Change in Education by Dr. Rudy L Duran

We are about to enter into a discussion about the most critical aspect of being a board member, superintendent, principal or the leader of any educational organization in the twenty-first century. The question that we must ask ourselves is, do we need a change? Change in education has always been with us. The difference is the way we go about change in this modern era of education. The day when we can make decisions about change based on the latest greatest flavor is past. Do you mean that we need a valid reason for the change? Absolutely! The problem we see with much of the change that we see in education today is that it is based on poor data or no data at all. We constantly hear the notion that we have seen this or that before in education. Well, that may or may not be a valid observation. We certainly see things that are at least related to one another many times. This may be in part because the fundamental principles that govern how we learn have not changed. We do occasionally discover a better way to get the results we want, but the founding principles of learning stay the same. Only research in areas surrounding the study of the “brain” function do we occasionally find something new. The Program Approach Instead, we see “programs” that are packaged and repackaged to be “sold” on the open market for profit. The number of fliers that I receive on a daily basis is phenomenal, each promising the solution to all of our problems. So, do we need a change? Yes! We need change because we are not getting the results in many educational institutions because we practice things that have never been effective, just tolerated. For example, when you study the research concerning the way most people learn, you will find that very few learn by “auditory” methods. And yet, you can go into most of the secondary classrooms today and still find teachers “lecturing” using the “sage on the stage” techniques of the nineteen fifties. Students who do not learn well through auditory methods will be struggling, and students who do will be succeeding. The others who do well can read texts or have informal discussions with classmates that allow them to survive. Those who have none of these resources will fail. Schools all over the country buy programs every day, as we try and patch the system we have in a place called, education. If we do recognize a genuine problem, we look around for a program that will fix it! How has that worked for us!? It has not worked, and yet we continue to try this approach. Even though “some” programs do have some initial success, most of the time there is no “follow through” and before long we are looking for the next flavor. It has created a very cynical teaching staff in many instances and caused them to be very skeptical. So, in essence, the “program” approach has failed and will continue to fail as long as it is used in its current form. Systemic Change So, what do we do? We need to make a “systemic” change in our organizations. What do I mean when I say systemic change? Well, first of all we have to recognize the fact that our schools are “cultures” that operate on a set of norms every day. In other words, we have a “way” we do things around here. This “way” is the “culture” that has evolved over time. For example, if a student is tardy, there is a “way” that we deal with that. If a teacher is incompetent, there is a “way” that we deal with that. If we change the curriculum, there is a “way” we do that. All of these processes and responses roll into what we call a system. There are other components in any system, but that is not my focus for this discussion. We want to look at the need for change and how we can cause that to happen in a positive fashion. Change is something that happens in every successful organization in the world that is continuously getting better. This is true in business, education, religion or politics. Change must take place, or the organization is standing still and it will ultimately pass away. Businesses who refuse to change find themselves lapped by the competition. An example would be the American car industry in the seventies and eighties. Detroit was so sure they would never be bested that they refused to change. Along come the Japanese, who, by the way, used the processes of an American by the name of Deming to do it, and produce a better car product than the Americans. The result, the American cars we drive today are ten times better than they were back then! Why, because they had to change or be put out of business. No One Can Replace Us One of the problems we face in education is the fact that we know there is no one who can replace us. So, we resist change because we do not see the need since there is no one who can do what we do. It was not until recent years; in this age of accountability that we have been pressured to examine what we are doing and whether or not we are making the grade. As leaders in education, we must face the fact that we must get better at what we are doing for the sake of our society. No longer can we face change kicking screaming that it will go away. With someone looking over our shoulders, rightly or wrongly, we know that we must make every effort to get better. The results around the country have been excellent in some places and not so good in others. Inevitably as someone associated with education, you are going to be faced with the possibility, and the high probability that change in your schools are necessary. Leading Change Through my studies and experiences I have spent a significant amount of time searching for the best way to lead change because I am driven to be the best. I will not accept second rate for any institution that I am associated. The education business is too important to the lives that we touch to be anything but the best. In my studies, I’ve adapted the eight principles of change that are put forth by John Kotter. First, There has to be a sense of urgency. Educators need a reason to change! If you can establish a reason for a change, it becomes much easier to bring the staff on board. You do this by looking at data and identifying problems that exist in your school. Once you have discovered these reasons together, then you can move the organization forward. Second, you need to put your teams together. This is where your discussions regarding learning communities come into play. Establish teams to address specific components of a problem or individual problems. As educators, these teams must be “empowered” to make decisions and proposals that will be acted upon. Third, you need to lead in the establishment of a vision that is more than words on a piece of paper. What will schools look like when you are finished and what will the results be academically when it is all said and done? What will be the strategies used to get where you want to go? This is where your leadership will be so important! Fourth, communicate, communicate, communicate, and communicate some more! Constantly repeat the vision! Keep it before the staff, kids, parents, and community. Paste it on the walls! Put it on the billboard! Put it in the paper! Say something about it every time you meet! Fifth, Look for ways to tear down barriers! If the answer is no at a higher level, try somewhere else. Make sure you do not take no for an answer until you have talked to the person who can make the decision. Do not be stopped by bureaucrats! If the final answer is no from the top, reload and work around the barrier. Get grants; ask the community, whatever it takes to get the job done! Sixth, Create ways to have short term wins. I always push very hard when I first enter an organization to create a short-term win. This is painful sometimes, but when the results start to take place the turn around in attitudes is phenomenal! Seventh, when you start getting the short-term gains, let them create the groundwork for future change. Make them a part of the school culture. Make the expectation that you will get better become a part of the way you do business in your school. You will do whatever it takes to get the job done! Eighth, reinforce the culture in a way that will sustain the systemic processes no matter who is in the driver seat. Schools that I have worked with to develop this continuous improvement culture had never returned to the way it was before I came. Once the culture is created and reinforced by the leadership, it becomes self-sustaining. Past Accomplishments 1) Victoria, Texas is a multicultural town with high poverty. The San Antonio media had recently highlighted the middle school that I was assigned to as a hot spot for gangs. It was not performing well academically, and all of the other problems compounded the situation. In my tenure there we were able to stop the gang activity on campus and raise test scores significantly. An example was the 40% increase in math scores for our African American males. (See Attached) 2) Clear Creek High School, a school, set in a suburban district, it was steeped in a tradition of mediocrity. In my tenure, we were able to change the dynamics of the culture and the results we were getting academically for all of our kids. We narrowed the performance gap between all populations and set it on the course it is on today, exemplary performance. Upon arriving at Clear Creek, I was faced with the attitude from the staff that they were getting “pretty good results” and that they were satisfied with that level of achievement. They were also convinced that they could not do any better. When I left, we had gone from our kids scoring in the 50-70 percent proficient range on all tests to scoring in the 88-94 percent proficient range in all testing categories. The continuous improvement processes we put in place during those years are still in place today. Why would you abandon success? 3) I came to the Dallas ISD with a major challenge. I was assigned a high school that was an inner city and forty-eight percent English as a Second Language population and 90% poverty. I was informed that in spite of the fact that they had a slight increase in testing scores the previous year, the staff anticipated horrible results for the current year because the students in the tested classes were much lower. We implemented the change in processes that I advocate in the school and had significant increases in test scores in every category and subpopulation but one and as much as 40% in some groups. Although I had to leave this assignment early due to a family crisis, we had set the foundation for change and improvement in the school and for several years after they continued to improve. 4) I entered the field of higher education with the idea that I could train others to do the things that I had been so successful at in the public schools. I was asked to rewrite the curriculum for the Educational Leadership program at the University of Central Arkansas. It was to be based on the ISLLC standards and to be performance based. We succeeded in this undertaking and taught cohorts of students based on performance modules vs. disjointed course work. Nearly every student we trained is a current practicing administrator. Those who are not yet administrators are not by choice. Although we were very successful, I missed the day-to-day challenges of the public schools and returned to become a superintendent. I had trained superintendents at the University, and I realized that the quality of candidates was decreasing and that I could be more useful to children by serving as a superintendent.

No Matter Where We Serve!

Each diverse population has inherent characteristics that need understanding. At one school, I realized early on that there were issues with my staff regarding their treatment of certain ethnic groups. We were fifty percent Hispanic, thirty percent African-American and twenty percent white. A consequence of this treatment was poor performance academically for a large portion of my students. We instituted a series of training sessions on the need to be culturally knowledgeable. It was amazing the success we had when our teachers realized they were responding to certain cultural differences in a negative fashion and were not aware of it. As a result, for example, we had a forty percent increase in the performance of our African American males in math in one year! This was the result of actively seeking a better understanding of these students needs and then addressing them in a positive fashion. However, there is misunderstanding sometime about what truly impacts academic performance the most. I used to battle my colleagues when they made statements like; “they have a high concentration of minorities, so they are going to have low test scores.” This is simply a false statement! The determining factor for performance is not ethnicity it is poverty! It just so happens that many minority students are also in poverty. I can attest to the fact that white, black, or brown kids who are poor are going to perform poorly on standardized tests initially. At the same time, students, of any color, who are not poverty stricken, will perform about the same. The other major factor that impacts achievement of students is the educational level of their mother. This is logical since the mother does so much of the early nurturing of children. So are there any consequences to how we treat children of poverty vs. middle class? Absolutely! If you have not ever heard of or read anything by Ruby Payne, and you work with children in poverty, do so right away. There is a culture of poverty that pervades all ethnic groups that if you can get a handle on it in your school you will see much more success with these children. Children of poverty do not see things through the middle-class lenses of understanding. They have a complete different set of values and if you expect them to conform to your values they will never succeed. One example that sticks out in my mind is the example regarding our values regarding paying bills. Have you ever noticed that even kids of poverty many times will have one hundred dollar shoes or a designer jacket? If not, look around and pay attention, it happens. How is it that they can have something like this but still not pay their bills? The reason is their parents do not see paying bills as a priority. Instead, they are interested in instant gratification and satisfying their personal desires. The last items they pay are bills. The result, they move from one rental complex to another when the rent comes due after stretching their time out to the limit before they are evicted. If you approach a child with that kind of mindset with a middle-class value such as “paying your dues” to earn something they do not understand. Our response many times is to get frustrated with these students when they approach us with the poverty mind set. There are many other examples in Dr. Payne’s writing. The knowledge that she teaches will change the perspective of your staff if they want to be successful with poor kids in any neighborhood. It will also make you rethink some policies that have been the norm for many years. For example, let’s look at the homework. Why do we give homework and is it a reasonable expectation for us to expect children of poverty to do homework? We assign homework with the expectation that the child takes it home and completes it there. Is this reasonable? How many homes of poverty have you been in? Where exactly are they to do this homework? They more than likely do not have a kitchen table as such and probably eat, when they eat at home, in the living area. Where are they going to find a “quiet” place to accomplish this task? It is more than likely impossible to find such a setting in a poverty home. And what kinds of assignments do we give? Are they assignments that are reasonable for us to expect these children to be able to succeed. An example that always comes to mind is the assignment where the teacher says; “ go home and get some magazines to cut out pictures of…” What magazines!? We set them up to fail because we have not taken into consideration the environment in which they live! We must have systems in place that recognize the cultural differences that exist in our populations. Then we need to make sure we are making allowances for those conditions. I am currently trying to get funding for a social worker. We have come to the point in time where it is necessary to try and meet all of the needs of our students whatever they may be. I had facilities on campus is Dallas that dealt with every social condition you can name. That is where we are today!

Hot Air and Blueberries

A man in a hot air balloon was lost in southeast Missouri. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me. Can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am." The woman replied, "You’re in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 36 and 37 degrees north latitude and between 89 and 90 degrees west longitude." "You must be a science teacher," said the balloonist. "I am," replied the woman. "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information. The fact is, I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip." The woman shouted back, "You must be in management." "I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well," said the woman, "you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is, you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault." Much has been said in recent years about the challenges we face as educators. Many educators want to throw up when they hear the terminology associated with No child Left Behind. We sometimes feel that we are faced with a task that is insurmountable and that we will surely fail. The truth of the matter is, it shouldn’t matter to us if we do or don’t have NCLB. Our task as educators, and this includes all of the staff present here today, is to educate all of the children in our community. We must not allow anything to keep us from answering the call, and it is a “Calling.” Just anyone cannot do what we do. We are not just here to have a job. Schools are not built like other businesses to provide a job for us. We are here to serve the future generations of our great country and to make sure they are able to have a better life. It is the most important task in America and each one of you plays an important role in that task. We are past the point where the blame game is acceptable. Despite the fact that we are tempted to blame someone else for any sub par performances of our students, the bottom line must be, we will get the job done and will do “whatever it takes”. Failure is not an option! A very successful ice cream maker who was a vocal critic of public schools. He frequently alleged that, if he managed his business like the public schools were managed, he’d go broke instead of being very successful in the ice cream business. As the story went, during one of his speeches, a lady, stood up and calmly said, "It’s my understanding that you manage a company that makes very good ice cream." The owner replied, "Best ice cream in America!" The lady then said, "Is it rich and smooth?" He said, "Sixteen percent butter fat," "Premium ingredients!" "Premium ingredients?" she asked. "Super premium. Nothing but triple A quality," the owner said. Then she dropped the bomb. "Sir," she said, "When you’re standing on your receiving dock, and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?" Everyone got kind of quiet. The owner said, "I send them back." For the first time during the interchange, the lady, a teacher, got pretty loud. "That’s right, but we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all, every one. And that, sir, is why it is not a business. It is a school." You see, there are a lot of differences in children. The teacher was right. We don’t have the opportunity to send our blueberries back. The parents are sending us the very best they have. And despite appearances sometimes that some might not care, deep down most do. But what do we do with the children when we get them? We do not get the choice of whom we teach. Unlike those who home school or send their kids to private schools, we educate every child who comes through the door. So, let’s think about the children that come to us for a minute and how we’re going to get all of those children to perform their best. If we receive a shipment of blueberries and find that they are not quite ripe, not quite ready, what do we do with them? It’s not enough to say, "They aren’t ready." We can’t afford that. We have to ask the next question, which is, "How do we get them ready?" You see, we have to determine where each child is and meet him where he is, not try and make them “ice cream” grade somehow. You may have to add a little more sugar to some children or a little more love. You may have to give some a little more time to mature with personalized attention. Whatever it takes to help them succeed we must do! This is true on all of our campuses. It would be nice if the students who walk through the door are ready to be middle schoolers or high schoolers, but the reality is many times they are not. We cannot wring our hands and look to blame their past teachers, we must jump in and meet them where they are. And just like there are all different sizes and kinds of blueberries. Some are--juicy, good, and sweet. Others are different shapes with different consistencies. We have kids who are good and sweet; others who are challenged or challenging; so we must deal with them differently. You see, I really do think that blueberries and kids have some similarities. At some point, blueberries can get so bad that you throw them away. That’s where the similarities end. We can’t throw any student away. Remember, the parents are sending us their best. We’re going to work hard, make every effort to get all of those kids to meet our high expectations. Business and education models are different. But there are some things that can be learned from each. There’s a difference between selling blueberries and educating kids. All kids, like all blueberries, are not created equal. The challenge that we face, and that we must overcome, is to make sure that we understand those differences and deal with all those kids differently, just like the businessperson deals with the blueberries differently. This is today’s challenge of diversity that faces every school educator in this room. We can’t be flying around in hot air balloons looking for someone to blame. Just as the kids we get are the best their parents have to send us, we are the best those kids are going to get! The very life and future of our children is in your hands. Let’s not disappoint them!