A Reader's Recommendation

A recommendation for your book stack from one of Lead Your School's readers:

You have to read this one soon. It is the hot book in politician offices right now.

“The Global Achievement Gap,” by Tony Wagner
ISBN 978-0-465-00229-0

When you get it, read closely pages 43 through 48 for his discussion of what is (in effect) the R4 Foundation Trinity.

Thanks reader, I'll order it this week.

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…

Blog Post: School Reform – Fact or Fiction?

Having fought in the trenches of the school improvement battle for a number of years now, I have observed that there is a formula for both success and failure in the effort to reform schools.

First, the basic formula for failure:

1. Be overly concerned with politics.
2. Spend a lot of time coming up with the perfect plan.
3. Have lots of moving parts in your perfect plan.
4. Have a long time window (at least 3 years).
5. Go slow.
6. Ignore the fundamental of quality instruction.
7. Pay attention to morale
8. Don’t upset anyone, if you do, immediately stop what you are doing.
9. Rely on plug and play programs to fix “those” kids.

These are the most common elements of failure and they doom most improvement initiatives. They are insidious because each element seems to either represent a logical, prudent and/or easy path to take. But in each case, the path of least resistance leads to ruin.

Fortunately, there is also a basic formula for success:

1. Do the opposite of the Failure Formula.
2. Train staff in the fundamentals of quality instruction, classroom management and school operations. Continuously review, revisit and re-train.
3. Hold everyone accountable for executing the fundamentals.
4. Provide a common scope and sequence.
5. Provide short-term common assessments.
6. Hyper-monitor instruction.
7. Provide external coaching.

That’s it, the executive summary of any successful school improvement plan. E-mail me if you want to discuss adapting this plan to your school or district.

So the answer to the title question, “school reform – fact or fiction,” is “yes”, depending on which formula you use.

Your turn…

Rules For The First Year Principal

I was recently at a small, rural elementary school. The school serves approximately 300 PK – 3rd grader. I was meeting with the principal to work on some district initiatives, but the conversation soon moved to another topic all together.

The principal is in her first year and she finds that she struggling with herself. Like most first year principals she has promised herself that she will be different. She won’t turn into the stereotypical, me-versus-you, autocrat. I asked her how that was working for her and she admitted not well. I listened to her for a bit and what she is going through is typical for the majority of first year principals.

So I gave her my “What your professors and bosses didn’t tell you about being a principal” rules. If you are asking why I would know the rules and not professors and bosses, the answer is experience. Most education professors haven’t been principals and most bosses don’t remember what they went through during their first year as a principal (after all, it generally was a long time ago). I on the other hand, spend a lot of time with first year principals on their campuses trying to speed up their learning curve.

Here are the rules:

1. The first year of being a principal is the steepest learning curve you will face in your entire career. This is primarily due to the fact that you are now accountable for everything. This forces you to consider every decision in light of this fact. It slows you down right when you are starting a job that moves faster than any position you have ever had before. Don’t worry though; Year 2 will be much easier.

2. The more dysfunctional the campus, the more autocratic you must be. This is tough, because this is not who you want to be and not what you signed up for. But your first priority is to lead the campus. Set the vision, set the expectation and enforce both. As the staff builds capacity and understanding, you will be able to become more collaborative.

3. Don’t worry about morale. Don’t even get in this fight. You’re new, you represent change. New and change is the recipe for a dip in morale. Instead focus on student performance, especially short-term measures. As the staff sees student performance improve, their morale will bounce back. Performance Leads Morale!

4. You have a honeymoon, use it. As soon as you get on the job, make the changes that need to be made. Don’t wait to assess the situation for a semester, do it now. The staff may not like it, but they all expect something different to happen. And the best time to make a mistake is when your boss expects one or doesn’t yet care.

5. If you want a friend get a dog. The Principal’s job is to lead. If you do it right, someone is always upset with you. Your job is to ensure that student needs are being met and the school is improving. You can aspire to being respected and admired, but don’t fret over whether or not you are liked.

Your turn…

What's In My Reading Stack

Here’s the list of books that I have finished in the past month and a brief review for each:

The Five Temptations of a CEO, by Patrick Lencioni
A good, quick read. Put it on your list.

The Dip, by Seth Godin
Skip this one unless you are a fan of the author (I am). Cotton candy reading.

George Washington: First in War, First in Peace, by James Crutchfield
Skip this one unless you are a huge George Washington fan (I am). There are better Washington biographies, such as “His Excellency”. I only learned one interesting fact – the British Navy flew their flags at half mast when Washington died.

Blogging for Dummies, by Susannah Garner and Shane Birley
Read only if you want to start a blog.

Here’s the list of books that I’m currently reading:

Small is the New Big, by Seth Godwin
Interesting.

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Awesome.

Revolutionary Management, by Alan Axlerod
Good, but dry.

The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Interesting, but dry.

Send me your list.

Professional Reading: The Must List

Larry Winget writes in his 2007 book, It’s Called Work for a Reason, that if you don’t read at least five professional books a year, you are a sorry leader.

Now I wouldn’t go that far, but if you don’t make a conscious effort to read one or two books a semester, you run the very real risk of becoming complacent and being left behind by our field.

As an example, last summer I was speaking to over 70 administrators in a struggling district. As I was talking, I noticed that the audience seemed lost so I stopped. I asked them to raise their hand if they had read anything by the following authors, Schmoker, Fullan, DuFour, or Marzano. Not more than 10 hands were raised for any one author. So I followed the teachable moment and we created a practical must read list for school leaders. Here’s the list:

Good to Great, by Jim Collins (the modern classic)

Results Now, by Mike Schmoker (the blueprint for rapid change)

Corp Business, by David H. Freedman (a handbook for action based leadership)

The Moral Imperative of School Leadership, by Michael Fullan (our big picture)

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell (little changes for big effects)

What books would you add?