Still Waiting for Superman

Last weekend I was a passenger in my car as my daughter drove me and her dog, Langston, back to her apartment in New York. I was reading the Washington Post when I noticed a story about the graduation rate at Duval High School, a school in Prince George’s County, Maryland.The same County and school system that I spent my entire seventeen-year education career in. I am very familiar with Duval. Its demographics are very similar to the school I spent nine years in as Principal. I know some of the people on the staff. Immediately, I knew that this story would be personal.

I began to reminisce when the story began by recounting a visit the school got from central office staff to inform them that the school had a new goal: a graduation rate of 95.4%. I know from my own experience that to achieve a number like that in a public school like Duval is possible only if you cheat. I know this because it would not have been possible in my school either. Two-thirds of my students were living in poverty, so were Duval’s. That fact is manifested in many ways. Chances are, at least fifty percent of the freshmen that arrive at Duval are two or more years below grade level in reading, and three or more years below grade level in math. Just like mine were. According to the article, only 8 percent of Duval’s students were proficient in Algebra 1 and 23 percent were proficient in English. By the time I retired, our students were scoring at more than 80% proficiency in both subjects, and we struggled mightily to maintain a graduation rate above 80%. There is no way in Hell that Duval could achieve a graduation rate of 92.3%. It is very likely that they lost at least 20% of those kids in their freshman year by either academic failure or dropping out.

As I continued to read the article, I began to get angrier as I learned that administrators and staff responded to the pressure and made their goals. The Superintendent “paraded through high schools with banners and pompoms, in a New Orleans-style dance line.” He would soon sign a new four-year contract.

So how did this “miracle” happen? Was it some world-changing pedagogical breakthrough? A sociological discovery that solved the riddle of cyclical poverty and eliminated the destructive effects of institutional racism? Maybe even a groundbreaking method for mass motivation of adolescents? Well… No. Apparently, you can get a 90% graduation rate if you change enough grades, dumb-down enough “credit recovery” packets, and falsify enough Community Service hours.

Why? Why do good people do stuff like this? It doesn’t benefit the students. Education is preparation. An unearned diploma is meaningless. If you go to college and you can’t read, write, think, or count, you will fail. If you get a job and can’t do the work, you get fired. It is educational malpractice to send a young person out into this world unprepared. It doesn’t benefit the administrators and the staff at the school either. According to the Post, Duval had three counselors fired, an assistant principal resigned, and the principal retired. So why do people do it? Fear. Fear of a poor appraisal. Fear of getting fired. The ultimate irony is if you end up as a scapegoat, you get fired anyway.

But Duval was not alone. There were other high schools in the county that used similar tactics, got similar results, and staged similar celebrations. The State of Maryland investigated the entire school system. Prince George’s County’s position was that no one from the central office ordered wrongdoing. The investigation ordered by the state did not find any evidence of wrongdoing by the Superintendent or his lieutenants.

When I finished reading the story I started to discuss it with my daughter. I told her how often people from the central office would come to my school with directives that I knew were often impossible or potentially disruptive. There were times when their directives would be counter to goals and objectives that had been mutually agreed on by all the school’s stakeholders from the beginning of the year. I knew that as Principal, I would be ultimately responsible for everything that happened in that building. For that reason, there were “directives” received from the central office that were simply ignored. If I knew they were wrong, or not in the best interests of my staff and students, I simply didn’t do it.

I also told my daughter that I never considered any “promotion” to a central office position. I had no dreams of being “director” of anything and I certainly had no desire to be a Superintendent. When she asked me why I felt that way I told her that I believed that as soon as you left the school building your job was more about politics than education.

There is a great misconception in America that in order to fix a school system you need a “great Superintendent”. Superman. News Flash… Superintendents cannot fix schools. Superintendents are politicians, not educators. Principals and teachers and counselors and parents fix schools.

The best Superintendent I ever had understood this. During my nine years as a Principal I had seven Superintendents. This one was different. We (high school principals) had monthly meetings with him alone, there were no other people in the room. We sat in a squared circle. He had hand-picked most of us, and during those meetings he simply asked us what we needed, what our problems and issues were. He listened, took his own notes. All my issues were resolved in 24 hours. He did not give us ridiculous goals and mandates. He understood his role was to pick the best people to run his schools, make sure we had the resources we needed, make sure we had the support we needed, make sure we were accountable for results, and stay out of the way.

I’m glad my daughter was with me when I read that article in The Washington Post. It made me angry, it made me sad, and I needed to vent. She knows me, understands me, and listens well. What happened at Duval High School is happening all over the country, and its wrong. Unfortunately, it will continue, as long as the powers that be are… still waiting for Superman.  

The Role of Discipline

When I sit in the loft of my home I am surrounded by the accolades bestowed on Crossland High School. Crossland is the high school in Prince George’s County, Maryland that I served as Principal from 2004 until 2013. The honors include three citations from the Governor of the State of Maryland, two citations from the State’s General Assembly, another citation from the Prince George’s County Council, and a feature article printed in the Washington Post. By no means do the honors stop there. We were also featured on the United States Department of Education’s “Doing What Works” website, named “School of the Year” for the National Capitol Region, praised by the Heritage Foundation from the political right and the Center for American Progress from the political left, and received an invitation from Michelle Obama for 50 of our students and staff to visit the White House. In other words, we did some really great stuff at Crossland.

In 2004, Crossland High School, with its 2100 students, was the worst of twenty-two high schools in Prince George’s County. The school was dangerous. The quality of the educational program was poor. The morale of its students, parents, and the surrounding community was poor as well. Hopeless was an accurate description of the school and all of its stakeholders. More than 65% of the students qualified for free and/or reduced meals, the government’s benchmark for poverty. In 2004, 15% of its students passed the State’s high school assessment for Algebra, 22% passed in English.

Crossland received all of the accolades mentioned above because we were able to change a culture of mediocrity, distrust, intimidation, and fear into a culture of respect for the individual, service to the community, and the pursuit of excellence. By 2013, test scores in Algebra had steadily increased to a passing rate of 76%, and English scores had improved to 78%. Students taking Advanced Placement classes had increased from 30 to more than 750. The school had been approved as an International Baccalaureate school, and 90% of its Seniors had applied to four-year colleges with at least a 70% acceptance rate for four consecutive years.

During my first year as Principal at Crossland my fellow Principals’ in the County teased me about having a pool to decide on when I would be fired. I quickly developed a reputation for being a very strict disciplinarian. We had many suspensions, so many in fact, that the other Principals were sure that the parental complaints would eventually result in my professional demise. Some of my students took to describing me as “Joe Clark”, the notorious Principal depicted in the movie “Lean on Me”.

The suspensions were the result of four simple rules that were put in place as soon as I arrived at the school. They were;

1.       No Profanity

2.       No Loitering

3.       No Class Disruptions

4.       No Fighting

All of the above violations resulted in suspensions. Initially, no one believed that such rules were possible, not until violators started going home. Eventually, the profanity that had been commonly used in classrooms and hallways ended, and respectful conversations became the norm. Eventually, the hallways became empty when classes were in session. Eventually, class disruptions ended, and teachers were able to teach, and students were able to learn. Eventually, the constant fighting ended, and students no longer were afraid for their safety while in school.

The rules, and the consequences for breaking those rules, were the only way that we could establish an environment that was conducive for teaching and learning. Once that was established, everything else was possible.

However, this was not a ”Zero Tolerance” environment. Our teachers, security, and administrators exercised discretion on a daily basis. The only zero tolerance situations were established by the Board of Education, and one of those was an automatic request for expulsion for any student bringing a weapon to school.

The “Principal’s Leadership Team”, was a special group of students at Crossland. They were my student advisory group, composed of one member from every student organization in the school. The members were personally selected by me at the beginning of each year. I met with them monthly, and we would have lunch and discuss everything that was going on in the school. We took field trips to Gettysburg, Pa., Monticello in Virginia, Harpers Ferry in West Virginia, and yearly trips to either Montreal, Quebec City, Niagara Falls, or Toronto in Canada. They were outstanding students, outstanding people, they were my student leaders. Membership on the Principal’s Leadership Team was something that was considered to be a tremendous honor. Our graduates wore a special collar on graduation day to indicate their membership. Some of the students that were selected as freshmen remained on the team for four years. They were in effect, leaders of leaders.

At the conclusion of one of our meetings, one of my senior students, a young lady that had been on the team for four years asked to speak to me in my office. When our meeting was over she got up to leave and when she picked up her purse a large knife fell on the floor. For several seconds neither one of us said a word. She knew the rules. Everybody in the school knew that if you were caught with ANY weapon it was an automatic expulsion. She was a senior. She was an honor student. She was already accepted to college. Her financial aid was already in place. I finally said, “sweetheart…what were you thinking???” She started to cry as she told me how she had been threatened, and was carrying the knife for protection. I picked up the knife and placed it in my desk drawer. I knew what I was supposed to do. I did not know what I was going to do. I told her I would talk to her the following morning, and sent her home.

I did not request the expulsion. I told no one what had happened. The student graduated, went to college, and graduated. Today she is married and a mother. I kept her knife in my desk drawer until I retired in 2013.

I’m glad I did not do, what I was supposed to do.    

The Rise and Fall of The Common Core

I was on a plane, cruising at 35,000 feet. There were several Principals on the flight. We were returning to the east coast from the annual NASSP (National Association of Secondary School Principals) convention when the conversation turned to NCLB (No Child Left Behind) and how our students were doing on our State’s annual exams. I was talking to a Principal from Mississippi, and when I asked him how his kids were doing I was left speechless by his response. According to him, his students were passing his State exams at a rate of more than 90%. That is when I knew that something was really wrong with American education in general, and NCLB in particular.

It is both logical and sensible to evaluate how well students have mastered the material that they are being taught. It is righteous and illuminating to disaggregate the data from those evaluations by racial groups, economic status, and the learning disabled as well. It is also important to have short term and long term goals for student achievement. Consequences for failure and/or non-compliance are necessary too, because all educators know that rules and expectations without consequences are not rules or consequences at all. All of these things were a part of NCLB, and all of these things are good.

However, NCLB had a fatal, obvious flaw. Bowing to “States Rights”, the law allowed the states to devise their own tests, set their own standards, and by so doing, devise their own definition of success. The result, was 50 different sets of standards. A successful student in Mississippi could move to Maryland and find him or herself hopelessly behind. A successful school in Louisiana might be a failing school in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, business leaders were complaining that high school graduates did not have the skills to do the work that their companies needed their employees to do. State superintendents of education, corporate leaders and Governors were looking at results from the NAEP, (National Assessment of Educational Progress) which is considered by many to be the “nation’s report card”. The NAEP asks the same questions and is administered in the same way in every state. It allows you to compare one state to another, one state to the nation at large, and the pace of improvement for a particular state and the nation. It was obvious to these state-level policy-makers that the country needed to have the same educational goals, the same standards. Not necessarily the same curriculums, not the same tactics or strategies, but as in football, the field needs to be 100 yards for everybody, or in basketball, the goal has to be ten feet from the floor for all. The nation needed common standards, not for every subject, just the core subjects of English and Math, Common Core Standards. The overall rationale was not only educational, but economic as well.

By 2010, forty-four of the fifty states had agreed to adopt and implement the Common Core Standards. The only states that refused to participate were Oklahoma, Indiana, Texas, Virginia, Alaska, and Nebraska. The standards had been conceived and developed by the states themselves. The effort was funded by the states, with additional funding provided by the private sector, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Somehow, between 2010 and today, this remarkable cooperation and near consensus among the states and corporate America to do the right thing for the education of America’s children began to fall apart.

 The genesis of the politicization of the Common Core occurred in July 2009, when the Obama administration announced a competition among the states to receive “Race to The Top” funding. As an incentive for states to initiate educational reform, States were awarded additional competitive points to adopt “internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the work place”. This additional educational funding for cash-strapped states became a powerful incentive to adopt the Common Core Standards.

As a result, the Common Core Standards became “President Obama’s program”. Republican Governors such as Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina began to back away from the program. National think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation criticized it as well. Conservative talk radio hosts weighed in, as well as Fox News. It has been described as a “federal top-down takeover of state and local education systems”.

The persistent attacks from the political right have been effective. By the end of 2014, four states had repealed the legislation that adopted the Common Core Standards. Seventeen additional states had introduced legislation to repeal or delay implementation.

Hatred is debilitating. It affects our ability to think and act rationally. We are all given reasons to hate others. When we submit to the temptation, we do more damage to ourselves than we do to those we allow ourselves to hate. I will not go into the reasons they feel the way they do, but the hatred that so many conservatives have for President Obama is sad to see. It is an intense, blinding, hatred that is debilitating not only to them but to the nation as well. It is a hatred that is debilitating to the nation’s uninsured. It is a hatred that is debilitating to the nation’s economy. It is a hatred that is debilitating to the nation’s children, for what is more important than their education?

I have never known anyone that I disagreed with on everything. I have never known anyone that I wanted to destroy at all costs, by any means necessary.

I pray to God, that I never do.

The Making of a Principal

It is always constructive to start a conversation by finding common ground, something that the participants agree on. Let’s start with this. In K-12 education, Principals are really important. It would be very hard to find a successful school, public or private with an incompetent Principal.

Unfortunately, a large majority of Principals are woefully unprepared for the requirements of the job. Now, in order to make a statement like that, one has to be intimately aware of what those requirements are. It would help if they have experienced the demands, expectations, stresses, and day to day occurrences first hand.

I have.

Most of the people that criticize the nation’s schools have legitimate concerns. They are correct to demand improvement. They are correct to demand equality in funding, better teachers, and better student outcomes.

What they may not realize is the most direct, cost-efficient way of obtaining those results is by focusing on the proper training and selection of the Principals. Once those Principals are selected, it is very important that they are given the autonomy and authority to pursue the desired results. They should be highly rewarded for success, and held accountable for failure.

Most of today’s Principals were outstanding teachers. Unfortunately, the skill set required to be an outstanding teacher is woefully inadequate preparation for being a Principal. My experience as a teacher lasted only five years. Fortunately, I had other professional experiences before becoming a teacher that turned out to be perfect training for my years as a Principal.

My career began as an Administration Manager for the International Business Machines Corporation. IBM gave me excellent management training and experiences that I relied on extensively as a Principal. After thirteen years with IBM my expertise included inventory management, personnel management, accounts payable, budgets, contract administration, distributive leadership, facility management, public speaking, motivational strategies, performance planning, counseling, and evaluation. All of these things were essential skills that contributed to my success as a Principal. None of them were taught to me in the undergraduate or graduate schools of education that I attended.

My pre-Principal education did not end there. I left IBM to purchase a franchised business, and became acutely aware of the pressures of being the final decision-maker. Five years as a business owner and I became completely sensitive to the importance of payrolls, and the enormous effect that meeting it and getting it right has on employee loyalty and morale. The importance of bank accounts, balances, and general ledgers became clear. I also came to appreciate how critical relationships with the community and other businesses were to my ultimate success. Perhaps just as importantly, I learned what it was like to be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the focus and stamina that requires, and the unending pressure of being ultimately responsible for everything. You don’t learn that as a teacher.

Five years as a teacher completed the preparation for me. Every successful Principal has to be expert in pedagogy, or the methods and practice of teaching. Additionally, a good teacher is aware of the importance of, and practices successful group dynamics, classroom management, parent relations, and educational ethics. Of course, education is ultimately about relationships, and the great teachers, the ones that become Principals excel at building and nurturing positive relationships with all of their stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, administrators, and members of the community.

The nine years that I spent as a high school Principal were highly successful by any measure. Test Scores? We improved our State Assessment scores in English by 253%, and our Algebra scores by 395%. Increased rigor? We increased the number of students taking Advanced Placement classes from 30 to 700. College and Career Readiness? For five consecutive years, 90% of seniors applied to four-year colleges, with a 70% acceptance rate. We were approved as an International Baccalaureate school. We were featured in a Harvard Business School case study, Forbes Magazine, and several times in the Washington Post. We were featured on both sides of the political spectrum, including the Center for American Progress and the Heritage Foundation. Deloitte named us “School of the Year” in the National Capitol Region in 2010-2011. The US Department of Education featured us on its “Doing What Works” web site. We opened a student-run branch of a local credit union on campus, and our students built a broadcast studio on campus as well. We convinced the State Senate to fund a press box for our football field, and persuaded the county government and board of education to fund and build a new auditorium for the school. We received three formal citations for excellence from the Maryland General Assembly, and two more from the Governor of the State. We also received a commendation from the County Government.

We also received an invitation for 50 of our teachers and students to visit the White House from Michelle Obama.

All of this occurred at a high school on the outskirts of Washington DC in which more than 65% of the students received free and/or reduced meals, the majority lived in single parent homes, a school in which many in the community had lost all hope.

I know that the immediate response to this will be “can this be duplicated”? My response is “I don’t know”. What I do know is that it is possible to re-think how Principals are trained and selected. I know that if I had taken only what I learned in school and as a teacher into my job as a Principal I would not have been as successful as I was. As a Principal, I needed every bit of the training and expertise I accumulated as a manager at one of the world’s great corporations and as an entrepreneur.

 More importantly, I had to insist on the authority and autonomy the job demands. I needed the courage to be different.

Every new Principal would benefit from receiving management training at one of America’s successful businesses. Our schools are living, breathing organisms, communities that a Principal is responsible for organizing, nurturing, educating and disciplining. Let’s invest in and then have the courage to trust our school’s leaders.

Free College for Everybody

President Obama would like to make community college available free of charge to everybody. He will provide details of the proposal during his state of the union address later this month. The cost will be approximately $60 billion dollars over the next 10 years. Students will be required to attend classes at least half-time and maintain a 2.5 (C+) grade point average.

Let the fighting begin.

I think the President may be on to something, simply because the criticism is coming from the liberals and the conservatives. Whenever that happens, there has to be something in there for everybody to like.

The conservatives are pissed because Obama has something to do with it, but they are also complaining about “federalizing higher education”, “another entitlement program”, and “spending money we don’t have”.

The liberals are complaining because they feel that the program should be for “those that need it most, the economically deprived, not the middle and upper income Americans that can afford to send their kids to college.”

Brilliant. The seeds of compromise have been sown, and in spite of a brand new, fired up, hostile Republican congress, this thing might have a chance.

According to the New York Times, the average 30 year old American born in 1880 had less than 8 years of education. Those born in 1910, increased that to almost 10 years of education. For those born in 1940, when they were thirty the average education had increased to 12 years. If you were born in 1970, the average education of American adults when you were 30 had increased to 14 years. That is where it remains today.

America’s economic power and standard of living has improved with the rising levels of education of its people. That is the basis of the economic argument for the President’s proposal. Who can argue that the jobs of the 21^st century will not require a higher level of education than the jobs of the 20^th, 19^th, or 18^th centuries?

For those complaining about federalizing higher education, how is this different from the GI Bill, that helped to fund my education, or the Pell Grants and other federally insured financial assistance programs that have assisted millions of Americans past and present to finance their college education? As for the “another entitlement program” and “spending money we don’t have” rants, the federal government currently spends almost $68 billion dollars a year on financial aid for education, and states spend billions more each year on scholarships. How hard would it be to find $10 billion of that each year for an investment that would benefit everybody?

For those complaining that the program should be for “those that need it most”, try to remember that “separate schools are inherently unequal”. The worst thing that could happen to community colleges would be for them to become economically segregated. “Free” community colleges would and should attract the middle class and the wealthy. They should attract the full racial spectrum of American students. If they do they will not only be academically viable but equitably funded by the local governments that control that funding.

The high school that I was Principal of in Prince George’s County, Maryland was unique in many ways. Almost 75% of our students were eligible for free and reduced meals, but we were also approved as an International Baccalaureate school, had a robust advanced placement program, and received national recognition for sending a large percentage of our students to college. But in addition to all of that, our school had a technical academy that trained our students and allowed them to graduate with professional licenses in the following skills; Cosmetology, Cisco Networking, Culinary Arts, Barbering, Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning, Electrical Wiring, Masonry, Printing, Automobile Technology, Drafting, Nursing Assistants, and Electronics.

We were able to give our students an opportunity to succeed. Not a guarantee, but an opportunity to succeed at a variety of educational and career options that might be best for them. Most of America’s high schools fail to do that.

President Obama understands that high school is not enough, not for our students, not for our nation. I suspect that the politicians in Washington, the democrats and the republicans, the liberals and the conservatives, know it too.

Ossie Davis, with a little help from Spike Lee, would say “Do the right thing…. Just do the right thing”  

An American High School in Cleveland

It was Henry David Thoreau that said “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails…” Perhaps it should be said no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its schools, its best schools and its worst. For the past 30 years I have lived in Montgomery County, Maryland. Our schools are considered by most to be among the best in the United States. For 17 years I worked in the Prince George's County, Maryland Schools, considered by most to be among the worst in Maryland. Using the Thoreau test, I was well qualified to render an opinion about the State of Maryland, but maybe not America.

But then I spent a year as an educational consultant in Cleveland Ohio.

I want to tell you about an American high school in Cleveland. It is not unique. In fact, when it comes to education for minority children in America’s inner cities, it is closer to the rule than the exception. The school is located minutes from beautiful downtown Cleveland. It is in a neighborhood in which the homes are marketed for $25,000 dollars or less. Many of the homes have boards in the windows although they are still occupied, and the roads in front and surrounding the school are filled with potholes.

One hundred percent of the students receive free or reduced meals, the government’s official benchmark for being really poor. All (100%) of the students are minorities. Cleveland does not have school attendance zones. Students can attend any school they want to, until it’s full. The students that attend this school are here because it is convenient to get to, they have been expelled from other schools, or they can’t get into any other school.

Ohio grades its schools in three general areas, Achievement, Gap Closing, and Graduation Rate. The schools get two grades for Graduation Rate (four and five year). For the year prior to my arrival this school received a “D” for Achievement and a grade of “F” in all of the others. The four year graduation rate was 53.4%. The five year rate was 62.7%.

At the beginning of the school year this American school had twenty four staff vacancies, seventeen vacancies at the end of the first semester, and eight at the end of the year. The school had 64 teaching positions, so on the first day of school, almost 40% of the classes had substitute teachers or no teacher at all. Imagine the effect this had on the school and classroom environment. Students that were already behind fell farther behind in core subjects and foreign languages.

This school in the heart of one of America’s major cities did not allow its Principal to appoint Department Chairs. The school district did not allocate any funds to compensate department chairs or a testing coordinator. As a result, communication was poor, subject and departmental coordination was non-existent, professional development was uninformed, record keeping was laughable, and morale was terrible.

A foreign visitor would walk away from our American school saying there was a serious lack of urgency by the staff to be where they were supposed to be. Teachers and administrators were habitually late to school. This resulted in large numbers of students in the halls due to missing teachers and locked classrooms, or because of large groups being moved to other classes due to missing substitute teachers. The persistent absences and tardiness of the staff had a direct negative impact on the morale and discipline of the students. The constant lack of supervision contributed to a culture in which the more powerful influence was exerted by the students themselves.

Student attendance averaged less than 80%. The school was able to document the fact that many enrolled students were attending other schools. Many others had dropped out, confirmed to be not returning by their parents or other responsible adults, but the school was not allowed to remove them from its enrollment. Student tardiness was rampant.

Communication efforts in the school were ineffective. Administrators, staff and students were constantly uninformed or misinformed of day to day events. The public address system functioned poorly and was inadequate for the purpose of communicating information to everyone in the building. This created an obvious, permanent safety hazard.

Our American school did not keep inventory records. There was a serious lack of knowledge relating to budget and purchasing procedures. The lack of department chairs made it very difficult for teachers to collectively assess their needs and request needed materials.

The school did not have access to a computer program or application to create a master schedule. The master schedule was not completed until the week-end before the first day of school. As a result, student schedules were incomplete and filled with errors on the first day of school. Hand written copies of the master schedule were distributed to the staff.

Expectations for student behavior was low. Disrespectful behavior by students toward themselves and adults was common. Profanity was commonly used as well. Trash and other litter was constantly in the halls. Fighting was common.

A discipline policy that outlines and defines student activity that will result in suspension did not exist. Consistency was lacking. Procedures were not in place to ensure that the staff is made aware each day of students that have been suspended or expelled. Procedures were not in place to ensure that Special Education students received manifestation hearings each time they were suspended once they reached ten total days of suspension.

To be sure, there were some very good teachers providing good classroom instruction in our “typical??” American school. But generally speaking, subject presentation failed to elaborate on critical attributes of the subject matter, failed to stress important factors, did not encompass the writing process or include reading comprehension elements, and failed to relate content to prior learning. In many cases lesson plans were either unavailable or not current. Lesson objectives were not clear and measurable or non-existent. Assessments did not consistently occur or were not evident. While there were notable exceptions, classroom environments were not conducive for teaching and learning. “Principles of Learning” were a major concern. Clear expectations, accountable talk, academic rigor, and self-management of learning were very rarely seen.

In 1896, in the case of “Plessy vs. Ferguson” The United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities. They said there was nothing wrong if they were “separate but equal”. On May 17, 1954, Thurgood Marshall convinced the court to reverse that ruling in the landmark “Brown vs, Board of Education of Topeka” case. The court decided that separate schools were “inherently unequal”.

The students, teachers, administrators, visitors, and parents of our American high school in Cleveland would say,

“Damn right”.

Advanced Placement

I recently watched an HBO documentary entitled “Little Rock Central”. The documentary was made in 2007 to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the integration of the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1957 a federal court ordered the school to allow Black children to attend, and the results became a landmark in the history of education and civil rights in the United States. The nine children that were selected to integrate the school would become known as the “Little Rock Nine”, and their initial attempt to attend the school would be met with a display of the most vicious anger and racist-fueled vitriol that can be imagined.

Not until President Dwight Eisenhower dispatched troops from the army’s 82^nd Airborne Division to escort and protect the children were they able to enter the school. The troops would continue to protect the children the entire year, escorting them in the hallways, in the cafeteria, and on the athletic fields for the entire year.

The producers of the documentary spent the entire year on the campus. The film gives intimate portrayals of many of the students and their parents. There are candid discussions with teachers, coaches, and the school’s Principal. Community activists and politicians are featured as well. I watched the documentary once, and then less than an hour later, I sat down and watched it again. It reminded me of so many things that I had to grapple with as Principal of my school, Crossland High in Maryland, and it also made me think of what might have been.

In 2007 Little Rock Central was considered one of the best high schools in the United States. It had more than 2000 students, and almost 50% of those students were minorities. Most of the white students were from excellent neighborhoods and stable, professional families, they also drove their own cars to school. They had the means to attend private schools but they chose to attend Central instead. The school is the most famous school in the country and receives tremendous support from various sources. It has a stellar academic reputation because so many of the white students take multiple advanced placement classes and are readily accepted into many of the top colleges in America.

Most of the Black students attending Central were there because it is their neighborhood school. The majority of them are depressingly poor, live in single parent homes, and come to the school reading two or three years below grade level. Most of them ride the bus to school. Ironically, the student body President was an exception to the prevailing misery in the Black community. He is a Black student that had a profile similar to the white students. He lived in a white neighborhood, and had a stable, nuclear family. He had college educated parents, had plans to go to college himself, drove his own car to school, and took multiple advanced placement classes.

Remove the white students from the picture, and you have what I had when I walked into Crossland High.

As I watched this excellent film, the frustrations of the Principal reminded me of my own. So many of the Black students reminded me of my students, and I will never be able to forget them, including the athlete whose mother threw him out of the house, that had terrible grades because he didn’t go to class, mindlessly betting his life on a career in professional sports. Or, the sweet young girl that had taken it upon herself to take an advanced placement class, conceding that she might fail but refusing to quit. I will never forget the camera following her home as she walked through a neighborhood one would expect to see in a third world country, into her cramped home where she described the sink that didn’t work and the room she shared with her brother. Or the pride she had in the fact that her mother did not have multiple men hanging around their home. Nor will I forget the young girl with the wonderful attitude that was only fifteen but had not one, but two children, and her sister that was younger than her and teased her because she only had one baby. The camera followed her as she walked to school one day as well, casually describing a crack house as she passed it, and explaining that the kids usually stayed inside because the “crack heads were crazy”. She arrived to school late, like so many of my students did.

Little Rock’s Central High School was de-segregated in 1957, but fifty years later, it was still not integrated. Black and white students rarely mixed. If they were in the same class they sat on separate sides of the room. They separated themselves in the cafeteria. There were no Blacks on the golf team. There were very, very few Black students in advanced placement classes.

At the conclusion of my first year as Principal at Crossland we had more than 2000 students enrolled but only 7 took advanced placement courses. By the time I left nine years later we had more than 700 students taking advanced placement courses. The demographics remained the same. The socioeconomic conditions of the students remained the same. But, many other things changed.

Education without literacy is impossible. If our students came to us unable to read on grade level, we had to teach them to read, so we did.

We did not ask or try to convince our students to do what was in their academic best interests, we required them to do it. Our goal was to graduate our students “college and/or career ready”. Consequently, once our students were reading on grade level, they were required to take at least one advanced placement course.

We changed expectations for students, parents, teachers, and the community. The pursuit of excellence in behavior, attendance, academics, athletics, college applications, college acceptances, and community service became the norm.

We could not have raised our academic expectations without the framework of advanced placement. These college level courses brought their own standards, their own unbiased curriculum and exams. The teachers by design expected more, and the students expected more as well.

What we did was controversial at times. I was met with reactions from skepticism to hostility. But the results were indisputable. Our student’s scores on the Maryland state exams in math improved each year from a 15% pass rate to 76%, and in English they improved each year from 22% to 78%. From 2005 through 2011, 70% of our seniors applied to 4 year colleges, with a 90% acceptance rate.

As a result of our student’s academic achievements, our school was featured by The Washington Post, the Center for American Progress, the Heritage Foundation, The University of Pennsylvania, The State of Delaware, Forbes Magazine, The American Diploma Project, The US Department of Education, and invited to visit the White House.

I can only wonder what type of school we would have had if half of Crossland’s students were the kind of white students depicted in the Little Rock Central documentary.

   

Baby Daddy

The best job I ever had was teaching middle school Language Arts in a predominantly Black school in Maryland. The reasons were many. I had a safe, professional environment to work in, and co-workers that I liked and respected. I had a wonderful Principal that gave me the support and autonomy that fueled my confidence and creativity. Most importantly, I had incredible relationships with my students and their parents. This was from 1999 to 2001, before “No Child Left Behind”. We did have standardized tests, (we called them “Functional Exams”) that were designed to ensure that students had the basic skills that would be required in high school, but they did not have the severe consequences for failure that today’s exams carry. 

My classes had three primary objectives. I expected my students to become better readers, writers, and listeners. The curriculum was my suggested path, but my creativity was my secret to reaching my students.

My students had the same homework assignment every day for the entire year. The assignment was written on the chalkboard and remained there for all to see for the entire year. My students were required to write an essay in a notebook explaining what they had learned that day. I made it clear to them and their parents that homework was 40% of their grade. They could not pass the class if they did not do it, and it would be hard for them to fail if they did. One day of each week was dedicated to students standing before the class and reading homework essays. The students would be graded on how well they read their essays and on how well they listened to others read.

The school did not have a computerized grading system so I bought one. I explained to my students that instead of me “giving” them a grade, they would actually “earn” their grade. The computer was going to do the math, and EVERY grade would count. Daily accountability was a foreign concept for my students, but one they would embrace quickly and benefit from in the future.

I checked each of my student’s grades every two weeks. I called the parent of every student that had a grade less than “C”. I would explain the reason the student was doing poorly, explain the grading system, and very quickly earn the respect, cooperation and loyalty of the parent. Usually, the problem was homework, and once the parent understood the assignment and its overall impact, it would cease to be a problem.

The power of relativity is vastly underrated when it comes to education. When I had to teach my students poetry, I knew that they would learn more by studying the words of Curtis Mayfield than Robert Frost, so we studied Curtis Mayfield. When we studied drama I let them write their own plays. I also would have a drama production for the entire school, with each student required to perform some role either onstage, backstage, or promotional.

I realized that some of my students were better readers than others, so to make sure that they could comprehend the assigned reading material, I would read critical passages to the class regularly. It seemed as if they enjoyed that as much as anything we did.

Most of my students were very successful in my classes. They passed the functional exams at a rate that exceeded 90%. They would often laugh about them when they were over, saying “we do that stuff every day”. I was very proud of them, and I felt a sense of accomplishment and self-worth that I will always cherish. One of my traditions was to have my students do meaningful work until the last minute of the last day of school. When the bell rang and they were dismissed, I would hug each of them before they left the classroom for the last time. When they were all gone I would sit at my desk and think about how much each of them had grown, how much each of them meant to me. I would think of their parents as well, and how they had trusted me to challenge their children to be better students and better people. 

That was the best job I ever had.

The first time my Principal approached me about being a Principal I told him I was not interested. I remember telling him that the reason I felt the way I did was because I got to fall in love 150 times every year. However, he was not a man that was easily dissuaded. He made me a member of the school’s “leadership team”, a group of teachers that he met with weekly to discuss the issues he was dealing with as a Principal. He had us create portfolios of our accomplishments, and lectured us about the importance of trained leaders in the field of education.

His winning argument for me was when he told me that he understood how my 150 kids were important to me every year, but if I was a Principal, I could have a similar impact on 1500 kids a year.

I had not realized or focused on how many Black students live in single parent homes until I became a high school Principal. The majority of my students did. The census bureau puts the number at 55% nationally. The American Community Survey puts the number at 70%. Reality is surely higher in some places, lower in others. Regardless, I will never forget the countless women that I have met with for reasons good and bad that were grappling with issues that would have been difficult for two parents, and damned near impossible for one.

So many times I have heard Black mothers look hopelessly in my eyes and simply say, “I just don’t know what to do”. So many times I have heard them say, “Can you help me?” I have seen anger, frustration, disappointment, confusion, shock and dismay. I have known mothers that have wanted and expected me to discipline, educate, and help to feed their children. Mothers that wanted me to help their children go to college, cut them some slack, or get them out of jail. I have had mothers that wanted me to pray with them, hold them, and dry their tears. 

There were so many mothers that wanted me to be their baby’s daddy.

It might be possible to do that for 150, but not 1500.

Curtis Mayfield once said, “I ain’t gonna point no fingers, and I don’t want nobody to point no fingers”. But the number of Black children in America living in poverty without the financial, emotional, and parental support of BOTH parents is a travesty and a tragedy. Married or not, every human being has a moral responsibility to take care of the children they bring into this world.

I understand why all of those mothers wanted their Principal to love, discipline, nurture, and support their children, but those things are in the job description for a father, not a Principal.        

Cancelling The Season

The Sayerville War Memorial High School football program is in trouble. Seven members of the football team have been accused of sexual assault of their freshman teammates in what is being described as a “hazing ritual”. The Superintendent has cancelled the remainder of their season and is considering the abolition of the program. Some of the parents are vehemently opposed to the Superintendent’s actions, others support him. The local and national media are weighing in on the decision as well, as local prosecutors decide whether to charge the students as juveniles or adults.

Déjà vu.

When I was a high school Principal I would meet with my varsity football and basketball players (male and female) a few days before the start of their individual seasons. I would look each one of them in the eye and make my expectations clear. I wanted them to realize that playing varsity sports is not a “right”, but a “privilege”. They had earned that privilege by the hard work and dedication they had displayed to make the roster. They needed to understand that when they put on our school’s colors and went out on that stage they were ambassadors, representing all of us. They would be representing all of the students, teachers, parents, and administrators, past and present that had any connection to our school. They had a responsibility to represent us well. I wanted them to understand that their visibility could be a blessing or a curse. The fact that our school was literally a twenty minute drive from the nation’s Capitol potentially gave us a national stage. We were in a major media market. The Washington Post was our local newspaper. If they represented us well, it could go a long way in improving the perception of our school. If they represented us poorly, it could very quickly destroy all of the progress we had made in changing the culture of our school, and the perception of our graduates. They needed to understand the power of the press, and the consequences of their actions when the press is present. 

I would also tell them I expected them to be role models for the other students. I expected them to be the best students. I expected to see them get to class on time. I wanted them to be the best examples of our basic beliefs of “respect, service, and excellence”. Finally, I made sure that each of them clearly understood that any suspension would result in an equal number of lost games. Consequently, a three day suspension would be three games not played. A five day suspension would cost them five. 

I expected my coaches to give our athletes the same message, but it was important for them to hear it from me as well. Culture is driven by expectations, and expectations are driven by the leaders of the group.

In October of 2009, my football players got into a fight on the field that got so bad the game had to be stopped. The fight continued as the visiting team tried to get on their bus. Fans got involved. One of my players threw his helmet at the bus. The police had to use pepper spray to subdue some of my players. There were arrests. Someone could have been killed.

As soon as we sorted out the facts, I suspended four players and requested an expulsion for one. I fired all of the assistant coaches and accepted the resignation of the head coach. I then met with the players and told them that what had happened was unacceptable, and the rest of the season was cancelled.

Some of the parents were vociferous in their opposition to my actions, as well as some in the media. Some of the parents and teachers supported me, but not nearly as loudly as those that did not. I actually got a phone call at home from the Superintendent who asked me to reconsider, but did not order me to. He did tell me that if I decided to stand by my decision, he would support me, and he did. The Washington Post and the broadcast media were all over it, and one columnist in particular was very critical, especially after I refused his request for an interview.

We resumed our football program the following year. I continued my preseason speeches. Never again did we have any character issues with any of our athletes again.  They made us proud, in all sports, and I was proud of them.

Cancelling the season in Sayreville was the right thing to do. Character can be built by playing football, but the games should never be more important than the life lessons that the players need to learn.

There are some things that should never be tolerated, including violence and sexual assault. If cancelling some high school football games can ensure that students are not subjected to those things, cancel the games.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The Time is Always Right To Do Right”... even if it is in the middle of a football season.   

Abandon Ship

One Sunday morning more than 15 years ago I decided not to go to church. Later that morning I found myself watching an old black and white movie called “Abandon Ship”. I never forgot it. When I became a Principal I thought about that movie every single day. I showed it to my teachers. I showed it to my International Baccalaureate students. I recommended it to everybody that asked me about the secrets to our success in transforming our school from the worst in our district to one of the best.

The movie is about leadership, decision-making, crisis management, group dynamics, ethics, favoritism, passion, and so many other things. Starring Tyrone Power, Stephen Boyd, Mai Zetterling, and Lloyd Nolan, the movie begins with a cruise ship striking a mine left over from World War II. The ship is destroyed and eventually Tyrone Power winds up on a life boat filled with other survivors including the ship’s captain, who is mortally wounded. Before he dies, the captain transfers command of the boat to Tyrone Power, who had been the second officer on the cruise ship. His last words to Tyrone Power is “save as many as you can”.

The boat is designed to accommodate nine people. There are twenty seven people either in the boat or holding on to the side of it. The people on the boat include young and old, male and female, strong and weak, black and white, meek and courageous.  Some of the people on the boat are grievously wounded. Some have faith and trust in the new captain, others think they are better qualified for leadership than he.

Mr. Holmes, (Power) initially believes they only need to survive for 24 to 48 hours until help arrives. He is confident that an SOS was sent before the ship sank. He is then informed by the dazed radio operator that both of the ship’s transmitters were destroyed before the distress signals could be sent. With no help on the way and the nearest land 1500 miles away in Africa, Holmes begins to realize the impossible situation he faces.

Another of the cruise ship’s officers, (Lloyd Nolan) is also seriously injured, and whispers the obvious to the beleaguered captain, “there are too many people on the boat, it has provisions and was made for nine, it will stretch to fifteen, but twenty seven has no chance. You have to get some of these people off this boat! Some are already dead! Like me!” He then jumps off the boat. Holmes jumps in the ocean to try to save him, but fails.

Soon it is obvious that a storm is coming, and the vacillating Holmes finally decides that he will have to sacrifice some of the people on the boat to save the rest. He informs everyone what he is about to do and begins to order the injured, weak, and cowardly to abandon the ship. He orders each to be given a life vest and placed over the side. One crew member (Boyd) is so opposed that he will only follow the order at gun point when told to place an unconscious woman over the side. When Holmes obliges he follows the order but insists on going over the side with her, despite the objections of Mr. Holmes.

One of the fifteen allowed to remain on the boat is so angry with Holmes that he wounds him with a knife, and Holmes shoots him dead with a flare gun.

The boat and the people on it survive the storm, and when they awake the next morning they hail Holmes as a hero and are effusive in their praise for him, unanimously thankful that he had saved their lives. However, Holmes’s wound has worsened, and applying the same standard to himself, he transfers command to the radio operator, giving him a ring signifying command that had been given to him by the previous captain, and throws himself overboard. The other passengers go after him and put him back on the boat.

Shortly thereafter, a ship appears on the horizon and everyone is jubilant when the ship acknowledges seeing them. But then, the passengers begin to disassociate themselves from the captain. They begin to express their objections to what the captain had done. The radio operator returned the Captain’s ring to him. The passengers literally turned their back to him in the boat.

The Captain was charged with murder and convicted. He was sentenced to six months in prison.

As a Principal, each day I reminded myself that “I can’t save everybody on the boat”.  Sometimes I would say it out loud. I wanted to save them, but until I accepted the fact that I couldn’t, each time I lost a student I considered myself a failure. To save them all was an unrealistic goal that endangered all of them. I believe that our students that were put over the side needed to be jettisoned. If they had remained we would have been in danger of losing the entire school. The life jackets that we offered included evening school, job corps, and alternative schools.

I remember this movie because of the similarities with my own experiences as a Principal. I remember the passionate discussions I had with my assistant principals, teachers, counselors and students about the moral dilemma faced by Mr. Holmes. Some of them realized that I faced the same dilemma every day.

Should a leader sacrifice the few to save the many?

I did.