Culture Club- An Assignment Reflection

I talk about culture all the time, mostly in the context of literacy, but also in relation to college-going, school climate, and the arts. I’ve never been hard-pressed to offer a suitable definition for culture in any of these scenarios, but when you remove the word...

Innovation and High-Stakes Accountability

It seems to me we have two forces shaping educational policy: one is the call to innovate, reflected in the USDOE’s Investing in Innovation (i3) grants and in calls from the US Secretary of Education to seek innovative solutions to persistent problems of student...

Reflecting on the School Year

The end of the school year is a whirlwind of activity.  As a high school principal, these things were uppermost in my mind during the last few weeks of the school year: making sure all graduation ceremony arrangements were complete and that any seniors not passing...

Creating a Coherent Improvement System

In January 2009 The National Center for Education Achievement (NCEA) published its research on higher performing school systems. The NCEA Core Practice Framework: An Organizing Guide to Sustained School Improvement is designed to help educators and policymakers...

SMART vs. HARD Goals

In my last post, School Goals: Impediments or Enablers? I references an article from Leader IQ titled Are Smart Goals Dumb? The article’s author argues that traditional goals built around elements that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and...