School royalty. Lords and Ladies of the school house. The concept of school royalty seems incongruous with public education. Yet, schoolhouse royalty does exist and it exists in every school. Ask any person who has spent significant time in a contemporary school organization and that person can tell you who the royal people are. Do you know them?

By definition, royalty can be conferred by the rank, status, power authority connected with a monarchy. Excluding students and staff with the family names of “King”, or “Duke”, or “Royal”, this type of royalty does not exist in our schools. Short of “the royal family”, there are some who think of themselves a royalty. Every school may have their prima donna children or the “entitled” sons and daughters of affluent residents. But, these are not the real school royalty. Also, school royalty are not elected or appointed, such as members of the Board of Education or school administration. Royal is not the person; it is about the person.

School royalty can be discerned by identifying those who receive the “royal treatment” of the utmost respect and esteem because of what they do and not because of who they are. Royalty is earned by the exceeding excellence of one’s work and bestowed by those who understand the difference between just accomplishing the work and accomplishing more than the work.

School secretaries, head custodians and the school cook have the longest legacies of royal treatment. Not all secretaries, head custodians and cooks are created equal; there is a world of difference within each group. However, children, parents, and teachers know which secretaries love their school and which love their jobs. Mrs. P loved her school. She had a good life outside of school, but when she was in her school, she was a surrogate parent for every child, an aide to every teacher, a resource for every parent, and her principal’s “back up.” On your worst day, she gave you her best smile and an ear to onload your woes into so that when you felt better you could then do what needed to be done.

Mr. Y’s kids attended his high school; he was the building engineer. He once confided that every day he attempted to treat each student as his child, every teacher as his brother or sister, and every parent as his mother and father. He succeeded so often that students, faculty and parents spoke of the high school as “his school.” When he received a phone call at home on Sunday because a child forgot a homework assignment in her locker, that child not only said “thank you, Mr. Y” when he met her at the school door, she hand delivered home baked cookies each day for the following week.

Mrs. K ran the food service. More important than her knowing the ingredients of every recipe was her knowing every child by name. Going to the cafeteria was more than going to lunch for most children, it was being greeted by name and talking with a woman who would stop the serving line until you looked up into her smile. And, this went on year after year. If a child was ill, she knew it and she welcomed him back to school. If a child picked at her food, she prepared different foods to find what she liked and then served it regularly. Kids loved her baking almost as much as they loved the baker.

Today there is a new member of the school royalty. You can tell by the way others treat him. He seldom stands still because his daily “to do” list grows by the minute. He is always on the move and when he comes to you, you immediately feel a sense of relief because he is able to fix most problems and make the things you rely on work. His title is “technology specialist”, but he is part screwdriver repairman, part architectural wizard, and part empirical visionary.

In the last century, school technology was the stepchild of the school librarian or media specialist. If you could make clear transparencies, coordinate the filmstrip and tape cassette of a DuKane projector, and keep your new collection of floppy disks in order, you were the school’s tech person. Today’s tech leader is scary, because he speaks “geek” with student gamers, can find lost files in the Cloud, reset the school’s clocks, schedule the exterior door security locks from his notebook or tablet, search the hallway and campus cameras for small time miscreants, and foresee the future of a three-purchasing cycle in which most of today’s computer system already is obsolete.

These people are school royalty and they deserve a very royal treatment. They are not placeholders of inherited insignificance, but the everyday Joes and Janes whose work makes every boy feel like a prince and every girl like a princess.

What is the school that children deserve? It is not a difficult question. Children can answer the question. Teachers can answer the question. Parents can answer the question. Employers and college admission personnel can answer the question. Interestingly, each of these groups has a different concept of the school that children deserve.

The stickler to making such an answer is that children, teachers, parents, employers and college admission personnel only have opinions about the school that children deserve. None of the these significant groups actually is allowed to determine the school that children deserve.

Real answers about the school that children get, not deserve, are written by politicians and taxpayers. For some reason, politics wag the politicians and taxes wag the taxpayers. Some days it seems more like games than real world problem solving. Politicians use educational policy to seduce voters who have the power to keep politicians in office. Too often, educational policy is not in the best interest of children, but what is in the best interest of adults politicizing education. Taxpayers only remember what they paid each year in taxes and seldom remember what they received in exchange for what the taxes they paid. There is a reciprocal rule that can be applied. The further the tax benefit is from the taxpayer, the less likely the taxpayer is to support that benefit. The benefits of public education are twenty years in the making. We never really know the benefits of a public education until a graduated student moves into the real world and applies the valued of what he or she learned in school. Twenty years of deferred gratification is too long for most taxpayers.

Too often, the school children deserve is so much less than the school they have. Too often, the school children have is the school that fits into the intersection of politicians and taxpayers and is the lower of the possible denominators.

Now and again, we are surprised. There is a school up the road from my home that lacks for little because the politics of the school board develops the optimum of educational programs and the community of taxpayers says “yes!” at the ballot box. Surprise gives way too often to not being surprised. There is a school down the road from my home where non-elected politicians downspeak everything about the school and their vehemence influences that community of taxpayers to say “no way!” at the ballot box. That leaves the school board with the mandate of minimizing educational programs for children in that school.

The real sin in all of this is that twenty years from now young people trying to make their contribution in the real world may look back and realize “when I was in school, the school couldn’t afford (science or higher math or music or art or computer science or whatever school program created a gap in their education). I am not able to do this work today.”

The school that children deserve is the school that will best prepare them for their future; a future we cannot predict. Hence, the school that children deserve is a school of optimal opportunities for every child. We and they really cannot afford anything less.

It’s mid-May and everyone at school is counting down the days. Zero is the last day of school or the first day of summer vacation; it depends upon your goals. Summer officially starts for children and their families, and teachers and everyone who works at school when the last day of the school year is history.

School’s out, school’s out; teachers let the monkeys out. Can you hear the voices of elementary children singing?

Two contrasting memories about school and summer vacation come to mind the closer we get to summer.

Memory one. For years, teachers were responsible for securing their classrooms for the summer vacation. I recall large rolls of butcher paper on a four-wheeled cart being pushed from one end of the school to the other. At each classroom door teachers tore off enough paper from the rolls to cover their bookshelves. Every book in the room was hidden behind butcher paper and masking tape not to be exposed until the next September. When children walked out of school on the last day, after they cleaned out their lockers, they carried home papers and art projects and gym clothes and music instruments. Children of all grades said good-bye to their public school. But, they carried no books. Books and the reading of books stayed at school.

Memory two. Several summers ago a high school junior-to-be was my caddy at a golf tournament. Jake attended a private school. I couldn’t help but ask what else he was doing during the summer besides caddying. Up and down the fairways, he told me of his summer reading list. Most were pre-reads of books that would be studied during his junior year. The others were re-reads of books he wanted know even better. All were college-preparatory reads. I asked him why he was committed to such a rigorous reading list and he said, “What I read this this summer assures me that I am ready for next fall. If I don’t read and learn over the summer, I will fall behind. I’ve been doing this for years.”

These are two very different memories about summer and they present two completely different expectations of how children can or should use their summer time.

We public educators are trapped in the pattern of nine months in school and three months out of school that perpetuates itself and nothing else. There are state statutes that limit the school year and local teaching contracts that limit the time when teachers can teach. We have rules that act to prevent children from engaging in summer learning. (I am not including children who are required to attend compulsory summer school as a condition for grade level promotion. In most instances, this is compulsory time and not compulsory learning.)

We also have acculturated ourselves into thinking that children need time away from learning. Parents are excited to have their children home in June, but by July 1st they want them back in school. Kids who are used to seeing their friends at school every day become lost and lonely in their own backyards. Summer is effectively over after 30 days of vacation but our culture says that it must be prolonged for another two months like it or not.

So, how do we break the cycle of lost summers? We do this by proclaiming loudly that if children don’t read and learn over the summer, they fall behind in their potential for learning growth. It’s as simple as that. Three months of little or no learning for a second grader means that this child will return to school not as a new third grader but as a kid whose stagnation places his learning growth back in the spring of the second grade year. Instead of a full year’s learning connecting to the next academic year, children accumulate seven or eight months of learning due to summer regression. As a result, very few students begin high school with a high school reading ability and very, very few graduate with a pre-college reading ability.

Even though we know this is not what children need, we continue doing less for them than we could. Instead —

We need to tuck a summer reading list into each child’s backpack at the end of each school day in April. Children and parents need to be prepared for a new kind of summer and two months of run-up information is a good beginning. The second grade teacher will prepare the first grade student’s list and each successive grade level teacher will continue the pattern.

We need to add a second list to each child’s backpack in May. This is a list of places in the community, including the public library, where parents can obtain each book on the April list. Everyone needs help and then they need more help if we want them to change habitual behavior. The reading list tells them what children need to read. The second list tells them where to find what children need to read.

We need to connect children to their summer reading. On June 1st we need to install several books on each child’s tablet or laptop. Children will use their devices to play games and communicate with each other. If we also make their devices reading machines, it is more likely that they will read.

On July 1st and August 1st we need to e-mail happy notes to each child to remind them that summer reading is important. The e-mail will contain lists of new vocabulary a child will need to know in September.

And, most importantly, in September and October we need to weave summer reading into our children’s daily instruction. The weaving will include vocabulary, concepts, and background information gleaned from the summer reading. If there is no weaving, children will think that all we were interested in was busy work and they get enough of that. The more we weave summer reading into fall instruction, the more likely children will read the next summer.

There is every reason for us to do all five of these things. Children beginning second grade will reduce their summer regression. Every summer children will expand their vocabulary and background knowledge. Instead of falling behind as a result of a lazy summer, children will be ahead and continually getting ahead.

There really is no reason that prevents us from doing these five things, except we never have. Will never have mean that we never will?

I also remember a talk show host who always signed off with “when you know what the right thing to do is, try to do it.”

In the movie Moneyball, Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, says to Art Howe, the team’s coach, “If you don’t win the last game of the season, nobody gives a damn.” Coach Howe responds, “So, now it’s on me.” (Losing the final game of the American League playoffs to the Yankees). Beane says, “No, it’s on me.” And, with that exchange Billy Beane sets about to reform the way in which baseball management conceives of building a winning team. He knows that winning or losing is not on one person, but on the way that everyone conceives of their responsibility for success. Ownership, management and players began to think of baseball not as a team of “great” players but as an organization of diversely talented players assembled to increase the number of games won each season. Public education must address reform in the same way. Leadership, teachers, students and parents must re-conceive what it means to be educationally successful and then work cohesively to create new successes.

Thus far, educational journals and public media have treated educators with a “so, now it’s on you” attitude. The US Department of Education and respective state governors have issued new mandates for and assessments of educator effectiveness using the “old baseball” adage that ownership can “put the spurs” to school leadership and school leadership can “put the spurs” to employees and that vigorous spurring will improve the academic achievement of children.

This improvement model looks and acts like every reform effort since A Nation At Risk was published in 1983. It is no surprise that every reform effort since that landmark publication has done little but spawn a next reform effort. Reformers have manipulated what happens in the classroom by looking for a new breed of teachers, a new slant on curriculum, and a new trend in teaching. It is time to stop looking for educational success in the singular venue of the classroom and using a new view of how each of the relevant players in public education can work in the aggregate to create more educational wins.

Today, we are looking at parents as players.

First, parents like Harriet Nelson, Donna Read, and Mrs. Cunningham are no more. When our grandparents went to school, the majority of children were sent to school by homemaking mothers who fed them breakfast, prepared their school clothes, packed their lunches, saw them out the door and seemingly waited at the door until their children returned home from school. Once back at home, moms watched over their children at play, prepared their supper, assisted with their homework and tucked them into bed. This parenting model happens so infrequently today that it is the exception and we must accept a new rule for describing the parent as an educational player.

The majority of children today are raised by working parents. The majority of moms and dads are fully engaged in the struggle of economic survival or in the daily turmoil of their occupations. Work to earn money is the full-time, every day focus of most parents.

A growing minority of children live with a single parent of a mixed family. The majority of families does not eat meals together, go to church together or sit together in the evening to talk about “what did you do today.” A majority of children do their homework, if they do it, in their bedrooms or a room away from their parents’ supervision. A majority of children engage with electronic media – social media, video entertainment, games, television – as their primary activity at home. Most parents find reassurance that a child engaged thusly is not a parenting problem at the moment.

Most high school aged children fit into these two categories. Children have found their niche in school and/or their positive community activities and find personal worth in these, or, due to a lack of success in school or community activities have become externally apathetic and have quit trying to succeed in traditional youth activities. The former are ready for parent engagement; the latter are not.

All of that said, when it comes to educating their children, especially elementary and middle school age children, parents “it is on you, also.” Teachers, curriculum, and teaching cannot fill in the gap of a child’s parent. These are essential things parents need to do as part of a reformed team committed to building educational wins.

Make learning matter. When I have asked children across K – 12 how often their parents talk with them about what they learned at school “today,” they typically cannot remember the day and they say “now and then.” Talking about your child’s most important childhood enterprise is not lip service; it is a daily testimonial of parental interest in what a child learns. Initiate talk about what your child learned today. Don’t stop with a kid’s time-tested first response of “Nothing. We didn’t do ‘nothing’ at school today.” If you know what your child learned yesterday, it is easy to initiate talk about what they learned today. If you don’t know what your child learned at school yesterday, start with today and ask again tomorrow.

Talk about the specifics of what your child has learned today and do it every day. You are tired from a day’s work. No one disagrees. But a day without positive talk about learning from a parent at home builds another thin layer on the callous of disinterest. When a child think’s her parent is not interested, it is hard for her to be interested.

Attribute learning successes to your child’s work at learning. Success begets success but only if the successful child believes that she has been successful, that current success is the result of what she has done, and that she possesses what is necessary for success again in the future. No cheerleader in a child’s life is more important than a child’s parent. No one can make a child feel more capable or more incapable than a parent. So, make your child understand that current success is due to what your child has done to be successful and that they can be even more successful in the future by continuing to work for their success.

Be your child’s cheerleader for success every day. Know your child’s aspirations and how she can make dreams come true. We all had dreams which did not transpire; but one or two did. When we can help a child make one of her dreams come true, we are paying success forward to future generations.

Make continuing education matter. In the last century, a college education was at the pinnacle of each family’s American dream for their children. Today, the economics of a college education make a baccalaureate more and more difficult to achieve. However, today there is much more to education than a baccalaureate degree. Education remains the best predictor of economic mobility and there are many flavors of education, especially technical and career specific education. A technical or career specific education is economically feasible for most. Further, a child must understand that education is a continuing life activity for tomorrow’s adults. Skill sets are changing too rapidly for any person to work a full fifty years based on the skills they learned before they were twenty years old. Careers will evolve and skill sets will change. Education is the constant tool for preparing a person for what comes next.

Assure that your child understands that constant learning is essential for their successful adult life. Education is not a school. It is not a teacher. Education is a personal investment in oneself.

Don’t get your pants in a bunch because someone is telling you how to be an educational parent to your child. No parent held his or her first child and said “I know all there is to know about parenting.” No parent said at her child’s fifth birthday party, “I know all there is to know about your sixth year.” We all need to hear lessons that we can use. I can give testimony to this truth every day.

This blog is not prescribing the education your child needs. Public education, traditional, charter or voucher. Private or parochial education. Alternative education. Home schooling. It doesn’t matter, as long as you are an educational parent who promotes learning, the attribution of success to personal effort, and the need for continuing education.

Educational success is “on” and “because of” educational parents.

What am I supposed to think about this and where do I begin? This question finds its way into our thinking on many occasions, especially when we are responsible for the success of children. Often the words of others assist us in understanding the imperatives we face. One proven strategy for setting the stage for action is to conduct a task analysis that creates a clear vision of the work to be accomplished. A task analysis is an essential step in presenting effective instruction that causes all children to learn.

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.” Abraham Lincoln

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin

Lincoln gives us our first thought. In teacher talk, he tells us that when we know what children know at this moment and what future learning they are to achieve, we are more likely to find the strategies for moving their education forward. Franklin gives us the kick in the pants to begin action – in positive terms, by preparing for success, our success is prepared. Hard to argue with Ben!

Task analysis helps us to transcribe complex objectives into an instructional design. The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics present teachers with an extraordinary set of objective outcomes for children to achieve as the result of each grade level of instruction. In their entirety and as individual statements, the CCSS are powerful aspirations for learning, however they are exceptionally rigorous, complex and complicated. In order to understand how a standard causes learning, teachers need to strip a standard/objective down to its parts and rebuild the parts into an instructional design.

The ELA literacy standard for writing for third grade children serves as a case in point.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.1 Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.1a Introduce the topic or text they are writing about, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure that lists reasons.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.1b Provide reasons that support the opinion.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.1c Use linking words and phrases (e.g., because, therefore, since, for example) to connect opinion and reasons.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.1d Provide a concluding statement or section.

In our task analysis, we must identify the component parts of the learning objectives. What is an “opinion” and an “opinion piece” and what do the children in this third grade class already know about opinions and opinion pieces. Each operative subject and predicate in these objectives must be parsed and a realistic understanding of Lincoln’s “first know(ing) where we are” must be established. If there are 20 children in the class, there could well be 20 different “where we are(s)” to be found. As an example:

Stripping the objective down to its incremental parts is necessary for our diagnosis of what each child needs to learn and how we are to instruct them. This allows us to answer, “Who needs to learn what and in what order do they need to learn it.”

We begin Franklin’s “preparing for success” processes by reassembling our assessment of the parts of the objective into an instructional design that might look like this.

• Verification of and/or instruction of background knowledge and skills.
• Class discussion of “meaty” topics from which they can form an opinion.
• Initial instruction of new knowledge and skills related to paragraph organization, supporting ideas, and writing skills.
• Modeling of new knowledge and skills
• Collaborative work for creating an “organizational structure” or graphic organizer of what the paragraph(s) might look like, including statement of an opinion, supporting sentences aligned with reason that supports the opinion sentence, and a concluding sentence.
• Individual work to write an “opinion piece” using the organizational structure developed collaboratively.
• Teacher monitoring of individual work and support of children with weaker background knowledge or skills (tutorials).
• Presentation of student work.

Task analysis not only addresses the immediate standard(s) to be taught, it also helps a teacher verify background knowledge for the learning of other standards in the future. The analysis entailed in a third grade literacy/writing standard confirms each child’s readiness of any other standard involving opinion, opinion pieces, the organizational structure of an opinion piece, and the process of using collaborative work to establish a framework from which individual work can be completed.