As I send applications hither and yon, many schools and districts have been asking about my qualifications to become a school administrator. Here’s an answer that doubles as an explanation for my blog’s admittedly incendiary title.
My focus as an administrator is always to develop a clear path to success and proficiency across a student’s years of schooling. I’ve found this approach lends a sense of gravity and importance for the student; s/he cannot simply bide their time by “punching the time clock” in and out of school every day if s/he can clearly see how their own development is tied to their schooling. This is especially true in regards to traditionally under-served populations such as disabled students and English Learners.
In March of 2008, just 4% of my school’s 10th grade English Learners passed the High School Exit Exam. The following year, a mainstream English teacher took on the SDAIE English class, which is transitional for students exiting the English Language Development program, and the HSEE pass rate leapt to 25%. In the Fall of 2009, I taught the SDAIE class, and I began to lead the English department to articulate standards and goals for both sides of our curricula – spelling out exactly how ELD classes should prepare students to reach fluency and ascend to the mainstream English program. That process continues today, and our EL pass rate on the last two exit exams has soared to 42% and 48% -- a twelve-fold increase in just three years thanks to a clear continuum that shows students exactly which goals must be met in order to reach English fluency.
This ability to craft a path to success that is clearly articulated and widely accessible is the most valuable skill that I would bring to any school. I refuse to focus on isolated test scores or just one area of instruction. In order for the school’s educational mission to resonate with students and families, it needs to speak to values that are too large to fit into the Scantron bubble. I notice, when I visit one local school’s website, that the mission statement is tucked away in a drop box, not blazoned on the home page. This raises an immediate eyebrow, and when I find the mission, I have a hard time visualizing what this school’s graduate looks like, or how s/he views the world. In fact, there seems a bit of a contradiction between the twin goals of “optimiz(ing) the learning of each student” – a very individualistic aim – and the desire to build a “community of learners”. The school wishes for its alumni to have integrity and good health, some form of “social responsibility”, and a habit of “lifelong learning”. I don’t see much there that distinguishes this school’s student from any other in my county. Indeed, the community “promotes” these values in its mission, which seems a rather passive choice of verb, as if the students and staff are content to advertise these ideals and hope they stick instead of “instilling” or “nurturing” these values or even actively “cherishing” them.
No Child Left Behind opened many eyes to achievement gaps along ethnic and economic lines, yet it has not served to close those gaps. This may be the result of a tragic flaw in American schools, particularly its high schools, that certainly precedes the law. In most of them, there is such a lack of educational vision that an embossed note stating you have graduated from that particular academy says little to nothing about who you are or the skills that you have developed. That’s why I’ve called my blog “Throw Out Your Diploma”; it’s basically a congratulatory certificate for earning credits. Your transcript of classes taken says more about you.
Schools are supposed to be neighborhood institutions that represent the values and spirit of a community. I’m grateful for the advent of published content standards, and the Common Core actually makes it easier to articulate a consistent, multi-year journey by which students build their skills across the grades. I worry, though, that in the race to the top of the standardized mountain, American schools have left behind the sense of wonder, passion, beauty, and freedom that should motivate such an arduous climb. If students learn the material without knowing why it’s important, then all the knowledge that earned them a diploma will soon be thrown out.
The path of a school, whether it lasts two years or seven, should be as unique and distinct as that of a college or university. When you hear names like Berkeley or Harvard or Brigham Young or USC, a specific image leaps to mind of the kind of citizen each university creates. Not many schools have such a strong, clear vision of what they want students to become, but I am confident that, as an administrator, I can develop a unifying vision of education that not only aligns a school’s curricula, but also its character.
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