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Welcome to the Tuesday morning, January 9, 2018, edition of the HML Post. This weekly newsletter is a service to the members of the Horace Mann League of the USA.
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Quote of the Week
Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.
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North Carolina was once viewed as the shining light for progressive education policy in the South. State leaders-often with the support of the business community-were able to develop bipartisan support for public schools, and implement popular, effective programs. North Carolina was among the first states to explicitly monitor the performance of student subgroups in an effort to address racial achievement gaps. The state made great strides to professionalizing the teaching force, bringing the state's average teacher salary nearly up to the national average even as the state was forced to hire many novice teachers to keep pace with enrollment increases. In addition, North Carolina focused on developing and retaining its teaching force by investing in teacher scholarship programs and mentoring programs for beginning teachers. (Learn more.)
This time of year, when classes are over, but I haven't yet graded, I start thinking about what I could have done differently. Inevitably, I think about the students I didn't quite seem to reach, the ones I could have helped more. Inevitably, those are students at either end of the spectrum, the top and the bottom. Without intending to, I often teach to the middle.
Sure, the students could have done more themselves. They could have come to class more or pushed themselves more, but often, they don't even know what to do. And that's where I think I could step in more and offer more guidance....
The top students, I think, are less harmed by my inability to teach to them. They will push themselves anyway, if not in my class, in another class along the way. It's the students at the bottom that I feel like I've let down. And some of them, frankly, are not motivated and would likely balk at my strategies for helping them, or they would do the tasks in a half-hearted way. (Learn more.)
NCLB, as it was known, is the worst federal education legislation ever passed by Congress. It was punitive, harsh, stupid, ignorant about pedagogy and motivation, and ultimately a dismal failure. Those who still admire NCLB either helped write it, or were paid to like it, or were profiting from it.
It was Bush's signature issue. He said it would end "the soft bigotry of low expectations." It didn't.
When he campaigned for the presidency, he and his surrogates claimed there had been a "Texas miracle." There wasn't.
Louisiana had long erred on the side of social promotion, often passing underachievers through school despite low reading and math levels.
Students who fell short were assigned mandatory summer-school classes, after which they took the test again. If that second attempt wasn't successful, students couldn't move on to fifth or ninth grade. The practice of
retention in Louisiana also extended beyond the high-stakes grades. In 2015-16, more than one-third of all retained students were from grades K-3. In that same year, 10 percent of all ninth graders were held back.
In
a presentation a few years ago, a top education-department administrator, Chief of Literacy Kerry Laster, wrote,
"We retain students despite overwhelming research and practical evidence that retention fails to lead to improved student outcomes." Laster's presentation, based on 2010 data, reported that 28 percent of Louisiana students did not make it to fourth grade on time. (
Learn more.)
Over four decades of coaching men's basketball-including a stint at his alma mater, West Point; 36 full seasons at Duke University. "Coach K" is a master recruiter, mentor, and manager of talent.
HBR:
When your players make mistakes, or fail to live up to the standards you set, how do you discipline them?
I do whatever the situation requires. I try to not have a template for handling these things. I don't believe in doing what people tell me I'm supposed to do. When they say, "He did that, so you should do this," my attitude is, "He shouldn't have done that. We are taking responsibility, and I don't need to tell you how." As a teacher, I respect an individual's right to be taught in private as much as possible.
HBR: What's the key to motivating a team-both when it's doing really well and when it's not?
You have to show motivation yourself. They have to see it in you on a day-to-day basis. The older professionals understand that you have to show up every day, no matter what, no excuses. With 18- to 23-year-olds, consistency is harder. So you have to hold them accountable and ask questions: "Why didn't you show up today? Do you have a strong enough desire to improve? Are you afraid of something? Is it your sleeping habits or your diet?" Eventually you get to a point where they're motivating themselves. (Learn more.)
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Christensen was interested in why companies fail. In his 1997 book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," he argued that, very often, it isn't because their executives made bad decisions but because they made good decisions, the same kind of good decisions that had made those companies successful for decades. (The "innovator's dilemma" is that "doing the right thing is the wrong thing.") As Christensen saw it, the problem was the velocity of history, and it wasn't so much a problem as a missed opportunity, like a plane that takes off without you, except that you didn't even know there was a plane, and had wandered onto the airfield, which you thought was a meadow, and the plane ran you over during takeoff. Manufacturers of mainframe computers made good decisions about making and selling mainframe computers and devising important refinements to them in their R. & D. departments-"sustaining innovations," Christensen called them-but, busy pleasing their mainframe customers, one tinker at a time, they missed what an entirely untapped customer wanted, personal computers, the market for which was created by what Christensen called "disruptive innovation": the selling of a cheaper, poorer-quality product that initially reaches less profitable customers but eventually takes over and devours an entire industry.
(
Learn more
.)
IN 1647, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law mandating the establishment of publicly funded schools. Puritans were worried that otherwise children would fail to learn the Bible and become susceptible to the wiles of "that old deluder, Satan". To pay for the schools, the colony levied a tax on local dwellings.
Although the aims of public schooling have changed since the 17th century, the critical role of property taxation in funding education has endured.
The share of school funding that comes from local taxes such as levies on property is twice as high in America as in the rest of the OECD club of mostly rich countries. It is an approach with many critics, who argue that children who need the most help in school in fact receive the least, since they live in areas with cheap housing and correspondingly small tax takes. (
Learn more.)
You can often predict which meetings will be unproductive from the moment you receive the invitation. There's the "team update" where you spend two hours listening to a rundown of how everyone spent their week, or the "planning meeting" where you hash out picayune details that should have been handled elsewhere, or the "brainstorming session" where extroverts shout out random ideas.
Some of these you can dodge, but others are much harder to escape - especially if the invitation comes from your boss, a key client, or an influential colleague.
Here are five ways to get out of a meeting that you know will be unproductive, or at least to limit the collateral damage to your productivity and schedule.
First, get clear on which meetings really are important to attend.
Second, make it more difficult for the meeting requesters.
Third, make the meeting requestor do "homework" to win your time and attention.
Fourth, if you want to get out of the meeting but still feel it's difficult to say no, suggest a minimally invasive compromise.
Finally, sometimes you do have to relent and attend, but you can at least make your boss or colleagues aware that your time is a zero-sum game and that they need to issue their requests carefully. (Learn more.)
What time should the school day begin? School start times vary considerably, both across the nation and within individual communities, with some schools beginning earlier than 7:30 a.m. and others after 9:00 a.m. Districts often stagger the start times of different schools in order to reduce transportation costs by using fewer buses.
But if beginning the school day early in the morning has a negative impact on academic performance, staggering start times may not be worth the cost savings.
Proponents of later start times, who have received considerable media attention in recent years, argue that many students who have to wake up early for school do not get enough sleep and that beginning the school day at a later time would boost their achievement.
(
Learn more
.)
Many states have long awarded seals, or endorsements, that indicate students have completed a career and technical education course of study. But this seal is different; no courses in career-tech-ed are required. Ohio's new seal focuses on skills that employers in many fields told the state they consider essential for success.
Good leaders keep good teachers in the field, and bad leaders drive them out. It's almost that simple. In forty-one years of reporting about education, I must have visited at least five thousand classrooms and observed an awful lot of really good teaching.
My all-time favorite teacher is George from Maine. T
o me, George embodies the best in the business, because of what he stood for and how he stood his ground when the going got tough. We met at his public high school in the late 1970s. At the principal's recommendation, I sat in on George's ethics class, which was lively and interesting. Afterward we had a cup of coffee at my request, because I wanted to hear his story. Ethics, he told me, was one of a bunch of elective courses that seniors could choose from for their final semester of high school. He had taught it for the first time one year earlier.
Although the principal had already told me the basic outline of George's story, I asked him to tell me what had happened in his class. He agreed. "I set the bar high because it's an ethics class," he said. "I tell the students that I accept only A or B work. Anything else, they get a grade of incomplete. (
Learn more.)
by Paul Axtell on the HML blog from HBR Tools for Better Meetings
A common complaint among managers is that the conversations they have with employees aren't producing results: "We keep talking about the same issue over and over, but nothing seems to ever happen!" That's because most managers are missing a vital skill: the ability to deliberately close a conversation. If you end a conversation well, it will improve each and every interaction you have, ultimately creating impact.
Meetings are really just a series of conversations-an opportunity to clarify issues, set direction, sharpen focus, and move objectives forward.
To maximize their impact, you need to actively design the conversation. While the overall approach is straightforward- and may seem like basic stuff - not enough managers are actually doing this in practice:
- Set up each conversation so that everyone knows the intended outcomes and how to participate.
- Manage the conversation rigorously so that the discussion stays on track and everyone is engaged.
- Close the conversation to ensure alignment, clarity on next steps, and awareness of the value created. (Learn more.)
Horace Mann League's Annual Meeting
2018 Annual Meeting and Awards
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The Education Cartoon of the Week. (Left here, just incase you didn't get a chance to read it.)
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The Superintendent's Special topics:
(Please share your ideas. Contact Jack McKay
)
Sponsor a Professional Colleague for membership
in
the Horace Mann League.
Click here to download the "Sponsor a Colleague" form.
On the Art of Teaching by Horace Mann.
The book, On The Art of Teaching by Horace Mann has been presented to new teachers as a welcome gift by a number of
schools district
. For orders of 50 or more, the district's name is printed on the front cover.
Ordering Information
Cost per copy: $12.50
Orders of 50 to 99: $11.00
Orders of 100 or more: $10.00
Send orders to: (include name of district, P.O. #, and address)
The Horace Mann League of the USA
560 Rainier Lane
Port Ludlow, WA 98365
or
email: Jack McKay
FAX (866) 389 0740
About Us
The Horace Mann League of the USA is an honorary society that promotes the ideals of Horace Mann by advocating for public education as the cornerstone of our democracy.
Officers:
President: Dr. Martha Bruckner,
Exec.Dir., MOEC Collective Impact, Omaha, NE
President-elect:
Dr. Eric King, Superintendent, (ret.) Muncie Public Schools, IN
Vice President: Dr. Laurie Barron, Superintendent, Evergreen School District, Kalispell, MT.
Past President:
Dr. Christine Johns-Haines, Superintendent, Utica Community Schools, MI
Directors:
Dr. Ruben Alejandro, Supt.
of
Schools, (ret.) Weslaco, TX
Dr. David Berliner, Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
Dr. Evelyn Blose-Holman, (ret.) Superintendent, Bay Shore Schools, NY
Mr. Jeffery Charbonneau, Science Coordinator, ESD 105 and Zillah HS, WA
Dr. Carol
Choye
, Instructor, (ret.) Superintendent, Scotch Plains Schools, NJ
Dr. Brent Clark, Executive Director, Illinois Assoc.
of
School Admin. IL
Dr. Ember Conley, Supt.
of
Schools, Park City, UT
Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, Professor of Education, Stanford U. CA
Dr. James Harvey, Exec.
Dir
., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
Dr. Steven Ladd, Superintendent, (ret.) Elk Grove USD, Elk Grove, CA
Dr. Stan Olson, President, Silverback Learning, (former supt.
of
Boise Schools, ID)
Dr. Lisa Parady, Executive Director, Alaska Association of School Administrators
Dr. Kevin Riley, Superintendent, Gretna Community Schools, NE
Executive Director:
Dr.
Jack McKay, Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska at Omaha,
560 Rainier Lane, Port Ludlow, WA 98365 (360) 821 9877
To become a member of the HML,
click here to download an application.
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