As a former coach, two of my favorite sayings were “Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing” and "Do Your Job!" Very simple but they work. Our focus was on the mission at hand and controlling the things that were within our control. So, what’s the main thing in education? Simply, student safety/well-being and teaching/learning. If you do those two things well in a school, the probability of success are very high.
As we started to get EOC scores back this week, many were very disheartening and exponentially lower than what we are used to. This seems to be the consensus in almost every school I’ve talked with and especially with virtual/remote learning. No matter the situation, it’s interesting to see the mission of the USDE hasn’t changed or varied with Covid. The mission statement of the United States Department of Education is “Our mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” It’s great that public schools are doing everything they can to stay open safely and everything possible to meet the needs of students' safety and well-being, but at our core of what we do is “teaching and learning.” Teaching requires learning, if a student doesn’t learn then we haven’t really taught.
It’s interesting to hear the “Politics of Distractions” used as excuses or reasons for the lack of academic performance: Distraction 1: Appease the parents, Distraction 2: Fix the infrastructure, Distraction 3: Fix the students, Distraction 4: Fix the schools, Distraction 5: Fix the teachers. These have been used interchangeably across the years. It’s important to note that none of these have anything to do with Covid but have been used repeatedly, many times when results weren’t what was desired….ever since the inception of our educational system and especially since the increased accountability measures since NCLB and RttT. Let's debunk the myths. Distraction #1….we had smaller class sizes and more individualized instruction than every before. Distraction #2….with many programs used, like SC Virtual, curricula was supposedly laid out and aligned. Distraction #3….students aren’t the variable, the adults in the building are….and we knew our students were behind from last Spring, the question is “what were we going to do about it?” Distraction #4….there was more federal and state money poured into education this year than probably every before in history. Distraction #5….teachers have had professional development since before they reported to work this school year and it’s been ongoing ever since. We really don’t have any legitimate “Politics of Distractions” when you analyze each one. In some ways, we got each of these answered that we’ve always asked for over the years but rarely gotten....and the results were not what a supporter of these politics of distractions would've thought.
The final question becomes “Where do we go from here? How to we adjust and modify? The final scores from this semester, the autopsy in many cases, are done and in the books. At this point, we aren’t able to change them. However, we do have the opportunity and responsibility to adapt and adjust going forward. We have an obligation to adjust because what we did this past semester, in terms of teaching and learning, simply isn’t good enough and we left more kids behind than ever before. One of the most alarming statistics is that the kids hurt the most by school shutdowns and time out of school were primarily students that were already performing significantly below grade level, minority students, and students from high-poverty/low socioeconomic situations. For as disappointed as we were with test scores in some areas this week, there were some high achievers and some grades/subjects that did fairly well. One of the best things was that I didn’t hear our staff make many excuses. Instead, when we met with most teachers they had already analyzed what went well and what didn’t as well as were working on a plan to increase student achievement in the Spring. Even thought he results weren't what we wanted, the mentality and attitude to start working immediately on a solution and as a team to improve is what I was glad to see. That's one of the things that we control in this pandemic situation. Tony Dungy said “You can’t always control circumstances. However, you can always control your attitude, approach, and response.” The great John Wooden said “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” The positive in this is that our staff is focused on what “we” can do to get better and improve instead of lingering with excuses or wallowing in our frustration. It all goes back to "just do your job" and “keep the main thing the main thing!” Don’t let Covid, time restraints, schedules, learning platforms or anything else distract or take away from our focus on student achievement as we move forward this Spring.
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