A brief report on leadership and achievement

"So, you want to teach?"

I'm looking at you. I know you've asked me that, or if not me, someone else who likes education or has studied education or even just anyone who has earned a liberal arts degree.

I think teaching is an incredibly rewarding and critically important profession. If living with an elementary education teacher taught me anything, it's that constructing knowledge and promoting intellectual development is something that requires a lot of time and commitment.  I remember in fifth grade that I decided I had finally found the job for me: a fifth grade teacher. Later, when I had Ms. Kincaid for English, I thought that I could be a good secondary English teacher. Teach for America was my first Alternative Break; my volunteer resume is almost exclusively with public schools. But I digress. Although I know teaching is huge (and debatably the single thing that makes the most difference for kids), I don't think it's for me.

One thing about working at Education Pioneers, and especially talking to the other interns and staff, is that you can have a heart for education and kids and social justice without that equating to a life in the classroom. I already believed this (and have build a lot of my dreams around this) but EP is founded on the premise that this is true. Part of my job has been to review resources that validate the effects of leadership on achievement of students.

So empowering, right? Here are some cool things I've learned:

“Reform in the U.S educational system is both lively and messy but, as educators grapple with emerging demands, we found that leadership matters at all levels. Leaders in education provide direction for, and exercise influence over, policy and practice. Their contributions are crucial, our evidence shows, to initiatives aimed at improving student learning, and of course ultimately to the future in which we all share” (Lewis, 283).

“There seems to be little doubt that both district and school leadership provides a critical bridge between most education reform initiatives and their consequences for students. Of all the factors that contribute to what students learn at school, present evidence led us to the conclusion that leadership is second in strength only to classroom instruction. Furthermore, effective leadership has the greatest impact in those circumstances (e.g., ‘schools in trouble’) in which it is most needed. This evidence supports the present widespread interest in improving leadership as a key to the successful implementation of large-scale reforms” (Leithman, 70).

I love augmenting my sense of self-worth through reading research about what I do. I have also had access to some really cool case studies about people who have been Education Pioneers Fellows. They deserve their own post, though. For now, I will let this absorb.

Sources:

Leithwood, Kenneth, Karen S. Lewis, Stephen Anderson and Kyla Wahlstrom. How Leadership Influences Student Learning. Rep. The Wallace Foundation, Sept. 2004. 

Lewis, Karen S., Kenneth Leithwood, Kyla Wahlstrom, and Stephen Anderson. Learning From Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning. Rep. The Wallace Foundation, July 2010. 

Why

Education Pioneers threw a spectacular party tonight.

There were a hundred people with advanced degrees from colleges that I wouldn't have even tried to apply to, all in business formal, drinking wine and eating beef wellington and bacon-wrapped scallops off trays from servers dressed in black. It was, at the same, time quite not-my-scene and the best time I've had all week. Graciously they left the word "intern" off my nametag, because a ton of people approached me to hear my story. Can you imagine?

To provide a bit of context, the people who are Analyst and Graduate School Fellows for EP are remarkably accomplished, and tonight was to celebrate them and why they have direct their career path into ed. reform. It was called the "Why Celebration." I will add the party pics later of the beautifully authentic wall of reasons why these individuals are working to transform education – to eliminate poverty, to make it so your zip code doesn't determine your future career, to let kids realize their full potential.

Really I just want to tell you about the keynote speaker. I would have been more excited in advance if I had any familiarity with Greater Boston school districts, but nonetheless the superintendent of Lawrence Public Schools Jeff Riley blew me away. He opened with this story and as much as I wouldn't start a speech with ten minute reading, he had the room in the palm of his hand. He read this to his teachers when he became superintendent, he said.

I can't do his subsequent speech justice by trying to recount it here, so I'll just tell you the ideas I'm still turning over in my head:

• Why is ed. reform so top-down? Why do people think a policy can be a one-size-fits-all in a district that serves such a diverse population? (In the sense that all populations are diverse.)
• The opportunity gap is what we should be considering. Disadvantaged kids just don't have the same sports, internships, involved parents, counseling, tutoring opportunities as suburban kids — and this is wildly significant with regards to achievement levels.
• His comment to the effect of: "People are on one side or the other - charter schools are great, or teachers and unions are great. I don't care. We are making charter schools, but without lotteries, and with unions."

So clever of you, EP. I guarantee you everyone left a little more sure of why they want to work in education, whether they wanted to or not. I heard someone decided to change careers after listening to this man tonight. I'm not even kidding.

Autonomy, mastery and purpose

Watching this short video was an assignment for a workshop tomorrow at Education Pioneers.

Not a lot to say that this video won't explain better. It illuminates a lot of why I'm here, why I've loved it here, and why the nonprofit sector and social entrepreneurship is so appealing to me. Enjoy!

Teducation

As I've said, a big part of my job thus far has been building databases and collecting data. In fact, all three of my projects last week were compiling information into spreadsheets, which leaves me with some extra processing capacity to listen to podcasts while I'm working. NPR collects all of the clips that address education and compiles them into a weekly podcast which I enjoy, but specifically, I discovered that TEDtalks has a section for talks about education!

I listened to four last week that made an impression:

1. Bill Gates on state spending. I listened to a TEDtalk from him a few years ago, actually, that really changed my perspective on the way we pay teachers. In this talk, he says that we need to be paying more attention to state budgets, because they define the money that goes to the schools and the teachers. He argues that we need to consider money for merit pay a necessary expense.
2. Cameron Herold on entrepreneurs. This entrepreneur coach totally rubbed me the wrong way. He said that we should recognize diverse talents in the school system, which is a legitimate argument, by telling stories about all of his business deals he made as a precocious 10-year-old. It was more of a 20-minute brag fest than a case for meaningful education policy.
3. Salman Khan on the flipped classroom. This one was especially fun because I am a bit new to this concept. This guy pioneered the idea that students can be more effective if they watch lectures at their own pace at home and complete traditional homework during class time. A really meaningful part of this to me was his assertion that the student-to-valuable-teacher-time ratio is more important than the student-to-teacher ratio, and this can be maximized by providing more work time in class. This makes intuitive sense, although I know that it's not always that simple.
4. Number four was just a soundbite on math education and how very few people use calculus in meaningful ways post-academia; instead of training people in levels of calculus, we should work toward statistics and more advanced uses of statistics. I loved this.

I know I've already talked about this, but there are so many ideas about what is good for education (and a lot of them are based more on politics than practice). Education Pioneer's mission has to do with education leadership which, by nature of the people they recruit, is based on a business model of the education system. EP also partners with more than 160 organizations in which they place their fellows, and the organization that takes the most is Teach for America. However, thus far, my Education Pioneers experience has been pretty apolitical. With regards to different ideas in reform, EP just looks for people who can make educated decisions about these based on data but doesn't try to make them themselves. They've given me this same freedom as an intern to learn and explore and come to my own decisions. I appreciate that a lot!