High School Grading Practices: Hope or Failure?

Are you committed to improving student learning in your high school? One of the first steps should involve leading your staff to examine and change traditional grading practices.

For high schools to become student-centered schools with cultures of hope for students, we must ensure that grades students earn are reflective of their learning. Several steps can be taken to ensure that your school's grading practices provide hope for students to succeed.

Photo by Lynnelle Richardson from Pexels

1. Have teachers examine their electronic grade books and indicate if each grade entered is reflective of student learning or compliance. Examples of compliance or behavior grades are extra credit points, points for bringing boxes of kleenex, homework graded for completion, participation points, and any other grades given not directly tied to student diagnostic, formative or summative assessment.

In addition, examine building and district behavior policies that affect student performance by not allowing full credit for work missed for truancy, in-school or out-of-school suspension.  We cannot ask teachers to improve grading practices if we as administrators still support policies that penalize learning for behavior choices.

2. Engage teachers in professional development regarding eliminating zeroes as a grading practice.  A number of educational leaders, including Richard Stiggins, detail the extreme adverse effect of zeroes on students' grades, leading to a loss of hope.

In building a culture of hope that focuses on improving student learning, eliminating zeroes as a grading practice is imperative.  We all have dealt with those students who because of ineffective grading practices and zeroes fail a quarter, semester or year early in the term with little or no recourse to pass the course.  A loss of hope and student disengagement from the learning process ensues.

3. Teachers should work in grade level, same-subject, or vertical teams to develop common assessments, teach benchmarks or learning targets in the same scope and sequence, and engage in student learning data analysis.  This ensures common, best grading practices rather than individual teacher decisions leading to reliable and valid learning data.

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4. Provide professional development for staff on successful intervention strategies.  Rick Wormeli's Fair Isn't Always Equal is an excellent resource.  Same-subject or vertical collaborative teams should develop common intervention strategies to intervene for any or all students who have not learned the curriculum's benchmarks or learning targets.

Systemic intervention by the school should stem from a collaboratively-developed pyramid of intervention.  The entire school community should be committed to enhancing student learning.  If a student becomes increasingly academically unsuccessful, the student moves up the pyramid.

Individual teachers and teaching teams should develop and implement common intervention strategies for re-takes and re-dos to allow students multiple learning opportunities.  As Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker stated, we should create schools where learning is the constant instead of time.

Students then earn grades that are indicative of learning through multiple trials and varied assessments.

5. Monitor student grades frequently.  We examined all student grades in our high school every 4.5 weeks and analyzed them by individual students, individual teachers, same-subject teams, and grade level. Students failing more than one class were immediately referred to their guidance counselor and the School Success Team process. Trends in individual teacher or subject data led to collaboration with our staff and further data analysis.

Teachers notified guidance of students who needed extra time and support for learning and gave these students Gold Cards that mandated intervention.  Guidance counselors met by each Gold Card student alphabetically and reviewed with them opportunities available for them to receive intervention.  Students then completed their Gold Card by having teachers who provided academic support sign their card and returned it to the teacher who assigned the card.

Students who received Gold Cards also lost student privileges, including late arrival, early release, coming and going during exam week, and/or driving and parking privileges until their grades improved. Parents, students, and staff understood that we were a school committed to ensuring student learning.

Engaging in purposeful, mindful grading practices can transform your high school into a school of hope for students.

Sources:

DuFour, R and Eaker, R (1988). Professional learning communities at work.  Bloomington, IN:National Educational Service.

Stiggins, Richard (2004). Classroom assessment for student learning: Doing it right, Using it well. Portland, OR: Assessment Training Institute.

Wormeli, Rick (2006) Fair isn't always equal. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Mirror or Window?

How do you respond when despite your best school improvement efforts your school achievement data is largely unchanged?

How do you respond when despite your best motivational targeted efforts, you still have a pocket of staff members who do not outwardly or inwardly support your efforts to move your staff forward in focusing on student learning?

How do you respond when despite presenting and engaging your staff in the best educational research, whether it be PLC, Marzano, Hattie, William, Stiggins, Schmoker, Schlechtly, or others, your school culture and climate is still largely focused on teaching rather than learning?

 In thousands of schools across America, educators-- in fact really great educators-- are engaged in professional development to improve our schools.  There are a myriad of focus areas, including student engagement, technology reform, creativity, walkthroughs, literacy across the curriculum, focusing on instruction, professional learning communities, mindfulness, and others.

Yet, true significant progress in improving student learning, particularly at the secondary level, in reading, math and science, the three focus areas of the PISA International Assessment that ranks world school districts, is largely unchanged in the US.

What about the percentage of students who meet the College Readiness standards on the ACT?  What is the percentage of students in your high school of students who can meet these benchmarks in all areas of the ACT? Despite the validity and reliability of this data in projecting college and career readiness, even the best high schools do not have a significant percentage of their students meeting these standards.

What does it say when our students do not meet well-established global and national standards accepted to be a valid and reliable data?

It says that despite many of the initiatives, few are effective in improving student learning, or schools are ineffective in their implementation, often moving on or changing without allowing time to affect student data positively. Or, principals or superintendents change and even the most effective initiatives fade and lose momentum without a leader keeping the lamp lit and monitoring data progress.

More importantly, how do educators normally respond when we are not successful in our change efforts?

Do we look out the window or in the mirror? Looking out the window means that we seek answers outside of our school for the reasons our student learning data is not significantly improving.

Looking out the window for a solution? (Graphic by digitalart, freedigitalphotos.com)

These reasons are the ones we have known for a number of years-- our students are unprepared for school by their parents: we have a large number of special needs, English Language Learners, and/or economically disadvantaged students.

Other "window" reasons include, but are not limited to some of the following: initiative overload by our own district offices, unfunded mandates by our legislatures, low pay for educators, a shortage of qualified teachers, and a lack of time or money for quality professional development.

And yes-- many of us see only these external influences when we examine our student learning data.

But what if we looked in the mirror? Richard DuFour discussed this concept of window or mirror in his educational research involving Professional Learning Community work. He clearly demonstrates the power of looking in the mirror to positively affect student learning.

Can we look in the mirror for our solutions? ( Photo by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.com)

When our schools face challenges, what if teacher-leaders, administrators and educators chose to look in the mirror?  That is, what if we decided to focus on our learning problems ourselves by developing a culture and climate systemically focused on student learning?

What if we chose to embed collaboration time in the school day so that 100% of our teachers could focus on 100% of our students each day? By doing so, how much would our school data improve if we chose to ensure that each student learned the intended curriculum?  What if we chose to develop valid and reliable assessments with clear learning targets in same-subject teams?

What if teachers analyzed data regularly in same-subject teams and provided intervention to each student who did not meet the established team SMART goal for student learning? What if every teacher utilized student performance as feedback to him/her on their instructional effectiveness?

And what if that same-subject team provided enriching instruction and support for those students who already know the materials before we teach it? What if every teacher committed to improving learning for every student?

Each of these questions mirrors the four essential questions of Professional Learning Community work as first established by Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker.

Want to truly improve your student learning? Then be a leader of leaders in your school organization and, utilizing research that focuses on student learning, devote every day to transforming your school culture to one of learning rather than teaching.

In The Six Secrets of Change, Michael Fullan states that schools must focus on consistency or what we do every day while simultaneously instituting innovation.  The fourth secret, "Learning is the work," states that schools should and can focus on improving classroom instruction and build continuous improvement into the culture of the organization, monitoring each student's learning and responding to it through personalization.

Are there external challenges in education? Absolutely.  Do some schools have more than others? Yes. But rather than try one initiative after another one, we should establish goals that focus on student learning, monitor learning progress, and stick to them.

It won't be easy.  It takes passion and persistence and a longterm systemic focus.

And don't look out the window-- look in the mirror.

You can't FastPass your school improvement work

Our society seemingly is obsessed with instant gratification. Fast food wasn't enough. We had to add drive-through lanes. Now grocery stores deliver our food orders to our cars.

Graphic by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

We recently visited a new outlet mall near our hometown and chose a pizza place for lunch.  It featured a wood-fired oven where once you picked out your ingredients, the pizza took 160 seconds to cook and then delivered to your table. Now that's fast. 

You can get your oil-changed in 15 minutes and using, Apps on your phone, shop and communicate instantly.  On Amazon you can choose 2-hour shipping and have your order delivered to your home almost instantly.

We no longer have to wait to call someone and see if they are home to talk to them.  (Yes-- at one time we really had to do that!) We can text, instant message or FaceTime someone immediately.  And we expect an immediate response from them.

Thirty or 60 days prior to your arrival to Disney World (depending on where you are staying) you can choose to FastPass which 3 attractions to "start your fun" without waiting in line.  

We all hate to wait on anything anymore.  Automatic and fast service and products seem to govern our lives.

And what about our work in education?  Is it any wonder that districts and buildings often choose to jump from one educational reform initiative to another, often fatiguing educators who have learned to endure the Flavor of the Month or Year professional development wheel.

Why? Because often administrators and other central office personnel do not see impactful results soon enough or are not focused on student learning to begin with.  Someone goes to a conference, and without fully weighing the initiative's potential impact on their specific building or district data, implements it.  No wonder well-intentioned reforms have little or no impact on student learning.

If we as educators truly believe that improving student learning is our best hope of changing student lives, then we must commit to only those initiatives supported by the best educational research. 

As a high school principal involved in leading Professional Learning Community (PLC) work for over nine years, I learned it takes longterm commitment to a focus on student learning by all key stakeholders to truly impact student learning positively.

Photo by Exsodus, freedigitalphotos.net

In working with schools now in initial stages of PLC work as a Thought Leader and consultant, one of the initial important steps is emphasizing that PLC work is a process and journey rather than a destination.  It requires commitment to excellence, ongoing professional development on the four questions, collaboration with staff, parents and students, and a sustained  and systemic focus on student learning rather than teaching.

You can't give up because data does not improve dramatically in the short term for it requires longterm commitment and dedication to student learning for success to emerge.  Our school was recognized as National Model PLC at Work School by Solution Tree and a National Blue Ribbon School because of a systemic focus on student learning.  It takes time to develop a school culture and climate of learning rather than teaching.

Whatever reform work your school or district is engaged, choose one that has proven results in improving student learning.  

If it does, know that this ride does not have a FastPass to success. And unlike Disney, our students cannot get back on this ride again.  Make each day, each class period, count for each student. As student learning improves,  hope blossoms.  And there is no instant recipe for that. 

Setting norms: A crucial step in collaboration

Working on setting up a collaborative culture and climate focused on learning?
Teachers collaborating in same-subject or grade-level teams within the school day?
Aligning to your mission and vision?
Focusing on aligning to the Professional Learning Community (PLC) 4 questions?

Sounds like you are on your way to a transformational change in your school.  For those of us on the PLC journey, we know it is not a destination, but reflective and result-oriented work that will change your culture from a focus on teaching to one of learning.

Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles, freedigitialphotos.com

One other extremely important step that is crucial to the success of your PLC journey is establishing norms to establish the conditions of collaborative work in same-subject or grade-level teams.

In Whole Child Blog, "The Five Dysfunctions of a Professional Learning Community," Steven Weber identified a lack of norms as one dysfunction of PLC teams.

He stated the "team norms are the foundation of a PLC." He continued, "When teams operate with norms, each member of the team understands how to communicate, how shared decisions will be handled, when to arrive for meetings, and how to professionally disagree."

In Learning by Doing, A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work, Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas Many encourage schools employing PLC principles to have same-subject or grade-level teams set norms as one of the most important and initial steps in the collaborative process.

They state that as teachers work through a process to create explicit norms and commit to them, "they will begin to function as a collaborative team rather than a loose collection of people working together." (p.103)

Graphic by Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.com

At the beginning of every year, our same-subject teams each established norms.  Examples included each team member being on time and present, coming prepared, being active listeners, and adhering to the 4 PLC questions as part of each agenda, etc.

After several years of having teams set their own norms, some departments decided to create collaboratively common department norms for each same-subject team to use during our embedded collaboration time.  They also utilized these norms for departmental meetings.

In time, it became clear that our team/departmental norms, submitted via Google forms, overlapped.  As we met with our department chairs we then all decided to adopt common building norms for our embedded collaboration time as well as every other meeting we hold, including staff meetings, department chair meetings, department meetings and PLC collaboration time.

In order to accomplish this, each team submitted their team norms via a Google form which we shared with the entire staff.  We then asked each staff member to identify the norms most important to them.  At our next collaboration time, we then asked the teams to also identify the norms most important to the team. Eventually through a collaborative process, we culled the list of norms to 10 and then to between 3-5 norms.  We then had our department chairs submit the wording they wanted for the final wording.

We included the norms on every agenda and stated the norms at the beginning of each meeting.  The norms became who we were and how we did business.  In PLC work, teams will disagree.  As Steven Weber observed, "Some teams feel like they can operate without norms, but conflict or a dysfunctional team member usually highlights the purpose of norms."

In your PLC journey, it is important to continually remind everyone in action and words the alignment and adherence of all to the mission and vision of learning.

Establishing norms, publishing norms, and committing to norms is essential to transform your school through PLC principles and a focus on learning.

The "edge" makes the difference

The Chase. The Grind. The Edge.

If these words do not make sense to you, then chances are you are not a fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes.  Each of these describes the last three seasons' mantras for the football team.

Coach Urban Meyer defined this year's "The Edge" as "where average stops and elite begins." But this is not about football, nor Ohio State.

As a 15-year high school administrator deeply involved in PLC implementation and now Thought Leader dedicated to transforming schools through PLC work and a focus on learning, I have always been intrigued by how we move schools from average to elite. How do we get to "The Edge?"

Photo courtesy of Jeff and Becca Rudzinski

In our work at our high school, and now in working with other schools and districts, it is easy to note that moving an average school, particularly a public school,  to elite has to be more difficult than moving a football team.

Those involved in transforming schools through action research and a focus on learning know that some PLC steps are easier introduce, implement and sustain than others.

For example, most districts, schools, and staff see the benefit and fairly easily adapt and embrace aligning curriculum collaboratively by teachers in same-subject teams (PLC Question 1, DuFour, Eaker, Professional Learning Communities at Work, 1998).

And many schools, districts and staffs, with the support of professional development, are in ongoing work on improving diagnostic, formative and summative assessments, leading to better common assessments and data analysis by teacher teams (Question 2, DuFour, Eaker).  This is difficult work and paradigms on teaching and learning are challenged as teachers learn to give up past and often archaic assessment practices.  Even question 4, responding to students who already know the material, is met with classroom and same-subject team strategies of differentiation and building enrichment fairly readily.

But the one that keeps most staffs, schools and districts from reaching the edge, from transforming from average to elite, is Question 3 of PLC work, "How do we respond when students are not learning?" (DuFour, Eaker)

How many schools or districts have systemic and mandatory student intervention as a goal?  Learning target work, yes.  Assessment? Yes.  But intervention?  Only the elite.

Intervention by invitation never works, and in order to truly transform teacher and learning in your school, in all schools, we must enact systemic, mandatory student intervention.

Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.com

Aligning curriculum and enacting common assessments will only take a school or district so far.  Our school only dramatically improved student learning after we became much better at setting SMART goals and monitoring student learning, every student's learning, by teacher, grade level and by individual student, and then by responding to students not learning.

Teachers certainly enacted classroom student intervention as good teachers always have, but now same-subject teams also discussed appropriate team invention strategies based on data analysis. In a PLC, intervention is not optional for staff or students.

Furthermore, whole-school intervention ensued, for students who are not learning become a learning emergency in an elite, rather than average, school.

We knew the name of every student who had a D or F every 4.5 weeks and responded as a building, with counselors, teachers and administrative support.  And expectations for students were also clear as we provided mandated opportunities for them to learn outside of class and within the school day because cared about them and their future so much.

Did our results improve?  Immensely.  We were recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School and a National Model PLC at Work School. We emerged as one of the top schools in Ohio for our Performance Index score, number of National Merit Finalists and perfect ACT scores.  Globally, we also outscored the world's highest performing school district, Shanghai, in all three testing areas of the PISA-- reading, math and science.

But more importantly--

The more we responded to students who were not learning, the more our students learned.  The more they learned, the more doors that were open to them.  The more doors open, the more lives changed.

And that is The Edge.  That is moving from being average to elite.

It is not a destination, but an ongoing journey every day, in every classroom, every period, for every student.

The time is now

"In pursing perfection we can achieve excellence."

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.

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.

Differences, disagreements and dislikes: what can we do?

When my daughter graduated from The Ohio State University, former president Bill Clinton served as  the graduation speaker. All politics aside,  I had never heard him speak before and looked forward to hearing not only his message but how he would deliver it to a stadium crowd of students, faculty and parents.

A mesmerizing speaker, one quote has always stuck in my mind.  Encouraging the students to embrace others in life, he stated, "Just because you are different from someone does not mean you have to disagree, and just because you disagree doesn't mean you have to dislike."

The quote returned to my mind yesterday during a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Columbus, returning home after visiting my family.  While still on the ground in Phoenix at the airport, their faces were fresh in my memory and the time we had spent together shopping in Scottsdale, sitting at the Rusty Spur, enjoying lunch at the Tempe Loco Patron that my niece and husband own and manage.

I reflected on our laughter and joy in hosting her baby shower to help welcome her son due in October and the girls' trip to the Diamondbacks game.  I am blessed to have such a loving and fun family.

As the plane ascended higher and higher into the clouds, I could see the homes below get smaller and smaller.  What a grand country we have! But why did much of our visit involve conversations of another police ambush, this time in Baton Rouge, a coup in Turkey, and hatred and violence in our world.

The view from the air of our country -- we are more alike than different.

But from above I reflected on the hundreds and thousands of homes we were flying above.  As we flew east shades of brown and mountains yielded to plains of green and crisscrossed roads.  Though I could not see individuals or families, I knew they were there.  Different cultures, different races all looked the same from high in the clouds.  As we neared Indiana and then Ohio and began our descent, rooftops and automobiles on roads became clearer.  Again, so many similarities from above.  Home after home, highway after highway.

So much of America is beautiful.  It became so clear to me.  We are all more alike than we are different.  We smile, have friends, families. Certainly we have different structures for homes, different incomes, schools, religions and races, but the same basic human needs and feelings.

As we turned to land, I looked down more closely and wondered why we were so quick to disagree with someone from whom we are different, so inclined to dislike those with whom we disagree.

The closer we get to each other seems to illuminate our individual differences.

As a high school principal I also saw the potential for these negative reactions each day in our high school.  Schools, particularly high schools, are microcosms of our society.  Our children are inundated by negativity on social media, their news sources.  Even in our Professional Learning Community work, some staff same-subject teams seemed plagued by disagreements leading to dislike. We focused as adults on our own positive motivation, work culture and climate in our professional learning community.  It was vital work for our success. But what about our work with students?

As building leaders and educators, how can we work to promote a culture of hope and caring in our schools?

1. Build a culture and climate where every student counts every day in words and deeds.  Look at the leadership teams in clubs and organizations, even in your own Principal Advisory Committees.  Do they reflect the diversity of your building?  Does your staff promote diversity in ability, race, gender, and culture when advising student organizations and in the selection of their leadership teams?  What about non-academic student recognition? Do they also reflect the diversity of the student body? If we are to create schools of hope, we must make sure each student feels recognized and respected.

2. Continue to focus on student learning every day.  Not every student is likable every day in some teachers' eyes, and in student eyes neither is every teacher.  If your culture focuses on learning every day in every period, teachers focus on student success in a caring culture and climate.  PLC work also fosters creative and improved instructional strategies that heighten student engagement.  Our same-subject teams collaborated and implemented experiential learning opportunities that helped make learning relevant and important.  As a result, our school discipline problems and student-student, student-teacher conflicts dropped significantly while student achievement increased.  The more students who succeed in their goals the more positive the school culture and climate.

3. Create casual spaces within your building where students can gather informally.  Is your media center inviting?  Do you have furniture grouped around your building so that students can collaborate formally and informally, getting to know other students on a personal level as well as collegially? Having conversations with others fosters trust and caring among students.  We enacted incentives for students who continued to make good academic and behavioral decisions that allowed them the freedom to go to various seating areas, enhancing our culture and climate of trust and caring.

While we cannot necessarily solve our problems of hatred and violence so prevalent today in our country in the world, we also cannot ignore it.  Making students aware that we are all more alike than different, and that we do not have to disagree and dislike in our schools may just help change the world one person at a time,

You Can Do It!

For nine years, I served as principal of a then new Central Ohio suburban high school. We opened dedicated to initiating and implementing the principles of Professional Learning Community work and sought resources to inform, guide, and inspire staff.

One of the best resources we discovered was On Common Ground, edited by Richard DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Rebeca DuFour. With our Central Office's support, we purchased a copy for each staff member, that year and every year for new staff, and we utilized it as our PD focus and application.

My well-worn copy of On Common Ground.

It is a unique compilation of articles by some of America's best educational researchers and reformists supporting characteristics of specific research, such as assessment, and how it is supported in and by Professional Learning Community work.  Contributors include Michael Fullan, Douglas Reeves, Michael Schmoker, and Rick Stiggins, and other notables.

One of the chapters, entitled the "Masters of Motivation,"became one of our most valuable resources in our work with changing the culture and climate of our building from an emphasis on teaching to an emphasis on learning.  Why?  Because it is the chapter that speaks of learning communities as schools of hope, schools of "effort-based ability."

In short, the author Jonathon Saphier encourages us to examine the message we send our students every day in our classrooms.  Do we convey to our students that we believe they can each do rigorous work to high standards, even if they do not believe it themselves?

He states that we should and must continue to exhort students in our words and actions that "What we are doing is important. You can do it. I will not give up on you."(p. 87, On Common Ground.)


"What we are doing is important.

You can do it.

I will not give up on you."


It is a simple mantra, but one that as we reflected on it, we realized that we were not implementing.  As a high-performing high school that offered both AP and IB courses, in addition to Honors, we often started the year with long syllabi and first week of school messages that emphasized how hard this class was going to be, how prepared you better be to be able to succeed and how much work you were going to have to do.

We emphasized the "this is important work" portion without reassuring students that yes, they could be successful and yes, we were there to help them learn it.

As a result, many students fled to guidance in the first week of school to drop the very AP and IB courses we had encouraged and recommended that they take.

We had excellent discussions with our staff about the sometimes subtle and sometimes overt messages we sent students about whether they should be in that class or not.  We also realized that we sometimes believed ourselves that certain students shouldn't be in certain courses.

This, of course, is an antithesis to the PLC belief that we all need to commit to focus on learning, that students can learn, and it is our job to assure learning in every classroom, every period, every day.

We had rich discussions in staff meetings, department chair meetings, same-subject team meetings, department meetings and casual conversations.  This dialogue and its outcome was one of our tipping points in our PLC work.  We HAD to believe that every student could learn, and we had to recognize that it was our job to ensure it.  More importantly, we needed to build classroom and school-wide structures to become a school of hope with high aspirations for every student.

The Math Department actually printed these words on a poster and had it on every math classroom door: "Math is hard work. You can do it. We will help you."  Imagine the message that sent every student as they entered math class.  Soon, one by one, more teachers embraced this commitment as their own motivating mantra to engage students in believing that yes, they could learn and would learn.

Embracing "effort-based ability" and overtly teaching effective effort strategies to our students helped transform our school into a school of hope.  More importantly, our teacher-student relationships strengthened with a commitment to learning.  We changed from individual teachers communicating and teaching content to collaborative teaching teams communicating to students that we do important work, they can do it, and we will not give up on them.

As principals, we also realized the importance of communicating this same belief to our staff as they continued to engage in our PLC journey.  Adults, as well as students, need to know that this work is important, they they can do it, and that we will not give up on them.

What are we "settling" for in our schools?

A recent series of TV commercials features "settlers" dressed as pioneers in a variety of settings, including engaging in pioneer cooking and farming tasks in their home and neighborhood, parodying their choice of cable in contrast to the choice of a satellite provider.  Their response to questions about living in the past, doing things the way they have always done them, is that they are "settlers" so that is what they do.

It's been said that if a time traveler came to 2016 from the pioneer days, he or she would recognize or understand little, except for our schools, especially our high schools.  They would recognize a teacher in front of a room, students in rows, copying notes and working at desks.

Certainly many schools and districts have worked hard to change this stereotype of classrooms and teachers, with many innovative instructional strategies, educational research implementation and maker spaces changing the face of our schools for our students.

Having served as a high school administrator the last 15 years, the last nine as principal of a National Blue Ribbon School and National Model PLC at Work School, I have engaged in a PLC journey with all key stakeholders and seen the merits of systemic change in increased student learning.  Moreover, I have worked with met many committed educators, dedicated to invoking needed change that enhances student learning.

But are we also like the settlers in the commercial?  Are we also settling for certain things every day in our schools still because that is the way schools have always done it?  Even in the very best high schools, there still seems to be much work to do.  And in schools who have not yet engaged in substantive change, we are indeed mired in 20th century practices in a 21st century world.

Professional Learning Community work is one of the educational reforms that many schools are in the process of initiating or implementing.  As identified by Richard DuFour and Bob Eaker in Professional Learning Communities at Work (p 15), PLC work calls for teachers to work in collaborative teams to address 4 questions: What is it we want students to learn? How do we know they have learned it?  What do we do when they don't learn it?  What do we do when they already know it?

In PLC work, teachers focus on student learning in collaborative teams. Photo by Stuart Miles at freedigitalphotos.com.

But how many of us are settling for less, even though we know the research demonstrates that focusing on these four questions can and will enhance student learning?

How many of our schools support and create collaborative time for teachers within the schools day so that every student learns the essential learning targets or standards?  How many of us can walk in our high school classrooms and see every Biology teacher teaching the same learning target every day as  scope and sequence has been collaboratively implemented?  Or are we settling for less, leaving students either lucky or unlucky on getting the teacher who is delivering the intended curriculum?

How many of us provide professional development to our teaching staffs to create valid and reliable common assessments, again ensuring that each student is measured fairly on the essential learning targets?  What about supporting teachers to meet regularly to analyze the assessment data, informing their instruction and providing the requisite feedback to students in order to inform them of their learning progress?

Or are we settling for individually-created teacher tests, some of them re-used year after year regardless of student achievement, varying from classroom to classroom, negating validity and reliability.  Are we settling for teachers to simply record grades, without monitoring those grades, rather than analyze the data, not only to inform students of their progress but to inform teachers of the quality of their instruction.

What about when students do not learn?  Have we put into place systemic, building-wide  interventions for each student who is not learning?  Do we implement mandatory interventions based on our developed pyramid of interventions and analyze regularly our building D and F reports and other data? Are we committed to providing extra time and support for students to learn what we are teaching?

Or are we settling for less? Is our school dependent on individual teachers to respond, or not, dependent on their personal beliefs about teaching and learning? Do the same students stay on our D and F list grading period after grading period because we are settling for schools where our job is to teach and the student's job is to learn and when they don't it is their fault, just as the majority of our schools did in the past.

Photo by Stoonn at freedigitalphotos.com.

And finally, what about those students who already know the majority of the material before they take the class and the assessments?  Are we just settling for them to get A's because  we have always had those extraordinary A students, the kids who are great at "doing" school? Or are we also committed not only to their achievement but also to their growth, providing differentiation and enrichment so that they, too, can also learning at their highest potential?

What about it?  Are their practices in your school or district that you are "settling" for?  American education is at a crossroads, out-performed globally, and the time for change is now.

Whether you are involved in PLC work, Hattie's visible learning work, formative assessment, Marzano research or a combination of them all, we can no longer be settlers in those aspects of our schools that we know need changed.

While it may be OK to "settle" for cable TV, we can no longer settle for antiquated practices in our schools.  Our students' future lies in our hands.

Beginnings are messy

Beginnings are messy.  There's no doubt about it. But beginnings are also essential, integral, and imperative.  Nothing gets done without a beginning.  Just like this new blog, See. Believe. Do.

As a principal and an educator,  I often saw how sometimes change was hard because the beginning was muddy and we are often uncomfortable with unclear starts.  We always drive more slowly, sometimes painfully so, on an unfamiliar road.

I started on a PLC odyssey 15 years ago after seeing Rick DuFour at a Principal's Academy at the Central Ohio Educational Service Center.  Then an assistant principal at a traditional high school with 2400 students, eight portables, and 70 teachers on carts, it took almost 2 years to actually start true PLC work.  The beginning was messy but necessary, with much exploration with a dedicated team of teachers who wanted and were willing to do high school differently.

Staying on a winding and curvy journey, especially if it is unfamiliar, is often difficult. (Photo by Exsodus at freedigitalphotos.net)

That core group transitioned to a new district high school, and again, we were in the beginning stages of PLC work for another two years. With integral groundwork and research laying the foundation, we embraced a remarkable PLC journey, resulting in being named a National Blue Ribbon School and a National Model PLC at Work School.

And without that messy beginning work involving our entire learning community of staff, parents and students,  our transition to a school of learning, a systemic focus on the 4 PLC questions, a pyramid of interventions and creative and innovative instructional strategies to better ensure learning would have never occurred.

This new blog and this initial post reflects my change in roles from a high school administrator for the last 15 years, the last nine as principal, to the thought leader and founder of See. Believe. Do., a company dedicated to transforming schools from a focus on teaching to a focus of learning.  It is from one of my favorite quotes, for I truly believe we must have the "vision to see, the faith to believe, and the courage to do" if we are to truly change and impact education for each student.

And yes, this beginning has been messy, too. It has taken many months to start the new Twitter @seebelievedo, Facebook (See. Believe.Do) , web domain and LLC. All of the steps made me realize why I made this transition.  We have many dedicated educators and administrators who are working very hard to change our American public education system.   Many I have met on Twitter, at conferences and at workshops.  They are continually initiating, reforming, changing and aligning to best practices.  They know that beginnings are also messy, but worth it.

But there are thousands of schools in America, public, private and charter.  And not all of them are focusing or trying to focus on learning.  How many schools have started PLC work and given up?  Design thinking? Whole-school literacy? Formative assessment? Visible Learning?

Even the best educators strive to persevere in their work, often in the face of many barriers-- fixed mindsets; district, state and federal mandates; a lack of resources; a lack of leadership capacity; continual building or district turnover, ever-changing district initiatives etc.

Barriers are part of the process of moving forward.  (Photo by Stuart Miles, free digital photos.net)

Often it is the beginning of the work, which may last longer than anticipated, and all of the messiness that accompanies it, that dooms its success.  Educators, including principals, often just decide it is easier to just go with the flow rather than start or sustain really important learning work.  Rather than see barriers as a part of the process of change and an opportunity to succeed, they see them as insurmountable obstacles.

It is easier to simply give up before they start, like many of us do in life.  We don't start something because we dread the start.   For example, once we learn to ski it is gratifying and fun, but the thought of starting sometimes results in never getting going.  Those beginning ski lessons are often ugly and frustrating, though essential.

But the difference is that in life, when we can't stand the messy beginnings or don't follow through, we are usually only affecting ourselves. But as educational leaders, we are affecting our students' lives.

As educators, we all know that 100% of the students in our schools today leave our schools in transition in a few short years, even if we are there for much longer.  Our action or inaction, or lack of followthrough, or starting or stopping, or never starting, delays or alters the future of our students.

Being an educator is hard work. PLC work is hard work.  But the transformation of student learning along the way is amazing.  And every journey starts with a single, first step.  Remember, first steps may be messy, but you will succeed if you stay on the road.