How to Fix Our City Schools

The Solutions are Simple, Change is Not

In baseball, there is the hidden ball trick, suicide squeeze, and delayed steal. Football teams sometimes try a flea flicker, fake punt, or an onside kick. Educators also like “trick” plays – what a colleague once called the superintendent’s “latest shiny object” and teachers call the “flavor-of-the-month.” However, as the legendary coach, Vince Lombardi, explained, "Football is two things. It's blocking and tackling. I don't care about formations or new offenses or tricks on defense. You block and tackle better than the team you're playing, you win." While education is not a competition, mastering “the fundamentals” is also the critical factor of great schools.

In the last edition of my newsletter, I suggested that urban educators have tried everything under the sun. What I didn’t say was that, generally, they have been on the right track all these years. How is that possible given, as I noted, that on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the “Nation’s Report Card,” only 18% of black 4th graders and 23% of Hispanic 4th graders scored at or above the “proficient” level in reading. Yes, some programs and initiatives are more important or powerful than others but most are sound, common sense ideas. They are not the problem. Using Vince Lombardi’s vernacular, the problem is that too much emphasis is placed on new formations, new offenses, and trick plays when we should be focused on mastering the fundamental instructional practices.

So, what is the “blocking and tackling” of the classroom? To answer that question, we only need to ask what schools do when students are struggling. For those students who begin each fall far behind their peers, do teachers differentiate instruction or provide extra resources? When students are falling behind, are teachers able to slow down, reteach, and provide extra learning time? Are the curricula cleverly designed to allow teachers to easily accommodate all the varied learners? Does the average teacher receive the training and resources they need to differentiate instruction for a classroom of 15-20 students with diverse needs?

As Jay McTighe observed, “While effective teachers always differentiate… it is unrealistic to expect an individual teacher to be able to fully address the wide variety of backgrounds, skill levels, interests, talents, personalities, and learning preferences of the large numbers of students found in many of today’s classrooms… Sadly, I have witnessed some extraordinarily conscientious educators… burn out from the demands of trying to be all things to all students.”[1]

To create great schools, we must recognize (i.e., admit) that while educators champion differentiation and tiered supports for students who need them, today, those practices are only barely implemented in most urban schools. Tragically, in the real world of state standards and “high-stakes” tests, most teachers feel they cannot afford to slow down, reteach, or otherwise adjust instruction. They feel the pressure to keep moving to “cover” the curriculum. But, how is that possible? Without more time and resources, how do primary teachers ensure that all students can read at or near grade level when we know many of their students arrive in kindergarten with huge language deficits? How does a student read a World History or Biology text when he can’t read The Secret Garden or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? How does a student learn 8th grade math when he hasn’t yet mastered the core of 4th and 5th grade math?

According to Albert Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Or, as the baseball guru, Yogi Berra, might have explained, our schools are “like déjà vu all over again.”

There are so many issues, challenges, opinions, theories, and distractions, district leaders have been unable to see the forest for the trees. It is not written in any administration or supervision playbook that teachers must hurry through the curriculum or that it is inadvisable to provide the extra time some learners require or that schools should only provide extra help for those few students who scored just below the “passing” cut score on the last test. (Yes, sadly, “targeting” students who scored just below the cut score is a common practice – although ethically, logically, and pragmatically misguided.) Once educators reject the premise that hurrying all students through “the curriculum” will somehow magically increase test scores, then creating great schools is absolutely within every district’s grasp. The necessary teaching and learning principles are well known. Further, the solutions are well within urban districts’ current budgets and do not require new programs, theories, or trick plays.

The answers have been right in front of us all these years. Students must have what Robert Marzano calls the “opportunity to learn” and for that to become a reality will require teachers to be well-trained and to have the resources they need – including time. In large measure, the solution is what we now call Response to Intervention (RTI) or Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). Of course, many superintendents will argue that they are already implementing RTI or MTSS and, to a degree, that is often true. As I said, many educators are and have been on the “right track.” But, what is needed is full implementation and that will require more and better training, resources, and leadership.

The critics, cynics, and naysayers will protest that it cannot be done, that fully implementing differentiation and tiered supports would be too expensive. In upcoming newsletters, I will show that urban districts already have the financial resources they need. But, frankly, it doesn’t matter what the cost. Let’s be clear. Our city schools and communities are in crisis. That is not hyperbole. Instead of experiencing success, far too many children learn school is a place of almost daily failure and frustration.

The solutions are simple but change is not. As Yogi Berra (or maybe it was Socrates) once said, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the past, but on building the new.”

In upcoming newsletters, I will look more closely at the resources and training teachers need, what real “instructional leaders” look like and why they are so critical, how districts can fund great schools within their current budgets, and other critical issues and the solutions. My goal is not to theorize, philosophize, or criticize but to offer practical solutions. I hope you find the information compelling and useful.

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[1] Jay McTighe, https://jaymctighe.com/a-response-to-differentiation-doesnt-work (2015).