Schools can bring up their science scores, but it takes concerted effort to focus in on critical standards and methodologies.  This takes time and often school leaders don’t have the expertise.  Additionally, schools need the data systems to track their progress and understand how to improve.  This is the core work of Empowered Schools.  For four years we have worked with schools and school districts to design systems to ensure college readiness.  We have many satisfied clients how are feel the relief of knowing that their scores are improving and they have real systems for continued and sustained improvement.

For schools in which the problem isn’t just in science, we have the same processes to help.  We have a strong group of professionals with extensive experience both in the classroom and coach teams of teachers in the development of their systems.  Our team is consists of people who are not teaching theory, but are teaching from their own successes in the classroom of today.

Give us a call, you don’t have to struggle to find the solution.  It already exists and we have made it work in every sort of district imaginable.  Contact us a inquiries@empoweredhighschools.com

This research into Flow is applicable for people of all ages and roles, with especial import for those in leadership roles. For the educational leaders or teacher leaders out there, the following post on fostering group flow can be informative and useful: What Mel Brooks Can Teach Us about “Group Flow”.

We would be curious to hear your thoughts on these resources. Thanks for reading and good luck to all of you who are beginning the work of the ending of the school year. Best wishes for a successful year!

Joe

In his article Mr. Loveless makes seven points about the Common Core from the report, its research results, and his conclusions.  The first half of my response addressers these seven points

1. The quality of standards has not had a significant impact on student achievement.
2. Rigor alone has not had a significant impact on student achievement.
3. The gap in student performance nationally between states is mirrored between communities within states.
4. “Solid curricula, excellent teaching, good assessment, sound accountability systems, and many other things must fall into place for the promise of standards to be realized.”
5. “If it’s good teaching, strong curriculum, robust accountability, and a dozen other policy pieces that must snap into place for significant improvement to occur, and standards are a net neutral on those events’ occurrence, then perhaps standards need not be the starting point. Maybe those other policies are better at driving improvement. Perhaps strong curriculum should be developed first and then all of the other pieces could be built around it. I don’t know that this is necessarily so, but we should be open to the possibility.”
6. “Effectiveness, not alignment, should be the primary criterion for selecting curricula, disseminating promising instructional strategies, and pursuing all of the other implementation strategies on which common-core advocates are betting so much. They steadfastly believe that “effectiveness” and “alignment with standards” are synonymous. The empirical evidence indicates that they are not.”
7. “On the basis of past experience with standards, the most reasonable prediction is that the common core will have little to no effect on student achievement.”

On each of these seven points individually, Mr. Loveless is correct when you look at education through the lens of past practice.  He is perfectly right that none of these individual elements alone will help generate greater student achievement, yet his response only hints in the direction of a real solution.  The fifth point above hints at the start of a real fix for the American education system.  It is not any one of these things that matter, but a synthesis of these things orchestrated effectively that will lead to greater student engagement, achievement, and ultimately success.  Why is it that almost every industry has embraced an integrated, systems approach to how they operate?  Time and again in human organizations, the ones that are most successful are the ones that have the most effective, efficient, integrated systems where teams of professional knowledge workers collaborate toward shared performance goals, guide their decisions by a consistent set of principles, follow defined processes and protocols, thereby freeing their creative energies up for innovative work, and ultimately holding their effectiveness/success accountable against a shared body of standards.  We began Empowered Schools K12 (formerly Empowered High schools) to specifically address this need in education.

We believe in an integrated, systemic approach (as depicted in the graphic above) integrating these six elements:

1. Teachers working in Professional Learning Teams (PLT’s)
2. PLT’s managing data-driven curricula/decision making to ensure student growth and achievement.
3. PLT’s follow our SCAIL process to create, deliver, and maintain a guaranteed and viable academic curriculum for all students (you can read this also as RtI Tier 1).
   1. S = aligning to Standards and Benchmarks (Developmental)
      1. i.      Emphasis on skills and concepts, not just content.
   2. C = aligning these standards and benchmarks out over the time allotted for learning (typically a semester, trimester, or year).
   3. A = Assessment (summative) of mastery of those standards and benchmarks.
   4. I = Instruction (formative assessment) and Intervention (Tiers 1, 2, and 3).
   5. L = modifying and intervening for the Learner and the Environment.
4. PLT’s then incorporate Social Emotional Learning Standards (SEL)/Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) to ensure that non-academic college/career/life readiness skills and concepts are instructed, learned, and mastered.
5. A new model of teacher leadership starting with PLT Leads, Team Trainers, Interventionists, Leader of Leads, and RtI Facilitators allows for true distributive leadership and therefore greater collaboration, initiative, leadership, and innovation.
6. Continuous quality improvement is successfully fostered because the system is designed to constantly have a second order loop that we go back through to assess and increase the effectiveness, viability, and appropriateness of instruction, learning, assessment, and student achievement.

Through beginning from a vantage point that approaches education from a high enough level organizationally we believe that we at ESK12 have a model that, if operated with fidelity, enables schools to escape the flavor of the month, not be superseded by the next shiny bauble, and to incorporate/adjust to the newest mandates.  Our model enables schools to set a clearly defined goal of what student achievement should be, justified in relation to objective research-based standards, and gives an actionable process for teachers to make it happen.  Additionally there are internal accountability measures as teams examine data and discrepancies in individual practice to raise individual and global performance.  No one operates in isolation and feedback is based on operating the system and measuring results against data.  For the individual, the team, the school, and the district this model is a way to ensure that standards are taken off of the shelf and put into action, that efforts are judged against real results and our response to them, and finally that rather than measuring ourselves against one another we are now measuring ourselves against a common standard/level of performance.

To return to Mr. Loveless’ seven points:

1. The quality of standards has not had a significant impact on student achievement. While this may be true on the surface, our model controls for the variables that often limit the effect of standards as it gives a process to render them actionable, holds actions accountable to results, and builds in a process to push toward increasing effectiveness.  More will follow on the quality of standards (particularly the Common Core, ACT College Readiness Standards (CRS), and SEL standards in my companion post to this one.
2. Rigor alone has not had a significant impact on student achievement. Certainly rigor alone may not cause student achievement.  We can easily get someone to work hard and still not work on the right things or have a system that enables students only to perceive the labor and not the learning.  The rigor in our model comes from focusing on developmentally appropriate and progressive skills and concepts with clear criteria for mastery.  This is coupled with feedback to students and teachers to focus and plan individual efforts as well as subsequent teaching, learning, training, and resources.
3. The gap in student performance nationally between states is mirrored between communities within states. This is absolutely true, but we take an enormous risk comparing ourselves to each other as circumstances and levels of capacity differ greatly from one place to another.  We need to compare ourselves to an objective standard and then perhaps our performance relative to each other gains so value in that it can shed light on what successful schools/teams/teachers are doing, so that these can be replicated.
4. “Solid curricula, excellent teaching, good assessment, sound accountability systems, and many other things must fall into place for the promise of standards to be realized.” I could not have made a better or more succinct justification of our model and its value myself if I had tried. No, seriously I couldn’t…for those of you who know me, and those getting to know, I am just way too verbose!
5. “If it’s good teaching, strong curriculum, robust accountability, and a dozen other policy pieces that must snap into place for significant improvement to occur, and standards are a net neutral on those events’ occurrence, then perhaps standards need not be the starting point. Maybe those other policies are better at driving improvement. Perhaps strong curriculum should be developed first and then all of the other pieces could be built around it. I don’t know that this is necessarily so, but we should be open to the possibility.” We used to think so too, and then we thought about viral systems/change in the business world and realized we can engineer the change from the inside out and from the bottom up.  We believe that our model effectively addresses the inferred question above of where to start.
6. “Effectiveness, not alignment, should be the primary criterion for selecting curricula, disseminating promising instructional strategies, and pursuing all of the other implementation strategies on which common-core advocates are betting so much. They steadfastly believe that “effectiveness” and “alignment with standards” are synonymous. The empirical evidence indicates that they are not.” How do you judge effectiveness without a standard of performance?  Many schools might settle at alignment, but most do not confuse this with effectiveness.  If you ask many teachers, they will tell you it is the lack of time, or the work load, or the sheer number of tasks (without a system to structure them) that get between them and being able to be effective.  Teachers tell us our model gives them the system, the support, and the processes to surmount these obstacles and begin ensuring that aligned curricula get put into action, are evaluated against learning caused, and improved until they reach the level of mastery expected.  Step back far enough and the problems are apparent—they are problems of systems, capacity, and effective use of time and priorities.  Our model addresses these.
7. “On the basis of past experience with standards, the most reasonable prediction is that the common core will have little to no effect on student achievement.” This is true to a point, but it is precisely why we created our model and why we do the work we do.  To paraphrase Einstein, the definition of insanity is to keep doing what we have always done and expect a different outcome.  So of course there needs to be a better way.  We think our model is one way to do this in a better way.  We think it is the way, but that is up to you the reader to determine whether you agree with us or not.

In closing, our model and processes hit all of Mr. Loveless’ seven key points.  I do not think the problem is that we do not do the right things or that one of these elements is more important than another.  I am arguing that our perspective is myopic and at too low of a level.  We need to rise above the fray, have an approach to analyze the situation, get the appropriate perspective, mass our efforts at the critical point, and then take effective action.

This post has grown long enough, so I will end it here and post the second portion of my response (about the value of the standards themselves) in the coming days.

As always we would love to hear your thoughts and feedback as this is an issue we believe is at the heart of the future of education.

This is a really great piece by Paul Farhi of the Washington Post that pushes back on media’s hyperbolic coverage of education.  In the cross-hairs of the Farhi’s sights is Zakaria’s woeful coverage of education from January, 2012.  If you’re still heated up from this 1 hour crushing coverage of American education, you need to read this article.  It is reminiscent of Berliner’s works which pushed back on biased coverage of education.  Of further note is that Farhi explains how media has come to this interpretation of education.  Frankly, it’s scary.  Unfortunately, this article isn’t going to be the go to piece to answer the critics of public education, but it may help you digest the latest biased critiques.

We’ve really just begun this collection and will have more resources in the near future.  You’ll want to keep an eye on this page.

IDEA Public Schools Awarded $11.5 Million Dollars to Increase College Readiness – MarketWatch.