School Boards: Friend of Foe of Education?

Recently I've been attending school board meetings around the Bay Area as I consider seeking a job in public education. I have been to a few board meetings in the past and viewed them as a bit boring but necessary. During these incredibly trying times for public education, especially in California, as I've attended school board meetings in the Bay Area, I have to say my view of these volunteers has sharpened in their favor.

School board members are elected officials who have a variety of reasons for entering this office, but most of them really care about education and the kids they serve. Most boards meet once or twice a month, often for 3-5 hours, and attend several committee meetings, travel to Sacramento for budget and legislative updates, and visit schools. All of this is volunteer time and for some, it means missing work or doing the board work after a long day at the office.

School board meetings are open to the public and several of the meetings I've attended have been heart-wrenching as school children, their parents, and teachers plead with the board to maintain music, special education, and library programs. There is talk of reducing the school year through furlough days (end school in April?) and increasing class size. The California legislature has loosened up requirements so almost anything can be considered to cut costs.  What they should be doing is making decisions about increasing revenue to support education.

School boards do important work that goes unappreciated by most. The members I've observed are trying to make compassionate and wise decisions in the best interest of students. It's not an easy job and if they aren't committed to doing the right thing, supporting the superintendent and the staff, they don''t last long. If you know a school board member and you think he or she is doing a good job, be sure to say "thanks"!

Visionary Leadership, Focus on Success for All Students, and a Dash of Humility

Yesterday the AASA named Marc Johnson of Sanger, California the National Superintendent of the Year. I happened to meet Marc a few weeks ago at a superintendents' conference and was very impressed with him. He is passionate, wise, and committed to kids -- and very modest about his accomplishments -- he was able to turn around a failing district in just a few years - and not with millions in federal funding. Read here to learn more.

What Marc did was focus on a limited set of critical results for student achievement and then depend on teacher collaboration to develop solutions. Good teachers want to improve the learning environment for students and they generally know how to do it. Marc Johnson knew this and initiated professional learning communities in Sanger, and then got out of the way.

Teachers collaborated to develop, implement and measure strategies to make every student successful. Now the district is no longer in school improvement and most of the schools are achieving at high levels. The results are magnificent!

What did the teachers do? They identified minimum standards for students to achieve at every grade level and then committed to help every single child achieve those objectives (rather than pushing them to the next grade unprepared).  Through the PLCs they shared best practices and coached each other. They always focused on the kids - not politics - and the school leadership ensured that everything that worked was measured and replicated.

It's not that complicated, but in most districts, there are too many distractions on 'new programs' to perform miracles rather than focusing on the processes that work.

Productivity Study - On the Right Track, Almost

As reported in EdWeek recently, the Center for American Progress has released their report on the productivity of thousands of school districts across the country.  The study compares district spending per student to achievement on standardized tests. They found that "after adjusting for inflation, education spending per student has nearly tripled over the past four decades. But while some states and districts have spent their additional dollars wisely—and thus shown significant increases in student outcomes—overall student achievement has largely remained flat."

Some of their conclusions are fascinating but not surprising - there were mixed results. For example, some of the higher performing districts spent much less than others, low performing urban school districts spent more than higher-performing similar districts in many cases, and suburban districts with almost identical demographics spent widely ranging amounts. The study did not uncover clear reasons for these differences and similarities - that will be the next study I imagine.

What's lacking in this study, as with many other recent reports on district productivity (the new buzz word), is solid recommendations for what to do to make school districts more efficient. What's missing is the focus on PROCESS improvement.

All work is a process and all processes cost money. Districts lose money every day on disorganized and complicated processes, many driven by outdated or unrealistic policies and assumptions. Until district leadership gathers their cross-functional teams to analyze what they are doing and why they are doing it, productivity will not go up. Using an organized approach with process improvement tools will enable teams to identify wasted time and effort. It will also uncover the sacred cows and the elephants in the corner that must be dealt with and eliminated.

Only by focusing on process redesign can district leaders give more time and money back to student programs that really work and where funding really belongs.

"Bust a Deal and Face the Wheel" - The Craziness of High Stakes Testing!

Sometimes moments in your life become juxtaposed to create a heightened awareness of reality - or -  a new view of it.

I just watched Mad Max - Return to Thunderdome for the umpteenth time and then a few days later during the holidays I listened as my nephew described the depressing situation in his elementary school.  The story thrust a line from the movie into my head - "Bust a deal and face the wheel" uttered by Auntie Entity (Tina Turner).

First, the background. Dan is a gifted special ed teacher who has dedicated his career to helping children, like his mentally disabled brother, achieve the highest levels possible. Yet, it is challenging to say the least. Every day he sees slight progress - he's a professional and recognizes and can measure his students' progress.

Yet, once a year the teachers are forced to administer the state tests. And here's the "deal": if your students pass with adequate yearly progress, the government will leave you alone. But if they don't make the expected progress, and you "bust the deal." you become a failing school and get to "face the wheel" - choosing between longer hours for more drill and kill, getting fired or furloughed, being taken over by a charter organization, etc.

So he is now in a failing school.

Here's the craziness of it all. Our rules around testing in the U.S. seem almost as strange as the rules in Barter Town in the movie, a bureaucracy carved out for a failing system. When Dan tests his kids, they must be tested at their grade level and they must read the test by themselves. Now the population in his school is 25% special education (it is a kind of magnet school) and on top of that, 50% ESL, leaving only 25% of the students without these challenges. He told me of one boy who had just arrived in this country from Africa, who could speak no English, and was directed by the teacher to 'play the game' of marking one circle per question - questions that he could not read!

One test, on one day out of 180 school days, determines the fate of an entire school community. Welcome to Thunderdome! "Two men enter, one man leaves" - 50% drop out rates have some root causes and this is one of them!

Dan is thinking of changing careers, though he really doesn't want to - he loves his students. But for his mental health, he might have to.

We must stop the insanity! Give back the schools to their communities and apply what we know works to make all schools better!

Bill Gates - Education Reform Expert Strikes Again

Once again, billionaire Bill Gates, philanthropist extraordinaire, announces his simplistic solutions for education reform at the Council of Chief School Officers annual meeting (Gates Urges School Budget Overhauls). In his speech, Gates recommends re-aligning school budgets, but then he focuses on specific teacher-related budget cuts like ending tenure (I agree, but for different reasons), eliminating incentive pay for graduate work, and worst of all, creating larger class sizes and reducing the number of teachers.

This article really frustrated me. How can Gates appoint himself an expert on education when he doesn't even take the time to back up his beliefs with research? Focusing solely on teachers is just wrong-headed. Sure teachers can get better, and I am against tenure - I saw enough bad teachers protected not only by the union but by administrators who simply liked them. But teaching is the core competency of education. A lot can be done to improve medical services by improving doctors' skills, for example, but would we undermine them by not rewarding them for keeping up with the profession? 

If we want to improve teaching, let's look at the top performing countries in the recent PISA report from OECD. The top countries view teachers as professionals and spend a lot of money on training them initially and then continuing to improve their skills with professional learning communities. They look at teaching and learning as processes that can be documented, replicated, and measured. 

Let's look at the process of teaching and learn from best practices. Targeting a few specific band-aids and focusing only on outcomes will do nothing to improve teaching and will only alienate those who are doing a great job and not being recognized.

By the way, great teachers are leaving American schools on their own. Several studies have shown that 50% of teachers leave within the first 5 years. This isn't only about pay, it's more about the hostile, bureaucratic, and stifling environment these professionals are working in.