Success for Black Boys

Last week I spent five days at the Harvard Closing the Achievement Gap Institute, sponsored by Dr. Ron Ferguson and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  The 2010 institute brought in educators from all over the United States including other areas such as Canada, Chile and the Dominican Republic.  There was a nice blend of teachers, school administrators, district level administrators, curriculum content coordinators and equity coaches, so the perspectives were healthy and diverse. The energy, passion, dedication and vision for our work was captured best by Dan A. Sims, Principal at Tri-Cities High School in East Point, Georgia, with a poem he shared called We Can Teach Them.  A video of Dan’s poem is above and a summary of each day of the institute is presented below.

Day 1 - Thursday July 8, 2010
Dr. Ron Ferguson
Framing the Work

Schools need people who interact most frequently and intensively with children (parents, teachers, peers) to nurture them in ways that contribute maximally to their self-realization as educated, healthy and fulfilled human beings.

Our reward is a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves and working with people whose values we share.

How Great School Leaders Build Trust and Credibility
ACTIONS – make it safe to make mistakes, keep promises, forthcoming with information/changes

URGENCY – Keeps most urgent challenges front and center in the district – Keeps showing up on agendas – doesn’t go away

FOCUS – Keep the number of initiatives small, help teachers and principals reduce the complexity of closing the achievement gap – not a sprint, but a marathon – celebrate short wins

EFFICACY – Explicit statements from leaders that we hold the answers to our challenges

INCLUSION – Leaders participate without dominating – let those closest to the issue/problem help in framing its solutions

STRONG RESPONSES – great leaders respond immediately, visibly, and sometimes harshly to behavior that sabotages organizational commitments

KNOWING THE STUDENTS – Great leaders know many students and press their staff to as well

PUBLIC TEACHING – Great leaders nurture open classrooms, frequent class visits, reflection

CLOSE MONITORING – Ensure non-negotiables are clear and are frequently monitored w/ ongoing feedback

PERSEVERANCE– Great leaders stick around and build a professional culture.

EFFORT – Great leaders speak and act from a belief that “Smart” is something you can get.

Preparing to Take Responsibility

-Why such an urgency to eliminate the racial predictability of achievement
-US Population becoming more diverse
-Past two years - more minority infants born than white infants
-Gap has been substantially closed before (See NAEP 1970-1990) also uneducated immigrants 19th/20th century
-Very little progress since 1990

Schools should stop comparing achievement scores among subgroups within the school and instead compared them against state averages (ie School Black Males vs State Avg for White Males)

Schools should move away from comparing proficiency rates and focused on actual scores (ie Black Males avg score w/ State avg score for White Males).

Five steps schools take toward becoming exemplary
1.     Key people accept responsibility to lead the change
2.     Declare the purposes of the work in mission statements that focus on a few ideas/priorities.
3.     Design strategies, plans, tools and tactics for broadly inclusive adult learning
4.     Develop and refine quality standards for judging teacher and student work
5.     Skillfully and relentlessly monitor plans and strategies, attending persistently and explicitly to achieving and maintaining quality

School Leadership fails when…
Leaders lack expertise
Leaders don’t know how to organize people to work together for change
Leaders are afraid to ask people to step outside their comfort zone
Leaders don’t respect other people’s ideas
Lack good ideas about what to do
Plans seem incoherent to people who are asked to do the work
Parents have not been included

Schools become exceptional when focusing on a few principles and practices.  Research suggests that adopting improvement models are ineffective and expensive for schools.  Most successful schools do their own work/research to get better.  Teams within schools begin to think differently about what needs to be done to close the achievement gap.  Currently everyone is looking for a model to replicate – real success comes with creating your own model.

Between 1972 and 2002 25% of the IQ Gap dissipated between whites and blacks

If you see low-level administrative tasks among school/district leadership, one usually sees low-level instruction in the classroom

Download Notes from Days 1-5 below