Readers Ask... Explain the Lists

A number of you wrote or called with questions about the LYS Top Ten Lists. The following, from an assistant superintendent, does a good job of summarizing the gist of those questions:

SC,

Can you please provide information on how the list was determined? What criteria and methodology were used?

Thank you.

SC Response

The list is a by-product of a tool my team and I began to develop when I was the State Director of Innovative School Redesign (Texas). I needed a way to determine the effectiveness to redesign interventions in school across different settings.

The short version of the system is that we look at factors that make school performance more difficult: Size of the campus; type of campus; percentage of economic disadvantaged students; percentage of LEP students; mobility; heterogeniality; number of tested grades served; instructional competence; instructional excellence.

Then we run it all thru the system and essentially get a slope rating (a golf term that measures the difficulty of a particular course) for every campus in the state of Texas.

So what is the practical application of this tool? Based on our numbers, in your district (Acceptable Masked Title I) High School, with an overall score of 153 is outperforming (Recognized Masked Affluent) High School with an overall score of 151.7. Think of it as Moneyball for schools, (Acceptable Masked Title 1) High School is doing more with less.

We don’t make our list public nor do we share access to the tool, because quite honestly, all it does is make the coasting, affluent schools of the world mad.

Hope this helps.

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/4ydqd4t
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation
• Get the Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan App at the App Store – Fun 5 Plans
• Confirmed 2012 Presentations: Oklahoma Association of Middle School Principal’s Mid-Winter Conference; NASSP Conference; NASB Conference

A Reader Writes... (A Look in the Mirror - Part 1)

In response to the 5/24/11 post “A Look In The Mirror,” a LYS Principal writes:

The 'troop rallying' has already begun. During a post-TAKS conference, I reminded an individual teacher not to define herself by just two numbers. I was actually proud of her sincere disappointment at the sub-pop scores in her grade and content area. That reality shocked us all (yes, I cried like a baby when I saw it on the screen for the first time). Even with secure data analysis and valid RTL programming - there can be surprises even for the best of us...

But all said and done - another LYS 'baby' school will stand on its own two feet this year. Proudly, as Recognized WITHOUT ANY exceptions!!!

Way to go Bears - thanks for believing even when you didn't fully understand it all yet - you Rock!

SC Response

Great attitude. Improvement is measured by progress forward and the pace of change. The goal is to get from Point A to Point B. Re-assess and then take off for Point C. And even for a rookie, you understand an important component of continuous improvement, disappointment. When you are satisfied and/or resigned to your fate it is very difficult to find the motivation to push yourself to get better. But when you are disappointed, that means that something is lacking. Which means there is something that you can do to improve your lot.

I had a former employee tell me that she only figured out why I was a great principal to work for, after I was gone. She said, “No matter what we accomplished, you were always vaguely disappointed. Which meant that we couldn’t slow down, we had to keep pushing ourselves. Your replacement kept telling us how we were the best and no one could do what we do. Since we were the best, we slowed down. And now we are in trouble again.”

Now here is my secret. I was always vaguely disappointed. But not with the staff and students, with myself. I could see that we weren’t getting results that I thought were commiserate with our effort. Which meant the system wasn’t efficient, which meant I wasn’t doing my part. Hence their hard work and diminished results reflected on my value to the team. As I said, disappointing. My course of action? More thinking, more working, so my school could have more achieving.

Congratulations on your success in a tough accountability year. I know a lot of your non-LYS peers in your district took significant steps backwards. The perils of believing the TPM hype. You and your campus are poised to be extraordinary in the next couple of years. Don’t lose sight of that.

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/4ydqd4t

Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

A Reader Shares... Moving Again

A LYS Principal shares:

"Sean, after taking two high schools from AU to Recognized, followed by a one year of working for a district that lied about wanting to change, I am back in the game!

The good news is for the first time my new school is primed for change, with the staff already engaged in much of the initial work. Oh, and the raise is nice too! The LYS path is not always straight or easy, but it always leads me to a better place."

SC Response
I’ve been waiting for you to get a campus that would embrace you. With two rating jumps a year the being the established norm for you and your campuses, it’s better than even money that you, your staff and students will be celebrating an exemplary rating this time next year.

Best of luck and call me if you need me.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Latest School Rankings - Part 5)

In response to the post, "Brezina Writes... (Latest School Rankings - Part 4...", a reader writes:

“At our school, many teachers say that students are put in their classes to cause a teacher to fail. If that is a strategy that is being used, that is unprofessional and can only harm the entire school. It causes dissension among the teachers that have had this done to them to those whom have not had that done and creates an almost hostile environment toward those teachers and then those same teachers use the system to keep their jobs or to cause more harm to others. Then you have an administrator that has not used LYS to cause success and positive interactions. You just have bad management. When this type of system is in place it only causes a school to fail."

SC Response
First, let me say that I have never worked with a campus leader that has scheduled students in a class for the purpose of making a teacher fail. I have yet to meet a principal that is willing to write off a whole class of students just to run off a teacher. In fact, I find the opposite to be true. Almost every principal I have worked with does their best to make sure that student exposure to bad teachers is minimized and exposure to good teachers is maximized. That means that often the best teachers are assigned the toughest kids. What I remind principals is that when they do that, they have to keep the heat on the teachers that don’t have the tough kids, otherwise you are punishing competence and rewarding incompetence.

Now what I have seen is a principal move a teacher she doesn’t like to cover the ISS class. This earns my immediate scorn and displeasure. My belief is that my absolute best teacher (Hello, Coach Boyd) has to be my ISS teacher. After all, that is where my most academically fragile students congregate.

In regard to your campus, what you have to consider is who is doing the complaining. Is it the rookie teacher who has the toughest intro level classes? Or is it the tenured teacher who is asked to teach a tough section along with an advanced or honors section? Some teachers feel that they have “earned” the right to teach senior AP English, and then convince themselves that those classes are successful only due to their “master teacher” status.

If it is the latter, my advice is to do your best to ignore the chatter. They will eventually get happy when their students start to perform, or they won’t and they will leave. It will depend on what they value more, student success or adult comfort. On the student centered campus, in the long run, both options are acceptable.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

Latest School Rankings

The Children at Risk / Houston Chronicle 2010 Texas School Rankings were just released. First, if you are happy with your ranking, a hearty “Congratulations!”

Second, much like the Newsweek formula and the Drop-out Factory formula, the Children at Risk formula is fundamentally flawed. Remember the old saying, “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”? You can revise that to include “Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics and Agendas.”

Third, in spite of a flawed, agenda driven rubric (and what ranking system isn’t: See BCS). I am a proponent for regular measurement to gauge growth and improvement. So don’t get hung up on where you rank right now. Because I can argue that your rating is completely justified and completely arbitrary and win both arguments. Just look at where you were last year, where you are this year, and aim for significantly better next year.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...