"If You See Something - Say Something"

Navigating through airports this past week I was struck by the oft heard but seldom listened to pre-recorded security announcement.

The phrase that caught my attention was, “If you see something – say something”. Though the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) does allow for variance with respect to the voice and limited customization of the message, the contents are for the most part the same. Yet, this phrase captured my attention – “if you see something – say something”.

As the mood of policy makers shifts to unprecedented focus on teacher and leader effectiveness as the reason for underperforming student achievement, the security announcement takes on a whole new meaning for me – “if you see something – say something”.

Argumentatively, the intention of the new system is to improve student performance as evidenced by improved teaching and learning.

The sense however, is that the new system will mostly be viewed as a negative not a positive.

Critics are lining up to point out what many have contended erroneously for years – teachers have little control or influence on student learning.

I hate to interrupt a fallacy with facts but research has clearly dispelled, obliterated these falsehoods. One merely needs to look at the school effects research to find practices as well as programs that have consistently and constantly produced results attributed to variables within the control of teachers and leaders alike.

Effective student learning is resultant from teachers teaching effectively. In a like manner, teachers teaching effectively are resultant from leaders leading effectively. This is neither complicated nor complex. Rather, it comes down to constant and consistent feedback and the use of that feedback to inform decision-making and practice.

For too long, the instruments used to make judgments of teacher performance have been limited in their utility or import especially with respect to the inclusion of student learning as a factor.

Is this a teacher issue?

No!

This is a leadership issue.

Consider, we will soon see publicly a significant disconnect between teacher evaluation ratings or teacher effect with actual student performance results.

We will see teachers rated as accomplished or distinguished (the second and highest ratings) with little or no students performing at the proficient or beyond proficiency levels.

In a like manner we will see teachers rated as accomplished or distinguished (the second and highest ratings) where their students have performed below what was predicted or forecasted based on previous student performance.

We will see schools with no teachers rated as developing in any standard or element area of the evaluation instrument in schools that did not demonstrate growth or make Annual Yearly Growth.

This is a leadership issue.

In as much as we need to do more authentic and accurate appraisal of teaching, we have done a very poor job of identifying, recognizing, acknowledging, celebrating, and rewarding effective practice – “If you see something – say something”.

Our administrators are expected to do both.

Yet, if we are not careful we will focus almost entirely on what needs to be improved and completely ignore “outstanding” practice.

To assist with balance, the evaluation tool itself requires evidence. That evidence will be made public one way or another. It is our best hopes that we will make public this spring the “evidence” of effective practice that includes but is not limited to student performance results.

For example, we have nationally recognized teachers known for effective integration of technology into instruction albeit interactive white boards, laptops, or other mobile learning devices – “If you see something – say something”.

Throughout our school system we have effective leadership practice as well.

Yes, we must improve.

Yes, the teacher and leader effectiveness evaluation system will create angst.

Nonetheless we must have the evidence, the proof, and the results of effect.

We must embrace the – “If you see something – say something” to ensure balance.

Our students deserve authentic and accurate appraisal of learning. So do our staff.

This is a leadership issue!

“Moving ‘whats’ to ‘ hows’ – not that easy”

Last Monday, all the instructional coordinators met with the Instructional Program Leadership team for the purposes of increasing awareness, understanding, and support for the myriad programs let alone staff engaged in the unprecedented work of transformation.

Facilitating the meeting, I asked staff to select from a list of over sixty (60) products, programs, activities, or etc. posted on a white board to explain “what” they were, “why” they were, and “how” they were in our school system.

While they were writing I grouped the items into five (5) color coded affinity groups. Staff submitted their cards according to the color code. I then had Instructional Program Leadership articulate what the groupings were to the whole group.

The point?

The list of items in and of themselves is overwhelming. Yet, once grouped by what they have in common it doesn’t appear daunting.

Moreover, applying our theory of action (What + Why + How = Results) the list represents the “how” of achieving the work. Though it was never intended to create a sense of any thing other than “do-ability”, the list or rather each item on the list has one been categorized as a “what” not a “how”.

This is unfortunate and certainly explains why many have felt “initiative” overload.

However, when seen as a “how” each item on the list becomes what it was intended to be – a tool, strategy to achieve a desired and expected result.

Specifically and for example, if staff see Teachtown, Headsprout Early Reading, Fast ForWord, Headsprout Early Comprehension Reading Assistant, and Learning Together as a “what” rather than as a set of tools or “how” to assist us toward eradicating illiteracy, they will not understand the utility and import of these powerful, results producing programs. They will, sadly, see them as something being “bolted” to the side, an inconvenience and certainly suspect.

In a time when every choice, decision, program, activity is second guessed, questioned, or challenged irrespective of whether or not there is a “better” or more effective solution, strategy, or etc., we must be diligent in our efforts to move “whats” to “hows”.

In fact the failure of leadership to assist in the shift from “what” to “how” regarding each of these programs with classroom instruction is exactly why some staff appear to resist or at best reluctant to fully commit and implement to fidelity.

Shifting a “what” to a “how” is simple but not so easy for a few understandable reasons. These reasons include but are not limited to:

1. Lack of clearly defining the problem being addressed;

2. Lack of expected or desired results;

3. Lack of connection to individual and organizational values;

4. Lack of a detailed implementation plan including communication strategies;

5. Lack of a detailed monitoring plan;

6. Lack of a detailed means to measure effect; and

7. Lack of a detailed strategy to adjust, correct, or abandon strategy, program, practice, or activity.

To address, in part the lack of the aforementioned, we are shifting our district, department, and school improvement and planning processes to the Annual Planning Table format. This format requires thoughtful and clearly articulated strategies and tactics with defined goals, targets, measures, timelines, and data sources for each phase of the continuous improvement cycle.

The implementation of granularity into the process as required through the task analysis of each strategy ensures a much more robust implementation, monitoring, and accountability for the work.

Additionally, the Learning Development Center’s first seminar is fully dedicated to “connecting dots” related to shifting “whats” to “hows”.

To do so, our Learning Development Coordinators are using a road map, if you will, to develop awareness, understanding, and support for the work in motion. This road map is entirely devoted to demonstrating the connections of our theory of action.

Though is may seem frivolous to some to spend time connecting dots to assist all staff in their understanding the difference between a “what” and a “how”, our results to date suggest in fact we have not made the shift in not only our understanding but in application of these powerful tools to improve teaching and learning.

We are therefore resolved in all we do to constantly and consistently connect the dots.

"... whatever it takes!"

The news of North Carolina requesting a waiver from the No Child Left Behind requirements is bittersweet possibly teetering on a violation of trust or at worse a broken promise.

First, the idea that each child should be, could be, and must be proficient in reading, mathematics, and writing as a minimum is a necessity not a fantasy.

Though argumentative, NCLB was flawed from its’ inception. The notion that each student learns the same way in the same amount of time is not based on human learning science or what we know about how the brain develops let alone environmental factors that influence human learning. Note – influence not determine.

Further, the belief and practice that punishment will produce results that to date had never been achieved is also flawed theory and flies in the face of human motivation as well as human learning theory.

Certainly fear and avoidance of punishment are motivators. However, prolonged fear has an adverse effect that more often or not creates the antithesis outcome or result.

For nearly forty years researchers (chief among them Dr. Larry Lezotte) have stated that learning not time be the constant in the organization and delivery of instruction.

The inability to recognize that time needs to be variable, flexible, and adjusted to address the root causes of failed learning and the failure to learn has led the Federal Department of Education to provide waivers from the very goals, aspirations, and “best hopes” that each state created and approved.

Aside from the single metric for assessing student learning, the lack of recognizing human learning theory, and human motivational theory, NCLB represents the one fact that cannot be lost – universal proficiency of the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics.

Ensuring that each student is proficient must remain our focus.

As previously stated, proficiency is merely the starting line not the finish line.

We must remind ourselves that getting every student to the starting line is not because every child should go to college.

This was not the aim of NCLB or proficiency.

I have shared previously the question, "What do my four children lose if all students are proficient in the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics?”

I expect my children to compete, excel, and to be the very best in whatever career choice they make.

Those expectations are more or less based on this fact - my children have choice.

Proficiency is a first step to choice.

They have choice because they had access and opportunity derived from expectations for and proficiency of basic skills. In addition to their formal schooling they have also had incredible experiences to “see” possibilities.

Proficiency is a second step to seeing possibilities.

The writers of our Declaration of Independence penned the right of choice in these words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Proficiency is a right.

Our staff and community must embrace that without proficiency our students have no choice.

In a like manner, we cannot accept that proficiency alone is the goal.

In as much as choice is derived from proficiency, proficiency alone limits choice.

We must push, pull, and challenge each student to go well beyond proficiency to mastery.

Proficiency leads to mastery.

Mastery creates the ultimate in choice. Now I ask, “What do my four children lose if every student has mastery of the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics?”

My expectations for my children don’t change in the least. In fact, they may increase.

Proficiency or mastery – it doesn’t matter. Each learner must still make choices based on their interests and desires. Hence the wonderful benefit of choice – they have one.

Though some may think me idealistic and possibly unrealistic in achieving universal proficiency, yet, why not?

For too long, many of our students have not had the benefit of choice because they were not proficient in the basic skills.

Wavier or not, the Anson County Schools must remain relentless in our pursuit of universal proficiency for each student as starting point.

We cannot abandon this cause.

We must get there whatever it takes.

Stay the course!