LeaderTalk

Book Recommendation

I would like to recommend a book for administrators, teachers, students, and parents to read. Stephen Covey has recently published The Leader in Me. This book describes the work of schools across the world to implement the leadership skills that originated from Covey's well known book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The book also helped me connect the habits with the seven categories of the Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. This was of interest to me since our school system has worked to deploy the Baldrige criteria for over 6 years and was recently recognized as the 2008 Baldrige recipient for education.

 

In The Leader in Me, Covey focuses on a school in Raleigh, North Carolina. A.B. Combs Elementary has been implementing the Seven Habits as a magnet school since 2000. Also, AB Combs utilizes Baldrige and quality tools in the school. What is interesting is the well documented results that AB Combs has achieved over the last 8 years and how many schools across the nation are implementing the Seven Habits and Baldrige principles and tools. The Seven Habits are closely aligned to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. For example;

 

Habit 1 - Be proactive - is aligned to the Baldrige Core Values in that being proactive encourages students and staff alike to take responsibility for their actions and behaviors and not look to blame others.

 

Habit 2 - Begin with the end in mind is closely aligned to the Baldrige items that require a vision, mission, and values.

 

Habit 3 - Put First Things First encourages alignment and focusing on what is important in deploying plans.

 

Habit 4 - Think Win-Win - reveals how important it is to look for what others are interested in and look for alternatives. Baldrige focus on stakeholders and core value of innovation are very similar to this habit.

 

Habit 5 - Seek First to Understand and then be Understood is all about processes, workforce relations, and focus on stakeholder needs which are Baldrige items.

 

Habit 6 - Synergize is all about learning from others and utilizing teaming to meet higher levels of performance. VERY MUCH a Baldrige principle.

 

Habit 7 - Sharpen the saw is about professional and personal development which are items closely realted to the Baldrige workforce and leadership items

 

Bottom line is that Covey's work and the Baldrige principles and tools are very closely related and compliment each other. Many schools and districts have not fully realized the potential of the Seven Habits or the Baldrige toools. They do not recognize the connections between the habits and tools with professional learning communities, common formative assessments, student data notebooks, and classroom PDSA's. These tools are really about creating the "leaders" within each of us. I strongly recommend this book and hope that many teachers and principals will identify what they can do to create the "leader within me."

Professional Learning Communities That Work

Our school system is often asked to present on how we implemented professional learning communities. Recently, we have had a number of visitors come to look at our work with PLCs and we are engaged with the American Productivity Quality Council in a benchmark study of PLCs. This blog may help those of you who are starting on this journey. Our key finding is that you have to change behaviors before you will change beliefs. So.. if you have the authority to implement a high impact strategy, then my advice is to get about the job of doing it and requiring products.

 

In ISS, our work in professional learning communities has been founded on the work of Rick and Rebecca DuFour. One of the key components of their work is the use of common formative assessments. In ISS, our teamwork matrix requires teachers to serve on one professional learning community that has the same curriculum and the teachers are required to develop common formative assessments every four weeks. The research  base supporting common formative assessments is immense and very convincing. The DuFour’s offer a number of reasons why teachers should utilize common formative assessments.

• Common formative assessments are more efficient in that teachers can share the work load and teachers who have more content knowledge on particular objectives can help other teachers develop good assessment items.
• Common formative assessments help to bridge the inequity among classrooms taught by teachers of differing abilities. Teachers agree on essential learning objectives, analyze best instructional strategies and then analyze the results of the assessments to determine if the strategies are working.
• Common formative assessments allow teachers to identify which students are mastering the learning objectives and which students are not mastering the objectives. Teachers can then provide interventions and enrichment for all students.
• Through the common formative assessments, teachers and students are monitoring learning on a frequent basis rather than waiting until the end of the year (summative) assessments when interventions would be too late.
• The assessments help teachers improve their instructional strategies. In combination with classroom PDSA cycles, teachers can engage students in action research to determine if certain instructional strategies work better than others.
• Finally, common formative assessments help teacher teams achieve at higher levels than teachers could achieve if working in isolation. Business has long known that teams can provide the synergy for higher levels of performance than individual workers working in isolation.

 

One issue that has arisen with regard to common formative assessments relates to grading practices. Some argue that CFA’s should not be part of grading if they are truly formative and others argue that in order to make certain students provide their best efforts the CFA’s need to have some connection to grading. The following are identified as best practice for use of CFA’s;

• CFA’s should be used to identify students who are experiencing difficulty with learning and identify those students who have already mastered the material
• A system of intervention and enrichment must be in place to provide additional time and enrichment for the full continuum of student achievement – only through teams can the resources be utilized to meet the needs of such a continuum
• Students must be provided with additional opportunities to demonstrate mastery and not be penalized for needing more time and support to master the learning objective

 

As a superintendent, I realize that grading practices are the ultimate domain of teachers and principals; however, I encourage all of our professional learning communities to review the research on common formative assessment, grading practices, and professional learning communities. The research is strong and professional organizations unanimously support these ideas and practices. Bottom line – implementing these practices with fidelity will improve student learning.

Virtual Superintendent?

The hype over the Christensen book Disrupting Class has been interesting. I found the book to be on target with the potential disruption of virtual learning, however, I did not completely agree with some of the support for charter schools and recommended changes for educational research. Nevertheless, I wanted to support the virtual learning. Over the course of the last few weeks I have saved the school district significant dollars by engaging in webinars and virtual meetings. Using something as simple as GoToMeeting.com or something more complex like Blackboard or Wimba, I have been able to continue my learning as a superintendent and conduct business without leaving my office!!!

One highlight of the recent week was a one hour webinar with Doug Reeves. Over the course of an hour, I was able to get up-to-date on his research projects, ask him a question with a direct answer, and hear what other superintendents across the nation are asking. Now to share a few of the highlights from the Doug Reeves webinar so I can use virtual methods to share learning with other educators. To create the change in schools that we need to see happen, Dr. Reeves suggested several approaches. I want to focus on two approaches that our school system has found to be essential.

1 – Monitoring of what adults do with a focus on no more than 6 objectives. In our school system we have customized classroom walkthroughs that look for examples of Plan Do Study Act cycle, student engagement, High Yield Instructional Strategies, and examples of Positive Behavior Support program implementation. Also, we monitor and coach school and department improvement plans on a quarterly basis and tie the results to evaluations. Dr. Reeves went on to say that while parent engagement and professional development are important, schools will not see increases in student achievement unless there is adult monitoring for fidelity of deployment of expectations of the approaches.

2 – Education is a revenue source rather than a drain on communities’ resources. Given the financial crisis that we are all facing, Dr. Reeves suggested that we all need to be advocates for the ability of education to actually save resources and produce resources. We could save our communities billions of dollars nationwide if we could reduce dropout rates. For more information and resources to develop your own approach to being an advocate, see the Alliance for Excellent Education web site at www.all4ed.org.

So… there we have it. I used a virtual method to pass on learning that I received from a virtual method that you can then use to gain information to help you develop your own follow ups that I hope you will deliver through virtual means like your blogs!!!! I have been kidding everyone around central office lately that I truly believe I can become a virtual superintendent!!!!!

A New Model for Managing K-12 Education

What if we eliminated the traditional school system organizational chart? What if we really looked carefully at this enterprise called public education through the lens of process management?

I know many of you are probably saying we have our process model well defined. You are probably thinking that we have been down that road and we have the t-shirt. Many of you use ISO, Baldrige, Six Sigma, process flow maps, DMAIC and other improvement strategies. If all of this sounds strange to you, then there may be hope!!

Our school system had been down most of these roads and we have some successes and some failures. Currently, we have started a national project with the American Productivity Quality Council in Houston, Texas to look at process management architecture to help improve K-12 public education.

As a Baldrige alumni examiner and a Six Sigma supporter, I thought I really understood processes. Our school system had flow mapped over 100 processes. We have in-process measures linked to strategic measures. However, what I am discovering is that I knew just enough to be dangerous. I have a number of examples where working on the measures of one process have actually negatively impacted other processes. Working on processes while continuing to manage the organization through a function based organization chart often leads to fragmentation, lack of alignment, and unintended consequences.

With a process management approach, our school system is moving away from a traditional function centered organization into a process centered organization. Why? We are achieving student learning results among the best in North Carolina while spending at a rate among the lowest in North Carolina.

If you want to know more about the APQC K-12 process management initiative, look on their web site or send me an e-mail and I will send you information. (tholliday@iss.k12.nc.us). A great resource is also Michael Hammer's work on re-engineering processes.

Democratic Convention Thoughts

As I sat watching the Democratic Convention last night I was particularly interested in the “town hall” forum being held. Some of the discussions were about education. Education has not been high on any presidential candidate’s agenda and does not appear to be moving up on the national agenda. However, the Democratic Convention seems to have 2 competing education groups. One is the Education Equality Project (www.educationequalityproject.org) and the other is the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education (www.boldapproach.org). The Equality project focuses more on accountability and closing gaps while the Bold Approach project focuses on a comprehensive approach to social issues as part of the education solution. The general principles from both are listed below. As educators, I think we need to know what the presidential candidates and their respective party platforms plan for public education in our nation.

Education Equality Project Principles (excerpts)

1. Fifty-four years after Brown vs. Board of Education, forty years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and twenty-five years after the publication of a Nation at Risk, we must confront a shameful national reality: If you are an African American or Latino child in this country, the probability is high that our public education system will fail you, that you will not graduate from high school, that your ability to function successfully in the twenty-first century economy will be limited, and that you will have no real prospect of achieving the American dream.
2. Despite the urgency of the need and the righteousness of the cause, public education today remains mired in a status quo that not only ill serves most poor children, but shows little prospect of meaningful improvement.
3. In practical terms, this means that we must take immediate steps to:
   1. Ensure that there is an effective teacher in every classroom, and an effective principal in every school, by paying educators as the professionals they are, by giving them the tools and training they need to succeed, and by making tough decisions about those who do not;
   2. Empower parents by giving them a meaningful voice in where their children are educated including public charter schools; 
   3. Create accountability for educational success at every level -- at the system and school level, for teachers and principals, and for central office administrators;
   4. Commit to making every decision about whom we employ, how money is spent, and where resources are deployed with a single-minded focus: what will best serve our students, regardless of how it affects other interests;
   5. Call on parents and students to demand more from their schools, but also to demand more from themselves;
   6. Have the strength in our convictions to stand up to those political forces and interests who seek to preserve a failed system.

From excerpts about Broader Bolder Approach

1. Continued school improvement efforts. To close achievement gaps, we need to reduce class sizes in early grades for disadvantaged children; attract high-quality teachers in hard-to-staff schools; improve teacher and school leadership training; make college preparatory curriculum accessible to all; and pay special attention to recent immigrants.

2. Developmentally appropriate and high-quality early childhood, pre-school and kindergarten care and education. These programs must not only help low-income children academically, but provide support in developing appropriate social, economic and behavioral skills.

3. Routine pediatric, dental, hearing and vision care for all infants, toddlers and schoolchildren. In particular, full-service school clinics can fill the health gaps created by the absence of primary care physicians in low-income areas, and by poor parents' inability to miss work for children's routine health services.

4. Improving the quality of students' out-of-school time. Low-income students learn rapidly in school, but often lose ground after school and during summers. Policymakers should increase investments in areas such as longer school days, after-school and summer programs, and school-to-work programs with demonstrated track records.

What about the children?

As the presidential race heats up and local races for commissioner and school board begin to gain steam, I hope each of you will ask questions about the children. I hope that our focus will be on the children. What has happened so far in the national race is that the war and the economy have overshadowed any mention of education, health care, and other social issues that impact children. I recently heard Marian Wright Edelman speak to a large group of school administrators. The focus of her speech was "Standing up for Children." Some of the statistics she quoted at the meeting were from the report recently published by the Children's Defense Fund - America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline.

Ms Edelman cited the following events that happen every day in America:

4 children are killed by abuse or neglect

5 children or teens commit suicide

8 children are killed by firearms

33 children or teens die from accidents

77 babies die before their first birthday

192 children are arrested for violent crimes

383 children are arrested for drug abuse

906 babies are born at low birthweight

1153 babies are born to teen mothers

1672 public school students are corporally punished

1879 babies are born without health insurance

2261 high school students drop out of school

2383 children are confirmed as abused or neglected

2411 babies are born into poverty

2494 babies are born to mothers without a high school diploma

4017 babies are born to unwed mothers

4302 children are arrested

17,132 public school students are suspended

We are the wealthiest nation in the world. Yet we cannot provide for our children. The income gap between wealthy Americans and those in poverty is the highest in the history of our nation. To provide basic health care insurance for all our children would have cost the nation about $10 billion this year. The President and Congress could not agree on providing health care to all children. We spend more than $10 billion in Iraq every 2-3 weeks. We spend 3 times more to incarcerate our youth than we spend to educate our youth. 1 in every 100 Americans are in jail and most of those were failures in school or drop outs. Yet, children and their agenda are always last on the list. Many politicians would rather complain about education and blame the parents and children than try and address the basic social issues facing our parents and children in poverty every day.

Ms. Edelman mentioned that the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination is coming up in April. Dr. King and the civil rights movement made great progress in helping to close the education and poverty gaps in our nation. Have we moved forward or gone backward since that time? I would suggest that this election is the time that we ask all those running for office - What are you going to do for the children?

To see the full report on Cradle to Prison Pipeline, go to www.childrensdefense.org

Change Management: A 21st Century Skill

Not too long ago, school boards hired superintendents based on their ability to maintain status quo. Measures of performance were low teacher turnover, positive satisfaction numbers, and keeping the community happy with the football team's performance. The overriding mantra for this period of time was - "If it ain't broke then don't fix it." Things have really gone in a different direction with the emphasis on "waves of educational reform" that have been happening since at least the late 60's (that is far back as I admit to being employed in education!!)

Today, school superintendents and principals have to be successful managers and leaders of change. The overriding mantra today is "If you keep doing what you have always done you will get the results you have always gotten." Einstein said it was insanity to keep doing what we always have done and expect different results.

The ultimate change guru in our current educational research base is Michael Fullan. I heard Dr. Fullan recently at the AASA meeting in Tampa. Dr. Fullan has two books out that are a good read for those of us expected to lead and manage change or for those teachers or parents who want to understand why administrators do the things they do. Dr. Fullan has updated his classic - What's Worth Fighting for in the Principalship and has a new book - Six Secrets of Change.

Just to give readers a hint at the change secrets, Dr. Fullan gave a presentation on the changes and promised a copy of the powerpoint at his web site - www.michaelfullan.ca

#1 - Love your employees - focus not only on student and customer satisfaction, but, also create schools and districts that focus on quality of life for teachers and administrators

#2 - Connect peers with purpose - top down doesn't work, bottom up doesn't work, need to have a blended and partnership approach

#3 - Capacity building trumps judgmentalism - assume staff do not have capacity to implement changes when things are not working and then build capacity

#4 - Learning is the work - for everyone... including school boards - professional development must be delivered within context and supported on the job - for every hour of PD, need 7 hours of coaching, deployment, and mentoring

#5 - Transparency - things can't be improved if we don't know about them

#6 - Systems Learn - move from systems thinking to systems DOING!! You don't change beliefs, you first change behaviors. So start doing and don't wait until you have it perfect. You learn from making excellent mistakes.

Root Cause Issue

While I always enjoy reading blogs about the latest in technology and I readily admit to being a school superintendent who loves exploring technology solutions to address educational issues, I have to recognize that the root cause of our problems with education is related primarily to curriculum. Every day, public schools are attacked by business and politicians. The attacks usually center around comparative data with other countries. TIMS, PISA and other studies are always cited as demonstrations of our lack of competitiveness with other countries. Recently, I had the pleasure of working for about 9 months with a Blue Ribbon Commission to make recommendations on changes to the North Carolina testing and accountability system. Our major recommendation was to revise the curriculum objectives so that our curriculum was more in alignment with other countries who we are competing against for jobs for the 21st century. Some of the reactions from our recommendations have been interesting. The full report from this Blue Ribbon Commission is accessible through the Department of Public Instruction in North Carolina.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting a summary of the Blue Ribbon Commission recommendations to a group in Raleigh. The group was the Watauga Club. This club has been in existence for a number of years and touts among its membership former governors, senators, house members, and influential business leaders in NC. The presentation was greeted with somewhat cautious optimism by the group. Most were very appreciative of the work done by the Commission and felt the recommendations could make an impact. However, several members were somewhat agitated that yet another commission has met and actions are not happening fast enough. One particularly agitated business leader kept expressing concern that over 50% of black students do not graduate from high school and educators reaction was to form a commission and recommend curriculum changes.

Other reactions across the state and nation have been more positive. Several leading newspapers in NC have supported the recommendations of the Commission. Also, I recently attended the Superintendency Institute of America winter workshop with Larry Lezotte and it was apparent that our work in NC was leading the way for education reform of testing and accountability systems.

At the Phoenix meeting, I was particularly excited about a presentation by Dr. William Schmidt from Michigan State University. Dr. Schmidt is a leading researcher for numerous national and international assessments. Dr. Schmidt was very clear in what he thought the issue is with the poor performance of US students when compared to international competition. The problem is the excessive curriculum objectives that we expect children to master during any grade and especially through grades K-12. Dr. Schmidt gave several comparisons of curriculum objectives between the US and the leading countries in the world on international assessments. Particularly noteworthy was one chart that he showed the number of objectives in math at the K-2 level. In the leading countries, students are expected to master whole number meaning, whole number operations and measurement units by the end of 2nd grade. Those are the only mathematics objectives they are exposed to in K-2. In the US, our K-2 students are exposed to these 3 objectives and over 20 others. Bottom line - our children are exposed to lots of objectives, however, many students are unable to master the objectives and they do not have the foundational skills to build on for future learning. The solution is very simple and almost impossible to implement.

Fixing the curriculum seems easy enough. The problem will be when the curriculum is reviewed for reduction. Every special interest group comes to the table and they never want to give up anything. They always want to add objectives. Teachers are always involved in the process, however, teachers have little training in development of statewide curriculum that is nationally and internationally competitive. The state would be well served to follow the Commission's recommendation on this one issue and the General Assembly needs to support the recommendation through changes in the legislation that requires curriculum reform every five years.

Curriculum is the root cause of our inability to prepare our children for the future and to help them be competitive with international students. Failure to address this root cause will doom the Commission's work to just another report and the attacks on public education will continue because our performance on international assessments will not improve and jobs for the future will continue to move more toward a service economy rather than a manufacturing or innovation economy.

Interesting Research on Reading

Recently, I had the opportunity to hear Ted Hasselbring, Professor of Special Education, Peabody College at Vanderbilt. Dr. Hasselbring developed Read 180 which is a reading intervention program that we use in Iredell Statesville Schools. The following bullets are highlights from Dr. Hasselbring's speech.

• Struggling readers have two problems – unable to decode and read connected text and unable to comprehend text
• Fluency – accuracy and speed in things you do well – without fluency, no application of skills and watching kids read without fluency is painful to student and adults
• Human processing – working memory – the more fluent we are with low level skills, the less working memory we tie up for low level processing, so we can use working memory for higher level skills – struggling readers use too much of working memory for low level skills like decoding
• Neural pathways – these are the connections our brain hardwires, the more pathways hardwired, the less likely we are to lose memory later in life
• Neural pathways – word recognition and retrieval is easier when we have neural pathways – kind of like having a file cabinet full of stuff but no filing system or retrieval system – kids develop neural pathways based on experiences
• Fluency requires retrieval of words from long-term memory – through neural pathways
• Our working memory can handle 7 chunks of information + or – 2 chunks – elementary children can handle 5 chunks + or – 2
• Our working memory can handle the chunks for about 20-30 seconds
• We have to give kids enough practice or rehearsal to move words from working memory to long term memory
• We must move away from work sheets and computerized work sheets – these help you move long term to short term for processing, however, do little to move from short term to long term
• Comprehension – readers (adult and student) link text to own experiences and vocabulary to make sense of what they are reading – background knowledge is very important, however, most of the text material we use students have very little background knowledge and they see no relevance in the material

What should happen with information and training like this? The actual use of this information and research could go a long way in helping more children read and be successful. In our school system teachers are expected to work in teams at least one hour per week and look at common assessment of student progress to learn how children are progressing. Many of our teachers will find that struggling readers are the children that are not successful. All of our teams of teachers are then expected to develop strategies to provide interventions for these students who are struggling and challenges for those students who are meeting or exceeding expectations. These meetings take time. A few of our teachers resent the use of this time or they spend the time in these meetings complaining about having to meet. Teachers say they need this time to plan. However, the synergy of the group with the appropriate use of data and research on best instructional strategies will always create better PLANS than individual teacher plans.

To be or not to be? My inner conflict.

Do you ever have one of those days where you finally think you have it figured out?? Do you ever have one of those days where you think you are the only one in the gallery that is getting it?? Do you ever have one of those days that your life finally makes sense?? Well I’ve yet to have one of those days, but today came close.

I was attending a North Carolina Public School Forum Board of Directors meeting. This group has led the way in North Carolina for many years. This group is responsible for many of the excellent programs that NC has in place to improve education. The group is a wonderful blend of legislators, educators, business and non-profit that has been emulated across the country.

This evening we had a presentation from the Chief Operating Officer of the Research Triangle Park that is located between Durham and Raleigh, North Carolina. Research Triangle Park is one of the fastest growing regions in the nation and is creating a tremendous amount of jobs for the future. I went into the meeting thinking that I was going to hear another business person tell educators what a terrible job we were doing.

Before I attended the evening session I reviewed a wonderful video on the lack of creativity in public education. Ken Robinson presents a powerful case for changing education as we know it today. The link is - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66.

So, what do these two have in common? The answer is me. I have lived in two worlds for many years. As a former band director and musician, I was constantly immersed in the world of creativity. Jazz music requires creativity. The marching bands of today require creativity. I continue today (even after 36 years of educational employment) to judge band contests that require long hours at very low pay. Why? I enjoy the creativity and enthusiasm of the students and directors as they create a powerful art form.

The other world that I am immersed in is that of school superintendent and member of numerous state commissions that are looking at education reform recommendations for our General Assembly. The two worlds seem to conflict and I am often polarized between creativity and logic. Tonight, I finally figured out the answer. Rick and Becky DuFoor tells us the answer – it is the beauty of “and” vs. the tyranny of “or.”

Tonight I asked the question - If the jobs of the future require creativity and innovation, how can we continue to promote basic skills testing requirements that seem to hamper creativity and certainly limit the innovation of technology? The answer has to be both. We must ensure that students have basic levels of competency in math, science, reading, technology, and citizenship. However, we must figure out how to assess these skills in innovative and creative ways that utilize technology. I keep reading these blogs and articles that promote one over the other. I keep hearing politicians that support basic skills. We must come together and figure this out. We must prepare our children for the future they will face, not the future that we imagine. The leaders of schools and school systems of the future will be preparing children for an age that we cannot imagine. Deming said we are preparing messengers for at time that we will not see. Let’s involve the students in preparing for that future and not limit ourselves to the past that we know. End the debate of “or” and work toward the conciliatory nature of “and.” Good luck and when you get the answers, let me know at tholliday@iss.k12.nc.us.