Are you aware that the teacher “dropout rate” is higher (46% over 5 years) than the student dropout rate (33% over 4 years)? America’s next big crisis will be, where do we find enough teachers to fill our classrooms? Schools of Education are not producing enough people to replace the teachers who leave. Surveys indicate that most of the teachers who are leaving are quitting because of the lack of administrative support. My new book, published today, 162 Keys for School Success: Be The Best, Hire the Best, Train, Inspire and Retain The Best, addresses this issue. You will find more information about the book on the home page.
Franklin Schargel’s Blog
Excerpts from 162 Keys to School Success: Be the Best, Hire The Best, Train, Inspire & Retain The Best
Used with permission from Schargel, 162 Keys to School Success: Be the Best, Hire the Best, Train, Inspire, and Retain the Best. Copyright 2010 Eye On Education, Inc. Larchmont, NY. All rights reserved. www.eyeoneducation.com
1 Shared Leadership.
Organizations based on shared leadership thrive while organizations based on dictatorial or despotic leadership at best, perish; at worst, survive. One need not look far to find examples of this in the business world, where the most admired chief executive officers share leadership. In education, the schools we identified in our leadership and culture books (From
At-Risk to Academic Excellence: What Successful Leaders Do; Schargel, Thacker, & Bell, 2008, and Creating School Cultures That Embrace Learning: What Successful Leaders Do; Thacker,Bell, & Schargel, 2009) were able to thrive because, as participants stated, “We treat everyone as family and family doesn’t allow family to fail.” When site visits were paid to many of the schools that responded to our surveys and we asked who is responsible for the success of the school, the staff replied, “the principal.” When we asked the principals the same question, they replied, “the staff.” What makes shared leadership work?
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Openness to suggestions
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Open lines of communication
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Building trust
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Having respect, giving respect
The job of principal is overwhelming and few people expect you to have all the answers. You can’t do it all by yourself or all at once. You might look for a place to start and then look upstream in order to prevent problems for occurring in the first place. You should gather data on your current situation and continue to gather data as you move forward. Envision the ideal situation as you go.
2 Placing Blame.
People tend to blame people when in reality it is the system that is failing. How do you produce better results while not changing the process that produces those results? Fixing a piece of the system (i.e., teachers) without fixing the rest of the system tends to sub- optimize what we wish to accomplish. On the other hand, systemic reform will make everything better, not just that piece that we have focused on.
3 Establish a Mentoring Network.
The best principals make the best mentors. Speak to your colleagues in your district or in the surrounding districts and establish a network where you can collaborate with your professional peers. Collaboration will afford each of you opportunities to experiment and to receive feedback on new approaches you are using and on specific initiatives you are undertaking. Professional development should not be for classroom teachers only. Hold monthly meetings and rotate the schools where the meetings are held. Ask to visit classrooms in
schools you do not supervise. See what you can replicate in your school.
4 Reconsider Retention.
Despite a half-century of data and research showing that retention does not result in long-term gains in achievement, schools continue to retain students. Retention is popular among politicians who criticize “social promotion” and believe that the threat of retention motivates students. The discussion about social promotion became part of our nation’s dialogue about education when President Bill Clinton asked for its end in three consecutive State of the Union Addresses (1997–1999). Data indicate that retained students are more likely to drop out of school than those students who have not been retained. Retention increases the risk of dropping out between 20 to 50 percent. Up to 78 percent of students who drop out before graduation have been retained at least once. Racial minority students and students living in poverty constitute the majority of those who are retained. Gains in achievement for retained students were either nonexistent or were not maintained in subsequent years after retention, according to The Effects of Retention on Drop-out and Graduation Rates, A Research Brief of The Principals’ Partnership: A Program of Union Pacific Foundation (Blayaert, 2009; see http://www.principalspartnership.com).
Retention doesn’t work and has a devastating effect on students, the educational system, and the parents of those retained, so why do we use it? It would appear to me that we need to build safety nets early into the system. We can- not wait until the end of a school term or a school year to reprogram failing students during a summer where many of the same teachers are teaching the same material in the same way using the same curriculum and same textbooks. The minute a teacher identifies a failing student we need to establish tutoring classes that take place after school, before school, or on Saturdays. The incentive to parents would be that any student who is failing and does not avail himself or herself of the increased time might face the prospect of being held back.
5 What We Can Learn from the Best Sports Managers.
Great managers of baseball, football, soccer, and basketball know that if they hired the best players, they will have a great team. Similarly, great principals know that if they hire the best teachers that are available, they will have a great school. We need to trust the people who we hire to do the jobs they are assigned. We also need to empower people to make decisions. When candidates are being interviewed, get them to talk specifically about how they would handle different challenges. How would they deal with a crisis like a fight in their classroom? How have they reacted in the past when something went badly? What were the most significant mistakes they have made along the way and what have they done to correct them? What have they learned from their mistakes? How would they deal with the situation differently today?
6 Make It Happen.
I used to coach soccer. I love soccer for several reasons. First of all and most important, it is a team sport—everyone plays and there aren’t any real stars. If the team wins, it is a team victory, not a quarter- back’s or pitcher’s victory. When I coached, I informed the players that if they wanted to win, they needed to make it happen. No one would put a victory in their hands. Education currently is based on individual achievement, not on team involvement. Achievement or lack thereof is credited to “good” teachers or “bad” teachers. I would rather have a team composed of no bad people, rather than a team with a few stars. For example, in soccer, everyone has different skills. Some people are playmakers and can create great visions and make great plays. Some people do not want to screw up and so they pass the ball to more established players. The team leader needs to keep everyone on the team going in a productive direction. A team focused on objectives will not burn out. How do your people react when something goes wrong? Do they freeze up? Do they bemoan their fate? Or, do they get back into the game, looking at their errors and making corrections to avoid them in the future?
One of the things that I learned by reading and by experience is called the “Deming Cycle,” which is P.D.S.A., Plan, Do, Study and Act. I think it has great applicability in education. As educators, we spend a great deal of time developing strategic plans. We spend far less time developing and measuring strategic deployment. We do not think about what happens when we deploy our plans, but it is critical that we determine what worked and what needs to be improved. We need to study the results of our actions. And having studied and measured the results, we need to complete the cycle and act again. Each time we go through the cycle, we need to always make improvements, revising and updating, slowly and deliberately.
7 My First Day on the Job.
I remember the first day that I worked as a teacher. It was hard to forget because on that first day was a teachers’ strike. It was a bone-chilling cold day in September and I had met very few of the faculty. It was also the first day for the principal, Irving Anker. As we walked around the school in a picket line, one of the school dieticians came out with a tray of hot coffee and a tray of doughnuts. When we asked how much they were, she said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. The new principal paid for them.” In that one gesture, the principal made more friends on the faculty than anything else he could have done on that cold fall day.
8 Imbed the Improvement Process.
I call this “widening the circle”—bringing more people into the process rather than leaving them outside. It is very difficult institutionalizing a process rather than having its success dependent on a single individual or group of individuals— individuals who may leave, retire or become unavailable. The belief that organizational improvement needs to cascade down from the top upper echelons of school managers no longer works in today’s schools where frequently the staff has more seniority and experience than the principal. Good ideas are constantly being percolated up from the teaching ranks. Until school leaders at all levels take advantage of this percolator philosophy, schools will continue to mire in the mud.
9 “If You Were in My Shoes. . . .
” Ask your faculty, “If you were in my shoes, what three things would you do to improve the performance of the school?” Have them write their answers on sticky notes. Then have them place the sticky notes on a white board and look for ideas that seem to be related. Place these in a vertical a list. At the top of each list, post a title sticky such as “More parent involvement,” “Student apathy,” and so on. By having a visual, people can see where the problems lie. At the same time, the staff needs to realize that there are inhibiting factors such as:
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limited resources
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the number of staff with the knowledge and capacity
to lead the work
key staff turnover
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too many organizations with conflicting agendas
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reform overload.
Do not allow the inhibiting factors to deter the faculty from addressing the issues of improvement. Remind them that white water rapids are still waters that have learned how to go around obstacles.
10 Take Time to Recharge Your Batteries.
Have you ever thought, “What would happen if I wasn’t around?” Everyone needs time for himself or herself—time to get away from work, time to ingest and absorb all that takes place in your life. Build a balanced life around your personal life and school and make sure that the boundaries are as firm as you can make them. Find the time during the day to take a walk outside your building. Leave your cell phone and walkie-talkie behind and just mellow out.
11 Take Time for Your Family.
It is paradoxical that when improving the lives of other people’s children, educators fail to take the time to improve the lives of their own children. Balance your life by spending some time with your family.
12 Be a Boss, Without Being Bossy.
Robert M. Gates,Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, tells this story: During the Revolutionary War, a man in civilian clothes rode past a wall being repaired.
Ironic isn’t it?
Governors and legislators and even the president have said how important education is and how, as a nation, we need to become globally competitive. Yet at the same time, they are leaving thousands of educators hanging in the wind as they have failed to come up with additional funding to retain teachers. Apparently they are waiting for a report from a commission on deficit reduction which is not scheduled to to issue its recommendations until after Election Day – well after the school year has started.
At the same time, states have committed to increase their requirements in English and Math. So students will have increased standards as well as having larger classes. We cannot commit to raising standards at the same time as laying off teachers.
I guess it makes sense to someone.
Technology & Cheating
According to a 2009 study by U.S. News and World Report, nearly one out of three teenagers are using mobile devices to obtain test answers. What is more frightening is “nearly 1 in 4 students thinks that accessing notes on a cell phone, texting friends with answers or using a phone to search the Internet for answers during a test isn’t cheating.
What are educators to do? There are a variety of anti-cheating technologies available, such as text-matching software and cheat-proof tests available. Check www.google.com or bing.com
Of course, students may believe that you are cheating if you catch them cheating.
Dropout Prevention Institute/School Attendance Symposium
Franklin has been selected to present two workshops at the Dropout Prevention Institute to be held October 4-7, 2010 at the Hilton in the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. The Institute is sponsored by the Florida Department of Education and the National Dropout Prevention Center (www,dropoutprevevention.org).
Franklin will be presenting a pre-conference on Monday,
Percentage of Poverty Children in School Dramatically Increases
The U.S. Department of Education special report on high poverty schools which was included in the 2010 Condition of Education study found that the percent of high poverty schools rose from 12 to 17 percent between the 1999-2000 and 2007-2008 school years, even before the current recession was fully felt. The percentage of public schools where more than three quarters of students are eligible for free or reduced price lunch “” a key indicator of poverty “” has increased in the past decade, and children at these schools are less likely to attend college or be taught by teachers with advanced degrees. In all, there were 16,122 schools considered high-poverty.
Students at these schools face a number of disadvantages:
“” A smaller percentage of teachers and high-poverty elementary and secondary schools have earned at least a master’s degree and a regular professional certification than those in low poverty schools.
“” They are less likely to graduate from high school; on average, 68 percent of 12th grade students in high poverty-schools graduated with a diploma in 2007-2008, compared to 91 percent at low poverty schools. The numbers have actually gotten worse for students at high poverty schools, dropping from 86 to 68 percent since 1999-2000.
“” After graduating from a high poverty school, 28 percent enrolled in a four-year institution, compared to 52 percent of graduates from low poverty schools. And while college enrollment has increased by 8 percent since 1999-2000 for graduates from higher income schools, the numbers have remained stable for those in poor schools.
Cities were more likely to have a larger percentage of high-poverty schools. About 40 percent of city elementary schools fell into that category in 2007-2008, compared to 15 percent in towns and 13 percent in suburbs, according to the study. The report found a similar trend at the secondary school level.
The South and West had a higher percentage of public elementary schools that were high poverty than the Northeast and Midwest, 24 percent compared to 16 and 12 percent, respectively. Mississippi had the highest percentage nationwide “” 52 percent of its public elementary schools are considered high poverty. Louisiana, New Mexico, the District of Columbia and California were also pointed out as having higher percentages of low income elementary schools.
Students at high poverty schools are more likely to be minorities. Hispanic students, for example, made up 46 percent of students at high poverty elementary schools and 11 percent of students at low poverty schools in the 2007-2008 school year. White students made up 14 percent of students at high poverty elementary schools, and 75 percent at low poverty elementary schools.
High poverty schools also have a larger percentage of students with limited English proficiency.
Students at these schools had lower average scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress in reading and math than those at low poverty schools, though in some cases the achievement gap has decreased.
At this time when states need to balance their budgets and the federal government keeps on printing money, we as citizens need to remind our legislators that while children do not vote, educators do! Schools are increasingly dealing with children who need more services and schools are expected to provide them.
National Youth At-Risk Conference Savannah
Franklin will be presenting two workshops on March 7, 2011 entitled, “Let’s End the Plague of School Dropouts: ONCE AND FOR ALL!” at 10:30 – 11:45 AM & 1:15 – 2:30 PM.
Registration and Conference Details can be found at http://ceps.georgiasouthern.edu/conted/conferences.html
Global Death Rate of Children is Falling
In a new report financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation it was found that death rates in children under 5 are dropping in many countries at a surprisingly fast pace. The report is based on data from 187 countries from 1970 to 2010.
Worldwide, 7.7 million children are expected to die this year but this is a vast improvement over the 1990 figure of 11.9 million.
Health experts say the figures mean that global efforts to save children’s lives have started working, better and faster than expected. Vaccines, AIDS medicines, vitamin A supplements, better treatment of diarrhea and pneumonia, insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria and more education for women are among the factors that have helped lower death rates, said Dr. Christopher J. L. Murray, an author of the report and the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, in Seattle. He said the improvements in Africa were especially encouraging. ”
The United Nations has set a goal of reducing death rates in children under 5 by two-thirds from 1990 to 2015, but not many countries seem to be on track to reach it.
A third of all deaths in children occur in south Asia, and half in sub-Saharan Africa. Newborns account for 41 percent of those who die. The lowest death rates, per 1,000 births, are in Singapore (2.5) and Iceland (2.6); the highest are in Equatorial Guinea (180.1) and Chad (168.7). In rich countries, some of the worst rates are in the United States (6.7) and Britain (5.3).