WEBVTT

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I'm Joe Johnson.

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I am the Executive Director of the National Center

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for Urban School Transformation at San Diego State University.

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In my work, I have spent a lot of time visiting and studying high-performing schools,

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and I have also spent a lot of time visiting and working with schools that weren't doing well.

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Sometimes, I see in those high-performing schools,

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the same programs and sometimes the same practices that I see

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in schools that aren't doing so well.

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So I have become somewhat skeptical about if there are magical practices

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or magical programs that are the solutions.

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I think that there are some critical issues about how educators pursue those practices.

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And so one very important issue is the extent to which everybody in the school,

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all of the teachers and support staff and administrators,

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they all have a real commitment to whatever practice it is that they're going to pursue.

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If people don't believe in what they're doing, they will pursue, kind of, compliance behavior.

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They won't put their heart in it, and so the results are not likely to be as strong.

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The other thing is that in schools that are getting better results,

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they're very careful about picking practices that align

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to the strengths and needs of their students.

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So, they don't just pick willy-nilly, or, you know, this is the flavor of the month,

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but instead they pick what they have carefully thought out was going

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to address the needs of their students.

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Then, I'd also say that what I see in very successful schools is that as they decide

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to address a few practices-it is truly just a few-having clarity about what this is supposed

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to look like is essential, and how they are going to measure their implementation.

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But then similarly, what's also important is having a clear notion of what is the real result

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that they're trying to achieve by implementing this practice

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so that they know what's the real goal

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and they are not getting distracted thinking that the goal is the practice.

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The goal is actually getting students to learn this mathematics,

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or the goal is getting students to learn this reading approach.

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And so when they are clear about what the goal is and how they are going

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to measure their pursuit of the goal, then that also, I think,

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influences why some practices are actually more effective at some schools than at other schools.

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As schools work to do that, they need to be mindful

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that improving instruction means improving student learning, improving student understanding.

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It's not really about what we present.

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It's about what students learn, and that has to be the perennial focus.

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One of the first high-performing schools that I studied was a school

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in Brazosport, Texas, Brazosport High School.

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And when I went to that school, and I spent quite a bit of time visiting classrooms

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and talking to teachers, and then I sat down with the principal Doug Boone,

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and I said, "Doug, I need the bottom line.

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Six years ago your school was a low-performing school,

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and now it's one of the highest-performing schools in the state.

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What's the bottom-line difference between back then, six years ago, and now?"

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And Doug thought about it for a minute, and he said, "Well,

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six years ago we taught school like we were feeding the chickens."

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I said, "Excuse me?"

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He said, "Well, you know about feeding chickens don't you?"

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I said, "Well, why don't you explain it to me, Doug."

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And he said, "Well, when you feed the chickens, you strap on your bag of feed,

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you go out into the yard, and you toss your feed onto the ground.

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And if the chickens get it, well, fine, and if they don't get it, well, fine.

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But after you have tossed your feed, you're done."

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He said, "That was pretty much the way we taught school.

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We strapped on our lesson plans.

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We went into our classrooms.

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We tossed out the information.

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If the students got it, well, fine, and if they didn't get it, fine.

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But after we had tossed out our lessons, we were done.

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We were done for the day."

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He said, "The main difference between back then and now is that now we are not done

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until we know that our students have learned what we have attempted to teach.

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We are constantly looking for evidence."

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Are they learning it?

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Are they making sense of it?

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Can they give it back to us?

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Can they apply it in different ways?

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Can they teach it to the student next to them?

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Can they write about it?

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Can they pull it apart and put it back together again?

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They're constantly looking for that evidence.

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I suggest that in this work of improving instruction that that's what great schools do.

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They are constantly focused on, "Are the students learning, and are they learning well?"

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And wherever they are not, then they are constantly asking themselves,

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"How can we change our instruction?

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How can we improve it?

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How can we make it more effective?"

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So that the bottom-line result is that children are able

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to demonstrate that they have in fact learned.