Designing School Systems for All Students: A Toolbox To Fix America’s Schools

1. Designing School Systems for All Students: A Toolbox To Fix America’s Schools Dr. Robert J. Manley Dr. Richard J. Hawkins Presented at the AASA Annual Conference, Denver, CO February 18, 2011

2. Why have educational reforms failed? Shared Vision Problems, Issues Dynamic Tension Current Reality Problems, Issues We typically play here Emotional Tension

3. How can educational reforms succeed? Creative Tension Shared Vision Problems, Issues R We should play here Dynamic Tension Current Reality R Problems, Issues

4. What predicts success for the B.A.? • Content mastery of intense curricula • 8th grade ACT benchmark scores in Math, Science, Social Studies and English predict college success • Current Reality: Success rates on 8th grade ACT • 40% achieve science benchmark • 60% achieve social studies benchmark • 25% achieve math benchmark • 20% of 8th grade predicted to complete BA

5. Who takes more rigorous courses? Why? Female students take more rigorous courses than males in high school. Ethnic group percent in rigorous courses 69% of Asian Americans 54% of White Americans 42% of Black Americans 34% of Hispanic Americans 22% of American Indians

6. Our Assumptions • Our students now compete on the world stage intellectually, economically, and socially • Based on the demographics and capacity of other nations, particularly India and China, to produce high quality educational programs, we cannot afford to leave any child behind • Our students must develop fluency and adapt to world cultures • Our schools must be reconceived and redesigned accordingly!

7. You Reap What You Design! • Our school systems are producing the product they have been designed to produce. • If we are not satisfied with our current reality, we must rethink and then redesign our schools in alignment with our desired future

8. Ineffective Schools: A Process of Alignment…OR NOT! Shared Vision? Herein Lies the Problem

9. Effective Schools Design for Alignment Shared Vision The Ideal

10. Our Guiding Ideas • Effective schools envision success for ALL students • Effective schools are designed for ALL students to be successful • They align their structures with the desired future

11. Our Guiding Ideas • Effective schools are designed for ALL students to achieve mastery, not proficiency, in all academic, artistic, physical, social, and emotional domains • Effective schools are designed to accept responsibility for insuring that ALL students meet mastery in all academic, artistic, physical, social, and emotional domains

12. Let’s Open the Toolbox

13. Getting The Curriculum Right • Design a well defined rigorous, sequenced curriculum whose focus is on knowledge and understanding! • Design for Survivor, not Jeopardy • Align the espoused curriculum with the curriculum actually being taught! • Design a clear scope and sequence for all subjects • Curriculum design starts with envisioning the outcomes a la Wiggins and McTigue

14. Getting The Curriculum Right • Design and embed social emotional literacy into every curriculum • Design and embed 21st century multiculturalism into every curriculum • Design and embed team learning and technology into every curriculum • Design and embrace multiple learning styles and intelligences

15. Getting The Curriculum Right • It is time to embrace national standards that : • Are apolitical • Are designed for mastery • Are designed for 21st century skills and knowledge • Reflect world-class standards and rigor • Are guaranteed and viable for all students • Foster democracy and insure our place on the world stage economically, culturally, and socially

16. Getting The Curriculum Right • It is time to embrace national assessments that: • Are apolitical • Reliable and Valid • Emphasize knowledge, understanding, and transferability • Deemphasize test-taking technique • Emphasize what children know and are able to do • Utilize multiple measures to illuminate learning • Assess through multiple learning styles • Produce measureable outcomes that align with our desired future • For example, use ACT Gr.8 and Gr. 12 as “leaving exams”

17. “Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.” Robert Jarvik, MD. Inventor of the Jarvik 7 Artificial Heart

18. Leadership • Lead with Vision and Inquiry • Serve their organization • Are data informed • Value the workers

19. The essential role of leaders is to design, teach and steward their organizations to their desired future Peter Senge The Dance with Change (1999)

20. Inquiry: An Essential Skill for Building Relationships and Shared Vision • Balance Inquiry and Advocacy • Listen to yourself and others • Suspend your certainty • Hold Space for differences • Speak from the heart • Slow down. You need to go slow to go fast • “I’m wondering…”

21. Diagnostics, Prescriptions and Assessments for Success • Data, data everywhere • Is it valuable? • Is it skewed and/or biased • Does the data measure that which your organization values?

22. “The brutal truth that schools must face is… that a system can only produce the output and behaviors that it was designed to create” Manley & Hawkins (2009), p.56

23. Planning for Change • How aware is your organization about the need to change? • How prepared is your organization for the change under consideration? • What are the organizational ABBA’s and MM’s about the problem and potential solutions • What strategies can you employ to ready the culture for change?

24. Planning for Change • Analyze and assess data and analyzing collaboratively to establish the need for change • Use your Guiding Ideas to create buy-in! • Turn your GI’s to Operating Principles (action) • Supervise to your vision and GI’s

25. Framework for Strategic Leadership Skills and Capabilities (Data) Relationships Practices Culture Current Reality ABBA’s Guiding Ideas Evidence Awareness and Sensibilities PDSA Change Action Desired Future Innovations in Infrastructures T, M, & Tools

26. Fixes That Fail Symptomatic Fix Issue Unintended Consequences

27. Student Engagement • Stimulate children to perceive aspects of the world about them • Develop more extended and accurate language • Develop a sense of mastery over the immediate environment • Develop thinking and reasoning to make new discoveries • Develop purposive learning activities for longer period of time Bloom, (1981)

28. Cooperative Learning In true cooperative learning schools all teachers held students collectively and individually responsible to demonstrate mastery of what they had learned

29. How To Govern Schools Effectively “Quality starts in the boardroom.” - W. Edwards Deming

30. Effective School Boards • Governance is specialized ownership, not management • The board is a governing body • The board specifies the nature and cost of results • The board outlines boundaries for the superintendent • Board meetings are spent learning about, debating, and resolving long term ends • The board monitors performance Carver (1997)

31. Character Education and Its Impact on Student Achievement • Effective Character Ed. is not a program, it is a way of behaving that can be taught, modeled by all, learned and assessed • Character must be broadly conceived to encompass the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of morality. All adults must help children understand “core virtues”, adopt and commit to them, and work to employ them in the school. Lickona (1991)

32. Guiding Ideas • We believe that social and emotional literacy is necessary for academic success •  We believe responsible citizenship is developed through the teaching and learning of core virtues and skills of character development • We believe that all virtuous behavior is learned • We believe all students will demonstrate the capacity to reflect on their behaviors through the lens of the core virtues and generate multiple strategies to correct and model appropriate behaviors

33. Operating Principles • If we believe that social and emotional literacy is necessary for academic success then… •  If we believe responsible citizenship is developed through the teaching and learning of core virtues and skills of character development then… • If we believe that all virtuous behavior is learned, then… • If we believe all students will demonstrate the capacity to reflect on their behaviors through the lens of the core virtues and generate multiple strategies to correct and model appropriate behaviors then…

34. Our Core Virtues • Respect • Responsibility • Honesty • Acceptance • Perseverance • Empathy • Integrity • Humility • Forgiveness • Compassion

35. The Results

36. The Following Year

37. This Year

38. Bus Reports • 2004 – 2005 • 163 Bus Reports • 2005 – 2006 • 214 Bus Reports • 2006 – 2007 • 32 Bus Reports * As of April 1st 2007

39. Unintended Consequences • Strong Attendance • Internal Complaints Decline • External Complaints Decline • Mental Models begin to shift • Adults • Students

40. Academic Gains • Kindergarten into First Grade • Reduction in Level 1 and 2 Students • Significant Improvement from Baseline to Benchmark Reading Levels (Closing the Gap) • No Significant Performance Gaps Between Disaggregated Groups • New York State ELA Exam

41. Systems That Work for Students • Curriculum Design Focused On Student performance • Leadership Infused With Systems Thinking • Diagnostic and Prescriptive Skills Focused on Strengths • Engaged Students • System Analysis, Continuous Improvement, Inquiry • Effective School Boards • Pervasive Character Education