The following is a synopsis of an article found in The Atlantic (July/August 2011) titled, The World’s SchoolMaster.  As we visit districts in Canada and the US, many of us are hearing talk around the PISA.  This synopsis may help in your understanding of this test and its implications.  Note, the following observations are pulled directly from the text of the article.

In 1996, Schleicher (the world’s schoolmaster – Duncan loves this guy and consults with him regularly) joined the OECD  (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and designed the PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment) to move the organization from measuring inputs, like spending on schools, to outputs, how much kids learn.  The test measures beyond students’ retention of facts.  It measures their readiness for knowledge worker jobs and their ability to think critically and solve real world problems.  To remain economically competitive we need to measure what students actually know and from there, make decisions.

Spring of 2000, all 30 OECD members and two other countries had a sampling of their 15 year old’s take the PISA.  The results caused uproar.  The US ranked somewhere above Greece and below Canada, a middling performance we’ve repeated every round since.  The Germans ranked even lower than us.

US response: it’s our immigrants.  Not so, our native-born perform just as unimpressively as our immigrants.  Apparently a country’s wealth does not predict success.  Poverty is destiny in America where as in Canada and Finland, their poor perform much better than our poor.  One big beef was that the first PISA exam only took a sampling of approximately 5000 US students, not enough of a representative sampling to really matter.  Samplings are much bigger now, but I don’t have the exact numbers of US students tested most recently.

So what do high performing districts do, according to Schleicher’s research?

1.    Teacher training schools are much more rigorous and selective
2.    They put developing high quality principals and teachers above efforts like reducing class size or equipping sports teams
3.    And once they have these well-trained professionals in place, they found ways to hold the teachers accountable for results while allowing creativity in their methods
4.    Notably, they devoted equal or more resources to the schools with the poorest kids

Today, 70 countries collectively give PISA to representative samples of more than 500,000 15 year olds every three years.  A longitudinal study of 30,000 Canadian students recently found PISA scores to be more accurate than report card grades in predicting which kids will go to college.  In 2010, Shanghai, participated in the PISA.  They trounced every single country.  Schleicher believes this is due to a policy of rotating the best teachers into the region’s worst performing schools, the opposite of what tends to happen in the US.

Oregon, Japan and Germany now include PISA questions on their own standardized tests.  Steven Paine, former superintendent of West Virginia, redesigned his state’s curriculum to make it more demanding, based in part on PISA findings stating, “We had set the bar too low.”

In the end culture is created by what we do.  Schleicher has since developed a pilot test for schools in the US to compare their individual school scores to those in the world.  Thanks for reading.  C

I recently purchased Harvard Business Review’s Guide To… series, which are basically a compilation of articles from their magazine series under headings such as Getting the Right Work Done; Persuasive Presentations; Project Management; Productive Meetings, etc.

I started with the Guide to Getting the Right Work Done.  There were half a dozen articles dedicated to this topic and the main piece of advice I noted was to first define success.  What would make this year successful for you?  Many of the articles talked about establishing rituals.  One ritual is to post, where visible, your annual goals and projects and then break those goals down into doable chunks or benchmarks by quarter.  Then, whatever “important work” you do on a daily basis must stick to those goals and projects.  I would add that developing corresponding strategies to achieve those goals is worth recording visibly.  In other words, write down the: who, what, where, when and how those goals will be achieved and put them on a wall where you can’t avoid them.

My husband recently purchased white board paint from Ideapaint Home.  I intend to paint one entire wall in my office so that I can write down my annual, quarterly and daily goals in large creative lettering so that every time I look up from my email, I am reminded of the important work I am avoiding and therefore not doing because I am allowing myself to engage in easy work.

Ultimately the big idea is to design a method that systematically focuses you on activities that have the most long-term leverage.  What ever we do, we must strive to always move toward clearly articulated goals and benchmarks.  In order to stay focused on goals and projects, this particular HBR Guide recommends establishing daily rituals.  For example, to address and honor Body, Emotion, Mind and Spirit, this is what Carol’s daily schedule might look like if she is in the office.  But even while on the road or attending meetings in the office, a similar routine can be established.  Note, I answer email and phone messages twice a day.

5:30 – Coffee

6:00 to 7:00 – Yoga

7:00 to 9:00 – Breakfast, Walk Dog and Prepare for Work

9:00 to 10:30 – Attend to the first of three important daily tasks

10:30 to 11:00 – Attend to email and phone messages (snack)

11:00 to 12:30 – Attend to the second of three important daily tasks

12:30 to 1:30 – Lunch out of the office with a walk

1:30 to 2:30 – Attend to the second or now the third important daily task

2:30 to 3:00 – Attend to email and phone messages (snack)

3:00 to 4:00 – Attend to third important daily task

4:00 to 4:30 – Break

4:30 to 5:30 – Attend to third important daily task

5:30 to 6:00 – Review work done on this day and design priorities and record tasks for the following day

6:00 to 9:00 – Family, reading, blogging

9:00 to 5:00 – Glorious sleep (we absolutely need 8 hours)

Other articles in this Guide talk about creating formal systems and yet an informal culture through delegation and development of employees.  Often email and meetings that are pointless and time wasters distract us from our priorities.  Here are some pointers:

On Multi-tasking: Don’t do it!  Single task instead by really listening during meetings and conversations so that you can pick up the nuances, think about what you are hearing, access creativity, and really connect with people.  When you are with your peers, be present.  Put your phone and computers away and ask that others to do the same.  We tend to think that because we are busy with our email, we are important and conducting valuable work when in fact we are likely missing an excellent opportunity to connect with our peers, define goals, and strategize for results.  What a missed opportunity if half our brain is on one conversation and the other half is trying to focus on an email conversation. The fact is we don’t really do either conversation justice.

On Jumping Monkeys: There was a pretty famous article written in the early 70s by William Oncken, Jr., and Donald L. Wass that discussed the dilemma of employees going to their respective supervisors to get their respective monkeys off their backs.  The “monkey” is a task or challenge that the employee doesn’t quite know how to handle and therefore, if the supervisor will take the monkey, the subordinate will happily allow the monkey to jump from their back to their supervisor’s.  Covey writes a commentary on this article about empowering employees to deal with their monkeys through delegation.  Through development and subsequent delegation of and to employees, we enable them to act independently of us and thereby empower employees to act.  Another methodology is for the supervisor to ask three questions before taking on a monkey: Am I the right person? Is this the right time to deal with this monkey? Do I have all the information to take this monkey?  If you answer no to any of these questions, then don’t take ownership of the monkey.

One article points to supervisors’ natural inclination to take on all the monkeys because they subconsciously want to take credit and maintain a position of power.

In the end this Guide challenges us to adopt new behaviors.  I personally bristle at the idea of having such clear rituals established where I know exactly what I’m doing at any time of the day.  Where’s the creativity in that?  But then again, I wonder, if for experiment sake, what would happen if I were to be disciplined for one year?  I’m nearly half a century old; surely I can try this idea out for a year.  What would happen if I actually made time to be creative?   According to research, I’d have a much better chance of creativity actually happening.  And so it begins.  I will articulate specific time for specific activities each day using my Action Book and see how it goes.

The OECD recently published a paper titled, Building a High Quality Teaching Profession.  Lessons From Around the World (OECD, 2011).  In that paper the authors relate, “In many high-performing education systems teachers do not only have a central role to play in improving educational outcomes, they are also at the centre of the improvement efforts themselves.  In these systems it is not that top-down reforms are ordering teachers to change, but the teachers embrace and lead reform, taking responsibility as professionals.”

“Teachers embrace and lead reform, taking responsibility as professionals”.  This is the operative phrase, and all the more reason for districts to act on the model standards that will advance the profession recently designed and codified by the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium.  The Consortium was founded in 2008 by a group of educators who got together to examine current research and thinking about the critical leadership roles that teachers play in contributing to student and school success.  Their standards help us understand what constitutes the knowledge, skills and competencies that teachers need to assume leadership roles in their organizations.  And by doing so, we now have a rubric by which to create corresponding professional development to nurture teacher leaders in our organizations.

If you have paid positions in your organization such as resource providers, instructional specialists, curriculum specialists, classroom supporters, learning facilitators, mentors, school team leaders, and data coaches, these standards can be used to guide the preparation of these educators to lead effectively.  Due to economic constraints, in many cases I am coming across districts who are having to let these paid expert teachers and their positions go.  I have suggested to many of these districts that there are plenty of educators who would jump at the chance to assume these roles for little or no money because they are actively seeking opportunities to participate in decision making at the school and district level.  According to research stated in June’s JSD article titled, Model Standards Advance the Profession, often Gen Y teachers are interested in participating in a positive and supportive school culture that fosters teamwork and effective communication.  And according the OECD if we are going to attract a new generation of teachers that stay in the profession as their elder peers leave in droves, we will absolutely need to recognize the Gen Y’s desire to work in a profession where their skills and talents are recognized and revered if we want to keep them.

These newbies are interested in professional opportunities that include collaboration and technology.  They are interested in receiving and giving in-depth feedback with their peers and school administrators.  They are interested in making time for regular collaboration.  And for those districts that accepted RTTT money or other and are now deeply entrenched in figuring out how to evaluate and compensate educators for their performance, acquiring new skills and assuming new roles and responsibilities is all part of what motivates educators to extend their duties beyond their regular work as classroom teachers.

This week I will break down each one of the Domains (there are seven) to discuss how we might design district and or school site professional development to provide a pathway for our folks with fire in their bellies to lead.  In the mean time if you want to access the standards yourself, you will eventually find all the standards explained in detail online at www.teacherleaderstandards.org.  As of now, their site is under development.  In the mean time I will take each standard and discuss possible ways to implement and support the standards at your organization.

• Domain I: Fostering a collaborative culture to support educator development and student learning.
• Domain II: Accessing and using research to improve practice and student achievement.
• Domain III: Promoting professional learning for continuous improvement.
• Domain IV: Facilitating improvements in instruction and student learning.
• Domain V: Using assessments and data for school and district improvement.
• Domain VI: Improving outreach and collaboration with families and community.
• Domain VII.  Advocating for student learning and the profession.

Stay tuned as I demystify each Domain and relate how the consortium recommends considerations and strategies for policies and practices that support implementation of the standards in your learning organization.  Thanks for reading.  C