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2nd peer comment: reposted- change week 3 article

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2nd peer comment: reposted- change week 3 article

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Hi Jacquelyn and Tara,

I am excited that our school district is implementing more technology, but I still think that our education system is moving too slow to keep up with the technological demands of our society. Our school district has been implementing more technology into our classrooms and curriculum. Our students share seven iPads during stations for reading and math in the classrooms. Our school also has a computer lab that we are encouraged to use three times a week to ensure that our students use technology for reading and math. My students enjoy using the technology during the school day. This year, my first graders made their PowerPoint for their final research projects, and I helped them add audio to read their sentences on each slide. I was very hesitant when the other first-grade teacher suggested this final product. After completing the project, I was very glad that we did the PowerPoint. My students were completely engaged during this time. I learned from this experience; student engagement does increase with the use of technology. Has your school district started implementing more technology? If so, what are some ways that you have used technology in your classrooms?

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This a great article that discusses the importance and benefits of building a positive staff culture. The article explores a creating school-wide system that includes public acknowledgments and compliments, social gatherings, and positive classroom observations. Good information for aspiring leaders.

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Speaking from personal experience, the more I know and trust my colleagues, the better I work with them. I'm fortunate to have worked in several schools that allotted time to building a strong adult culture. Here are some of the best strategies I've seen.

School-wide Systems

Social and emotional professional development sessions: We've all experienced feeling tired, burnt out, or insecure about our efficacy. I know this from my experience to be especially true in schools serving at-risk populations.

In one of those schools, our leadership addressed these feelings directly through professional development sessions called Fill Your Cup, which incorporated social and emotional learning. We had staff members sign up to lead activities they enjoyed, such as yoga, cooking, running, biking, singing karaoke... really anything that brought them joy.

Then each staff member signed up for two of the sessions to "fill their cups." These sessions were always highly rated by our staff, and the next day the school always seemed to have a lightness in the air. The sessions provided a chance for staff to get to know each other in new ways, to blow off steam, to build stronger connections with each other, and to break down barriers of mistrust.

Public acknowledgements: Many schools start or end staff meetings with shout-outs, a beneficial practice. I've seen leadership go beyond this-one example is a practice I call "collective cards." My school's leaders had staff members with different roles sit together at tables. Each person wrote their name in the center of a card (a large index card or half sheet of paper will work), and passed it around the table so that each person there could offer a note of thanks or acknowledgement. This continued until everyone at a table had signed all the cards, and then they were returned to their owners.

This kind of practice allows people to offer a compliment they might not normally make the time for, and it also encourages staff to find the good in everybody they work with. A different approach is to end meetings by encouraging staff members to email a colleague a note of thanks.

Gatherings: We all know the cliché: the family that _____ together, stays together. This can apply to school communities as well. Create opportunities for social gatherings outside of the school day. Make sure they don't always include alcohol-find a variety of activities to meet the needs of many different types of people.

One person doesn't have to do all the work-try organizing a social committee. And offer opportunities for staff members' families to mingle as well.

Food: Need I say more? What meeting hasn't been improved by the addition of food? There's not always money in the budget, but potlucks and staff sign-ups can play a role. Either way, caring for a belly is caring for a heart, and that goes a long way.

Working on a Smaller Scale

Sometimes it's hard to start with school-wide systems. Here are two successful smaller scale initiatives I've experienced.

Door banners: Who doesn't want to walk up to their classroom and see wonderful things written about them? At one of my schools, the leadership organized door banners. We put chart paper on the teachers' doors and organized times to visit each other and write celebratory notes.

Not only was this beneficial to teachers, but it was also valuable for students to see the adults participating in a healthy, collaborative culture.

Positive classroom observations: So often when teachers are visited by observers, they tense up as they feel they're being judged on what's not good enough. Additionally, in our professional desire to be better, we forget to pause and reflect on what's going well.

As an instructional coach, one way I alleviated these deficit-based approaches was to visit teachers specifically to note effective moves. During these observations, I would take notes about all the instructional decisions that were to be celebrated... and there were many! Classroom visits focused on strengths shift a school away from a deficit model to an assets-based model.

I want to end with the importance of hearing the staff's voices. The most important element of a strong adult culture is that staff never feel like things are being done to them, but rather with them. Some of the ideas here might work for your school and some might not. The only way to know is to ask. Use surveys to gather feedback about your school's adult culture, suggestions for improving it, reflections on PD sessions, and other creative community-building ideas.

After all, a school where teachers know, trust, and honor each other is a school where students learn best.

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Building a Positive Staff Culture Takes Work | Edutopia

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Speaking from personal experience, the more I know and trust my colleagues, the better I work with them. I'm fortunate to have worked in several schools that allotted time to building a strong adult culture. Here are some of the best strategies I've seen.

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I fell upon this article that a teacher wrote about his internal conflict about leaving the classroom for a leadership position. He expresses his concerns and excitement about leaving behind his classroom students to support teachers as an Instructional Coach.

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First Person

Growing up, I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. My mother often tells people I started teaching at the age of 5, after I entered kindergarten. For years, she would find me alone in my room, pretending to teach the alphabet or numbers or grammatical rules to invisible students. When I was older, I graded imaginary papers from behind my desk, dreaming of the day I would one day have a classroom of my own.

At school, I saw how teachers interacted with one another, with my fellow students, and with the surrounding community. I knew that these people were community pillars and their work was important. Teachers seemed like superheroes to me (and they still do).

I wanted to be a leader, both in the classroom and in the community, like the teachers I knew. I felt like I was called to be a teacher-as if the profession had chosen me. By 10th grade, I had started taking the necessary classes to one day become a high school English teacher. And within six years, I'd reached my goal.

But recently, I made a choice that will take me off this path that I've long thought I was destined to follow. I've decided to leave the classroom and become an instructional coach in my district.

While I know I'm ready for new challenges, I'm also worried. I worry I'll lose the teacher identity that is so important to me. I fear feeling like I'm abandoning the students I love.

A New Calling

For the past six years, I've taught all grade levels of high school English. I've taught every type of learner, from kids in freshman-level compensatory classes to upper-level Advanced Placement English courses. I've made incredible relationships with both colleagues and students, and I have loved being in the classroom.

By about year four of teaching, though, something started to feel like it was missing.

Over time, I had been given more of a leadership role in my school. I had started mentoring brand new teachers and hosting student teachers, and I enjoyed helping them learn the art and craft that is teaching. Through coaching them, I felt the slight tug beyond the classroom.

I was feeling pulled to something new that had captivated me. I wanted to support teachers.

Just a few years later, I was finishing my master's degree in education, a task I had undertaken both to better myself as an educator and to have opportunities for advancement in my district. Almost serendipitously, opportunities for instructional coaching jobs were opening up at the same time. This was my chance to pursue that small dream that had emerged.

But the conflicting emotions that I felt as I looked out at my students, kids who had become so much a part of me, nearly ate me alive. I felt that by even entertaining the idea of an interview, I was abandoning them. But I still had that inclination tugging at me to give this new dream a shot. I knew if I were offered a job, I would take it.

I was ready for new challenges. I relished the moments when colleagues would come to ask for help or feedback. I was excited to hear their ideas and offer guidance and support. And nothing was better than hearing their success stories when something that we had planned together worked well for their students. I loved helping them feel empowered.

Facing Tough Decisions

Now, as I'm about to start my first year as an instructional coach, I still don't think I've quite wrapped my head around how this next chapter of my life and career will go.

I'm branching out, and it scares me. The decision to leave the classroom was the hardest decision that I've had to make thus far in my life (and I feel certain that's not hyperbole).

Part of me feels like I'm betraying the teacher in me, betraying the dream of that 5-year-old boy so captivated with teachers. But the other part of me, the less guilty part, realizes that I'm not betraying that dream. I know that I achieved that dream, and now I'm moving on to a new one.

When I told my students I had accepted an instructional coaching position, some of them cried. I cried, too. I wondered if part of their sadness stemmed from a place of fear. For them, my departure could be a reminder of the one they're soon to take themselves when they leave high school-one that will undoubtedly leave them faced with tough decisions.

What I told them was just as much for their comfort as it was for mine: It's okay for new dreams to emerge and to evolve. And it's definitely okay to pursue them.

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I'm Leaving the Classroom for Leadership. And I've Never Felt More Internal Conflict

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First Person Growing up, I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. My mother often tells people I started teaching at the age of 5, after I entered kindergarten. For years, she would find me alone in my room, pretending to teach the alphabet or numbers or grammatical rules to invisible students.

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This article discusses the benefits of principals empowering teachers and building leaders by including teachers in the decision making process. The article states that by providing teacher opportunities to participate in decisions that directly affect them, the teachers become more committed to the school's mission and want to see their work succeed.

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Bolin (1989) states that " teacher empowerment is defined as investing teachers with the right to participate in the determination of school goals and policies and to exercise professional judgment about what and how to teach" (p. 82). To follow the above definition, administrators must be active in providing experiences for all teachers to grow as leaders. In today's economy and with limited funds available to provide teachers with professional development, administrators must be creative and open to numerous options for individual and school growth. This growth is enhanced by empowered teachers, who are committed to the overall success of the school's mission, have increased productivity in and out of the classroom, and an increase in the teachers disposition

Research shows that when administrators use tactics to increase teacher empowerment, teacher morale also increases. Terry (2000) states "in schools where teachers are empowered to be leaders, the focus of control changes from the principal to the teachers" (p.2). In the "Journey to Teacher Empowerment (1999) the authors share that when teachers' confidence increases and when they feel competent in their abilities, classroom instruction will improve. Goyne (1994) states that" administration should encourage other teachers to seize opportunities to share their strengths with other members of the staff" (p.2). By providing opportunities, teachers are accepting leadership roles. Furthermore, participating teachers learn new skills to increase student learning. As teachers improve together as a staff, individual and school moral can increase. This is reinforced in the theory of collective efficacy.

Empowerment also increases productivity when teachers have more time to collaborate. Teachers need to be placed in situations where they can learn from other teachers. Therefore, administrators should provide structure for collective practice. Whitaker (2003) said "teachers should be placed in situations where they can learn from other teachers" (p.32). One option to increase productivity is to provide experiences during the school hours that allow teachers to discuss student performance, curriculum, and instruction with their colleagues, as well as, provide encouragement and support. Professional Learning Communities (PLC) are a popular choice that provide collaboration during school hours. A creative approach includes providing duty free lunch for teachers. Teachers use this time to eat together so they can share experiences and discuss student and school issues. This practice is supported by research in reflective practice.

Another option includes the administrative team use of school funds to rotate substitutes during the school day for teachers to collaborate. This low-cost approach provides classroom teachers time to work closely with their colleagues. Leithwood and Riehl (2003) make this statement about building a collaborative process. "To enhance performance in their schools, leaders provide opportunities for staff to participate in decision-making about issues that affect them" (p.6). By building collaborative processes administrators enhance the performance of their school and it's teachers. This could be considered a form of action research. It is important to note that principals are challenged when teachers are unaware of their role in shared decision making. Therefore, it is the principals' responsibility to ensure teachers are informed about effective decision making processes. An effective principal will lead the school through the following discussed on page 63 of Balls, Eury, and King (2011) book "Rethink, Rebuild, Rebound":

Decisions are made by the individuals most influenced by the decisions.

Appropriate information is available to those making the decisions.

Decisionmakers are adequately prepared to make data-driven decisions.

Decisionsmaker hold conversations about the data and decisions.

Decisionmakers create action plans to implement decisions based on data.

Decisionmakers are expected to be accountable for the consequence of their decision.

Finally, by providing experiences for teachers to grow, teachers become more committed to the school's mission. When giving the opportunity to lead, teachers are vested and want to see their work be successful. As the administration relinquishes control to the teacher and shows trust, teachers become more creative and willing to take risks. The classroom teacher will try new approaches to instruction, provide more assistance to their students, and be more flexible. By granting more freedom and independence teachers are more likely to have buy-in to the school's mission. This idea is backed up by Terry (2000) when he states "principals should allow their teachers the freedom to be creative and take risks" (p. 2).

To enhance these experiences, administrators need to recognize teachers and their accomplishments. With the opportunity to grow as a professional and be recognized for their efforts, teachers will become more empowered and willing to explore future experiences leading to continued growth.

High performing schools have administrators who articulate a vision, help teachers grow professionally, and play a leading role in determining the school's climate. Teschke (1996) puts forth some points for principals to follow. "Principal's should assist teachers in maximizing their strengths, principals should develop collegiality and be proactive in the pursuit of the schools vision" (p.10). Therefore, the principal as part of school improvement team should be committed to allowing teachers and staff to gain new experiences on a daily basis. These experiences will allow all members of the school to develop a better understanding of their role in the school's mission and vision. With a commitment to this process, schools with teachers who are empowered to become leaders, the focus of control changes from the principal to the teachers who directly impact the success of the students. Concepts that may be used to train staff to become more empowered are outlined on page 96 "Rethink, Rebuild, Rebound":

Purpose is to stimulate dialogue among stakeholders of the teaching profession

What constitutes the knowledge, skills, and competencies that teachers need to assume leadership roles in their schools, districts, and the profession

Model standards are often used in the development of curriculum, professional development, and standards for such entities as school districts, states, professional organizations and institutions of higher education

These standards are designed to encourage professional discussion of what constitutes the full range of competencies that teacher leader possess

This form of leadership can be distinguished from, but work in tandem with, formal administrative leadership roles to support good teaching and promote student learning

Role of principal to inspire others towards collaboration and interdependence as they work toward a purpose to which they are deeply committed. The transformational leader delegates and surrenders power over people and events in order to achieve power over accomplishments and goal achievement.

With a commitment to this process, schools with teachers who are empowered to become leaders shifts the focus of control changes from the principal to the teachers who directly impact the success of the students.

Reference

Balls, J. D., Eury, A. D., & King, J. C. (2011). Rethink, Rebuild, Rebound: A framework for shared responsibility and accountability in education. (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Learning Solutions.

Bolin, F. S. (1989). Empowering Leadership. Teachers College Record, 19(1), 81-96.

Goyne, J., Padgett, D., Rowicki, M.A., & Triplitt, T. (1999). The Journey to Teacher Empowerment, 1-13.

Leithwood, K.A. & Riehl, C. (2003). What We Know About Successful School Leadership. Philadelphia, PA: Laboratory for Student Success, Temple University, 1-12

Terry, M. P., (2000). "Empowering Teachers As Leaders". University of Memphis, 1-8.

Teschke, S. (1996). Becoming a Leader of Leaders. Thrust for Educational Leadership, Bol. 26 Issue 2.

Whistaker, T. (2003) "What Great Principals Do Differently. 15 Things That Matter Most." Eye on Education, 1-117.

Allen D Eury: Dean of School of Education at Gardner-Webb University Mark A. Snyder: Graduate Student at Gardner-Webb University Jeff Melton: Graduate Student at Gardner-Webb University Webb University

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Bolin (1989) states that " teacher empowerment is defined as investing teachers with the right to participate in the determination of school goals and policies and to exercise professional judgment about what and how to teach" (p. 82). To follow the above definition, administrators must be active in providing experiences for all teachers to grow as leaders.

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Organization is crucial to maintaining a smooth running school and classrooms. This article focuses on the importance of teacher organization to maximize student learning, manage classroom and behaviors, and teach students life skills.

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Educators today are expected to fill many different roles, which is why teaching can be a challenging profession. The key to success in the field is a teacher's ability to organize herself, her classroom, and her students. As teachers try to become better organizers, they should visualize what results they want in their classrooms before they install an organizational system. Learning a few concepts can help.

Punctuality Means Students Are Ready to Learn

Organization means that students are in their proper place at the proper time and know what's expected of them, and the teacher is ready with effective lessons and means of assessment. If students are not in class on time due to a lack of an effective tardy policy, their education suffers. Tardiness affects the student in question as well as other students who either have to wait for the student or endure a brief interruption as the tardy student enters the room.

Students Learn Important Life Habits

In addition to learning the importance of punctuality, students also need to learn about industry, perseverance, and achieving accuracy in their work. Without these skills, they won't be able to successfully transition to the real world of living in the community and holding a job. If teachers and schools provide a framework that reinforces these habits, students will benefit.

Good "Housekeeping" Keeps the Focus on Learning

When the little items are established, such as when pencil sharpening is allowed or how students are able to go to the restroom without disrupting the class, the classroom itself runs in a much more orderly fashion, which allows for more time for instruction and student learning. Teachers who do not have systems for these and other housekeeping items in place waste precious teaching time to deal with situations that have no bearing on student learning and achievement. Once organizational systems are in place and students understand and follow them, the teacher is left free to actually instruct the students. The focus of the day can be the prepared lesson plan, not whether a student is allowed to go to the restroom at this particular moment.

Good Organization Leads to Fewer Discipline Problems

If a teacher has a warmup exercise on the board when students enter the room, this gives them a framework for starting the day that is lesson-centered. Students are expected to sit in their seats and begin working when they enter the class. Having a warmup assignment ready each day means that students have less free time to chat and potentially become disruptive. Having a system for handling late work can also help minimize classroom disruptions. If a teacher does not have a system in place for giving students their assignments when they have been absent, the educator will have to spend valuable time at the beginning of class determining what assignment to give them-leaving the class unmonitored for a few minutes, a recipe for disruptions even before the day's lesson begins.

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Teachers need to be good organizers to help students achieve their fullest potential. Here's why organization is the key to effective teaching.

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This article explores anticipated changes in education within the next decade. It discusses a wide range of educational changes such as technology, connectivity, mobile learning, self-directed learning, and curriculum.

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by Terry Heick
Ed note: This post was originally published in 2013 and most recently updated in 2020.
We recently speculated on what education might look like in the year 2028 (see the link above) when today's kindergartners have finished K-12 and beginning their work in the world (or college). The focus of that piece was technology, and how it might impact the way students learn in the coming decades.

This piece is similar, but a bit more focused on the pros and the cons of learning trends, and the ultimate impact they might have on education and society at large. Note that all of these pieces are necessarily speculative, presented to hopefully promote conversation, illuminate possibility, and help us to stop and think where this all might be headed.

13 Ways Education Could Change In The Next 13 Years
1. The elementary school might evolve
Modern learners must consume, evaluate, and integrate constantly changing data in highly-dynamic and visible contexts. In 2013 (when this post was originally published), most elementary schools were (are?) more less tiny high schools, with a balance of reading, writing, mathematics, geography, and other 'core' skills, while character training supplements academic work. Though that balance tends more towards literacy than it does in most high schools, this minor adjustment is insufficient to meet the needs of a modern world. As society evolves at a more rapid pace than ever, literacy is changing, and elementary schools must respond in kind-with literacy not as a goal, but its sole purpose: Reading, writing, and emerging critical thinking skills. How? It could be that elementary schools will return to a role closer to that of the trivium-a classical education approach to learning that offers a learning sequence of grammar->logic->rhetoric.

In this approach, grammar doesn't refer to parts of speech, but rather "discovering and ordering facts of reality comprises basic, systematic Knowledge-not only the rules developed and applied to the ordering of word/concepts for verbal expression and communication....This is the initial, self-conscious technique used in properly (discursively or sequentially) organizing a body of knowledge from raw, factual data for the purpose of gaining understanding (through logic) and; thus, also organizing the individual human mind." (1) This could also be accomplished through adaptive learning software, smart apps, and a blended approach to learning that mixes precise decoding instruction driven by personal learning algorithms, mixed with 'human' teaching of the art and science of media design.
2. The demand for a new kind of assessment
Rather than measurement, true assessment is the process of uncovering understanding-figuring out what a learner does and does not understand, and moving forward from there. A connected culture seeks to see and be seen-to measure itself based on the interaction with others. This replaces a more intimate 'feedback loop' of a close circle of friends and only intermittent sharing. Rather than dwelling with texts, revisiting writing, reflecting on thinking, or extended conversations, everything here is fragmented across digital screens and a half-dozen communities.

The ability to be heard at any point in the learning process has significantly changed both our self-image and our sources of curiosity. For better or worse, thinking is now often social, and the traction an idea receives in chosen communities will act as a form of assessment-not so much of truth or innovation, but accessibility and even popularity. The learning feedback loops today are different than they were two decades ago.
3. Academic standards could be supplanted by 'other content'
As the access to information increases and social chatter reaches a never-ending crescendo, the need-and impact of-hundreds and hundreds of academic standards changes. In the current model, many students may master a 'proficient' number of select standards by achieving a pre-determined 'cut score,' but still fall short of being able to find, analyze, and use information in new and unfamiliar situations. This is a significant failure that isn't a matter of 'instructional adjustment,' but a new approach to why, how, and with whom students learn. This means the codex of academic standards that drive public schools today must change in quantity, scale, and function-or fall into the background completely.
4. Personalized learning will disrupt how we think of curriculum
Personalized learning isn't just about differentiated content, but rather just-in-time, just-enough, just-for-me access to authentic and accessible learning resources. 'Curriculum' is a flexible enough term that it can bend to accept new approaches to learning, but ultimately, it may be replaced entirely. Learning playlists will serve as a middle ground between top-down pedagogy, and pure , just as blended learning bridges current K-12 models with eLearning. (See also, Chloroforming the Unit.)
5. New content areas could emerge
Math, science, social studies, and literacy have been the pillars of modern education for over a century. But in the face of an uber-connected and technologically-driven world, new perspectives naturally emerge. Rather than 'content areas,' it is now possible to unify learning experiences by new criteria, including the ability to use specific technologies. And this assumes they need to be unified at all. This doesn't mean traditional content areas are unnecessary, but rather that new, more robust-and hopefully more interesting and rebranded-themes are necessary to naturally aggregate content. For example, 'Design' can merge math, science, and sociology to provide both a playground for arithmetic and an authentic need to know and create for authentic purposes in a true 'Maker Movement Culture.'
6. Certification could be supplemented by avatars
The need to see and be seen has fostered a culture of spectacle, where image, visibility, interaction, and access trump critical thinking and patience. As people seek to continuously brand themselves-just as corporations have been doing for a century-the result could be the same in education: human identity based on reputation, portfolios, and data rather than intimate and authentic human interaction, and iterative understanding.
7. There could be a shrinking demand for some forms of certification
Dominated by digital media, social media, video games, and an increasingly blurred line between them all, the work a connected, 21st-century adult 'does for a living' is taking an unprecedented number of forms. Unable to keep up with this explosion of 'careers,' many academic institutions (which were paid larger sums of money to prepare for careers in law, medicine, and engineering) may see the end of-or radical rethinking of-'certification,' a relic of a time when people, information, and communities stood still. Certainly, specific fields will continue to require highly-specialized training and provide universities with a lifejacket-or motivation to rebrand themselves as cultural cornerstones of wisdom.
8. There may be new reasons 'to go to school'
Growing discontent with a corporate-dominated world, a fresh demand for equity, and the democratization of information access will cause the rise of 'good work' where hyper-interdependent students seek to understand the ultimate impact of their work on the world around them. The days of 'going to school to get a job' could be slowly replaced by 'critically learning so that we come to understand what must be done.' This shift causes schools of all levels and sizes to respond.
9. Networks could trump content
Networks trumping content is an odd possibility-the idea that who you interact with becomes more important than what you study or desire to understand. But it's already happening-and it doesn't have to be all bad. Imagine a community of artists, doctors, or engineers that gather, exchange ideas, and interact on a consistent basis. This kind of interaction would offer a very organic form of value exchange and even "intellectual conditioning," and membership in such a community would provide a learner with considerable opportunity to acquire knowledge, forge relationships, and pursue an apprenticeship. Of course, this depends on the community and the nature of one's membership within it. (Think Reddit.) Whether this is truly 'bad' or not is subjective, but in a community-especially one digital-where connections are often superficial, huge in number, and based on convenience and the nature of the platform itself, subsequently losing that community is similar to losing content mastery. Which is bad.
10. The Maker Movement could spawn a design and/or entrepreneurial "culture" in education
Tinkering with physical and digital tools encourages playfulness, creativity, and a relaxed state of mind where genius has room to bloom. Just as project-based learning has taken years to find credibility in the average classroom, the Maker Movement will as well but could see an accelerated implementation in light of the natural thinking patterns of the 21st-century students.
11. Mobile Learning & self-directed learning could form the core of formal education models
Whether through adaptive learning apps, '1:1 blended learning,' personalized learning algorithms, or self-directed learning, the future of learning is undoubtedly mobile, personal, and self-directed. Whether it is effective or not depends on what exactly is being 'personalized,' but 'getting out of the way' and focusing on how to learn rather than what to learn is a shift difficult to fault.
12. Elite academic institutions could become the new 'fringe'
Or begin to anyway. While autodidacts, homeschoolers, unschoolers, and apprenticeships are currently the 'fringe' of education, that could change. As the focus of learning shifts from pure academic proficiency to a tone more open, fluid, and self-directed, many will naturally resist such a change. Those that believe in the value of a top-down, compliance-based, text-driven, test-centered, letter-grade approach will catalyze a fringe return to a "golden era" of academics, including a focus on classical education, failure and success, academic standards, good grades, and professional preparation. Socioeconomic realities will keep such a trend from finding widespread traction, as public schools continue to experiment with new approaches to learning, and spend their budgets in pursuit.
13. Curriculum will change, both in form as well as content
Evaluation of learning will see the ability of students to merge content and access high-value content areas as leading indicators of understanding. 'Mastery,' 'proficiency' and related terms become old language from an era of the closed and institutionally-controlled system of education. New notions of 'mastery' will focus not on academic standards, but media literacy, problem-solving, networking, and other critical strands of a modern, technology-driven society.

(1) http://www.triviumeducation.com/trivium/; How Education Might Change; 13 Ways Education Might Change In The Next 13 Years; image attribution Steve Wheeler

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13 Ways Education Could Change In The Next 13 Years

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by Terry Heick Ed note: This post was originally published in 2013 and most recently updated in 2020. We recently speculated on what education might look like in the year 2028 (see the link above) when today's kindergartners have finished K-12 and beginning their work in the world (or college).

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This article offers simple solutions for establishing and maintaining a communication system through informal and formal methods.

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1. The Monday Memo

An endless barrage of emails, texts, handouts, and announcements can lead to a communication overdose. The message, scattered about, gets lost when there are too many outlets. The easiest remedy is to consolidate these communications in a single, consistent package. We called ours the Monday Memo. It contained operational nuts and bolts, calendar events and deadlines, observations and insights from the school leader and others, weekly goals (which were shared with students as well), and at least one professional article aligned with the school's mission and vision. The Monday Memo was like a Napoleonic bulletin-it kept the troops well-informed and on the path to victory.

Note: Whenever possible, add a little levity. A cartoon or humorous story usually does the trick. A Monday morning smile can often carry a teacher all the way over to hump day.

2. The Huddle

At big schools with lots of grades, teachers often work themselves into silos. Freeing them from these silos is a scheduling challenge, but one well worth taking up. A teacher of ours came up with a simple solution: The Huddle. (We actually called ours "The Herd" because our mascot was a yak.) Once a week for just 15 minutes, we would all gather (with refreshments, of course) to share team plans and to look for opportunities for collaboration across grade levels.

And just like a football huddle, we would break with a unified clap.

Note: This can be accomplished electronically, but being eyeball to eyeball makes a world of difference.

3. Tea With Teachers

Once a month, I would meet with parents in the morning to discuss anything and everything having to do with the school. I called it Donuts With Dunbar. (We served lots and lots of coffee as well.) One day a teacher came up to me and asked, "Why don't you ever have donuts with us?"

"Y'all are always too busy in the morning," I said.

"Then let's do refreshments in the afternoon," she said. And thus Tea With Teachers, or TWT, was born. Unlike most faculty meetings, TWT was voluntary and the agenda was set by the participants. There were no time limits nor goals-only open, honest, real discussion.

4. Shout-Outs

There are a number of ways to acknowledge and celebrate best practices and excellence in schools. One of the best and easiest is the humble shout-out. Throughout the week, faculty and staff would submit nominations for academic, artistic, and cultural achievement. Every Friday, we would recognize those students, teachers, and community members who had gone above and beyond the call of duty. We would also note progress toward weekly and annual goals. It was a way of keeping all eyes firmly on the prize.

5. Art Jams

During the school day, it's almost impossible to think creatively. Grading papers and juggling deadlines doesn't exactly foster creative thinking. Yet such thinking is more important today than ever. So how and when do you generate new, innovative ideas? For us, it took place after school and off campus, surrounded by art and with plenty of adult beverages. Being an arts-integrated school, we called it an Art Jam. It was a time to brainstorm crazy ideas-ideas that might just lead to improved teaching and learning.

6. Social Media

A board member once asked me why I managed the school's Facebook page. "Don't you have more important things to do?" she asked.

"Believe it or not," I said, "Facebook is one of the most important things I do."

The principal is the vision keeper for a school. That vision has to be shared with all stakeholders. Social media-Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.-is one of the best ways to accomplish this. Use it to promote instructional best practices, to celebrate excellence, and to recognize all of the things that make your school unique.

7. Professional Culture Surveys

So with all of this improved communication, how do you know if it's working? As with student achievement, there has to be an end goal or measure for success. At our school, we developed a professional culture survey and gave it out three times a year. It was anonymous, and the perception data was shared with the entire faculty and staff. We used the results to, among other things, further improve communication.

When it comes to communication in schools, less is not more, and more is not necessarily better. It needs to be systematic, intentional, and transparent.

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7 Easy Ways to Improve School-Wide Communication

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An endless barrage of emails, texts, handouts, and announcements can lead to a communication overdose. The message, scattered about, gets lost when there are too many outlets. The easiest remedy is to consolidate these communications in a single, consistent package. We called ours the Monday Memo.

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I found this article interesting in that it reports data found in a study provided evidence on the importance of school leadership by estimating individual principals’ contributions to growth in student achievement.

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It is widely believed that a good principal is the key to a successful school. No Child Left Behind encouraged the replacement of the principal in persistently low-performing schools, and the Obama administration has made this a requirement for schools undergoing federally funded turnarounds. Foundations have invested millions over the past decade in New Leaders for New Schools, an organization that recruits nontraditional principal candidates and prepares them for the challenges of school leadership. And the recently launched George W. Bush Institute is making the principalship a focus of its activities. Yet until very recently there was little rigorous research demonstrating the importance of principal quality for student outcomes, much less the specific practices that cause some principals to be more successful than others. As is often the case in education policy discussions, we have relied on anecdotes instead.

This study provides new evidence on the importance of school leadership by estimating individual principals' contributions to growth in student achievement. Our approach is quite similar to studies that measure teachers' "value added" to student achievement, except that the calculation is applied to the entire school. Specifically, we measure how average gains in achievement, adjusted for individual student and school characteristics, differ across principals-both in different schools and in the same school at different points in time. From this, we are able to determine how much effectiveness varies from one principal to the next.

Our results indicate that highly effective principals raise the achievement of a typical student in their schools by between two and seven months of learning in a single school year; ineffective principals lower achievement by the same amount. These impacts are somewhat smaller than those associated with having a highly effective teacher. But teachers have a direct impact on only those students in their classroom; differences in principal quality affect all students in a given school. We also investigate one widely discussed mechanism through which principals affect student achievement: the management of teacher transitions. Importantly, because high teacher turnover can be associated with both improvement and decline in the quality of instruction, the amount of turnover on its own provides little insight into the wisdom of a principal's personnel decisions. We confirm, however, that teachers who leave schools with the most-successful principals are much more likely to have been among the less-effective teachers in their school than teachers leaving schools run by less-successful principals. The final component of our analysis considers the dynamics of the principal labor market, comparing the effectiveness of principals who move on to those who stay in their initial schools. Constrained by salary inertia and the historical absence of good performance measures, the principal labor market does not appear to weed out those principals who are least successful in raising student achievement. This is especially true in schools serving disadvantaged students. This is troubling, as the demands of leading such schools, including the need to attract and retain high-quality teachers despite less desirable working conditions, may amplify the importance of having an effective leader.
The Texas Database
Our analysis relies on administrative data constructed as part of the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) Texas Schools Project. Working with the Texas Education Agency (TEA), this project has combined different data sources to create matched data sets of students, teachers, and principals over many school years. The data include all Texas publicschool teachers, administrators, staff, and students in each year, permitting accurate descriptions of the schools led by each principal.

The Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS), TEA's statewide database, reports key demographic data, including race, ethnicity, and gender for students and school personnel, as well as student eligibility for subsidized lunch (a standard indicator of poverty). PEIMS also contains detailed annual information on teacher and administrator experience, salary, education, class size, grade, population served, and subject. Importantly, this database can be merged with information on student achievement by school, grade, and year. Beginning in 1993, Texas schools have administered the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) each spring to eligible students in grades 3 through 8. Our analysis therefore focuses on principals in elementary and middle schools, for whom it is possible to develop performance measures.

The personnel data combine time as a teacher and as an administrator into total experience, so it is not possible to measure tenure as a principal accurately for those who became a principal prior to the initial year of our data (the 1990-91 school year). We therefore concentrate on the years from 1995 to 2001. Over this period, we are able to observe 7,420 individual principals and make use of 28,147 annual principal observations.
Measuring Principal Quality
The fundamental challenge to measuring the impact of school leaders is separating their contributions from the many other factors that drive student achievement. For example, a school that serves largely affluent families may create the illusion that it has a great principal, when family backgrounds are the key cause of high achievement. Alternatively, a school that serves disadvantaged students may appear to be doing poorly but in fact have a great principal who is producing better outcomes than any other principal would.

Our basic value-added model measures the effectiveness of a principal by examining the extent to which math achievement in a school is higher or lower than would be expected based on the characteristics of students in that school, including their achievement in the prior year. Put another way, it examines whether some schools have higher achievement than other schools that serve similar students and attributes that achievement difference to the principal. This approach is very similar to that employed in studies that measure teacher quality using databases tracking the performance of individual students over time.

The main concern with this approach is that there may be unmeasured factors that affect school performance. Our data contain only basic information on student background characteristics, such as gender, race or ethnicity, and eligibility for subsidized lunch. As a result, we cannot control for more nuanced measures of students and their families, such as motivation or wealth. We are, however, able to control for students' test scores from the previous year, which may well capture a lot of the characteristics that we cannot measure directly. Moreover, there are also school factors not under the direct control of the school, including the quality of teachers inherited by the principal. Below we describe alternative approaches to isolating the contributions of the current principal.

In estimating principal effectiveness, we want to minimize the influence of specific circumstances and look at the underlying stable differences in impacts. This issue is important because a principal's impact may vary with tenure in a school. A principal's impact on the quality of the teaching staff (whether negative or positive), for example, probably increases over time as the share of teachers who were hired on her watch rises. To account for any differences in effectiveness that are related to tenure as a principal in a given school, we begin our analysis by focusing on data from the first three years a principal leads a school.

This first analysis indicates that the standard deviation of principal effectiveness is 0.21 standard deviations of test scores (see Table 1). This is a very large figure, perhaps unbelievably large, implying that a principal at the 75th percentile of this effectiveness measure shows average achievement gains of 0.11 standard deviations (relative to the average principal), while one at the 25th percentile shows average losses of 0.15 standard deviations. These differences are even more pronounced in high-poverty schools, for which the gap between the 25th and 75th percentile principal is more than one-third of a standard deviation. On average across all schools, the impact of having a principal 1 standard deviation more effective than the average principal is as much as seven additional months of learning in a single academic year.

As noted above, this initial estimate of the variability in principal effectiveness may partly reflect differences in school characteristics that are not under the principal's control, such as the quality of the school building, or decisions made by district administrators as well as unmeasured parental influences. As a result, it may overestimate the amount of influence principals actually have.

We begin to address this issue by measuring principal effectiveness based only on comparisons of within-school differences in student achievement growth over time. In simplest terms, we compare average student achievement gains in the same school under different principals. This method eliminates the influence of any student, school, or neighborhood characteristics that do not change over time. Its main drawback is that it ignores all differences in principal effectiveness between schools, potentially underestimating the amount of variation in principal quality. For example, if each school tends to attract principals who are similar in quality whenever it searches for a new principal, this approach will understate the true extent of variation in principal effectiveness.

We conduct this second analysis using all of the principals in our data, not just those in their first three years leading a school, because the numbers of schools with two principals observed in their first three years is quite small. (Note that re-doing the prior analysis using data on all principals does not significantly alter the results presented above.) Restricting the analysis to comparisons within schools, however, cuts our estimate of the variation in principal effectiveness in half. Even this reduced estimate is substantial, however, indicating that a 1-standard-deviation increase in principal effectiveness raises school average achievement by slightly more than 0.10 standard deviations. This impact is roughly comparable to that observed for variations in teacher effectiveness in studies that use the same kinds of within-school comparisons.

Our first two methods involved estimating effectiveness measures for individual principals and then calculating the standard deviation of those measures. Although any unmeasured school factors that are unrelated to principal quality would not bias these results, such factors would inflate our estimates of the variation in principal quality based on these approaches. We therefore employ a third approach that gauges the amount of variation in principal effectiveness directly by measuring the additional fluctuation in school average achievement gains when a new principal assumes leadership, as compared to typical fluctuations from year to year.

Focusing on the additional variation in school average achievement gains around principal transitions reduces the magnitude of the estimates. Nonetheless, the results remain educationally significant: a 1-standard-deviation increase in principal quality translates into roughly 0.05 standard deviations in average student achievement gains, or nearly quality between schools and again ignores any tendency for a given school to attract principals of similar quality over time, suggesting that it likely understates principals' actual impact.
Teacher Turnover
The results presented so far rely on indirect measures of principal impact, namely, student learning gains during a principal's tenure in a school. The data do not include any observations about what a principal actually does, or fails to do, to improve learning. We now turn to an analysis of the interactions of principals with teaching staff, which bears directly on a number of current policy debates.

A primary channel through which principals can be expected to improve the quality of education is by raising the quality of teachers, either by improving the instruction provided by existing teachers or through teacher transitions that improve the caliber of the school's workforce. Teacher turnover per se has received considerable policy attention, largely because of the well-documented difficulties that new teachers experience. The potential benefits of reducing turnover nonetheless hinge on the effectiveness of both entering and exiting teachers.

We expect highly rated principals to be more successful both at retaining effective teachers and at moving out less-effective ones. Less highly rated principals may be less successful in raising the quality of their teaching staffs, either because they are less skilled in evaluating teacher quality, place less emphasis on teacher effectiveness in personnel decisions, or are less successful in creating an environment that attracts and retains better teachers. Although better principals may also attract and hire more-effective teachers, the absence of reliable quality measures for new teachers and the fact that many principals have little control over new hires lead us to focus specifically on turnover.

Unfortunately, our data do not contain direct information on personnel decisions that would enable us to separate voluntary and involuntary transitions, and existing evidence suggests that teachers rather than principals initiate the majority of transitions. In addition, the Texas data do not match students to individual teachers, meaning that we must draw inferences about teacher effectiveness from average information across an entire grade.

With detailed information on teacher effectiveness and transitions, we could investigate whether better principals are more likely to dismiss the least-effective teachers and reduce the likelihood that the more-effective teachers depart voluntarily. In the absence of such information, however, we focus on the relationship within schools between the share of teachers that exits each grade and the average value-added to student achievement in the grade. We examine how this varies with our measures of principal quality based on student achievement gains. For example, in a school where 5th-grade students learn more than 4th-grade students, we would expect a good principal to make more changes to the 4th-grade teaching staff.

The results of this analysis confirm that the relationship between higher teacher turnover and lower average valueadded in a given grade is stronger as principal quality rises. This pattern of results is consistent with the theory that management of teacher quality is an important pathway through which principals affect school quality. The fact that less-effective teachers are more likely to leave schools run by highly effective principals also validates our measure of principal quality. If our measure was just capturing random noise in the data rather than information about true principal quality, we would not expect it to be related to teacher quality and turnover.
Principal Transitions and Quality
Along with teacher turnover, instability of leadership is often cited as an impediment to improving high-poverty and low-performing schools. Consistent with these concerns, we find that Texas schools with a high proportion of low-income students are more likely to have first-year principals and less likely to have principals who have been at the school at least six years than those serving a less-disadvantaged population. Sorting schools by initial achievement rather than poverty level produces even larger differences (see Figure 1). The proportion of principals in their first year leading a school is roughly 40 percent higher in schools in the bottom quartile of average prior achievement than in schools in the top quartile; the proportion of principals that have been at their current school at least six years is roughly 50 percent higher in schools with higherachieving students.

Yet the import of leadership turnover also depends on whether highor low-quality personnel are leaving, something prior research has been unable to address. We therefore examine whether the likelihood that a principal leaves following the third year in a school varies with her effectiveness and with the share of low-income students in the school. We observe principals making a variety of career decisions: remaining in the same school as principal, becoming a principal at another school in the same district, becoming a principal in another district, moving into a central office position, or exiting the public schools entirely. We divide principals into four equal-sized groups based on estimates of their effectiveness using the first of the three methods described above. We also limit the data to include only principals with fewer than 25 years of total experience in order to minimize complications introduced by the decision to retire.

Our results confirm that the least-effective principals are least likely to remain in their current position and most likely to leave the public schools entirely. With the exception of the schools with the lowest poverty level, however, there is not a consistent relationship between the likelihood of remaining on as principal and principal quality (see Figure 2). In high-poverty schools, for example, principals in the middle two quartiles of effectiveness are substantially more likely to remain than those in the bottom quarter. The most effective principals are more likely to remain in the same position than those in the bottom quartile, but are considerably more likely to move on than those in the middle of the quality distribution.

Another result emerging from this analysis that is troubling from a policy perspective is the frequency with which low-performing principals move to principal positions at other schools. This trend is particularly striking in high-poverty schools, where more than 12 percent of poor performers annually make such a move. In contrast, less than 7 percent of the poorest performers in more-affluent schools become principals at other schools. This may reflect the fact that it is challenging in high-poverty schools to separate the effects of school circumstances from the quality of the principal, leading district administrators to give principals from high-poverty schools a chance at a different school.

The simple conclusion, nonetheless, is that the operation of the principal labor market does not appear to screen out the least-effective principals. Instead, they frequently move to different schools, perhaps reflecting the bargain necessary to move out an ineffective leader in a public-sector organization. Potentially, this is where the superintendent enters the picture. Making good decisions on the retention and assignment of principals may be among the distinguishing characteristics of successful superintendents, a possibility that warrants additional study.
Conclusions
The role of principals in fostering student learning is an important facet of education policy discussions. Strong leadership is viewed as especially important for revitalization of failing schools. To date, however, this discussion has been largely uninformed by systematic analysis of principals' impact on student outcomes.

Determining the impact of principals on learning is a particularly difficult analytical problem. Nevertheless, even the most conservative of our three methodological approaches suggests substantial variation in principal effectiveness: a principal in the top 16 percent of the quality distribution will produce annual student gains that are 0.05 standard deviations higher than an average principal for all students in their school.

There are many channels through which principals influence school quality, although the precise mechanisms likely vary across districts with the regulatory and institutional structures that define principal authority. Because all principals participate in personnel decisions, we have focused on the composition of teacher turnover. For the best principals, the rate of teacher turnover is highest in grades in which teachers are least effective, supporting the belief that improvement in teacher effectiveness provides an important channel through which principals can raise the quality of education.

Finally, patterns of principal transitions indicate that it is the least and most effective who tend to leave schools, suggesting some combination of push and pull factors. This pattern is particularly pronounced in high-poverty schools. It is also worrisome that a substantial share of the ineffective principals in high-poverty schools takes principal positions in other schools and districts. Clearly, much more needs to be learned about the dynamics of the principal labor market. For student outcomes, greater emphasis on the selection and retention of high-quality principals would appear to have a very high payoff.
Gregory F. Branch is program manager at the University of Texas at Dallas Education Research Center. Eric A. Hanushek is senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Steven G. Rivkin is professor of economics at University of Illinois at Chicago.

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It is widely believed that a good principal is the key to a successful school. No Child Left Behind encouraged the replacement of the principal in persistently low-performing schools, and the Obama administration has made this a requirement for schools undergoing federally funded turnarounds.