Taking a Knee

In a recent posting on Facebook, I shared a news article and this quote from an Indiana politician who filed a bill to make the Indianapolis Colts refund the ticket price to any fan claiming to be offended by a Colt player kneeling during the playing of the national anthem:

“To me when they take a knee during the national anthem, it’s not respecting the national anthem or our country,” Smith said (via the Indy Star). “Our government isn’t perfect, but it’s still the best country in the world and I think we need to be respectful of it.”

My take: The politician says that people should forego their first amendment rights to criticize their government. I found that chilling.

Yet when I shared the story and that thought and quote on Facebook, I received a comment that left me wondering how the commentator could have missed the point. I support the right of black men, even NFL athletes, to protest even during the pregame ceremonies of a football game. It is their right protected by the First Amendment.

The comment: That's right Greg, you said it best. It's not RESPECTING THE ANTHEM AND OUR COUNTRY. It's being DISRESPECTFUL, DISRESPECTFUL TO ALL THE GREAT MEN AND WOMEN THAT SERVED THIS COUNTRY, and many of these GREAT men and women suffered great injury and many died so these pieces of DUNG could take a knee. There are many other great ways to protest police brutality. But all those players were and are too damn DUMB to figure this out.

How could this commenter miss the point?

Then I realized I am missing the point and it goes way beyond the protest of black men about the systemic racism black men experience every moment of their lives in America.

It is about the militaristic quality of our current culture and how the NFL has embraced that, imbuing patriotism, the flag, and the military as an essential part of its entertainment offering, making a sporting game an expression of American dominance and superiority to the rest of the world, seeking cultural hegemony through its attempts to expand across a globe that would rather play soccer and maybe the NFL takes it as the ultimate insult that the world calls soccer the sport of ‘football.’

Our democracy is in danger in its glorification of the military, in its embrace of a kick-ass culture, in its adoption of gladiators as the ultimate heroes.

Already we are creating the military as a special class of citizenship: a few years ago, Florida voters approved a state constitutional amendment that gives veterans an extra property tax exemption that other citizens cannot get.

Don’t tell me that I hate the military. I am grateful to the men and women who choose to serve. But I don’t think that entitles them to special privileges.

And I reject the NFL’s appropriation of a militaristic culture to enhance the entertainment value of its games.

Today I will say that maybe the critics are right: to take a knee in protest is disrespectful of the military because of the background in what the NFL has done in promoting itself as a domestic battlefield in which fans can witness in person the soldiery now glorified.

But that is why this is so very, very wrong.

I remain a Jaguars fan and will continue to root for them in hopes of one day reaching the Super Bowl and bringing this city a championship. But the militaristic aspect in the marketing? The sooner that’s flushed into the sewer, the better.

One Year Turnaround, Final Chapters

A thorough review of the book, The One-Year School Turnaround, has been undertaken and now reaches its end. It was necessary to examine in depth the book's ideas as its author, James Young, will be in charge of Duval County's most endangered schools.

Young wraps up his prescription for turning around schools by describing the importance of having fun, celebration, and appreciation a part of the activities and environment of the school. It is hard to work in a turnaround school and some appreciation goes a long way to maintaining the motivation and efforts of faculty, staff, and students.

He wraps up by saying to minimize negative influences and maximize positive influences. Basically, what he means is to put the right people in place and let them do their work. Don't interfere, state officials, district staff, consultants, etc. Given the freedom and resources they need, school-based personnel can make the vital differences needed to lift schools.

I wish him well. The environment has changed since he was principal of Ribault High School. If he is aware of the changes in state assessment, state regulation, and state law, as he should be given that he is running a consulting firm, he should be able to produce the improvement needed. I do think he does not have enough time (only four months from December to April) for the three immediate schools, but I suspect he is in place to learn the schools and will receive the management contract in June should any of those schools not make a C under Florida's grading formula.

He will find it harder to get the resources he wants.  Unfortunately, the legislature is determined to strip funding from school boards and there isn't the money available that there was six years ago. Speaking of outside, negative influences, he will not find help from Jacksonville's philanthropic establishment as they have decided they are experts--having never earned education degrees nor worked in an actual public school--and insist on being given the power to set policy and make operating decisions in return for funding.

Talk about needing to minimize negative influences.

One Year Turnaround, Part Seven

The Self-Motivated Student

In his seventh chapter, James Young writes about his insight that he raised his school from an F to a C (Ribault High), but something different had to take place if the school was to move up from there. Specifically, he recognized that students were putting in the work to learn because he threatened them with loss of privileges: prom, class trips, pep rallies. If his school was to achieve higher, the motivation would have to come from the students themselves.

"In order to achieve our goal, we needed the students to want it and work hard without us pushing them."

Exactly, but forget the school goals. I want students to want success for themselves, value learning for its own sake, and work hard without needing threats of bad grades, et cetera, for motivation.

This is my real job. Students like to ask when they will ever use what they are learning. I have several answers most of which run along the lines of adolescent brain development (math is really good for this) and acquisition of critical and creative thinking skills (again, math is really good for this).

But my real job is to help students find a passion for learning and a sense of where they want to go and gain the confidence that if they work hard at it, they will succeed. It's not what anyone is born with; it's what they do with what they have. AND! What they don't have, they can learn if they are willing to learn and work for it.

Much of what secondary teachers do is help students internalize motivation and values so that they move under their own power, which is what they really want.

Young recognizes that teens are self-motivated by nature: "There is seldom an issue with a teenager being self-motivated to eat, acquire a cell phone, listen to music, watch TV, belong to a peer group, or simply survive." He describes the problem as one of not being motivated to work hard to achieve goals or reach their potential because they don't see it happening in the neighborhoods where they live.

How will he accomplish the goal of self-motivation?

First, he says that teens need to be taught. They don't know what self-motivation is and they don't understand its importance. To accomplish this, as the principal, he met with groups of students during the day to explain, give examples, and encourage.

Second, he had students take a questionnaire to make them aware of their level of self-motivation.

Third, he required every student to write a plan for themselves that included personal and academic goals and strategies to reach each goal. Afterward, each student met with an adult to review the plan to ensure that the goals were obtainable. Having students list strategies to improve their performance had the effect of improving their performance.

Fourth, teachers provided follow-up support and review of progress under the plan. They offered advice for revision if students were not making progress.

Key is to support the students.

This is a chapter I fully endorse. In fact, Young has given me some ideas for my students and I thank him for that.

One Year Turnaround, Part Six

The series may seem long with one post per chapter (review of the book The One-Year School Turnaround, by James Young), but it's important to understand how Mr. Young thinks and works because we are trusting him in Duval County, Florida, to rescue targeted schools from the sanctions of HB 7069, the legislative bill signed by Governor Scott that shortened the time schools not making the grade (literally, not earning a C by Florida's school grade formula) have to improve or be shut down.

Throughout this section of the book, Young complains that principals are often unaware of their school's data. I can only hope this is a reflection upon work throughout many school districts because I don't know of a single Duval County principal who is not keenly aware of their school's data, who is not maintaining notebooks and analyses, and who is not using the data to support their decisions.

You'd have to be so clueless as not to get the gig at all since principals twice a year must appear before the superintendent and high district muckety-mucks, known as the cabinet, in our weird version of the British Parliament's Prime Minister Questions sessions. They could be asked anything and they had better have data to back up their answers.

Young recommends a principal having an effective data management system, which means people to crunch the numbers for them, and then lots of data chats. Lots and lots of data chats: teacher-student, admin-teacher, coach-teacher, admin-coach, teacher-parent, school-community ...

He says that he did not send report cards home but required parents to come and pick them up. This took place after school and on Saturdays. Parents met with teachers for an explanation of the grades.

I'm all in for parental communication and meeting with parents, but I sense a huge contract issue in his writing. Did he require that teachers work lots of uncompensated hours? If they refused, did he punish them on their evaluations with 'needs improvement' ratings in areas like parent communication, professionalism, and willingness to help the school?

#teribrady&dtu

One Year Turnaround, Part Five

Continuing with his solution equation, Young turns his attention to his Big Four: professional development, curriculum development, assessment, and remediation.

(This series is a review of The One-Year School Turnaround, by James Young, a former DCPS (FL) principal who now consults with school systems on how to raise a school grade within a year and avoid draconian state sanctions.)

1. Professional Development: Young emphasizes the importance of ongoing teacher learning and development in turnaround schools because they usually have inexperienced staff: new hires, TFA supply, and the like.

He notes the problems with PD for teachers: incompetent or poorly prepared trainers, a lack of preparation via PD for programs school leaders demand teachers implement, overload--so much is provided that there is no time to begin any of it. Further, many teachers attend PD sessions to get their required recertification points. The lessons they learn are not brought back to the school, sometimes because the teacher only went to be excused from teaching duties for a few days (his words, not mine.) He complains that much of the time PD is not aligned with the school improvement plan.

To that list, I can add that PD is unfocused; there is a lack of continuity from one session to the next. There is no follow-up with support for implementation in the classroom. Most PD that takes place during Early Release time consists of district-mandated meetings that waste teachers' time.

Yes, Early Release is a huge waste of time. It produces little actual teacher learning. The time would be better spent with teachers in their classrooms with a full 90 minutes to deliver lessons.

Young insists that the key to PD is an academic coach. He calls for one content-area coach per tested area. He wants PD to be focused on the needs of the school as revealed by student data.

"The principal should ensure most of the coach's time is spent providing training and job-embedded professional development."

In my experience and other coaches that I have known, that rarely happens. It is the rare principal who understands the coach's job and supports them in those responsibilities.

Some principals view their coach as the substitute of first resort: anytime a sub assignment is not filled, the coach is assigned to run the class. Others use their coaches as junior administrators. If they have a math coach, then they think the math department does not need a designated administrator. But coaches support; they do not evaluate. Weak teachers ignore the coach's recommendations because they know that the coach cannot do anything about it. Without administrative support, coaches waste their time. Finally, many principals assign their coaches to take over a struggling teachers classroom--ignoring the fact that all teachers need a coach's presence and support if the position is to produce the across-the-board improvement that is the justification for the position.

Frankly, the school system would be better off returning the coaches to classrooms. I believe the former superintendent was moving in this direction when he began sending assistant principals to coaching seminars.

2. Curriculum Programs: Young has several criticisms of curriculum adoption by districts. It is optimum for each teacher to select their own criteria, but not practical. Nevertheless, he is correct to question why districts continue with ineffective curriculums.

However, his most important point is that the curriculum does not control the teacher, the teacher must control the curriculum, adapting the materials and supplementing as needed to achieve the learning goals.

It is the basic responsibility and authority argument: if anyone is responsible for producing results, they must be given the needed authority to make the decisions.

In actuality, we have moved beyond the times he describes in his book. These days, district staff understand that the guide is just that--a guide.

3. Assessment: Another area of focus. He actually doesn't give much information in this part of his book. He does think that assessments must have the format of state assessments. "This approach ensured students would be familiar with the type of questions on the assessment ...."

Sorry, Mr. Young, but kids aren't that dumb. They are familiar with the formats and how to operate a computer. If not, they get a mandatory practice test before they can take the real thing. It is much more important to focus on what they are learning regardless of format. Often, the only way I can know why a child is not arriving at the correct solution is to give an assessment with problems that a child must solve. Only then can I review the work to determine who doesn't understand the concept, who knows the concept but can't solve a simple algebraic equation, and who gets the answers wrong because they can't add numbers correctly. A test that mimics FSA will not give me that information.

Beyond that, a mimic test puts students into test-taking mode. They focus on how to trick out the right answer rather than working to demonstrate mathematical understanding.

4. Enrichment/remediation: Young concludes this chapter by reviewing the reasons why interventions are rarely effective: someone paid for it so we have to do it, the best teachers are not assigned to do it, volunteer groups are accepted without a vetting to see if they have the needed expertise, extended day programs are mere babysitting, placement is haphazard rather than based on student need (why Saturday School never produces results), the extra instruction does not match what took place during the school day.

One Year Turnaround, Part Four

Having dealt with the preplanning that goes into his Turnaround Solution (capitalized because that is the name of his consulting group), James Young now goes into what he calls the solution equation, part two of his book.

Right away, in chapter four's opening sentence, he reveals the niche he works in: "it is essential to know how a school's grade is calculated." What he offers is a rise in the grade to get a school released from the dreaded state of coming state sanctions.

It is clear from the detail he provides that he has done that in his previous assignments as a principal of a Duval County public school. It is not necessary to describe what he did--overall, the chapter relates how he analyzed FCAT data to understand how his schools were measured. Unfortunately, Florida has moved on from FCAT to the FSA (Florida Standards Assessments).

The game has changed. I checked the copyright date to see when the book was printed (2014), right around the time Florida changed tests and revised its grading formulas. Chapter 4 is out of date and needs to be rewritten. We must rely on Young to understand the nuances of the new system.

For example, learning gains is the hardest category now to produce results whereas before it was the easiest. No one has any idea of how a student is progressing to making learning gains by the FSA measurement, but two years of results have shown that the previous experience of schools scoring 70 or 80% learning gains when the passing rate hovered in the 30% range is over. Learning gains cannot be taken for granted. But no one knows how to predict them.

Wait, someone does. In my subject area, I have taken my school's results and correlated the raw scores (percent of questions answered correctly) to the scale scores used to assign a level (what we call the grade). I have determined the target scale score each of my students must produce to be credited with learning gains. Using interim assessments, I can predict how that student performance would equate to a scale score and whether the student is truly on track or not.

Why is this important? In my content area, mathematics, passing percent is one category, learning gains is another, and learning gains for the lowest 25% is another. Learning gains is two-thirds of the points produced by math. But no one knows how to predict them.

Given Young's description of how he drills into the data (another piece of school data jargon) to identify which students to focus on, it is imperative that he knows how to do this.

Another nuance: no one knows who the bottom quartile is. Unlike FCAT, when last year's test was used to identify these students and schools could work with the students for improvement, the FSA determines the bottom quartile from the current test. The state looks at the lowest scores and then determines if they made learning gains from the current test.

Young makes an important point that a school must recalculate its data at the beginning of the year because the student body from last year is different from this year. He takes the test results of the students currently enrolled and recalculates the school grade. That gives him the true point from which the school is beginning and to set the improvement targets needed for the desired school grade.

But when he talks about setting targets, it gets uncomfortable for teachers. Not only does he set overall targets like we need nine more students for a category, but he breaks that down to each individual teacher and asks them to identify the particular students who are most likely to reach the mark and to concentrate on them.

Many principals have done this across the years: asking teachers to perform triage and ignore those who will pass/make gains on their own and those who are so far behind they cannot improve enough to help the school grade.

When this happens, the focus of the school centers on the institution, not the children it serves.

I understand that the school board has brought James Young into designated schools because a state of emergency exists in the three schools that might be forced to close this year and five more the year after.

It is about survival and sometimes some are sacrificed for the good of the whole.

But school is about providing opportunity to every child, every day, every school, every classroom. Sound familiar?

One Year Turnaround, Part Three

"Determine the Problem"

Young states the obvious before he issues this blistering criticism: 'Before determining the root causes of failure, school leaders, district and state staff, and consultants try to fix the problem by changing leadership, removing teachers, bringing in a new curriculum, hiring consultants, or implementing new programs. Millions of dollars are spent unnecessarily while schools continue to fail."

Does he put his contract into that category? Sorry, had to get the snark out of the way.

Districts should not use the same plan for every school. He is correct about that. Different schools have different challenges. Often the one plan for all approach simply reveals that district leadership is deficient in understanding its schools. The 'I know best' attitude of the district has been destructive to the goal of helping schools.

"The best time to evaluate schools is in the spring, before school lets out." I've said this for years. School Improvement Plans make no sense to me and when I talked about the process to business people, inevitably I would be met with laughter. No one other than schools opens their door to their clientele and only then begin to make a plan, a yearlong plan that will have only five months before it is evaluated. Young calls this insanity and I agree.

Young expands his critique to how schools are evaluated in that only test data is used. "Test data do not indicate the causes of school failure; test data just indicate the school is failing." The point is well made, but I would argue that test scores from reading and math are not sufficient to conclude that a school is failing. More measures are needed before making that determination.

Young calls for a multi-pronged approach to identifying the causes of a school's problems: individual interviews with students, parents, teachers, staff, and community members; focus groups; surveys; observations.

He makes the important point that if people give their ideas, advice, and feedback, that input should result in visible action. Ignoring the input of stakeholders only causes them to check out of the process. "Even if I was not in favor of some of their suggestions, I made it my business to change, implement, alter, or modify something they requested. It was their school also, so their input mattered."

YES! If only district people would have this attitude!

(I came to this same conclusion decades earlier in business. Sometimes a staff member wanted to do something I was sure wouldn't work. I approved it anyway. First, I could be wrong (DCPS, are you listening?), second, the staff member would be invested in their idea and that might provide the edge to make it work, third, they needed to know their ideas were valued and there is no way to value an idea like allowing the person to do it. If the idea didn't work, I didn't have to kill it; the staff member would do it--no one wants to be a loser. Encouraging a climate of innovation and accepting failure as a part of the growth/learning process ... isn't that what education should be?)

As for observation, years ago it was called Management by Walking Around. Go see what's really taking place rather than sitting in a closed office studying numbers on paper.

Finally, Young calls for research: "lesson planning, the master schedule, extended learning opportunities, and classroom management ..." He admits this takes time, but avers that it is necessary. Only then can a systematic plan be developed.

Mr. Young, you are on point, but the time ... you don't have it for the three schools on the chopping block. I can only assume you are positioning yourself to be the outside management company that must be hired come the end of June.

(The book is 'The One-Year School Turnaround,' by James Young, available on Amazon. I am reading and sharing my review because Mr. Young has been given a $500,000 consultant contract to work with eight schools in my city that are in danger of being closed or charterized under the Florida law known as HB 7069. Young is a former principal in the city.)