Knowing What to Turn-Around

There are forces out there that believe we can turn-around schools by making data rooms sprinkled with attractive charts, filled with numbers going UP! For too many people responsible for schools, this is the lifeblood of improving schools. I would not be relieved, nor put much stock in the following data, but there are charter systems and grant distributers who might be convinced this data reveals a school moving in the right direction:

·     Attendance has improved from 94.3% to 94.8%.

·     Enrollment has gone up 413 students to 439 students.

·     The test scores have improved from 49% proficiency to 53% proficiency.

And qualitatively,

·     School is implementing at least quarterly practice testing emulating the big day.

·     School adds special celebrations, poster campaigns and extra food around testing days.

·     School hires staff with proven high testing results track records.

·     School includes student testing results when evaluating staff 

·     Students participate in highly formulated teacher-directed classrooms.

There you go, a formula for success! Really – do you really buy this?

The less understanding of rigorous peer-reviewed research in education, the easier it is to digest this over-simplified and frankly backward view of what makes a school great.

We would know more about what to turn-around if all decision-makers were life-long learners – and do the ‘grit’ needed to keep abreast of current research and best practice in education. We would know more about what to turn-around if we surveyed students each year. They know they are bored to tears in settings where they cannot construct materials and ideas. They know such turn-around formulas are not inspiring. They know such schools highly cherish the students with high scores, and prefer that weaker scoring members move on to other schools. They know what we need to turn-around – not test scores, but dis-engagement, that is so pervasive in schools that minimize greatness indicators. 

It’s surprising that quantitative worshippers do not pay attention to other data for their dashboards such as the increasing suicide rates among students or the reduction of young people entering the teaching profession in the United States. A current system of accountability (basically hire and fire approach) is not attracting ‘ready-made’ ideal teachers. Few people want to take a chance on this profession these days. To turn-around such trends, we have to build in teacher development on-site – and make sure the budgets reflect that time is afforded for weaker teachers to work alongside stronger teachers in team teaching and planning scenarios. The system of letting staff go every year, with the ‘lalaland’ expectation that the super teachers are just around the corner – is the most ridiculous assumption, but common practice, particularly in charter schools. Check out the job advertisement sites. Lots of turn-over data there. The system of clearing out weaker teachers is simply increasing the number of lucrative headhunter recruiting businesses. The creation of a turn-style profession, is not helping. Such administrators need to stop playing roulette and begin the hard work of professional development. I am all for rigorous teaching standards – but they are not contained on a single page dashboard. Every school leader should be very familiar with Charlotte Danielson’s and Linda-Darling Hammond’s work. This is the comprehensive stuff that enables school leaders to identify areas for improvement – and do something to help teachers get there. Handing them a spreadsheet with an overall poor score – just doesn’t cut it. 

The narrow focus on selected data is front and center in the problem of school turn-around.  An unhappy culture exists when educators are not developed – but rather fired or re-routed from establishing any sense of belonging. This does nothing to develop a sense of community, nor student trust that their teachers will be there for them long after their classroom experiences have ended. In such environments, they see teachers as clerks in a large department store. Such perceptions contribute to a lack of empathy which leads to schools needing to over-invest in behavior management programs – to ‘consequence’ or punish kids into a compliant existence. This sounds like a fun place to go for six hours a day. There are actually schools in 2019 that expect quiet in the halls. Seriously, this space could be the only time when students are permitted to put more than one sentence together! The teacher-directed “sameness” model (i.e. Teach Like a Champion) is boring these kids to death, and by over-testing them throughout the year, it is making the culture worse. I also predict many testing scores are random – as they do not account for test fatigue or the varied critical mass of students with special needs. There are systems that create school ranking report cards that actually believe such data has put the best schools on the top of their heap. Dream on!

Turning around schools starts with understanding that there is so much else that matters beyond the test scores, attendance and re-enrollment. The current trend in the turn-around process makes everyone pay for mistakes – when the research says – we need to learn from them. I say, where is the survey data that tells us what the students are thinking? This is a qualitative and quantitative data gap that needs to be filled. I sense we do not want to ask students for their feedback because the dashboard builders might need to create new dashboards – and they would discover that what makes a great school – just doesn’t fit on one page.

Barbara J. Smith, ZPD School and Curriculum Design (www.z-pd.ca)