A School Year Is Long Enough To …

I have not yet met a person who does not have an opinion on the length of a school year.  By and large, most people who are not students, parents of students, in the business of school or reliant upon child labor don’t care and “I don’t care” is an opinion.  The remainder, a minority of our community – parents, grandparents, employers and others whose daily life is touched by school – form their opinion from their personal experience, their self-interest, and an uninformed concept of schooling.  Normally, this blog sets a proposition, examines what we know and think about the topic, and creates an action or To Do with a rationale.  Today, I will start with the conclusion.

The Big Duh

A school year must be the length of time necessary to teach and cause children to become competent in an annual curriculum.  It need not be longer nor shorter than that, but it must be long enough to teach an annual curriculum. 

What Do We Know?

Over time educators have packaged learning into grade levels and content courses and courses of study and each package is an annual curriculum.  Elementary school is parsed into 4K or pre-kindergarten, Kindergarten, and 1st grade through the last grade of your school’s organization, typically 5th or 6th grade.  Each grade level is a step on a curricular scaffold building a child’s knowledge, skills and dispositions about learning school year by school year.  Secondary school is parsed into content courses of English/language arts, math, science and socials studies and perhaps a world language.  These are stacked or sequenced, as in English 7 through English 12 and Algebra through Calculus.  Some content courses seem to be stand alone courses, like Marketing or Personal Finance, but have underlying content and skill structure in English, social studies, and math.  Also, secondary school instruction provides continuous courses of study in music, the arts, and technical education.  Year after year of instruction in choir, band and orchestra or in painting and ceramics or technical training refines and improves student performance.

The packaging in terms of time began when our communities were agriculture-based and children could attend school when not needed during the planting, growing, and harvesting seasons.  Packaging was reconsidered when child labor laws were implemented and regular schooling replaced daily work.  A school day mirrored a work day and a school week mirrored a world week and school calendaring filled the community need for day care for millions of children nationwide.

Curricular packaging has been refined and fit into grade level and course competencies.  A child’s progress through the 3 R’s was a pathway up the scaffold of reading, writing and arithmetic.  At one time, a 6th grade education or the ability to read, write and cipher at the 6th grade level was an adequate adult competency.  Later, the level of competency advanced to 8th grade and children could stop attending school after completion of 8th grade or the age of 16.  That was good enough.  Today, high school is the completion of 13 or 14 years of schooling and a generalized competency of 10th grade or better.

Our contemporary school scaffold is a child’s annual demonstrated competence on annual curricula that validates promotion to the next annual curricula and eventually graduation.  The time required to complete each step of the scaffold or each packaged curriculum is approximately 180 school days or 36 weeks of school.

There are no prizes or awards for schools that have shorter or longer school years.  There is no economic incentive to add days to a school year.  School revenues and contracts for all school employees are a set amount in a school’s annual budget and decreasing or extending a school year does not alter these major expenses.

Why Is This Thus?

Why is 180 days the seemingly standard for a school year?  The question was asked and answered more than 100 years ago.  The world’s richest man of his time, Andrew Carnegie, was committed to the role of education as the essential strategy for improving life in the early 1900s.  In 1906, he funded the Carnegie Foundation led by Harvard President Charles Elliot to study and recommend standards for a college education.  At the time, the national college graduation rate was less than 10% and the quality of a college education was dependent upon the college.  There were no national standards for education.  The Carnegie Foundation literally defined college and university education in the United States for the next century. 

The Foundation also recommended changes in public education.  For our purposes, the Foundation defined a high school Carnegie Unit as a (one) credit awarded for completion of 120 hours of instruction over the length of a school year.  A school year, then, is the length of time to required to achieve 120 hours of instruction plus assessments plus other school requirements.  According to the Carnegie plan, a high school student could earn six to seven credits per year and 24 to 28 credits over four years and high school graduation became the completion of 24-28 credits. 

Using the 120 hours of instruction as the standard for an annual curriculum and allowing for reteaching and make-up lessons for students absent from school and for the additional legislative mandates that must be accomplished in a school year, 180 days became the normal length of a school year in US public schools.  Ninety days was a semester and 45 days was a quarter or grading period.

Since 1906, much as changed in the field of teaching and learning, yet the basics of a Carnegie Unit and the standards for a school year have remained largely unchanged.  A discussion of a school year begins with 180 days.

We must always be aware of the influences of money and politics in public, as these are constantly at play in public education.  By rule of the US Constitution, the responsibility for public education is delegated to the states.  Hence, the funding and rules related to public education are legislated by state government.

It is honest to state that state funding for public education is allocated according to money available not by money needed.  This basic understanding tells us that legislatures with a need to fund many state programs that compete for a limited annual state budget are always looking for ways to reduce or contain costs.  Public education, prisons and highways are the three largest expenses in state budgets.

The school year is an example of such manipulation.  For decades, a school year was 180 days of instruction.  First, start with this as the number of interest:  180 times the salaries and benefits of school employees is the largest cost of a school year.  More than 80% of school costs are paid in salary and benefits to employees.  If school funding is considered on a per day basis not a per year basis and a school year is defined by hours instead of days, then the total sum of money spent for salaries and benefits can be changed.  Second, change the number of interest to:  hours of instruction times the salaries and benefits of school employees is the cost of a school year.  The total remains the same as long as the hours of instruction equal 180 days of instruction. 

In Wisconsin, 437 hours of instruction are required for Kindergarten students, 1,050 hours for grades 1 through 6, and 1,137 for grades 7 through 12. 

Third, allow schools to determine the length of class periods and the number of hours in a school day so that each grade level meets the legislated number of instruction hours.  Now, a school year can be less than 180 days.  More importantly, the cost of school is reduced by each day of salary and benefit that is removed from the annual school calendar. 

Politics and economics not student learning drive the contemporary defining of a school year.  Today, a school year can be reduced to the bare minimum of days required to complete mandated hours of instruction, a number in the 170s.

Yes but!  If we add the concept of educational accountability to the definition of a school year, how much teaching and learning is required for a child to competently complete an annual grade level, a content course or a course of study?  There is no magic in the Carnegie Unit.  Critics of the Unit have harped for decades on its arbitrariness.  Yet, the idea that the completion of a rigorous course of instruction should be the basis of how we “package” a year of school keeps us returning to the idea of the Unit.  A school year must be accountable for learning not just time in class.

To Do

Accountability for learning matters and competency is the metric of measure.  The number of hours in a school day or in a school year is just the vehicle for achieving competent learning.  School Boards approve and adopt annual curricula for all children in all grade levels and courses with the intention that children will successfully and competently complete each.  We must honor this element of local school control of public education. 

We have a national problem with proficiency.  A majority of children do not meet proficiency standards on local, state and national assessments.  This is an instructional challenge.  We must improve the instructional tool box used by all teachers to more effectively cause every child to learn.  This is a commitment challenge.  We must hold to the goals of annual student achievement and invoke what we know about the science and art of explicit teaching and the necessity for instructional interventions when initial instruction is not successful.  Proficiency is created when a child is competent in each curricular unit of instruction so that at the end of a school year there is a sequence of proficient learning.  We must intervene at the point of mislearning or non-learning not at the end of school year.  And, to point, reducing the number of days in a school year contradicts what we know about student proficiency.  Teachers need all the time they can have with children not less.

Take Away

As a School Board member, I hear from parents who want to reduce the length of our school year.  I return to the first paragraph.  Most who have an opinion about the length of a school year base their opinion upon personal experience, self-interest, and an uninformed concept of schooling.  A Board member’s responsibility includes educating the public about education and local education, in particular.  As an educator who is a Board member, my first accountability is to causing every child to become a proficient learner and to learn.  In the business of causing learning, instructional time is our most valuable resource.  We can improve teaching skills and refine curriculum.  However, without adequate time for all of the layers of instruction, initial through necessary interventions, to be successfully deployed, teacher skill and engaging curricula will not cause the educational outcomes children need.  A school year may be an arbitrary number of hours and days, yet there is a substantial rationale connecting instructional time with learning accountability.  At the end of conversation, we get what we settle for and less time will result in less learning.

Academic Standards – The Genome of Proficient Learning

Academic standards are the genome of a 21st century PK-12 education.  Turn back the covers on any curriculum today and you will find “standards.”  They are the “who says this is the right stuff to teach” credentials of school curriculum.  As consumers, we look for credentialing,  like the Good Housekeeping Seal or Underwrites Laboratory Approval, that gives us reliance that school curriculum is not something cooked up during the summer by a local committee but is written by experts in the field of PK-12 education.

Although politics has kicked dirt on the Common Core Academic Standards, they remain the best of academic standards available to PK-12 educators.  In Wisconsin, the Common Core Standards were adopted as the official academic standards of the Department of Public Instruction in 2010 and are the basis for instruction, assessment and educational accountability.

A genome, even the sound of the word, is scientific.  It is the complete set of genes present in a cell or organism.  By applying genome to the organism of academic standards, academic standards are the complete set of academic characteristics of a graduate of our PK-12 educational system.

Like the genome encoded on a strand of DNA, the genome of academic standards seems just as mysterious.  But, it isn’t.  They are clearly written and complete, just in educationese.  Educational leaders need to take the time and make the effort to de-mystify the verbiage of academic standards into plain speak.  This explanation must include two components – why they are important and how they work.  What are academic standards and how does our school use PK-12 academic standards?  And, what does proficient performance of each standard mean?  The latter is essential, because proficiency or advanced performance indicates the grade level goal which are the code of the genome.

This is what the DPI says about standards.  It is a good beginning.

What are academic standards?

Academic standards tell us what students should know and be able to do in the classroom.  Wisconsin has standards for 24 separate subjects.

Why are academic standards important?

Standards provide goals for teaching and learning. Standards are clear statements about what students must know and be able to do.

What does an academic standard look like?

Seventh grade mathematics: solve real-life and mathematical problems involving angle measure, area, surface area, and volume.

How do standards differ from curriculum?

While standards provide the goals for learning, curriculum is the day to day activity that helps a student meet those goals. Curriculum, which should be thought of as the student’s overall classroom experience, is affected by lesson plans, classroom assessments, textbooks, and more. In Wisconsin, curriculum is developed and approved by local school boards to meet their local needs.

https://dpi.wi.gov/families-students/student-success/standards

This explanation should be repeated to students and parents frequently, so that children and their moms and dads clearly understand that “standards-based” means “these are statements of what each child should know and be able to do and all of our assessments will focus on helping everyone understand how well children know and can perform these.”  And, because the standards build upon each successive grade level and course, students and parents need to know that Algebra and Geometry, for example, are introduced in elementary school arithmetic and are developed through middle school and applied and expanded in higher mathematics courses in high school.  Like the DNA genome, the genome of academic standards winds through the school organism across many years of student learning.

This explanation may sound or read like, “This year our first grade math students will begin to use mathematical operations and algebraic thinking.  Yes, Algebra in first grade.  These are the operations and algebraic thinking standards and a description of what your child will know and be able to do as a result of our first grade math instruction.

Standard:  Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.

Performance:

  1. Use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.
  2. Solve word problems that call for addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.

Standard:  Understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction.

Performance:

  1. Apply properties of operations as strategies to add and subtract.3 Examples: If 8 + 3 = 11 is known, then 3 + 8 = 11 is also known. (Commutative property of addition.) To add 2 + 6 + 4, the second two numbers can be added to make a ten, so 2 + 6 + 4 = 2 + 10 = 12. (Associative property of addition.)
  2. Understand subtraction as an unknown-addend problem. For example, subtract 10 – 8 by finding the number that makes 10 when added to 8.

Standard:  Add and subtract within 20.

Performance:

  1. Relate counting to addition and subtraction (e.g., by counting on 2 to add 2).
  2. Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13).

Standard:  Work with addition and subtraction equations.

Performance:

  1. Understand the meaning of the equal sign, and determine if equations involving addition and subtraction are true or false. For example, which of the following equations are true and which are false? 6 = 6, 7 = 8 – 1, 5 + 2 = 2 + 5, 4 + 1 = 5 + 2.
  2. Determine the unknown whole number in an addition or subtraction equation relating three whole numbers. For example, determine the unknown number that makes the equation true in each of the equations 8 + ? = 11, 5 = � – 3, 6 + 6 = �.

This standard is just one of many in first grade mathematics instruction.  As your child tells you ‘This is what we learned in math today,’ please keep these standards in mind.  When your child enters second grade, the next instructional year will add to and expand these first grade standards.”

As an extension, good practice would also help children and parents to connect standards to periodic classroom tests and assessments.  Just adding a standards statement to the top of the test page indicates the alignment of preceding instruction and the assessment to a particular academic standard.

The reason for this time and effort points directly to the accountability that school leaders and teachers have for causing all children to learn and proficiently perform grade level academic standards.  Each first grade child who successfully knows and can perform the operations and algebraic thinking standard given in this example will be ready for instruction in second grade operations and algebraic thinking.

And, here is the rub.  Every child who does not successfully know and can not perform the elementary and/or middle school grade level math standards at the appropriate grade level proficiency level begins a parade of successive years of incomplete learning in math.  It is no wonder that high school Algebra is “the wall” for so many students, the course where the annual standards of algebraic thinking in elementary and middle school coalesce into a single math course.  Children who have successfully learned and performed their elementary and middle school math standards are ready and prepared for high school Algebra.  Children who did not are severely challenged in Algebra and all subsequent math courses.

The mutual responsibility that school leaders, teachers and parents have for student learning can be made easier when annual academic standards are explained, distributed across the year of their instruction, and clearly aligned with grade level instruction and assessments.  When we know what we are supposed to do, the doing is made easier.

The genome of academic standards is a road map that is designed not only for instruction, but to aid school leaders and parents to assure that each child successfully learns what they are to know and be able to do each school year.  It is our road map and needs to be closely followed.

Accountability Using Visual Contracting With Sub-Groups

Educational accountability places a premium on a teacher’s ability to close achievement gaps. For a myriad of reasons, the academic achievement data of children in your class are scattered on the score sheet. An effective teacher will take this scattergram and teach so that every child’s next achievement score will cluster at or beyond the measure for a full-year’s growth in learning, and, there will be a diminished difference between the clustered scores of each disaggregated sub-group of students. In order to be an “effective” teacher, this is what must be done.

BA, or Before Accountability, I would commonly observe a teacher analyzing their students’ achievement data and resting their eyes upon the names of children whose data was significantly below that of the class norms. Usually this would be one to two children and they would become the teacher’s “special project.” These children would need “special” and very personalized instruction in order to cause their next achievement data to be more like their classmates. Teachers routinely picked their “projects” and did whatever was necessary for the achievement scores of those children to “jump.” That was BA.

Today’s educational expectation reads well but is very amorphous when a teacher stands in front of the class and scans two dozen or more faces. How can every child be a “project?” The theory of closing such gaps says, “Disaggregate the data, look at each face as a weighted score, pick out the faces with the lowest weighted scores and those students are your special projects while your quality teaching advances the learning of all other children.” The reality of projects today is in the faces.

Every face in a classroom represents a child who is looking back at their teacher wondering “Am I your project? Are you thinking that my achievement will provide the leap in numbers that will show you to be an effective teacher?” They are waiting for you to recognize them, understand how their needs mesh with your needs, and make them your project.

So, point your mental finger and to yourself say, “You, you and you. We need to grow you by almost a year and a half. This next group needs to grow at least a full year. You over there and you and you and you need to move your scores by eight months. You scan a large group, knowing they need to grow by several months. And, you and you, not many are you, are already at this year’s target – let’s see how much we can grow you.”

The pressure is on. The administrators know the scores and they also have seen the faces that must experience the greatest growth. At the same time, the administration has been pressured by parents of the two children who already have achieved more than your grade level. They want assurance that you will continue the wonderful achievement of their children so that they will be two years or more beyond their classmates.

So you scan the faces once again to make visual contacts that would sound a lot like this.

“We have a lot to do. I will be seem like a second skin to my first group because we have things to unlearn as well as learn. As your second skin, I will sit with you to make certain you understand what to do, how to do, and check that you always do it right. You may squirm but you will not escape my hard attention and in June you will be at grade level.

Now, I am looking at my groups that need to grow at least a grade level this year. I will be your shadow because shadowing is the way I cause children who are learning on schedule to stay on schedule. Although I will allow you to wander a bit, I will check your understanding every day. We will find what you need to know and do and ways of doing it together.

You kiddos who are within months of our grade level targets will also make a full year’s growth. I will hover above you to steer your learning but you will organize and conduct most of it. There are many ways to learn and you will experience these through our work.

Finally, my pair who are already a grade level ahead of the class, you will be more than that when we reach June. Together, we will talk about how you will achieve your goals and I will stand to the side to non-directively push your learning. We will assess your understanding of this grade level curricula to assure your foundations, but move on to new learning independent of your classmates.”

Visual contracting says “I see you and you see me. This is what I am going to do and I know what you are going to do. When I nod, you will know that the game is on.”

Nodding is a unique educational recognition. No one in a court of law would claim that shared nods represent a legal contract. Yet, in the classroom, when an effective teacher looks a student in the eye and nods, there is an understanding and there will be a reckoning.

Leadership Longevity Is Tenuous

Leaders, who are not self-employed, live in a fragile world of employment security made increasingly more tenuous with each passing year. Making a career as a leader is a role to which many aspire but few will achieve longevity. Their reality is that leadership is the art of swimming in deep water while carrying the weight of their decisions. The sign on the leader’s office door says, “No lifeguards on duty.”

In The Anguish of Leadership (2000), Jerry Patterson describes a leader as a person always swimming in deep water. At the beginning of his tenure, a leader swims quite well. He enjoys the honeymoon of employment when his employers and most employees wish him well and their support gives him buoyancy. Also, his pockets are empty. He has no experiential record, good or bad, in this employment.

I paraphrase Abraham Lincoln with “You can be successful with all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot be successful with all the people all the time.” Every time a leader is unsuccessful, a rock is placed in the leader’s pocket. Events that are hugely unsuccessful load in larger and heavier rocks. And, rocks in the pockets make it increasingly more difficult to swim in deep water. On the positive side, rocks may be taken out of his pockets by professional successes. Interestingly, there is no correspondence between the rocks taken out for a success and rocks placed in for a failure; the rocks of failure are heavier and more numerous than the rocks of success.

Adding a second paraphrase, this from John Wayne in Big Jake, “ … my fault, your fault, nobody’s fault, I am going to hold you responsible.” Patterson believes that a leader’s professional well-being is affected by the successes and failures of everyone in the business for whom he is responsible. When a subordinate is unsuccessful, rocks may be placed in that person’s pockets but always some rocks will be placed in the leader’s pockets. When President Truman placed his famous “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his White House desk, he also was saying “This is my rock pile – all grievances, disagreements, and disenchantments with my leadership go here.”

Eventually, Patterson writes, the total weight of the rocks in his pocket will pull almost every leader under the water. Or, the constant burden of swimming with heavy rocks in his pocket wears down the leader and he succumbs. Few leaders escape significant drowning as they work through their careers. Some leaders will re-emerge in a similar leadership position in a different organization and many may enact a resurrection several times over the length of their career, but almost all will drown once.

Head coaches for professional sports teams are a case in point. As the person leading a professional team, the coach is ultimately responsible for the success of the team as expressed in the team’s win and loss record. Wins are good and losses are “rocks”. Too few wins and too many losses creates a heavy pocket of rocks. On Monday, December 29, the day after the final game of the 2014 National Football League season, four head coaches and two general managers were fired. Each had accumulated too many rocks in their pockets. 2014 is not unique. The average tenure of a head coach in the NFL is 2.39 years. The average tenure in the National Hockey League is 3.0 years, 3.03 in the National Basketball Association and 3.8 years for Major League Baseball head coaches. Leaders drown in the deep water of professional sports every year and sometimes at mid-season.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-02-29/managers-coaches-tenure/53376918/1

Public education is no different. The keeping of wins and losses is not as dramatic in education as it is in sports, but school leaders are handed rocks just as often as head coaches. The average tenure of a school district superintendent is 5.5 years. The rocks for urban, super-large districts are heavier. Their average tenure is 3.3 years. Approximately 15% of all superintendents professionally drown each year.

http://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=740

Superintendents are hired and drown in the shadow of the Lincoln paraphrasing. Few are fired due to a criminal act or professional malpractice. These do happen, but they are rare. The great majority of drownings are the result of a general loss of confidence in the superintendent. A loss of confidence make occur with major stakeholders in the school district, such as parent groups or special interest groups. These groups control large piles of rocks. Local religious and business leaders have their own stockpile of rocks. Students, the most important group of people in a school district, also control rocks albeit smaller rocks. And, of course, the confidence of the Board of Education is essential. When the Board loses confidence in the superintendent a professional drowning is soon to follow.

A superintendent making important decisions for a school district will inextricably offend some rock holders even with the best of decisions. It is a fact of life for a leader. Creating smaller class sizes is a good thing for students, teachers and most parents, but it stirs the rocks of taxpayers who object to increased costs. Cutting costs is a good thing for taxpayers, but diminishing the resources for schools and classrooms stirs the rocks of the teacher’s union and PTAs. Allowing school events on Wednesday evenings wins the admiration of sports and fine arts fans who enjoy more games and concerts, but it raises the rock throwing ire of church leaders who lose time for religious education generally held on that night of the week. No matter, rocks find their way into the pockets of every school leader and even the best eventually sink lower and lower into Jerry Patterson’s deep end of the pool.

So, knowing the reality of a leader’s professional world, those who aspire to be leaders, those who are still above water in the deep end of the leadership pool, and those who employ leaders should honor Robert Herrick’s verse to The Virgins. Leaders must lead as well as they are able to and for as long as they are able to remain above water because no leader survives the eventual weight of the rocks in his pockets.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles to-day

Tomorrow will be dying.

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/virgins-make-much-time

Public Ed Is Focused on the Wrong End Game

Public education is focused on the wrong end game. For too long the leaders responsible for public education have focused on the graduated student in an adult-world context. For the purpose of daily and school-year instruction this traditional end game is too abstract and too distant to meaningfully connect with everyday teaching and learning. The end game should be to cause every child to successfully learn their annual curricula on a weekly or monthly basis regardless of their learning conditions. This new end game is meaningful, measureable, and accountable and directly connects teaching and learning in ways that schools, teachers and students, and communities can see and understand. Change the end game focus to change the end game outcomes.

There is nothing wrong with a big picture end game when you are willing to wait until the “end” to understand your success. It is like leading a life for the purpose of going to heaven when you die. Such a purpose provides excellent tenets for living, but you won’t know the success of your life’s mission until you die.

Or, hearing a pre-school child say “I will be a fireman when I grow up” and having the local fire commander write in the station log “In fifteen years, following high school graduation and technical school training Tommy will be sufficiently educated to enter our probationary program.” Maybe and maybe not.

A long distance end game is not a good strategy for ensuring a high quality education for every child every day of every school year. The end game must be shorter-termed with clearly stated end-of-instruction learning outcomes. And, the end game plan must drive instruction so that every child successfully learns their curricula.

Imagine how this works. The school mission reads:

This year your child will successfully learn her (grade or subject) curricula. To accomplish this, her teachers will use best instructional practices including frequent assessments and reports of learning accomplishments.

Another way to understand the end game problem is to ask “And, whose success is the measure of interest?” When the district’s end game focus is to prepare graduates for life after school, it is the district’s rate and degree of graduation preparation that is of interest. When the end game is each child’s successful learning of an annual curricula, it is child learning that is of interest. Child learning is an appropriate and better end game.

Once again, change the end game focus to change the end game outcomes. The management piece for this new end game includes:

  • analyzing and dissecting the curricula into instructional segments,
  • pre- and post-assessments of each segment,
  • necessary pre-teaching and re-teaching to assure every child’s success with each segment,
  • a combination of personalized and grouped direct and indirect instructional sessions within each segment, and
  • advancement to the next segment only when learning indicates readiness for that segment.
  • Learning accomplishments will be recorded and reported to parents at the end of each segment.

The upside to this new end game is that instruction is directly connected to the immediate and annual learning outcomes. The connection is clear, measureable and accountable. It is not like the goal in a traditional outcome in which children are taught a curricula of Civics in 8th or 9th grade for the purpose of making them better informed citizens as adults. Admirable goal, but its outcome is disconnected from its instruction.

An upside to this end game is that each child is a successful learner regardless of their learning conditions. Exceptions are not made. Children who are not English-speakers are taught the vocabulary and concepts of their curricula before and as they are taught the curricula. Children who need special education assistance receive it in conjunction with their curricular instruction not in lieu of or in addition to. Children who need more time for their initial learning get more time for their initial learning; it is more effective and efficient to assure successful initial learning than it is to remediate learning later.

An upside to this end game is that as every child successfully learns their annual curricula they also are progressing toward the district’s graduation goals of college or career readiness, responsible citizenship, economic productivity, and community contribution. The district’s success in causing these summative goals is ensured by every child’s success with their annual curricular goals.

A downside to this end game lies in its incumbent accountability. When the school says that “every child will successfully learn their annual curricula regardless of learning conditions” this becomes the school’s and the teachers’ annual commitment. Sadly, very few if any schools have ever fulfilled a commitment to assure the learning success of every child.

This raises a really large question of “Why not?” The answer is that the traditional end game focuses upon distant learning outcomes disconnected from annual teaching and learning and that obscures the reality that many children do not successfully learn their annual curricula. Most learn just enough to “pass.” Schools and teachers were and are seldom held accountable for student success on clearer and shorter-term learning outcomes. Our obsession with student and school outcomes on statewide and international academic assessments is indicative of the current focus on the big picture end game and not timely and locally-measured student learning

A downside to this end game is that educational leaders need to be so connected to the instruction of every teacher and the learning of every child in their school that these leaders can assist teachers to make necessary adjustments to instruction when children are not successfully learning. This requires a significant change in leadership and the skill sets of instructional supervision. But, this also is the most significant upside to the new end game. School leaders and teachers will be immediately connected to their teaching and child learning in their school. This is an upside that can and must be achieved.

It may be impossible for public education to implement all of the mandates for educational reform that are currently being demanded if its leaders continue to use the traditional end game focus. If we can change the end game, we can improve the learning outcomes for every child. The improved outcomes of the new end game will change the way in which everyone, include educational reformers, looks at public education. Change the focus now!