"There is no one left to blame"

Presenting at the National School Board Association’s national conference was a significant milestone for the Anson County Schools. Presenting on a national stage was both affirming and validation for leadership and the dedicated work of our staff at all levels.

An audience of school board members from across the nation listened with great interest of the work to make transparent the challenging work of transformation.

Several school board members indicated their systems were in turnaround. This opened the door for a conversation about the difference between transformation and turnaround.

In the end, most agreed that there is a significant difference between the two. To that end, I was asked to what degree was our staff albeit teachers or administrators aware as well as committed to transformation. I replied less than fifty percent but we were working on developing greater awareness, understanding, and support for transformative work.

A key in creating capacity is being clear that it is the system not people that must be fixed. In doing so, we cannot blame people past or present for our current situation. We must shift as well from seeking new programs to deeper, more critical examination of our practices.

The implementation gap ‐ the gap between expected or desired outcomes and actual results is almost entirely related to deep implementation or the lack of. As we have discussed before, implementation is predicated on those factors associated with personal meaning, relevance as well as a person's sense of purpose, mission, beliefs, and guiding principles. Many of these, if not all, shape habits, conveniences, and behaviors.

We need to look no further than our own personal preferences to understand the challenges, obstacles, or barriers to change. Therefore, leadership cannot be upset, angry, or frustrated when others, who have not had time to fully reflect, ponder, think, process, or consider different practices are reluctant or hesitant to change practice.

Central to transformation is the ownership of dissatisfaction with current performance results. It does little good to have dissatisfaction residing only with a few. We know the vision of "all means all" means little to those who are not dissatisfied that not all our students are performing at proficient in the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics.

Further, the lack of dissatisfaction prevents looking at root cause. Too much time is devoted to blaming administration, teachers, support staff, students, parents, the state, federal government, county, and etc.

With a critical mass of dissatisfied stakeholders, the vision of "all means all" becomes the impetus to a deeper, more critical examination of the causes of the failure to learn and failed learning.

The vision of "all means all" does not mean we will experience drastic performance improvement overnight.

We must remember that the path followed resulting in our current situation is not the path that will lead to “all means all”. It can’t – it wasn’t intended to.

If all our strategies, work plans were focused fundamentally on the work of ensuring that each learner at a minimum demonstrated proficiency first and foremost we would certainly accelerate improved performance for all learners.

In fact, if we were relentless in the pursuit of proficiency no matter what, we would see increased attendance, decreased disruptions, decreases in inappropriate behaviors, decreases in teacher absenteeism, increased student engagement, increased parent participation, and etc. Yes, a relentless pursuit of proficiency no matter what it takes is the powerful first step in making the "all means all" vision reality.

Dissatisfaction, the "all means all" vision, and relentless pursuit of proficiency no matter what it takes are the three factors that will overcome both reluctance and hesitancy.

It will not, however, remove resistance. Those that choose to resist have reasons of their own but I can without hesitation state that these reasons do not have anything to do with ensuring that each learner is proficient.

Though argumentative, it is time to acknowledge what some will construe as a personal attack, offensive, and most certainly not politically correct. We don't have time to discuss or debate whether or not all students should learn, can learn, or must learn the basic skills represented by proficiency.

A preponderance of evidence exists that unequivocally and empirically demonstrates that gender, race, language, socioeconomics, geography, and etc. are merely factors not determinants of learning.

Implementation, deep implementation of what we are doing is required by all, for all and of all.

Why can’t we do this!