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.