through a rather tricky series of rapids that was preceded by a short waterfall, something they had not seen before. My son stationed himself at the top of the rapids, lining up each canoe and cheering his students on.

With every group the same thing happened.

Some students took what they knew, executed the right paddle strokes, and flew through the rapids. But others panicked, and in almost every case, just lifted their paddles into the air and screamed. The result was always the same, a flipped canoe and two students flailing away through the rocks.

I think that it is this way for us right now. We know what to do to help kids learn. We feed them good meals and get them to and from school safely. Certainly we will make mistakes, but overall, we know what to do, despite what the media or politicians might say. The millions of young people who have gone through the public school system--one free to all comers and open to every child-- and have gone on to hold jobs, vote, and build decent communities are a testament to that.

The temptation is to quit paddling, to believe the critics, to panic in the face of the unending drumbeat of criticism.

My message to you about this year is simply this—you know what to do, you know you are making a difference in the lives of our kids, so just keep paddling, and let me know if I can make the water any smoother.

Managing From Up Close

I believe the current conventional wisdom about school district leadership is flawed. Many of the current ‘reformers’ are betting on what I would call ‘management from afar’. It goes like this—find an executive from an area other than education, train them in the business of schools, and turn them loose to cut budgets and drive up test scores. Oh, and keep the old model of district leadership with orders coming from ‘downtown’ and the district leadership knowing little, if anything, about the real life of classrooms.

That may work in some places, and fail in others. (If it does work then we need some similar approaches to the leadership of our medical system, Congress, and the home mortgage and banking industries.) But I am willing to bet that the impact will be limited.

As an alternative, I believe that administrators who are still involved in the day-to-day lives of teachers, students, staff, and families would better serve districts. That leadership should not be ‘downtown’ but should be down the hall; that administrators should have to experience the consequences of their decisions made; and that easy access to district administrators is owed to the public that pays them.

So, with that in mind, this year I am taking on the dual role of superintendent and secondary school principal in our school district. We will see if this model, one that keeps the superintendent in daily touch with everything from announcements to pep rallies, can be effective.

There are three pieces of this leadership model that are crucial; shared leadership, staying connected with the school and community, and understanding that the only job of central administration is to support teachers in helping children learn.

A few notes on each.

First, shared leadership. Of course I cannot do everything a superintendent and a principal can and should do. Even in our small district that would not be possible. But what we have done is taken what we would have spent on a full time superintendent and used those funds to make sure each of our schools had a full time leader. In addition to their building duties they also have some central office functions. So one elementary principal handles federal and state reporting, the other directs curriculum and staff development, and an associate principal at the secondary school also directs the extracurricular program.

This team approach goes all the way to day-to-day building management. When one of us is out of his/her building, the fourth administrator heads to that building for the day and works from there. So some days my office (basically my computer) may be at an elementary school. The point is that we all share responsibility for the education of every child and the support of every teacher.

Second, staying connected. Nothing epitomizes the distance of district leadership from the real work of the schools than the expression, ‘it came from downtown.’ Far removed from the real lives of kids and teachers, bureaucrats make decisions, issue pronouncements, and try to micro manage the work of the classroom—all the time with little or no contact with real kids and real classrooms. Even more notable is the central office isolation from the families that the schools are to serve.

My dual role means I am still involved in curriculum, working with teachers on instruction, meeting with families about kids. In fact, in the past few weeks I have been cornered in the grocery store by a woman wanting to know why we did not hire a family member, talked with a laid off staff member about how to manage the new fiscal realities that family faces, and written two letters of recommendation for members of the class of 2011. This contact reminds me that every decision I make has real consequences for people who are my neighbors, and for kids and staff that depend upon us to provide them with the learning environment they deserve.

Third, supporting teachers. I believe that the only reason you have a central office is to support the work of teachers in educating our children. When you are removed from the school, when your degree is in management and not education, you may forget that. The job is not to manage instruction and learning, it is to support instruction for learning. And if you have not experienced the actual life of a school it is nearly impossible to support what you do not know.

I do not believe this will be easy, or that I will always do it well. But I do believe the models of managing schools from afar are seriously flawed and are hurting our schools. We will try managing from up close. I will keep you informed as to how it goes.

A Voice of Hope Rises Above the Din

The school year ended a couple of weeks ago here. The halls are empty, we are cleaning up last year’s records, building next year’s schedule student by student.

What goes on now is the work behind the scenes; work done without fanfare or hype, by teachers and staff whose work right now makes next year’s successes possible.

Things are a bit slower, however, and it allows me to catch up on things sent my way that were set aside in the rush to graduation this spring. In that collection of articles, books, and notes was one piece that caught my eye and gave me hope in spite of the ongoing and oft misguided debates about our schools. You can find it here, and I believe you will find this parent’s plea for school reformers to get serious about what really matters in schools inspiring.

I do not know the author personally, though I think I would like Helen Gym. She is the driving force behind something called Parents United for Public Education, good people who work for reforms like free busing for kids to school, smaller class sizes, healthy fresh food in cafeterias—you know, simple stuff that does not make headlines but really makes a difference.

But it was Ms. Gym’s piece on what parents really want when it comes to schools that caught my eye. Here is the short list, but I encourage you to follow the link to her entire piece:

• Programs rich in the arts, sciences, and history that are about more than test scores;
• Critical thinking;
• Small classes;
• An experienced, stable, and professional teaching force.

And what she points out is that while this is what parents want, these simple steps are ignored by politicians who contract out teaching, spend fortunes on tests and pre-packaged curricula, and continue to dumb down our schools with a focus on one-size-fits-all standardization.

Now that I am superintendent of schools in my little district, I can lead on some of these things in spite of state budget cuts and the focus on testing here. As Ms. Gym suggests, we are going to keep our early childhood programs in the face of reduced funds—and we are going to see how to make them more developmentally appropriate. We are going to squeeze just a bit harder to reduce class sizes in our middle school. We are going to continue to offer our staff the best support we can to bring on line a curriculum rich in critical literacy skills. And we are going to create a better website and re-launch our district newsletter to try and do a better job connecting with parents.

And I think I am going to send all of our staff—from teachers to custodians, aides to principals, a copy of Helen Gym’s fine piece of writing.

I have no idea how this will turn out for us, or for Ms. Gym and her allies in Philadelphia. But I do know that on this Saturday morning, in spite of the rain, things seem a bit brighter just knowing she and her friends are on my side.

The Triple Crown

It’s spring, and time for the Triple Crown. But I do not mean in horse racing.

Rather, at Federal Hocking Secondary School it is time for the academic Triple Crown for our seniors.

The first of the three, our Graduation Portfolio presentation, took place last Friday, the day before the Kentucky Derby. Each senior stood before a panel of faculty and defended the portfolio that they had assembled demonstrating their readiness to graduate.

The first section of the portfolio was their plan for after high school, complete with college or job acceptance letters, resumes, letters of reference and their own agenda for life after high school.

Section two demonstrated, through course work or work outside of high school, their competence in math, science, humanities, and at least one elective area. And the third section presented their competence as a citizen, documented through work at school, in their community, and in the society writ large.

All day the staff listened to personal stories of challenge and achievement as our students stood and delivered their best for our appraisal.

Next will be the Senior Project presentations. For the past year every potential graduate has been charged with designing and carrying out an individual project where they learn something new of their choosing.

With the help of an outside learning resource that each student has to identify, they have had to learn a new skill and then present a product that demonstrates that achievement. On Project Showcase night this year our halls will be filled with artifacts ranging from a 1940s restored car to a biodiesel refinery, rehabilitated horses to gourmet desserts, computer programs to gun cabinets, and hand-tied trout flies to gluten-free cookbooks.

Each of these projects has challenged our students to learn on their own, to find a passion and pursue it, and to find someone to teach them something new outside of the school walls. These are skills that will last them a lifetime.

Finally, on the two days prior to graduation, our seniors will take their final performance assessments. I have written about these previously, but in case you missed it, we do not believe the traditional ‘final exam’ best demonstrates what students have learned.

Thus, we schedule half-day performances that range from researching a position paper, writing it and defending it in a seminar, to carrying out a new lab investigation in the chemistry class. It is a moment when our students prove to us that they can use what they have learned in a new context independent of our help. So much more valuable than one more multiple-choice test.

Many people have pointed out that for too many youngsters the senior year of high school is a waste. Having finished all the requirements for college by December, they coast through a spring featuring nothing but proms and pranks. I would agree—but not here. While some schools see the senior year as a victory lap, we see it as the final lap in the one-mile race, a sprint to the finish.

Do we get push back? You bet: Why do we have to do what no other school around is doing? This is too much pressure on my child in the final year. How can I fail to graduate if I have all my credits but did not do my project?

Of course, with many adolescents, push back is the name of the game. But in the end our goal is not to make school easy—it is to make it meaningful. As my colleague Nancy Sizer pointed out in her important book Crossing the Stage the senior year can be a vital capstone to an educational experience, but only if we make it so.

Yes, we push hard down the stretch. But why not? We want our graduates to know that you put in your best effort at any task all the way to the end, not just through the first three-fourths of the task. And given that for many young people high school will be the end of their formal education, it is our responsibility to make sure they are well-prepared in the areas of careers, intellect, and citizenship when they cross our stage later this month.

It is a shame that policy makers do not get the importance of standards such as the ones we use at Federal Hocking. In fact, in Ohio the current administration is heading towards ending the Senior Project requirement, put in just two years ago by then-Gov. Ted Strickland. This while they will keep the five-part multiple-guess graduation test that students take in tenth grade.

No matter, it is springtime here in Southeastern Ohio and the bugle has blown calling our candidates for graduation to the starting line. The race for their own personal Triple Crown is underway; and I am proud of their ability to take up and master this challenge.

March Madness

I used to love March.

I attended the University of North Carolina as an undergraduate and March meant madness of the best kind. There was the ACC Basketball Tourney and then the NCAA playoffs—and of course, March meant spring break as well.

Now, I hate it. Forget the fact that there is so much more to love as I have grown older. Sure, there is still the basketball—and for all you doubters my Tar Heels have returned! But with March my farm comes alive starting with the spring peepers calling from the creeks, the first bass from the ponds, and wildflowers in fields and the smell in the woods telling me spring is here.

While it should be one of my favorite months all of this is overshadowed by the most important part of March for the kids and schools in Ohio--the annual madness called the Ohio Graduation Tests.

For five days during either the second or third week of March (it depends upon when your spring break falls) tenth grade students across Ohio sit for five days for tests that will decide whether or not they will graduate from school two years later. Those same tests also determine the school’s ranking with the state and whether it will fall prey to the Annual Yearly Progress measures that determine its fate with the state and federal government.

For five days students sit for two and one half hours taking tests in Reading, Math, Writing, Science and Social Studies. During these five days students face a barrage of questions covering the Boxer Rebellion to quadratic equations, possessive plurals to theocracies, Punnett squares to the meaning of a poem. Questions that I doubt any adult in Ohio not currently in high school could answer. It is like nothing they have done before and nothing they will ever do again. And yet it is one of the most important measures of their success in school.

We have been giving some version of these tests for nearly 20 years now—and I keep wondering why.

Someone once said (it is attributed to Einstein, but no one is really sure) that the definition of madness is continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Our own March madness is exactly this. We continue to give standardized tests as if giving them will in some way improve schools. Sure enough, each year states enter into the test score sweepstakes (led by Education Week magazine among others) to see whose scores are the highest. So what?

There is no study that links the scores on these exams with success in life, college, the military, or the workplace. There is no study that says these tests have led to a richer or more challenging curriculum, or more engaging teaching practices, or more welcoming schools (in fact, the evidence seems to suggest just the opposite). There is no study that says that the money we are spending on these things is a good investment, with more of a payoff than, say, more teachers, books, supplies, or extracurricular activities. There is simply no evidence that doing more of the same will get us different results.

But when you are suffering from madness, reason does not matter.

Which is probably why I have the Tar Heels winning the national championship in my local pool.