BACKGROUND: The politicization of the media, business, the military, unions, social media, entertainment, etc. etc. has also infected many Boards of Education and it is not going well. Simply stated, education in America is a failed organization and getting worse.
Previously I have published essays on education describing how to fix the system beginning with the elimination of the federal Department of Education and working down the organization to the local level. But, as the saying goes, “The chances of that happening are between slim and none and Slim just left town.”
The need is great; a short-hand look at pre-Covid education results tells a very grim story.
Every year, over 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the U.S.; that’s a student every 26 seconds, 7,000 per school-day. About 25% of high school freshmen fail to graduate from high school on time. Almost 2,000 high schools across the U.S. graduate less than 60% of their students. In the U.S. high school dropouts commit about 75% of the crimes.
Oregon will soon lead the nation in percent of students who graduate from high school. Why? In 2021 Oregon Governor Kate Brown cancelled the proficiency standards for reading, writing and math for high school graduation requirements. That simple piece of legislation told the teachers, Principals, Superintendents and School Board members that they will not be held accountable for passing out high school diplomas to functionally illiterate graduates.
A recent Arlington Virginia Board of Education proposal would force educators to allow students an unlimited number or retakes on assignments, ban giving out extra credit and would effectively eliminate homework by prohibiting it from being graded.
December, 2021, many of California’s largest school districts are dropping “D” and “F” grades. The move is called “competency-based learning.”
Providence, Rhode Island, only 5% of eighth graders are proficient in math; Newark New Jersey, 21% proficiency in math; Wisconsin, Black American eighth graders perform only slightly better than white fourth graders in reading and math.
And the Covid impact on education made all of this worse.
But, in 2017 we spent $14,100 per K-12 student which was 37% higher than the average among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member counties.
Bottom Line, two thirds of our high school graduates are not adequately prepared to be all they can/should be. And this is not a new problem, 20% of American adults cannot name even one of the three branches of government.
Post-election, 2022, Boards of Education are forming up with their new members in the 13,187 school districts representing 131,000 elementary and high schools with 47.8 million students across the U.S. The purpose of this essay is to suggest it is very possible for a school district to take on the issues, at their level, fix what is wrong with education at their level, and consistently graduate high school students who are proficient in reading, writing, math, science and history.
My purpose in publishing this essay now is that if any of you reading this are getting the impression that your newly-elected Board of Education appears to be concerned with everything except excellent academic achievement, then what follows is a scenario you might want to suggest to your school board members.
With that background, let’s take a look at what the minutes of a recent Board of Education meeting might look like. President of the local school board speaking:
Good morning and thank you for coming in for this Saturday session with just us leaders, the Superintendent, all of our school Principals along with our newly-elected Board members.
Let’s begin with the bottom line, the nation is getting an “F” in education and we in this room are not immune to that disease. Let me explain just how bad it is.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)is the only assessment that measures what U.S. students know and can do in various subjects across the nation. Also known as The Nation’s Report Card, they grade mathematics, reading, science, writing, technology, arts, civics, geography, economics, and U.S. history for grades 4th and 8th every 2 years and 12th grade every 4 years.
In 2019, pre-Covid, NAEP tested 150,600 4th-grade students, 143,100 8th-grade, and 26,700 12th-grade students. Here is a summary pulled from a large comprehensive report:
Reading, NOT proficient: 59% 4th-grade, 66% 8th-grade, 76%, 3 of every 4 high school seniors are NOT proficient in reading.
Math, NOT proficient: 65% 4th-grade, 66% 8th-grade, almost 2 out of 3 high school seniors NOT proficient in math.
Other subjects were even worse. For high school seniors 88% NOT proficient in history, 77% NOT proficient in writing ability and 78% NOT proficient in science. That’s the bad news; the worse news is that Covid negatively impacted those results.
Neither you nor I can fix the Washington or State bureaucratic education mess and there is nothing we can do about the other failing school districts so we won’t even try. But what we can do is make sure we do everything in our power with the leaders in this room to ensure our high school seniors can read, write and solve math problems at a proficient level. The bottom line is to keep education decision-making close to the point of execution.
There are two uncompromised rules that will guide us forward. First, we in this room are responsible for providing a safe and secure environment for learning on all school property. Secondly, the leadership group here in this room is responsible for teaching every subject every day to every student to a prescribed standard that will translate to proficiency.
We must begin with the premise that an organization without standards is a failed organization, period. Success in education does not emanate from more guidance from above, not from more money from the feds, or interference from the Education Unions. Excellence in education flows from establishing standards and from enforcing those standards at the local level every day for every student in every class.
The Board members are in agreement about the course of action I am about to describe. I have been over this with your Superintendent and he is all in. Our purpose here today is to get you completely read in on the details and committed to execute. We are going to create and operate inside a culture of accountability and academic excellence.
BOARD ACCOUNTABILITY: We, the Board, are accountable to the people who elected us to make overall policy decisions, establish direction and define the end state.
SUPERINTENDENT ACCOUNTABILITY: The Superintendent is accountable for two things:
One, and this is the overall key to success, is to articulate in plain language an achievable standard for every subject, every grade K-12. Stated another way, what every student is to know at school-year’s end. It is all about achieving 100% proficiency.
This process of determining standards will begin with a small group of kindergarten teachers and a couple elementary Principles meeting with the Superintendent to discuss and determine the end-state for the kindergarten academic year. They will research the state standards, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) proficiency standards and the thoughts of those at the meeting. The result will be the standard for every kindergarten student in our district. Seated at that meeting will be the first-grade teachers who will hear the discussion and gain a clear understanding that the end of kindergarten year standard will be the start point for first grade academics. Additionally, having establish the end-of-year standard, each group will, before adjourning, break the standard down into 6-week instructional periods. That process will continue for a few weeks until there is an end-of-year standard for every subject in every grade.
Secondly, the Superintendent is accountable for ensuring that every Principal is using these standards for academic achievement. He will be making frequent visits to your schools to observe and draw conclusions about how you are performing your duties.
Before we get into Principals’ accountability, let me see a show of hands, how many of you make it a point every day to spend at least one entire period sitting in the back of the room of an ongoing class? Ok, so that is generally not happening. More on that in a few minutes.
PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITY: You are accountable for day-to-day execution of the academic agenda. This begins by requiring every teacher to develop and provide to you the lesson plans that will lead to achieving the end-of-year standard. You must approve each of those lesson plans. Let’s say it is the halfway point of the first semester and you are sitting in on the 5th grade math class. You have with you the lesson plan; is the teacher ahead, behind, on point or off track? If behind or off track, you must take steps to lead that teacher toward a successful outcome. Ignoring the end-of-year standard is unacceptable.
You, the Principal, are accountable for constantly grading the work of all your teachers. Assessing, counseling, mentoring teachers is your responsibility. In any profession, be it legal, medicine, military, etc. there are some who should be doing something else for a living. Be on the lookout for these two types of teachers. One, is the teacher who consistently has failing student and will defend themselves by saying, ‘ I can teach them the subject but I can’t make them learn.’ Clearly a cop-out. On the other end of the scale is the teacher who creates an atmosphere where-in students want to learn. Keeping a failing teacher on your staff is unacceptable.
A second question for you Principals; how many of your teachers routinely give quizzes? Hmm, I hear you saying that giving quizzes is not a frequently-used tool. That response from you begs another question. How do your teachers know on a continuous basis if all the students got it? Are all of the students comfortable with what was presented this week and ready to move on? Without testing, how do they know?
The point being, we cannot allow a student to get behind. If they are behind now it will only be exacerbated moving forward. A staggering national statistic is that every school day about 7,000 kids drop out of school. The overriding reason is that they got behind in the early grades, more-so the next year and the next until they find themselves in a hopeless state of mind and take the easy road, drop-out-of-school and thereafter, in overwhelming numbers, enter a life of crime and/or welfare.
In June of 2019 it was reported that 60% of North Carolina fourth graders were not proficient in reading. Are we naïve enough to believe they probably caught up in fifth grade? The reality is they probably regressed the following year and years after. Obviously, North Carolina schools are not teaching to standard and are not dealing with problem students in a timely manner.
Here is what we are going to do, teach, test, teach, test routinely and immediately identify any student who gets behind. What do you do with a student who fails the final exam in June? A massive summer session for 60% of all the 4th graders who are behind in reading plus every other student who is behind in math is not in anyone’s budget. To just rely on periodic final exams, be they 6-week exams or end of semester exams, to determine if a student is proficient does and will not work. Teach/test, teach/test is a viable solution. The alternative is to just pass them on to the next grade where they will get further behind
If a student fails the Thursday quiz, he/she needs to catch up by Monday because the teacher will be moving on to more difficult material. This is where the teacher/student/parent contract kicks in. More on that in a few minutes. Additionally, you, the principal could set up a tutoring program whereby volunteers are available for after-school assistance.
You, the Principal, have to be sitting in on classes routinely. Otherwise, how will you know whether or not teachers are teaching to standard, testing to standard so that all students are on schedule to be proficient in all subjects when the school-year ends?
An organization without standards is a failed organization. We can always hope for a positive outcome but hope is not a process.
TEACHER ACCOUNTABILITY is simply staying in their lane, teaching and testing their subject to standard. Sex education, gender, Critical Race Theory, and politics are the parents’ responsibility and are absolutely forbidden subjects is our school system. I need a show of hands that you all are completely on board with that directive. If one of your teachers does have discussions with their students on these subjects you will initiate a formal counseling session with that teacher, back it up with a written statement and inform the Superintendent of the actions taken. If there is a second occurrence in your school, the Superintendent will initiate a formal counseling session with you. Everyone clear on that?
PARENT ACCOUNTABILITY: Parents are a critical element in the education equation. Get them involved and make them understand that they are also accountable. The first parent-teacher meeting normally takes place some days or weeks after the school-year begins. We are going to invite and encourage parents to meet with your teachers during the week before classes begin. Every teacher will begin the discussion by explaining the end-of-year standards, the teach/test agenda, there will be homework and the importance of not falling behind and what happens if their student does poorly on a quiz. The parents will get an email immediately if it is determined a student is behind with instructions for additional homework over the weekend as well as information on the school’s tutor program.
Let me close with a comment about teacher unions; on the national level they have become completely politicalized, try to dictate education policy and are completely out of their lane. If one of your teachers has a personal issue with our policies or with your leadership, our preference would be for the teacher to use our chain of command to resolve their issues. But if they feel the need to see their union representative, that is their right and we accept that. What is not acceptable is for any union representative, of their own initiative, to be physically in your school or directly contacting you or your teachers. All union communications and meetings will begin with me, Chairman of the Board of Education and no one else. I need a show of hands from every person in this room on that issue.
I don’t want you to get the wrong impression, I am not anti-union but the teachers unions have gotten completely off base in this country; making education policy, telling teachers how to teach and what to teach; publicly advocating for or against political issues unrelated to education. We don’t need that and I will deal with it, not you.
The bottom line of this discussion today is that we are going to create and execute a culture of accountability and academic excellence with no student left behind.
Let me take your questions, I don’t want anyone leaving here today without a complete understanding of the way ahead in our school district.
Author’s comments: Improving education is not rocket science. The point of the above dialogue is that any school district could, and in my estimation, should self-initiate these simple steps and move towards academic excellence.
Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, and a new book May 2022, FIX THE SYSTEMS, TRANSFORM AMERICA as well as the author of a blog WeThePeopleSpeaking.com