School Leadership for No Child Left Behind

No initiative in my three decades-plus in education has generated the sturm and drang of NCLB. It without question the most-criticized, most-resented, least-appreciated piece of legislation educators have ever been required to implement. Yet we have. It isn't simply that educators are, for the most part, good rule-followers, although that is probably true. As the years have passed and the work of implementing it has unfolded, there has been a growing, if grudging, admission that NCLB has forced certain accomplishments within public education that may never have otherwise come to pass.

Leverage for Leaders
In my experience of the past eight years working with school and district leaders, the greatest positive consequence of NCLB has been the raising of expectations for the achievement of all students. The legislation has given school leaders the leverage to demand that everyone in their systems stop making excuses for the failure of its schools to ensure that every student is achieving rigorous curricular standards. Nonetheless, a host of issues obviously still remain.

Double Systems in Some States
In my state, California, prior to NCLB's enactment, our Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999 was already performing a similar function quite well, thank you. PSAA, which itself caused a stir of unprecedented proportions, required schools to demonstrate steady growth toward a target, measured by - heaven help us - standardized test scores. Unlike NCLB, California's PSAA is a growth model, which allowed time - up to 20 years if needed - for schools to reach these targets. Historically underperforming subgroups were assigned lower targets, since those students were already behind. PSAA remains in effect in California, side-by-side with NCLB. Various state-funded incentive programs - with sanctions attached - are based on the growth formula of PSAA, known as the Academic Performance Index. While no educator in her right mind would publicly acknowledge any love of the API, especially in the beginning, it is certainly a kinder, gentler model of accountability than the Adequate Yearly Progress formula of NCLB, and our state leaders continue to lobby the U.S. Department of Education for the use of a similar growth model when NCLB is reauthorized.

Masking the Problem
As we approach 2014, it appears that for most public schools that serve large groups of underperforming students, the "absolute model" of measuring growth under NCLB did not allow enough time (13 years from the year of enactment) for these schools to catch up. Perhaps the jury is still out on this, although schools can be found, such as those identified by Doug Reeves as "100/100/100 Schools" (100% poverty 100% non-white ethnicity, 100% achieving grade level standards), that have caused everyone else a bit of a problem by proving it can be done. While there are valid arguments in its favor, I think the greatest danger of putting all of our eggs in a growth model basket like California's API is the fact that it can mask the problem of students who are still falling through the cracks of the public education system.

Not all states have a measurement system in addition to AYP, but consider this issue for those that have one, if it is a growth model. Take, for example, a California school with an API of 825 (it should be noted here that for a variety of compelling reasons, it is much more difficult for high schools than middle schools, and at least slightly more difficult for middle schools than elementary schools, to achieve all the growth targets, whether it is a growth model or an absolute model). Any California school over 800 on our state's API is considered an "A" school. If every student in the school attained a perfect score on the entire battery of our state's content standards tests, the school would have an API of 1000. 800 was set by the PSAA lawmakers as the target for all schools to shoot for, and California does have schools with APIs of 900-plus.

Unfortunately, there can be a dangerous tendency at schools over 800 to believe that there is no need to do anything but maintain status quo. Since most such "high-performing" API schools serve students who are largely from families of higher-socioeconomic status, there isn't necessarily a sense of urgency to continuously examine classroom practices and school policies in order to improve the performance of the relatively few students who are not achieving. While there is a growing number of schools that are very notable exceptions, at this time, at the majority of California's "A" schools, most students came to kindergarten ready for school. Their parents began telling them they were going to college when came out of the womb. The smaller number of students who are not proficient on the content standards at these schools can easily be hidden or forgotten. Even very able students can coast along, far below their potential, when the school's API is high. Since failure to meet AYP under No Child Left Behind triggers virtually no penalties at schools that don't receive Title I funds - which many high-API schools don't, given the typically-higher SES of their attendance areas - it is possible that little or no attention is paid to students who are not attaining proficiency. Those high-API schools that do receive funding may be failing to meet AYP, in some cases causing the teachers to ask, "So what?" It can be a bewildering set of numbers, often misunderstood by the community, the press, and even the teaching staff.

In states having AYP as their only measure, schools that do not receive federal funding may still be years away from paying attention to students who are not attaining proficiency. Even if they are in districts that are in or approaching Program Improvement status, the focus for improvement is most likely on the schools that do receive funding.

In California, our State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O'Connell, addresses the "invisibility" problem by demanding that schools pay attention to the subgroup achievement gaps, which can be clearly seen in both the API and AYP measurement systems. It is now a requirement for schools seeking the California Distinguished Schools recognition, historically reserved for schools having both high API and AYP totals, and is something he mentions in almost any public address that he gives.

The Exceptions
California schools that have earned their way to "A" status, versus those who were "born" with it when the API began, are growing in number, and prove that strong leadership and effective teaching can overcome the mitigating influences of poverty, race, English as a second language, and disabilities. This is not to suggest that good teaching and good leadership are absent at the others, but a telling trend is often the shifting of demographics in the attendance area of a school that began with an API of 800-plus. As school and classroom practices that worked adequately or well for advantaged students begin to fail the growing number of "new" students, there is often a tendency to blame the families and students rather than engage in critical self-examination. I am certain that these trends may hold true across other states as well, including those using only the AYP measure of NCLB.

Schools Serving Many Needy Students
What about schools that perform poorly according to state measures, if they have them, that are also low-AYP schools? In California, virtually all schools have improved significantly under both PSAA and NCLB. Researcher Lauren Resnick has said, "What you test is what you get," and if nothing else, the fact that we are now paying attention to measurable achievement has caused us to change practices and policies for the express purpose of improving student learning. The AYP targets seem very rigorous for schools that started out with very few students proficient, and as of 2008-09, we are not yet at the point where the absolute "bar" for AYP requires up to half of the students, regardless of their subgroup, to be proficient. Yet what school staff would think of hanging a banner from its roof proclaiming, "Welcome to [Happy Hills High School], home of high expectations! 50% of our students are proficient in math and English!" What might be a huge improvement for us may not appear laudable to non-educators. Moreover, it is certainly discouraging for schools where everyone is working very hard to get the test scores back and find that some of the AYP targets weren't met. However, it is even worse if the test scores come back, showing too little improvement or even drops in some areas, and the educators blame the kids or the parents.

Implications for School Leaders
So what are the implications for school leaders, whether they lead relatively high-performing, or lower-performing schools? Returning to my opening argument, I have watched the most effective school and district leaders use NCLB to help further the work they already knew was necessary. NCLB has helped them provoke the innate inertia of the organizational bureaucracies of their schools and districts, spurring them into action that has improved student learning. It has helped them counter the arguments of entrenched staff members who would have preferred to preserve their private classroom practice rather than study student data openly with colleagues in order to improve instruction. Some leaders have even leveraged the threat of sanctions - Program Improvement status - something veteran teachers may have initially waved aside with a yawning "just another pendulum swing," which has now become a reality at a number of schools and is still being used to leverage change at many of them.

Facilitating Teacher Discovery of Students in Need
I have seen amazing leaders at schools serving mostly advantaged students, and receiving no federal funds, use the student achievement data to shake their high-performing schools out of complacency. They engineer data study sessions that enable teachers to discover how many students are actually not achieving, in spite of the fact that the overall data looks impressive compared to that of many other schools.

Teacher Study Groups
A tool of effective principals at schools in every range of performance is the use of teacher study groups to do research on questions the staff needs to answer in order to improve learning for all students. These principals build commitment to specific, improved classroom practices, and help the staff examine school policies that may be counterproductive to learning. For example, one high school principal created demand for having students in class by having a study group examine the lost instructional minutes of students "locked out" for being tardy. The policy had been that tardy students sat in an empty classroom with a campus proctor for the hour of class to which they were tardy. While many teachers liked this policy because it was a simple answer to the tardy problem, the teacher study group was able to convince the staff that this policy was detrimental to the goals they had written for closing their school's achievement gaps.

Subgroup Data
There are those who rightly object to the term "subgroups." Randy and Dolores Lindsay of Pepperdine University argue that the very word suggests a lower class of students. They recommend using other terms, such as demographic groups. Being the parent of a child with special needs, although PSAA wasn't enacted until the year he graduated, I do not believe his best interests would have been served by being regarded as a subgroup member. I certainly pay attention to subgroup data in order to serve our client schools and districts, and I laud the power of studying that data in order to set goals and plan actions to close the achievement gaps the data brings to light. Yet I urge leaders not to lose sight of the fact that these subgroups are actually individual students, with names and needs - and gifts. At the same time, I am also convinced that if special education students and English learners were not subgroups that mattered under AYP, it is very likely that the programs they were offered, and expectations for their achievement, would remain at the same low levels as they were in many schools and districts pre-NCLB.

Student Papers Bring Focus on Students by Name and Need
The Algebra I team at a high school in one of our districts has moved to the practice of systematically examining student papers - a common weekly quiz of 3-4 items, on which the students are required to show their work - in their team meetings, in order to sharpen their focus on students by name and need. SMART goals (Specific and Strategic, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented, and Time-bound) are highly effective in focusing energy on the goal. However, there is an inherent danger of being seduced by numbers and percentages when SMART goals are written and revisited, losing the focus on what specific students need in the re-teaching loop, and as scaffolding for the upcoming instruction. The practice of examining students' actual work helps keep the focus on the students.

Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum
Perhaps the most powerful tool available for leaders under NCLB is ensuring that there is a guaranteed and viable curriculum for all students. Before NCLB, students moving from school to school, or even teacher to teacher, had no guarantee of having access to the same high-quality, rigorous curriculum. NCLB has been the great equalizer, because it has required each state to develop content standards for the core subjects, beginning in elementary school, with "teeth" in that requirement provided through the testing cycle. Because we are required to meet the same growth targets for special education students and English learners, they, too, are finally being given access to the guaranteed and viable curriculum of their peers. Much as we might resent the external control of non-educators that has forced us into this world of high-stakes accountability, we might have seen this coming as the years have passed where each teacher was simply allowed to "close the door and teach."

Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning has conducted research that synthesizes over two decades of "effective schools" studies. The results of that work were published in Robert Marzano's What Works in Schools. The highest-impact factor of the 11 statistically-significant factors found to impact student achievement - measured by standardized test scores - was a guaranteed and viable curriculum. Guaranteed obviously means that all students get it, not matter what teacher they have, or what school they attend. Viable simply means that it can be taught in the time frame for the course it is designed for, which is where pacing guides come in. Some teachers decry what they feel is over-standardization, but in schools and districts that have truly worked toward GVC, teachers across their systems are teaching the curriculum with both fidelity and creative flair. Without GVC, what any particular student gets in any particular classroom is a crap shoot, and the most-needy students have historically been served the least rigorous, least consistent curriculum.

The Law We Love to Hate
I expect that from here until 2014 and perhaps beyond, NCLB will remain the premier legislation that educators love to hate. Perhaps the changes in the re-authorized bill will make it more palatable to at least some of us, but the chances that any federal legislation of its sweeping proportions will please all educators are probably infinitesimal. Likewise, this article will most probably not win friends, but perhaps it will influence a few people.

There are those who believe that the not-so-secret agenda of NCLB is to ensure such a widespread failure that the public education system can be privatized. There are days when I think there is more than slight possibility that that could be true. How ironic for the authors who may have had that agenda up their sleeves that that NCLB has caused some schools to improve so dramatically. These schools have pulled off a feat akin to NASA's moon shot in under ten years from JFK's pronouncement that it would be done in a decade, at a time when the technologies required to put a man on the moon were still science fiction. The schools identified in Reeves' studies have essentially shot the moon - taken all the tricks, and won the game. Now, if enough school systems can learn from these schools and others like them, too bad, privateers!

I urge leaders to resist the temptation to indulge in NCLB-bashing - which is confusing to those we must influence and lead, given that it is a mandate - and use it instead as leverage for changes that will benefit all students. Most certainly, we all should hope for the changes we would like to see, and write to our federal legislators and lobby anyone else who might be open to our suggestions. But above all else, we should waste no more time in using the opportunity NCLB has given us, to lead with courage toward ensuring the educational opportunities that the American public education system purports to offer for all students. If the conspiracy theorists are right, it may be that it's up to us to ensure that the public education system remains public. Like the 100/100/100 schools, while no one is looking, let's take NCLB and make it work for us, and especially, for our students.

HOME  |  PRODUCTS |  CONTACT US