A Reader Asks... Balancing Formative and Summative Evaluation

A new LYS Principal asks the following questions:

SC,

  

I am still struggling with the coaching v. evaluation idea.   I understand that in the hands of our professional support staff, PowerWalks can be a great coaching tool.  However, the Assistant Principals and I are responsible for the appraisal side of things.  At our district meeting, you addressed the fact that we (administrators) will move from the coaching side to the appraisal side when needed.  

When that is the case? Or is it whenever I think it is necessary? Do I use the PowerWalks observation instrument as an evaluation tool or do I need to use something different?

I have concerns that when I move someone into an appraisal situation based of PowerWalks data, I have in effect made the PowerWalks system an appraisal system.  Am I missing something or is there another piece of the puzzle that we have not covered?  

I’m really trying to wrap my thoughts around this. 

SC Response

Great questions! It is obvious that you are trying to fit formative classroom observation into your daily practice.

The big question is, “When do you move from coaching to appraising?”  

The answer is when you see something that requires action.  This could be:

A. If you walk in on something that you cannot abide by, then you must address it then.  This may happen once or twice a year.

B. If you notice a negative pattern early, you can intervene.  For example, if something negative that was observed three times in fifteen walk-thru's would cause you to intervene; you would intervene the third time you saw it, even if you had only been in the classroom six time.

C. If you notice the teacher is constantly struggling and/or is not progressing in the implementation of something. Intervene.

The big issue is communication. Whenever you decide that you need to intervene, you must let the teacher know that the purpose of your visits has changed and improvement in performance must occur in an expedited fashion. We must own the fact that teachers do not trust administrators in the classroom because on most campuses the "friendly" visit turns into a "witch-hunt" without any overt warning.  Even your own district advocates surprise summative evaluation observations. That is the worst of bad management practice and perpetuates an "us versus them" mentality.  And yes, I have shared this with your Superintendent and members of your Board.

As to your point that switching to the appraisal model based on PowerWalks observations makes PowerWalks a de-facto evaluation tool has some merit, especially in an environment devoid of communication and trust.  In practice, I think this is mitigated when a principal has the following conversation with a teacher, "Based on our visits to your classroom, we have noticed that you seem to be struggling with….  Because of that, I'm going to come observe you during these three times (GIVE THE TIME) over the next week.  I'll observe you for at least 15 minutes each time so I can get a better feel for what you are trying to accomplish and how your class responds to your instruction."

If, after the longer observations you decide that things really are OK, tell the teacher.  If things still concern you, you now have better information in which to build an intervention plan.  Plus, you are intervening early enough that it is possible to avoid jeoprodizing both overall class performance and the teacher’s job.

As for what to look for when you do intervene, that is determined primarily by the reason for the intervention.

I hope this helps, if not keep asking and I'll keep answering.

  

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool)
• Upcoming Presentations: Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote), Advancing Improvement in Education Conference (Multiple Presentations), TASSP Assistant Principals’ Workshop (Featured Speaker), North Dakota Association of Secondary School Principals (Keynote), American Association of School Administrators Conference (Multiple Presentations), National Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

A Reader Writes... Our Anti-Public School Leaders - Part 1

In response to the 9/11/12 post, ”Our Anti-Public School Leaders,” a reader writes:

SC,

Prior to my 23+ years in education, I spent 13 years in the private sector. I also have both a MBA and MEd. All that to preface the statement, I am totally disappointed and disenchanted with the Republican power brokers at the state level in regard to education. I am a true-blue Reagan conservative, but you cannot run a school like a private business - it just does not work. We cannot, nor should we, control our raw materials; after all, they are human beings.

We need some new conservatives in office that truly understand public education and that will trust professional educators instead of assuming that we have to be monitored and controlled or we won't do our jobs. The vast majority of educators I know are professionals that do their best every day for the kids in their districts.

SC Response

By our nature and regardless of our party affiliation, educators are a conservative group.  I often have to remind my non-educator friends that as school people, we are a little different from the mass of society. A little more decent, I like to believe.  That’s what happens when you become the de-facto parent for 20, 40, 100, or even 200 kids a year. Which is why you have to be alert when your party of choice abandons your core belief, yet continues to take your vote for granted.  Even though I’m an Independent voter, the party that has received the majority of my votes for the past decade has done just that.  Which is why for the immediate future, my sole candidate litmus test is the willingness to support and fund public education; the most noble endeavor in our ongoing national experiment. Here is my simple, school-centric formula:

• Cut funds – I vote for your opponent
• Don’t fund – I vote for your opponent
• Unfunded mandate – I vote for your opponent
• Increase accountability without increasing support – I vote for your opponent
• Devalue educators – I vote for your opponent

Obviously, the pattern is fairly easy to recognize. The question is this, “Does a candidate care enough about my vote to respond to my crystal clear agenda?”

We'll see. However, I’m just one vote.  If we as educators don’t express our collective will at the ballot box, we will continue to get what we have always got. 

• There is still time to register to vote.  If you haven’t done so, what are you waiting for?
• Early voting is opening up all across the country.  In Texas, it will begin on 10/22/12.  I for one will be voting early.
• And circle it on your calendar, the general election date is Tuesday, November 6, 2012.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool)
• Upcoming Presentations: Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote), Advancing Improvement in Education Conference (Multiple Presentations), TASSP Assistant Principals’ Workshop (Featured Speaker), North Dakota Association of Secondary School Principals (Keynote), American Association of School Administrators Conference (Multiple Presentations), National Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations)
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

The Superintendents' Corner: Pretty Lies and Powerful Truths (Part B)

A LYS Superintendent sends in the following:

Yesterday, we outlined the path to vouchers.  A path that has nothing to do with parent choice and everything to do with tax breaks for affluent parents.  Today, we will test the “Parent Choice” misdirection play of the voucher proponents.

Why limit parent choice to just choosing schools?  After all, it seems disingenuous to demand vouchers using the mantra of parent choice and then limit the choices parents have.  That’s no choice at all. It is still the government making choices for parents and giving you the illusion of choice.  And why are parents allowing Austin to tell them they must leave their local public school if they want school choice?  Why can’t parents have school choice in their local public school?  

The limitations of parent choice in local public schools are put in place by Austin, and the limitations can be easily removed, which is consistent with the conservative belief of “deregulation.”  If we are going to have parent choice, let’s go all in.  I have a proposition for parent choice that will transform existing local public schools into the type of schools parents want.  
I ran some of these ideas by some advocacy and parent groups, and the ideas were well received.  How many parents are leaving local public schools because of high stakes testing and ridiculous standards of accountability that the parents simply don’t agree with or understand?  How many parents leave local public schools because they want more input into the curriculum and graduation requirements for their children? How many of those parents would return to traditional public schools if the parent could choose the level of testing and accountability for their child?  I posed this question and this is the response I received from the Texas Parents Union:

"We suspect many parents have exited the system due to overemphasis on test results and "achievement gap mania."

True parent choice does not come from some limited menu of options generated in Austin or D.C.  This plan for parent choice is simple and it’s virtually free:

1. Parents work with educators in their local public schools to develop a course of study for their child.

2. The parent could even work with their local public school to choose instructional delivery methods: traditional, on-line, and/or blended.  The options are many. The parent may choose to have math traditionally taught, but may choose to take English on-line.  Some parents may see no need for their child to have art and will choose to omit it from their child’s curriculum.

3. Parents choose the test level and accountability standard for their child, including the option of none.  Parents work cooperatively with educators in their local public schools to make this decision, much like the current ARD process in special education.

4. Parents are free to use advocates to help advise them during the process of making choices for their child.

5. Parents are not locked into their choices; they have a true, free range of choices and can change and customize their choices as needed for the best interest of their child.

6. Neither Austin nor D.C. gets a say.  After all, it’s about parent choice.

7. Once the parent decides the school is failing their child, the parent can choose another school.  Again neither Austin nor D.C. gets a say.  It’s about parent choice.

8. Each local public school is free to be what each parent wants it to be. Constraints on what a public school can do for parents are removed.  After all, why is the government requiring parents to leave their local public school in order to have choice?  Virtually all constraints that deny parents choice in their local public school are put in place by Austin. Remove the constraints, deregulate.

9. Reams of the Texas Education Code can be eliminated.  It may even be possible to eliminate or drastically change the role of TEA.  TEA could turn into the organizer of the Regional Education Service Centers.  In this capacity the Service Centers and TEA answer to the school districts and help provide the resources and options parents are choosing in their local public school.

This is a simple plan and the cost is negligible. If a parent wants an education for their child through the 12th grade but thinks testing for their child should end in 8th grade with a basic skills test (or no test ever, at any grade level), then so be it.  It’s about parent choice and what right does government have to negate that choice?

So there it is, true parent choice, not the choices Austin allows parents.  I say this and believe it: if the government refuses to do this for parents, their intention is not parent choice, their intention is something else and parents are merely being used.  Don’t be used.  Do not let the government force you out of your local public school in order to have a choice. I will leave you with an excerpt from one of Vincent’s famous letters to Theo discussing the works of Zola:

We’re used to insipidities of that kind, to such pretty lies, that we reject powerful truths with all our might. ~ Vincent Van Gogh to Theo Van Gogh, July 2nd, 1883, The Hague.

Parents, reject the pretty lies and demand the truth, and true choice.  Take back your public schools.  

Mike Seabolt

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool) 
• Upcoming Presentations: Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote), Advancing Improvement in Education Conference (Multiple Presentations), TASSP Assistant Principals’ Workshop (Featured Speaker), North Dakota Association of Secondary School Principals (Keynote), American Association of School Administrators Conference (Multiple Presentations), National Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

The Superintendents' Corner: Pretty Lies and Powerful Truths (Part A)

A LYS Superintendent sends in the following:

The Path

1. There are those who want vouchers. The intent is to serve as a tax break to the wealthy.

The guise of “parent choice” is their front story.

2. The desire for vouchers as a tax break for the wealthy has been around for decades and was strongly pushed by Milton Friedman in the 1950’s, decades before high stakes testing.  

3. School testing and accountability may have begun as honest attempts to improve the quality of education.  Some schools are indeed failing, but the idea that school failure is widespread and systemic is questionable.

4. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2002 in the Zelman case that vouchers may be legal if the voucher program met all five components of the Private Choice Test. (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639, 2002)

5. Point one of the Private Choice Test is that in order to be legal, school voucher programs must have a “valid secular purpose”.  SCOTUS ruled that “providing educational assistance to poor children in a demonstrably failing public school system" satisfied the “valid secular purpose” provision.

6. The Zelman ruling is a roadmap for those trying to further the agenda of vouchers as tax breaks.  It was quickly realized that in order to get voucher tax breaks in Texas, the public school system had to be “demonstrably failing.”

7. It can be argued that high stakes testing and accountability was initially implemented with good intentions, but voucher tax break proponents saw testing and accountability as a way to show that the Texas public school system is “demonstrably failing.”

8. In a parallel path, the business generated by “failing schools” went from cottage businesses to multi-billion dollar global industries. Former TEA Commissioner, Robert Scott, compares this new test building industry to the military industrial complex.

9. This has led to ever increasing test difficulty (TAAS to TAKS to STAAR) and accountability ratings so convoluted and complex that the general public and many professional educators do not understand the system.  This was the engine that was used to show the Texas public school system is “demonstrably failing”.

10. In 2009, the Texas Projection Measure (TPM) was introduced. It was a method used to predict the likely success of students.  According to TEA, TPM was 92% accurate. It is important to note that under TPM the number of “failing schools” fell by more than half. Also, TPM was implemented during the build up to an election year.  Draw your own conclusions.

11. Once state elections were decided, the multi-billion dollar testing industry and the proponents of voucher tax breaks had a vested interest in the return of “failing schools.” TPM had to go.  And it did. Quickly.

12. In 2012, the plan is almost complete. Voucher proponents are screaming “school choice” and “vouchers” marching behind the flag of “failing schools.” “Failing schools” that were created by their own design. Voucher proponents have almost satisfied Point One of the SCOTUS Private Choice Test.

13. True commitment to parent choice is questionable and it is more likely the true intention is to achieve voucher tax breaks for the wealthy.  

Putting the commitment to parent choice to the test is easy. Tomorrow, we will consider that test.

Mike Seabolt

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool) 
• Upcoming Presentations: Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote), Advancing Improvement in Education Conference (Multiple Presentations), TASSP Assistant Principals’ Workshop (Featured Speaker), North Dakota Association of Secondary School Principals (Keynote), American Association of School Administrators Conference (Multiple Presentations), National Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations)
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

Top LYS Tweets From the Week of September 16, 2012

Here are some tips for getting your campus and/or district to embrace the use of bootleg technology in the classroom.

1. Sell the need for change.  Remember you are dealing with people who are OK with the current situation.  To get them on your side you are going to have to “Show and Sell.”  Show people how student performance and engagement is improved when teachers embed the use of bootleg technology. Constantly talk up the benefits and ease of use.  The more you do this, the more staff that will join you.

2. Start small.  Create a pilot project.  Pick a class, set some parameters, collect some baseline data and then introduce the bootleg technology.  Take lots of notes to speed up the learning curve for others. Track progress, collect end of the project data and then share your results.  The success and/or knowledge gleaned from the pilot project will lessen the risks involved with a larger rollout.

3. Manage expectations.  Bootleg technology is not a silver bullet.  It won’t transform your campus overnight. It does however have the very real potential of making the classroom more efficient, extending leaning beyond the classroom and saving the school money.  Just a slight uptick in any of these three areas should be considered a win.

A number of you in the LYS Nation are now using your own bootleg technology devices to follow Twitter.  If you haven’t done so yet, we want you to join us.  To let you see what you are missing, here are the Top 10 LYS Tweets from the week of September 16, 2012.

1. Each initiative added creates a decline in organizational effectiveness. Adopt the Foundation Trinity. (By @brandyjbaker)

2. Going to Frame the Lesson and use the rest of the Fundamental 5 in my Sunday school lesson to 1st-6th graders next Sunday! (By @mike_metz)

3. Cain's critical writing rubric: The brain moves the pen; forced connection; forced cognition; illusion of accountability.

4. Meeting tip: When you show up late, just grab a seat. When you walk around looking for the sign-in sheet, you are now late and inconsiderate.

5. Discipline is just choosing between what you want now and what you want most. (By @DavidLeeOrr)

6. At ‘Munch & Learn’ with elementary principals. Just finished an activity describing importance of framing. Now elements of learning objectives. (By @LindaHenrie1)

7. At HCDE Legal workshop and look at what I found in the educators resource catalog – The Fundamental 5! (By @mike_metz)

8. When dealing with complainers keep in mind that the loudest barks seldom come from the smartest dogs. (By @ToddWhitaker)

9. Closed campus has greatly improved attendance and has become routine. (By @fletcherturcato)

10. Secondary school teacher/parent agreement: I agree to only believe 1/2 of what your child tells me about you, if you agree to do the same.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool)
• Upcoming Presentations: Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote), Advancing Improvement in Education Conference (Multiple Presentations), TASSP Assistant Principals’ Workshop (Featured Speaker), North Dakota Association of Secondary School Principals (Keynote), American Association of School Administrators Conference (Multiple Presentations), National Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations)
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation