Why Passing and Failure Rates Matter

Every since I have been in education, I have been acutely and painfully aware of grades.  I tracked them as a teacher, I tracked them as an area coach, and I have tracked them as an administrator.  Grades are a sensitive issue in school with every stakeholder, and there is good reason why.  Your passing and failure rates are a definitive factor in your academic culture.

This is why it is critical that administrators monitor the pass/fail rates of every teacher in the building and follow up with the appropriate conversations once the data is reviewed.  Part of this conversation is sharing the rationale for paying such close attention to grades.  The other part is to review the gradebook with the teacher to identify why the grades may be problematic and to connect those problems, if necessary, to instructional practices.

I want to be clear - high failure rates are an obvious problem, but almost perfect passing rates MAY also be an obvious problem.  Too often the issue of grades is relegated to "maintaining metrics", but the academic culture of the school is more important than making one goal during the school year, especially if it destroys your academic culture.

Grades are a teacher's self-report about his/her own effectiveness.  When teachers have high passing rates or low failure rates, they are making a self-report to the community about their effectiveness.  As administrators, we want to make sure that these reports are valid and reliable and that our own responses are appropriate.

If you have a large number of teachers reporting a large number of failures, then your students and parents will accept failure as part of attending your school.  There is no urgency to improve when everyone is failing.

If you have a large number of teachers reporting a large number of passing grades without corresponding achievement data, then your students will accept low standards or minimal work as part of attending your school; parents will assume that their students are doing well and will not push students academically at home.  There is no urgency to face challenges or to work harder.

Grades are a reflection of expectations for student achievement.  Grades should be able to help guide expectations about student achievement.  When grades are skewed in any direction, you are dealing with bad data.

This impacts teachers' impressions of the students and will guide their conversations about student performance.

This impacts students' impressions of themselves and their ability to achieve academically; it also impacts their parents' expectations and beliefs about their students.

Additionally, it impacts your students' ability to go to college.  You may not be aware, but many colleges and universities keep stats on your students' high school grades and compare them to performance in college.  Based on your current and past students' trajectories, your school g.p.a.'s can be weighted differently during the application process and therefore impact admissions.

The purpose of monitoring grades cannot be to simply make teachers change grades.  Rather than solve problems, this exacerbates the issue.  I have seen administrators issue numerical caps for failures. I have seen administrators force teachers to write remediation plans for the 50% or more of their students who are failing - this just ticks teachers off and gives students the impression that they are going to get a make-up when they don't do work.  I am not against remediation plans - I do encourage teachers to use this as an intervention, but I am against having teachers do unnecessary work that undermines the purpose of grade monitoring in the first place.

Check the gradebook.  I often find that many grading problems actually have to do with grading practices rather than instruction.  When I look at gradebooks, I ask:

1.  How does student performance on summative assessments compare to student performance on classwork?  Nothing destroys class and school culture quicker than grades that are not predictable.  Students who are given failing classwork grades should not be scoring high on summative exams; students who are given high classwork grades should not be scoring low on summative exams.

This is one of the top reasons that many educators are looking at their grading practices.  It is perplexing that students who have not mastered objectives pass classes, while those that do, don't pass.  It is also heartbreaking to see students who have high ACT or SAT scores be held back in college admissions while students with much lower scores go off to school, where they often struggle to keep up with the work.

2.  Are there enough formative grades to justify the summative grade?  If a teacher only has a few assignments, this can skew grades.  

3.  What is the teacher grading?  Another issue that may be present is if the teacher is grading every and anything - even introductory practice.  This is definitely an issue when teachers have more non-academic grades than they do academic grades.  If there are 20 participation grades and 5 academic grades, the data will definitely be skewed.  

Excessive grading may also be a sign of classroom management issues - the teacher is trying to modify behavior through the gradebook; this method usually always fails and results in high passing/failure rates and creates a vicious cycle for the class.

4.  Is the teacher using weights and are they used appropriately?  I have seen teachers simply throw gradebooks off by weighing one specific type of assignment very heavily and then not following through and using the category or point value regularly.  I always emphasize to teachers who want to use weights that they need to know the number of assignments that will fall into each category to ensure that weights don't skew grades.

5.  Are there grades that should be thrown out or that students should be given an opportunity to redo?  While reviewing the gradebook, I point out assignments or exams that large numbers of students did poorly on or that were not completed.  If large numbers did not do well, this becomes either an assessment quality issue or an instruction issue.  If large numbers did not complete, I ask how the assignment was structured, especially if it involves a high point value/weighted assignment (was everything due on one day or were there checkpoints?).

Many of these issues can be addressed by having a schoolwide grading policy that builds a sound logic for grading.  This creates common expectations and understanding.  It also helps parents and students appropriately advocate for grades.  You may also be surprised that by simply starting this conversation and getting teachers to explore these issues that they will naturally press for mastery and stadards-based grading practices to improve the quality of grades.  And, then, grades really will matter: your passing and failing rate issues will manage themselves.

Whose Strategy Is It? Building Independent Learners.

Whenever we talk about strategy, we are usually referring to adults - we just don't think about students.  However, we also consistently talk about student-centered, adult facilitated classrooms.  We talk about 21st century learning skills.  We talk about being a digital citizen.  But, what we don't talk about is the strategies that are employed by students or how to get students to use strategies to learn.

As a teacher, whenever, I heard student-centered, I thought about collaborative groups and giving students' choices on assignments.  This was a really short sighted view (but I didn't know that at the time).  But, then, I met these fantastic educators from District 214 who shifted my understanding.

If you aren't aware of this district and it's curriculum resources, you should check them out:  http://www.d214.org/staff_services/si__reading_writing_thinking_roads.aspx

Student centered classrooms are ones where students solve their learning problems to master skills and content.  Student centered classrooms give students choices about HOW they will approach learning tasks and meet goals.

One of the most important things that we can do as teacher leaders is to help teachers figure out HOW they help students to solve learning problems.

Often when planning, teachers think very deeply about how THEY will present information and what ACTIVITIES students will do.  What usually doesn't get as much thought is HOW STUDENTS will be able to complete the activity and use their own strategies to learn.  Accordingly, there is usually only one path or one right answer that students are expected to hit on.

But, in order for students to really learn, they have to employ their own strategies, and, without teacher support, they often can flounder.  So, when talking to teachers, I try to steer them to the following things:

Provide multiple models/process samples.  Even though, one specific model may be used for instruction, it helps students to see multiple models and approaches, so they can determine which components of a process help them to learn with the skills that they have.  This is why "think-alouds" are important - to help students develop logic, not imitate the teacher.

For instance, if you were in school 20 years ago, you probably remember the grueling process of outlining with a specific format and then having to do research notecards.  The process worked for some students but didn't fit everyone, but then the teacher would grade you on your outline and notecards, regardless of how good your written product was.  Even worse, there were always some kids who never wrote anything because they were stuck in the "process" of outlining.

I remember other kids asking me how I wrote my papers; the truth was that I would write the paper, go back, create the outlines, and notecards based on my paper.  I would turn in that part of the assignment late, but my paper always arrived on time (we were expected to attach the outline and notecards).

Provide multiple templates/graphic organizers.  As teachers start off the year, I encourage them to teach students how to use individual templates and graphic organizers, but, eventually, point out that the students need to be able to choose how they will complete the learning task.

Templates and graphic organizers are great ways to help students organize and demonstrate their thinking, but they should lead to an additional product.  When the teacher is showing the students how to complete templates or graphic organizers, it is an instructional activity; when students choose their template or graphic organizer, it is then a strategy.  High level classrooms have students independently selecting these "helpers" even when not prompted.  In high level classrooms, students find these items "helpful" and don't see them just as part of the "work".

Additionally, I encourage teachers to post the templates and graphic organizers in their classes, so students can be reminded of the strategies and have references as they work.  It also assists teachers in directing their conversations with students to focus on strategy use rather than "what is the answer".

In schools, at a really high level, they provide a bank of common templates and graphic organizers that students can use in multiple classes.  My school isn't here yet, but I hope to see this emerging over the next year or two.

Provide starters.  Sometimes, you just need a push.  I encourage teachers to use sentence starters and paragraph frames just to get students moving in the right direction.  If used well, students can internalize the structures and focus less on quantity of work and more on the quality of work.

Additionally, starters can maximize class time - rather than working for 15 minutes to figure out how to get started, with sentence or paragraph starters, students can begin working on the content and build on the assignment to make them their own.

The one caveat that I give with this advice is that teachers should not provide this all the time.  The starters should be removed as students get more and more practice and then referred to only when students need to be engaged in "strategy selection".

Using these strategies, helps students to become independent learners who can function in and out of the classroom.  After all, strategy selection and creativity are the hallmarks of the 21st century.  Independent learners have something to contribute in all situations - individually or collaboratively.  

What strategies are you sharing with teachers to build independent learners?

New to Tech Integration? Aha's for Principals and Their Teams

Right now, many of us are preparing for next school year.  Common Core and an explosion of technology resources are making everyone question where technology fits into the future of their schools.

This school year, my school has been implementing 1:1 Chromebooks, and I wanted to share some a-has that might help other principals and their teams as they start their planning.

Start with your bandwidth.  Almost any tech you buy now is going to depend on wi-fi, not hardwiring.  What is the bandwidth in your building?  Do you have the building infrastructure (i.e. drops) to maximize the bandwidth?  Knowing this one simple thing will help you know if your plans are implementable.  Ask your tech coordinator or your district office - they should be able to tell you this in one or two calls.

The cost of tech is down for a variety of reasons - many which make technology possible for schools.  Depending on your tech buys (Chromebooks, IPads, etc.), some operating systems are now internet-based rather than hard drive based - this means continuous updates that don't require individual attention or purchased upgrades.  It also means that your hardware will last longer than 3 or 4 years.

Additionally, the internet based operating systems have management consoles, which means updates and upgrades can be done by one person from one device.

Speaking of....shifting from software suites to apps.  Google Apps for Education (GAFE) is definitely leading the way, but there are a plethora of education apps in both the iTunes store, Google Play store, and stand alones that are beneficial for classes.  This means no more packages that force you to buy what you don't need or won't use; instead, get the same capabilities for FREE.

Additionally, many apps are device agnostic, meaning that even if you aren't 1:1, teachers and students can access them from multiple devices including smart phones in a classroom.  My teachers are loving FREE apps such as Kahoot (assessment), Desmos (math support), and Splashtop (screen mirroring - better than buying SmartBoards).

Even better, teachers can CHOOSE what they want and don't want to use.

Dashboard Add-Ons.  One of our biggest fears is understanding technology use and it's impact on student achievement. There are now add-ons to maximize data generation for both administrators and teachers.  Hapara provides both management and stats on GAFE usage; Clever works with multiple programs to provide school and teacher dashboards of student performance and provides single log-in entry for all users (Achieve300, Discovery Education, Scholastic, and the list goes on and on).

Due to the student information that is being crunched, you most likely will have to work with your district on this.  I'm patiently waiting for this in my district, but know it's coming like Christmas.

Schedule PLAYdates.  Even before you launch your tech integration, schedule times for teachers and students to play with and find apps and programs that you are thinking of using.  The learning is infectious, and the students will raise the bar for your staff.  You'll be surprised how many teachers will wander into other teachers rooms just to find out what the students are talking about.

Jenny Magiera is one of the teacher gurus of the nation.  Her website and ideas are inspirational - she started me on my path to tech integration three years ago.  Like her, you will find that your teachers will lead you and your school no matter what your own technology proficiency is.  The biggest challenge is going to be access - give the access, and you will be pleasantly surprised.

Join Twitter and encourage your staff to do so.  You don't have to Tweet, but you will have a stream of articles, tech recommendations, and collaborative resources that you don't have to search for.  Add cool people like Eric Sheninger, Jenny Magiera, the Chromebook Institute, etc. and you will have everything you need with a click and a scroll.

Additionally, if your staff joins and tweets from their classroom, you will have a quick way to check on your tech integration throughout the school day and share what you are doing.

Enjoy the ride.  Your role will be to problem solve and support - not to introduce and teach.  You will hear plenty about what needs to be fixed as well as what's going great; you will just need to support your brilliant teachers.

Simple Twist to Enhance Pop-Ins

I just had a great experience that I wanted to share with everyone.  So, we all have to do observations - especially pop-ins just to check and see how things are going.  I have really been thinking about how to make pop-ins more purposeful and use them to build teacher capacity as well as to inform the administrative team on how our school is doing on implementing our 1:1 and Bengal Instruction Frames (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1uNXkGwMWBIRWpJbGh6dFFoU0E/view?usp=sharing).

So, what I have been doing is observing for a few minutes and taking 3-5 points of targeted evidence (interviewing students about what they think the objective is, how students know they are successful, etc.), and I share it with the teacher.

Rather than give feedback, I send the teacher a prompt about what I was looking at, and then I ask them to tell me what their reflection is and next step.  The teacher then responds, and I get much richer information than I would have gotten by just popping in for a few minutes.  Additionally, I get to start a dialogue with the teacher where I can provide assistance or highlight great practices, especially once I get additional context. 

What I've noticed:

*Teachers assess themselves and don't require my specific feedback

*Teachers directly ask for specific assistance if needed

*Teachers share highlights or extend invitations as a result of the dialogue

I like this because just leaving a brief note sometimes seems like dropping a rock down a deep well - you don't really know if it found the ground.

How are you using your pop-in visits to build capacity or strengthen school initiatives?  Any recommendations from the vets?

EXAMPLE FRAME:  

I am following up on my classroom visit.  As shared in the weekly announcements, our focus this 2nd quarter is the use of success criteria.  Following this, we look for: your posted objective and agenda (administrative expectations) and ask three students in your class two questions, "What are you learning today/what skill are you learning/practicing?" and "How do you know you are successful/have mastered the lesson?".

Your objective was: .

Your three students responded:

What are you learning today/what skill are you learning/practicing?	"How do you know you are successful/have mastered the lesson?"
S1:	S1:
S2:	S2:
S3:	S3:

Based on your students answers, what are your reflections and next steps?

More than Text Complexity: Supporting Text Alignment

As we delve into Common Core some of you may have noticed a nefarious problem lurking beneath several literacy lessons.  As we stress text complexity and the Common Core standards, we need to take the time to ask one simple question, "Does the text match the instructional objective?"

Even before the Common Core standards became a curriculum driver, the issue of text alignment has been an issue.  Too often, both administrators and teachers assume that any standard can be taught with any text. This could not be further from the truth.

Imagine learning about cause and effect, but there is only one example of cause and effect in a two or three page article.  Can you imagine the confusion, the off-topic discussions, and outright incorrect answers that students will be giving? And then, there is the judgement that the students have an issue with reading texts because the targeted skill actually does not appear in the text, or, that the teacher's instruction does not help students grasp skills.

When selecting texts, text complexity is only one consideration, and I would say that it should not be the first consideration.  Readability and text complexity can easily be judged by doing a copy and paste into a word processing document.  Text alignment cannot.

Text alignment requires that the teacher select an article that matches the targeted instructional objective, that matches content objectives, and that is engaging enough to help students learn.  This can be a tall order, and, to be honest, I often wrote or patched together articles for my own classes to save myself from what can be an arduous search.

So, when I support teachers in looking for texts or evaluating texts, I give these guidelines:

1.  Check the titles and subheadings; pay attention to genre and text purpose.  Most textbooks are expository texts that are written with explicit meaning.    They are great for teaching things like BASIC chronological order and BASIC cause and effect.  They are not great for more complex understandings.  I, personally, preferred articles and encourage teachers to use articles over textbooks because they provide more flexibility.

If you are trying to teach argumentation, the title should clearly be an argument.  If you are trying to cause and effect, the title should clearly indicate that it is about cause and effect.  The sub-headings will help you understand how the text is organized.  This level of clarity is a hallmark of disciplinary writing.

2.  Make sure there are 5-7 examples of your target standard/objective available in the text.  You need enough exemplars that students have something to find.  If they can't find it, they will start making stuff up because they assume that if the teacher gave them the reading, it must be there.  This is the "Emperor's New Clothes" of literacy-based lessons.

You have to read the text, mark your example, and understand what miscues are present before you give it to students.  Additionally, you must be prepared that everyone's interpretation of the text will not be the same (that's why textual evidence is so important).  Having multiple exemplars deepens the discussion and can help the class come to consensus.

You also have to know how to divide the text up - the worst thing is to send kids into a jigsaw when their assigned texts only has part of the information that they need.  Knowing the text prior to class will build in this flexibility.

3.  Determine whether the text gets to the skill by being explicit, generalizable, or inferential?  This tells you WHEN you can use the text.  It is painful to see kids struggle with an inference that has to be developed over multiple paragraphs when they are just learning a skill.  This also goes to text complexity.

Explicit texts should be used for introductory instruction.  Explicit mixed with some generalizable and/or inferential for intermediate instruction, and a text that is totally inferential (philosophy is often like this) should be saved for advanced instruction (like AP or IB courses or when students have demonstrated the ability to grasp this level of text).

Generalization and inferential texts require scaffolding as students learn to deal with them and cannot be given without explicit instruction of how to deal with them.

4.  Create a reading prompt.  The reading prompt should give a brief overview of the article(s).  It should explicitly state the skill that students are learning and practicing, and it should state the specific steps that they should use in reading the text.  

This will ensure that your texts are aligned to your objective and help you see any possible gaps that you might need to address in planning or instruction.

NOTE: You should provide 2-3 strategies that students can choose and use when reading the text.  A strategy is only a strategy when it is used to solve a problem; otherwise, it is your instructional activity.  This means that students have to choose, not you.

What alignment advice are you giving teachers?  Has anyone tackled this issue head on in their school?

Conducting a Post-Observation Conference Using a Framework

In framework observation cycles, the post-observation conference gets to the meat and potatoes of what we do every - the impact on student learning.  But, sometimes this opportunity is missed because we spend so much time on teacher practice.  This can lead to a negative conference because you have two education professionals arguing about practice rather than focusing on student outcomes.  I tell teachers that I don't care if they lecture, worksheet, or stand on their head for the class period as long as it is effective and has an impact on student learning.  This shifts the focus from whose educational philosophy and approaches are right to "are our students learning?".

NOTE: The quality of the post-observation conference depends heavily on the evidence collected during the observation.  It is important to collect a range of data that matches your framework - this means that you need a mix on teacher speech/events and student speech/events.  The more times I go through these cycles, the clearer I am about what to collect.  This is my running list: 

* the objective/agenda of the class                     *overview of boards and classroom walls

*excerpts of teacher instruction                          *excerpts of student interactions

*excerpts of student/teacher interactions            * time stamps for the excerpts/transitions

*samples of student work produced during class (literally typed into my notes or with pictures I take with my phone).

This year, I have learned to provide the observation notes to the teacher immediately after the observation (I send it while I'm still in the class); this has made the conferences more effective even if it takes me some days to finish my tagging and schedule the conference.

Teacher Leads, I Listen. So, during the post-observation conference I let the teacher lead.  Here, the teacher has the opportunity to demonstrate and highlight their effectiveness in the classroom.  In this case, I cluster the questions, but, at this time, my job is to push for the teacher to share evidence with me that support their conclusions.  Teachers can use evidence from the classroom observation notes, student work samples (if they bring them), or any other data collection tool that they have (i.e. Gradebook).  

The ratings are the very last thing that we talk about in the conference - it has been my experience that by the time we complete the conference, very little time is needed or desired to talk about the ratings because the teacher has already come to the same conclusions that I have 98.5% of the time - any time that there is a difference of opinion, we go back to the evidence.  I do not share ratings before the conference, but I do share comments before the conference.  I always enter into the post-observation conference with the mindset that a rating might change based on my conversation with the teacher.

Depending on the teacher and the effectiveness of the lesson, post-observation conferences usually last 15-25 minutes.  Teachers who need additional coaching and/or resources usually work with me for the whole 45 minutes with some type of follow up meeting.

The Questions.  

1.  How do you think the class went?  Was the class effective - did students master the objective?  Evidence?

2.  What went really well?  What didn't work?  What would you keep/change if you taught this lesson again?  How did it impact what you did the next day? Evidence?

3.  What did you learn from this observation cycle?  What will you focus on as a result?

Professional Development Plan.  This is where I share my conclusions using the rubric components and descriptions - not ratings with the teacher.  I also hold myself to the same standard of evidence during this conversation.  We talk about:

1.  Celebrations - what the teacher has done well and the impact of previous professional development (2-3 things the teacher did really well), using evidence from the observation and/or shared.

2.  Suggested Areas of Improvement - identify no more than 2 high leverage components that teacher might think about working on (3 if closely related) and the rationale, using evidence from the observation and/or shared.

3.  What we both agree will be the next component foci will be and next steps including any resources that the school can and will provide.

The Ratings.  For those of you with a detailed framework, you know it can be tedious to try to get a pre-assessment for every component of the rubric; I focus on the Domain overall using the rating names and brief descriptions of what the ratings mean.  This is how you'll know that the first part of the conference was effective - teachers should be able to give an accurate rating and pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses.

Domain 1 (Planning) - Based on this cycle, where do you think you are at with planning?  Unsatisfactory - you need more training and assistance, Basic - you need some assistance and feedback, Proficient - you have this mastered, or Distinguished - you're an expert?  Strengths/weaknesses?

Domain 2 (Classroom Environment) - Based on this cycle, where is your classroom environment?  Unsatisfactory - Need support to move to a learning environment, Basic - OK, but inconsistent, Proficient - You are in control of the class, or Distinguished - You're in control and the students are helping you to manage? Strengths/Weaknesses?

Domain 3 (Instruction): Based on this cycle, where is your classroom instruction?  Unsatisfactory - its effective for only a few students, Basic - it's effective for some students, Proficient - it's effective for most/all students, or Distinguished - it's effective for all students and the students contribute to their learning? Strengths/weaknesses?

The Big Reveal.  After we complete the protocol, I then show the teacher the screen with all of their ratings.  I give them a few minutes to review and ask, "Are there any surprises?"  Most of the time, there is a resounding, "No, I already knew that - we talked about it".  Sometimes, there are questions about 1 or 2 ratings, and, in those cases, we go the evidence and compare it to the rubric until we come to an agreement.

So, this is my post-observation protocol.  If you would like to read about my pre-observation protocol, you can follow this link:  http://principalinstruction.blogspot.com/2014/11/conduction-pre-observation-conference.html.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback and any best practices that you have learned.

How to Personalize Your School Data: Get Muddy

Once upon a time, I had time to troll through tons of data. I was a teacher.  I was a literacy/data coach.  I was an assistant principal, and then I became a principal.  And, all of that time that I had to scroll through data and make charts was gone.  I thought I lost part of what was one of my important strengths - knowing and being the expert on my school's data.

But, I discovered that one of the great parts of being a principal is that you get to teach adults.  And, the skill that my staff has needed me to teach is to review and understand data.  So, now, I'm not the primary source of data collection, but I am an archiver and researcher.  I know where to go, and I've seen enough that my instincts are sharp even if I don't have the data in front of me.

One skill that I have learned is how to personalize my school's data to fit my time and my school's needs.  I wanted to share some of these tips because I often hear principals lament that they are not "data savvy"; but, what I would argue is that they are student and staff savvy and organizing your data reports with this in mind can make a big difference to how you approach school data.

Outcome Data v. Actionable Data.  Accountability looms over all administrators, and we may find ourselves obsessed with the outcome data.  We want to know how well we are moving towards the end of the year goals.  We check attendance.  We check failure rates.  We check averages.

This is a great start, but the data isn't actionable.  I mean we can call in our staff and students, yell, scream, beg, and plead about the numbers moving in the wrong way or celebrate when they move in the right way, but the fact is that outcome data doesn't really move anyone to action.

Actionable data is student and staff level data that let's you know who to work with and what types of strategies to use.  It's knowing which of your teachers have the highest and lowest failure rates.  It's knowing which students and staff are missing a lot of school and who is at school everyday.  Actionable data is both positive and negative data that helps your team figure out who and what to focus on.

Select Your Priorities.  One mistake that people make is that they want to focus on everything; as a result, data overwhelms them, they never make any deadlines, and the data is usually the autopsy data that educators complain vehemently about.  As the principal, you have to guide and collaborate with your team members on the selection of the BEST data points for your school's mission and vision.  There is no point in focusing solely on test scores if your attendance is 70% - I'm pretty sure that whatever you do will fall flat.  There is no point on focusing heavily on RTI or MTSS Levels 2 if you don't make the 80% cut-off at Level 1.

Data should make you more effective - not more crazy.  Select 5-7 non-negotiables that everyone can focus on.  These 5-7 points should be easy to understand, easy to access, and easy to track (Note: You may have to train someone to make this data available).

For instance, my school's vision is "Excellence Today, Success Tomorrow: Bogan Today, College Tomorrow".  We closely follow two metrics - On-Track to Graduation and College Selectivity.  Everyone in the building and parents are trained to understand the data.

On-Track status is given on Red, Yellow, or Green paper to indicate student status (the Excel sheets are coded the same way).  Easy to understand (I love hearing parents ask students why their friends' letters are red or yellow, and I love seeing kids display their green letters), easy to access (simple pull of grades combined with test score data), and easy to track (just add columns).

College Selectivity is given every quarter with a combination of students current Explore, Plan, or ACT score, their projected G.P.A. based on their current grades, and their college selectivity (the type of college/university that they currently qualify for).  Easy to understand (data at the top, table at the bottom), easy to access (a macro generates it after dropping in data), and easy to track (add columns).

Scroll the lists - don't study them.  Many people make the mistake of thinking that they have to be a guru around every report that comes out.  You don't.  You simply need to start noticing patterns in the data.  The more you scroll your students'  and staffs' names and the corresponding data, the more you will learn about your school.  More importantly, you'll start to pick up on who and what to pay attention to.  When you look at the outcome data, it will have some real, personal meaning to you - not just a numeric impression.

Understand and accept that you will become an expert with your number of exposures, not with the amount of time that you spend on one report.

Chunk the data.  If you have 1,000 students and 100 plus staff members, there is no way that you are going to be able to review every single data point.  Instead, set a cut off.  Make sure that the cut-off is both positive and negative.  For instance, you want to know the top and bottom 30 students for attendance.  You want to know the top and bottom 20 teachers for failure rate.  You want to see the Honor Roll List and the list of students with two or more failures.

Also, make it clear to the data owners that you want to be able to talk about your data chunks, so you can continuously get updates.  How is such and such doing?  Where is this group moving?  What have you done to support .... since we last met?  I saw X moved off the list, what's going on?

This will help you quickly assess if your strategies are successful, help you connect with stakeholders around their own personal data, and make the data manageable enough to help you decide where to spend your time.

The positive and negative data will also help you balance your leadership approach.  Too often, we focus on negative data and this can translate into negative leadership (don't forget to celebrate small advances and celebrate them with targeted groups).

Where are you at with managing your school data?  What data points are you using to drive your school's mission and vision?

Mastering the Schedule and Enhancing Your Role as the Principal (High School)

Every year, I start my school's next year scheduling in early October.  Many people ask me why I start so early, but it is my experience that this is the best way to build staff capacity and maximize student scheduling. I believe that the school scheduling should be a collaborative process; however, it takes about 3 or 4 cycles for teacher/staff to really understand the choices that they are or are not making.  These 3 to 4 cycles need to be long because the greater the understanding, the more input the staff will want to give.

I have been an administrator for 6 years - only one year have I started without all of my schedules being in order on the first day - the first year that I was an assistant principal.  This happened mostly because I was new to my role and didn't fully understand the scheduling process; I just left it to the scheduler who I assumed would be able to take care of everything.

The problem with this is:

1.  Scheduling reflects your academic priorities and planning - it is the ground floor of any student intervention (pullouts everyone?).  Your scheduler may make decisions on ease, not based on what's best for students, the teachers, and/or the school.

2.  Scheduling impacts both the principal's and the staff's workload and collaboration, and, therefore, the quality of instruction.

3.  Scheduling impacts the culture and climate of your school: attendance, discipline, and academic press can all be impacted by a poorly designed master schedule.  You may also find your leadership undermined by   scheduling as well if teachers can pander and negotiate schedules and room assignments that you aren't assigning.

Principals should not be afraid of scheduling; sit with your programmer as they go through the scheduling process, so you can learn each step and figure out how to maximize your schedule.  This is how I learned to schedule and to lead in the development of my schedule.

Basic considerations:

1.  Complete your course tallies (counts of courses that student select) BEFORE budgeting occurs.  This means that you will know how many teachers and what types of certifications you will need.  You don't have to do this yourself - the scheduler can share this report with you and walk you through it.

 It will help you maximize your teacher certification selections. You will also ensure that your schedule is funded, and you aren't surprised by salaries.  Accordingly, if you have to scramble for funds it will be for 20 thousand dollars worth of office supplies instead of a 90 thousand dollar English teacher.

2.   Identify collaboration time that you want to occur during the school day.  If your district has principal directed periods this will maximize your impact on instruction and give you time to provide professional development and support to teachers during the school day.  Create a prioritized list - most schedules can handle one or two types of collaboration time - once you get beyond this, you may run into trouble with getting all members of teams scheduled for the particular period.

The first part of creating schedules is to lay out the blocks of when classes will occur and what rooms they are in.  If you tell your scheduler this AFTER the master is set, the scheduler will have to re-build the schedule before they can schedule students.

NOTE: Also let the scheduler know if you want teachers freed for a certain number of periods and which periods those are

Check out @markbarnes19:  http://buff.ly/1CIGFJE

3.  Pay attention to workload, room assignments, and hallway assignments.  This can improve the culture and climate of your school.  

a.  My rule of thumb is no more than 2 preps per teacher - it is hard to be effective with too many preps and/or too many room assignments - the goal is one room, but if there have to be multiple rooms, they need to be close to each other

 b.  Look at what teachers are assigned to what rooms; those hidden corners go to my most proactive teachers with the best classroom management.  Teachers who need support are in the middle, so they get additional support from other teachers and security.  You may also consider grouping teachers by departments to foster collaboration and peer observation or grade levels for the same reasons AND to strengthen security for students.

c. Hallway assignments are important to maximize your security - combined with locker assignments, you   can enhance security by creating target areas at certain periods and minimize student crowding

There is definitely more to scheduling than just these few points; I know that there are some master schedulers out there who are principals, and they probably have some basics to share as well.  What are yours?

Classroom Participation v. Classroom Engagement: A Note to My Teachers

My district has adopted the Charlotte Danielson Framework for teacher evaluation.  As part of this transition, I provide my teachers with e-mails that give deeper explanation and exploration of specific domains and components.  I wanted to share one on a topic that I talk to teachers frequently about - the difference between participation and engagement.  Let me know what you think?  Do you have similar conversations with your teachers?  And, how have you effectively moved their understanding?

Participation v. Engagement

Engaging students is an area that many teachers have questions about. I wanted to go over this particular domain with the hope of clarifying some questions.

Issues that people have shared:

1. We confuse engagement with participation. Engagement is about the mental effort that is exerted to master

the subject. Participation is about the physical indicators that we can observe that may or may not demonstrate mental efforts.

For instance, I can participate in a conversation where I am not engaged. If you ask me about the weather, and Itell you that it's cold outside, and it's snowing, I have participated, but there is no evidence that I have engaged.

You can ask me what my stance is on the Affordable Health Care Act, and I can do multiple things.

a. Participate - Simply say, I agree/don't agree or don't care and move on.

b. Participate and engage - I say, I agree/don't agree, don't care, and explain why I have this stance, AND it's not just a regurgitation of something I heard (engagement). You can increase my engagement by     asking questions or providing counterarguments, so I defend my position or explain.

c. Engage - I don't necessarily respond, but I think about it, and then may choose to participate/engage in theconversation at a later time.

We frequently observe Scenario A - from a limited number of students in a class - these students get points for participation even if they have not engaged in the mastery portion of the lesson.

We also see Scenario C - from students who are quiet and who are thinkers. They may not let you know that they are engaging, but they frequently surprise teachers by demonstrating their engagement in later

assignments.

The target Scenario is Scenario B. This is why Questioning and Discussion Techniques are so important - you are attempting to get students to participate in an activity that requires engagement over periods of time that lead to mastery.

Just because students participate, doesn't mean that they are engaging.

2. We skip prerequisites for engaging. This means you haven't established safety. Imagine that we are at a meeting. I stand at the front and start handing out sheets and tell you to fill out the sheets. The sheet doesn't have a header, but asks for several bits of personal information (your social security number, your phone number, and home address). I tell you that you have five minutes to fill out the sheet, and then I want you to share it with your partner to make sure that the sheets are filled out correctly.

What?! The five minutes will be used by almost everyone to figure out what is going on - some people will be

participating and filling out the sheets (not necessarily with the requested information), some people will be

talking about why I want the information, and some people will sit there - either refusing to fill out the sheets or trying to figure out why I want them to fill out the sheets and why they should share it with a partner.

There are prerequisites for engagement to occur. They don't have to take a whole class period, but they need to be done to establish safety.

a. There has to be a clear objective that everyone understands. If people don't understand WHY they are doing something, many will participate, but they won't engage AND complete the activity at the time of request.

b. There has to be clear criteria for what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. I most likely am going to get a range of responses on these sheets beyond what the written request is. To maximize the effectiveness of this, the participants should also be able to contribute. This is the purpose of doing things like establishing norms for meetings or providing rubrics for assignments.

c. People have to understand the procedures and strategies that are being used and the choices of procedures and strategies that they can use if the suggestions don't work for them. Why do you have to share your personal information with a partner? Who might be a complete stranger and would now have access to your personal information? Can't I just re-read or have a personal conference if the sheet isn't correct?

Participating in class is scary enough for students, engaging is a risk that many of them aren't willing to take -

what if people know that they don't know? This is why so many students wait for the answer, or, simply repeat the answers that they know are right.

Skipping prerequisites, means that you won't make your classroom safe and you won't get to engage

students.

3. There's not much to engage in.  This is a common mistake that is made when the focus of instruction is topical  (facts and memorization), rather than skills.

To explore a topic REQUIRES skills.

To change the content and/or context and maintain engagement REQUIRES skills.

The content gets you started (participation), the skills get you engaged.

The easiest example of this is math. Many of us had math classes where the teacher gave you a problem like

2x+y=7, you then practiced many variations of the problem using the same procedures over and over. You did very well participating in this or you could do o.k. if you had your notes, but if you got a word problem or received a real world scenario, you weren't able to figure out what to do (engage).

Skills are applicable in different contexts and in different content; content is not. Understanding what a variable in math means very little if you can't recognize a variable in a science experiment, in a spending plan, or in a myriad of other place that you encounter variables.

For prolonged engagement:

a. Students must have a skill or a strategy (tools)

b. They must use the skill or strategy to explore content/contexts and have

c. They must be able to use the skill or strategy with MULTIPLE choices about how to use the skill and/or strategy OR contents/contexts to demonstrate mastery

This is why students can't just do one type of problem (even if the numbers are changed out), read one article or section of the textbook, or practice one thing over and over - they need multiple types of problems, articles, situations, so their minds are stretched during class.

What may START OFF as engagement turns into PARTICIPATION, which means no mental energy is being expended and there is NO engagement.

To be engaged, student have to be participating in a RICH experience with multiple points of entry.

When you hit all three of these areas, you will have a rigorous classroom.

Let's get out there and start engaging students!

The Mecca Of PARCC: The Assessment Page You Probably Skipped Over But NEED to Review

Today, I kicked myself about 15 times - I was having a talk with one of my coaches about PARCC requirements and realized that I had not visited my favorite page of the PARCC Online site (http://www.parcconline.org/about-parcc - NOT the PARCC Pearson site, which many of us are visiting multiple times a day).

The particular page that I am referring to is "The Assessment System" drop-down on the Assessment Tab.   This is a page that many will be tempted to skip to go to the practice exams, but this is a BIG mistake.  If you have already been using this as a resource, you might want to go back as it has been updated since the field testing.

What is on this page?

If you click on "Blueprints and Test Specs", you get a list of items including:
1.  a detailed description of the test items on PARCC with the points assignment
2.  the standards broken down into targeted objectives
3.  three really important literacy documents - the literacy text analysis worksheet, the informational text
        analysis worksheet, and the direction sheets on how to use these sheets to select texts.

These three groups of items are the guidelines that the assessment writers must use to create the PARCC exam.

If you click on "PLDs", you will get the performance level descriptors, which are detailed rubrics that describe exactly what student performance must look like in order to perform at levels 2, 3, 4, or 5.  The great thing about the Performance Level Descriptors is that they bring all of the resources together, so you can see the big picture of the assessment overall - something taking the practice test by itself cannot accomplish.

This resource is really the backbone of any Common Core planning that we are doing - it gives clear explanations of how the assessment interprets the standards and is the minimum that must be planned for in designing school based curriculum, instruction, and assessment.  It's a lot of information that will probably take all of us a couple of years to fully internalize, but definitely, in my opinion, the best free Common Core resource that we have access to.

So, take a glance and let me know if it makes you as giddy as it makes me.

Building a Curriculum System

Before we get started, let's clear up some vocabulary.

STANDARD: Is a long-term outcome that is reached through curriculum and instruction.  This is why Common Core emphasizes that it is not a curriculum - it is a set of desired outcomes for students.

OBJECTIVE: Is short-term outcome achieved in classrooms through daily instruction.  It is a building block towards the standards.

The first thing to understand is whether it is the school or the teacher that doesn't understand the standards.


Does your school have an ACADEMIC vision that is tied to the standards and to the state assessment?

Part of your work as the school leader is to make sure that you have created or articulated the school vision of standards implementation.  Many schools have thematic organization; they focus on social justice, technology, career preparation, college readiness, etc.  Whatever, your vision of the standards are should be articulated.  This allows the school to establish their 4 year academic goals.

Your school's 4 year academic goal may be that all students will be creative, critical thinkers who will contribute to their communities.

Accordingly, if this is clear, when you talk to your teacher about their standards, you will ask them:

1.  How does your interpretation of the standards support students' creativity?
2.  How does your interpretation of the standards support students' critical thinking?
3.  How does your interpretation of the standards ensure student contribution to the community?
4.  How does your interpretation of the standards ensure student success on the state assessment?

NOTE:  Even though it seems counter intuitive, it is important to include a discussion of the state assessment and it's value in your academic vision.  For instance, my school's slogan is Bogan Today, College Tomorrow Our state assessment includes that ACT.  If we really believe Bogan Today, College Tomorrow, then we have to believe that student performance on a college entry test really does align with our vision and mission for the school.  This prevents confusion when teachers are held accountable for results - we agreed the test was an important measurement because....If you are going to have a big blowout, have it here, so everyone can move past their disagreements and work together.


How do the standards align to the state assessment?  Does your state have a criterion test (clearly stated objectives that will be tested) or a norm-referenced test (a framework of objectives that may or may not be tested)? And, are the state standards the exact same as those listed for the test or "aligned" to the test?

The easiest scenario is that your state has a criterion test and that the criteria for the test are the exact same as the state standards.  This makes your job easy: either your school, your departments, or your individual teacher needs to place these criterion in logical order.

The next easiest scenario is that your state has a norm-referenced test with a framework that is also the state standards.  You know you have a framework if either a standard or topic is given along with a group of objectives.  The challenge here is to identify, as a school,  what the MOST IMPORTANT standards and objectives are - because most likely, you aren't able to do everything and some objectives will be learned as a by product of others. Your school academic vision should help in this selection.   After your important standards or "power" standards are selected, they need to be broken down by school consensus and put into logical order.

The most difficult scenario is that you have a framework, a norm-referenced tests, and state standards that are different from the framework of the test.  This means that your teachers have to figure out multiple alignments, which leads to confusion.  In this case, I have learned that it is best to make a choice about which standards you are going to use in order to plan.  If you are lucky, your state provides a clear alignment document already; if you are not, your time is better spent building curriculum than aligning standards.  If the standards have clear objectives connected to them, you spend your time putting them in logical order.  If the standards are numerous, you will still need to select your "power" standards, break them down by school consensus and put them into logical order.

Does your school have the TOOLS to build daily lessons?

Many schools skip over one very important document - the scope and sequence.  A scope and sequence document maps out how standards are taught over the four years at a school.  This creates accountability at each grade level and for each teacher and prevents "individual" courses.  If your school does not have a scope and sequence, your students, classes, and scores may be suffering for it.

A good scope and sequence will look something like a spreadsheet.  The standards AND objectives will be in the left column.  The other columns will represent blocks of time (i.e. 5 weeks or 10 weeks), and there will be X's that make it clear what will be taught in that time period.  High level scope and sequence maps will show you differentiation as well - what honors classes are expected to cover, what regular classes are expected to cover, and what support classes are expected to cover.

The second document that the school should have is a curriculum map.  The curriculum map can be overlaid on the scope and sequence.  The curriculum map explicitly states the content that is going to be taught with the standards.  Many schools use themes rather than specific materials to provide teachers flexibility.

When these two documents are in place, teachers can focus on planning instruction.  AND, your job as an administrator will be exponentially easier because you have the scope and sequences to refer to when you are participating in planning sessions, observation cycles, and coaching.  Your job is to make sure that the teacher honors their colleagues' work; the teacher's job is to implement what the team has agreed on.

But, it's the middle of the school year!  Yes, we all face that.  One thing that has to be clear is that building a curriculum system takes multiple years - you will always be revising - at first, the revisions will be big, but then they will get more targeted and focused as the teachers get a handle on it.

Expect your first product to be very messy.  Your teachers will learn a lot in the process.  Things that they thought were so crucial will be weeded out or replaced.

In the short term - have your teachers do this work by the quarter.  Have them keep notes and pay attention to student results.  In the long-term, use the summer to really hash out a better plan and dirty details.  Remember, most likely, it will take 2-3 years to really gel your scope and sequence AND curriculum maps.  Most people are going to face this task with Common Core becoming the new planning standards.  But, the pride and collaboration that will come from this will be invaluable, and it will go a long way in making your school a positive, academic culture.

Conducting a Pre-Observation Conference with a Framework

For many principals, the jury is still out on whether or not the framework approach to teacher evaluation is worth the efforts.  One of the most intimidating factors for some principals are the extended conversations around instruction.

I actually love the framework approach because I used to have to use a standard checklist - a checklist that I was not fond of and that I didn't feel that was very helpful for teachers or myself.  The framework, on the other hand, is very specific, and is helpful.  One, it helps both the teacher and I start off with a common, detailed understanding of what great planning and instruction look like.  Two, it helps both myself and the teacher zero in on practices that can take their work to the next level.  And, three, it helps me as the instructional leader see patterns that need to be addressed by professional development (differentiation rules!)

Accordingly, I wanted to share my "protocol" for conducting pre-observation conferences, which allow me to not only gather information prior to the observation, but to support teachers in their own thinking and lesson preparation.

Teachers lead, I follow.  So, I look at the formal observation as "performance art" - my job is to understand how the teacher has gotten to the current point.  I need to understand the teacher's logic.  Therefore, I usually group questions and let the teacher talk, interjecting only to ask clarifying questions, or, if needed, to point out missing information and/or model suggestions.  Occasionally, when teachers are way off, I go back and review the rubric and school expectations.

The pre-observation conferences usually last between 20-30 minutes - sometimes as long as 45 minutes if the teacher needs additional coaching and support.  This has made the process very manageable, maximizes my time, and allows me to do multiple observations throughout the school year (I can do 5-7 pre-observation conferences in a week; my APs can do a similar amount as well - we complete cycles in two week spans).

The Questions.

1.  Talk to me about the professional development that you have done since your last observation.  What will I see different in your instruction as a result?  How has this impacted your relationships with your colleagues?  How has this impacted student achievement and what is your evidence?

2.  What standard/objective will I be seeing in your classroom?  How did you get here (talk to me about your unit and recent lesson plans)?  Student results/work that you want to share?

3.  How will you and I know that students are successful/that they mastered this objective?  What will their student work look like?

4.  What does the instructional activity look like?  Walk me step by step through what you will be doing and what the students will be doing?  How have your students' impacted your design?

Review the Answers.  I always review my notes with the teacher to make sure that I am accurate in my understanding.  This also gives the teacher a chance to correct any confusion.

1.  So,  X was your best PD.  As a result, I will see you doing A, B, and C.  The students will be doing D, E, and F.  And, you've been able to share with your colleagues by....

2.  On XDay, you will be teaching the students to....because your unit is on .... and you have been doing X, Y, Z.  Your current data/student work shows....

3.  When I come to observe, (describe lesson).

4.  So, by the end of the class period, students will be able to ...... and by the end of the unit, they will be able to ..... And, you will know they are successful because the work has A, B, and C.

I've had pretty good success with this protocol, but I am always looking for ways to improve.  What protocols are you using?

Using Lesson Plans to Diagnose Instruction

One of the most common tasks for school administrators is reviewing lesson plans.  But, the question is why are you reviewing lesson plans.  If your answer is accountability, then you most likely are not leveraging your lesson plans for the fantastic conversation starters that they are.  Lesson plans in conjunction with observation are a powerful tool that helps you understand how teachers think and to provide the appropriate coaching to teachers.

The question for each TEACHER's lesson plan review is "why you are reviewing it"?  Note, that I focus on the teacher and not the general lesson plan.  Why the teacher?  Because if you are looking to improve instruction through your feedback on the plan, you have to know the teacher's needs, not the lesson plan template requirements.

I look at lesson plans for four standard things:

1.  Does the teacher understand the standards and how they are meant to be implemented?
2.  Does the teacher organize instruction into clear objectives that are logical and that build on each other?
3.  Does the teacher plan instruction and/or activities that are aligned with objectives and/or standards?
4.  Does the teacher plan for formative assessment and differentiated response to student needs'?

If your school has a special instructional initiative, you can also ask a fifth question: Does the teacher implement X strategy in their activities with fidelity to our school vision of implementation?

To decide on what to review, I find it is usually helpful to observe the teacher and looked at some type of student results - this does not have to be standardized or state exam data.  For instance, my school district has Gradebook, I can go into any teacher's gradebook and look at how students did on a teacher's specific assignment or exam.  Gradebook provides a simple pie chart for every assignments/exam showing the distribution of student performance.

Diagnosis for Question 1:  If you walk into a teacher's classroom, and no one including you, knows what is going on, it's probably best to start at the standard.  Does the teacher demonstrate that they actually understand the standard or are they just copying and pasting from your state/district documents?  Other indicators are that the teacher is completely off from what the standard describes or they are doing incredibly low, rote exercises (e.g. having students trace pictures from the textbook, copying portions of the textbook, etc.).

Including more than two standards for the lesson plan is always a clue.  Standards usually have to be broken up in order to be taught; giving a laundry list usually suggests that the teacher doesn't know what they are teaching, what the students are learning, or what the students are practicing.  These classrooms frequently are just a non-stop activity fest, and students don't know their progress until after the test is given.

Diagnosis for Question 2:  Does this teacher have a standard of the day?  Start the class without referring to any previous learning?  It might be that they haven't really broken the standards down into viable instruction units AND put them in a logical order. Classes like these are often poorly paced and have plenty of student complaints - "We never learned this", "The teacher goes too fast", etc.

Teachers with this issue usually are at the extremes of the instruction spectrum - they're always "teaching" or the students are always "practicing" even though there was no instruction - because they're short on time.  Both the teachers and students are always complaining that no one is learning anything.  The teacher also has to frequently interrupt the class as they interact with students to share what they "forgot" to tell the class.  In addition, the teacher has to continuously extend their instruction or activity time because they are out of time.

Diagnosis for Question 3:  Are all of the teachers' classes EITHER instruction or activities?  Many teachers plan instruction but fail to provide activities OR they plan activities and fail to plan instruction.  The result is that they get mixed results on assignments/exams and student response.  These teachers are most likely to have wonderful instruction or fantastic activities that end up netting "no results".

These teachers can also get lost and forget to make sure that their classes are aligned to their stated objectives and standards.  You may see a great class from this teacher one day and an o.k. class another day.  Inconsistency is one of the biggest clues that this may be the needed starting point for this teacher.

Diagnosis for Question 4:  Do all students perform in the same range of performance with this teacher or are there large gaps between different groups?  You might have noticed that all of your top students complain about this teacher or that all of the special education teacher complain about this teacher.  The teacher may actually say to you themselves that they just can't get through to a certain type of kid.

If you persistently see that specific groups of students are excelling in a teacher's classroom, you know that the instruction is somewhat effective, but it's not responsive.  In these classrooms, you will see many of the students engaged, but some students not engaged or the same group of students continually asking for assistance.  The teacher probably has one great lesson that works for many students, but not all.

Introducing Myself

Hello!

I am new to blogging, but I wanted to start blogging about something near and dear to my heart - instructional leadership.  I frequently see and find articles about how to be a great leader or a great principal that have cursory references to instruction, but very little on the actual instructional practices of principals.

Accordingly, I wanted to create a blog, where I could share what I have learned and hear from other principals about the actual work of instructional leadership.  I have spent a lot of my time talking and working with other principals who have questions about specific instructional practices and developing logic for their instructional plan.

I hope that this blog assists those principals who are interested as well as anyone who is interested in transitioning to instructional leadership or principalship.

So, what is my background?  I was an English teacher in both Memphis City Schools and Chicago Public Schools, and I had pretty decent results.  In Memphis, my students demonstrated high levels of proficiency - my classes were 90% proficient during the 2002-2003 school year, and 100% proficient  on a criterion test during the 2003-2004 school year.  After working in Memphis for three years, I moved to Chicago and taught in Chicago Public Schools, where my classes proficiency rates increased 3-4% each year on a standardized test.

The challenges of moving students on two different types of tests taught me a lot about instruction, students, and the organization of schools for student success.  I shared what I learned with others as an area coach.  I worked with principals and their teams to understand data, school metrics, and most importantly - instruction.  I led a pilot of interim exam assessments with 7 schools - 5 of the 7 schools posted growth in the number of students who were proficient on the PSAE - one school moved 12% in one school year.

I then moved on to assistant principalship where I worked with a dynamic group of teachers on the instructional leadership team and in classrooms.  Together, we revamped the curriculum, focused on understanding student data, and improving instructional practice, and we had pretty good results.  My last year at the school, we were the 6th highest school in growth and posted some double digit gains in reading growth.  The school has continued to hold onto their academic momentum since I have left, and I am looking forward to seeing where the school will go.

I'm currently working as a principal at William J. Bogan High School, where, in my first year,  many of the most significant data changes were in climate and culture, but we expect that we will begin to see the fruits of our academic labors.  We had some small victories and are looking to continually seeing more.

Feel free to visit my school website boganhs.org or to follow us on Twitter @BoganBengal79.

Why Professional Development? A Chance to Think

When I talk to other principals and district personnel, I frequently hear the same plans for professional development.  We are going to show teachers Strategy X.  We are going to take teachers through Y Planning Process.  We are going to review data and plan.

My question is always, "why are you doing that professional development?".  The most frequent answer that I hear is that we want to improve instruction.  I understand that we all want to improve instruction, but the approaches to professional development that we take tell teachers a lot about what we think of them and what we think of teaching.

I frequently hear the frustration expressed that students are not widgets.  Well, teachers are not widgets either.  Even though all of us are very excited by seeing high level implementation of certain classroom strategies or protocols or inspired by a research review that says that a school focused on just these strategies and demonstrated improvement, I think we often miss an important component - the teacher's thought process.

Great teachers do not just imitate or replicate strategies or lesson plans; they have a clear, deep articulation about WHY they are doing what they are doing.  You can learn how to fly a plane, but if you hit a storm or the plane breaks down, what's going to save the plane is your THINKING, not a rote procedure.  When the "bullet proof" strategy falls flat in the classroom, can the teacher spring into action or does he or she look like a deer in headlights?

If professional development does not help teachers develop their thinking around instruction or clarify their rationales for taking certain actions, it most likely is not bearing the desired fruit.  I love to see teachers come out of PD and say to me, "I need some time to get my head around this", or "I'm really going to have to think about this.  It's not what I usually do", or, even better, "When we were talking about/doing, I thought about my classroom and...".  Even better is when teachers can finally say after wrestling with something for 6 months, "I get it", AND you see it play out in their classroom with a twist.

I was attracted to teaching because of the complex problem solving - not the opportunity to follow a script. I believe most teachers are that way.  Professional development is a rote activity unless it helps teachers develop their practice AND their thinking.  Problem solving brings about great things - inquiry, collaboration, paradigm shifts, and innovation.  Great PD shouldn't just be judged on the Likert scale; it should be judged on Bloom's Taxonomy.

All Teachers Can Be Master Teachers (If they Choose To and Have The Right Support)

I have never met a teacher who wanted to be mediocre, but I have met teachers who have given up, and I have met teachers who are so confused that they don't know what to do.  Teachers, who are not that strong at their craft, rely on their principals.  This can be a good thing or a bad thing.

The good thing for principals is that most teachers are more than willing to give you a chance, when you walk into the building.  They may do things that drive you crazy, but, overall, they want your help.  The bad thing is that, if the teacher needs too much individual attention, the principal can come to the conclusion that what they have on their hands is a "bad" teacher rather than one who needs a lot of support.

That's why it's important, as a building leader to create a balance of support for your teachers - they need both administrative support as well as teacher support because the fact is that you are not going to be able to do it all.

Find out the teachers' stories.  Ask and listen - teachers will tell you the whole life story of a building.  The most revealing will be the stories of teachers who have never taught anywhere but at your school.

If you are taking over a building where professional development or teaching was a low priority, you're bound to hear some horror stories: teachers who have received evaluations without ever having been observed, teachers who have attended inquisitions, or who have been targeted by other cliques' of teachers.   But, you may also hear some really encouraging, inspiring stories - ones about teachers who have stayed to save their alma mater, teachers who have supported each other and stood up for students, and, the amazing teachers, who despite their circumstances, are spectacular and have amazing classes.

These stories will tell you the emotional state of the building, which is key because hurt and angry people take a little more to reach than happy, sunshiney people.

Talk to the students about instruction.  Ask general questions, "are you learning a lot today?", "Who is your favorite teacher?", "Who do I have to see in this building?", etc.

See the teachers teach.  When I first walk into a building, I like to see teachers in groups.  I go and observe whole departments or whole grade levels on a day.  Why?  So, as the leader, I can see the big picture of instruction.  Teaching is a team sport.  Where does the school team excel?  Where do they need work?  What are the experiences of the students throughout the day?  If we going to call on teachers to support other teachers, we have to understand who we are calling and what we are calling them for.

Talk to the leaders.  Share the school data and have them explain the outcomes.  If the leaders give you a blank stare, you know where to start.  If the leaders give you a list of problems, you know where to start.  If the leaders point out what has worked and what has not worked, you know what to support and where to start looking for fixes.

Share your findings and start the negotiations.  After doing all of the observing and talking, people are going to be nervous.  They want to know if they said too much or if they missed something.  Let them know what your observations of the netted.  Their responses will let you know if you're on the right track and give you common ground to start from.