We are the authors of our own slide into mediocrity. We want all our children in all their school programs to be successful – perhaps, equally successful. To make this happen, we give every program all the funding, staffing, supplies and equipment, time and commitment requested to assure that the school board and administration are 100% supportive of everything our students do. Our unwritten mantra is “We will not hold back a dollar if that dollar is the difference between a student having or not having the educational experience he or she wants.” We are providers of educational experience. To paraphrase an older Ford Motors motto, “We will Provide” became our Job #1. We suborned Ford’s statement “Quality is job #1” and, as a result, lost our quality and like any statistic knows it will, we drifted toward the averageness of public education.
Marshall Field, founder of the Chicago department of the same name, created a store-customer ethos based upon this statement. “Give the Lady what she wants.” A happy customer is a return customer. Our school board and administration again paraphrased. “Give students and parents what they want.” Do not argue or cause a school board meeting riot, again.
Our unswerving commitment to providing blinded us to our looking at the qualitative results of the provision. We provided. Voila! Everyone should be happy. The outcomes, however, are not what we expected and we are no longer happy.
Once known around our state as schools of educational excellence, we slipped toward an average benchmarked by an increasing of children whose annual learning achievement is categorized as basic or below basic. Like too many schools in our state, the majority of our children now are not proficient in reading and math. If you prefer reference to grade level – more than half of our children are below grade level in reading and math. We no longer are the top performing schools in our county. Parent conversation about open enrolling to other schools increased, and were those schools not 40 to 65 miles further away for self-transporting parents, more families would have migrated.
Interestingly, all was not totally lost. Our AP-level children continued to take AP courses and AP exams and their success maintained some school reputational luster. But, 90% of the school district’s children are not enrolled in AP classes. And, although the school’s One Act performers have been to the state competition fourteen years in a row with a boatload of honors, most school programs struggle to reach a .500 season.
Our dilemma is this. When everything is of equal importance and requires undebated organizational support, the importance of everything makes nothing important. The graph of priorities is a flat line at the top of the page. When everyone understands that no programs will ever be diminished or eliminated, the discerning edge of organizational scrutiny and evaluation evaporates. And, the overwhelmingness of everything being important flattens teacher, coach, director and advisor efforts to make a difference.
We lost our ethos, that essential, positive spirit within our school that is our unifying focus. “Provision is Job #1” is not a rallying cry.
The loss of school ethos is debilitating. Years ago, the school board’s charge to school leadership was “We provide a private school education in a public school setting.” The hallmark of our private school education was excellence in academics surrounded by extensive arts, activities and athletic opportunities for all all children. That charge was qualitative. A private school education meant that high quality teaching would cause all children to demonstrate high quality learning. Because funding was available, funding would be used judiciously to support high quality teaching, directing, advising, and coaching. And, because we are small schools, we were expected to monitor and adjust annually to ensure we always were pointed toward quality achievements.
The core of our charge was academic success supported by success in the arts, activities and athletics. Our ethos was that quality teaching caused quality learning. Job #1 was academic success.
We need to reclaim our ethos.