Hyper-monitoring

R4 Hyper-monitoring update:

In just the last calendar year, there have been 22,148 walk-thru observations entered into the R4 Aggregate system.

Do you hear that noise? That's the sound of improving instructional practices and increased classroom engagement. It's the sound of success

Did you do your 25 observations last week? What are you waiting for?

Your turn...

Final Exams - Format and Use

If a school is going to administer final exams, then it should be for the purpose of generating instructional data. Otherwise, why is it being done?

If the campus intent is to collect relevant, objective instructional data, then the final exam must be a common test, shared by the department and preferably the district. And, this is critical, every student needs to take it. That includes the student with A’s and the students who come to school everyday. It is the only way to ensure the data is valid. When the “best” students are exempted from the final exam, the staff has a built in excuse if the test results are bad.

“What did you expect, only the slackers and weak students took the test?”

With a common test, taken by all the students, after some basic disaggregation, the campus can determine which teachers have used practices that should be examined and shared and which teachers need some additional support.

Also, the data from final exams should be one of the final factors considered before summer teacher training and beginning of the year in-service plans are finalized.

Instead of viewing final exams as the last activity of the current year, view them as the one of the first activities of the next year.

Your turn…

Final Exams - Exemptions

As it gets closer to the end of the year, I start to get more questions concerning final exams. Am I for or against them; what should they consist of; should there be exemptions; etc.? The next few posts will address some of those questions and the answers I usually give.

Let’s tackle the big question first, “What do I think about allowing students to earn exemptions from finals?” Overall, I think the practice is counter-productive and should not occur.

Exemptions are generally granted for two reasons, either to encourage students to attend class and/or to do all of their work to maintain a high grade. Many teachers swear that the incentive works in both cases.

However, in spite of the bump to attendance and grades that exemptions may provide, they are bad practice. The purpose of assessments is to provide objective instructional data to staff. Final exams provide this data for an entire course. But if significant numbers of students are exempted from the exam, the data provided is suspect at best. If the staff isn’t using final exam data for instructional purposes, then why are they being administered?

So the question becomes, will we give a final exam or not. If the data isn’t being used, don’t give one. If the data is being used, make sure that the data set represents the entire class. Then find other ways to encourage students to come to class and turn in their work.

Your turn…

Economic Stimulus Money - Uses

The following comes from Dr. Mike Laird (a friend of the site), by way of the U.S. Department of Education:

Stimulus monies are to be used to support the following Key Education Reforms:

• Raising standards through college and career ready standards and high quality assessments that are reliable for all students, including English language learners and students with disabilities;
• Increasing transparency by establishing better data systems tracking student progress over time;
• Improving teacher effectiveness and ensuring equitable supply and distribution of qualified teachers
• Supporting effective intervention strategies for lowest performing schools.

Thanks Dr. Laird.

Your turn...

Graffiti

Graffiti is a cancer on school and community morale. Go on the offensive and do not tolerate it on or near your campus. If you are diligent, timely and persistent; in less than a semester you can solve this problem.

Your turn...

Leading Change

It is time to go to the cliche’ well. Every school leader would be well served to put the following saying on her mirror, “…if it is to be, it is up to me.”

The failure of most change initiatives is that the change is for everyone except leadership. That is a sure fire method for ensuring that any change will at best be superficial and at worst be non-existent. It also represents a colossal leadership failure. A failure that is too common, entirely avoidable and brazenly self-inflicted.

Change is difficult, uncomfortable and often scary. If as a school leader, you are serious about improving your campus, then you must first engage fully and publicly in changing your practices. Your staff must see that you are willing and able to deal with short-term adversity to achieve long term gains. Only then will you have the credibility to support those who are engaged in the change and the moral authority to take action against those who are not.

As a leader you are always setting an example. What example do you want to set?

Your turn...

Curb Appeal

Curb appeal, what is it and does your school have it? As every real estate agent knows, curb appeal is essentially the first impression that your campus makes on visitors and patrons. And like your mother told you when you were a child, “you do not get a second chance to make a first impression.”

The practices of good of curb appeal are usually ignored or overlooked by school staff. They are naturally focused on the “work” of education. However, a little attention to the details of presenting your school in its best light will pay dividends in the way of an improved working environment, better attitudes and general good will.

As one principal was overheard telling his facilities staff, “the public doesn’t know what a good curriculum entails, the public can’t identify the components of quality instruction, but the public does know if the school looks good and they grade us every day."

Your turn...

College Material

I have to admit that I’m losing my patience with the “all students will go to college” debate. The main reason for this is because when I’m on a lot of campuses, the staff is allowed to think that it is actually a debate. It’s not a debate, it is a fact. A fact that must be mandated, supported and enforced by school leaders.

I understand that not every student wants to go to college, but as educators we must prepare every student to pursue some sort of post-secondary training or education. College, junior college, military service, and/or trade school must be in the future of every one of our students. Anything thing less consigns our students to the margins of our rapidly changing economy.

When I was an AP and Principal, it may have been possible that there were individuals on my staff that didn’t believe that all of my students were going to college, but they were smart enough to keep that thought hidden when I was around. My mantra was, “get them to school, get them to class and get them to college.”

Here is some ammunition to support you in your fight to prepare all of your students for college:

• We don’t get to choose who will go to college and who won’t… We just get to prepare everyone so they can have the option.
  
• Entry level blue collar job reading requirement are higher than the freshman year of college… So preparing students for college is the easier job.
  
• His parents don’t care if he goes to college… So he’s lucky he goes to our school and not somewhere else.

I’ve got more responses, so send me the negative comments you’ve had to face and I’ll send you a response.

To sum up, we can and must prepare all of our students for post-secondary training. If you, as a school leader, are not willing to commit to this, it will be your students that suffer.

Your turn…

The New Working Definition of Great

A reader pointed out that I mention “Great Schools” a lot and asked how I defined “Great”. This is an excellent question because the definition of a great school used by me and my colleagues at the R4 Group differs from that used by most educators.

The original definition of a great school probably began with simply having a roof, a book, a chalk board and a teacher (1800’s)*.

The definition evolved to represent a school that was clean, orderly, offered a lot of activities and had some students who achieved at high levels (1960’s - present)*.

The next step in the evolution of the term was to define a great school as one with high raw test scores (1990’s - present)*.

As schools are being ranked publicly, the term great school, as it is used by most people, seems to be defined as, “the school I work at”, or “the school that my children attend” (2000’s)*.

However, when I talk about “great schools” I mean schools that either send a significant percentage of their graduates to college or schools that significantly outperform their peers. What do these to criteria look like? First, let’s consider schools that send a significant number of graduates to college.

This criterion is somewhat of a sliding scale. The variables of the scale include type of school, size of school, drop-out rate and demographics. For example, if your school is a small, high SES, early college high school that sends 99% of it’s graduates to college, good for you, but anything less and you failed. This definition of great doesn’t apply to you. On the other hand, if your school is a small, low SES compensatory high school with a decreasing drop-out rate and 83% of your graduates enroll in some sort of post-secondary institution, you are getting dangerously close to great territory.

Now let’s look at the second criteria, outperforming your peers. This criterion is fairly straight forward and brutally honest. Take your school and its demographic peers. Sort the critical performance measures. The schools in the top 10% are probably great. The schools in the next 30% are probably good. Everyone else isn’t getting the job done and the raw scores don’t matter. For example, if your peers are generally recognized and you are acceptable, you are not great. If your peers are generally unacceptable and you are acceptable, you may be great. The critical variable in this category is consistency.

So to sum up this discussion, when I use the term “great school”, I mean a school that either consistently sends a significant number of its graduates to college or consistently outperforms its peers. When I use the term “great principal”, I mean the principal of a great school.

* Note: Date and definition made up by author.

Your turn…

Rapid School Improvement - Four Quick Rules

Here are four quick rules, in terms of making rapid gains in campus academic performance.

1. Poor instruction is better than no instruction. Filling instructional dead times (start of class, end of class, transitions) with even low grade instruction (worksheets, flashcards, etc.) will make a noticeable impact.

2. Poor aligned instruction is better than excellent non-aligned instruction. I’ll use a sports analogy to explain this. If the goal is to win a football game, then bringing in an expert tennis coach to teach the team how to serve is a waste of time. It does not matter how engaging the tennis instruction is or how important the tennis coach thinks her information is for the team to know.

3. If there are no short-term, common assessments, then there is no scope and sequence. Without regular checks, classes will move at dramatically different paces and cover dramatically different concepts.

4. To deal with the above issues in rapid fashion, use external coaches. The above areas represent staff blind spots. Your external coach will not only be able to identify them faster than you can, there will be fewer hurt feelings when the outside person points out deficiencies than if the news came from an inside person.

A campus needs to address these four areas first, before tackling anything more complex. For those readers who might think that this is rather pedestrian and not ambitious enough, try it first. All the great campuses had to deal with these issues before they could move on to second tier concerns.

Your turn…

Interesting Writing Progam

Young Writers Program gives students confidence
In 2007, teacher Luke Perry introduced his sixth graders to the idea of writing a novel in one month. The idea became extremely popular, and last year in the school district there were roughly 250 participating students, who happily typed away during lunch to finish their books, which they proudly read for community leaders and over the school's public-address system at the end of the month. "I can't gush enough about it," Perry said, calling it the best experience of his 10 years in teaching. "I'll never teach the same way again." Edutopia magazine (2/2009)
http://www.edutopia.org/arts-national-novel-writing-month

A lot of the districts that I work with have student goals that specifically address writing performance. The program described in the article above seems like it could be a fun way to embed more authentic writing in the curriculum. The program even has elementary, middle school and high school components. In Texas, you could plug this project in after the TAKS writing test or in May when you are looking for ways to keep up the academic enthusiasm.

Here is the link to the program, http://www.nanowrimo.org/

If anyone out there has any prior experience with the program, send in a review. If anyone is going to try it, let us know. It might be fun to get some friendly competition and support going on between multiple campuses.

Your turn…

Data Use

Bad principals and their staff don't use data.

Good principals and their staff use data to predict the future.

Great principals and their staff use data to change the future.

Your turn...