New Book Explores How to Revitalize America's Public Schools

U.S. students score lower on international tests of math, science, and literacy than students in most other industrialized nations, including Japan, China, India, and most members of the European Union. That means the next generation of leaders may find themselves poorly prepared to compete. And it begs the question: What can be done to reform, redeem, and revitalize America's public schools?

Gary Gordon, a researcher in Gallup's Education Division and a former public school teacher and principal, firmly believes that more accountability testing is not the answer. His position is supported by growing evidence that the "No Child Left Behind" program is setting student achievement goals to the lowest common denominator. In a groundbreaking new book, Building Engaged Schools:Getting the Most Out of America's Classrooms (Gallup Press; September 2006), Gordon exposes the outdated assumptions behind the system's problems and calls for a radical shift in the learning process to focus on the strengths of individual teachers and students.

"The message of this book is that educational excellence relies more on the talent and engagement levels of people within a school than on any other factor," states Gordon. "Identifying and leveraging the underutilized talent of students, teachers, support staff, and principals should be the first consideration in improving outcomes for students."

Drawing on surveys and focus group discussions with principals, teachers, parents, and students, Building Engaged Schools offers a comprehensive view of what's wrong with the current approach to education in the United States. As Gordon makes clear, the emphasis on remediation and on conforming to mandated instructional techniques, curriculums, exams, and standards has turned U.S. public schools into demoralizing places to learn and work. Despite all the talk about the importance of talented educators, teachers are routinely treated like interchangeable parts in a machine. In general, students are taught what's required to pass tests, but not what's needed to help them develop their innate potential or prepare for the future.

Yet as Gordon demonstrates, school leaders, teachers, and communities can change the system if they work together toward common goals. Sharing examples of innovative public schools and citing instructive cases of forward-thinking businesses, Building Engaged Schools presents an inspiring vision of for American education. What's more, Gordon discusses basic strategies to achieve it. Among them:

• Replacing the focus on fixing weaknesses with a strengths-based approach to education. This approach includes identifying each student's natural inclinations, then setting courses and projects to help students develop in ways that lead to career success.
  
  
• Recruiting and hiring teachers that not only possess knowledge and skills but that also have a talent and enthusiasm for teaching. Schools should give teachers the freedom and support to go beyond the curriculum and to cultivate relationships with their students.
  
  
• Reaching out to parents and helping them more fully understand the crucial role they play in their child's education, and encouraging their commitment to creating trusting, productive partnerships with classroom teachers.
  
  
• Recognizing the complexity and emphasizing the value of a principal's role as both a good manager and an inspiring leader.
  
  
• Encouraging communities to get involved in their local schools and to foster a culture that values education.
  
  
• Replacing standardized tests that focus on proficiency with a measurement of every student's relative growth. This provides a much better yardstick of a school's capacity to motivate and inspire a love of learning.

Building Engaged Schools is required reading for leaders, teachers, and parents, and everyone invested in saving American education and keeping America great.

About the Author

Gary Gordon, Ed.D., is Vice President and Practice Leader of The Gallup Organization's Education Division. Before joining Gallup, he devoted 25 years to working in public schools as a teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent. He also taught future school leaders at his own graduate school alma mater, the University of Kansas.

For more information, contact:

Barbara Cave Henricks
Cave Henricks Communications
512-301-8936 or barbara@cavehenricks.com

Six Essential Steps for Building Engaged Schools

1. Emphasize each student's strengths. A focus on fixing weaknesses emphasizes getting all students to average, and none to excellence, in their areas of greatest potential. Every student needs to learn the basics. But ultimately, fulfillment comes from opportunities to develop natural inclinations in ways that lead to success. Schools should encourage students to run with their talents, rather than constrain them through standardized instruction. Teachers should identify each student's learning needs and celebrate, as well as cultivate, each student's unique strengths.
2. Recognize schools as people-driven. Theabilities of teachers and principals are paramount to the success of students. Far too often, talented educators are treated as if they are interchangeable parts in a machine. Evidence shows that teacher talent and teacher commitment to relationships affect student outcomes more than any curriculum change.
3. Make finding the right people every school's highest priority. A principal's most important task is selecting teachers who can help students learn. This requires recruiting candidates with the knowledge, skills, talent, dedication, and enthusiasm for the calling. In turn, district leaders should select principals who are both effective managers and inspiring leaders.
4. Foster positive school cultures. The working conditions within each school influence how teachers and students perform. Every school's environment can be improved if principals, teachers, and other staff members work together toward that goal. Within supportive environments, teachers feel like they belong, they matter, and they have opportunities to learn and grow. Only then will they be capable of making students feel the same way.
5. Reach outside the school. Teachers must help parents fully understand the role they play in their child's education. Along with fostering trusting partnerships between parents and teachers, school leaders must encourage the community to actively support children's education. However, schools can't make the crucial changes alone. Communities must rally around initiatives intended to keep students keenly interested in unlocking their own potential.
6. Improve measurement. Our outdated system of accountability testing must be replaced, despite its sanctioned status under state and federal law. America can't match the pace of global competition by setting student achievement goals to the lowest common denominator. Measuring each student's relative growth provides a much better yardstick of whether a school is teaching all students to strive to be their best.

Adapted from Building Engaged Schools: Getting the Most Out of America's Classrooms by Gary Gordon (Gallup Press; September 2006).

A Q&A With Gary Gordon

Author of Building Engaged Schools: Getting the Most out of American's Classrooms

Q: What inspired or compelled you to write Building Engaged Schools (Gallup Press, September 2006)?

A: My role at The Gallup Organization enabled me to view America's schools from a different perspective and see the changes businesses have made in response to new conditions. I was struck, however, by how many businesses changed dramatically in the last decade and how little public schools have significantly changed. The difference is that public schools have not challenged some basic assumptions that limit their range of responses. Writing Building Engaged Schools became a way to ask public schools to challenge these assumptions and to adopt different strategies.

Q: Why aren't federal mandates, like No Child Left Behind, working to improve the state of public education in America?

A: While it is still early, it is unlikely that we will see major improvements in student achievement because of No Child Left Behind, because it uses outmoded, "factory" model for the education process, where every student passes through an assembly line. Specifically, No Child Left Behind concentrates education efforts on proficiency and the lowest common denominator, rather than growth for every student, and it encourages rote, "do and say" curriculum and instructional approaches to teaching and learning, leading to further teacher and student disengagement. It provides summative data after the school year is over rather than formative measures that can improve learning during the year. It creates important but insufficient standards for "highly qualified" teachers. It also limits measurement to one model and makes the test more important than learning and growing. And it also penalizes schools that are making real progress and rewards schools that tread water but show adequate yearly progress with a few students.

Q: How does accountability testing undermine effor to prepare students to achieve future success in their chosen field?

A: In many ways, schools limit the development of excellence because of a one-size-fits all philosophy that stems, in part, from how we measure learning. Accountability testing reflects a prevailing push to make students well-rounded. It assumes that every student should learn the same thing, at the same time, and in the same way. It tests students on facts because facts are easy to measure, unlike more important contributors to success in life, such as critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, and the ability to work with others. To help students succeed in life, schools should be helping students understand and develop their innate potential.

Q: How does the quest for an ideal curriculum diminish the value of teachers?

A: Schools spend an inordinate amount of time and money searching for an ideal curriculum or teaching strategy. This search stems from an unstated assumption that there is one ideal way to teach, and if we just find it, all teachers will be successful with their students. It assumes that the curriculum is more important than teachers, and it reduces teachers to assembly-line workers that just need the proper tools and methods.

Q: What are the hallmarks of an "engaged" classroom?

A: In an engaged classroom, students and teachers are actively involved. Students initiate discussions outside of class with other students -- and with their parents -- about what they are learning. Students are also free to accomplish their learning goals in ways that fit them best.

In an engaged classroom, students have a sense that they belong, because they're absolutely sure that the teacher cares about them personally and is there to help them learn. Students receive feedback about their progress and have someone to talk with about their development.

Q: Given the current requirements and constraints of our public school system, is it possible for every teacher to tap the unique potential of every individual student? Where and how can a dedicated teacher begin?

A: We may not be able to ever tap the potential of every single student, but we can certainly do a better job than we do now. A teacher can start the process by asking students and parents about the student's interests and talents. A teacher can identify the crucial pieces in each unit, help students learn those pieces, then allow students to move into areas of individual interest. A teacher can think about how to allow students to be at different places at different times while still learning core content and skills. And technology can be a major asset in managing a higher level of individualization.

Q: What qualities distinguish an engaged teacher from a merely qualified one?

A: A qualified teacher has subject matter knowledge and a set of skills in how to teach that subject knowledge. But in addition to knowledge and skills, engaged teachers demonstrates a commitment and love of teaching through their actions. They care about students as people, and deliver learning that has meaning to each student and is enjoyable and interesting. Engaged teachers have an emotional commitment to their students and to learning.

Q: How can school leaders reliably identify teachers with strong potential to help students exceed expectations?

A: First, principals must identify what is the "right stuff" to be a teacher in this individual school. Principals can identify these talents by looking to their best teachers, observing them closely, and talking with them about what they do and how they do it. Then they must find interview items or activities that differentiate applicants with those talents from all other applicants. Many existing programs can help principals identify these applicants. But here's the bottom line: Principals and human resource administrators should be driven to find applicants who are like the very best teachers.

Q: Why do principals need to be both effective managers and inspiring leaders? What can a principal do to maintain a healthy, productive workplace?

A: Until we divide the role, as some observers have suggested, principals must be effective managers and inspiring leaders. Principals must manage to ensure that the school runs effectively and that teachers have the materials and equipment they need to help students learn. Principals must lead by painting a picture of what students can become; they must paint a picture that gains the emotional commitment of the school community. Management gets things done for people; leadership gets people to do great things.

Q: Why should schools take the initiative in getting parents more involved in their child's education? What simple steps can teachers take to strengthen their relationships with parents?

A: Research suggests that the more value the family culture places on education, the more likely students are to succeed -- and schools can influence the existing culture in families. A teacher must take the initiative to make positive, beneficial contact with parents. A teacher should ask parents about the student's interests, talents, and goals, because parents are the experts. A teacher can ask parents to act as their partners; they can make clear what parents can do to help students learn in class and give parents tools to help. Most parents don't come to teachers knowing how they can help their children learn; they rely on teachers to help the understand this.

Q: What approach do you recommend for measuring student performance?

A: Measurement is a crucial tool for improvement, because we get what we measure. But first, we have to be certain that we are measuring the right things. Measurement should quantify growth in every student at the year's end, then that feedback should be given to the student, parents, and teachers. Measurement should be done at multiple points during the school year to tell teachers whether each student is learning crucial concepts and skills in addition to facts. And it should include hard-to-measure areas like critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity, rather than just easy-to-measure facts.

Q: How can school leaders begin to reach out and foster an education culture in their community? Why is this vital to our country's competitive future?

A: As a first step, school leaders should listen carefully to community members. Then they should communicate the role parents and community members can play in building educational excellence. School leaders and teachers have an obligation to show parents how to be involved in their child's education and seek community partnerships that can occur in the schools. With this involvement, community members can give permission, support, and a sense of urgency for teachers, principals, and district administrators to make learning different from the way it's been in the past. If we don't, America is likely to find that our students don't have the education they need to compete in the future.

Q: What would you most like teachers, principals, and school administrators to take away from Building Engaged Schools?

A: People are the key to learning, not process or policies. If we are to create the schools our students need and America requires, we must pay more attention to the teachers and principals in our schools and the way in which the organization and community treats them. Then teachers and principals can engage students in learning at much higher levels.

Q: Why should parents who can afford private education keep their child in public school? What can concerned parents do to help their local schools become more engaged?

A: I believe that much of our past success -- and certainly our future success -- as a nation stems from providing educational opportunities to young people from every economic, social, religious, and ethnic group through our public schools. A crucial element of America's democracy will be lost if America's public schools fail. Parents should recognize and support great teachers or principals and demand more like them. Parents should push and support efforts to engage students by developing student strengths and changing how learning happens in our classrooms.

Gary Gordon, Ed.D., is Vice President and Practice Leader for The Gallup Organization's Education Division. He is the author of Building Engaged Schools: Getting the Most From America's Classrooms (Gallup Press, 2006).