The time is now.
It is 2016, and we are well into the 21st century. I spent 15 years of the 21st century as a high school administrator, and nine of those as principal of one of America's highest-performing high schools by a number of external indicators.
These include being named a Blue Ribbon High School, one of only 21 public high schools in the nation to be named so in 2010. We also took the PISA, and our students outperformed the highest-performing school district, Shanghai, in all three areas of the test, reading, math and science. We also ranked highly in our state perennially on the state graduation test. Our staff's dedication and commitment to Professional Learning Community principles resulted in our recognition as a National Model PLC at Work School.
Being result-focused helped crystallize our mission of changing students' lives. Frankly, it is one thing to say you are a great school; it is quite another to work it prove it over and over again in a cycle of continuous improvement.
Today, I enjoyed lunch with one of our recent graduates. With great joy I listened to his hopes and dreams for his future as he enters college as a first-year student with sophomore status. I loved hearing about his reflection on being an International Baccalaureate Diploma graduate. His insight into what high school was and should be was an impressive discourse on our high school and on our educational system.
Our school opened in 2004 as a Professional Learning Community and our success at focusing on student learning increased as we came together as a school community of students, parents, and staff. We did business differently than most high schools by focusing on the four questions of PLC work, and our results blossomed as a result, as did our student engagement and efficacy.
Part of the reason is that we opened with a sense of urgency, as our students came from our community's other two high schools. Our community has high expectations and values education, crucial to our students' success, and as a new school we had no credentials. We had no secondary school report, no list of colleges and universities that our graduates attended, no average ACT or SAT scores, no AP scores, and no Ohio Graduation Test data.
We also had zero years of engaging in the best instructional practices, the best educational research, and our professional learning community work.
And so for us the time had to be now. The time was now to start our PLC work, to start our data history, and most importantly, to start changing student lives.
Why? Because each one of the students who were in our classes every period every day deserved the best education we could collaborate with our students and their parents to create and provide.
Now, in my work with other districts, other administrators and staff, and other buildings as an Thought Leader, I most want to encourage this same sense of urgency.
The time is now to improve our schools. We should be working with a sense of urgency.
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| Photo courtesy of sheelamohan, freedigitalphotos.com |
Research states that substantive change in high schools takes 8-10 years, middle school 6-8 years and elementary 3-5 years.
It is too long. We must change now. Why? For the students who in less than a month will enter our doors all over the nation.
For some reason we feel we must take time to research, discuss, collaborate, reflect, and take baby steps so that the adults in our buildings can become comfortable and better own the change. As professionals we want to discourse and debate. And certainly we must learn together as a professional learning community and utilize our data to inform our practices.
But for a high school that is starting the change process now that means it may be 2024-2026 before substantive change occurs. That is too late for the thousands of students who will graduate in that time.
The research is clear. Professional Learning Community work affects positively a whole-school focus on student learning. John Hattie's Visible Learning is clear on what truly affects student learning in classrooms. Dylan William's Formative Assessment work on effective feedback also positively affects student learning.
Now is the time to come together and implement it. We must act, today and tomorrow. Every day take a step to change ineffective instructional and systemic practices in schools and districts that have little or zero effect on student learning.
August is coming. Are you ready to change? The time is now. We must have the vision to see what needs done, the faith to believe we can do it, and the courage to do it.
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