Results Now

I am the principal of a high school in a suburban New Jersey district. Traditionally, our teachers have been monitored closely for the first three years of employment until they received tenure, then after receiving tenure our teachers are evaluated once a year during a lesson of their choice. Administration encourages our tenured staff to invite a supervisor in for a lesson in which the teacher is trying something, new, unusual or experimental.

I recently attended a Principal's workshop which focused on how the United States can improve teaching methods to ensure the highest quality of education is available to all students. At this workshop, we read a book called Results Now by Mike Schmoker. After reading this book, I have decided to recommend some changes to teachers and supervisors at the high school.

"“If we leave virtually every instructional choice up to individual teachers who work alone, then inferior practices will dominate in most schools. (Haycook, 2005)

I am going to advise all the department supervisors to prepare a "to do" list of lessons and activities they would like to see in classes in their departments. Each month, supervisors will hold a department meeting and share these activities with teachers under their supervision and require that teachers choose at least one lesson a month to pilot in their classrooms. Supervisors will then randomly drop in to classes to assess how this system is working to include a variety of activities in the classrooms.

"Only 5 percent of Americans performed at the highest math level - compared with nearly a quarter of Finns, Koreans, Japanese and Dutch" (Peterson, 2005, p.3) Page 21

I am going to set up a committee of math teachers and/or supervisors, as well as some math students to research the criteria for graduation of the above mentioned countries at the high school and middle school level. The committee will take those results and compare them with the requirements for math to graduate from high school in the United States. From those results, we can assess what we need to do to bring our students up to a higher level of expertise in Math. Perhaps we need to change the graduation requirements, or offer incentives to students who take multiple credits in math.

"direct involvement in instruction is among the least frequent activities performed by administrators of any kind at any level" (Elmore, 2000, p.6) Page 29

I would like to share with other principals an idea that seems to be working at our high school. During our administrative meeting, we create a schedule of teachers to visit during each quarter. These visits are 5 - 15 minute informal "drop ins"; the idea is to offer positive encouragement when we visit a class that is engaged in a productive activity, and at the same time it alerts teachers to the fact that our administration's philosophy is an open door policy. We make sure, over the course of a semester, each teacher receives a visit at least once, maybe more. We realize that teachers have days that are not as productive as others, so what works with this plan is between our administrative group, we are able to assess if there are teachers in the building who are less productive than others. We use this information as input for supervisors to use during evaluations to suggest to teachers how they can improve lessons!! Try it.