LYS Principal Search - High School (Northeast Texas)

 LYS Executive Search

~ High School Principal ~

A large, Northeast Texas school district is searching for its next high school principal

The successful candidate will have

•  Demonstrated leadership success as a secondary campus administrator
• Demonstrated success educating at-risk student populations
• LYS training and experience, preferred

Information of note

• Large 4A/5A high school campus
• Urban, suburban setting
• Diverse student population
• Competitive salary and benefits

Qualified and interested candidates submit the following to Search@LeadYourSchool.com

• Letter of interest
• Resume
• Administrator’s certifications
• Two letters of reference
• Recent campus performance data

Application Deadline: June 18, 2013

Search Consultant: E. Don Brown

LYS Executive Search

(832) 477-5323

LYS Nation, once again a school district is targeting you to be its next campus leader. Time to step up again!

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: Texas Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

A Reader Writes... CSCOPE is the Root of All Evil (Part 4:1)

In response to the 2/15/13 post, “It Seems That CSCOPE is the Root of All Evil (Part 4 of 4),” a reader writes:

SC,

If I were Dr. Labay, I would be furious about the way this was presented.

SC Response

JV,

I'm genuinely curious. What about this do you think would make him furious? 

Looking forward to your response.

SC,

I felt that it was degrading and insulting.  However, I am genuinely impressed with your astoundingly quick response.  It was "Anti-CSCOPE Argument #11.” 

It portrays him as, “An evil genius / incompetent... hood winked a whole State..." 

The response WAS good and thorough, but the introduction was in a negative manner.  It's like "Rapist caught" and slandering an innocent person, then later, stating that it was an error... that the accused was a wonderful person.  There is a statistically-significant amount of people, when data are presented in the negative, they believe / accept it, and, regardless of trying to correct it, always has a stain on it, a questionable belief.

SC Response

A-ha.  Now I understand. Kind of like, "The controversial CSCOPE program..."  But here is the sad part.  That wasn’t my introduction.  As with all the Anti-CSCOPE arguments, the characterizations came straight from the anti-blog sites and related comments.  I agree that it is insulting and I understand your disgust.  I felt the same way.  Which is why I wrote the posts.  Those who hate something are publicly vocal.  Those who love something are privately vocal.  And those who just find something useful say nothing.  Knowing that, I decided to defend a useful tool or at least show that the Anti-CSCOPE Loonies do not have logic on their side. 

The primacy / recency effect tells us what happens last is what we remember most vividly. So...

Dr. Labay and the CSCOPE team are consummate professionals who built a remarkably useful tool in relative obscurity.  Their reward? To be publicly insulted and denigrated by a power hunger state senator and a host of fringe actors.  It makes me sad, because my Momma raised me to believe that Texans are better than that.  I wonder what their Momma’s think?

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: Texas Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

A Superintendent Writes... Texas "Sort of" Forced the Adoption of CSCOPE

A LYS Superintendent sent in the following:

SC, 

Today I was asked a question regarding CSCOPE, textbooks, and TEKS.  Here was my response.

First, state adopted text books “sort of” don’t exist anymore. Which is to say there are state adopted textbooks, but districts are longer limited to using just them.  The old EMAT system and textbook exchange mechanism seems to be on the way out.  That changed in 2011 with the advent of IMA (Instructional Materials Allotment).  Now districts get a flat amount for instructional materials and can use that money as they please... sort of.  The board has to certify that the money will be used to purchase materials that satisfy the TEKS, and you spend the money first and THEN you send in a reimbursement request to TEA who then decides if they will give you money or not.   

Needless to say the guidelines for IMA money have been developed on the fly (TEA is making up the rules as they go) and the process has not been simple. So, the idea of “state adopted textbooks” has very little meaning anymore, even though I would not go as far as to call the term meaningless.  More on textbooks in a moment.

CSCOPE contains content, but that was not the original intent or design.  CSCOPE started life as a scope and sequence of the tested curriculum built around the TEKS.  The TEKS offer the scope of a curriculum with no sequence; therefore the TEKS cannot be considered a curriculum.  To confuse matters, the State Board of Education determines the TEKS, however TEA determines which TEKS are tested.  Needless to say the prescribed TEKS and the tested TEKS are not the same.  There is much criticism, including some criticism from the State Board of Education (yes, that is a circular statement), that the prescribed TEKS are too many and too broad, which is likely true.  This is probably why TEA trims the prescribed TEKS down to a set of tested TEKS, but I don’t know that for a fact.  CSCOPE came in to provide a curriculum aligned to the tested TEKS because as the tests got harder and harder and the passing standards got higher and higher, it became obvious that blindly teaching the overly broad prescribed TEKS without a scope and sequence was counterproductive, and in fact harmful.  

CSCOPE content came in because it soon became clear that once a curriculum was prescribed, many teachers had no idea how to design lessons that were at the rigor and relevance demanded by the curriculum.  The vast majority of teachers thought rigor was piling on more work, which was not what was needed.  Example lessons were then added to CSCOPE, and they were meant to be just that, examples.  But some district and school leaders with no background in curriculum or instruction demanded that CSCOPE lessons be taught with 100% fidelity.  Of course some teachers resented this and pushed back. Then add to that, not every CSCOPE lesson is great, and some are downright bad.  As is the case in every instructional resource I have reviewed and/or used.

  

Now, back to textbooks.  Textbooks theoretically taught the TEKS, and one could make the loose argument that a textbook even provides a scope and sequence and hence is a "curriculum."  I don't buy that argument, but I see how it can be made.  However, blind allegiance to the textbook leads to another problem.  The prescribed TEKS and the tested TEKS change frequently, yet textbooks were sometimes in adoption for a decade before being updated.  How many times were the state approved textbooks supposed to updated, but when the time came to do so the State found no money, so everyone continued to use what they had?  This led to teachers using textbooks aligned to a set of TEKS (prescribed and tested) that in some instances no longer existed.  I know for a fact at one point we were several years into TAKS still using state approved textbooks in math and science that were aligned to TAAS!  Something had to give.  A tool was needed that was cheap, aligned, and fluid enough to stay up with the decisions of the state board of education, the legislature, and TEA.  Textbooks became part of the problem.  CSCOPE became the solution.  Although not a perfect solution, it is a much better solution that the old "state approved textbook" model, and it solves the problems of cost, alignment, and fluidity.

  

As to your question, “Where do I get more information?”

That is the best question of all.  Part of the problem is there is no centralized location to get the facts.  Some of us know the facts because we live it.  But to help, here are some links:

 http://leadyourschool.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-superintendents-corner-c-scope.html

 http://leadyourschool.blogspot.com/2013/02/it-seems-that-cscope-is-root-of-all.html

 http://leadyourschool.blogspot.com/2013/02/it-seems-that-cscope-is-root-of-all_13.html

 http://leadyourschool.blogspot.com/2013/02/it-seems-that-cscope-is-root-of-all_14.html

 http://leadyourschool.blogspot.com/2013/02/it-seems-that-cscope-is-root-of-all_15.html

From the State Board of Education:

 http://www.texasisd.com/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=33&num=132994

 http://www.texasisd.com/article_135183.shtml

SC Response

CSCOPE is a direct result of the “Law of Unintended Consequences.”  When amateurs and idiots introduce agenda driven mandates and rules into a system, the system will respond.  The interesting thing is that in the face of these rules and mandates that were designed to prove a failed system, educators continued to work to serve students and follow the rules.  That’s who we are.  CSCOPE was built to help teachers teach and keep pace with accountability.  And the crazy thing is that it actually is a decent tool.  But remember the agenda of many of those in our legislature is to prove that public education has failed.  So the response to continued success is to starve the beast, ratchet up the accountability and attack the tools of success.

Yet we keep voting for the same people year after year.  For all of our smarts...

  

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: Texas Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

A Reader Asks... CSCOPE is the Root of All Evil (Part 3:1)

In response to the 2/14/13 post, “It Seems That CSCOPE is the Root of All Evil (Part 3 of 4),” a reader asks:

Mr. Cain,

Have you actually used this mess in-depth, in a real classroom, with real students?

SC Response

That is an excellent question!  To which the short answer is “No.”

Now before you tune me out due to a perceived lack of credibility, let me make my case.

I haven’t taught in the classroom since 1995, when I became an Assistant Principal.  At that time, accountability was a non-factor and the concept of a scope and sequence was mostly theoretic.  In practice, you started on page one of the textbook and tried to get to the end of the book by Memorial Day.

As an assistant principal, the need for a scope and sequence wasn’t even on my radar.  I worked at a large, inner-city high school. Preventing gang fights and drive-by shootings occupied almost all of my thoughts and actions.  To this day, I have worked with schools as tough as that one, but never tougher. 

As a principal, my perspective expanded.  I saw that my teachers were struggling. The state changed standards and accountability meaning that essentially each one of them had to reinvent the wheel while still driving the car.  So in 1998, I went to my district’s C/I department and roughly outlined the need for a common scope and sequence (we didn’t know what to call it then).  The Assistant Superintendent for C/I listened to me and said, "That would be hard.  We don’t do that.”

When I asked, “Exactly what do you do?” the meeting was promptly ended.

As an Assistant Superintendent, again my perspective expanded.  I now saw that what my teachers were struggling with on my former campus wasn’t unique.  That the issue was the same on all of my campuses.  So in 2000, I pulled together the then astronomical amount of $100,000.00 and went to the service center and contracted to have a common scope and sequence (I still don’t think we knew what to call it then) built for my campuses.  The resulting product was so bad and I was so vocal about how bad it was that the service center refunded the money.  At that point, my teachers were in cut, paste, and borrow mode. Luckily, Aldine ISD and Cypress-Fairbanks ISD (both districts had over 50,000 students at the time) were becoming more purposeful in the resources they were providing for teachers.  And in Harris County (the Houston area), competitive cooperation among school districts was encouraged by our superintendents (Brezina, Paige, Neeley, Berry, Donaldson, Guthrie, Merrill, and Folkes just to name a few).

When I moved to the state, what was immediately apparent was that the schools that struggled the most - provided the least amount to support to teachers. First and foremost was the fact that if there wasn’t a common scope and sequence, a yearly decline in student performance was a foregone conclusion.  At that point, in the early 2000’s, Dr. Neeley used her charm (big stick) to encourage (make) the service centers to actually pool their resources and create a tool useful to teachers across the state.  Hence the genesis of CSCOPE.

I have since lived on campuses and in classrooms, working with educators to maximize their efficiency (measured by adult effort expended for levels of student performance).  Bottom line, teachers using a district provided common scope and sequence have students who are more successful than teachers without such a tool.  The tool is imperfect, but it does improve every year.  And again, though at times it doesn’t feel like it, you are much more effective in the classroom when you use it than when you do not.

As for me, I’m a coach.  And like all coaches, the game I played only resembles the game played by today’s players.  But my job is no longer to play the game, my job is to prepare the players.     

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: Texas Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

We Can All Do Something

I don't have the words to express the deep sorrow and pride I have for the teachers and students in Moore, Oklahoma.  Just prayers for the victims and survivors, their families, their community and the responders.

If you have the means and feel compelled to do something, I suggest the following, contact the American Red Cross.

Give blood.

Give platelets.

Give money.

www.redcross.org

www.redcrossblood.org

www.redcross.org/charitable-donations

Top LYS Tweets From the Week of May 12, 2013

A number of you in the LYS Nation are now Twitter users.  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 May 12, 2013.

1. Students in Mr. Stovall's math class. "When we write about it, it makes it click in our head." And, "Yeah, I remember it better this year."

2. Is it critical thinking when we constantly tell our students what to do instead of giving them the autonomy to show what they can do? (By @DrJerryRBurkett)

3. Your weekly reminder: It is amazing what happens to instructional rigor when you have students talk purposefully and write critically.

4. Every year I observe that the increase in student discipline issues in May are driven by the lack of instruction and purpose in the classroom.

5. Just because the students in the back of the room are working on SOME thing doesn't mean that they are working on YOUR thing. Work the Power Zone.

6. Let's be honest about our practice. In class we're not "Giving students some free time." What we're doing is "Stealing student opportunity."

7. A big difference between integrating and infusing technology. What are students doing with the technology? That is what matters. (By @johnfalino1)

8. Of course I believe in luck. Because with hard work, preparation and flexible thinking I manufacture it daily, by the truck load.

9. If you don't close your lessons, you have to own the lack of retention that is impeding the performance of your students.

10. What could you and your students do with an extra 18 days of instruction? That's what you give away in a year when you end 5 minutes early each class.

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: Texas Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations)
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

A New LYS Principal Search - Middle School (Northeast Texas)

LYS Executive Search

~ Middle School Principal ~

A large, Northeast Texas school district is searching for its next middle school principal

The successful candidate will have

• Demonstrated leadership success as a campus administrator
• Principal experience preferred
• Secondary experience preferred
•  Demonstrated success educating at-risk student populations
• LYS training and experience, preferred

Information of note

• Mid-sized middle school campus
• Urban, suburban setting
• Diverse student population
•  Competitive salary and benefits

Qualified and interested candidates submit the following to Search@LeadYourSchool.com

•  Letter of interest
• Resume
• Administrator’s certifications
• Two letters of reference
• Recent campus performance data

Application Deadline: June 18, 2013

Search Consultant: E. Don Brown

LYS Executive Search

(832) 477-5323

LYS Nation, Once again a school district is targeting you to be its next campus leader. Time to step up again!

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: Texas Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook