Drafting a Purpose Statement for Professional Learning

Too often, I’m sad to say, professional development is viewed by teachers and administrators as an obligation to be met or an onerous problem to be solved (How can I acquire CEUs for recertification? or What will we do on our mandated “inservice day”?) rather than a compelling purpose to be served through sustained and focused learning and teamwork. The importance of a succinctly and powerfully expressed purpose was underscored for me in a May 2006 Fast Company article on organic farming ("A Farming Fairy Tale" http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/105/food-organic.html). An advocate for this approach observed, “The conversation isn’t really about ‘going organic’—it should be about how we change the world for the better, how we deal with the world as we currently see it.” Charles Fishman, the article’s author, concluded, “Whether we get to 100% organic is not the issue. It’s whether we become a sustainable society.”

I took that as a challenge to describe the purpose of professional learning in similarly compelling language. I wrote: Students’ economic and life prospects are profoundly affected by the quality of teaching they experience. That is particularly true for low income and minority students. Unfortunately, the quality of teaching often varies dramatically even within a single school. High-quality teaching for all students can be realized, however, if teachers routinely collaborate with the intention of continuously improving their teaching so that all students achieve at high levels. A culture of continuous improvement in teaching and learning and the structures that support it requires skillful leadership in schools. Leaders’ deep understanding of high-quality professional learning and teamwork in schools and their ability to explain clearly, precisely, and concisely their attributes is essential in the creation of such schools. Sustained professional learning and teamwork for all teachers and school leaders focused on the core tasks of their daily work is essential in ensuring outstanding teaching in every classroom for all students.

That seemed too long and complex and lacked the “change the world for the better” punch of organic farming’s purpose, so I tried again: Students’ life chances are affected by the quality of teaching they receive, and the quality of teaching across all classroom in a school is determined by the quality of leadership within the school. The sustained quality of teaching and leadership is, in turn, determined by the quality of professional learning and teamwork experienced by teachers and school leaders.

Still too long, so I made a third attempt: At its heart, educators’ professional learning profoundly affects students’ life chances, particularly those young people who are most in need of quality teaching.

I encourage you to write your own purpose statement for professional learning. As a starting point feel free to use phrases or sentences from my statements, and be prepared to write successive drafts. I encourage you to share your results with other readers of this posting.

Plans That Make a Difference

A superintendent I met at a “Leading for Results” workshop I conducted told me with some pride about his district’s strategic plan. To help me understand the elements of the plan, he pulled a decidedly low-tech tool from his bag—a laminated piece of poster board which contained a diagram illustrating its key feature. He propped it on the table top in front of me and explained that the plan’s focal point was “reflective practice”—what the system and its members had to do differently to serve all students rather than on how students had to change to serve the desires of the organization. To that end, the plan empowered teachers to teach less by “cleaning their curricular attics,” emphasized holistic achievement through which all forms of intelligence are developed and recognized, and nurtured professional relationships that focused on teaching and learning, particularly on the design of classroom work experiences for students.

It was easy to imagine the superintendent using this simple diagram in one-on-one conversations or in small group meetings to explain and remind teachers, principals, parents, school board trustees, and other community members of the district’s priorities and the means by which they would be achieved. It was also easy to imagine the incredible focus that district and school leaders could achieve as educators continuously deepen their understanding of these concepts and seek to apply them in their classrooms.

That conversation prompted me to reflect on what I’ve learned about strategic planning from NSDC’s previous efforts extending back to 1986 and from planning I’ve observed in countless schools and school systems. From my experience some of the key attributes of a powerful strategic plan are:

• A stretch goal that appeals to both leaders’ heads and hearts. A strong plan, I believe, motivates organizations and their staff members to stop doing some things that are hard to give up and to initiate at least a few activities that feel scary because they require deep changes in beliefs, understandings, and actions.

My assumption: If nothing of significance changes in professional learning and relationships, leadership, teaching (including the curriculum), and assessment, nothing of significance will change in student learning. Or to put it a bit differently, if we do what we’ve always done we’ll get what we’ve always gotten.

• A coherent theory of action related to a small number of clearly defined and powerful strategies. Because the theory of action explains in simple, direct language—preferably in the form of stories—exactly how a plan’s strategies will lead to the desired result, everyone in the organization (school board trustees, district leaders, school leaders, teachers, etc.) understands them and can describe how the strategies affect their work.

My assumption: Clear, logical thinking demonstrated in clear, logical writing and speaking regarding both ends and means is essential to avoid entering the “zone of wishful thinking” and dissipating energy in minimally effective, fragmented efforts.

• Indicators of progress that truly inform the actions of teachers and school and system leaders. Such data produces meaningful and actionable knowledge (not “true but useless” information, to borrow Jerry Sternin’s phrase). Data will be simple enough to collect and interpret that educators can provide both individualized and immediately useful forms of “just-in-time” assessment and aggregated information across a team, school faculty, school system, and state or province.

My assumption: Data that is easily understood and actionable is a key component in improving individual and organizational performance.

For me, those are the essential elements of a powerful strategic plan—an intellectually and emotionally compelling goal, a clear explanation of how the goal will be achieved through simple declarative statements and stories to illustrate the organization’s theory of action, and understandable and easy to apply “metrics” that guide mid-course corrections and motivate continuous improvement in professional learning, leadership, teaching, and student achievement. I welcome your thoughts on this important subject.

Developing a Point of View on Closing the Achievement Gap

As someone constantly on the lookout for examples of the 80/20 principle, I immediately tuned into an assertion made by Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters in their Education Week “Commentary” (“Closing ‘Dropout Factories’: The Graduation Rate Crisis We Know, What Can Be Done About It,” July 12, 2006) that just 15 percent of American high schools produce close to half of this nation’s dropouts (we might call this the 50/15 principle). They also claimed that “poverty is the fundamental driver of low graduation rates” with a near perfect correlation between it and schools’ tendency to loose students between the 9th and 12th grade. Research the authors have conducted indicates that half of one large school district’s dropouts could be predicted in the 6th grade through just four variables: attendance, behavior, and course failure in math and English. Among the concrete solutions Balfanz and Legters offer is “greater investment in research, development, and invention . . ., particularly in the areas of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.”

I would add to the researchers’ list of solutions the development of an unshakable belief on the part of system leaders regarding the capacity of all (or virtually all) students to learn at high levels. That thought was underscored when I met this summer with a group of 15-20 rural and small system superintendents and other district administrators who were discussing in a very open and honest way whether schools can be expected to educate all students to the level of their state’s rigorous academic standards.

Speaking in the context of NCLB, a superintendent in the group said that a goal that put higher levels of achievement many years out in the future was unacceptable to him; he believed his school system could do much better job of educating all its students right now and that it was his job to ensure that it happened. Another superintendent took exception with that view, a position that probably took some courage to express openly in such a public setting. He said, in effect, that based on his experience poverty trumped the influence of schools in determining student achievement. The two superintendents talked back and forth for a few minutes, with others joining the conversation from time to time.

After the session the doubting superintendent followed me down the hall, clearly wanting to continue this discussion and to further explore my views. We stopped to talk, and another participant who had not spoken in the larger group joined us. It was clear to me that both superintendents were looking for an honest, respectful, and thoughtful conversation about schools’ responsibilities and capacities to close the achievement gap given the existence of serious social problems such as poverty and racism.

I, too, have struggled to develop a coherent point of view on this critically important subject, and the following essay I prepared for the Fall 2006 issue of the JSD reveals how I have tried to clarify my own thinking in this area. (The published “Overview” will be somewhat briefer due to space restrictions.) I hope that it is useful to you and to others in stimulating serious and sustained dialogue regarding this issue.

“Create Your Point of View Regarding Schools’ Capacity to Close the Achievement Gap”To be honest, I feel angry that our society asks teachers to take on a disproportionate share of the responsibility for ameliorating the profound negative consequences of poverty, racism, and inadequate health care for poor and minority children. I am angry that the public schools that serve our most challenged students are grossly underfunded. And I am angry at political leaders who willfully ignore the damage done to children by these social problems or who act in self-serving ways that intensify the problems.At the same time, I know that each day hundreds of thousands of teachers make a positive difference in the lives of young people who are challenged by forces far beyond their control. These teachers know first hand the grinding circumstances that some children face and yet persist day after day in the demanding task of teaching all student to high standards.This issue of the JSD challenges me to reconcile these perspectives by determining my point of view regarding the capacity of schools to close the achievement gap. Here’s the result of my effort.

Competent, firm leadership by knowledgeable, skillful, and committed principals and teacher leaders is essential in creating schools in which all students achieve at higher levels. While such leadership cannot be abdicated by principals, in high-performing schools it is distributed broadly within the school community.

Most human beings—educators included—underestimate their ability to affect positive change. Skillful leadership on the part of principals and teachers can create a sense of expanded possibility and higher expectations for everyone in the school community—teachers, principals, students, and family members. This increased sense of efficacy leads to more ambitious goals, improved teaching, and the development of school programs that address equity issues.Teachers’ deep understanding of the content they teach matters. So, too, does their knowledge of instructional practices that produce high levels of learning for a diverse student population.

Teachers’ attitudes toward their students affects motivation and learning. Positive attitudes are revealed in the high expectations teachers hold for students and for one another, in the genuine respect they display for students and their families, and in the enthusiasm and sense of possibility they bring to their work each day.

The quality of relationships teachers have with one another affects whether professional learning is put into practice and whether other school improvement resources are wisely used. Trust among teachers as revealed in candid conversation about traditionally “undiscussables” such as race and social privilege is a critically important feature of high-performing schools that serve poor and minority students.

All the factors mentioned above can be affected through persistent, deliberate effort. Closing the achievement gap, as this issue of the JSD makes clear, requires steadiness of purpose in the face of what at times may feel like insurmountable challenges. It also requires professional learning and teamwork that has its heart sustained and candid conversations within the school community about learning, teaching, relationships, expectations, race, and poverty.While the exercise of preparing this “Overview” helped me clarify my views, it is your perspective as school and system leaders that will ultimately influence the life chances of poor and minority students. I hope that you use the articles found in these pages to help you articulate your point of view regarding the responsibilities and capacities of schools to educate all students to high standards. It is a critically important task that no one—article authors, publication editors, or education associations—can do for you.