School Leader

Research on TELL Kentucky survey highlighted at MSERA next week

As already noted on this blog, next week I'll be attending the Mid-South Educational Research Association annual conference in Pensacola, Florida.  Besides enjoying one of my favorite Gulf Coast beaches, and besides offering a training session on The Self Aware School: Using the Enneagram System to Enhance Instructional Leadership, I'll also be presenting or co-presenting the results of a wide-ranging analysis of the 2011 TELL Kentucky survey of teacher perceptions.

The TELL (Teaching, Empowering, Leading, and Learning) survey was administered to K-12 educators across Kentucky in March 2011.  Over 42,000 teachers and administrators participated, representing an 80% response rate.  The survey measured teacher's perceptions of their teaching conditions on eight research-based constructs. 

Overall, teachers in Kentucky reported fairly high-levels of satisfication with their teaching conditions.  Since then, the survey was readministered in March 2013, and the Kentucky Department of Education has widely touted the TELL instrment as a means for schools to improve their learning climate.

With a small grant from the Kentucky Council on Post-Secondary Education, a group of researchers at Western Kentucky University, including Steve Miller, Kyong Chon, Jie Zhang, Tony Norman, and me, were commissioned to further analyze the 2011 TELL data.  Chunling Niu, a doctoral student in WKU's Doctorate of Educational Leadership progam played a lead role in the research, and doctoral student Richard Hunt also assisted with the analysis. 

Our goals included exploring whether teacher perceptions on the TELL survey were different between high- and low-performing schools, and how different educator groups (principals versus teachers, principals versus assistant principals) viewed teaching conditions.  An additional study explored differing perceptions of teaching conditions between schools that have implemented Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports and those that have not (doctoral program graduate Dr. Kelly Davis played an instrumental role in this particular study).

Four papers will be delivered at MSERA next week highlighting the results of our research.  Among the findings we will discuss:

• Among high schools in the Green River Regional Educational Cooperative (the main service area for WKU), teacher responses on the TELL survey were largely unrelated to student outcomes.  The one exception was on the construct of Community Involvement and Support.  Regardless of other demographic variables, in higher-performing schools teachers tended to report a greater level of support from parents and the community.  These results were consistent with analysis commissioned by KDE finding that, statewide, Community Involvement and Support was the only construct positively associated with student achievement.
• Unsurpisingly, principals consistently had more positive views of teaching conditions than the teachers themselves.  However, principal and teacher perception differences were not predictive of student learning outcomes, except (again) for the construct of Community Involvement and Support.
• Assistant principals had perceptions of teaching conditions more in line with those of principals, but were significantly more like teacher perceptions on the constructs of Teacher Leadership and School Leadership.  Again, discrepancies in principal and assistant principal views were not associated with student achievement.
• Schools that implemented the PBIS model for improving student behavior outcomes had significantly higher perceptions of teaching conditions on the constructs of Managing Student Conduct and School Leadership.  We also found that the more faithfully a school implemented PBIS, the more positive were teacher views of their teaching conditions.

Some of the results of our analyses were not surprising.  Other findings have important implications for school leaders interested in promoting higher levels of teacher satisfaction in their schools.  I was most interested in results from the PBIS study.  Over 400 schools across Kentucky have implemented PBIS, and our research showed that the TELL survey can partially function as a tool for evaluating the effectiveness of PBIS.  The findings were promising for schools that want to implement PBIS, but also a reminder that fidelity of implementation really matters.

The dominant theme of our findings, however, is that the TELL survey, whatever its strengths, does not tell us much about whether students are learning measurably more in schools with positive TELL results.  In other words, teachers might be very satisfied with the teaching conditions of their schools, but that doesn't mean students are learning anything.  This finding should put the TELL survey in perspective.  It has value, but policy makers should be careful in overstating its usefulness and importance as a tool for school improvement.

We will be seeking to publish results from these studies in the near future.  In the meantime, contact me if you would like further information, and I look forward to sharing this research at MSERA next week.

The Self-Aware School - New CLS Training Session

Note: This post originally appeared on the website of Contemplative Learning Solutions, my school leadership consulting and professional development venture with Dr. Tom Stewart, professor of education at Austin Peay State University.  Visit the CLS webpage, www.contemplativelearning.org and "Like" us on Facebook more about our work at helping schools, districts, businesses, and non-profit ventures deep their work through reflective practice.

Please join us on Wednesday, November 6 as we present our training session The Self-Aware School: Using the Enneagram System to Enhance Instructional Leadership to the attendees of the Mid-South Educational Research Association’s (MSERA) Annual Meeting.  (MSERA is a regional division of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), which hosts what is arguably the pre-eminent annual educational research conference that attracts national and international presenters and advances important research in our field.)  We are eager to present a synthesis of our past and most recent Enneagram work at MSERA, combining elements of our general introductory training sessions with school leader-specific connections using our original school leader Ennea-type profiles. 

While researching, designing, and facilitating a new ongoing workshop series, we were recently reminded of the strong connection between the kind of self-awareness that an Enneagram study can provide and deep, transformational reflective practice.  We sincerely believe that school leaders can use this training to become even more effective reflective practitioners, and highly-effective instructional leaders.

We hope you can join us on Pensacola Beach next week for further information.  If not, though, contact Tom or Gary to see how your school/district/organization might benefit from similar work.

(Photo:  Tom and Gary presenting at the 2012 Canadian Institute for Enneagram Studies conference.)

Instructional Sensitivity Conference next month

I've written previously about James Popham's compelling case for why standarized tests are not particularly good measures of teaching effectiveness.  The term now used to define whether a test actually measures the impact of teaching on learning is "instructional sensitivity."  Popham argues that for tests to be instructionally sensitive, they must exhibit the following characteristics:

• The test must be based on a modest number of important curricular targets.
• The test must be based on learning targets that are clearly defined.
• Performance reports generated from the test must yield data showing exactly which learning targets individual students have mastered and which they have not.
• Each test item must be free of cultural bias.

Based on these criteria, the vast majority of standardized assessments can't be considered "instructionally sensitive."

The answer to this is not to throw out all standardized tests as some people, including the once insightful but  increasingly ridiculous Diane Ravitch, suggest.  As I've argued before, taxpayers who shell over millions of dollars each year in support of education deserve some common, standardized measure of school performance.  We need to recognize the limitations of standardized tests as they are now constructed, however, and place a much larger emphasis on the creation of meaningful, instructionally-sensitive school- and classroom-level assessments.  And, we need a thoughtful, engaged, research-based, industry-wide focus on improving the quality of state tests.

In the spirit of all of these goals, the Achievement and Assessment Institute at the University of Kansas is sponsoring an Instructional Sensitivity Conference November 13-15 in Lawrence, Kansas.  Among other top-notch presenters, the conference will feature Jim Popham himself delivering the keynote.  Sessions will focus on debates around the topic of instructional sensitivity, and promising research on advances in testing design and technology that can improve the measurement of student learning.

Unfortunately I cannot attend this event, as I'll just be getting back from the Mid-South Educational Research Association annual conference where I'll be presenting several papers.  However, I encourage readers to attend (click here for registration information), and to follow AAI's work, which has major implications for school improvement and education practice. 

I'd welcome feedback and thoughts from readers who attend, and I'll continue to follow and share AAI's work and subsequent events.

SLLA test prep session returns to WKU in November

My WKU colleague, Dr. Mike Putnam, will be reprising his hugely popular, extremely affordable, test prep session for the School Leaders Licensure Assessment (SLLA), required of all aspiring school principals in Kentucky and many other states.  The session will be held on Friday, November 15 from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. Central time, continuing on Saturday, November 16, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Gary Ransdell Hall Room 3005 on WKU's main campus.  The session costs $25 for WKU students and $40 for non-WKU students, plus a $30 materials fee upon arrival (UPDATE, 10/26 - materials will be available online, so there will be no materials fee; participants should bring a Java-compatible laptop to the session).

Dr. Putnam developed this test review with Dr. Dennis Bunch of the University of Mississippi.  Previous prep sessions at WKU have resulted in a 100% pass rate for in-state graduates and a 97% pass rate for out-of-state graduates.

The session will include a review of the six ISLLC standards upon which the SLLA is based, and feature timed test prep exercises and hands-on activities and discussions.  Participants must agree to confidentially share their SLLA test score results with Dr. Putnam, as he and Dr. Bunch use this data to continue refining the test prep process and may publish an analysis of results in the future.

Download more information: Download SLLA Prep Session November 2013

Contact Dr. Putnam at [email protected] by end of the day on November 7 to register.  Please provide your name, phone number, current school and district, and professional position.  Space is limited and late registrations are not permitted.

Wired article explores implementation of Sugata Mitra's radically student-centered approach to learning

Almost exactly one year ago I wrote a blog post about prominent education professor Richard Elmore's declaration that, "I do not believe in the institutional structures of public education anymore."  Speaking at a forum on the future of school reform, Elmore described his growing conviction that conventional efforts to improve teaching and learning in America's schools will inevitably fail because the structures of school itself are not geared toward meeting the actual learning needs of children.  Elmore suggested that our entire approach to education must be dismantled and rebuilt.  In my blog post, I expressed relief that somone of Elmore's stature was describing a feeling I've had in my own gut for years.

That blog post has garnered thousands of visits over the last twelve months.  I am so grateful for the outpouring of positive comments and affirmations from all over the world.  I've heard over and over again how much Elmore's message resonates with educators, parents, and ordinary citizens concerned about the future of schooling.  And I've made new contacts in the Montessori, Sudbury, and homeschooling communities who have shown me how alternative, student-centered models of learning are getting results, and have been for years.

All of these approaches share the assumption that children are not only capable of learning, but are hungry to do so, and schooling should channel (rather than squelch) their natural curiosity.  In his comments, Richard Elmore cited the work of Sugata Mitra, an education technology research who has conducted compelling experiments in the developing world demonstrating how, which very little assistance from adults, children can teach themselves vast quantities of knowledge and engage in high-level thinking tasks.

Earlier this year Mitra won a $1 million TED prize to launch seven "schools in the cloud" to further implement the learning approach he's been refining as a result of his research.  But a recent article from Wired magazine shows how one teacher in Mexico, inspired by Mitra's work, has gotten similar results in a desperately under-resourced, low-tech school in the drug-infested border city of Matamoros. 

The article by Joshua Davis describes how Sergio Juarez Correa, a 31-year-old teacher at Jose Urbina Lopez Primary School (pictured here with a student), transformed his teaching to put students in charge of their own learning, largely by posing interesting questions and then getting out of the way, interjecting only to offer encouragement.  Such an approach seems farcical to Americans conditioned by a century of industrialized schooling based on the assumption that to learn, kids have to be forced to sit down, shut up, and repeat whatever they are told or shown to do.

The truth is, this one-size-fits-all, teacher-centered approach to education has never actually served students in the U.S. very well either (see my reviews of books on this topic by John Taylor Gatto and Nikhil Goyal).  Student-centered learning is not only more humane, engaging, and better aligned to how the brain actually works; it is also more effective.

The startling results in Sergio Juarez Correa's classroom are evidence.  The students were not only engaged in learning tasks that can be described as rigorous and higher ordered, but also performed among the top students in the entire country of Mexico on state-administered exams. 

Not that Juarez Correa put much stock in exams that are, by and large, ineffective measures of teaching effectiveness.  But as long as standardized tests are the chief currency for measuring student outcomes, it's encouraging to see that student-centered learning isn't harmful to their test scores, and actually contributes to extremely high performance.

Along with Richard Elmore, I am beginning to get some ideas for what the future of schooling is going to look like.  Juarez Correa's classroom is a good first glimpse.

Integrating the Common Core into school principal preparation

A special issue of the Kentucky Journal for Excellence in College Teaching and Learning has just been released exploring challenges in the implementation of the Common Core Standards.  The issue, which was guest edited by Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday, features an article by me and WKU colleague Dr. Jill Cabrera. 

"Preparing Principals for Instructional Leadership: Integrating the Common Core Standards" describes recent revisions to WKU's principal certification program and how we have placed a renewed focus on the principal as instructional leader.  The article explores how the Common Core Standards play a role in our framework for instructional leadership.

The article is not yet posted on the KJECTL website, but you can download the full issue here (our article begins on page 56): Download KJECTLSB2_Summer Edition Word9122013_2

WKU's utilizes a definition of instructional leadership borrowed from Robert Marzano's conception of "supervision" as the principal's responsibility to "the enhancement of teachers' pedagogical skills."  Everything else a principal does should serve the purpose of supporting the continuous growth of teacher practice.

The article describes how, from this core assumption about the role of the school leader, WKU's principal program then helps aspiring administrators establish the importance of curricular clarity as the foundation of effective teaching practice.  We argue that, for all their limitations, the Common Core Standards provide a level of curricular clarity that many schools have previously not known.  We emphasize the role of curriculum in general, and the principal's responsibility to ensure a guaranteed, viable curriculum for all students, as vital elements to Danielson's Framework for Effective Teaching, the essential rubric for teacher practice now in use throughout Kentucky.

I am no great apologist for the Common Core.  As I've emphasized elsewhere, while the Common Core Standards do represent a clearer, better organized curriculum than in the past (read this report from the Fordham Institute, cited in our article, documenting the superiority of the CCS over the preceding standards in most states), there are still simply too many standards to teach to proficiency in any given year.  Serious work of prioritization must still be done, and that is work that, in the absence of any great efforts on the part of state officials, must be done at the school and district level.  Some courageous, cage-busting leadership is called for to make the Common Core Standards part of a viable curriculum.

I also share the concerns of many other Americans, including a fair number of educators, about the appropriateness of a standardized curriculum for the entire nation.  The U.S. Constitution wisely leaves the business of education to the various States and territories, and the strong-arm tactics of the Obama administration in getting states to adopt the CCS are a bad precedent.  The one-size-fits all nature of American schooling is problematic enough already; the standardization of learning doesn't need any help, and in fact needs to be reversed.

Nevertheless, politicians have required that public schools implement the Common Core, and therefore school leaders must get about the business of doing so.  WKU has made instructional leadership a key focus of its principal preparation program, and the Common Core must have a place in that emphasis.

Like the new state-wide teacher evaluation system, there is much to appreciate in the Common Core Standards, and so while I may be skeptical about the role of CCS in improving student learning, I am like with PGES, skeptically hopeful.

PGES: Call me a hopeful skeptic

Kentucky's new Teacher Professional Growth and Effectiveness System (PGES) presents a major challenge for school leaders and seeks to redefine the relationship between principals and teachers and the conversations they have about instruction.  I've been working my way through the same online PGES training principals are required to complete to formally evaluate teachers using the new system so I can effectively address these topics in my own education administration courses. 

There is so much to admire in PGES, and there's no doubt about its intention to address the problem of meaningless teacher evaluations.  As the 2009 report The Widget Effect illustrated in stark terms, the prevailing systems of teacher evaluation have traditionally failed to distinguish between high and low-performing teachers, or to provide the kinds of meaningful feedback that would actually help teachers improve their practice. 

But for all the possibilities PGES presents, I remain a skeptic, if perhaps a deeply hopeful one.  As I've written before, data from other states that have already revamped their evaluation systems are not encouraging, and now a recent article by three prominent education researchers - Joe Murphy, Phillip Hallinger, and Ronald Heck - suggests caution in expecting enhanced evaluation systems to significantly improve teaching practice.

Last Spring I wrote about a New York Times article exploring the results of new teacher evaluations in multiple states, including Florida, Michigan, Tennessee, Connecticut, and Washington, DC.  After investing millions of dollars and thousands of hours in new evaluation systems designed to better distinguish levels of teacher performance, these states found that principals were still rating more than 90 percent of all teachers as effective or highly effective. Only tiny percentages of teachers were identified as "ineffective" or "developing."

It would seem these efforts were a monumental waste of time and money with only a handful of possible explanations for the results.  One would be the absurd suggestion of teacher union boss Randi Weingarten (cited in the NYT article) that this outcome just proves most teachers are already very good at their jobs.  While I believe many teachers are, in fact, quite effective, any half-awake person who has ever walked into a school can attest that the percentage of effective teachers is nowhere near 98 percent, as evaluations from Michigan and Tennessee suggest.

Another explanation would be that these evaluation systems are poorly crafted and therefore don't provide a good structure for distinguishing teacher performance, or that principals are poorly trained in how to use them.  I am completely unfamiliar with the systems from these others states, and can't make a judgment in this regard.  But if their evaluation systems are anywhere close to Kentucky's PGES framework, then I doubt this explanation.

The foundation of Kentucky's new evaluation system is Charlotte Danielson's research-based Framework for Effective Teaching, a very well-crafted rubric with descriptors that clearly describe the differences of specific teaching behaviors at four levels of effectiveness.  I haven't actually used any of the PGES instruments to evaluate real teachers in the field - and this could remain a weak spot in the system - but based on the framework itself, I have a lot of faith that PGES should be able to function as it is designed.

The final, and I believe most likely, explanation is that principals are simply lacking the emotional courage to use the evaluation tools as designed to give teachers the meaningful, critical feedback they deserve.  Moreover, the structure of schooling, tenure laws, leadership turnover, and the all-encompassing managerial duties of the principal may all be confounding variables that just cause otherwise well-intentioned administrators to conclude that using evaluations to accurately describe teacher performance is simply not worth it.

All of these variables are explored from the perspective of empirical research in Murphy, Hallinger, and Heck's article, "Leading via Teacher Evaluation: The Case of the Missing Clothes" from the August/September 2013 issue of the journal Educational Researcher.  Reviewing the history of teacher evaluation practices and research on their effectiveness, the authors conclude that evaluation systems have never had a meaningful impact on teaching practice or student learning, and most likely never will.  They cite the difficulty of connecting specific evaluation mechanisms with teacher practices in a way that can be studied empirically, as well as the nature of schooling itself which does not reward and support principal efforts to focus on instructional leadership.

However, Murphy et al. do suggest there are research-based instructional leadership functions that actually do make a difference in teacher performance:

Work here includes establishing a powerful sense of vision, with strong academic mission and challenging organizational goals and expectations...enhancing student opportunity to learn...developing and using data systems to inform and monitor instruction...creating personalized learning environments in which all youngsters are cared for, participate in, and have ownership of the school...developing a school culture conducive to learning...[and] providing alignment and cohesiveness to all school actions.

Furthermore, Murphy and colleagues identify four larger categories of principal behaviors that make a difference in teaching quality:

...providing actionable feedback to teachers...developing communities of practice in which teachers share goals, work, and responsibility for student outcomes...offering abundant support for the work of teachers..and creating systems in which teachers have the opportunity to routinely develop and refine their skills.

None of these principal activities must rely on the teacher evaluation system for their effectiveness.  In fact, these activities are most likely high-leverage behaviors even under the old, clunky teacher evaluation system.  Perhaps we could save all this time and money we are currently investing in PGES and focus, instead, on leadership behaviors that really make a difference.

 Of course, none of these activities contradict the goals or structures of PGES either.  In fact, the teaching framework that undergirds PGES, and the kinds of conversations that PGES prompts between principals and teachers, might be deeply facilitative of the kinds of principal behaviors described above.

For better or worse, PGES is with us for awhile.  My deep hope is that it will cause school principals to think much more deeply about the qualities of effective teaching, and to engage with teachers in more meaningful discussions about classroom practice.  Where PGES makes a difference, it will likely be because individual principals have found a way to integrate it seamlessly into their larger strategy of instructional leadership.

As Ric Hess pointed out recently in his thoughtful article for National Affairs, education reform structures have universally failed to change educational practices.  But leadership does make a difference.  While I remain skeptical of PGES, I remain deeply hopeful about the power of reflective leaders to use whatever structures are available to make a difference in teaching and learning.