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Many Teachers Try To Teach As They Were Taught – Stop Doing That!

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If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then many teachers of yore are buttered with adulation.  When people decide to become schoolteachers, they often do so thinking they will teach like their favorite teachers taught them.  You see it in the eyes of an interviewee when asked “Tell us about your favorite teacher when you were in school”.  Imitation later is demonstrated as a new teacher settles into patterns of mannerisms, classroom layout, and, most significantly, interacting with students.  Vestiges of a favorite teacher try to appear in a new teacher constantly. 

Stop doing that!  Most of what we admired in a favorite teacher was personality and charisma not teacher effectiveness.  Teach as you were taught to teach not as you were taught as a student. 

What do we know?

There is art to teaching.  Most favorite teachers touched us with their artful teaching, their personality, and their caring for each student.  They proved the statement that children do not care what a teacher knows until they know that a teacher cares.  Good teaching is an art form of connecting with children. Remembering a favorite teacher is like having that person’s arm around you or basking in her smile.  It is an emotional, affective warm feeling, often of kindness and support.  It grew from all the “atta-boys and atta-girls” she showered on students.  Children, as people pleasers, will do most anything to get a smile or a nod or a note to take home from a favorite teacher.  “How many books do I need to read?  I’ll read every day after school!”.  And the warmth of her smile gains even greater emotionality over time.

We would like to think that every teacher is a “favorite” to some students, but truth be told, there are some teachers who do not create adoring followers.  The art of teaching is not distributed equally among all teachers.

Favorite or Most Effective

An equally telling question for a teacher interview is “Tell us about the teacher who most effectively challenged you to learn”.  Effective teaching is causing children to learn and causation lies in the science of teaching.  Children may learn to please a favorite teacher; they learn from highly effective teachers due to an application of best teaching strategies. 

Highly effective teachers are not simply born.  They are the product of their study of theories and practices of pedagogy that consistently cause children, or anyone for that matter, to learn.  These theories and practices include –

  • Motivation.  Every child responds to positive triggers that encourage them to engage in learning.  Effective teachers pull those triggers.  They make learning personal by referencing a student’s name and that student’s high interest in the subject or skill as they introduce a lesson.  They make the new learning sound unique and special.  They attach new learning to recent successful learning.  They create a mystery children are to solve.  Effective teachers understand the need to continue to motivate throughout the lesson and unit not just as its beginning.
  • Direct instruction, inquiry-based instruction, and problem- or project-based instruction.  These three strategies are the arsenal for effective teachers, and they are masters of each.  Any lesson can be taught by one of these three strategies, yet there always is a most appropriate strategy for the nature of the learning.  Effective teachers provide variety in classroom work by rotating among these strategies. 
  • Practice and reinforcement.  Effective teachers understand that practice does not make perfect, it makes permanent.  They use immediate and massed practice and interval and distributed practice.  They don’t practice just to practice but for strategic reinforcement to build short- and long-term memory.  Effective teachers avoid the drudgery of drills while knowing that learning will erode and be lost without practice over time.  Reinforcement over time is a mantra.
  • Assessment and corrective teaching.  Effective teachers pre-assess, teach in chunks, model, practice, and use formative assessments to check the accuracy and strength of student learning.  They understand that very few lessons will immediately cause all children to be successful learners.  They use assessments to tell them “Correct this now before uninformed practice makes it harder to unlearn”.  They unteach, reteach, and teach differently based on assessments to move children from early errors to later success.  Effective teachers also are very good at observing student proficiency without testing; they have a mental rubric for the level of proficiency children need to achieve.
  • Extended and advanced learning.  Effective teachers know that some children will grasp and master new learning accurately and quickly.  Those children will need extended and advanced learning rather than corrective teaching.  Effective teachers plan enrichments and accelerated learning for children who need these to stay connected to the classroom.
  • Lesson planning.  Effective teachers are immaculate lesson planners understanding the steps of a plan that causes learning to happen.  In the 1980s school districts taught teachers to use Madeline Hunter’s Model of Mastery Learning.  Hunterisms became standard operating procedure for more than a decade.  Splashback against No Child Left Behind caused some educators to consider Hunter too mechanistic.  However, in the decades since, a Hunter lesson design rebounds as best practice.

https://www.csun.edu/sites/default/files/Holle-Lesson-Planning.pdf

  • Curricular design.  Effective teachers understand that some children really respond to direct instruction while others jump aboard for inquiry-based teaching and still others are excited by problem-based and project-based instruction.  These teachers strategically use all three strategies to engage children as active learners.  They also use Universal Design thinking in their curriculum to ensure learning is not hindered by avoidable barriers. 

The Big Duh! 

Teacher preparation programs teach us how to be effective in causing children to learn.  Effective teachers remember their favorite teachers from their school years and emulate many of those veteran teachers’ mannerisms.  Beyond that emulation, effective teachers are masters of the science of teaching and use all the tools they have been taught to cause all children to be successful learners of their annual curriculum. 

Sharpening Teaching Tools – Getting Ready for Day 1 Means Getting the Rust Off

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Teachers and Tiger Woods face the same challenges as professionals.  When Woods returned to the PGA tour after time away his game was not what it once was.  When precision skills are not used frequently enough to remain honed, they develop rust.  Summer vacations and time in general have the same effect on teaching skills.  Before re-entering the teaching season this fall, all teachers need to sharpen their teaching tools to get rid of summer rust.

What do we know?

Summer is a cherished time for teachers as well as children.  Ten weeks or so away from the classroom is exactly what it is – an absence away and a setting aside of the teaching skills used in classroom work.  As teachers decompress from the stress of daily teaching in the nine months of school, the mental acuities of teaching slumber during the summer weeks.  This has been an aspect of the nine months on and three months off in an educational calendar for decades.  It is one of the reasons school leaders schedule professional development days before the first day of school.  Like their riding a bike, teachers don’t forget how to teach over a summer’s vacation, but they do profit from time back on the pedals before children enter their classrooms.

Getting ready for the first day of school is not just arranging a classroom to receive children.  Getting ready also is shaking loose the summer slumber/rust by clinically considering how a teacher will teach the first curricular units of the year.

Explicit Instruction

One of the most frequently used instructional strategies is explicit teaching, a step-by-step approach that purposefully connects teaching strategies with learning outcomes for children.  Direct instruction is one of the primary methods in explicit teaching.  Direct instruction teaches a chunk of content or skills, checks for student understanding and accuracy, and then teaches a next chunk.  Explicit teaching also entails an examination of the critical attributes of the content and skills to be learned, scaffolding those attributes into a sequence that leads to student proficiency with the content and skills, the use of formative and summative assessments of student learning, and the ability to reteach what students did not learn correctly.  And explicit instruction focuses on the children as learners, understanding that every group of children arrives with differing learning backgrounds and learning needs.

https://education.ky.gov/curriculum/standards/kyacadstand/Documents/EBIP_3_Explicit_Teaching_and_Modeling.pdf

While it is possible for a teacher to walk into a classroom on the first day of school and begin teaching from the rote memory of their first day one year ago, it is better practice for a teacher to review and consider all the steps and processes of instruction before day one.  Getting the rust off means a teacher expends the time and effort to reconsider the first curricular units of the new school year in terms of what the teacher needs to do each class session to cause all children to learn.  Reconsidering the uses of explicit instruction is a good way to rub off the rust.

Key questions:

What do children already know?  The purpose of direct instruction is not “how to tell students what they are to learn”, but determining what students already know, what they need to learn, and the best way to deliver that new learning.  Decisions about telling, demonstrating, inquiring about, or experiencing individually or in groups come after determining what needs to be learned.

Who are these children?  What are their strengths and challenges as learners?  Which children are new to our school and need social acclimation as well as instruction?  What assumptions about these children can a teacher make with confidence?

How will new learning be chunked into teaching/learning in small enough amounts so that all children can successfully process their instruction?

How much engagement time is needed for all children to successfully learn a chunk of instruction?  This is pacing.  Most teachers and students want to “get at it” quickly in the first days of school.  Pacing new learning is essential to assure that getting at it creates successful learning.

How will I know that all children are proficient in their new learning?  Much of formative assessment is observational – seeing and hearing children in the processes of their learning.  Some of formative assessment is quizzing.  Getting the rust off is rebalancing a teacher’s confidence in observing students at work to know if they are being successful or need reteaching or different teaching to be successful.

The Practice of Rehearsal

We rehearse many things consciously and unconsciously.  I would not make a golf shot without taking several practice swings to understand the terrain of the ground, the lie of the ball, the bottom of my swing arc, and the way I want to hit the ball.  I mentally phrase many responses to questions prior to speaking or writing to ensure I am focused on the question, have facts to support what I say or write, and can deliver my words in a tone that fits the occasion.  Rehearsals, physical, cognitive, and emotional, provide assurance that what is to be done or said is targeted and purposeful.

The theory of rehearsal says that when a person reviews what is needed and preliminarily practices a delivery of what is needed, the delivery may not be perfect, but it will be a faithful representation of the best the person can deliver.  And that is what getting the rust of teaching skills is all about.

Last school year I stood in a classroom doorway watching an elementary teacher prepare for teaching a lesson.  She talked aloud but softly as she told herself the objectives of the lesson, what she and her students had done the days before, and the new instruction she would teach this day.  She checked her laptop to assure the presentation of new information was queued up.  She checked a stack of handouts she would give to students.  She repeated the outcomes she would look for by the end of the lesson.  Lastly, she said the names of two students she needed to check frequently and give more assistance.  She was in a rehearsal zone and unaware she was being watched.  At the end, she smiled; she was ready.

I have observed chemistry teachers laying out a lab, writing teachers keying in on a complete versus incomplete sentence structures, PE teachers rehearsing the flexibility exercises they would teach, and math teachers reviewing problem solutions on a screen – each one practicing purposeful rehearsals before students arrived for instruction.

The Big Duh!

As it is true that we get what we settle for, the quality of student learning we get is a direct reflection of the quality of teaching we provide.  Teachers are professional educators with the skills to deliver high quality lessons.   Rehearsing instructional skills prior to teaching better ensures the opportunity to use very sharp teaching skills.

Liberal Arts: The High School Curriculum for Our Future

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A college liberal arts education is a dinosaur, a creature of the past.  Because the cost of college today means an earned degree must pay for itself quickly after graduation, college is not about learning for life but for a livelihood.  Our last best chance to assure future adults acquire the broad knowledge needed for life and lifelong learning is a high school curriculum designed as a liberal arts education.

High tuition costs and the prospect of lengthy debt payments is the number one cause for current declines in college and university enrollments.  The value of a college education is not what it used to be; no longer is college the gateway to the American Dream.  Marketability is more important than a major.  Thus died the liberal college education, a broad and balanced course of study.  Because a major now begins in the college freshman year, high school curriculum is the foundation and last bastion of a liberal arts education.

School boards need to pay attention for this essential reason: the last instruction our future adults will receive in US history, US government, world history, the general sciences, non-technical mathematics, non-technical writing and speaking, literature, the arts, and so-called soft skills will be in your high school classes.  A high school education, more than ever before, will be the common denominator for Americans to understand America and what it means to be an American.

What do we know?

Our Founding Fathers valued an educated and informed population.  Thomas Jefferson emphasized the need for a literate and informed voter if the United States experiment in democracy and representative government were to succeed.  Correspondingly, America’s first colleges and universities, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Virginia, emphasized a liberal and rounded education.

“The liberal arts college model took root in the United States in the 19th century, as institutions spread and followed the model of early schools like Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth.  The model proliferated in the 19th century; some 212 small liberal arts colleges were established between 1850 and 1899.  As of 1987, there about 540 liberal arts colleges in the United States.”

“Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional or vocational curriculum.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_college#:~:text=The%20liberal%20arts%20college%20model,as%20liberal%20arts%20colleges%20today

For many years, Wisconsin had one of the finest public-university systems in the country.  It was built on the Wisconsin Idea: that the university’s influence should not end at the campus’s borders, that professors and the students they taught should ‘search for truth’ to help state legislators write laws, aid the community in technical skills, and generally improve the quality of life across the state.

But the backbone of the idea almost went away in 2015, when Governor Scott Walker released his administration’s budget proposal, which included a change to the university’s mission.  The Wisconsin Idea would be tweaked.  The ‘search for truth’ would be cut in favor of a charge to ‘meet the state’s workforce needs’”.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/12/the-liberal-arts-may-not-survive-the-21st-century/577876/

“As faculties and administrators become more and more uncertain about the value of knowledge for its own sake and about what a curriculum should include, the colleges’ dependence on the whims of their late teenager clientele is not only increased, but the very reason for the continued existence of the liberal arts college is being whittled away.”  “In the decades since, fears about the demise of liberal arts education have been routinely reiterated, particularly in the wake of the Great Recession, as college applicants grew increasingly concerned about the number of job opportunities yielded by their degree.  Advances in technology have also spurred predictions about the decline or death of the liberal arts — ChatGPT being the latest.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherrim/2023/01/11/the-problem-facing-liberal-arts-education-is-not-subject-matter-its-application/

At a micro level, “Kovach (a student considering an English major as a preparation for a career in theater and the arts) will graduate with some thirty thousand dollars in debt, a burden that influenced his choice of a degree. For decades now, the cost of education has increased over all and ahead of inflation. One theory has been that this pressure, plus the growing precariousness of the middle class, has played a role in driving students like him toward hard-skill majors. (English majors, on average, carry less debt than students in other fields, but they take longer to pay it down.)”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/the-end-of-the-english-major

The problem of indebtedness after graduation and a new concept as to the purpose of a collegiate education radically changed the perception of and interest in a liberal arts education.

What is a liberal arts education?

“The goal (of the liberal arts) is to become broadly educated, well-rounded members of society that can understand lots of different domains of knowledge, learn how to learn, and have a specialization of sorts,” says Mark Montgomery, founder and CEO of Great College Advice, a college admissions consultancy with offices across the U.S.

Most liberal arts colleges do not offer separate professional education programs, such as business and engineering schools, which are designed to give students specialized training for specific professional practice.”

A liberal curriculum includes many academic disciplines, especially the skills of communications, writing proficiency, analytical thinking, and leadership skills.  Often, a second or third language and courses in the humanities are included.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2018-12-07/what-a-liberal-arts-college-is-and-what-students-should-know

In the 1950s and 60s when ex-servicemen enrolled in college under the GI Bill and growing numbers of women found opportunities for a college education, a liberal arts education was a popular course of study.  Graduates were proud of their BA with a major in the liberal arts.  English majors provided insurance that company communiques were correctly written.  History and political science majors provided insight into community and state leadership.  The liberal arts also were a foundation and springboard for graduate studies.

In past US Census reports most people reporting a college education were graduates of liberal arts colleges or liberal arts programs in state universities.  A broad college education, their last formal education, gave them a basis for understanding America and the world.

Instead of a liberal arts education.

Today the trend is changing.  “According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, US colleges and universities awarded two million bachelor’s degrees in 2018-19.  More than half of these degrees were concentrated in just six fields of study.  Plentiful job opportunities and high entry-level salaries make certain fields more attractive.  For example, business and health degrees account for nearly one-third of all undergraduate degrees.”

The 10 Most Popular College Majors

What is general information?

There is no consensus on what constitutes the basic information of an education.  Every discipline of study has its own answer.  Given this lack of clarity, we can build an understanding of the information a 4K-12 education must generate from the purpose of education and examples of what a lack of correct information looks like.

E. D. Hirsch, Jr. wrote in Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, “Only by piling up specific, communally shared information can children learn to participate in complex, cooperative activities with other members of their community.”  “Americans are different from Germans, who are in turn different from Japanese, because each group possesses specifically different cultural knowledge.  The basic goal of education in a human community is accumulation, the transmission to children of the specific information shared by the adults of the group or polis”.

A public education should, among other goals, educate children to understand the history, culture, and working mechanisms of their country, state, and local community.  If not, children are aliens in their own land.

The following are examples of what a lack of or misunderstanding of general information looks like.

• More Americans could identify Michael Jackson as the composer of “Beat It” and “Billie Jean” than could identify the Bill of Rights as a body of amendments to the Constitution. 

• More than 50 percent of respondents attributed the quote “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs” to either Thomas Paine, George Washington, or President Obama. The quote is from Karl Marx, author of “The Communist Manifesto.” 

• More than a third did not know the century in which the American Revolution took place, and half of respondents believed that either the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, or the War of 1812 occurred before the American Revolution. 

• With a political movement now claiming the mantle of the Revolutionary-era Tea Party, more than half of respondents misidentified the outcome of the 18th-century agitation as a repeal of taxes, rather than as a key mobilization of popular resistance to British colonial rule. 

• A third mistakenly believed that the Bill of Rights does not guarantee a right to a trial by jury, while 40 percent mistakenly thought that it did secure the right to vote. 

• More than half misidentified the system of government established in the Constitution as a direct democracy, rather than a republic – a question that must be answered correctly by immigrants qualifying for U.S. citizenship.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/americans-vs-basic-historical-knowledge/340761/

Some may consider general information to be trivia or clues on TV’s Jeopardy show.  But accurate and complete understanding clears up so many misinterpretations and misstatements that populate everyday conversation.  For example, children cannot speak about global warming without background of the earth’s atmosphere, the world’s geography, and how nature replenishes oxygen and cleans carbon dioxide from the air we breathe.  They cannot engage in conversation about global warming without analytical thinking and problem-solving skills, filters for fact and non-facts, and civil conversation and communication skills.  These are part and parcel to what Hirsch considers our cultural literacy and abilities to use knowledge in engaging with our world.

Drive the point with this fact.  Just 39 percent of American adults can pass a multiple-choice test required for US citizenship.  The passing score is 60 correct out of 100 questions.

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-10-12/2-of-3-americans-wouldnt-pass-us-citizenship-test#:~:text=Just%2039%20percent%20of%20Americans,a%20passing%20score%20of%2060.

The big Duh!

Rousseau wrote that children learn best in a natural environment where, as they encounter the need to know, they engage and begin to understand.  Our world is not that natural environment and our children do not exist in Rousseau’s theoretical garden.  Responsible adults must create a public education that prepares all children for adult life and that preparation includes a firm foundation of the knowledge and skills that are within the liberal arts. 

High school is the last opportunity for all children to gain a Jeffersonian education for an informed citizenry.  High school graduation requirements are the last stipulation for ensuring all children have a broad yet appropriately deep knowledge and use of skill sets in literature, history, the sciences, mathematics, the arts, second languages, and the soft skills of reading, writing, analytical thinking, reasoning, and argumentation.  These four years set the foundation for what a graduate will say “I was taught …” for the next 80+ years of life.  Almost all graduates will engage in training and professional development related to their chosen occupations and avocations.  Equally, almost none will re-engage in the curriculum of 4K-12 education.  That door closed.  We must ensure that when a high school graduate closes her 4K-12 door, she possesses a liberal arts foundation that will serve for the rest of her life.

We are what we appear to value.  Reading Proficiency and Censorship.

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Simultaneously the Wisconsin legislature is considering a bill to improve reading instruction for all children and a bill to limit what schools can provide for children to read.  Two bills each with its own perspective on how the state should fulfill its commitment to educating children.  One bill attempts to apply the best practices of the science of reading to ensure all children can be proficient readers.  One bill tells schools to limit what they provide for children to read and see.  Each bill uses the power of the state to transform how schools impact children.  Each bill is an expression of what we value.

What do we know?

Our WI constitution says the state is responsible for establishing and supervising public education.  State statute 118.01(2) outlines the state’s educational goals.  These include instruction in 118.01(2)(a) the basic skills of reading, arithmetic, listening, writing, and speaking, analytical skills to think rationally and solve problems, a body of knowledge in literature, fine arts, and the natural sciences, skills and attitudes for lifelong intellectual activity, and knowledge in computer science including the social impact of computers.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118

What is being proposed?

Representative Joel Kitchens is spearheading Assembly Bill 321 to improve child literacy by creating an Office of Literacy, focusing teacher prep programs on science-based reading instruction, establishing and funding literacy coaching, and standardizing early literacy screening through grade 3 assessments.  Equally important to the use of phonics-based reading is the ban on schools from using three cueing strategies in teaching children to read.  Every child in 4K-grade 3 will be taught how to decode words and encode sounds – to read and write independently.  Each child will be taught the mechanics of literacy and strategies for building vocabulary.  A child’s ability will no longer be determined by her school’s reading program preferences but by best practice. 

The bill institutes change in teacher education and professional development to ensure that teachers know how to teach phonics-based reading.  Today most teachers do not teach phonics as it was not part of their baccalaureate preparation or their school district’s PD.  Most teachers learned to teach whole language or blended reading strategies dominated reading instruction.  Teachers will learn to teach and be accountable for teaching all children to read using the science of reading concepts and skills.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/related/proposals/ab321

State Senators Andre Jacque, Romaine Quinn, and Cory Tomczyk presented a bill that would cause schools to remove books and material that are “deemed harmful or offensive to minors from public schools and libraries” and “enact policies that ensure minors do not view harmful materials on public computers”.

Under the guise of parent rights to supervise what their children learn, the bill requires schools to publish their curricular materials so that parents may object to what they deem harmful and/or remove their child from that class instruction. 

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/proposals/sb10

One bill supports our educational goals and the other subverts those goals.

I fully agree with Joel Kitchens when he says “Students will succeed by returning to the way most of us learned to read.  I truly consider this to be the most important thing that I ever worked on in the legislature”.  AB 321 advances the educational goals of our state by improving how we teach all children to read. 

Senate Bill 10 contradicts our educational goals to provide all children with opportunities to consider, think, and become intellectual problem solvers.  It ignores or does not trust the authority of school districts to supervise the materials they provide for children to read and see and experience in school.  Instead, this bill creates a new right for a parent to make that decision not just for that parent’s child but for all children.

SB10 is Wisconsin’s effort to keep up with other conservative-dominated state legislatures with book banning.  If successful, the bill ensures that schoolbooks and materials can be censored by a single parent or small group of parents.  It also places school boards in the bullseye of the issue to ban or not ban books.

https://www.wortfm.org/following-national-trend-wisconsin-lawmakers-introduce-book-ban/

Where is our educational high ground?

As a former school superintendent and school board president, I applaud Assembly Bill 321 and shun Senate Bill 10.  The high ground of public education is to teach children how to think and to resolve issues.  It is low ground to tell children what to think and to insulate them from issues they should, with appropriate instructional support, be able to consider. 

Our state constitution explains the educational goals of a public education in Chapter 118, section 118.01.  118.01(d) says “Each school board shall provide an instructional program designed to give pupils: (8) Knowledge of effective means by which pupils may recognize, avoid, prevent and halt physically or psychologically intrusive or abusive situations which may be harmful to pupils including child abuse and child enticement.  Instruction shall be designed to help pupils develop positive psychological, emotional, and problem-solving responses to such situations and avoid relying on negative, fearful, and solely reactive methods of dealing with such situations.  Instruction shall include information on available school and community prevention and intervention assistance or services and shall be provided to pupils in elementary schools.”

The high ground for our state is to implement the goals of its statutes.  Schools must constantly improve how we teach children while we constantly are vigilant regarding the educational materials we use for that education.  The state constitution gives schools the authority and responsibility to do these, and the role of legislation is to enhance not impede schools.  The constitution commends parents to work with local school boards to understand and advocate for the education of all children.

The high ground for local school boards is to constantly supervise the materials and experiences used to educate its students.   When a challenge arises the board can engage in an appropriate conversation with the conviction that the district has and is meeting its responsibilities for the entirety of our state’s educational goals.  We teach all children to become proficient in basic skills and to consider, think, problem solve and make decisions regarding their school experiences.  We do not teach them what to think or how to value their experiences.

Dropping Educator Prep For Superintendents Is A Bad Idea

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There are answers that resolve the difficult issues of a problem and there are answers that avoid the issues.  School districts in Wisconsin face problems that a recent legislative proposal avoids.  School superintendents are resigning and retiring at a faster rate than new superintendent candidates are being prepared for the job market.  A proposed legislative fix is to eliminate the requirement that superintendents must be trained as educators and licensed by the DPI.  Making the job available to a wider pool of non-educator candidates does not address the problems that cause a shortage of trained superintendents.  This is a bad answer – superintendents are educators first and foremost.  Address the issues that cause superintendents to resign or retire early; do not lessen the training that connects a superintendent with the instruction of children.  Superintendents need to be educators.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel accurately reported the problem and the legislative proposal.  “Over the past few years, the number district administrators leaving the job has nearly doubled. At the start of the 2022-23 school year, 107 of 421 Wisconsin public school districts had a different superintendent from the previous school year, with 65 of them in their first year, according to Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators executive director Jon Bales. This is in comparison to 66 changes in superintendents at the start of the 2021-22 school year.

Under current law, all school district administrators in Wisconsin, with the exception of Milwaukee Public Schools, are required to hold a license issued by the Department of Public Instruction. The proposed legislation by Stroebel and Wittke would create a similar exemption for the other 420 public school districts in the state.

‘(The bill) is just an attempt to help provide school districts the option of taking qualified people from candidate pools that they have available to them,’ said Wittke, a member of the Racine Unified School District Board from 2016-19.

‘We just look at it as trying to do things that bring more talent into the K-12 education system and allow talented people to realize the full extent of the expertise that they have,’ Wittke said. ‘(We want to) open up the talent pool and help districts out so they can choose the right person to run the district rather than someone who has a specific license.’”

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2023/05/17/schools-superintendent-turnover-not-unusual-for-wisconsin/70196216007/

The “heat in the kitchen”.

President Harry Truman gave us his direction for dealing with heated problems.  “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”  In a manner of speaking, that is what an increasing number of school superintendents are doing.  After successfully preparing themselves for school district leadership, they abandon their job and/or career.  While President Truman proclaimed himself to be heat resilient, he did not help us understand the issue of heat.  Neither does the Stroebel/Wittke proposal.

The heat is not what it used to be.

Historic heat and current heat are not the same.  In past decades the annual budget or a school referendum or the losing record of the high school football coach were hot school board items.  Parents and residents physically attended a school board meeting, rose to speak to the board, heard each other, and awaited a board decision.  Addressing the board was part of a process and the protocols for speaking with the board were honored.   Heated arguments were made, and some excessive words were used but at the end of the process civility was honored.

In the era of new heat, we add vitriol.  As crass indicators, the new heat can be measured by the decibels of yelling and the amount of spittle that is expelled.  Old heat retained civility and new heat has little regard for self-regulation.  Growing numbers of parents and residents attend physically or Zoom into board meetings and ignore the agenda and parliamentary process.   In many instances, they grab the floor and do not relinquish it until the board gives them the decision they demand, or the meeting is abandoned in chaos.  They leave the lectern to get into the faces of board members.  They over shout those who disagree with their demands.  The new heat is all about forcing board decisions to favor the demands made by the most vocal. 

Superintendents are the school board’s lightening rod.  The district administrator is the board’s executive officer and responsible for implementing the board’s policies.  As the board’s executive, the superintendent also makes recommendations for board consideration.  The superintendent is the point person on all issues thus is the lightening rod that attracts all the storm and fury when there is public disagreement with policy implementation or recommendations of new policies.

Within this tense environment, a recent study found that nearly 40 percent of superintendents reported being threatened or feeling threatened on the job.  And 63 percent of superintendents reported feeling endangered about their mental health and well-being over the past two years.

But while superintendents are feeling the heat, policymakers are unable to accurately determine the impact of pressure on superintendents’ well-being, performance and willingness to stay on the job.’”

https://www.governing.com/education/why-are-so-many-school-superintendents-leaving-their-job

I served as a school superintendent for 15 years and was a school board president during the pandemic and write from experience. 

New hot issues are about parenting and politics not schooling.

“Contributing to this tension are politically divisive issues that many school superintendents have had to navigate over the last three years, including the teaching of race, book bans and providing access to athletics and bathrooms for students who identify as transgender.” 

https://www.governing.com/education/why-are-so-many-school-superintendents-leaving-their-job

The school board is legally authorized to govern local public education and nothing else.  Too many parents and community residents today want the school board to resolve newly heated social and political topics that are not school issues.  Unable to invoke policy at the national or state or municipal level, they turn to the grass roots government of school boards.  Their purpose is to make local policies impose their perspective on everyone in the school district.

No quick fixes; just education.

Public education is public.  Our state Constitution tells us what this means.  Boards are publicly elected.  Schools operate on public tax dollars.  School enrollment is open to all in the public community.  School policies and rules are public documents.  All the business of the board except what the statutes allow to be confidential is a public record.  The doors of a public school may be newly secured, but they are open to the public.  Board meetings are open to public participation.  These attributes are strengths of public education and are part of the solution to emerging struggles.

New stressors that are raised by some in the public must be resolved with the tools of public education – teaching and learning.  This is why school superintendents must be trained and licensed educators.  While elected board members speak for their constituents and their children, superintendents speak for education and the education of all children.  At the board table in front of the public, the superintendent is a singular voice, and that voice must be informed by training and experience.

The superintendent uses teaching skills to prepare the board for the topics on its agenda.  While open meeting laws prevent board members from discussing agenda items prior to meetings, they rely on the superintendent to teach them the background of the topic, the compelling reasons for the topic appearing on this agenda, and the pros and cons of the topic necessary for the board to make an informed decision.  Few board members are trained educators.  They need to be taught by the superintendent to think as educators.

Board members can represent all the traits and characteristics of children in a classroom.  They are not often satisfied with the dictates of a CEO but want to know the why and what if of the topics they consider.  Board members are adult education personified.

Trained superintendents also understand from their school life experiences that successful learning takes time and patience.  Experience taught them that a difficult day for one lesson need not carry into the next day.  Training tells them how to modify their instructional approach to ensure successful board learning.

Trained and experienced superintendents also know that once they have completed their pre-agenda education and presentation, the responsibility for the outcome is up to the board.  It is out of the superintendent’s control.  They know how to release their responsibility to the board.

Beyond teaching board members, superintendents also teach their administrative team, district employees, the community, and children.

Administrative team.  The superintendent leads the central office staff, principals, directors, and department heads.  On a line and staff chart, the superintendent is the person responsible for implementing all district programs.  The faculty and school staff take their organizational direction from the admin team.  A strong superintendent instructs all school leaders in the district vision, mission, and annual goals.  His detailed explanation defines the exact performances required of team members for the district to meet its goals.  Like strong teachers, he models and practices what he teaches and holds himself to the same assessments as his team.

District employees.  An employee who knows the CEO of the organization knows the job he does, has observed the work he does, and understands how the job contributes to the organization feels connected to the organization.  Superintendents who were principals and who were teachers have this background knowledge.  They can speak directly with bus drivers, cleaners, cooks and servers, aides, and all faculty with understanding of the jobs they do.  Conversely, superintendents without school training must rely on the reports of others to indirectly understand an employee’s work.  Except for the largest urban school districts, superintendents who are educators have this essential in-school knowledge and it provides indispensable connections.

Community.  The school community is a set of concentric circles.  Faculty, staff, and children are in the core circle.  Parents of school children are the second circle.  The resident community is the third circle.  Superintendents connect with some of the resident community in the comings and goings of personal living.  Folks at the grocery and gas station see the superintendent frequently; most in the community do not.  Residents know about the schools only from what they hear and read.  For this reason alone, a superintendent must be a community educator who provides frequent, informative, and candid communications to all residents.  Human interest stories matter, especially when they demonstrate that the superintendent knows the people-side of school.  A superintendent forms public opinion about the schools by what he communicates.

Children.  When I was an elementary student I knew my principal, Mrs. Phillips, and my school superintendent, Dr. Salsbury.  I saw Mrs. Phillips almost every day, and I saw Dr. Salsbury’s name in letters to school parents.  Both were real people to me, not just names.  When they spoke, I listened. 

When I was a superintendent with an office in the school’s main hallway, I saw the children of our school every day, and they saw me.  I sat in their classrooms, ate in their cafeteria, and walked their halls.  I considered the school my classroom and just like a teacher I was purposeful in what I said to children.  It was my opportunity to learn from them to better shape their school experience.  Every superintendent needs to get a “kid fix” frequently to remain personally connected with the most important people in the school.

The Big Duh!

If our legislator’s intent is to fill jobs, then any person can be a superintendent.  If their intent is to ensure successful school leadership, then only trained school leaders are qualified to be a superintendent.  As with many things in life, we will get what our legislators settle for.  We hope they settle only for what is best for educating children.