Why is ESSA so Fascinating?
I am so proud to be our Indiana State Board of Education’s representative to the task force, formed under HEA 1395, and charged with studying the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and our ISTEP+ summative high stakes Indiana test. Ever since the bill was signed into law on December 10, 2015 by President Barack Obama, I have been fascinated with the possibilities that lie ahead for our children. I have the opportunity to speak about my views and thoughts on ESSA and most recently spoke at the District 9 Meeting of the Indiana Association of School Principals and led off discussing my own and the nation’s fascination with ESSA. But why? Why am I and so many others so fascinated with ESSA?
Speaking to District 9 Principals of the Indiana Association of School Principals
I believe there are a three big reasons for this fascination:
- The historic nature of this law that started back with President Lyndon B. Johnson, was revisited in the President George W. Bush era, and now with ESSA being signed into law by our current President Barack Obama. President Obama told us that when ESSA goes into full effect with the 2017-18 school year, we will be maintaining Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil rights legacy of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which turned 50 last year. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) was originally passed as part of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration’s War on Poverty campaign. The original goal of the law, which remains today, was to improve educational equity for students from lower-income families by providing federal funds to school districts serving poor students. Since its initial passage, ESEA has been reauthorized seven times, most recently in January 2002 as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Each reauthorization brought changes to the program, but its central goal remains: improving the educational opportunities and outcomes for children from lower-income families.
- It was also historic and fascinating that ESSA passed by a huge bipartisan margin after eight years of debate. ESSA passed by a vote of 359 to 64 in the U.S. House of Representatives and a vote of 85 to 12 in the U.S. Senate. President Obama acknowledged No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law and the work of President George W. Bush, but also said the NCLB “often forced schools and school districts into cookie-cutter reforms that didn’t always produce the kinds of results that we wanted to see.” He went on to say that ESSA “creates real partnerships between the states, which will have new flexibility to tailor their improvement plans, and the federal government, which will have the oversight to make sure that the plans are sound.” I believe this opportunity for collaboration between states, including state legislatures, state boards of education, communities, families, schools, and all other external and internal stakeholders, and the federal governments fascinates us and has us dreaming of the possibilities.
- Finally, I believe we are fascinated with the opportunity to invent unexpected solutions. Innovation is a major pillar of fascination. Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican – Tennessee, and a key architect of ESSA said it best when he stated “What I believe is that when we take the handcuffs off, we’ll unleash a whole flood of innovation and ingenuity classroom by classroom, state by state, that will benefit children.” Ingenuity and innovation – now that is fascinating and we in Indiana and every other state need to take full advantage of the opportunities that ESSA provides for our students.
With this fascination comes responsibility. As I stated earlier, we have the opportunity to invent unexpected solutions – in other words, INNOVATE. Many talk about the POWER going back to the states under ESSA and even as a card carrying fan of my hero, Patrick Henry (who was an advocate of individual and state’s rights), I would rather say “RESPONSIBILITY back to the states.” Power guides action, so we have the responsibility in Indiana to guide the action and bring all internal and external stakeholders together for a true collaboration to develop innovate for great solutions for the children of Indiana and our Nation.
Leading Learning
Charlotte Danielson Speaking to NASBE Members on April 4, 2016
This past week I had the opportunity to take another deep dive into the new Every Student Succeeds Act during the Legislative Conference of the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). It was also great to not only listen to Charlotte Danielson of the Danielson Group, but I was also able to have a lengthy personal conversation with her about innovation in education, teacher evaluation, and teacher leadership. The thing that impresses me most about Charlotte is that she is always thinking continual improvement and innovation. She made a few comments that are appropriate as we consider leading learning. Let’s face it, students learning is the ultimate goal we need to be achieving in education. The phrases that Charlotte said that resonated with me were, “Learning is done by the learner,” and “Teaching is cognitive work.” As we lead learning I believe it is very important that we keep these two thoughts in mind.
The goal must be to shift the thinking on the student and how the instructional environment supports student thinking. Teaching is a constant work of improvement – a career that involves learning and rethinking our approaches daily. It’s a very interesting concept if we reconsider that we’re always developing our practice. If we are to be successful we must start with the student as the focus and lead the learning from there. The student must always be at the center – this is always critical to success in leading learning.
In my studies at Harvard University around leading learning, I have had some key takeaways that came from the idea that, “Learning might be best described as the process by which information becomes knowledge” (City, Elmore, & Lynch, 2012, Chapter 6, p. 153). This when put together with the thought that, “Knowledge…is information plus meaning, where meaning is acquired through experience or education” (Chapter 6, p. 153) frames a fertile environment for innovation in education. It allows us to take education outside the walls of the traditional schoolhouse. It allows school to be any modality where some combination of information, knowledge, and learning flows from some portal to the learner (City et al, Chapter 6, 2012). As a leader of learning I want to continue to use the lens of education as learning instead of school as a physical place of learning. (City et al, Chapter 6, 2012). These key takeaways came from studies of the book The Futures of School Reform (2012) edited by Mehta, Schwartz, and Hess.
As a state board of education member and someone that works in education leadership and policy development, I want to continue to make sure and educate fellow policymakers on the learning core and make sure we are leading learning and not just leading school as usual. I want to continue to improve leading learning from a policy side to help others understand how to make policy meet reality.
Leading Innovation in Education
Being involved as a school leader of a network of schools offering fully virtual enrollment, as well as blended learning centers, I have experienced both the joys and challenges of being involved in innovation. Keep in mind online learning is very much still in the pioneer stage of development. Through this experience I have learned first hand the push back from individuals, organizations, and policymakers who will not even accept trying innovating in the space of online education and school choice. The same holds true for many other innovations in education as well. This makes it extremely hard at times to reach consensus for having education policy, accountability systems, and funding meet reality.
Some of the push back I refer to is well founded. When you think that we have been educating our children in much the same way for two centuries, it is natural for there to be some resistance to change. Interesting to me, however, is that an analysis of data from all the traditional means by which we deliver education to our children suggest we should be pushing back on some of those means as well. By their very nature, innovations are new and untested. Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect that all innovations become immediate success stories and be evidence-based. At the same time, the education field has a long history of promoting the latest fads and “flavors of the month” that turned out to be, at the least, ineffectual, and at the worst, have children falling further behind. I am certainly not suggesting we contribute to this unintended consequence either. Sometimes, though, I worry that we have not given some very effective and innovative ideas enough time to see if learning gains will be experienced.
In the world of education, innovation comes in many other forms than just the online world. There are innovations in the way education systems are organized and managed, exemplified by charter schools or turnaround academies being managed by education management organizations (EMO). There are innovations in instructional techniques or other delivery systems. We need ongoing innovation in the area of customizing learning for every student. This is very important in serving every student. There are innovations in the way teachers are recruited, prepared, and compensated. I have had the opportunity to work with Teach for America teachers and would put them up against any teacher preparation program. The training and disposition of these teachers to work with struggling urban students who are behind on both skill and grade level is outstanding.
We must continue to encourage creativity and innovation in addressing our most important challenges in education. I believe we need more opportunities for innovations to pass through a peer review process focused on the project’s design. This would provide an opportunity for vetting of the ability of the innovation to be brought to scale and be duplicated. Schools and other innovators of learning must place rigorous, experimental evaluation designs in place so that, over time, we can learn if practices are effective.
Additionally, we need to continue to think about how to accelerate innovation time and evaluation of the effectiveness of those innovations. I believe collaboration is the key here. Innovations are best designed when they are a direct result of a need in a specific school context. We need to make sure our teachers and staff have the necessary time and resources to reflect and be creative in developing customized solutions for the students he or she serve. Finally, we need to continue to develop robust networks for sharing innovations and best practices.
Big Opportunity Leadership
On my flight home from Washington DC last night I had many things on my mind. One of which was the newly signed into law Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA as most people refer to it. ESSA was the reason I was in our Nation’s Capitol for the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE)Legislative Conference. We had the opportunity to work through what state boards’ role will be in the implementation of ESSA. I was reflecting on how much work there was to be done implementing this new and great bipartisan law that gives a great deal of power back to the states – Patrick Henry would be proud. Consensus has been reached to pass ESSA into law and now it is time for implementation. John Manning (2015) referred to this as execution in Lesson #40 of The Disciplined Leader. As I was reflecting, the pilot came on and said we had 327 miles left to Indianapolis. Because the Wright Brothers are my idols, I could not help but say a quick thank you to them for executing their plan for first flight. They took advantage of what John Kotter calls the “Big Opportunity.” Because of them, I am able to be home from Washington DC in a little over an hour. That is one big opportunity!
Secretary of Education John King & I
Manning (2015) discussed creating ownership in solutions. ESSA empowers many to take advantage of the big opportunities. I had the opportunity to be with our recently confirmed Secretary of Education John King, yesterday morning and we discussed the opportunities for state legislatures, state boards of education, schools, and many other stakeholders to work together for implementation of ESSA. This implementation really plays into John Kotter’s Dual Operating System approach to change. As we implement ESSA in Indiana I hope we will use the five premises from Kotter as our guide for taking advantage of the “Big Opportunity” – equity in education for all students. Secretary of Education King also left us with this very important thought, “Schools save lives!” Again, that is one big opportunity. These five guiding principles are:
- Having many change agents – by having state legislatures, state boards of education, state departments of education, and many other stakeholders involved in the collaborative implementation we should have innovation and creativity for coming up with the best practices for our students.
- Creating a “want to” not “have to” mindset – Now that the power has been placed in the state’s hands for implementation of ESSA, we must be excited and have a “get to” approach.
- Head and heart, not just head – This is easy when we are implementing law to serve our children.
- Leadership, not management – This is important for me as an Indiana State Board of Education member. I must do my part to provide the leadership to keep the strategy of ESSA implementation in tact.
- Many systems, one organization, lose the hierarchy – everyone must be a part of the “big opportunity.” Again, there must be collaboration from many different stakeholders.
Manning (2015) taught us to “stay the course” and execute. What “big opportunities” do you have on the horizon for implementation?
Jenga Masters Leadership
This has seemed to be the year of Jenga for our school as we build our leadership capacity. You know, the great balancing game with the rectangular blocks. The metaphor of the game of Jenga continues to pop up everywhere in our school’s leadership journey. Click here to watch a video of Jill Landers and I playing a wicked game of Jenga recently – we are the Jenga Masters! We used Jenga as a way to represent our vision and mission earlier in the school year as a way to make sure everyone understood the parts of our vision and mission. Then, we decided to completely redo our vision and mission and add core values as a project of our 
Focused Leader Academy. To do this we started by using a “Design Thinking” model. I cut 18” pieces of tongue and groove lumber and the teams built models of the ideal vision, mission, and core values. The exercise made learning visible. As the project progressed our Focused Leader Academy members were learning how to develop a vision, mission, and core value.
To understand the illustration of the Jenga metaphor, you need to get on board with a few ideas:
- Imagine the whole of the tower is the total sum of your entire organization, including leadership capacity.
- Imagine each block is some sort of capital (leadership, a moment/shared experience/word/deed, student, family, teacher, leader, curriculum, technology, et cetera) that is part of entire organization, school, or business.
- A block-in would be an organization building action while a block-out would be a situation whereby the organization would be weakened or damaged.
- When using the Jenga model, one must assume all capital mentioned in the second bullet point are equally important.
Click here to watch a video of our journey building our own Jenga models when creating a new vision, mission, and set of core values for Hoosier Academies Network of Schools.
Here are some thoughts on why Jenga makes such a great model to use for leadership training, creation, and “Design Thinking:”
- Strong leadership everywhere in the organization equals well-built Foundations. The potential height of the tower depends a great deal on how well you build the foundation and how many blocks you commit to it. The stronger the shape, the more intentional the design and placement and the more blocks you have, the higher you can build.
- Removing just one block weakens the structure. When you remove one of the blocks, the entire structure becomes more unstable. So when you don’t have strong leadership developed in every individual in the organization, everything gets a bit more shaky. Each subsequent move not only feels more risky, but actually does put the organization at risk.
- We have to be careful of “piling on” too many initiatives or tasks for our teams and organizations to do. If the structure is weakening or is weak, it does not help to pile on the top.
- When leadership capacity needs to be developed, the bench needs to be developed at the individual level, not somewhere else. I call this hyper-personalization of developing the team professionally. Otherwise, new attempts at building the leadership bench can seem out of place and lead to destabilization instead of continual improvement.
- No matter what, if we remove enough blocks it results in eventual collapse. The tower can only handle a certain amount of pieces being removed. We learn how to work around it, even though it hurts the overall strength and potential of the organization. But eventually, our schools, businesses, and organization cannot hold under the pressure of “weak links” so to speak; whether individuals, teams, supporting organizations, or departments. Eventually, the entire organization will falter and this can be disastrous – just as when the entire Jenga model falls.
As you can see, there is a lot to be learned from Jenga. It has certainly been a great model for us to use as we rethink our school and use “Design Thinking.” If you were consider your organization as a Jenga model, how stable is your structure?
What’s The Goal?
Effective leaders, of the past and present, carefully articulate what the end goal is and have a robust plan to get them there. Leaders understand that they are working with scarce resources – people and capital. Their imperative is to prioritize initiatives based on the impact and the ease of implementation and then allocate their resources appropriately. I was always taught to “Under promise and over-deliver”. It may seem exceedingly obvious, but this is hard to put into practice. Many leaders, including myself, want to appear as able to do everything, but sometimes the best strategy is evaluating the end goal and choosing what not to do. Remember, the most important decisions we make are what to say “no” to.
In Lesson #39 of The Disciplined Leader, John Manning (2015) argued for developing a “What’s the goal?” culture. By specifying goals clarity is achieved, the direction is clear, and the team stays focused. This past week we had a task force go to Arizona for school planning. While we used the best practice of a collaborative agenda building exercise, I gave them my desired end goal of solidifying our plans and doing what I called, “moving action items from being written in pencil to written in ink.” The team also set goals for what was needed to be accomplished, both for our time in Arizona as well as our overall school launch project. This vital few item of goal setting helped us to stay disciplined and get an incredible amount accomplished. It also helped us to say no to initiatives which would have caused us to lose our focus and take the eye of the ball. Are you taking the time to develop a “What’s the goal?” culture?
“Defining ‘What’s the goal?’ before taking action will save time and also form greater direction and improve execution. Drive this habit through your organization, and employees will be more productive, goal-oriented, and results-focused.” ~ John Manning
The Vital Few of Leading My Team
It is now time for my favorite activity that John Manning (2015) has readers do as part of reading the 52 lessons in The Disciplined Leader. The book is divided into three different parts and Manning (2015) instructs readers to pick their own three vital few from each part that he/she needs to work on. I really like that this is a part of the reading, as it provides a way to reflect on what has been learned in the reading and a chance to put the learning into my own real world context. In other words, the learning meets reality.
Click here to read my reflection and my vital three from Part I, The Responsibility To Lead Yourself. This post will be a reflection of Part II, The Responsibility To Lead Your Team. Part II included the following lessons:
- Choose the right words
- Put your game face on
- Be in the moment
- Focus on what is right, not who is right
- Don’t cross the line
- Treat everyone fairly
- Honor your commitments
- Don’t overuse the “I” word
- Surround yourself with great talent
- Hire who is right
- Empower employees
- Hold your team accountable
- Check up on daily goals
- Give effective performance feedback
- Spot opportunities to coach
- Demand more solutions
- Encourage disagreement
- Advocate for your team
- Recognize your employees
As you can see, Part II in The Disciplined Leader had some pretty heavy stuff. It took some studying and long reflecting to decide what my vital three would be. Since I had blogged about all 19 Part II topics, I also went back and studied all my posts. Here are my vital three:
- Empower employees
- Surround yourself with great talent
- Give effective performance feedback
Anyone who works with me or has spent very much time with me will probably not be surprised by these vital three. Empowerment and being surrounded with great talent is essential to the success of any organization. Performance feedback makes the top three because this is an initiative I just formed a task force of teachers to begin working on.
Empower Employees
This is a huge deal for me. I strive to create a “make it so” culture. Our team members are encouraged to be creative, innovative, and self starting. My desire is to have team members come to me with such great, thought out ideas that all I have to do is say, “Make it so!” What I have found is that the more I say “Make it so!” the more innovative and great ideas I get. This is such a powerful tool for employee engagement. We know that employees being engaged and and believing that what she is doing makes a difference is the number one item on the job satisfaction list.
Just last night we had the perfect example of this: A team of teachers presented our new vision, mission, and set of core values to our school board. This was a project of our Focused Leader Academy and our teachers worked through whole rewrite process as well organizing a board retreat session and other stakeholder feedback sessions. The beauty of the process is that the teachers owned it. And, one of the byproducts was the learning and professional growth that went along with the project. Therefore I would add to Manning’s (2015) on empowerment and say that with empowerment also comes professional growth. In fact, empowerment and professional growth are one of our core values:
Surround Yourself With Great Talent
This is so easily said and much tougher done. I am somewhat of a subscriber to the theory that talent is overrated. Skills must be developed. None of the great athletes, musicians, or artists were born with skills and talent at the top of their games. We all have had to be bad at something to get good and go on to be great. Therefore, surrounding ourselves with great talent also means we have the responsibility to help our team members grow and develop. I call this hyper-personalized professional development. This takes work. This takes a lot of work to imbed in cultures where this has not been a part before. It is, however, crucial for a culture of excellence.
This also relates to empowering our team members. If we want to empower our team members to make decisions and have autonomy to get the work done, then we must provide the hyper-personalized professional development necessary to help them become the great leaders they can be and have the necessary skills to do their jobs at the highest level. It would be ludicrous to empower employees to the level of a “make it so” culture without also provide the necessary knowledge to do the job. This would be the definition of chaos. Therefore, a vital part of my role as a disciplined leader is to go after top talent and then do everything possible to provide for the utmost personal professional growth.
Give Effective Performance Feedback
This vital part of being a disciplined leader is so related to my other vital three in this part of the book because at the core of performance feedback is professional growth. Our teacher performance evaluation process and tool that I inherited leave a lot to be desired. The reason for the deficiencies is how it was developed – top down. Basically, it was a “here it is” development process. There is pretty compelling research that suggests that affected by the performance feedback process should be heavily involved in the development. Leadership needs to come from those affected by it.
My goal for the task force I mention earlier is to come up with an evaluation process that is much more formative than punitive. There must be more regular check-in conversation and not just the once or twice per year evaluations. We are doing our teachers a disservice if all our principals do is check up on teachers once or twice a year. I am looking forward to seeing the work that our teachers do this.
Now that you have had the chance to learn about my vital few, what would you choose as your vital few?
Leading Shoulder To Shoulder
In Lesson #37 of The Disciplined Leader, John Manning (2015) wrote on how to advocate for your team. I call this pulling up shoulder to shoulder with your team. The best way to advocate for your team is to work right alongside of the people. This comes down to having a philosophy of a flattened hierarchy. I believe leadership must happen whenever and wherever necessary, by whomever can best provide that leadership. With this type of culture it is important to lead shoulder to shoulder with the team.
I like the flat organizational structure because the employees work in smaller teams and have more voice and power over how they work. Many exemplars of this structure can be found in the business community. The term I use here of being shoulder to shoulder comes from a teacher from another school district other than my own, who said to me, “You know, I’ve never seen an administrator who is so involved in every piece of the school like you are. It is not that you are micro-managing, you are just working ‘shoulder to shoulder with everyone.” Honestly, I took this as a huge compliment. I do believe it is important to work right next to those you lead. 
I have always said one my most important roles is serving as a blocker. Manning (2015) called this “overcoming obstacles.” The only way to truly advocate for your team and give them the support they need is to be right on the line (using a football analogy) with them ready to block. The other real advantage to being shoulder to shoulder with your team is the opportunity to learn the micro-knowledge of the organization from those doing the important work.
How about you; are you shoulder to shoulder with your team?
What’s In Your Culture?
I finished a great book yesterday that has easily made it onto the list of greatest books I’ve read. The book was, It’s My Pleasure: The Impact of Extraordinary Talent and a Compelling Culture by Dee Ann Turner. Of course I was tweeting like mad while reading and was excited to have the author liking, favoriting, and replying to my tweets (@ByronErnest). In fact, I was getting lots of Twitter interaction from others on those tweets, too. You’ll notice Dee Ann Turner liked a tweet where I set a new goal for 2016 of having lunch with her at a Chick-fil-A. She liked and replied to the tweet; sure hope she’ll consider it.
Then, I was real excited yesterday to receive a tweet from Andy Van Weele (@AndyVanWeele). He tweeted the question, “What was your big takeaway?” This is an awesome question because it is not plural, it’s singular. I, of course, tweeted back and told him to stay tuned for this post. As I began to think about this, I considered the 71 highlights I made while reading the book. I reread and studied each one. Then I realized no single one of these great thoughts shared by Dee Ann Turner was my big takeaway. My big
takeaway was the fact that Dee Ann Turner was the product of the culture of excellence she taught us about in the book. Think about it; lots of people write books about culture and leadership. Here, however, is an author who has lived and become a product of an outstanding culture. In addition, is continuing to provide outstanding leadership to continue that legacy. This book isn’t about turning around or building an organization, it’s about what it’s like to be a product of an incredible culture of “It’s My Pleasure” and wanting to continue and further hone that culture of excellence. It is about it being an honor for Dee Ann Turner to be a “facilitator of opportunity” on behalf of Truett Cathy.
I must admit, I’m a little jealous of Dee Ann’s opportunity to learn and develop under the tutelage of S. Truett Cathy, the author of the phenomenal culture that is Chick-fil-A. As a leader of schools turning around, I spend most of my time on culture building, so I’m just so blown away by the thought of spending over 30 years growing in such a great culture. But, then I get chills thinking about this is the very reason I have accepted the calling to lead the schools I have; to give our students and staff the same culture that Dee Ann Turner grew, developed, and flourished in. Not an easy task, but clearly attainable!
So, there’s my big takeaway: Dee Ann Turner was the product of the culture of excellence of Chick-fil-A. So, my question to the readers of this post is: “Would you want to be a product of the culture you have created?” Or, an even more compelling question is: “Would you want someone to write a book about the culture you are leading? If you waivered on your answer, or said no, you need to read It’s My Pleasure: The Impact of Extraordinary Talent and a Compelling Culture by Dee Ann Turner. Let’s all become “facilitators of opportunity.”
Attracting, Preparing, Developing, Retaining
Leadership development and leadership project-based programs provide participants with practical, real world, and in-depth experiences. Well implemented programs provide ongoing mentorship, and targeted training across a range of areas within the organization. The key for success is customizing and personalizing all phases of the professional growth experience. It should truly be personal professional growth. The goal is to recruit and develop leaders for our organizations. With so much micro-knowledge and tacit knowledge needed for an effective school, or most other organizations, we must be building our benches and “raising our own.” As John Manning (2015) pointed out in Lesson 28 in The Disciplined Leader we must be providing growth opportunities and investing in our team members’ future. Never forget, intelligence of an organization is, no surprise here, a product of the intelligence of its members. 
I am writing this post while sitting in the airport in Atlanta. I am heading home from a great meeting of state legislators and state boards of education members held to discuss the new federal education law, Every Student Succeeds Act. One of the things that kept coming up over and over was how imperative it is that schools have robust school leader and teacher leader development programs. It is obvious this is crucial for schools. That is why I am so proud of our Focused Leader Academy. Our Focused Leader Academy is an employee development and engagement program. The idea is that great minds and great motives still matter. Teachers with school leadership aspirations have the opportunity to become part of a cohort which will take part in monthly leadership training and be part of supervised leadership projects of the school. Cohort size is at least 10% of teaching leaders per year. The Vision is: Leadership will be born out of those who are affected by it. The Mission is: Leadership will appear anywhere and anytime it is needed. Our Theory of Action is: If we empower our teachers through leadership skill development…Then we will have teacher leaders ready to contribute to the success of Hoosier Academies and be an important part of our talent pipeline.
In fact we learned this is an important part of our talent management system. If we get it right we will be doing these four things:
- Attracting top talent
- Preparing top talent
- Developing top talent
- Retaining top talent
We need to be intentional about the development of the personal learning agendas of those we serve. In other words, we need to hyper-personalize!
Is your school or organization being intentional in the leadership development of those you serve?
Reference
Manning, J.M. (2015). The disciplined leader: keeping the focus on what really matters. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.
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