Tag Archives: college readiness

What Really Makes a Great School

So, I talk a great deal about my amazing students, my incredible staff. All true. Today I am grateful for my unbelievable parents. Last night, I shared a situation at our PTA Meeting and 5th-grade performance, I shared a situation with them and asked for their support. Their commitment to our school and community is unbelievable. This might be a given if you were talking about a roomful of people from the same backgrounds. I have families from all walks of life, all different viewpoints. One thing is undeniable-they love our school. I had a situation where an outsider made some judgments based on paper scores and a school rating website. I asked them to be more vocal about Degan and they stepped up to the plate.

And just as a public service announcement, STAAR is only as good at telling you about a school as you compare apples to apples. It doesn’t tell you that my current fifth graders entered 1st grade with only half knowing their letters and sounds. (Because some of these kiddos just didn’t have the opportunity to have quality learning experience before coming to school and not because their parents didn’t love them with all their hearts. It’s all about access to resources!!). I can tell you that these same students were only about 61% passing STAAR on math as third graders. These same kids were over 70% passing in math last year and after our first district benchmark was over 90% and ABOVE the district average.

Before you judge a book by its STAAR scores you might want to dig a little deeper to see the untold story. Does the TEA accountability report tell you that? Does it tell you how my diverse students wrote their own performance? Does it tell you how they “circle” and as a group work through their issues with each other and show value? Does it tell you about how innovative they are and how they use technology to create products to show their thinking or that one of my students is creating a documentary on being an NEU school and how that has affected her? I mean really, if kids could pass the test when they walked in the door does that prove a school is good versus one who grew kids like I described?

Oh, don’t worry. We are taking care of STAAR too. Not with test prep or drill and kill. But rather by deep learning. My students will accomplish whatever they dream of because they are amazing, they have incredible teachers, and because of our parents….they are the best in the world and support their school. They aren’t afraid of diversity and are willing to do whatever it takes, too.

No Excuses (Especially on Saturday)

Two years ago, my campus learned about No Excuses University. It happened accidentally when a visitor to our campus said, “Oh, you’re an NEU Campus.” I had no idea what it the world NEU was, so I looked it up. Basically, it is the implementation of best practices for instruction, combined with a passion for the learning of all students. It is a fierce commitment to adults not making excuses about why a child cannot succeed in school, but rather doing whatever it takes to overcome barriers and ensure that all children (no matter their background, ethnicity, socio-economic status, or disability) are proficient or advanced in Reading, Writing, and Mathematics so that they can go to college if they choose.

In trying to be aligned to this belief, my campus has looked at the students who we believed were not quite ready to hit that “proficient or advanced” expectation and created what we call NEU Saturday. This is a time where selected students come to school on Saturday for two hours so that they have a little extra time to learn. I need to be clear. This has absolutely NOTHING to do with our state assessment. My commitment is not to a test, but to these children’s being prepared for their future. If we do that right, they’ll be fine on a test, but the test isn’t the driving force.

I love this! Learning isn’t about worksheets! It’s about relationships, relevance to life, and things that can connect with the learner!
Because we aren’t bound by constraints of tutoring for a test, we serve all grades. YES, all grades, pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. They come and a band of teachers welcome these children with open arms and celebrate the child’s commitment to his education. So many of my students are still learning that things don’t just happen to them, but through the choices they make, they have the power to change the direction of their lives. I tell each one of the students that they are the “chosen” ones. That their teachers specifically chose them to come to this special time because of the grit, growth mindset and commitment to no excuses they make every day.

We feed them a full breakfast. While I know it is big talk in Washington D.C. that breakfast doesn’t make a difference in education, that is just plain malarky. When people are hungry, they can’t think about anything, but their stomach growling and “hangry” is a reality. Many of my children rely on the food from school as their primary source of nutrition. It’s just a sack breakfast with cereal or a muffin, string cheese, juice, and milk, but knowing my students are getting one extra meal over the weekend makes a huge difference.

Then for the next two hours, I have an incredible staff that pours into these children. They talk with them, hug them, and provide them with meaningful learning. They do cool activities with Versa-tiles, read, and play games with higher-level thinking and strategy. There’s not one test prep material. Only opportunities for the students to think, discuss and problem solve in meaningful situations. The best part is that these students say this is the best day of the week and and ask to come back on Sunday, too!


There’s lots of criticism about public schools and their effectiveness. I haven’t seen that. Public education is the heart of our society’s future. It takes ensuring that all children have access to a quality education to ensure they have the tools to become productive citizens in the future. It is when we take off the constraints off and allow educators to do what they love and teach that this happens. They do whatever it takes because this is why we get into teaching: to see all children succeed. No excuses.

Why I Won’t Have a STAAR Pep Rally at My School

Pep Rallies before a standardized test have become a common occurrence in schools. A campus principal’s email can be flooded with people who want to get paid to be a part of these “pep rallies”.   I have been a part of this practice in the past, but since becoming a principal, I have been against this type of practice.  Why, because a ” STAAR Pep Rally” makes the important thing the test.  It sends the message to those people outside education that “the test” is what is important.  I am here to say a standardized test is the LEAST important thing that happens during a school year.

A test is what happens on one single day to measure all the learning that takes place in the course of a school year.  For it to be an accurate measure, all the variables for that would have to be absolutely perfect.  Students would have to have a great night’s’ sleep,  a well-balanced breakfast, a supportive emotional environment before school, and all the supports they need to be successful.

Let’s face it.  Some students have trauma at home. Many don’t have basic needs met.   They don’t always have the nutrition they need.  They may not get adequate sleep. Even our students with disabilities don’t have access to all their IEP interventions because of the rules of the test.  The variables are not the best case scenario for some kids.  How in the world could we expect the test to accurately reflect all they have mastered?

Here is what I am willing to rally over:  students, teachers, grit, growth mindset and all they have accomplished over the ENTIRE year.  At my school, we do this every Friday. Today, on the eve of our standardized test, my students did come to the cafeteria to meet with me.  The rest of the building lined the hallway to applaud their hard work and let them know we stand with them. It was not a STAAR Pep Rally.  It was a celebration of people who work hard to grow in their learning. It was caring about the people enough to let them know they were loved, supported, prepared, and in control of their destiny.

When students arrived, I shared with them my story of having to retake the GRE to get into graduate school to work on my doctorate.  As I sat down to take this test, I felt angry and frustrated.  I felt like there were some words that no one used, so impossibly worded questions, and I just felt there was no way that that test could accurately encompass who I was as a principal or a learner.  It hit me that this was how some of my students felt.

I told my students that there was no way that tomorrow’s test could define them either.  There was no way that this test could fully share with legislators or the public how much they had learned this past year. What I did tell these students was that they were in control, that they had the power to control their destiny. I shared with my fifth graders that sometimes, working hard at a test can give you a benefit.  That while my test couldn’t define me, it could gain me access to a program I wanted to be a part of to improve my life.

For them, working hard to “show what they know” could prevent them from retaking this test in a few weeks, but it would be their choice.  I told my fourth graders that while they weren’t facing a retest, the evidence does show that every time they pass a test like this,  it increases their chances of passing the next one.  No matter what, I told them they were in control.  I wanted them to know they were prepared and had everything they needed.  If they wanted it, they could achieve it.

I think that is what it is all about:  empowering students to know that they have control over their education.  The focus should never be on a test, but the people taking the test and continual reminders that even as children, they get to choose, they get to decide how to define themselves.

 We put tremendous pressure on students to “pass.”  The truth is our actions should support our beliefs.  At my campus we don’t have a test pep rally, we have a “hope rally” every single week where we celebrate teachers, students, and the power of education together as a campus.  While today I did bring students down to meet with me before they take their test tomorrow, it was never about the test.  It was ALWAYS about the people.  Whatever happens, tomorrow doesn’t really change anything.  Don’t get me wrong.  I want all of my students to do well because I know it makes their life easier in the long wrong. However, I know what my students have learned, how they have grown, and how much they have overcome and it far exceeds the constraints of a multiple choice test!

Not Just a Building

This past week, I attended the Texas Association of School Administrators Midwinter Conference and had the opportunity to hear Shanna Peeples, 2015 National Teacher of the Year, speak. She had so much to say about advocating for public schools, but the thing that has resonated with me most was this quote:

“Public school is not a building. It’s a promise that a community makes to itself.” Shanna Peeples, TASA Midwinter Conference 2017

I’ve thought a lot about what she said, but I would take this statement a little further. A public school is not just a building; it is a promise that the community makes to itself to inspire hope for a better future.

We live in a tough world. We have people feeling entitled to rewards without work. People who cannot communicate effectively with words, so they use violence. People who are angry because they feel invisible, and other people who are afraid of the people they don’t understand so they put up the barriers that make angry people feel even more

disenfranchised. Instead of fixing the systems we have and contributing to a better world, people want to take their toys and go home resulting in soft segregation. This is only going to create a continuous cycle of decline.

But here is what I have to say-public schools are the hope for a better future. Public schools are the embodiment of our forefather’s vision, and capture in the words of Emma Lazarus inscribed on The Statue of Liberty.

In my school that promise is:

  • to a young girl that there will be someone there to care for her, despite her mother suffering from stage 4 cancer and having no extended family.
  • taking a moment to talk about what went wrong when a boy lost his cool and threatened a peer and to develop a different plan while helping him let go of his angry past.
  • a letter waiting for you at your new school when your family moved away and a teacher worried about your transition because you have moved so often.
  • a teacher braiding your hair because you are staying in a homeless shelter and mom couldn’t fix your hair before you came to school.
  • knowing that we will exhaust every option before we label you in a way that may limit your future opportunities.
  • the nurse recognizing a rash as a bigger problem to alert you to the need to seek immediate, life-saving medical attention.
  • a concerned teacher taking money from her own pocket to ensure the electricity is on so a child with asthma can have nebulizer treatments.
  • teaching peers to show compassion to a student with low cognitive ability and them applying that compassion by looking after her when she is outside the classroom.
  • designing work with incubating germs that help you learn “school stuff” but make you feel like a grown up in the real world.
  • setting goals and celebrating achievement and talking about how to regroup when the goal falls short so that all children, no matter of their ability, are coached and guided for growth.
  • talks of college embodied in grade level cheers and the dreams that a college degree can hold for your future.
  • songs of education and being “world changers” with the entire school every Friday.
  • the adults not making excuses that prevent children from achieving the best future, no matter where they started.
  • diversity and the opportunity to be around all kinds of people and learn that there is no need for fear, just value of multiple perspectives and willingness to use words to discuss differences.

Public schools are the place that we value every individual. It doesn’t matter your ethnicity, your native language, your religion, whether or not you have a disability or giftedness. You may come from an average background or one fraught with trauma. You may be wealthy, poor, or just middle-class. You may be the child who tries to please or the child who is continually demonstrating your displeasure with the world by spinning things into chaos. In a public school, we love you, we value you and try to earn your trust. We stretch you and grow you. We teach you to collaborate and communicate with those that are nothing like you. We teach you to think critically and set goals. We teach you to read, write and problem-solve using multiple strategies. We prepare you for the ability to thrive in a diverse world with the confidence that you can not only achieve your goals, but make the world a better place.

The things that public schools do to prepare our world for a better future are not easily measured by standardized tests or accountability systems and high performance on a test doesn’t guarantee your success if you cannot relate to the 21st century world.  Many would have society believe that paying for an education is a better option, but the don’t tell you what opportunities you miss because of a separate, homogenous education

Just remember, public schools are not just a building, we are people who ensure the promise that the community makes to itself, who love all and accept all, to inspire hope for a better society and future for all.

 

You Can’t Compare Apples and Oranges

This is a great read if you don’t understand why public schools are NOT failing. For example, if you looked only at my campus’ non-disabled, non economically disadvantaged and native English speakers, we would be at the top of the charts. Even so, we are climbing those charts because we educate all children in a social-emotionally healthy, rigorous way.


The great thing about America is that everyone has opportunity. You don’t have to be wealthy, non disabled, or meet a standard to get the in. We start with whatever you give us and grow you. In public education we educate every child. And here’s the great news, if you want a different product or possibility, you can home school, or choose a private school.
Just remember, our constitution guarantees a FREE and APPROPRIATE, PUBLIC education. Everyone having a quality education is how we make America great, not through soft segregation. If you think public schools can improve, roll up your sleeves and help.

If you decide not to help, please just don’t take every report you read at face value.  Rates of American Public Schools include all children.  Private schools, Charter schools, and schools from other countries often have selective processes.  One’s an apple, one is an orange.  However, unlike the picture above, these reports and media stories are clearly labeled as such.  Make sure you only compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

#standupforpublicschools #proudpublicschoolprincipal #donttreadonme

U.S. Public Schools Are NOT Failing. They’re Among the Best in the World

 

If You Take All the Mouse’s Cookies

This is an article I wrote published this month in National Association of Elementary School Principals’ magazine “The Principal”.

https://www.naesp.org/principal-novemberdecember-2015-breaking-cycle/inspire-growth

No Excuses

I am fortunate to work in an amazing school district.  It is a district where the community has established values for educating our students in ways that prepare them for the 21st Century.  The primary focus is on understanding learning standards and valuing others and their diversity.  Nope, I didn’t mention test scores.  Amazing, right?

Don’t get me wrong.  We want our students to achieve proficiency on their tests. We just know that if we are educating our students in meaningful ways that include involving our community, integration of the meaningful use of technology, engaging students with choice, flexible seating, and collaboration they are more likely to learn.  If we teach at high find a waylevels, students will be able to transfer these skills to a test, but more importantly to LIFE!

As a part of this amazing district, we are also a part of an amazing group of districts called the North Texas Regional Consortium. These districts have banded together to proclaim higher standards for our students than skills encapsulated on a test.  They organize dates that allow campuses to visit each other and discuss the types of practices we value.

My campus always participates, whether it is as a host or someone who sends others out to visit.  Last year, during one of the times that we had visitors, a teacher approached me and said, “So you’re a ‘No Excuses University School.'”  I’m sure the look on my face was showing my lack of understanding as I said “Huh?”  She repeated herself, and I replied, “I have no idea what you mean.”  She said, “But you have to be.  You’re doing all the things.”  I said, “I’m not sure what you mean.” 

when-i-lost-my-excuses-i-found-my-results-298x300If nothing else, she peeked my curiosity. Long story short, I looked NEU up on the web. I saw that we were doing most of the concepts they valued: Creating a  “Universal Culture of Achievement,” Engaging in Collaboration, Using Standards to Drive Instruction, Using Assessment to be informed, Being Data-Driven,  Having Effective Systems to Manage Data, and Implementing Effective Interventions.  The focus was working with high poverty schools. Yes, this sounded like something my campus needed to be a part.

 I took a group of teachers to one of their institutes last Spring.  The most powerful thing I heard was about how often it is the adults making the excuses for why students cannot achieve. We say we believe all students cannot learn, yet we pigeon-hole students into a path that will never allow them access to higher education.  The group of teachers and I that attended knew immediately these were “our people” and within three months we had applied and become and No Excuses University School!  

 

I don’t think it matters if you are a high poverty school or not. The truth is; all studenexcuse limitts need teachers as advocates who prepare them to attend college so that they are ready if they choose.  A college degree is a statistical game-changer when it comes to financial success and avoiding adult poverty.  I don’t think educators make excuses because we are lazy or don’t care about kids.  Teachers make excuses because our hearts break for some of the difficult things students have already endured in their lives or because we have tried everything we know to do and just don’t know what else to try in helping our students. 

A “no excuses” mindset is not easy.  It’s something we have to practice. We began our year writing down our past excuses and throwing them in the trash.  We then wrote new pledges that said what we would do instead of using the old excuse.  Colleagues hold each other accountable for this daily. At my campus, we tell our students and parents that every student will be proficient or advanced in Reading, Writing, and Math, and we have challenged ourselves to look at any students who are not growing whether they are currently at the top, middle or bottom of our achievement continuum. .  It has been amazing to see our teachers and students rise to the new expectation.

I believe if you want to get results, you first have to have to get rid of all the reasons why you can’t and start believing that you can!

An Open Letter to Bill Hammond in Response to his Article in The Dallas Morning News on the Cost of School Funding in Texas

As I read the following article in the newspaper, I could not help but be dismayed at the surface level understanding and judgement of school funding.

Bill Hammond Article on Texas School Funding in Dallas Morning News

Mr. Hammond,

Thank you so much for your viewpoint on the cost of education in Texas. You make some valid points on how the legislature has backed off on many of the previously established criteria for high school graduation. One thing that you failed to point out is that part of the reason the legislature has backed off on these incredibly stringent criteria is that even with higher demands on students through extremely limiting class schedules and even more rigorous testing with State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) and End of Course Assessments, it wasn’t working. We had incrementally increased standards and weren’t seeing any results to justify this new direction of demands. Does it mean that schools are not doing everything they know to do to prepare our students for college and for their futures? Absolutely not.

Years of increased demands on graduation plans and increased testing weren’t increasing students’ success on tests or in college.  More importantly, they were likely causing more damage than good. My guess is that both you and I didn’t face the demands of high school schedules or testing that students in the past ten years have faced. Yet, I think we both turned out okay.   I took the Texas Assessment of Basic Skills (TABS) in high school. I know for a fact the STAAR tests my students take in elementary school are far more rigorous than what I faced in high school. Still, I graduated from high school and have managed both a bachelor’s and master’s degree.

The legislature’s ridiculous demand with testing took the focus off students and put it on testing. Schools and more importantly students are paying the price. Teachers didn’t want to focus on testing, but faced with the pressure of labels and job security, they did what they thought necessary, valued, and expected. We began teaching students specific steps to follow to “pass”. Unfortunately, as we became a “test” driven state, we forgot that it was more important to teach students some of the skills that are critical for life: thinking, problem solving, perseverance despite failure.

When Texas revamped our “testing” agenda to create tests that required students to think and problem solve rather than follow specific steps and testing strategies, educators weren’t prepared for such a drastic swing in the pendulum. The change isn’t a bad thing, but it takes time to shift gears. The students who had the “do as I say” instruction are finding it harder to undo this way of thinking. These would also be the students who have more recently graduated high school and are the ones creating the numbers you reference.

Here are some other things that you are not considering in your stance. Poverty rates across the country have skyrocketed in the past seven years. We are currently at some of the highest rates since The Great Depression. It was four years ago that the state cut school funding and has yet to restore it back to even the original rates, much less keep up with rises in prices of almost everything. 

Students from poverty are facing crises at home, again, like I would suspect you or  I never faced. I have students at my school who do not know where meals are coming from. Some live in cramped housing exposed to high crime rates. Others absorb the stress of their parents who live in financial uncertainty. They bring all of this to school with them. My colleagues and I gladly are there willing to take it off their shoulders as they walk through the door so that for a few hours a day, they can just be children without bearing the weight of the world.

Teaching the students at my school looks much different from the instruction when I grew up. I experience students who are angry and frustrated and by no means ready to learn. But it’s okay. They are children trying to cope with a world that is not “child friendly”. I do feel it is my job to meet their basic needs: make them feel safe, make sure they have food, make sure they feel loved unconditionally so that they can get ready to learn. I don’t make excuses for them because we don’t have time for that. I just know these are some things I must do if I hope to make sure they are proficient in academic skills. While we push our students academically, we don’t do it with “test prep”. We teach our students to think and problem solve.  We embed technology because digital literacy is just as critical for the 21st Century as reading, writing, and math. We show them how the skills and concepts they are learning are critical for their futures. Because most of our students from impoverished backgrounds do not have someone in their family or circle of friends who have benefitted from higher education, we have to find ways to intentionally show them  the value of college, too.

Yes, I’m quite sure as a businessman, you don’t see the value of an educational dollar. You grew up in a system that required much different demands on you as a student, not to mention, public school is typically a “middle class” system. You probably sailed through without an issue.   You probably haven’t considered that more than fifty percent of our Texas students are living in poverty. I know this because I don’t think you are including the fact that this number has been significantly increasing in your relaying of Texas public school’s dismal failure in graduation rates.   For students from poverty to successfully access the educational system, it takes committed adults who are willing to help them learn rules and values about education that they may not have learned at home, not because their parents don’t care, but because they may not know them either. I know that smaller class sizes don’t necessarily show a positive effect on student achievement UNLESS the strategies being used are different. I would say that given the high needs of students in poverty, children DO benefit from small class sizes because this allows teachers to invest more in each child.  It is amazing how five fewer students can increase time to develop one-on-one relationships and help students see the value of education in a personalized way.

I recently had a great conversation with Senator Van Taylor. He shared with me how he thought charter schools made better use of a tax dollar. I cannot help but laugh at this notion. Charter schools accept the students they want and remove them if they don’t live up to expectations. In public school, we educate every child. We don’t pick to keep the ones who can make good scores.  We even keep the ones who are experiencing emotional and behavioral issues that make teaching and learning hard. We do this willingly because we know that if we don’t teach all students in the classroom how to accept and adapt to each other, our society won’t have much of a chance. The real world includes all types of people.

For people to get out of poverty, research shows three things that can make a difference: a quality education, a relationship with an adult who can help them navigate their way, or a special skill/talent. Public schools can absolutely provide the first two and  help enhance the third if given the support needed to do so. Public education is the key. We need legislators to quit making mandates that distract us from our work. We need businessmen who haven’t walked into a school since they graduated (if they even attended public school) to quit thinking they know best, unless they want to come and spend real time in a school and see what the circumstances are before acting as judge and jury.

You see, you may be a businessman, but I too am in a business: the “people development” business. I have a better reason to succeed than you because I have more at stake. My job isn’t about profits and stakeholders; it’s about human lives and could result in the rise or decline of a society based on the success of the lives I touch each day. If I fail, the outcomes are much more devastating, so please do not act as if this is something educators take lightly and that it is just about money. As a businessman, I am sure you can understand that in business, money is equivalent to support. I think that is all any of us in education want – support of the communities we fight for every day.

I recognize you may equate rigorous learning with coursework and tests. I don’t. I am a proud member of a school district that understands that to teach students in a way that prepares them for the 21st century, we must do this through authentic work that ties learning to the real world and involves problem solving and critical thinking. It takes conversations and meaningful feedback from teachers, not scores on a bubble sheet. Creating this type of classroom that also results with success on tests takes time, and it also takes money.

If you would like to see what we do, I invite you to my school. We begin talking about college with our students while they are in Pre-Kindergarten. We do rigorous, relevant learning. Teachers in my school take part in ongoing job-embedded professional learning so that we get better at teaching our students every day. In addition to the core subjects, we teach our students about character, grit, and growth mindset because these are the skills that research says result  in success in college. We are not where we want yet with test scores, but our students are developing the skills they need because of the work we do.  We do it with the money we have, but even a return to previous funding levels would help.  

Personally, I would rather see Texas tax dollars spent on education than prisons.  I think we should be much more shocked by the cost of our penal systems than public education. The recidivism rate there shows much less success.  If we spent the money on education, maybe the penal system would improve in the long run as well. Having better prepared citizens has to be better for Texas, our community, and businesses in the long run.

Sincerely,

Vanessa Stuart