It is difficult to read educational literature nowadays without confronting an article regarding how to improve teaching. In fact, just Google “How to improve teaching” and you will receive 124,000 results. Add another word, like “instruction”, “quality”, “skills”, “practice”, “strategies”, and “performance” and you can sort through more than 200,000 results. Who isn’t writing about teaching? If the quantity of responses is astounding, so is the variance in quality and relevance of the writing. Many are blogs by classroom teachers. These are balanced by the blogs of “professional commenters”. If a result is not authored by a practicing teacher or professional commenter, it is a commercial for a workshop, conference, institute or online course designed to improve one or more aspects of teaching. Everyone wants to improve teaching, yet few write about improving the structural profession of teaching as a prerequisite for improving the professional work of teachers.

I propose that, if our communities, states and nation are serious about improving the quality of student achievement, and, if these entities truly believe that improving the quality of instruction is the pathway to improved student achievement, then it is time to employ teachers for a full calendar year instead of a nine month school year. Further, it is time to adjust a teacher’s salary from an annual salary based upon nine months work to a professional salary based upon twelve months work. And, it is time to demand professional performance for such a professional employment. These three structural changes to the profession of teaching set a proper stage for the improvements mandated by government, called for by commenters and wished for by practicing teachers.

Taken separately, the current ramp up of improvements in teaching and student achievement is designed within a traditional nine-month school year calendar. The expectation that such lofty improvements will be made inside the same nine month calendar that is the very calendar producing all of the alleged educational failures is a clear demonstration of Einstein’s definition of insanity: “To do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.” In this case, the repetition of sameness is expecting that teachers can simultaneously teach, evaluate ongoing student learning, and design new instructional strategies and, at the end of the academic year, have advanced overall student achievement and closed the achievement gaps of underachievers. Insanity indeed.

This is the equation that needs to be changed.

For 180 days teach more rigorous standards that will be assessed with more complex tests

+ continuously and SIMULTANEOUSLY evaluate learning in multiple subjects

+ continuously and SIMULTANEOUSLY design re-teaching strategies for children unsuccessful with initial instruction

+ continuously and SIMULTANEOUSLY design extended learning strategies for children successful with initial instruction

= closed achievement gaps between disaggregated child populations and internationally competitive academic achievement by all children.

Interestingly, it is not the discrete tasks that are daunting. Teachers can cause children to learn more rigorous standards. Teachers can cause children to succeed on more complex educational tests of academic achievement. Teachers can design re-teaching and extended learning strategies to assure learning by all children and more learning by learning-efficient children. Teachers can close achievement gaps. Finally, teachers can cause the academic achievement of children in the United States to be internationally competitive. These discrete tasks are not the problem. The problem is SIMULTANEOUSLY in a traditional school year that used to be 180 days and now is shrinking to between 160 and 170 days for academic instruction.

Efforts to extend the school year for children have not fared well. There are break out school districts that have organized extended year instruction and year-round instruction. However, there are very few of these examples. And, those that have done so still face the same dilemma. How can teachers teach, evaluate and design in the same moment, and in the case of extended year districts, do so over even greater time?

It is much more feasible to maintain a nine-month school year for children and create a twelve-month professional employment year for teachers. Acknowledging the need for teacher vacation time, a year-round employment with a four week vacation, that should be inclusive of all school vacation time such as Christmas and spring breaks, will result in eleven months of professional work. This professional calendar will provide dedicated time for teaching (nine months or thirty-six weeks), time for a continuous, careful and collaborative evaluation of student learning, and time for the design of instruction that can advance the learning of children who were immediately successful and complete the learning of children who were less than initially successful. Time for the last two tasks, analysis of student learning and design of “next” instruction is sorely absent in today’s school year calendar for teacher work and is further abused by mandated reforms to be accomplished within the insanity of a school calendar.

To be successful with the reform mandates, teachers need time to do professional work. That time includes evaluating learning and planning next instruction to assure that all children learn. A professional year rather than a school year is a sane solution to the problem of time.

The second aspect of a new professional employment is annual salary. Money is the elephant in the dilemma of improving the profession of teaching. Local property taxes carry the “elephant’s weight” relative to teacher compensation. The debate over teachers’ salary and benefit packages and the local school’s millage in the local property tax bill has been ongoing for decades. This is why I point to the commitment of the nation and states, as well as local communities, for the improvement of educational achievement. Because the nation and each of the states have a stake in educational improvement, they also must share in the cost of the improvement. If the nation and state do not share in the cost, they should diminish their educational mandates. It is the age old commandment to “put up or shut up.” Demanding something for nothing and pointing to the lack of quality instruction is fully disingenuous when these governmental leaders know the insanity of expecting significantly different results from the age-old teaching/evaluation/instructional design dilemma.

The current federal ante of money is heavily weighted toward entitlements and incentives. Although many of the historic titles have been abandoned, there still is considerable money in the annual ESEA awards to states and through states to school districts. Earlier in Obama administration, federal economic recovery money was funneled through the states to thwart the drastic lay-off of teachers that would have occurred during the dire recession. Also, the Race To The Top funds have provided incentive grants to spotlight districts’ work on federally-inspired projects. Federal money, though important for a district’s compliance efforts, is not significant in everyday teacher compensation.

The relationship of state money to teacher compensation varies with the economic status of a local school district. In Wisconsin, state funding under the “two-thirds” funding formulas of the last century committed the state money to paying up to two-thirds of a local school district budget. The “two-thirds” promise was more political than economic as there were many school districts that received “special adjustment aid” only, often less than $10,000 on a $10,000,000 district budget.

There has not been a state commitment to establishing and maintaining a professional teacher’s salary in Wisconsin. To the contrary, teacher compensation is a political football kicked heavily when there is a state budgetary deficit and state expenditures exceed revenues.

A professional compensation should accomplish three goals. First, young professional teachers should no longer need to be engaged in non-educational summer employment in order to pay their bills. In too many communities, a beginning teacher with a family qualifies for food stamps and must hold a non-educational summer job in order to support a family. A nine-month teaching contract is a part-time contract that pays part-time wages on an annual basis. This is not professional.

Second, a professional salary should be large enough to retain the very best teachers in the profession. Too many quality instructors leave education because their salary is not competitive with the salary they can demand in another profession. Too many quality instructors leave education due to the knowledge that their salary “tops out” well below the salary of other comparable professionals. There is a belief that teachers accept a relatively lower annual salary because they are in a “helping” profession and the real rewards that satisfy a teacher are “of the heart” and not “of the wallet.” This is not true and it is not professional.

And, third, a professional compensation should pay teachers for the addition of approximately seventy working days to their professional work year. When a professional teaching calendar that approximates 255 working days is adopted it is rational to assume that additional time creates additional costs. However, there also is need for a rational discussion of instructional time with children and instructional evaluation and planning time without children and a differentiated cost of each kind of time. Professional salaries for a professional work calendar need to be competitive with comparable professions and a target annual salary should be in the neighborhood of $100,000.

How to raise the revenue for increasing professional salaries is the perplexing problem. Because the number of teachers in a state is a very large number and the number of teachers in a school district still is a proportionately large number, it may be reasonable to incrementally add employment weeks and employment salary to the profession over a schedule of time. The important accomplishment is the realization of national, state and local leaders that if they demand improvements in educational outcomes and accountability, they must supply a reasonable professional work year and a reasonable professional salary to accomplish their demands.

And, lastly, it is time for professional educators to cause professional educational results. It is time for every child to accomplish their annual curricular goals, regardless of any impediments they may face. It is time for every child to advance a grade level and be promoted with commensurate grade level knowledge, skills and working processes every school year. And, professional accountability, that supports a sustained professional employment, should be contingent upon a teacher causing all children in the teacher’s assignment to accomplish their annual curriculum.

Are these three recommendations valid? “Backward design” has been a concept in educational planning for several decades. Backward design applied to the improvement of educational outcomes starts with a consensus understanding of those outcomes. The backward design then creates valid and reliable processes that when executed faithfully and annually will cause those outcomes to be realized. So lets’ state the proposition in terms of backward design.

We want to improve the educational outcomes of all children. Or, in mandate language, all high school graduates must be college or career ready, and all children must be academically competitive with their international peers. The causal factor in this mandate is the improvement of instruction of all children. The focus in the improvement of instruction is the improvement of teaching. And, necessary to the improvement of teaching is the institution of a professional teaching work year and a professional teaching salary.

Finally, I return to Albert Einstein. “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used to create them.” Our old thinking about the profession of teaching leads us to expecting improved educational results based upon greater demands placed upon teachers working in the same work environment that produced unsatisfactory results. If educational achievement is a problem, we need to apply new thinking to its solution. It is the sane thing to do.

A school is a very complicated organization. Public schools, especially, are becoming ever more complicated with federal and state mandates trying to cooperate or maybe compete with local control. There are many interests each trying to influence the nature, purpose and outcomes of public schools. That being said, it is critically important for school leaders to know when to listen and take heed of the constant banter and when to listen but not take heed.

Why is this important? Educators often use metaphors to illustrate their lessons, so here’s another. A school is a very large ocean-going vessel. More to the point, a school is a training ship. Think of the USCG Eagle, the Coast Guard Academy’s training ship. Can you envision this tall-masted sailing ship with its many sails? School is not a cruise ship for entertainment and it is not a freighter hauling goods to distant ports. It is not an excursion boat out for a lark and it is not a submarine meant to sail unseen. A school is a working vessel that sets sail for the purpose of educating its children, just as the Eagle embarks trainees and disembarks Coast Guardsmen. School Boards and school leaders give great attention to the planning and preparation of a school’s annual voyage of education. Planning is done with the purpose and means for giving every child aboard a complete year’s learning of their grade level curriculum. Once at sea, a school is in constant motion until it reaches its destination in June.

The helm of the ship keeps the ship on its course. There is little worse than a ship with a helmsman who is beleaguered with constant course changes. “Go this way! Go that! Make these changes! Make those!” Such a ship is as good as dead in the water. And, that sadly is the state of too many school leaders, adrift at sea due to the constant course change demands of reformers, politicians, and special interest groups who envision education as a means to their disparate ends.

For this reason, I advise school leaders to follow the organizational, curricular, and instructional design charts they made for their academic year. Do not attempt great sea changes while in motion. Do not attempt structural reforms in school organization or in curriculum or in instructional design while teachers are engaged in the daily teaching of children. School leaders, like the captains they are, will, of necessity, make minor adjustments en route. No ship sails in a perfectly straight line and no school year advances without adjustments in the margins of its plan. But to make major changes while in motion is an injustice to the education of children.

It also is an injustice to teachers. Teaching begins with a linear design from one end of the academic year to the other. Along the way, it becomes impossible to find any straight lines as the learning needs of individual children at any point along the voyage require a teacher to make many mid-course adjustments. To institute major curricular or instructional delivery changes once the school year is launched is tantamount to floundering the on-going instruction of children.

It is best practice to have filed your course of study, as a ship files its sailing plans, well before your launch date. Once filed, keep the helm on the planned course. Reformers had their chance to influence the course of the school year before it was launched. Keel haul anyone who demands major mid-year changes!

It’s a new school year!!! How many times will the word “new” appear in any conversation or school publication prior to the first day of school? Welcome to new teachers and new students. Unwrapping new books and materials. Sitting at new desks. Riding in new buses. Playing on a new playground or in a new gym. Booting new laptops and tablets. New curricular goals and new assessments. New! New! And, new!

The declaration of newness is a cultural thing. New and a consumer-based economy go hand in hand. Every local store and online merchant finds its connection to “getting ready for school” shopping. Clothes. Shoes. Backpacks. Applications for smartphones and tablets. New is better and better is what children need to get ready for school and for school success. Interestingly, there often is a sale price associated with getting ready for school.

After all is said however, “new” does have a good ring to it because it connotes a clean and fresh beginning of the school year for everybody. No matter the child’s age or educational status, September is a new beginning point. There are no marks or grades or outstanding assignments that carry over from the prior year. Many teachers believe that the “fresh start” concept is essential for children, especially those who faced challenges and setbacks the prior school year. The fresh start also embraced extracurricular activities. Almost all athletic coaches build up their player’s expectations of the “new” season and the anticipation of more wins this year than the team experienced last season. And, children of all ages, whether they admit it or not, look forward to their new grade level, new courses with new-to-them teachers, and what is new with old friends and classmates.

The message is that a new school year is related to new school success. Actually, the excitement of something new and novel often causes a bump up in performance. There is an adrenalin rush that comes with any Christmas morning-type of event that gives all of us an immediate flurry of energy and task focus. The Hawthorn Effect tells us that the intensified attention associated with “new” has short-term, “rah, rah” value for classroom energy, but the Effect is not related to significant learning achievement. And, that is what everything new at school should be about – how will what is new cause all children to achieve a quality learning.

http://psychology.about.com/od/hindex/g/def_hawthorn.htI

I offer educators a different strategy for getting ready for a new school year. Show the community what is new and exciting, but show children real images of their immediate and future school successes.

Showcase what is new in the school to those who were responsible for procuring or creating all that is new. Especially, assure that local taxpayers have a clear understanding of what their funding has caused. Publicly recognize school patrons who led community initiatives that resulted in bringing “new” to the school. Take the time to recognize the faculty who worked on school projects over the summer. Be thankful and gracious for all that has been done to improve the school. There is a real boost to the energy of the school community that derives from their engagement in improving their local school. Everyone loves the smell of a new car!

New for children should be a focus on the “new” learning they will achieve during the new school year. Show children and teachers examples of last year’s success. Show them the exemplars that clearly portray what children at their grade level and entering their courses will be able to know, do and process at the end of the new school year. Let first graders hear and see what second grade readers sound like. Let them hear the fluency that they will achieve by the end of first grade. Show them the vocabulary successful first graders master. Display successful arithmetic work that lets a first grader see how their understanding of numeracy, shapes, size and scale, and their skills with addition, subtraction and problem solving will grow as a result of their new school year. Show high school children starting an AP History class exemplars from the past year’s AP History Test and let them see the level of thinking and writing that they also will be able to perform on their AP tests.

Do this for all children at every grade and every course. It doesn’t take a great deal of time or effort, but the clarity of purpose that it creates is monumentally beneficial. First, a display of exemplars makes school real. Summer is over and the work of school has begun. Children can physically see and hear what children only a year older than they have achieved. Second, children naturally make comparisons between what they believe is their current status and the exemplars. It is okay for children to see the disparity when it is coupled with their teachers’ assurance that “You can do it. I will help you.” We are used to seeing pictures of “before” and “after” and these images can be very inspiring. Third, they hear their new teacher explain that her job is to see that all children achieve these exemplars and “We are going to start on this adventure today.”

I always will remember Jor-El telling his son, Superman-to-be, “In this year we will study …” while Kal-El sped through space and time from the destroyed Krypton to Earth. Maybe it was Marlon Brando’s voice that made these words special. No, it was the promise of learning that clicks with me. These are the words that should replace “new” in every late August and early- September school conversation. Then when the new school year begins, the seven year-old girl would tell you “We are going to learn about …. in second grade this year.”

On the fourth Monday of a new school year ask any child older than six to retell you about all of the new people and stuff at her school and she will look at you with mild bewilderment. “This is school,” she will tell you, “and we are doing the same kinds of things this year that we did last year. We changed grades and got different teachers. But, it still is reading and writing and listening and doing what kids always do in school. Only it is harder this year. And, oh ya, there are two new kids in my class. Their names are …” You can bet on this response.

The “new” of a school year is wonderful thing. However, it is the “new and can do” of learning that is the most significant of the wonderful things that begin in September.  To begin a child’s school year well first show the child what she will have learned by the end of the school year.

“Fortune favors the prepared mind.” — Louis Pasteur

In less than a month millions of children will begin the 2014-15 school year. They start a new academic year in which every child will be instructed and assessed and expected to demonstrate the approximation of a year’s growth in learning. The quality of their learning is of an exceptionally high importance to these children, to their parents, and to the communities and states that authorize and fund their education. Never before will the data portraying the degree and extent of learning and the equitable acquisition of learning be as monitored and evaluated and politically publicized as it will be in June 2015.

In the week before children arrive, teachers are returning to their employment for their before-school-starts professional development day or days. For many teachers these in-service days are jam packed with district, school and grade level or subject level meetings. Administrators have laid claim to at least half of the diminutive in-service time. They need to assure that all employees receive mandated information relative to educator effectiveness and this year’s performance targets. The remainder of contracted in-service time will be dedicated to each teachers’ classroom and teaching assignment preparation.

This is where I pause. School teachers will have two or three days of in-service time to prepare for a school year. If Pasteur was correct, we are not looking at “fortune” but at misfortune. We are assuring the replication of the past. “Déjà vu all over again,” Yogi called it. An in-service of sitting and listening and arranging the stuff of classrooms is not a preparation for effective instruction and quality learning.

Why is this? We all tend to repeat our pasts. It not only may be human nature, but it certainly is the nature of institutions. In Wisconsin, the number of and distribution of in-service days was historically bargained in most school districts. By tradition, two or three days of in-service before the first day of school, a day or two later in the year for clerical needs, and a day to attend the annual WEA convention were bargained into the contract. If teachers or Board members wanted additional days for teachers’ professional development, they had to bargain it into the contract. Sadly, adding time for teacher training was painful and costly and, if bargained in during “good times,” it was quickly bargained out during “bad times.” Both sides of the bargaining table were to blame for this.

Now that ACT 10 has removed in-service time from the scope of bargaining, it is indeed strange that most school district Working Agreements have retained the old lack of commitment to in-service and professional development time. Districts are required to have plans for the professional development of each employee, but the commitment of district time and resources remains mighty thin.

Is this historical and antiquated in-service planning really the best application of the truth that fortune really does favor the prepared mind? Why do we continue to do what we know is not in our best interest? Good questions, eh!

Adults who play the children’s games provide us with a valid counterpoint to what schools do relative to preparation. Practice and rehearsal for a professional level performance is essential. The Green Bay Packers would no sooner think of playing their first regular season game after two days of practice than they would consider selling Lambeau Field. Would the Milwaukee Brewers forego spring training? Professional sports knows the importance of professional preparation. If these organizations committed to playing children’s games for our entertainment spend so much time and effort in preparing their players for a successful season, why shouldn’t schools spend a commensurate level of time and effort in preparing their teachers for a successful season? The successful education of a generation of children should be as important as an MLB or NFL championship.

A quality pre-season for an academic year begins with an intensive study of the past year’s results. It takes time and study to identify and understand the relationship of end-of-year results with instructional practices. A second phase of pre-season should address the correction of instructional inefficiency and strengthening of good teaching strategies. The third phase should focus on the learning needs of children assigned to each teacher and the creation of a game plan for matching best instruction to each child’s needs. When parsed out over the weeks of summer, a school’s pre-season is the commitment to episodes of professional work preparing for the best of professional classroom performances during the next school year. A month of time is needed, if not more.

Instead, a school’s pre-season remains lip service to preparation at best and most teachers spend days if not weeks of instructional time gearing up for their seasonal work. How sad.

“Do you want to know why you lost today?” Sam Mussabini asked of Harold Abrahams regarding Abrahams’ loss in the 100 meter dash. “You’re over striding. Now these coins represent the steps in your sprint.” Mussabini pushed the coins together. “Can you find me another two coins, Mr. Abrahams? Remember, over striding. Death for the sprinter. Knocks you back.” Mussabini slapped Abrahams across the cheek. “Like that!” He slapped him again. “And that!” Harold Abrahams diligently worked on shortening his stride and improving his sprint technique and he won 100 meter dash in the 1924 Olympics. More importantly, Sam Mussabini demonstrated the power of coaching for improving personal performance. Mussabini broke the barrier for professional coaching in an era when everyone was expected to perform using only their own God-given talents. Being coached breached the dignity of the sportsman. Thus it was portrayed in the movie “Chariots of Fire” (1981).

Coaching for improved performance today is accepted practice. The 2014 roster for the Green Bay Packers lists 20 assistant coaches each assigned to a specific skill set for professional football players. Watch the pre-game warmups at any major league baseball game and you will see a dozen coaches and assistant coaches around the batting cages, in the bullpen and along the infield and outfield critiquing and coaching professional baseball players. Look around the practice tees and greens of any PGA event and you will see Butch Harmon, Hank Haney, Sean Foley and Dave Pelz and a score of other golf coaches constantly watching and critiquing the swing techniques of the world’s best golfers. Watch center court at Wimbledon and you will see championship tennis players looking into the stands for smiles or frowns from their personal coaches. Why are these professional coaches present today? Because even the best want to be better – again, even the best want to be better. If they don’t stay sharp or get sharper, they will lose. Professional coaching is all about improving professional performance.

It is time for educators to embrace professional coaching. The name of the game in education is causing learning. Learning is a measured effect of instruction. Children start at point A on a learning continuum with a planned expectation to reach point B and beyond using strategized curricula and pedagogies. New state statutes and mandates demand improved student achievement. Layered in these statutes and mandates are requirements for improving teacher effectiveness, typically measured by student academic achievement gains and a demonstration of “best” teaching practices. Professional teachers are in the perfect environment for professional coaching.

In times gone by, topics were covered, books were read, and subjects were studied. Children attended classes and teachers taught. At the end of the term, grades and credits were assigned and learners went on to whatever came next. Today, coverage, reading for reading’s sake and studying are minor strategies to a more significant end game. Learning now is a measured product and the metrics for evaluating student learning gains create the box score of interest. A school may only be as good in the educational world as its annual student achievement data.

The era of measured learning is doubly important because of politicized school choice options. All parents can read the box scores of their various local public, private and charter school options and enroll their children in the school that demonstrates the best learning gains. Education is a consumer-based industry with money and jobs dictated by school choice options. The advantage gained by open enrollment to a high achieving school or teacher is now a greater factor in student enrollment than neighborhood school affiliation.

Given this new reality, every professional teacher, like every performance-based professional, should have access to professional coaching. This is a “duh!” statement. This also is a survival necessity. The dilemma that teachers face is that they, like athletes in the era of Harold Abrahams, shun professional coaching as the arrival of an anti-Christ. Professional coaching of teachers; how dreadful! The black box, closed door classroom world of teachers decried the intrusion of critical coaching as anathema to the purity of their work and the sanctity of place where they do their work. Those days, however, are as antiquated as the horse and buggy. Interestingly, most students and many young teachers today don’t know what a horse and buggy reference means.

Here are five truths regarding professional coaching that must be embraced in order for professional teachers to survive in a consumer-based educational world.

• Teaching for learning is an art and a science that can be critiqued and coached for improved effect.

For too long a time teachers have believed that teaching is an art and only the teacher-artist can understand and interpret her own work. Or, that if teaching is a science, it is an inexact science that defies critical evaluation. I have known too many of these teacher-artists and thankfully they have proved to be a dying but not completely extinct species.

Teaching practices have been studied and associated with student learning for decades. Best teaching practices are those that reliably and consistently cause positive student gains in demonstrated learning. There are no teaching practices that guarantee positive learning for every child in every circumstance every day. Wonderfully, there are a wide variety of best practices that consistently correlate with positive learning gains with certain student groups and characteristics. When taken in the aggregate of practices, a teacher who is expert in using this variety of best practices creates the best record of causing positive learning gains for all children regardless of their characteristics. Although the use of the terms “science-based” teaching practices have become over used and abused politically, there are best practices that any and every teacher can be coached to learn and coached to perform with positive effect.

• Teaching is a public enterprise and no longer the sole purview of a teacher in a teacher’s classroom.

Open records and public data bases changed the classroom from the closed and private domain of the classroom teacher and her students and their parents into a public showroom. School report card data can be drilled down to the classroom level and associated with specific teachers. This data describes and analyzes the student learning of one teacher’s student group as compared and contrasted with the student groups of other teachers in the same school and in all other schools. We have reached a time when student data defines the effectiveness of a teacher’s teaching and that data is available for the world to see. It is unlikely that this reality will be reversed; it is more likely that it will be more critically and broadly utilized.

The elementary and junior high teachers who taught me in the 1950s must be rolling over in their graves with the worry that the statistical evidence of their teaching may become public record. It is not that they were ineffective teachers, but that their work would be so brazenly held up for public scrutiny. Public scrutiny! Get over it! Almost everything at school is public data today.

• Criticism for coaching purposes is not personal. Get over the defensiveness.

School is highly affective and no one wants to hurt another’s feelings. Children are schooled in being sensitive to other children. Teachers are just adult children in this case. No teacher wants to hurt another teacher’s feelings or will tolerate being offended by a peer. Sadly, this hypersensitivity has created an aversion to professional criticism.

Even in department and staff meetings designed for and supportive of professional growth, a teacher is hesitant if not loath to be critical of a peer. The concepts of critical and criticism have forever connoted negativity. “I liked the way you spoke to the children in the beginning of the lesson” or “The children seemed to appreciate the way you helped them when they had difficulty dividing fractions today” are typical of the nature of non-specific, fluffy commentary from one teacher observer to another. “I won’t hurt your feelings and you won’t hurt mine.”

Criticism is the language and highway of professional improvement. Being critical is not being mean-spirited; it is using a critical and clinical eye to discern teaching that causes students to learn from that which does not. Teachers need to be told which of their teaching practices are effective and why and which of their teaching practices are not effective and why. Whenever possible, observational data or student performance data correlated with the specific practice needs to be shared and used as a driver for understanding how a better or alternative practice may have caused a better result.

On the softer side of professional criticism may be lesson studies. These are non-supervisory observations based upon understandings of best practice and learning effects and shared by peers related to their observations of each other. The goal of lesson study is to strengthen the capacity of a particular lesson to cause student learning and of variety of lessons to cause all children regardless of their characteristics to achieve proficiency of a common educational objective or standard.

On the more aggressive side of criticism may be a professional coach sitting with a teacher or group of teachers to critique a teacher’s instructional effectiveness. This session will be more clinical and use more exacting language to assess the cause-effect relationship between teacher and student.

Regardless of the softness or aggressiveness of the coaching, the purpose is to cause the teacher to be a more effective teacher in causing all children to learn. Just as the purpose of Butch Harmon’s coaching is not to abuse Phil Mickelson but to cause Mickelson to make better shots in order to lower his golf score.

• Professional coaching supports not threatens employment.

For too long a time teachers have associated the need for professional coaching with “professional remediation.” Teachers were placed on professional remediation plans when their supervisors claimed that their work was unacceptable and improvement was necessary to prevent demotion, loss of compensation or termination. A teacher who needed coaching was one step from being fired.

Not true today. Every teacher and principal, superintendent and district instructional support person should receive professional coaching as the district’s standard operating procedure for assisting each employee to be sharp and become sharper in causing student learning. The lack of professional coaching in a district may reflect an inadequate understanding of professional development.

• The leadership responsibilities of superintendents and principals are supervisory and supporting of professional improvement. Their specific skills sets may not include the breadth and depth of pedagogy required for professional coaching.

There was a time when building principals were expected to be the school’s instructional expert and singularly responsible for assuring the instructional effectiveness of the faculty. Many principals relished and flourished in that expectation and role while even more principals floundered. Today the principal remains the instructional leader of the school but not alone as a professional coach. The mandates for principal effectiveness have exploded as broadly as the mandates for teacher effectiveness and the realities of time and task make it impossible for a principal to be school’s sole instructional coach.

It is usual for a principal in a supervisory role to be trained in the clinical evaluation of a teacher parallel to the training of a professional coach but not to share the larger and more detailed body of work required of coaching. It is usual for a supervisor to share critical observations of a teacher’s work with a coach for the purposes of specifying required improvement but unusual for a coach to share critical observations of a teacher’s work with a supervisor for the purposes of employment validation.

School districts everywhere are exploring the use professional coaches. They understand the relationship between teacher instructional effectiveness, student learning achievement and public opinion of their school district and individual schools. Coaches for teachers will soon be as common as coaches for sports and I hope that soon comes quickly for the good of public education.