Results from a 2023 Maryland state math exam reveals that 13, which is 40%, of Baltimore’s High Schools did not have a single math-proficient student. ZERO.
We have heard ad-nauseum about the devastating impact on education during the Covid pandemic. However, these 2023 results are not a Covid problem; Baltimore has actually improved test scores over the post-pandemic period. Six years ago, in 2017, Project Baltimore produced a similar report of test scores and found 13 city schools had zero students proficient in math. Many of the schools from 2017 are also on the 2023 list.
Last school year, Baltimore City Schools received $1.6 billion from taxpayers, the most ever. The district also received $799 million in Covid relief funding from the federal government. This is not a funding issue.
BALTIMORE IS NOT ALONE; DATA FROM ACROSS THE NATION:
- 20% of U.S. students do not graduate high school.
- 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 every school day; thereby creating a linkage to a life of crime and/or welfare.
- 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. Those “dropout factories” account for over 50% of the students who leave school every year. One in six U.S. students attend a dropout factory. One in three minority students (32%) attend a dropout factory compared to 8% of white students.
- Of those graduating high school, over 20% are unable to pass the test to enter the U.S. military because they are functionally illiterate.
- In the U.S. high school dropouts commit about 75% of the crimes.
- About 70% of prison inmates do not have a high school diploma.
“PROFICIENCY”, WHAT IS IT?
The National Assessment of Education Progress, NAEP, results provide educators, policymakers, elected officials, and parents with invaluable information regarding how our children are doing in school. NAEP measures the academic performance of the nation’s students by testing 4th and 8th grade students every 2 years and 12th grade every 4 years.
NAEP reports on student achievement/capability in three categories: Basic, Proficient and Advanced.
- Students performing at NAEP Basic level have only partial mastery of fundamentals. These students are failing.
- Students performing at the NAEP Proficient level have demonstrated some competency over challenging subject matter.
- Students performing at the NAEP Advanced level have shown superior performance.
Most recent NAEP national data on math proficiency. Baltimore is not alone.
4th grade, 67% are below Proficiency level and almost 1/3 of them are even below Basic level.
8th grade, 75% are below Proficiency level and more than half are even below Basic level.
12th grade, 76% are below Proficiency level and more than half are even below Basic level.
CONCLUSIONS FROM NATIONAL TEST RESULTS:
Our nation is in serious trouble and the light at the end of the tunnel is unfortunately an on-coming train. The U.S. is currently getting an F in education results. The high percentages below Proficiency level in 4th grade do not improve through middle and high school.
SOME THOUGHTS ON A PROBLEM STATEMENT:
My sense is that there is too much emphasis on End of Grade, EOG, testing. “Let’s wait and see how we do on EOG tests”; “We are hoping for a better result this year from EOG tests.”
The problem with those courses of action is that when we don’t do well on EOG tests, it is already too late to do anything about it. Proficiency deficiencies just get passed on and, of course, compounded the next year. It is a formula that will guarantee failure on through middle and high school and leads our country to the 7,000 dropouts every school day. If the system is fixated on EOG results that is a big part of the problem and explains why our education system is on the downward path to a nation of functional illiteracy.
The focus the past two years has been to correct the Covid down-curve. But, generally speaking we have not sufficiently defined the problem and therefore have no solution going forward.
THE TWO-TIERED PROBLEM:
First tier: The day-to-day education process lets “unproficiency” slip into the system throughout every school year. Those who are in a position to fix it don’t recognize that it is happening or don’t care that it is happening. Or, if they do recognize the daily unproficiency problem, they just do not know what to do about it. Nonproficiency grows, is compounded every year until, at some point, usually in high school, when the student is failing, embarrassed, ridiculed by his/her peers and frequently skipping school they conclude enough is enough; I’m done. The circumstances that led to that drop-out day probably began in 3rd grade and grew like a cancer getting more pronounced every year.
Second tier: The problem is that we do not have a dynamic, in-place, continuous, immediate-action process of 1) identifying that Billy just got behind and 2) getting Billy immediately caught up with his classmates. We can always hope for better EOG test scores but, as we all know, hope is not a process.
THESIS:
My thesis is that a good teacher can, at any time during the school year, go through the student roster and separate those who “got it”, are up-to-speed and ready to face the next, more complicated building block on the lesson plan from those who did not get it and will have difficulty going forward if not corrected immediately.
A WAY AHEAD:
If my problem assessment is correct, we need a comprehensive movement and cannot continue to wing it in the individual schools and classrooms. We need a definable campaign.
Campaign planning is a series of organized actions aimed at accomplishing a stated purpose and typically focused on a path toward an identifiable end-state.
Without a formal, phased campaign, individual schools (in Baltimore) will wonder off in different directions with no continuity. Some will prosper. Most will flounder. It is analogous to someone having a half million dollars’ worth of materials piled on their lot and the vision is to build a fabulous dream home; the only thing missing is a blueprint. How is that going to turn out?
Planning is proactive thinking at another level, a journey not a destination, never perfect (think contingencies) and never final. “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” von Moltke.
Simply stated building a campaign takes us through a series of steps in a logical sequence, all of which should be written down in a formal proposal. Let’s call it a Framework for Action, with emphasis on the word, “action.”
A special note before we begin building the Framework. This problem cannot be solved by the U.S. Department of Education with their 4,400 bureaucrats and $88 billion budget. Even if they understood the problem, they would undoubtedly let a multi-million-dollar contract to a bunch of psychologists and education “experts” who would, in a couple of years, produce a 500-page document that demands more money, more regulations, more bureaucrats and is not actionable. Ditto for State Departments of Education. This is a problem that needs to be/can be defined and fixed within each of the 13,452 school districts.
THE PLAYERS;
The leaders in the education organization are easily identifiable because the organization, in many ways, resembles thousands of other organizations in our society.
First there is the Board of Education analogist to corporate boards with one advantageous difference. Who is on the Board of Directors at General Motors? I don’t know and neither do you. But we know our Board of Education members because we-the-people elected them and we can vote them out.
Second, at the strategic leader, level, there is the CEO, aka the Superintendent of schools. He/she should be the first in the chain of command that has daily responsibilities associated with quality teaching and learning and the Product.
Third, at the operational leader level, there are the vice presidents for academics, aka school Principals.
Finally, at the tactical leader level, there are the First-Line-Leaders, aka teachers, at the point of execution.
The education organization has a clean, simple, uncomplicated chain of command that can/should be more effective than it apparently is.
BUILDING A FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION:
Identify the problem; without it there is no solution which, I believe is where we generally are today across America. After that just answer these simple questions; who, what, when, where, why and how.
VISION is first out of the Framework tool box: Have a written vision of the end state; a sentence, not a paragraph. Why? “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Be realistic; there is a fine line between vision and hallucination. Vision defines WHERE the organization is going.
STRATEGY is alignment of assets to their greatest advantage. Strategy is the big picture, the long-pole in the tent. Three rules for strategy:
First, have one.
Second, keep it simple. Subordinates need to see it, understand it, buy in and talk about it. it is convenient to have a short-hand description in a word or phrase, e.g., Innovate and change to be all we can be. Be able to explain it in 50 words; an elevator-brief.
Third, if it’s working, don’t change it.There will be zealots for and against most strategies.
The CEO might say: Our strategy is to turn over every single rock, see what crawls out, change a lot of what we currently do, innovate, identify all best practices, key on excellence in teaching and learning. The centerpiece of our culture will be accountability at every leadership level. K-5 will constitute the main attack.
Comment RE “main attack”. What I concluded in the above discussion on the problem is that if we don’t get “it” right in K-5, there is no recovery in middle and high school. A friend of mine who is on the local Board of Education is working the “main attack” issue in our district. Translated, main attack means the three traditional levels of K-12 education, elementary, middle and high school should not be considered equals when it comes to priorities, funding, resourcing, etc. If the main attack is not properly resourced and fails, we’re toast?
Development of the strategy is not a 5-minute process. Perhaps put together several 2–3-person task forces and assign them to look at the existing culture, consistent shortcomings, strengths, vulnerabilities, potential capabilities, internal and external forces, define the art of the possible, discover what the “A” schools are doing different etc. DO NOT build a pie-in-the-sky unworkable, unrealistic strategy and launch a failed campaign which would play directly into the hands of the I-told-you-so naysayers. Strategy is HOW we are going to get to the end state.
MISSION: State the mission in one sentence. There will be a mission statement at each leadership level with increasing levels of detail from top to bottom. Mission is the beginning of the process of communicating, throughout the entire leadership continuum. It is the launch point. It is on public display. The measures of merit for a good mission statement are clarity (no ambiguous words) and brevity (a sentence, never a paragraph). Mission flows throughout the organization and becomes relevant and actionable at every level from the Board’s mission, to the Superintendent’s mission, to the Principals’ missions and on to the individual teachers’ mission statements. Mission is WHAT we are all going to do.
The Superintendent’s mission is to change the organization, its culture and inculcate enhanced teaching and learning.
A Principal’s mission might read: Ensure that every teacher is teaching to standard from prepared/approved lesson plans and that they use a teach-test, teach-test technique that identifies students who got behind followed by immediate steps to get them back in a state of proficiency.
A teacher’s mission is to teach to standard using best practices, know when a student falls behind, use immediate communications among the parent/teacher/student trifecta to solve the problem and have everyone at least on a proficient level at year’s end.
There are two types of mission statements and both could be applicable to the education organization. One use of mission is as described in the above paragraph for any campaign or plan. Secondly, many organizations have a single, unwavering, unchanging, overarching mission statement. For example, “The mission of the U.S. Army is to fight and win the nation’s wars.” The value of such a statement is that it provides a rock-solid reference point for everything that follows; training doctrine, fighting doctrine, standards, budget, weapons systems, deployability, etc.
One way to put some day-to-day thinking and action into the “main attack” scenario is to tag an overarching mission statement for the elementary schools. Put it on the front door; have a big banner hanging in the gym and set K-5 apart from middle and high schools. When considering resourcing, hiring, standards, teaching, testing, dealing with the parent/teacher/student trifecta etc., all of those issues should stand alone just for K-5. It follows then that there may need to be a revised mission statement for middle and high school. The nay-sayers will argue that the school “system” is all one K-12 issue. They are wrong. For example, The mission of our elementary school system, K-5 is to achieve a proficiency level for all students of at least X% before entry into middle school.
INTENT: None of the above is rocket science but the process puts forward the necessary steps leading to Intent, the most powerful tool available to a leader. Intent characteristics:
- Lets everyone inside their leader’s head.
- Singular possessive, (My intent is to …….)
- Public information, (everyone knows it, talks about it, builds their plan of action from it). Every leader at every level should have a published statement of intent. Measures of merit are brevity (four short paragraphs) and clarity (no ambiguity).
Paragraph one of Intent is a simple description of the end-state at every leader level. For example, a principal’s intent: Right now, the proficiency level of the students we are sending to middle school is unacceptably low; X % proficient. My intent is for us to improve those proficiency results by at least X% every year until we are consistently sending Y% of our elementary graduates to middle school proficient in every discipline.
Paragraph two: A brief description of the school’s operation. The overall thrust will be to optimize inspired teaching and learning; every day identify students who are not proficient and have a plan to fix it immediately. My intent is that every teacher is empowered to be all they can be every day. Develop a very strong, consistent, useful student-teacher-parent trifecta. Seek out and try out best practices of your profession and discipline. Self-evaluate and continuously ask yourself; could I have done this or that better? Establish your own best practices and institutionalize them. AAR (after-action-review) everything and answer 1) What did I/we do good? 2) What could I/we have done better? 3 How do I/we institutionalize change and improvement? (Good/Better/How AAR every day). Have a mentor and lean on them.
Paragraph three: Explain why we are doing this, why it is important, why it is essential to our survival. We are doing this now because we are an organization that is failing in our mission which eventually leads to too many student drop-outs or to high school graduates who are actually functionally illiterate. During World War II, General Eisenhower, commander of all forces in Europe said, “The U.S. soldier will accomplish anything you ask of them as long as you tell them why it is necessary.”
Paragraph four: Keys to success are acceptance of change and innovation. While this is an overall team effort, each of you, individually, must accept that we must change, innovate and be all we are capable of being. Figuratively speaking, change or die.
Intent bottom line: You hear it, you see it in writing, you see the end state, you participate as part of a team that is bound together in a common cause, you continue to act in the absence of specific daily guidance based on what you understand your leader intends for you to do.
Intent, the most powerful tool available to a leader, answers who, when and why.
A PHASED CAMPAIGN: For any complex operations plan, it must be broken into logical, identifiable phases. It keeps everyone focused on first things first. It keeps some from stumbling ahead without having properly set the stage for future actions. Do three things:
One, give each phase a name; phase 1 is usually Planning.
Two, set an end date for each phase.
Three, and most importantly, define a set of Centers of Gravity for each phase just before that phase timeline begins. A Center of Gravity could be a person, place, thing or circumstance that is CRITICAL to success or could cause it to fail. It is not a long list, perhaps 2 or 3 issues. Publish them and make it a daily function for everyone to be aware and on the look-out for indicators.
CONCLUSIONS: this Framework for Action outlined above will work and must be written down. Why? When important leader thoughts and directions are recorded, the author will be especially cognizant of the verbiage; is it correct, will they “get it”, are we performing tasks in the most logical sequence, does it pass the smell test? If the campaign pieces are published it becomes a readily available reference document.
The alternative to writing the vision, strategy, mission, intent, phasing and the first set of Centers of Gravity is that a principal may put all of this critical information out one time verbally during a teacher assembly. Among those attending will be a few who take copious notes, those who take none, those who are currently burdened with some crisis that has them completely tuned out and perhaps those who hear something early on that they disagree with and just shut down at that point. Verbal can be very imperfect and can be a failed leader tactic.
CEOs:
While daily observing senior leaders of large organizations in the military (32 years) and then 10 years working with senior leaders in civilian organizations, I have come to some conclusions about how successful CEOs operate. First of all, they recognize that they can easily become overwhelmed with the breadth of their responsibilities. The successful ones find the best and brightest directors and delegate the day-today leadership of that element with perhaps a weekly up-date to remain current on the issues. Then successful CEOs can focus the majority of their time and efforts on the Product. Every organization has a Product. As mentioned earlier, the U.S. military’s Product is trained leaders and combat-ready forces. GM’s Product is vehicles. An education organization’s Product is students at proficiency level.
I recently saw an education organization diagram with the Superintendent’s direct reports being the Directors of budget, human resources and communications. The school Principals were at the bottom of the org diagram filtered away from the CEO by two layers of intermediate bosses. Obviously, there was little if any daily focus by the CEO on the Product. That school system is at about 60% proficiency. Loooong ago in my little country one-room K-8 school I learned that 60% is an “F”.
BOTTOM LINE:
Our nation is in an education crisis of major proportions, not getting any better and the only thing our president will say about education is that unions are wonderful and charter schools are not.
I promise you building a Framework for action is not theory; I know it works. One example: In my post-military 10-year consulting career, one of my customers was a top-ten Fortune 500 Corporation operating in 120 countries. After 3 ½ years into a Framework for Action campaign, with no new products, no additional territory and the same employees, their gross revenue had increase tens of billions of dollars annually.
Using the Framework for Action as a tool box does not require a new law or new regulations or a new budget; it’s free.
Note to subscribers: If you agree with this proposal, send a copy to the members of your local School Board. I’m not trying to sell books; I’m trying to sell solutions. If a school system took on this program their leaders might find I advantageous to read VISION TO EXECUTION which amplifies the above Framework for Action tools and introduces additional tools that can be helpful.
Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, FIX THE SYSTEMS, TRANSFORM AMERICA as well as the author of a blog WeThePeopleSpeaking.com