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.

The new professional teacher is not the teacher of your youth or your mother’s or grandmother’s. The words “new” and “professional” are used with a reason; the teacher of tomorrow will be a new breed.

I lay back on an examination table in a neurologist’s office recently. As any good health consumer, I studied the man’s professional data to learn where he was trained, where he practiced, and read reviews by his patients. I asked my GP if he would have this neurologist run nerve studies on him; he said he would. He checked out as a competent professional neurologist, so I lay on his table. As he ran small jolts of electricity down various nerves from my neck and shoulder to my fingertips and right hand, he began a small conversation.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“Retired school superintendent,” I said.

“I tried teaching when I was just out of college,” he said. “I don’t know why anyone would choose to be a teacher. It’s impossible work.”

“I’m glad you left the classroom,” I said. “Only those who can teach should be teachers.” He looked at me thinking I was kidding. I was not.

He proceeded to tell me about all the things he did not like about being a teacher and closed with “I tell lots of people I know who are thinking about being a teacher how terrible the work is and how little they will be paid. The best thing is summers off. I tell all of them – don’t be a teacher.” Thankfully, he was just finishing the nerve study and shifted into giving me a summary of his findings.

He was proof of the adage I have reversed from its usual wording. “Those who can teach should teach. Those who can’t should do anything else.” Happily for me, I have an entirely different perception, understanding, and vision for the teaching profession.

The new professional teacher will be more like this neurologist than he will like. This future teacher will be highly trained with a baccalaureate and many semesters of seminars, courses, and workshops, if not advanced degrees. Like an MD, the teacher will be able to display numerous certificates of academic and advanced pedagogical accomplishments on her classroom wall as a result of many years of continuing education. My neurologist and the future teacher each will be engaged in a decade of study and early work before they truly earn the acclamation of professional.

Yesterday’s teacher may say, “Just like me” when considering this schedule of post-baccalaureate study, but not really. Yesterday’s teacher most often took post graduate credits in order to renew a teaching license. Many took any credit, usually a course that was close to home and fit neatly into the family’s vacation plans. Too many took credits that were not related to their teaching assignment, because license renewal was only loosely connected to advanced training. I do recognize that many of yesterday’s teachers, less than 30% earned a Master’s Degree along their path toward license renewal and salary advancement. Almost all stopped their serious professional study at that point and enrolled only for renewal credits during the second half of their career. Not really like what the future teacher will need to do.

Tomorrow’s teacher will be a professionally trained educational specialist. The nature of specialty may be as an early or primary education teacher of reading, language and mathematics. Or, as an upper elementary teacher of extended reading skills, composition, and pre-advanced math. Or, as a secondary teacher of college and career readiness using reading and data analysis, technical composition, and collaborative skills. Or the teacher may be an expert instructor of music or Spanish or computer science. There are many flavors of specialty needed to teach tomorrow’s children. She will complete “clinical courses” and performance-based workshops directly prescribed to strengthen and extend specific teaching skills required by her teaching assignment. She will dive deeply into the science of teaching for advanced learning. She will have a professional resume just like the neurologist and any parent or community member or school administrator will be able to ascertain both the details of her training and annual reports of the quality of her teaching.

Tomorrow’s teacher will not work a nine-month or school-year contract like teachers today. Classroom teaching of children will only be part of her contract. Her calendar-year contract will include ample time for daily instructional planning and reflection regarding instructional effectiveness. She will have time dedicated for working with individual children who need more time and differentiated instruction in order to successfully learn their annual curriculum. She will have time for test preparation, test correction, and conferencing with children regarding their test performance. She will engage with her peers in lesson studies that will sharpen their collective teaching skills inside those lessons. And, she will have time and opportunity to engage with mentors and professional evaluators so that she can improve her professional work over the duration of her career.

Concomitant with her calendar-year contract, she will be paid a salary appropriate for a contemporary professional. Most career teachers will earn $100,000 per year or more. In contrast with today’s teachers, they will not be paid more based upon the completion of additional credits or degrees. Nor will their employer reimburse them for the cost of credit completion. These will be the expected obligations of a professional who is paid a professional annual salary as compensation for the quality of her contracted professional work. That is the most significant change in a future employment: pay quality teaching that causes quality learning not pay for calendared work.

In the years to come, there will be a change in the public perception of teachers. Today, too many hold the opinion that teachers are unionized, public employees who work less than full-year jobs. Furthering public disdain is the perception that too many tenured teachers go through the motions of teaching with little regard for student learning because their jobs are contractually protected. Instead, tomorrow’s teacher will be esteemed because of the quality of her work and the impact she has in shaping the life of a child. She will be held in the same regard as doctors, lawyers and engineers and referred to as “Professor,” a throw-back to the adulation teachers received generations ago.

Perhaps the aspect of tomorrow’s professional teacher I smile most about will be the realization, similar to that of my neurologist, that teaching for the purpose of causing demonstrable learning is exceptionally difficult work. Only highly trained, committed professional teachers should do the work of teaching, and, because of this tomorrow’s adults will be much more ready for the difficult challenges they face than are the adults of today.

Thelma and Louise taught us, “You get what you settle for.” They were discussing life’s ups and downs with men and money. Getting is one thing. Settling is yet another. If you get what you settle for, it is necessary to know your options before you settle. It is possible to settle up and receive more; settling does not have to mean that you always get less. It’s just good consumerism and, at heart, Louise Sawyer was a consumer advocate.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103074/quotes?ref_=tt_ql_3

Not so strangely, you also get what you settle for in schooling choices. But, unlike Thelma, you don’t have to drive your Thunderbird off a cliff to resolve what you may have settled for.

Our granddaughters will attend a neighboring elementary school next fall, one in second grade and one in a 4K class. The principal completed the task of student placements in May and notified parents of their child’s teacher assignment next year through a June mailing. As retired educators, my wife and I are very interested in our granddaughters’ education and we listen to how our daughter and son-in-law discuss important schooling issues. We think teacher assignments are very important issues.

Consumerism in general is elevated these days and can be applied to most things of value. It may be related to the state of the economy with increased costs and stagnant personal income. Or, it may be that folks are just more discerning in the value of their expenditures and investments. So, I look at how consumerism plays out in teacher assignments. Thirteen years of K-12 education is one of the most significant investments a parent will make in a child’s life. More than ever before, parents must be active consumer advocates for their child’s education.

When I was the local superintendent/elementary principal, I could anticipate a parent inquiry about teacher assignments from twenty percent of our parents. Most of those inquiries sounded like this. “We were hoping that our daughter could have Mrs. —-, because her older siblings had Mrs. —- and she is so nice.” Or, “We are requesting that you move our daughter into Mrs. —-‘s class because all of our daughter’s friends are in that class.” Consumerism for these parents was social; they liked a teacher for that teacher’s student-friendly characteristics or they wanted to be included in the social networks of others. There is a lot of social consumerism at school and, when schools can meet these low level educational demands, children and parents can be made happy. However, social interests really are at the low end of the advocacy totem pole.

Less frequently, parents inquired about the placement of their child because they knew that children in “Mrs. —-‘s“ class received a better education. These less frequent inquiries easily separated into two flavors; those that were a polite inquiry and those that were a demand for reassignment to the teacher of choice. A principal’s daily school life spins continuously and engaging in a discussion of teacher quality is like the spinning of a toy top – you never know how far out of bounds it will take you. I see teacher quality clinically and a demanding parent views teacher quality as a win-loss advantage; a winning advantage that they want.

When a principal takes the time to carefully assign children to their next teachers, parent requests for a change of assignment can be both problematic and irksome. An initial assignment that is carefully made is far from random. The decision considers a child’s learning achievements, learning needs and learning styles. The decision matches the child’s learning conditions with the teacher’s personal and instructional strengths. Many times this analysis creates what appears to be the perfect match, but most of the time an assignment is a pretty good match. Additionally, an assignment decision considers the social dynamics of the new class. The quality of the child assignment can also be dependent upon the characteristics of other children in the class as well as the teacher. Finally, the decision considers a sense of balance between sections of the same grade level or course. If the number of students in each section is too far out of balance, it is the teachers who make demands for reassignment.

Reassignment is problematic in that the pre-analysis and considerations led to a balanced, total assignment. Any change would create its own problems with the considerations that were balanced. And, once the teacher assignments for the school have been published, any change of assignment is public and the rippling problems from that reassignment erupt. Reassignment is irksome after the hours and days the principal invested in the process of making initial assignments. My first mumbled response sounded like this. “Who do they think they are? What gives them the right? Do they really think they know the best assignment for their child’s learning needs?” Irksome can be much more than irked.

Making a reassignment for a demanding parent typically was not easy or quick. It meant meeting with them and listening to their demands and rationale. It meant reconsidering the values within the initial assignment and how making a reassignment would affect the balancing of those values for all children. It meant listening to a teacher’s questioning the wisdom of “giving in to demanding parents” and the response of multiple teachers if the “balance” is upset.

In retrospect, I wish that more parents had taken the time and effort to form an opinion regarding the quality of their child’s teacher assignment. I wish that more parents had irked me. There is ample data available both in the state and local school public data bases and in the parent network of each school to provide any parent with a modicum of information relative to their child’s next teacher. Although there also is a lot of “hooey” involved in what some parents believe is their informed opinion, most of the time they are on the right track. I could take some comfort in the process. After listening to a parent’s argument, they also would listen to my reasoning. And, in most cases, many found their concerns answered by the detail and child-by-child nature of my placement processes. Every year, though, I made placement changes based upon a parent’s request. In each case, I liked their reasoning, their genuine interest in their child’s learning, and that they chose not to settle for less than what they believed was best for their child. As problematic and irksome as they are, responding to demanding parents assures the principal that consumerism is working effectively in our schools. This is why.

Educational consumerism should affect the quality of learning. Most of the demanding parents were driven by their perception of “best” instruction and “better” learning outcomes. The daily instructional of a school is not secret. Parents can learn to understand the differences between teachers who are more effective at causing all children to learn and those who teach to the middle of the class with little regard for more talented or more needy children. Parents can observe the teachers who academically challenge their children. Parents can know which teachers take a strong interest in how children progress in their learning and those teachers who are more casual or cavalier about how well children learn.

Data about school achievement also is not secret. Parents can observe and compare the achievement statistics of children depending upon teacher assignment. Too often there is a difference. Every year a small and perceptive group parents of the next Kindergarten class would request placement with one of our three K teachers because they knew that children in that teacher’s section annually had the highest reading and language test scores in second and third grade. The foundation that this teacher laid paid dividends for children over time. Demanding parents want their children to have the advantage of learning from a teacher whose instruction creates better achievement results.

Parents can observe and learn which teachers connect with their students and use that connection to create better learning. Better learning achievement may be caused by a more effective teacher and it also may be caused by a more caring teacher. Interestingly, these are the two qualities that children talk about at the fiftieth reunion of their high school graduation. The most effective and the most caring teachers make a difference over a life time.

Effective consumerism really should affect teacher employment. When a principal assigns children in multiple sections of a grade level or course based upon each child’s learning needs and teacher talents, there almost always is a resulting imbalance. The more effective instructors and more caring teachers will have more children assigned to their sections. Historically, it was more troublesome for everyone involved to try to dismiss or demote the teacher who annually was the less effective and less caring teacher. So, sections were balanced and all teachers retained.

Today, no one, schools, parents and children, can put up with a less effective or a less caring teacher. If these characteristics affect a child’s learning achievement, everyone suffers. Changing state laws regarding teacher contracts are relieving the legal frameworks that made dismissal or demotion of an ineffective teacher in the past. I applaud new teacher evaluation frameworks that use student achievement, especially value-added evidence, to form an annual rating for every teacher. And, for every principal and superintendent. I recall observing a teacher dismissal case in Minnesota several decades ago. The presented facts clearly established that the teacher was sub-standard. The problem was that neither the district nor the state had a history of establishing a definition of teacher competence. That problem no longer exits.

The irony of educational consumerism is that children, the ultimate consumer, are seldom involved in the discussion of the quality of their education. For that reason alone, everyone, parents and school personnel alike, should take a stand: We will not settle for less than assigning each child to a teacher(s) who will assure that this child will successfully complete their annual curriculum this school year. Educational consumerism, as Thelma and Louise roughly described it, is “getting what you settle for.” No one should settle for less than a very good teacher.