A Reader Submits... The Urban School Myth

A LYS Reader submits…

"In my career I can now say I have worked in just about every type of school in Texas. I have worked in 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, and 5A schools. I have worked in schools that served a wealthy population, and I have worked in schools that are 90% low SES. I have worked in suburban schools, rural schools, and urban schools. These schools have been spread around north Texas, east Texas, and south Texas. That leaves only west Texas that I have yet to experience, but I have about 10 to 15 years to go, so I will probably make it there too.

I was somewhat worried when I went to my first urban school, having spent my career up to that point in rural and suburban schools. You drive to work the first day and see the gang graffiti and you are worried. You see the kids walk in the first day with their hard appearance and you are more worried. And then the myth starts to unravel.

The verdict: Kids are kids everywhere, period. Urban students certainly have a lot to overcome, but when it comes to culture, music, and dreams, I have found kids everywhere remarkably similar. I have found very few kids anywhere that I can’t talk to, relate to, and get through to. Yet urban schools are the proverbial “tough nut” to crack. Why?

Certainly attendance is a tougher issue in urban schools, but not tremendously so. Other than attendance, urban schools have few problems that Foundation Trinity can’t cure. Other than attendance, I have not found the issues in low SES urban schools to be tremendously tougher than low SES suburban or rural schools, regardless of school size.

So why the “urban myth”? That is, most people I meet are convinced beyond a doubt that urban schools are tougher places to succeed in than other schools. I propose the urban myth of schools exists as a convenient excuse for leaders and teachers who can’t get the job done. Get a good curriculum, teach it using high yield instructional strategies, keep the game honest with common assessments, and urban students will do just fine.

There is one caveat: You have to truly care about the kids. Low SES students will write adults off quickly if they sense the adults don’t care. Unfortunately, my experience in urban schools is that too many adults don’t truly care about the kids that poison the well for the rest of us . Of course this is true in every low SES school I have worked in, regardless of size. I suspect urban districts get the “tough” title due to the huge number of kids they fail to adequately educate. A 2A low SES school doesn’t fail enough kids to cause an outcry. Sort of like killing: when does murder turn into genocide; one death, ten deaths, ten thousand deaths? How many low SES kids have to be under educated before we point a finger and say that’s wrong? Fifty is not enough, but five thousand in a concentrated area causes a noticeable problem for society. Are the fifty any less of a travesty?

So there it is. Give a damn, teach your kids, seek ways to make kids succeed, and I bet you the urban myth will vanish."

SC Response
There is an essential truth at the center of the myth and it is not the kids, as you have observed. The truth to the myth is scale. And the issue of scale works both ways. Let’s take scale as it is generally considered, “Big.” As you increase in size, you increase not only the number of problems that you deal with, but as those problems interact with each other you magnify their effect and complexity. Yes, the campus may have more staff, but personnel equations are linear. Complexity equations are exponential. What occurs at your typical, large urban school is that the adults are attempting to manage complex exponential systems with antiquated linear practices. When the inevitable failure occurs, institutional myopia focuses on the “obvious” problem – students. This makes about as much sense as blaming the piece of paper when I can’t solve a calculus problem using only algebra strategies.

Scale also causes issues when it is, “Small.” Most small urban schools were once large. But for any number of reasons, the bulk of the student population has moved to other schools. Instead of recognizing the reality of the current situation and changing, the school stubbornly clings to the big school model, trying to be everything to everyone. This quickly turns into being “nothing to nobody.” Sadly, the more eminent this particular fate, the more desperate the adult battle becomes to not change.

For the small urban school model, take a look at the truly successful charter schools (and there are a number of them). What the good and great charters understand is something that escapes the typical educator. It is this, “Know your niche, exploit your niche, be expert in your niche, but most importantly, ignore anything that is not your niche.” This is how you make small urban schools work and work exceedingly well.

I believe the issues of scale are leadership issues. To expect teachers to rise up and overcome every issue the machine throws at them is a fool’s dream. You can not spend all day, everyday in the classroom, teaching at full speed and have the time to come up with the big and mid-sized picture solutions to system problems. That is the responsibility of leadership. And when leadership does not engage at full speed and with conviction, the urban school myth becomes ever more entrenched.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Interview Prep - Part 4)

In response to the posts on interview prep, a reader writes:

“Although you are right, there are things that can be learned in this type of interview, there is danger working in these districts. Remember, you work for who hired you. If the superintendent hires you, that's who you work for. If a committee of teachers hire you, that's who you work for. In general a committee of teachers will try to maintain status quo. Status quo is OK if the status is the school is great. There are very few great schools, especially high schools."

SC Response
You are right about the lack of truly great schools. And here are some of my thoughts related to that fact.

1. It’s not that there isn’t an overwhelming desire to be great. There is. Ask 100 people if they want to be great. At least 95 will say “yes.” But ask those same 100 people if they are willing to put in the work necessary to be great and the number of positive responses will drop dramatically. My guess is that 50 people with a positive response would be a safe bet. But then watch those 50. Less than 10 actually have the discipline, focus and work ethic to be great. If fact, to be great at one thing, you have to be deficient in other things. You can not have it all. Scary thought isn’t it, and one that is completely contrary to what every advertisement wants you to believe. The great one’s obsess and grind. Everyone else goes home and has a life. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but I am saying you will be much happier if you quit lying to yourself.

2. When you visit “great” schools you quickly notice one of three things. Either the campus is focused on “stuff and things,” and it is the stuff and things that they do exceptionally well that people consider great. For example, the high SES school that has earned blue ribbon awards yet does not academically outperform its peers. Or, it is a niche campus that is bragging about the “success” of the niche. For example, the early college high school that hangs its hat on the fact that 95% of its graduates go on to college. Or it is the low SES campus that is consistently outperforming its peers, but will not concede that it is great because they recognize that their kids haven’t even begun to reach their potential.

But to tie back to the premise of interviews and who to work for, you have to know who you are. If you are a regular reader of the blog and a koozie carrying member of the LYS Nation; go for great. We work too hard, our students’ needs are too extreme, and life is too short to just be ordinary.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (The Recent Posts)

In response to the recent posts, a reader writes:

“Sean, I have been reading, enjoying, and learning from your blog a for few months now. I had the opportunity to hear you at the Rigor, Relevance and Relationship conference as well, and fortunately for me, I have a mentor that is philosophically in tune with the things that you write and say.

I have to humbly admit that I've never felt like jumping out of my seat before and yelling ‘YAH BABY,’ before today's posting. You hit the nail on the head with your points made, and it's that exact leadership philosophy that 'young' (in terms of years of leadership experience) leaders crave to lead them and the rapidly changing schools we serve.

In the everyday working school environment, the reality is that the principal HAS to step up to the plate and at least take a whole hearted swing. And when they don't; whether they can’t or won’t lead in the style that is necessary; the Superintendent needs to do his or her part in recognizing this underachievement and do ‘the right thing for kids.’ In other words, they have to make sure that their principals lead or leave.

This whole business about ‘finding the right fit,’ and ‘making the right match,’ for personalities of the adults on campuses is bogus when 100’s of days of instruction are at stake. Finding leaders who have the guts, courage, skills, and stamina to look the pitcher in the eye and say, ‘bring it on - all the heat- because I'm ready to swing and I'm pointed to center field,’ will be the pivotal point for our true success.”

SC Response
First of all, YAH BABY!!! The fact that there are educators like you out there who are fired up about school leadership and student success, makes hosting the Lead Your School network exciting and worth doing.

Second, you are spot on. If school leaders do not fully engage, then they are effectively limiting the success of the students, the staff and the school. When I was responsible for a team of principals, they knew that not fully engaging was the unforgivable sin. It was OK to aim too high and miss. But hedge your bet, or take the path of least resistance and diminished productivity and your position with the district was tenuous at best.

Third, I completely agree with your stance on "finding the right fit" for the school. This is district code for maintaining the status quo. Unless, the campus in question is significantly outperforming its peers, the status quo needs to be replaced, not maintained.

A quick aside:
High SES campuses, outperforming your peers means significantly outperforming similar high SES campuses. It does not mean outperforming the low SES campus on the other side of the district. And before you say that you do both of those things, double check your data. The interesting thing about high SES schools is that they all perform about the same. If necessity is the mother of invention, it seems that academically fragile students are the mother of pedagogy improvement.

Another somewhat related aside:
I was working with a mid-to-high SES district three years ago. The Superintendent (philosophically in tune with, and a friend of Brezina) had me assess his secondary campuses and address his principals. Here is the summary of my report and presentation:

Assessment
1. All six HS campuses were operating well below their potential, even though they were significantly outperforming the much poorer, surrounding schools.
2. Five of the campuses had the opportunity to be great.
3. One of the campuses had the opportunity to be World Class.

Presentation
1. The one campus, identify the best high schools in the country. Beat them soundly.
2. The other five campuses, catch the one campus.

The immediate response
1. Three of the six principals resigned within one week (one of them resigned five minutes after I finished speaking).

The on-going result
1. The one is making significant progress at becoming World Class.
2. The other five are giving chase at full speed.

All of this to say, if you are going to work, sweat, stress and bleed for the job, why not be great?

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn…

The Curse of the "Halo" Effect

This has been a good week for articulating the pattern of ongoing observations. Here’s one that just hit me like a bolt of lightning as I listened to yet another school leader try to explain to me that his high SES schools aren't the problem, it’s his low SES schools.

Here’s the insight, “The lottery winner luck of working in an affluent zip code is the most cancerous impediment to instructional innovation facing our profession.”

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn…

Blog Post: Public Schools Out Perform Private Schools (It's All About Instruction)

This post was inspired by:

Study: Teachers, curricula help public schools outscore private peers
Certified math teachers with ongoing professional development and more modern curricula help public-school students do better than their private-school counterparts in math, according to a new study. "Schools that hired more certified teachers and had a curriculum that de-emphasized learning by rote tended to do better on standardized math tests," said University of Illinois education professor Sarah Lubienski, a study co-author. "And public schools had more of both." ScienceDaily (2/25) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090226093423.htm

I for one am not surprised by this. I have long held this opinion and actually have related evidence (somewhat validated by the study mentioned above) that justifies my belief. Here’s my case. In the past eight years, I have personally visited well over a thousand campuses and have observed thousands classrooms. I also have access to the data collected from over 40,000 R4 Hyper-monitoring observations. Here is what is painfully obvious from all this information:

Across settings, campuses, districts and regions, the quality of instruction in classrooms is very consistent. Unfortunately, it is consistently mediocre. The variable is the academic foundation of the students in the school. High SES students that receive mediocre instruction do OK on achievement tests and pass most of their classes. Low SES students that receive mediocre instruction generally do poorly on achievement tests and struggle in most of their classes.

What is powerful about this fact is that it makes improving schools very do-able. Just improve the overall quality of instruction in every class. When this occurs, low SES students do better on achievement tests and pass more of their courses. High SES students simply blow the roof off achievement tests. Or as one principal I work with stated with glee, “we destroyed the curve.”

So how does this relate to private schools? Well, we learned about the power of changing instruction, not at the high SES schools, but at the low SES schools. The high SES schools were comfortable doing the same things they had always done. On the other hand, increasing accountability standards are forcing low SES schools to change just to survive. In this case, the staffs of low SES campuses have taken the lead in illuminating best instructional practices that can no longer be ignored.

Who are the only schools with higher SES students than a high SES public school? The answer,of course, is private schools. Take high SES students, parents who are OK with paying for private tuition and tutors, small class sizes and non-certified teachers and what you have is the recipe for 1950’s quality instruction.

For all the flack that public schools and their staff face, I would blind draw a teacher from a “good” urban public school over a teacher from a “great” private school to join the staff on my campus any day of the week.

Your turn…