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If You Point Fingers, Point to a Better Solution

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When a problem arises in the US count on two phenomena to follow: 1. public outcry with its omnipresent indignation leading to 2. finger pointing. When a problem involves any aspect of governmental oversight count on one more unfailing phenomenon: regulations will fly! Is this true? Follow the cries and finger pointings of these current problems –

  • Children in the US are not academically competitive with children in other nations.
  • There is a gap in academic achievement between white children from middle class and affluent families and the achievement of children of color and children living in poverty.
  • As a profession, teacher candidates graduating from college represent the lower 50% of undergradate GPAs.
  • Higher education is unable to correct or strengthen its failed teacher preparation programs.
  • If nothing is done to correct the above problems, the economic power of the US will deteriorate even further from its glory as world leader.
  • And, the USDE is releasing a 400+ page set of regulations that, in a nutshell, apply No Child Left Behind strategies to teacher preparation programs.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/11/ed_dept_teacher-prep_regulatio.html?intc=es

And, as a result of the work results of this dotted line scenario, the academic competence of all school children in the US will be significantly improved.

Hide the spoons to prevent self-gagging! Einstein’s bones are bouncing in his box as once again we apply our usual and failed strategies expecting successful results.

When so many turn their heads with educational jealousy to the new leaders of international academic competitions, namely Finland, Singapore, Shanghai, and the Netherlands, why aren’t we also turning our eyes for solutions to the international leaders in vocational training? We read of the poor comparisons between our teachers and those in Finland, between the spoiled work ethic of children in the US compared with their peers in India and China, and failure of US schools to prepare high school graduates for trades-work that is an economic mainstay in industrialized nations. Now, we read of the US Department of Education’s indictment of teacher preparation programs to be improved by high stakes, performance for federal grants regulations. If, as the USDE asserts, this national problem can be remedied with better teacher preparation, why don’t we look to the German apprenticeship program for a better idea? The training system that creates the skill sets to design and produce Porsches and BMWs must be doing something right!

http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/A-Bud/Apprenticeship-Programs.html

Using a backwards design approach, applying the German apprenticeship approach to talented teacher development would look like this.

7. All children are taught by highly qualified teachers using the best of teaching practices.

6. A school district hires a highly trained, job-proven teacher with whom the district is professionally invested – district success and teacher success are inexorably tied to each other.

5. The apprentice-teacher learns teaching practices from a combination of college courses and on-the-job instruction and applies and refines these practices as a classroom teacher in the school district.

4. The school district and college preparation program co-opt each other. The district will pay a salary to the apprentice-teacher to learn on the job and the preparation program will dually credit the student-apprentice for learning on the job and in the program.

3. An apprentice teacher simultaneously is a full-time teacher-in-training working in the school classrooms and a full-time student in a college teacher preparation program.

2. The school district creates contacts with potential teacher candidates during their freshman and sophomore years in college for the purpose of pre-screening and building future working relationships.

1. The school district begins a teacher candidate recruitment strategy five to six years in advance of hiring a new teacher.

Now, in a forward design mode. The inculcation of a highly trained and job ready first-year teacher into a school culture and its educational expectations is too important to languish with the educated “hunches” of HR personnel and school administrators. Their track record is too much like a baseball scout trying to divine the productivity of a hot prospect who appears to have all of the baseball skills. In truth, neither the HR people and administrators nor the scout know if they have picked a winner.

So, why guess at the success of a new hire? Instead, hand train your successor teachers through an apprentice program. Every apprentice cum teacher will be classroom-proven in the district’s own schools for employment in those schools.

There is a second level of benefit to an apprenticeship approach to teacher development. A school district expends considerable time and resources in recruiting, orienting, providing initial educator mentoring, and supervising through a probationary period. Too often, as national statistics prove out, a high percentage of new teachers leave teaching within the first three years of their early career. Teaching is not what they expected it to be. Or, children and classroom management is more difficult than imagined. It is probable that the cost of constant teacher replacement offsets much of the cost of an apprentice’s on-the-job salary.

Why isn’t your local school district using an apprentice program already? That’s a simple answer. Because no one else is. Apprenticeships break the mold of past and current practices. They disturb the age old system that the USDE says is not working but wants to fix through sanctions. If some school district instituted an apprenticeship program, it would be difficult to contain the good news.

However, apprenticeship-teacher preparatory programs require time, money and commitment. Because they are by their structure a work in progress, a school district and teacher preparatory institution would need to commit to a five or six year scheme. This is not easy for either party that has operated for decades if not centuries on “you accredit your undergraduate, we’ll recruit and hire them.” And, how has that worked out?

Additionally, apprentice-teacher programs are not easy because the school district must pay an apprentice a salary for on-the-job training. In a world of taxpayer oversight, levying for apprenticeship funding would make the program a year-by-year proposition.

Finally, the district, teacher preparatory program and apprentice must make a commitment to each other. The culture of young adults in the US is even less commitment oriented than our institutions. Most undergraduates change their major at least once while in college. Most undergraduates take five or six years to complete a four-year degree program. And, contemporary thinking is that a young adult will change vocations at least six times before retirement. From the institutional side, new standards or educational mandates will be implemented during the apprentice’s on-the-job training years. How can the district be sure that their trained apprentice will match with as-yet-unknown mandates of the future?

All this said, is what the USDE proposes a better solution? Only if you believe that hitting a frog with a stick will turn it into a prince (or princess)! Let’s create a United States teacher apprenticeship program and produce academically successful graduates prepared to drive equally well produced Porsches.

The Unbelievably Essential Principal

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How essential is a principal to the educational enterprise of a school today? Unbelievably essential! The Effective Educator era reinforces the principal as the person responsible for leading a successful school. Not only is the principal the chief leader of all that happens in the school, Educator Effectiveness in Wisconsin places 50% of the overall evaluation of every teacher in the hands of the principal. For everything and everyone, principal leadership is unbelievably essential.

Historically, the principal was the “principal or lead” teacher of a school faculty. Over time the principalship was formalized and legally recognized as the leader of a school. Educational statutes in most states recognize four entities in a school district: Board of Education, superintendent, principal, and teachers. Almost all statutes relating to the supervision of children and the employment supervision of teachers refer to the school principal as the supervisor. Research abounds regarding the role of a school principal. Effective School Research in the 1980s affirmed that “if the principal is not engaged in an initiative, the initiative fails from the beginning.” Although recent Essential Schools’ research attempted to replace principal leadership with collegial and collaborative leadership spread out among teachers, the need for “chief” leadership has remained immutable. There is theory and there is reality.

http://www.mes.org/esr.html

http://www.essentialschools.org/resources/92

A test for identifying school leadership can be derived from Hollywood’s Miracle on 42nd Street. Send a letter to any school addressed to the “Person in Charge of the School” and the letter will wind up on the principal’s desk, or with a chuckle, on the principal’s secretary’s desk. There is a Santa and there is a school principal.

There are many ways in which a principal is the school’s “chief”. I like two recent pieces aired on NPR’s Marketplace. Kai Ryssdal and NPR reporters asked, “What does a CEO do all day?” and “What is the point of a COO? A CEO? A CVO? A CKO?” They provide us with several insightful examples of the importance of the “chief.”

The common denominator in the workday of any chief is meetings. Meetings are the way in which the chief keeps groups inside and outside the organization focused on the organizational mission. Meetings are the inter-relational connecting point between the leader and the people being led. Meetings clarify and transmit a common understanding of information and organizational objectives. “He (or she) is in a meeting” is what most people hear when they attempt to contact the chief.

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/ive-always-wondered/what-do-ceos-do-all-day

There are many areas of expertise that a chief must possess in order to be an effective leader. The NPR report labeled five areas using very unique yet highly informative descriptors. I find that the NPR descriptions also are apt illustrators of a school principal. These are:

Chief Agility Officer. Schools no longer are the monoliths of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this century, school leadership and school faculties must be highly adaptive to constant change. Government, business, and local communities do not hesitate to forcefully legislate or subtly redirect a school’s educational programs. Special interests rule in all too many discussions of how schools are failing and what they must do to create success for the future. An agile leadership is necessary for schools to interpret and respond to incessant change.

Chief Knowledge Officer. The principal is seldom the most intelligent or intellectual member of the faculty but always is the person who is “supposed to know.” If there are two questions that a principal hears more than any others they are “What do you want me to do now?” or “What are we supposed to do with or about …?” Leadership resides in the knowledge of what do or in the connections to the sources of that knowledge. This is different that an Information or Technical Director. Those are specialties and provide definitive and short-term answers. The CKO responds to the now and future issues as they reflect the educational mission of the school.

Chief Networking Officer. A school no longer operates as an island in the educational sea. Parents “helicopter” in and out of school. Local industry wants school graduates trained and ready for immediate employment. Governors want a world class education that will energize a state’s economy. Children want to learn and be happy. There are ways in which these seemingly disparate needs and wants fit together and the principal must be able to connect the dots and tie the laces.

Chief Visionary Officer. As interested as a teacher may be in the future of education, the teacher’s focus circles around lesson plans, unit designs and the next “big” test. Someone in the school must constantly steer the school toward a picture of what the future looks like. Principals must work in the today while looking well beyond tomorrow.

Chief Electrification Officer. This is not just the person responsible for turning on and off the school’s lights. The Electrification Officer pushes the “go” button for everything in the school from the annual school calendar, assignment of the faculty and staff, student schedules, clock and bell schedules, athletic and arts events, and recesses and vacations. Like an old time wagon master, the principal says “Head ‘em up and roll ‘em out” every school day.

These five descriptors are categorical. A principalship may also be painted by function and one of the most significant functions has recently jumped from the many to #1 in Wisconsin schools. The principal is responsible for assigning a numeric value that represents 50% of a teacher’s professional employment evaluation. The responsibility for a teacher evaluation is not new; it is described in the educational statutes. In the pre-Effective Educator era, a school district or school or principal formulated an idiosyncratic definition of an effective teacher. That definition usually referenced a set of teacher standards and assessed a teacher’s professional work through the lens of research or an instructional model. For a decade or more, Madeline Hunter’s Instructional Design, was the basis for examining a teacher’s instructional competence. There were other models used, but there was not a statewide, mandated template for assessing educator effectiveness.

Today a school district and its schools use a single model for evaluating a teacher’s effectiveness. And, the principal is the sole person holding up that template to see how a teacher’s instructional practices match with that model. At the end of an assessment, the principal will assign a single numeric value to represent the quality of the teacher’s educational effectiveness.

Perhaps we should add a position to the NPR list of what a chief does.

Chief Deciding Officer. This role sounds like President G. W. Bush when he proclaimed, “I’m the decider.” The principal must decide whether or not a teacher is an effective educator and assign a number to distinguish that level of effectiveness.

In his History of the World, Part 1 (1981), Mel Brooks said, “It’s good to be the king” as he reveled in his life as the one and only Louis XVI. It also is good to be the principal, the one and only chief of a school. The singularity of being the chief also carries much responsibility. Knowing that a principal today is unbelievably essential to the success of a school and the professional life its faculty, I amend the Brooks’ quote, “It is hard to be a good king (chief).”

All Star Teachers: You Know Who They Are

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Someone always stands at the pinnacle. You name the endeavor and a ranking will exist somewhere and someone is at the top of that ranking. Call it human nature to always seek out the best or at least what we think is the best. Or, call it a flaw in our character that causes us to give everything an ordinal number. But, we do it. Afterwards, if we stand back and reexamine the ranks, what is it that distinguishes the very best from the very good and these from the rest? And, as this is a blog about teaching, what is it that distinguishes the best teachers?

We gain insights about the very best from the mechanisms that are used to create rankings. Sorting through data and making a simple analysis is okay, but not very discerning. We can rank by wins and losses or successes and failure. This is easy to do when competition is involved, but more difficult to do in complex endeavors. College sports teams are ranked nationally by games won and lost in a sports season. These are simple and objective numbers. Colleges are ranked as educational institutions by measures of their academic rigor and the prestige the world conveys to their graduates. These are complex and subjective values.

Let’s consider a non-educational ranking system. US News and World Reports annually ranks almost everything of significant importance to the American consumer. Their evaluative techniques are honed over time. For instance, their evaluation of “The Best Hospitals” considers four areas of interest – structure of hospital resources, processes for delivering care, outcomes as measured by risk-adjusted mortality, and patient safety. They combine these four criteria with the professional reputation of the hospital as judged by physicians to create a national ranking.

http://www.usnews.com/pubfiles/BH_2014_Methodology_Report_Final_Jul14.pdf

Placing a value on the work of a teacher also is a complex and subjective determination. Few organizations rank teachers publicly. One of the few rankers, the University of Illinois, reduces its valuation to consumer/student ratings. The University of Illinois uses student ratings to create a “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent By Their Students” at the close of each academic term. Students rate the overall teaching effectiveness of the instructor as well as the overall quality of the course. This combination recognizes that effective teaching is pedagogical and curricular – know how to teach and know how to make what is taught important to the student.

http://cte.illinois.edu/teacheval/ices/pdf/Summer14List.pdf

US News and the University of Illinois want their consumers to use their ratings as a basis for making future decisions.

Often it is easy to perceive that someone is very good at something but not as easy to discern who is better than others, especially when being a professional in that occupation already is the result of a highly selective process. People don’t get to be professional athletes or acclaimed surgeons or nationally-known lawyers or award-winning architects by just showing up. Professionals are already exceptions to the general population. Being one of the best in their profession means that they have demonstrated that their work is superior to the usual work of others in their field.

This is an important concept – work that is superior to the usual in their field. As most things that people do can be measured, I like measurements that indicate an added value due to personal performance. I like the baseball statistic “on base percentage plus slugging percentage” or OPS+ to understand which players make the fewest outs when at bat and reach the most extra bases for each hit they make. The higher the OPS+ ranking, the greater an individual is separated from the average. I like strokes gained by putting to identify golfers who are most efficient on the green, the place where a high percentage of all strokes taken is needed to get the ball in the hole. This stat separates great professional golfers from the rank and file of the PGA. And, I like QBRAT or the quarterback rating system to understand which passers are most efficient in gaining yards and scoring points against the inevitable incompletions and interceptions. In Wisconsin, we certainly like Aaron Rogers, as his QBRAT is often the best in the NFL. These statistics provide a qualitative analysis of a professional based upon how their personal performance differentiates them from an average baseball player or PGA golfer or NFL quarterback. Using these statistics, one can differentiate the best from the rest based upon professional work.

http://www.sportingcharts.com/dictionary/nfl/quarterback-rating-qbrat.aspx

http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/strokes-gained-putting-behind-newest-pga-tour-stat

To date, education has not generated much comparative data. US News and World Reports annually publishes its “Best High Schools in the US” based upon standardized school data, often found in each state’s department of public education or on school web sites. When these reports become public, schools that are acclaimed attach the “Best” recognition to their web sites and school publications and schools that aren’t recognized proclaim that such rankings do not capture the essence of good schooling.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools

Education is, perhaps, a softer, gentler profession that does not seek ranking or want to single out the best. Perhaps it is because education is about children and we do not want to market a school using the qualities of its student learning. Perhaps it is educator’s normally humble countenance. Or, that a local school is a reflection of its community, especially the community’s socio-economic status, and this is not a basis for discerning the relative quality of a school.

More likely, ranking teachers is difficult because successful student is not as cleanly defined as a batter hitting a triple or a touchdown pass or a 27 foot putt that finds the cup. The mind of a child and the dynamics of a school classroom are two very messy places for discerning the differences in teachers.

The one exception in the desert of teacher recognitions is the national Teacher of the Year Award. Each year one teacher is named as their state’s Teacher of the Year in each state TOY is a candidate for the national Teacher of the Year.

Is it fair to say that teachers in a school that is highly ranked by US News are by their employment in that school superior teachers? Yes, once we accept two pieces of educational research. First, parenting and home conditions make a difference. Teaching in school must both take advantage of these differences and more quickly overcome the deficits of disadvantageous homes. Second, “…the research does show a strong rela-tionship between parental influences and children’s educational outcomes, from school readiness to college completion. Two compelling parental factors emerge:

1. Family structure, i.e., the number of parents living in the student’s home and their relationships to the child, and

2. Parents’ involvement in their children’s schoolwork.

Consequently, the solution to improving educa¬tional outcomes begins at home, by strengthening marriage and promoting stable family formation and parental involvement.”

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/09/academic-success-begins-at-home-how-children-can-succeed-in-school

Once we account for the child’s readiness or lack of readiness for learning given their out of school backgrounds, we can point at the relationships between good teaching and success learning. “Research consistently shows that teacher quality—whether measured by content knowledge, experience, training and credentials, or general intellectual skills—is strongly related to student achievement: Simply, skilled teachers produce better student results.”

http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Staffingstudents/Teacher-quality-and-student-achievement-At-a-glance/Teacher-quality-and-student-achievement-Research-review.html?css=print

The Center for Public Education’s listing of effective teacher qualities, however, resembles an assemblage of neutral data, like at bats, runs scored, runs-batted-in, games played, years in professional baseball that appears on the back of most professional athletes bubble gum/collector cards. These data do not reflect the essential value added information like OPS+, strokes gained, or QBRAT.

I propose that the best of the best do the following on a regular and constant basis and these seven criteria can be used to identify value added teaching. Teachers everywhere approximate these measures now and again. The best of the best do these constantly, almost intuitively and certainly with both a knowledge that good teaching is not a fluke but a sustained use of best practices.

1. Advance their own teaching skills and content mastery to the point that they are experts. By law, teachers must engage in professional development for re-licensure. Some do so because they must and others because they enjoy professional learning. The best are constantly engaged in the study of and experimentation with pedagogy that reaches the hardest to teach children and advances the learning of the most talented. They are constantly building their own academic expertise in the curriculum they teach.

2. Cause student academic growth measurements greater than 1.0 per year. Most children do not achieve a full academic year’s growth as measured on standardized tests. On the 2013 NAEP reading test, 80% of fourth graders were below grade level and 74% of 8th graders were below grade level. That does not mean all children were below grade level, some were at or above grade level. So who were the teachers of children who were at or above grade level? After we discount for the home differences of children, what did these teachers do to cause at least a 1.0 annual growth in measured growth in reading?

https://www.studentsfirst.org/pages/the-stats

3. Regularly use sustained active engagement of children in extend learning outcomes beyond the usual. “Teaching that emphasizes active engagement helps students process and retain information. It leads to self-questioning, deeper thinking, and problem solving. Engagement strategies like repetition, trial and error, and posing questions move the brain into active and constructive learning. And such activities can lead to higher student achievement.” A teacher’s extended engagement with a student is what raises the achievement of a student who has been an underachiever as well as a student who has been an outstanding achiever. Extended engagement is the “push” that makes a difference. Ironically, the presence of engagement is as readily observable as the lack of engagement and the latter is to frequently observed, especially by children.

 http://www.nea.org/tools/16708.htm

4. Constantly instill persistence and growth mind-sets in student instruction. Talent and favorable conditions are not enough. “Children must be taught to persist over time to overcome challenges and achieve big goals.” This is preparing children for success in life, not just school. Children can be taught that problems and challenges are part of a life and that they can forecast and plan how they will meet these. They can be taught a mind-set of goal setting and perseverance. Children who do so achieve higher grade points than children who do not. Persistence is not the result of the academic push that is associated with engagement. Persistence is the pull of a constant encouragement.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept13/vol71/num01/Grit-Plus-Talent-Equals-Student-Success.aspx

5. Regularly pose significant problems and help children to create unique and creative solutions. Problem solving “presupposes that students can take on some of the responsibility for their own learning and can take personal action to solve problems, resolve conflicts, discuss alternatives, and focus on thinking as a vital element of the curriculum. It provides students with opportunities to use their newly acquired knowledge in meaningful, real-life activities and assists them in working at higher levels of thinking.”

https://www.teachervision.com/problem-solving/teaching-methods/48451.html

6. Provide an accurate and provocative modeling at the right time to raise a child’s performance. This characteristic is pronounced in the teaching of art, music, dance and technical education. It also appears in the teaching of writing, math problem solving and science. Some of the greatest instructors are in the arts where, as they sit beside a student, they are able to model the fingering of a clarinet or the brush stroke on a canvas or the pace for pushing an arc weld. But, it is not just their presence or their personal skills. It is their sense of the right modeling at the right time that causes significant learning.

7. Create a permissive opportunity for creativity in which the child is her own best judge of successful learning. Creativity is a process and product that is greatly desired. In most instances is not taught, but nurtured in a setting that overtly permits creativity and covertly dissuades non-productive criticism. The best teachers know how to structure and sustain this opportunity and not let it become instructional anarchy.

These characteristics of best teaching are found in schools recognized by US News and in schools well outside of that recognition. They are characteristics that children know and love, usually after the fact. They are characteristics that parents appreciate in their children’s teachers without being able to label what exactly it is the teacher does. These are characteristics that principals and supervisors do identify and label, but seldom acclaim publicly. And, these are characteristics that teachers quietly recognize within their peers. However, recognition of the best teachers has not become professionally, economically or politically compelling. So, today we do not publicly rank teachers.

Teacher ranking is more covert. In almost every school, assertive children and parents press their counselor and principal for placement in their preferred teacher’s classes. Informal parent networks know that students taught by certain teachers score better on PSAT/NMSQT, ACT and SAT tests that students taught by other teachers. One school’s choral program is better than another and another school’s math department is the best in the county. These distinctions are not published; they are just known and in the knowing represent an informal ranking of teachers.

Someday the best teachers will be publicly recognized for the excellence of their ability to all cause children to achieve exceptional learning. Wouldn’t it be something if children posted photos of All-Star teachers next to their photos of All-Star athletes, big name rock stars, and the other adults that children admire and esteem. Until then, pay attention to the flurry of activity when children are annually assigned to teachers and when high stakes test results are published when class reunions are held. Names of the best teachers won’t be shouted but they will be spoken.

Coach Up Front Instead of Fixing Problems Afterward

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To get in front of teaching and learning problems, enroll every teacher in an instructional coaching program and attach a coach to every first-year teacher. The investment in “up front coaching” is a fraction of the cost of remediating ineffective teaching and unacceptable student learning and their associated public distress.

Public education historically stands with a mop looking at milk spilt on the floor wondering what could have been done to prevent the waste of talent, time and resources after the fact. We treat teachers and teaching the same way by always working from behind a problem. A majority of classroom teachers are competent instructors and capable of successfully meeting their student learning challenges. These teachers don’t make the mess, yet always wind up with the mop. Their colleagues who are less effective do make the mess and seldom are capable of the mopping. Looking back upon the mediocre instruction of less capable teachers and the lackluster learning demonstrated by their students, we wonder what can be done to make their instruction more effective and to raise the quality and equity of student learning. Invariably the response almost always includes initiatives with money, mandates dressed as guidelines, timelines and potential consequences for failure. And, here we go again.

This week the US Department of Education (USDE) issued new guidelines to the states for the addressing of “teaching gaps.” Teaching gaps refers to the distribution of teacher talent among school districts and schools. Recent data gathering indicates that low-income and minority children have a significantly lower access to the more effective instruction of talented teachers than do more affluent and white children. That is the mess. The mopping reads as follows – “States are not required to use any specific strategies to fix their equity gaps. They can consider things like targeted professional development, giving educators more time for collaboration, revamping teacher preparation at post-secondary institutions, and coming up with new compensation systems,”

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/11/ed_dept_states_must_address_te.html

Also this week, Harvard University announced a new fellowship program to better prepare seniors to enter the teaching profession. Teacher preparation programs are being called to participate in the mopping. “The students will take a reduced course load during that semester (second semester of their senior year) as they begin student teaching under a mentor teacher. For the following academic year, they will complete their school-based training and classes on subject-specific teaching methods. And finally, they will finish up with an additional summer of courses and mentored teaching. After they have become full-time teachers, the fellows will continue to be given feedback and coaching by Harvard faculty.”

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/11/harvard_u_initiative_will_prep.html?print=1

We know what working from behind the problem looks like. Not only isn’t it pretty, it also isn’t effective. By the time an ineffective teacher is “in the program”, her ineffective teaching practices have become ingrained in her routines. She is professionally hardened with these routines. Unlearning bad practices so that effective teaching practices can be learned is both a hard pill for her to swallow and harder for her to do. Worse, years of children in her classroom have been ineffectually taught by ineffective practices. What a mess!

Identifying teachers in a school whose daily teaching is lackluster and unacceptable is not difficult; just hard to prove. Students know. Parents know. And, fellow teachers know. Also, they know and can quickly identify teachers who are highly effective at causing all children to learn.

Sadly, the procedures for dealing with ineffective teachers outlined in most school district policy manuals is a three- to five-year process. Given the time it took to identify the teacher’s history of ineffective teaching, successful remediation stretches the professional mopping to a five to ten year stint – all the while, children are being taught by the teacher “in the program.”

So, why wait until there is milk on the floor to determine who the spiller is and how much damage the spill will cost to clean up?

Instead, create a new professional practice today. In most school districts, this only requires action by a resolute school board. Insert the following in your Employee Handbook:

• This school district is committed to providing a high level of quality instruction for every student. Pursuant to this commitment, the School Board employs instructional coaches to assist every teacher in exercising everyday effective teaching practices associated with higher levels of student learning.

• At the time of hire, each new teacher to the district will be assigned to work with an instructional coach for the purpose of assuring that the probationary teacher is informed about and trained in the use of effective teaching practices.

• Beginning with the ____ school year, every teacher in the district will be assigned to an instructional coaching program for the purpose of assuring that veteran teachers are informed about and trained in the use of effective teaching practices.

• Beginning with the ____ school year, the Teacher Evaluation Procedures will include 1) observations by the school principal to validate the teacher’s use of effective teacher practices on a continuing basis, and 2) analysis of the teacher’s student learning outcomes to validate that the teacher is causing all children to achieve significant learning.

There are no guarantees that every child will earn academic honor status every year. Very complex variables are at play. However, the variables associated with effective teaching and student learning can be significantly narrowed when schools get in front of problems rather than dealing with them afterwards. A proactive teacher coaching program is a very good way for a school district to address the variables within its control. Schools always will be engaged in some mopping up, but student learning need not be the major mopping problem it is today.

Public Ed Is Focused on the Wrong End Game

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Public education is focused on the wrong end game. For too long the leaders responsible for public education have focused on the graduated student in an adult-world context. For the purpose of daily and school-year instruction this traditional end game is too abstract and too distant to meaningfully connect with everyday teaching and learning. The end game should be to cause every child to successfully learn their annual curricula on a weekly or monthly basis regardless of their learning conditions. This new end game is meaningful, measureable, and accountable and directly connects teaching and learning in ways that schools, teachers and students, and communities can see and understand. Change the end game focus to change the end game outcomes.

There is nothing wrong with a big picture end game when you are willing to wait until the “end” to understand your success. It is like leading a life for the purpose of going to heaven when you die. Such a purpose provides excellent tenets for living, but you won’t know the success of your life’s mission until you die.

Or, hearing a pre-school child say “I will be a fireman when I grow up” and having the local fire commander write in the station log “In fifteen years, following high school graduation and technical school training Tommy will be sufficiently educated to enter our probationary program.” Maybe and maybe not.

A long distance end game is not a good strategy for ensuring a high quality education for every child every day of every school year. The end game must be shorter-termed with clearly stated end-of-instruction learning outcomes. And, the end game plan must drive instruction so that every child successfully learns their curricula.

Imagine how this works. The school mission reads:

This year your child will successfully learn her (grade or subject) curricula. To accomplish this, her teachers will use best instructional practices including frequent assessments and reports of learning accomplishments.

Another way to understand the end game problem is to ask “And, whose success is the measure of interest?” When the district’s end game focus is to prepare graduates for life after school, it is the district’s rate and degree of graduation preparation that is of interest. When the end game is each child’s successful learning of an annual curricula, it is child learning that is of interest. Child learning is an appropriate and better end game.

Once again, change the end game focus to change the end game outcomes. The management piece for this new end game includes:

  • analyzing and dissecting the curricula into instructional segments,
  • pre- and post-assessments of each segment,
  • necessary pre-teaching and re-teaching to assure every child’s success with each segment,
  • a combination of personalized and grouped direct and indirect instructional sessions within each segment, and
  • advancement to the next segment only when learning indicates readiness for that segment.
  • Learning accomplishments will be recorded and reported to parents at the end of each segment.

The upside to this new end game is that instruction is directly connected to the immediate and annual learning outcomes. The connection is clear, measureable and accountable. It is not like the goal in a traditional outcome in which children are taught a curricula of Civics in 8th or 9th grade for the purpose of making them better informed citizens as adults. Admirable goal, but its outcome is disconnected from its instruction.

An upside to this end game is that each child is a successful learner regardless of their learning conditions. Exceptions are not made. Children who are not English-speakers are taught the vocabulary and concepts of their curricula before and as they are taught the curricula. Children who need special education assistance receive it in conjunction with their curricular instruction not in lieu of or in addition to. Children who need more time for their initial learning get more time for their initial learning; it is more effective and efficient to assure successful initial learning than it is to remediate learning later.

An upside to this end game is that as every child successfully learns their annual curricula they also are progressing toward the district’s graduation goals of college or career readiness, responsible citizenship, economic productivity, and community contribution. The district’s success in causing these summative goals is ensured by every child’s success with their annual curricular goals.

A downside to this end game lies in its incumbent accountability. When the school says that “every child will successfully learn their annual curricula regardless of learning conditions” this becomes the school’s and the teachers’ annual commitment. Sadly, very few if any schools have ever fulfilled a commitment to assure the learning success of every child.

This raises a really large question of “Why not?” The answer is that the traditional end game focuses upon distant learning outcomes disconnected from annual teaching and learning and that obscures the reality that many children do not successfully learn their annual curricula. Most learn just enough to “pass.” Schools and teachers were and are seldom held accountable for student success on clearer and shorter-term learning outcomes. Our obsession with student and school outcomes on statewide and international academic assessments is indicative of the current focus on the big picture end game and not timely and locally-measured student learning

A downside to this end game is that educational leaders need to be so connected to the instruction of every teacher and the learning of every child in their school that these leaders can assist teachers to make necessary adjustments to instruction when children are not successfully learning. This requires a significant change in leadership and the skill sets of instructional supervision. But, this also is the most significant upside to the new end game. School leaders and teachers will be immediately connected to their teaching and child learning in their school. This is an upside that can and must be achieved.

It may be impossible for public education to implement all of the mandates for educational reform that are currently being demanded if its leaders continue to use the traditional end game focus. If we can change the end game, we can improve the learning outcomes for every child. The improved outcomes of the new end game will change the way in which everyone, include educational reformers, looks at public education. Change the focus now!