mcnultykeynote

Ray McNulty July 1, 2007 Model Schools Conference 2007 – Washington D.C.

Opening Keynote – Essential Learnings from School Reinvention
//This session will share some of the most essential learnings related to school reinvention. These are the findings and consequences that have been learned the hard way but provide the best return on investment. What to do when a school or district is just beginning this work? What makes the changes sustainable? What key strategies are important to improve literacy? Come prepared for some blinding flashes of the obvious and some “so that’s why it didn’t work” moments.//


 * Current system is impervious/bullet proof – resists change, is repellent
 * American educational system is outperforming its design; graduating more students than even; not fully preparing students for their future
 * Educators need to reinvent the system; not outside forces (politicians)
 * Class of 2020 (Karl Fisch video) – just left kindergarten; will live beyond 2080-2100; Is the curriculum in place to take these students to the cognitive place they will need to be in their future?
 * Human mind is the most powerful learning machine on Earth – infants/children get a sense of the world through taste, touch, sound, sight, smell (this is part of the educational system totally left out of our control – the early years)
 * When brain growth is the highest, public expenditures for education is the lowest (0-4 years) – significant gap between brain growth and public spending (gap/lag continues throughout the entire process of public education)
 * Knowledge gap (socioeconomic) is significant
 * Summer learning loss gap is significantly worse for low-income, no summer school students (still drops for middle-income, no summer school students)
 * The primary aim of education is not to enable students to do well in school, but to help them do well in the lives they lead outside of school
 * Study – Are they really ready to work? (basic knowledge/skills get the job, applied skills keep the job)
 * Communication skills, honesty/integrity, teamwork, interpersonal, strong work ethic = top 5 new-hire skills
 * 21st century learning skills & content – the common core – online study (connection to 21st century literacies from MIT/MacArthur Foundation)
 * Students who perform well in our school system do not necessarily perform well in life – skills valued in school are not the core skills and values in real life
 * What got us to where we are today will not get us there!
 * Become the agents of changes – do not submit to being the objects of change

__Key Learning from the Field__

The Big Bang Theory – changing the wholes system at once will provide nothing but pain, doesn’t work because there are some good things going on in our schools, fix what is //not// working by using data
 * the implementation dip . . . the possibility curve = when you implement change/new strategy, things will get worse before it gets better, must acknowledge the problems and dialogue openly about it
 * the versions strategy – when you try something don’t call it a draft, pilot, etc., call it a //version// (version 1, version 2, etc.) = Microsoft strategy (in 1995, when they launched Windows, they knew that there were bugs, so they listened to their customers and continued to improve and launch new versions)
 * tweaking practice / something doable; / ambidextrous organization (e.g. have every student free write 5 minutes every day in every class)

Instruction Not Structure – gap exists between effective practice and actual practice
 * Some ideas – align learning expectations (tighten curriculum), teach reading and writing (across the curriculum), supervise teachers (provide feedback – if it becomes part of our culture it becomes exciting and motivating), organize teachers to work in teams (support, collaboration / more apt to implement best practices)
 * Study - Comprehending Literacy in a Global Era (prose, documents, quantitative, technological)
 * “If You Care About Learning, These Finding are Chilling” – Mike Schmoker

Learn from Others – even if they are not like you. . ., get ideas, listening to the customers is //not// always the best strategy (“User centric innovation is nice, but sometimes you should ignore what the market or customers are saying.” //The Economist//, June 9, 2007)
 * Richard Ogle – __Smart Mind__
 * Extended mind through interaction and collaboration (“outing the mind”)

Personalization – not “averages”, “one size does not fit all, it fits one,” it doesn’t matter what the state does, what matters is what’s on my fridge, “fair does not mean equal” – Nancy Silvious
 * You can’t teach kids you don’t know . . . //relationships// (Carol Ann Tomlinson), relationships are foundational to designing educational experiences that are appropriately rigorous and relevant
 * R x R x R (relationships, relevance, rigor) = LCWRS (life college, work ready students) – like any math equation, if any of the Rs is a zero . . . nothing works
 * Quadrant D – Adaptation, uses learning to learn (pushing kids beyond their limits, need to //really// know kids in order to do this)
 * Quadrant A – relationships of little importance, Quadrant C & B – relationships important, Quadrant D – relationships essential
 * Think of the interaction of the three Rs as a 3D model

Culture – culture trumps strategy, creating new culture is easier than changing and existing culture, BFO (blinding fact of the obvious) = culture needs to be supportive, nurturing, and focused on high expectations for all, collaboration is evident in “the way we do business”, everyone has a voice, administration and faculty are responsible for all students
 * Vision statements only help those who already buy into the system, not effective for the medium and resistant adopters
 * Gauge how strongly your people agree on where they want to go and how they want to get there
 * When a new strategy is implemented culture is affected
 * [|www.stationaryisbad.com] (video)
 * visions, skills, incentive, resources, action plan – managing complex change, must have all elements to generate effective change

Focus on the Students – we focusing on everything else, make decisions based on the needs of the students and use data, student survey data tells us that they think school is boring, let students know that the goals of the school are, listen to the students
 * My Voice Survey – school is not their world, what they value in their daily life is absent or banned in schools
 * Need to teach kids the appropriate use of the ubiquitous technologies that comprise their reality
 * Things to leave behind – industrial model of education, low expectations for students (esp. special education and ELL), pure disciplines (content), trainings not attended by leadership (if it’s important enough for them to be here, it’s important enough for you to be here), “this is the way we have always done it”, assign teachers based on seniority, using state assessments as the solution to the problem
 * Highly effective teachers teach very little – they are facilitators of R/R learning
 * Home schools and online learning are the fasting growing sectors of the education today
 * Unleashing the enthusiasm of “possibility thinking”
 * We are at the primary innovation point of education
 * Invisible difference – passion and commitment