By Eric Hargis, Executive Director of the National PTA

Like many Americans, I have relocated several times in order to move ahead in my career. As a California native, I certainly expected things to be different moving to New York City, to Atlanta and to Washington, DC. From weather to clothing styles and customs, things are not the same from one state to the next. But one thing that must be the same regardless of which state you live in is a quality education for our children.

As a parent, the Common Core State Standards provide my wife and me with a clear understanding of what my children are expected to learn at each grade level, K through 12, regardless of what state the job takes our family (with the exception of a notable few). That the Standards are evidence-based and developed in collaboration with teachers, school administrators and experts gives me confidence that my kids will graduate fully prepared for college.

Unfortunately, like so many other issues, the Common Core State Standards are surrounded by myths and are being misrepresented for supposed political gain; the incredible value that the Standards provide to parents wanting to be fully engaged in their children's education makes this all the more dangerous and could represent a huge loss to our education system in America.

Bashing anything done by the Federal Government, always a popular sport in America, has now reached Olympic class status, and there are those claiming that the Standards are a government take-over of education and call them "Common Core National Standards." This isn't even a Pinocchio stretch of the truth, but an out and out lie. The truth is, states are driving this process and have been involved at every level —  from the drafting and development stages through revisions and the final product.

In fact, states voluntarily adopted the Standards. States can even go above the content of the Standards by 15% to cover content that they feel is important but not currently a part of the Standards. Importantly, states and school districts still have autonomy in decisions made on how to teach the Standards in the classroom.

At the same time, as a parent, I will be assured quality and consistency in my children's education regardless of where we live. While most all members of state and district education boards pursue only the highest of academic standards, one need only watch the television talk shows to hear what a few believe should be taught as science and history. Let's keep them on the talk shows and out of our classrooms!

As we all know too well, business in Washington and in many states is driven by partisan politics. Despite the proven effectiveness of the Common Core State Standards, they have become an easy target for a bickering Congress, and divided state and local leaders. The American people are tired of the political games that are hurting our children. We want our government leaders to come together to ensure that our children receive a better education than we did. Those states that have still not adopted the standards for purely political reasons are doing their state's students an incredible disservice.

Empowering parents to be involved in their child's education is the cornerstone of what we do at PTA. In this difficult economy, many parents are focused on getting food on the table, finding a job, or simply making it through one more day. The PTA works to reach every parent, providing them with tools and resources to be involved in their child's education at every level. In our work on Common Core we have seen what a parent armed with information can do: One parent saved her school district $50,000, money that was to be used to buy new curriculum — curriculum that, at that time, would not have been aligned to the new Standards. These savings are a teacher's job for a year, new books for the library, or an investment in technology to improve learning. Family engagement is crucial for Common Core and it is because of examples like these that we know we are on the right track toward improving the education system in our country.

Common Core is the first effort of this kind in the education system and all schools will be better served during this process of aligning standards. We have seen what states can do when they work together. They share resources and best practices, enabling everyone to come out ahead. When schools are working, our children succeed. That is every parent's ultimate goal and one that we can realize with the Common Core State Standards.

Views expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of the Learning First Alliance or any of its members.

Posted by Learning First Alliance at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By Marla Ucelli-Kashyap, Assistant to the President for Educational Issues, American Federation of Teachers

There's growing evidence many American public school teachers, parents and students seem to agree with T.S. Eliot's poetic assertion that April is the cruelest month. April is the month each year when millions of students — and their teachers and families — experience standardized testing. And the current generation of large-scale assessments, administered under the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, are too often low-quality and high-stakes at considerable cost to taxpayers. More importantly, they're not having the desired effect on student and school outcomes. Instead, several recent studies show test-based rewards and sanctions are having the opposite effect and slowing the nation's progress in closing the achievement gap.

During testing season 2012 there has been a growing — and quite diverse — chorus of concern and apprehension about what has become a national fixation on testing. A large group of Texas school boards (some 360 as of late April) passed a resolution decrying the negative impact of high stakes testing. FairTest joined forces with the Advancement Project, the Asian American and NAACP Legal Defense Funds and several other national and local educational, faith-based and advocacy organizations, along with prominent citizens, in a resolution drawing on the Texas model. The resolution, which has received significant attention nationally, states the over-emphasis on testing "has caused considerable collateral damage in too many schools, including narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing love of learning, pushing students out of schools, driving effective teachers out of the profession, and undermining school climate."

At the American Federation of Teachers, we agree things have to change. Last week, our Executive Council passed a resolution whose title sums up its intent: "Testing Should Inform, Not Impede, Teaching and Learning." The resolution, which calls for America's public school accountability system to be "re-examined and re-built," will be recommended to the full convention of AFT delegates meeting in Detroit in July. It commits AFT to working with all who share our commitment to restoring balance to public education by prioritizing high-quality instruction informed by appropriate and useful assessments. In other words, helping to design the alternative.

A number of AFT state and local affiliates are taking immediate stands on the topic. Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), summed up his members' vision of effective assessment: "Students and teachers deserve tests that are fair, valid and reliable, and are appropriate measures of what is happening in classrooms in every corner of the state." Announcing NYSUT's passage at its April convention of a resolution that calls for an overhaul of the state's current testing system because of harm to students and hindrance to learning, Iannuzzi noted, "Enough is enough."

The problem lies neither with the existence of testing nor the idea of accountability. Rather, it's the kind of tests our system prioritizes, the scale at which they are used, and the narrow definition of accountability dictated by current public policy. The most useful tests for enhancing student learning and academic success are diagnostic assessments used to ascertain each student's strengths and weaknesses, and adjust curricula and instruction to meet student needs; and formative, or classroom-based, assessments that are directly connected to instruction — allowing for immediate feedback and instructional adaptation. In other words, tests that help teachers teach and students learn.

That's what systems with top education results internationally do. They focus much more on integrating testing with teaching and learning at the local level, on measuring deeper subject matter knowledge and the skills to use it rather than on large-scale, high-stakes standardized testing of all students.

Further, systems with the strongest educational results, from Ontario to Japan, are characterized by a strong sense of shared accountability for learning where teachers, families, students, school administrators and government all have a role to play. In the U.S., too many self-appointed "reformers" use international test score comparisons to denigrate American schools, but advocate for testing and accountability practices antithetical to the successful strategies employed in high-achieving countries.

There is much to do to fix broken public school accountability, but the nation's students need us to make the collective effort. For those committed (as we are) to the implementation of Common Core State Standards, one early, concrete step is to ensure the voices of teachers are included in the assessment development work currently underway with the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced consortia.

Views expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of the Learning First Alliance or any of its members.

Posted by Learning First Alliance at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By Anne L. Bryant, Executive Director of the National School Boards Association

We've all seen the fast-growth of online learning in the K-12 public education sector, and the many new opportunities emerging for students and schools. But with all this rapid growth, are too many students getting lost in cyber space?

Quite possibly, yes. That's the conclusion of a new report by the National School Board Association's Center for Public Education, "Searching for the Reality of Virtual Schools," which looked at what little data exists on student outcomes, from a single online class to full-time virtual schooling.

NSBA, with its Technology Leadership Network (TLN), has been a leader in educational technology for more than 20 years, and through our annual site visits and conferences we've seen many success stories in online learning. Public schools have long used what was once termed "distance" or "satellite learning," where students could watch lessons remotely. And the internet gives students unlimited opportunities — for instance, students in rural areas can take an Advanced Placement or a foreign language course that is not offered at their local school, or a struggling student can take a credit recovery class. Online tutoring guru Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, thrilled the more than 7,000 attendees of NSBA's Annual Conference last month showing how his online tutorials have become a tremendous tool for classrooms and students around the world.

The field of full-time online learning, though, is emerging as a much different story. There are some 250,000 students now enrolled in full-time virtual schools, an increase of 50,000 in one year and four times the number it was a decade ago.

The rate at which state legislatures have approved these institutions is remarkable. What's more remarkable, perhaps, is that the Center found these schools operate with few accountability measures, and states and districts are paying online providers from 70 to 100 percent of the costs of educating students in traditional schools, even though their actual costs should be much lower.

All of this has taken place with no research to back it up — in fact, what little research and anecdotal evidence exists on full-time virtual learning shows alarmingly low graduation rates, course completion and test scores.

Take Ohio, which has the largest number of students enrolled in full-time virtual schools, more than 31,000 in the 2010-11 school year. Of the state's 27 virtual schools, only three were rated "effective" or "excellent" on the state's accountability scale in 2010, with the two largest (which together enroll more than half of those students) rated as "continuous improvement." And, according to the Ohio Department of Education, their on-time graduation rates were well under 50 percent. A Stanford University study of Pennsylvania charter schools found that its eight virtual charters performed significantly worse in reading and math than their traditional school counterparts.

And Michigan just passed a law allowing the creation of 15 new virtual charter schools. The schools would get the same per-pupil funding as traditional schools, but the only reporting requirements are for costs to operate, not academic progress.

Meanwhile, the for-profit online companies are racking in huge profits primarily from taxpayer dollars. K12 Inc., the nation's largest provider, expects revenues this year of about $700 million, up from $522 million last year, according to the Washington Post, and is planning to expand its operations to preschool.

These companies are lobbying heavily for legislators to fund their products, and it's not hard to find conflicts of interest. For instance, I recently wrote in the Huffington Post about a proposal by John E. Chubb, the head of an online investment firm with significant investments in K-12 and postsecondary online learning, to give every family the option of a government-funded virtual education for their children (with the government paying the same per-pupil funding to virtual providers as traditional schools).

We must also consider that a level of maturity and self-discipline is required for students to succeed in a full-time virtual school — not to mention the desire for actual interaction with peers and teachers.

That's not to say all is wrong with virtual schools: The Center found research that showed some elementary students performed fairly well, possibly because their parents were more involved in their education. The TLN highlighted successful virtual schools during its 2012 site visit to the Clark County School District in Las Vegas and its 2010 visit to the Jeffco Public Schools in Colorado.

The Center's report has some important recommendations for educators and lawmakers:

"Policymakers and school leaders will need to make smart choices so that online learning adds value to the quality of instruction and students have the support they need to be successful," the authors write. "States will need to establish straightforward funding policies based on a clearer understanding of true costs, how the money is distributed, and the impact on local school districts. There must be transparency in the administration of online learning and clear accountability for student results."

Until we take a hard look at the potential and peril of virtual schools, lawmakers must tread much more cautiously.

Views expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of the Learning First Alliance or any of its members.

Posted by Learning First Alliance at 6:40 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Learning the art of preparing effective teachers never ends for the teacher education community. Each day, we discover new ways to review, modify and apply the best methods that will ultimately address the learning needs of all students. But what are the core ideals and characteristics that serve as the foundation beneath this evolving knowledge? I recently asked Alison Hilsabeck, who leads a successful program at National Louis University, to answer the question, "What do we know about teaching teachers?" Her insightful response follows.

-Sharon P. Robinson, Ed.D., President and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)

The educational research community has devoted significant energies toward the goal of codifying the research on learning and teaching, and on translating that research into effective practice. Those efforts continue a legacy of scholarly practice extending back to Plato and Aristotle. Recently, there have also been a number of substantial reports (e.g. the National Research Council's Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education's Transforming Teacher Education through Clinical Practice: A National Strategy to Prepare Effective Teachers) that have informed the national dialogue about the mechanics and organizational arrangements of educating teachers. It would be presumptuous of me to even begin to summarize all of this work.

Instead, I write from the perspective of an education school dean, working to maintain a 126-year-old institutional mission to prepare teachers who actually know what to do on their first day as the teacher-of-record. At National Louis University (NLU), we are focusing much of our work on the preparation of effective and resilient teachers for low-performing schools. This has challenged us to rethink assumptions and build stronger and deeper field partnerships. Our experience suggests the importance of some key factors with which many educators would agree. While implementing these factors can be challenging, here is a bit about what we know it takes to teach teachers effectively:

• Teacher preparation has to find its center in learning and psychological development, and the emerging research in those areas. That might seem obvious, but research advances in these arenas are moving at the speed of a runaway train. Rather than focus on teaching generic strategies, we should concentrate on how to navigate the differences among learners and contexts, and how to develop high quality relationships with students while helping them to grow academically.

• We need to ensure that teacher candidates have a deep knowledge of the disciplines they will go on to teach, including from the perspective of how children interact with and learn those disciplines. As Deborah Ball and others have shown us, the latter caveat increases the complexity of this effort significantly.

• The development of effective teaching skills has to happen through real and extensive practice. We know that teaching practices and tools only become nuanced and adaptive when learned in real-life settings, under the auspices of outstanding coaches and mentors. However, it can be hard work to ensure those practices scale up. At NLU, for example, it has taken a decade-long partnership with the Academy for Urban School Leadership to develop and refine an intensive residency model and scale it to prepare 180 or more teachers a year.

• For higher education to be effective in teacher preparation, it must erase any boundaries between university classrooms and conditions of practice in PK-12 schools. The conditions of promotion and tenure in higher education are not well matched to the rhythms and realities of school districts. As is the case in many other institutions, NLU's faculty have taken on new responsibilities for building and maintaining strong school partnerships — responsibilities some may never have anticipated when they joined the profession but that are critical to the work we do.

• Teacher preparation does not stop at the point of initial certification. This is evident, but in most parts of the country there is little support at the state or regional level for creating effective, sustainable PK-12-higher education partnerships. We need policy makers to facilitate a systemic approach to partnering PK-12 schools with higher education institutions to truly bring about more effective teacher preparation and induction.  

Alison Hilsabeck, Ph.D., is dean of the National College of Education at National Louis University in Chicago, Illinois.

Views expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of the Learning First Alliance or any of its members.

Posted by Learning First Alliance at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By Daniel A. Domenech, Executive Director of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA)

Each year, as Congress puts together the appropriations bills that comprise the total federal budget, AASA advocates for an increased investment in education, currently with a priority for funding for federal flagship formula programs like Title I and IDEA. In recent years, the focus has been on protecting level funding, in light of unprecedented fiscal hardship and, more recently, budget caps.

For the current fiscal year, however, yet more cuts threaten all federal programs with nearly 9 percent reductions in funds, sequestration: automatic, across-the-board cuts that will come in January 2013.

You'll recall that, last summer, as part of the agreement to raise the debt ceiling, the Budget Control Act (BCA) established a joint committee tasked with identifying $1.5 trillion in federal savings over ten years. When Congress' so-called SuperCommittee failed to complete this task, they triggered sequestration. The cuts become a reality in January 2013.

While there are some exceptions to the programs that will be impacted by sequestration, it is, by and large, a measure that will make blind cuts, regardless of program effectiveness, demand or return on investment. (Sequestration attempts to address the deficit issue through spending cuts alone, whereas the SuperCommittee discussions included other measures, including increased revenues, mandatory program reform, and spending cuts.)

Recent reports by the Congressional Research Service indicate that the cuts of sequestration would put funding at pre-2004 levels. A return to FY2011 funding levels wouldn't occur until 2018. While the work of the SuperCommittee would come with cuts as well, it is anticipated those cuts wouldn't be as drastic because the identified savings would be a combination of cuts, revenues, and restructuring.

We have reached sequestration, because Congress failed to act. Sequestration was designed as a self-imposed consequence if the SuperCommittee did not complete its task. The Budget Control Act was authored and adopted by Congress. Congress is not the victim of sequestration.

Reach out to your Congressional delegation and tell them how damaging the cuts of sequestration will be to your district and community. Let them know that any efforts to exempt portions of the budget (such as defense spending) from the sequester simply compound the cuts for the remaining parts of the budget. Urge them to pick up the work of the SuperCommittee and identify a careful, reasoned approach to identifying the savings.

Sequestration and Education:

• AASA's latest economic impact study Weathering the Storm: How the Economic Recession Continues to Impact Schools includes a section on sequestration. When superintendents were asked to weigh in on the impact of the cuts on schools, they reported little capacity to absorb the cuts: 'When asked if their state or local budget had the capacity to soften the impact of federal cuts (like those of sequestration), nearly all replied 'no' (79.4 percent for state capacity and 83.9 percent for local capacity). You can read a full excerpt of the sequestration section on the AASA Leading Edge Blog.

• Sequestration Resources: Also on the AASA blog, you can find a link to sequestration resources, including AASA's Sequestration Toolkit, talking points, podcasts and more.

Views expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of the Learning First Alliance or any of its members.

Posted by Learning First Alliance at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

by Paul Dunford, independent consultant for the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE)

As we prepare for the Common Core State Standards to be implemented in states across the country, the information from literature and developers urges us to prepare for a "different kind of classroom."

Descriptions of this next generation of classroom paint pictures of places where self-directed learning, student choice, and engagement built around enduring understanding are paramount. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is currently being applied to both the development and assessment of Common Core State Standards to measure student achievement. UDL, with origins in the neurosciences, prescribes flexible approaches to learning that are adjusted to meet the individual needs of students.

For those of us long committed to middle level education it appears our time has come. The alignment between middle grades classroom practices and the principles guiding curriculum development and assessment are closer than ever before. The Association for Middle Level Education position paper, This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents (TWB) has always guided our middle level practitioners to "make informed decisions about the kinds of learning experiences that young adolescents need." The major goals of middle level education as defined in TWB and the principles of UDL are well aligned. When TWB and UDL are naturally woven together they will further guide the middle grades classroom practices by combining our vast experience and research on what is best for all students ages 10-15 with scientifically based neuroscience research and suggested classroom practices that support the principles of UDL.

Throughout the collective work of AMLE, key teaching and learning concepts emerge. This is the time for middle grades educators to demonstrate a deep understanding of the needs of middle level learners and how those needs are supported with UDL principles and practices. The chart below presents just a few of the connections between concepts from the Association for Middle Level Education and the principles of UDL.

In preparation for the full implementation of Common Core State Standards, I urge everyone who professes a belief in meeting the unique needs of young adolescents to continue to build on this table as they practice the concepts and principles of TWB and UDL. Ensuring a clear connection of these concepts and principles in our middle grades classrooms will prove invaluable to increasing our students' achievement as we move to fully implement the Common Core State Standards and the assessments as they are developed.

Views expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of the Learning First Alliance or any of its members.

Posted by Learning First Alliance at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By Dan Domenech, Executive Director of the American Association of School Administrators 

Nothing is simple in the process of strengthening our national approach to public education.  These ten steps, however, provide a framework for invigorating our schools and creating an environment for positive change.

1. Provide regulatory relief from No Child Left Behind.

The waiver process that the administration has implemented is no more than an exchange of old regulations for new ones. It replaces the depleted stimulus dollars with regulatory relief as the means to get states and districts to implement the administration's policy. We certainly support accountability and the continued disaggregation of data for sub-groups of students, one of the few positive contributions of NCLB. We strongly support improving the lowest achieving schools, but at the same time we believe we must acknowledge the accomplishments of the vast majority of schools in America.

2. Allocate funds via formulas based on percentage of poverty.

We continue to object to the use of ESEA dollars for competitive grants. The intent of ESEA is to level the playing field relative to poverty. Since the beginning of the current recession, school systems have seen dramatic increases in the number of children eligible for free and reduced lunches. All eligible children should benefit from all available funds, not just those in "winner" states and districts.

3. Set goals, hold districts accountable for them, but allow the localities the freedom to determine how to implement them.

We are concerned about the growing intrusion of the federal government into state and local education issues. Any reduction in federal funds should be accompanied by a similar reduction in federal mandates. School systems should not be required to spend local and state funds to implement federal mandates.

Accountability for effectiveness is a state and local responsibility, as are compensation decisions. The required use of the very standardized tests that have been labeled as not valid and reliable by the administration in order to evaluate teachers and principals is creating chaos in states and school systems throughout the country.

Yes, student performance must be a key factor in the evaluation of teachers and administrators, but it must be left up to the states and localities to determine how, not forced upon them as a requirement for obtaining competitive federal dollars.

4. Fully fund and reauthorize the Rural Education Achievement Program Reauthorization Act (REAP) to maintain direct-to-district funding.

AASA played a pivotal role in the original adoption of this program. The needs of our rural schools are often overlooked and, due to a lack of capacity and staffing, they tend to fair poorly in a competitive grant environment. REAP is a dedicated source of funds that they sorely need.

5.  Continue to support the Common Core and state-developed standards.

In a globally competitive world we cannot go against countries that have a set of national standards while we have a set of fifty standards. It is also difficult to assess our progress as a nation with fifty sets of tests whose results do not align well with the closest instrument we have to a national test, the National Assessment for Educational Progress.

6.  Separate assessment for purposes of accountability from assessment for the purpose of informing instruction.

A random sample of the nation, a la NAEP, would do for purposes of accountability with reduced costs and less intrusion on instruction and the number of children and subjects tested.

7. State interventions should concentrate on building capacity and focus on a broad range of evidence and practice- based turn-around models.

Current requirements take judgment out of the hands of local administrators and force them to engage in the whole-scale removal of teachers and principals. We must stop the negative rhetoric that blankets all public schools and focus on the schools that need fixing. In that regard

8. Provide full funding of IDEA

AASA continues to advocate for full funding at the forty percent of the national average per-pupil expenditure and for allowing school districts to reduce local effort by up to one hundred percent of federal funding decreases.

9. Provide federal funding to address non-school barriers to student achievement

Wrap around programs continue to be essential to the education of the total child, and we support high quality childcare programs and tax incentives for employers to provide support for child care and after-school care. The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) should be continued and schools should be permitted to claim reimbursement from Medicaid.

10. The funding cap for E-Rate should be raised to meet demand.

We oppose vouchers and federal funding for non-public schools.

We will continue to be strong advocates on behalf of our public schools and work with both houses of Congress. We like much of what is contained in the reauthorization bills that have emerged in the House and Senate and hope that much of it will remain when ESEA is reauthorized.

School leaders, tell us what you think by commenting below. How would these tenets change education for children in your district?

Views expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of the Learning First Alliance or any of its members.

Posted by Learning First Alliance at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By Rich Bagin, APR, Executive Director of the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA)

We often say that our schools deal with two of our community's two most precious elements: its children and its money.

And in approximately 80% of school districts throughout America, it is now narrowed down just to money as many taxpayers forget about their obligation to provide adequate funding for schools when they do not have children attending their local schools. Add the dilemma of today's slow recovering economy, high unemployment rates, and the criticism being leveled at "government" employees, and you step right into the sticky situations that today's school leaders are experiencing.

Communicating the need for complex budget issues has never been easy, but the current climate raises the bar in building better understanding and support of the budget issues.

Once again school leaders must be proactive in their communication efforts. This is no time to let your critics to take the initiative to seize public opinion and fill social media with mis-information and half-truths while you spend most of your effort reacting to their false hoods about your budget.

One of my favorite examples is the story about a rumor that circulated saying that the current superintendent was recently given an outrageous car allowance. Critics in the community gave the story great attention through email and blogs. They used it as a touchstone of the type of waste that runs rampant in this school district. In fact, the school district's own community budget survey found the car allowance as the top area to cut from the budget. The sad fact was that the superintendent in this district did not have a car allowance. There was nothing to cut, even though the rumor carried weight with hundreds of vocal critics throughout that system.

In some respects, this is one school crisis that everyone understands. All of your constituents have been hit in some way by the economy — some worse than others. But everyone is affected. Our connection to schools can become an opportunity to prove that "we're all in this together" and to show how we need one another to protect our true bottom line — the education of all students.

Consider the following strategies and tactics to build more support for your school budgets:

• Engage staff and local leaders and carry through with the theme that we're all in this together. Establish a blue-ribbon task force to help your district look at ways to increase revenue, save money, and understand the impact of budget cuts in their community. We have seen this work extremely well in many communities. Participants "get real" very quickly and pet projects or cuts are often dropped when people understand the big picture. Make sure the task force has a communication plan and guidelines. If you can't get it going for this year, start it early for the next budget season.
  
  
• Develop key messages advocating education. First, take the high road. Remind your audiences that education is critically important to our economy. It may seem too global at first, but the reality is that we have all the research on our side as education is the hub of economic progress. Strongly position the message of that education is critically important to our local, state, and national economy.
  
  
• Show that we're all in this together. Use the over-arching theme that our schools, staff, parents, community, and state leaders are all in this together. Now is not the time to be divisive. Emotions run high during cutbacks and sensitivity must be heightened when you create your messages. Remember, language like essential and non-essential personnel always creates an emotional ripple with both internal and external audiences. People ask, "If they're non-essential, why did we need them anyway?"
  
  
• Don't assume anything. Most residents do not understand terms like step movements, special ed mandates, blended education, and more. Don't get lost in the weeds when nearly 80% of your community wants to know how much an increase will be needed and why. Also demonstrate that programmatic cuts have already taken place. It is difficult to keep a complex budget simple, but that is what is called for when you communicate your budget.
  
  
• Tap into your strengths. Communities that perceive local schools — and their leaders — to be open, credible communicators will find ways to help their schools succeed in the toughest times. Schools that can't find ways to draw on stockpiled goodwill will find the going tougher when it comes to communicating financial issues.
  
  
• Realize that you probably need a targeted communication plan, dedicated to addressing financial issues. Budget debates are no different from any other special event or initiative — they are campaigns that need planning and monitoring.
  
  
• Use a number of different techniques to collect feedback, carry messages, and buttress key ideas for a successful financial-communication effort.
  
  
• On your webpage set up a spot to clarify the misinformation that might be floating around your community. Stay with the facts; no need to enrage critics with banter that they will use against you. Remembering the car allowance example above, just note that the superintendent of schools does not receive a car allowance. Publicize that this budget feature is on your website.
  
  

Making Budget Communication Personal

Some professional communication advice on how to personalize your budget communication efforts includes:

• Do focus messages on the economy but also weave in messages about individual children and neighborhood schools. For most people, perceptions about school budget issues will flow from the ways in which they personalize the issues.
  
  
• Do not list proposed cuts generically, such as miscellaneous art materials. If planned cuts mean that you will no longer give art supplies to high school students, say it.
  
  
• Do develop communication tactics targeted to key audiences, including parents, staff, students, elected officials, business leaders, seniors, and more. Encourage staff to help communicate and reinforce vital information. Arm them with prepared answers to frequent questions, resources for more information, and training on how to communicate and build understanding and support.
  
  
• Do use plain language and images to talk about finances and numbers. Stay away from suspicion-arousing jargon and acronyms that taxpayers won't understand. Use everyday words with concrete meanings, such as costs and revenues. Don't bloat copy for simple terms, such as light and heat, with puffed up mumbo jumbo like environmental management or HVAC consumption.
  
  
• Don't use millions.
  
  

• Do create images that people can visualize and relate to: cost per child, cost per household, cost per classroom and so on. Explain costs in terms of an average taxpayer. Example: Less than the price of two movie tickets.

Your communication management and engagement activities will make or break your relationships with staff, parents, board members, business leaders, the media, and the taxpayers in your community. Effective communication will keep your reputation intact and demonstrate that your district is in good hands during these stormy times.

It is time to be proactive!

And I always ask, if school leaders do not do it, who will?

Views expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of the Learning First Alliance or any of its members.

Posted by Learning First Alliance at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By Stephanie Hirsh, Executive Director, Learning Forward

As a recent article in Education Week makes clear, there are many educators at a range of levels across the country talking about the link between teacher capacity and successful implementation of the Common Core (read Concern Abounds Over Teachers' Preparedness for Standards).

That link between educators and successful implementation is clear to me — it's high-quality professional learning. And as I attended last week's meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) Implementing the Common Core Standards state collaborative, I was delighted to hear that I am not the only one with that belief. CCSSO Executive Director Gene Wilhoit focused his opening comments on the role professional development must play in achieving the vision for the Common Core.

He began his remarks with the following: "If you take nothing else from what I say this morning, remember our success depends on two concepts: how we impact at scale (for this work depends on impacting the vast majority of teachers, schools, and districts) and all said, this really is a systems issue and we are the system. The cruelest thing we can do to teachers is to poorly prepare them for today's challenges, isolate them in dysfunctional environments, treat them as line workers while calling them professionals and then blame them for the woes we face."

We know from decades of reforms that this very step — how we prepare teachers to implement changes — is at the heart of making a transformation a reality in schools. "Nothing could be more critical to success of the standards than professional development for educators," Wilhoit said. "We need a fundamental shift in how teachers learn, grow, and improve in our education system."

So here's where I need to bring in another set of standards. The Standards for Professional Learning address the very issues that Wilhoit raised in his remarks. Crafting professional learning with attention to these standards will be essential in building teacher and leader capacity during our efforts to implement the Common Core. I'd like to focus on just two of our seven standards and the connections between them and Wilhoit's message.

Our Learning Communities standard states: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students occurs within learning communities committed to continuous improvement, collective responsibility, and goal alignment. Wilhoit asked that systems and schools make sure teachers participate in learning communities focused on Common Core. Such learning communities will be most effective when the educators within them collaborate in an environment where they hold one another accountable for the success of all students in a school or system. Together, educators will determine their greatest learning needs, and they will tap both the expertise within their community and identify resources beyond their team to begin to increase their capacity.

As Wilhoit noted, "The Common Core will require more content expertise and greater pedagogical skill, since when we demand more of students we'll be demanding more of teachers." With such demands, the peer-to-peer support of an effective learning community can leverage the best teaching a school has to offer.

Equally important is the Leadership standard: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students requires skillful leaders who develop capacity, advocate, and create support systems for professional learning. In this standard, we are addressing skillful leaders at all levels, from the classroom to the state, province, or nation. At whatever level they work, leaders make learning one of their top priorities, and not just for students, but also for themselves and for all staff. They also advocate for professional learning, and use their understanding of how change happens for systems to ensure support is in place. Wilhoit emphasizes the importance of the state leader in the shift to Common Core when he stresses that the state leader's role "is to articulate to educators, across your various projects and programs, that the state has a vision for how all of these seemingly disconnected initiatives work together to help them get their students to be college and career ready." He was speaking not only of Common Core, but also of teacher evaluation systems, and how all initiatives must interconnect.

I appreciate that so many of my colleagues understand the key role of professional learning in attaining our dreams for students, and I urge those who are concerned about how to create learning systems that build educator capacity to start with the Standards for Professional Learning (available online at www.learningforward.org/standards). All seven standards work in concert to facilitate learning that leads to changes in educator practice, leadership, and most importantly, student results. When we are striving for a transformation as critical as the Common Core, we can't overlook the importance of addressing the capacity of those responsible for achieving it.

Views expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of the Learning First Alliance or any of its members.

Posted by Learning First Alliance at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By Gail Connelly, Executive Director, National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP)

The greatest scientist of our times, Albert Einstein, is often credited with saying that "not everything that counts can be measured, and not everything that can be measured counts." I think policymakers and educators alike should pay heed to this tidbit of wisdom.

The National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) is paying heed by teaming up with the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) on a project to develop principal evaluation guidelines. (Watch for our guidelines and report in mid-May.) Like Einstein's message, the central premise guiding our work on principal evaluation is simple: Let's measure what counts.

Most principals are fully supportive of using data — and lots of it — to assess student achievement, teacher competency, and their own performance. NAESP's professional standards, Leading Learning Communities: What Principals Should Know and Be Able to Do, state that effective principals manage data to inform decisions, use data to measure student and school performance, and make data a driver for school improvement.

The additional reality, however, is that data can be a double-edged sword. Consider this from the opening chapter of Data-Based Decision Making, a joint publication of NAESP and Solution Tree written by highly regarded education professional, researcher, and consultant Edie Holcomb:

"The good news is that people no longer argue about whether you should use data," she writes. "Effective use of data has been repeatedly tied to successful efforts to increase levels of student achievement. ...The bad news is that schools sometimes use the wrong data in the wrong ways while neglecting other vital and useful information. The danger is a tendency to generate data for the sake of having more data, without creating context in which those data will become useful information."

It's this "good news/bad news" dilemma that concerns me. As both Einstein and Edie wisely point out, an over-reliance on some kinds of data can cause us to overlook other high-value information. Not everything that is important can be reduced to a number, a data point, a bar chart, or a scattergram. That said, there's no question that much of a child's academic progress (or lack thereof) can and should be measured. However, the total learning experience, especially in the case of early childhood education, defies numeric metrics. The "whole child" means just that — a child's physical, emotional, mental, social, and academic development are parts of a whole, intertwined and inseparable. A child's academic development cannot be assessed in a vacuum any more than a book can be solely judged by the author's knowledge of semicolons, for example.

To achieve real understanding, educators and education policymakers must assess a child's academic progress in the context of the whole child. But let's be clear: Acknowledging the whole child in student assessment isn't code for "non-assessment." Rather, such a focus ensures that quantitative data (which can be negatively impacted by many uncontrollable external factors) are balanced with qualitative data — portfolios, journals, and problem-solving and team-building projects, just to name a few. Absent this balance, I worry that we're actually testing too many of those uncontrollable external factors — hunger, ill-health, fatigue, a troubled home situation, or excitement about an after-school activity — and making inaccurate, piecemeal judgments that can haunt a child's academic experience.

While we don't speak of the "whole principal," perhaps we should. In the nearly three decades I've been privileged to work closely with principals, I have discovered that the principalship requires a blended approach of intellect, instinct, experience, skill, and compassion. Almost without exception, successful principals are lifelong learners, excellent listeners, hard workers, and masterful adapters who understand, synthesize, and act on multiple priorities and conflicting agendas.

More important, elementary principals care deeply about children — their academic progress, to be sure, but also their emotional and physical well-being, their social experiences and skills, and their creativity and curiosity. Exceptional principals take palpable joy in being around children. They demonstrate respect for youngsters and appreciation for their exuberance and humor, and they are, unfailingly, dedicated, kind, optimistic champions of every child in their school.

These characteristics are as important in evaluating principal performance as any skill sets, best practices, leadership qualities, or advanced degrees. They comprise, in part, the measure of a principal's heart. So as we take on the difficult and essential work of evaluation, let's not forget that it's often the heart of a principal that inspires the heart of a child and vice versa. And that makes all the difference.

Views expressed in this post are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of the Learning First Alliance or any of its members.

Posted by Learning First Alliance at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend