Laser-like focus or a broad-strokes approach?

As we've been working with Dr. Ray Smith from Visible Learning he has said some things that have really resonated with me.

Today he said, "80% of your impact comes from 20% of your practice. You need to be sharply focused not well-rounded." He followed this comment up with, "Sharply focused means you must be very selfish as to where and how you use your time. Practices have disproportionate impact!"

This last week or so, we've been looking at our mid-year reading data for our students. We haven't made the growth that we had hoped for and began doing research into why not. There are many things we do well but the research provided some ways we can be doing better:

1. If we want to see measurable gains in reading, our master schedule needs to reflect reading as a priority. It didn't. But it will next week. We have revamped it to identify 90-minute reading blocks for 1st and 2nd and 90-minute literacy blocks for K. This will provide teachers with more time to intervene with their lowest students. We can coordinate better with our reading support program to make better use of their time pushing into these classes. 
2. Our afternoon intervention time will be focused on our most struggling readers. Yes, we'll still provide enrichment opportunities for those students who are already at or above grade level, but our job is not finished until we get all students above that line. 
3. The most effective reading intervention is good teaching. If we want our students to become better readers, we must become better at teaching reading. Starting this month we will have a full-time reading support coach. This position will not be to work directly with the students, per se, but more focused on helping teachers who want to become better. We have several new teachers this year and this will be a resource for them on how to allocate time, how to group students for small groups, and how to teach more effectively in small groups. The same also applies to our veteran teachers. Research is clear on how to most effectively deliver reading instruction and our reading coach is hands-down the most up-to-date person in our building, probably even the district, on reading research.

Change is uncomfortable. Change in the middle of the year is even tougher. But change, based on best practice, centered around improving student reading is a no brainer. :)

What is my biggest concern as a principal?

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My biggest concern as a school principal is that I have a large discrepancy in effectiveness among my teachers. By discrepancy I mean a difference in how much of an academic impact one teacher can have on his/her students compared to other teachers in the same grade.

We often hear that people wish they had a choice in schools their children can attend because School A has a better reputation or is known as being a better school. But the research shows that there is only a 30% difference in academic effectiveness, nationwide, among schools. (click here for some research. I'll update it once I hear back from a few people who presented to us last week.)

But there is as high as a 70% difference among teachers in the same building (Dr. Ray Smith, 2015). This means that in some schools, it is an educational lottery. If you are lucky to be with a teacher who is highly effective, your students will show amazing growth. But if you have an unlucky draw, your students might actually leave the school year further behind. That is what keeps me awake at night.

How do we remedy this?

It's really quite simple. We don't have 14 individual kindergarten teachers, 15 individual 1st grade teachers, and 13 individual 2nd grade teachers. We have one TEAM of 14, a team of 15, and a team of 13 who see all the students in their grade as "our" students.

Being a team means they collaborate, agree, disagree, get mad, work through it, and after meeting every Monday morning, during prep and assembly times, they have a plan that includes every students in their grade level. They solicit help from reading and math specialists, they form their own grade-level intervention groups. The tell me they need a day to work together as a team and provide me with the rationale and expected outcomes that make so much sense that I have no choice but to tell them YES. How could I not? By telling them yes, I am helping these teams become stronger, closer, and more interdependent. And who benefits? Kiddos.

Being a team isn't just taking your take turn making copies. Being a team means if one person doesn't pull their weight, the whole team feels it. Being a team doesn't mean everyone is nice and happy and amicable. Being a team means you put aside your personal feelings and don't take it personal when everyone doesn't agree with you. You suck it up, look at the data, and do what's best for the students, not what makes you most comfortable.

I have teams who are exhausted, frustrated, yet excited. You will not find a 70% discrepancy between our highest and lowest performing teachers. Because they are locking elbows and academically moving these mountains of students together.

Remember a previous post about effect size, and how John Hattie identified a .40 as a normal year's growth? Well, Charter schools has an effect size of .20. Class size = .21. Principals/school leaders = .36; school effects = .48. But collective teacher efficacy, a team of teachers working together, believing that all their students can learn, has an effect size of 1.45.

Ah, now I can sleep at night. We've identified a solution and are working to remedy. Sweet dreams.