We Must Be Ready!

In recent years, there has been significant research done in the area of school improvement and turning low-performing schools around, particularly in schools that are high in poverty. Research in the area of school “turnarounds” has yielded the most significant results for high-poverty and low-performing schools because as a group they need the most assistance. The readiness factors are: Readiness to Learn --Since students living in poverty enter school already well behind their peers, and that gap only widens over time, it is imperative that schools operate in ways that address these deficiencies immediately and consistently. • Safety, discipline, and engagement. A calm and orderly environment is a prerequisite for learning. From the very first day, a student enrolls they will be expected to participate in the calm and orderly environment. Without it, little else can follow. Students living in poverty face extreme difficulties, and the school environment often reflects this. High poverty schools that beat the odds go the extra mile to support each child through each day and to create an atmosphere that facilitates critical connections between adults and students that is safe and orderly. And while we focus relentlessly on achievement in core academic areas, our school will employ curricula and instructional approaches that reflect a broad-based set of techniques, content, and experiences to engage and inspire each student to learn. Research shows that such robust curricula, coupled with project-based and other learner-centered instructional techniques, are a critical element of success for HPHP students. • Action against adversity. Schools must counter the deficits students living in poverty bring to school every day by offering nutritious meals, medical exams and services, and behavior-based training that set students and parents up for success. We must ensure that the teaching staff has human services training themselves, so they better understand the life circumstances of their students and have the basic skills to address them effectively in their classrooms. • • Close student–adult relationships. A major success factor of high-performing, high-poverty schools lies within our ability to forge close relationships with students as the single most powerful lever for encouraging success to a population who primarily come from homes of poverty. We must make personal connections that reach out to our students on an individual level. Readiness to teach—Everything is about “learning” which is the “result” of effective “teaching.” For us to be successful, the entire staff has to take responsibility for student achievement through strategies such as personalized instruction based on diagnostic assessment, flexible time on task, and a teaching culture that stresses collaboration and continuous improvement. The “Professional Learning Communities” model that emphasizes constant collaboration and data analysis will be the foundation of our organizational structure. Three crucial elements support a school’s readiness to teach: • Shared responsibility for achievement. The entire community, students, parents, teachers, and often other community members must be intensively and relentlessly focused on raising student achievement. Adults are motivated to change their own behavior to better assist students in reaching success. Expectations are set high, and the entire school community is engaged in facilitating students’ success. • Personalized instruction. High-performing high-poverty schools organize instruction around a short feedback loop of formative assessment, adapted instruction, further formative assessment, and further adapted instruction. The high-performing high-poverty schools employ the data-driven decision-making techniques of typical standards-driven school reforms but do so with more intensity. The assessments are highly targeted (often no more than 4-5 items) and frequently given (sometimes weekly); results are analyzed by teams within a day or two; and instruction is tailored in multiple ways to address gaps. Small group instruction, individual tutoring, and other strategies that explicitly address specific student misconceptions and learning challenges are immediately implemented after group analysis of student learning trends and individual cases. Assessment is seen by teachers and students alike as a critical tool for learning, rather than a disconnected chore or stressful high-stakes activity. • • Professional teaching culture. Teachers in high-poverty schools must work together and function collaboratively, focusing on formative and ongoing assessments of student learning, every week and often every day. Typical practices should include professional learning communities, joint planning time, and group reviews of student work. We will provide the time and support to facilitate these tasks, which are seen by everyone as a crucial part of their work, rather than an additional obligation. We will require team-based, school-wide professional development that is focused directly on improving instruction and achievement. Attendance at professional development is required and not optional. It is an “ongoing” process and not a one-time event. Readiness to act—School leaders will have the ability to make mission-driven decisions about people, time, money, and programs. They must be adept at securing additional resources, leveraging partner relationships, and developing creative responses to constant unrest. The ability to face the unique challenges of a HPHP school must be in the hands of the personnel who work with students daily. These elements support a school’s readiness to act: • Resource authority—High-performing, high-poverty schools’ resource authority shows up across the gamut of school operations: the daily schedule, often the annual school calendar, the way teachers collaborate with each other and participate in school decision-making, the allocation of the school’s budget and the very nature of instruction will be determined by results. In other words, the team has to be able to make adjustments to the functioning of the organization. • Resource ingenuity—To accomplish what needs to be done, Principal and staff find every mechanism and tap every organization or group they can. We will employ a performance-based pay system that will reward teachers for performance, based on the results of the whole student population, parent approval ratings, student attendance, teachers’ attendance and graduation rates. Acquisition of teaching skills is an expectation that does not warrant additional pay and will be built in the overall schedule. Internal personnel evaluation is considered a group responsibility not a “us versus them” approach. Goals should be realistic and will be reevaluated annually. The staff will hold each other responsible for results, as well as evaluations by administration. • Agility in the face of turbulence—We must find ways to overcome the constant turbulence of a high-poverty school—and be flexible enough to solve problems that crop up each day. This agility is essential to tackle the endless stream of circumstances that conspire to disrupt a school’s readiness to teach and readiness to learn. Responding to rapidly changing and difficult situations requires flexibility and persuasion, rather than rigidity and adherence to narrow standards of operational practice. Research shows that a strong culture of accountability in the face of constant unrest helps establish the expectations among adults and students alike that everyone is working together to tackle the tough work of reaching proficiency. Resiliency --In addition, we must foster a sense of resiliency in our students, defined as the capacity to succeed in spite of adversity or life stressors. Considerable research has shown that students can overcome adversity and in some circumstances can use adversity as a springboard to growth and success. Providing resilient students with the educational skills at all levels will give these students an important internal resource – knowledge – that cannot be affected by external circumstances (e.g. poverty) that are beyond one’s control. In order to achieve our mission of educating resilient students, all members of a school community should adhere to the following core guiding principles: we will set and meet high expectations; we will contribute to the global community; we will exercise choice wisely; and we will get to know one another and allow others to know us.

How Do We Address Schools of Poverty?

In 1994, the Improving America’s Schools Act introduced the concept of holding schools accountable for student performance on state assessments. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 changed that by requiring a regimen of annual testing in grades 3 through 8 and by imposing sanctions on schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress. In the school year 2006–07, 70 percent of 98,905 schools nationwide (64,546) made adequate yearly progress; 10,676 schools were designated as schools in need of improvement; and 2,302 schools were designated as schools in need of improvement restructuring. These schools generally have explored a variety of strategies to improve student achievement, but without rapid or clear success. The reasons they have not been successful are complex and multi-faceted. The strongest issues that have not been addressed very effectively in NCLB are students of poverty; school cultural environment; quality and training of teachers; and the effectiveness of administration. Unfortunately, No Child Left Behind has not been designed to address these issues in a specific fashion. Requiring “high quality” teachers in the classroom based on an arbitrary measure is not enough. At the same time, the issues that face schools attempting to meet the educational needs of Hispanic and Latino populations are compounded by the fact that not only are there language barriers, many times there are learning barriers created by the lack of education in their native language. Migration, war, lack of education facilities, cultural and economic circumstances can all interrupt a student's formal education. Because some students enter a U.S. school with limited or even no history of schooling, they may lack understanding of basic concepts, content knowledge, and critical thinking skills. They may not even read or write in their home language. Nevertheless, they will be expected to develop higher-order thinking skills in English. Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) are “the highest of high-risk students” (Walsh, 1999). Although the needs of the SIFE population may overlap with those of English language learners (ELL) in general, students with interrupted formal education most often require additional assistance in acquiring fundamental skills that many English language learners already possess. To meet the needs of all our urban students it will require something more than incremental change. We must examine and utilize practices to raise and sustain student achievement within one to three years, not the four to five that many educational change theorists advocate. It is our strong belief that we must use the “New-Model” for education as laid out by the Gates Foundation and the MASS Insight and Research Institute in “The Turnaround Challenge” research to meet the needs of all our students. ISECP will address the major components that research has determined will make urban school students successful. We will also enhance our odds for success with all students by teaching our staff the cultural traditions, norms, practices, values, and learning styles that can enable education professionals to effectively deliver services and connect with culturally different individuals on a deeper level. However, it is critical to keep in mind that all individuals, children, and families are unique; although their ethnic, cultural, and language backgrounds may influence them, they are not fully defined by them. Therefore, differences should be viewed as guidelines, not absolutes; serving to enhance services and communication, rather than to stereotype individuals. The goal of cultural learning is insight, not stereotype. General descriptions and guidelines will not apply to every person or situation, simply because there will always be exceptions when describing individuals. The barriers and walls between cultures begin to crumble when we further our understanding of others’ differences, respect their points of view, and strive toward cultural competence. An expanding body of research affirms that teaching and counseling students with interventions that are congruent with the students' learning-style preferences result in their increased academic achievement and more positive attitudes toward learning.

Curriculum and Staff Development Good or Bad?

Unfortunately, the attitude reflected in the title of this lecture is the attitude that many principals have regarding curriculum and staff development. There are many reasons that this may be the case, but primarily it is because our training in this area is usually limited. We see staff development as something we “have” to do each year at the beginning of the year and a few other times during the year on staff development days. Curriculum is something we have to make sure our teachers know, or have access to in the form of curriculum “guides.” Many times none of the activities or documents associated with the two seem very important to the way things really are. Wrong! These are the two most critical components of being a principal. If you have a staff that is poorly trained, they will perform poorly. If you do not have curriculum that is aligned with the expectations for your school, you will fail. So if we do not become very competent in these two areas we will have poor performing staffs that will fail! So what is our role as principals in these two areas? First, we must be familiar enough with the development of curriculum that we can provide some leadership in its development. Not that we are curriculum experts, but that we know the function of curriculum and what it should do and look like. Today we cannot afford to have schools that are not curriculum driven. We need a plan to get where we are intending to go and curriculum has to be the road map. We must at least be familiar with terms such as “frontloading,” “backloading,” and curriculum alignment. We must be able to determine whether or not we have “vertical” alignment and how it all fits together. The days when we can sit on the sidelines and hope for the best are long gone. Second, we must be knowledgeable enough about research to know that staff development is the most critical component of successful schools. We cannot make changes or grow a staff that is effective without solid staff development. For example, I have been involved in staff development for twenty-five years and I have seen many different delivery models. As a result of this experience and my studies about staff development I have come to the conclusion that as much as 90% of staff development is wasted time and money. Wow! That seems like a lot! Much staff development concentrates on delivering new knowledge in a large dose and then there is no real follow up. This model does not work! We must have staff development that is relevant and directly connected to accomplishing the mission and vision of your school. If it is not connected, do not do it! The day when we can send staff to that “conference” that they have attended for years just because, is over. We must make sure that it is directly linked back to the improvement plans of the campus, if not they cannot go. I know this would create some discontent, but that is where the leadership, including campus leaders, must help determine the purpose of staff development and where the funds will be spent. Of course, I am aware that sometimes the “district” may be the ones who determine your staff development, but you must take an active role in its development if you want your campus to succeed. There are many questions that still remain to be answered in today’s modern education along the lines of curriculum and staff development. For example, how do we use modern technology to help our kids learn? Computers have been around for years, but their actual usefulness is questionable at times. We use them more for bookkeeping tasks rather than true instructional tools. It is not an easy task to get teachers to integrate technology and what does that mean? Integrate – to become a part of something. How do we design curriculum to integrate technology? This is one of those things that will be crucial to you as principal. You will undoubtedly have teachers who refuse to integrate and couldn’t if they wanted to due to lack of skills. This is not an easy task. I would advise any principal who wants to be successful to make sure they have honed their curriculum leadership skills and their understanding of an effective staff development program. Teachers must also be included in the processes that develop both of these. As a principal, you must create opportunities for these activities to take place. That means you must make the “time” for this to happen. That means you must be flexible and creative in the use of training time and curriculum development. At first, teachers will complain about being out of their classroom for these activities, but as they see the results begin to take place in their classrooms long term, they will be much more supportive. I recently, enticed teachers to come in for three days to align curriculum K-12 by paying them a stipend. Initially, they were skeptical, but as the days progressed they suddenly realized the significance of what they were doing and they have volunteered to do more in a shorter period of time than I could have ever hoped for. This is powerful stuff! Get good at it!