Want To

Governor Perdue made it abundantly clear at the NC Association of School Administrator’s annual conference in Raleigh this week that education is her passion and she will make the remainder of her term laser focused on restoring the funding necessary to drive improvement.

She also made it clear that this has nothing to do with politics rather it has everything to do with children. “Economic development and education are synonymous – you can’t have one without the other”, she stated. At one point, she paused, lamenting, “surely the students of North Carolina are worth a half penny”.

If we are to succeed in preparing each student to compete, to fulfill the promise of an education we cannot do more with less. Pushing the curve of change is not inexpensive. As an example digital conversion requires connectivity, hardware, software, and an enormous investment in teachers to facilitate learning differently.

Do we have the passion to stand up, speak out, and advocate for each learner?

The events of the past couple weeks leave me less than optimistic however. We have undertaken a very expensive initiative in our human capital development work. The unprecedented investment of time and resources to assist teachers and principals that to date have not demonstrated through their teaching or leadership the level of performance expected and required is costly. What makes it worse is these very same educators complain about the inconvenience of intensive monitoring, observation, and feedback, leading to collaborative planning creating lessons and units as well as work plans, and having to give account for their performance. Further exacerbating our human capital development initiative is a belief that those that have not produced expected or desired results know what they need to do so. Hence, blatantly refusing to accept support or passively aggressively complying, staff have experienced mixed improvement.

Yet, where staff have not only accepted but also embraced this support we see not only improvement in the educator performance, we see improvement in student performance. It strikes me odd that staff in the same schools and in some cases the same hall don’t see the improvement in others and wonder, “hmm, I wonder if …”

Leadership is no different than the classroom teacher when it comes to asking, seeking, accepting, and applying the feedback into practice. In fact, the inability by leadership to model, to make sense, to humbly risk, and to champion initiatives proven effective in Anson County let alone in other systems in our state or country is simply baffling.

This week I was interviewed by researchers tasked with evaluating the North Carolina Race to the Top plan and role DPI has played especially in turnaround school systems. Their conclusion is that Anson County has a very logical, rational, and thoughtful plan. In fact one of the best they have seen in the state. They queried me, what are the obstacles in the way?

I responded with the candor that I write each week, “Capacity and sense of urgency by each staff is not at a critical mass to tip us from an inconsistent underperforming to consistently high performing school system”.

Hence, we are investing in our staff to see, hear, and feel the “what”, the “why”, and the “how” of effective practice in all facets of our system. No easy task to be sure. There is an assumed “want to” perform at a high level that must be present to really move forward. This is what isn’t at a critical mass – the want to. We are still teetering more or less with a “have to”.

Once we have the “want to” critical mass – look out. We will see unprecedented improvement and performance. In fact, I predict that once we have the “want to” in place, “all in” will not be at issue with any one especially our students.

Rephrasing the challenge that Governor Perdue voiced on Thursday, “isn’t every child worth it?”

Seriously, isn’t the passion, the conviction, and the heart of every educator the success of children.

Again, I ask isn’t every child worth the change we must make to ensure their success?

We must “want to” change. We can do so through abandoning ineffective practices and programs. We must replace them with evidence, results based practices and programs.

We have the data from what works and what doesn’t’ work. The challenge is do we “want to”.

Do you want to?