Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

The Parent Factor

By

I had a chance to facilitate/participate in a fascinating 90-minute conversation with about 15 parents in the Dobbs Ferry, NY school district yesterday that has left me feeling a bit more optimistic about what’s ahead than I have been in a while. Last month, I blogged about Dobbs Ferry Superintendent Lisa Brady (who is also a good friend), and I spent the day in her district talking to administrators and teachers. But the highlight was the chance to hear the hopes, fears, and frustrations of the parents, many of whom took part in the book study I wrote about before and who are a part of the district’s PTSA group. 

A couple of frames before I get into the details. First, these are highly motivated parents who in all honesty did not represent the entire demographic of the district. To their credit, however, they acknowledged and, at times, struggled with the lack of diversity at the table. And second, the day was specifically set up to give me a chance to pick their brains about the change process. I was really interested to hear what their pressing concerns and questions were and what we could learn from the experience that other schools might take from.

The short overview: this is a really hard conversation for parents, specifically because it requires them to rethink much of what they see as important in schools. Right now, test scores are seen as a hugely important factor in maintaining property values and in tracking student achievement. But these parents are struggling mightily with the test, and they are passionate in their opposition to the direction the testing conversation has taken. And it’s affecting their kids. It’s not just that their children are worried about the scores they might get on the test. Now, their kids are worrying that their teachers will be hurt if they don’t score well on the test. My sense is that most of these parents are quickly tiring of the frequency and impact of the tests, and they are ready to act on that fatigue in whatever ways they feel can best effect change

Because of the ongoing conversations that Lisa has been leading in the district, almost all of the parents I met with were on board with moving the school away from the traditional thinking about teaching and learning. But they wondered if teachers would be on board. And they wondered what that new vision of teaching and learning looked like. A few times, they asked for a road map or a plan to follow. Their frustration with the pace of change was palpable. But I was also impressed by their deep desire to grow these conversations to other parents and community members, and to start meeting with teachers and students to discuss a long term vision for change. 

I could go on, but let me just bullet out a few other key observations:

  • One of the things the parents articulated most strongly was the fact that Lisa approached these conversations in a truly collaborative way. Basically, it’s been “we have to ask these questions, but more importantly, we have to find the answers together.” And as I said in the previous post, the key to sustaining the conversation in Lisa’s eyes is to make sure parents own it and continue it regardless of any leadership changes in the district down the road.
  • One crucial piece that is becoming the focus is how to make sure teachers know that parents will support their efforts around change. When asked “would you be willing to sacrifice some points on the test during the change from a traditional classroom to a more student centered, authentic, inquiry based classroom?” most parents said yes.
  • That said, most parents also are on board with the idea that test scores and more authentic student learning and teaching are not mutually exclusive. There may be a short implementation dip, but in the long run, the scores will take care of themselves.

I plan on tracking this conversation in Dobbs Ferry as it progresses, but safe to say it was great to hear parents understand the need for change, be willing to participate deeply in conversations around what that change may look like, and push forward despite the many difficult, unlearning pieces that come along with it. If you have any questions about the process, let me know.

Getting Bold With Parents

By

As promised, I’m going to start trying to highlight some “Bold School” practices that I hope might serve as models for others to follow. (Note: I’m still looking for examples of those practices, so let me know if you’re being “bold” at your school…would love to connect.)

To that end, I want to offer up some of the work that Lisa Brady is doing as superintendent in Dobbs Ferry, NY around being “provocative,” specifically provoking conversations around real change in her local community. Some backstory just for context: Lisa was principal at Hunterdon Central during the last few years of my tenure there, and she returned as superintendent after I left in 2006. There, she led initiatives to move to a technology rich, connected, inquiry-based curriculum that are still evolving. She’s finishing up her first year in Dobbs Ferry, but she’s already made significant progress in changing the conversation around learning there as well. Her school district has about 1,650 kids K-12, is primarily blue collar, and has a fairly typical history of scoring well on the test and sending kids to college. It’s also a high school that features an IB program, and one that hasn’t made too many inroads into technology at all over the years. 

One of Lisa’s mantras is that schools have little choice when it comes to thinking differently about education. And she also believes that parents are the key to making that different thinking happen.

“Parents are the piece where we’re not doing enough legwork,” she says. “Marginalizing parents, not letting them be an important voice in the larger conversation is a huge mistake.”

Why? We all know the role parent’s play in budgets, election of school board members, and support for programs and teachers. But here’s the other thing: engaged and invested parents sustain the conversation over time. One of the biggest barriers to long-term change is that leaders rarely stay around long enough to see initiatives through. If parents are sufficiently invested in seeing those initiatives through over time, they will help to make sure that change continues despite a shift in leadership.

So, to that end, Lisa started early on with a program to a) set the context for the conversation with parents, b) be clear about what is most valuable in the learning interaction, and c) articulate that shared new vision to teachers and community in a variety of ways. The centerpiece was to invite all parents to read and discuss Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap, a book she chose because of the way it clearly articulated what schools need to value when it comes to an education.

“When you ask parents what they want their kids to be able to do, none of them ever says ‘pass the test’,” Lisa says. “They start with the types of skills that Wagner talks about, problem solving, agility, initiative. What parent is going to say ‘no’ to that? And that’s the frame that we have to keep coming back to when parents start talking about test scores. We have to keep asking them ‘is that really what’s important to you?’”

About 100 parents signed on to read and discuss the book, and over a month, Lisa held 10 discussions in parents’ homes, six during the day and four in the evening with a dozen parents each. While the meetings were supposed to last an hour, most went closer to three. (For some details of the themes that emerged check out this blog post.) What struck her most about the conversations were not the resistance to the idea of real change but, instead, parents’ concerns that teachers would change their practice. 

“We’re all saying the test is not the most important thing, but the state of NY is now saying the test is a big part of a teacher’s evaluation,” she said. “Parents wondered what effect that would have.”

That led to conversations with the teachers as well. “Teachers need to know that you or parents aren’t going to come after them with pick axes if scores go down. I made sure my staff were having conversations about change as well, and that they knew parents supported them, and that I would hold parents to that support once test time rolled around.”

The result has been a commitment on the part of the district to have ongoing conversations around the big picture value of an education in the Dobbs Ferry District, and a commitment to invest heavily in technology in the coming school year, an investment that has the support of the community. While there is still a lot of discussion about curriculum and instruction to come, the groundwork has been set in less than a year for significant changes in the way learning happens.

I plan on going into more detail on the process at Dobbs Ferry in other spaces, but here are some of the “bold” takeaways:

  • Parents are the most important constituency to engage in conversations around the shifts we are experiencing. We have to be willing to provoke and engage in those conversations on an ongoing basis. 
  • We have to trust that creating inquiry based, technology rich, connected spaces for learning will help students accomplish traditional outcomes (such as passing the test) as well. “It’s a bit of a leap of faith,” Lisa says, “but I just keep bringing the conversation back to what do we really want our kids to be able to do? If we believe that our kids should be self-directed learners, and critical thinkers and entrepreneurial learners, then we also have to believe that the test stuff will take care of itself.”
  • We have to admit that we don’t have all the answers, but that we need parents to be a part of the solution. “Parents can get comfortable with the idea that we’re figuring this out together.”
  • Teachers can feel very empowered when they know parents have their backs.
  • We can’t wait for policy or politics to change. We have to be the impetus for change.

So what resonates here? What would you add? What questions do you have? What stops you from thinking it’s possible? 

The 10,000 Parent Challenge: An Update

By

So first I just want to thank all of you who stuck around during the last session at Educon last week to extend this conversation, and to those of you who have signed on to see if we can make this happen. I thought for the most part, the conversation was valuable, and it’s left me thinking a lot this week about what we can and, perhaps, cannot do.

But I wanted to start this post with some context from a Jon Becker blog post that Chris alluded to in his session as well. It’s a quote by former NYC education head Joel Klein commenting on the “Political Education of Michelle Rhee.” He says:

This is a game about power, and I think you have a vacuum on one side…She’s concluded — and I think with some wisdom — that there’s really no countervailing force that is well-funded, is well-organized. What I think she wants to build is an organization that can really step up and amass political support and play hardball.

As Jon notes, Klein is right. There is no alternative narrative to the “do what we’re currently doing only better” “reform” that Rhee and her cohorts are espousing. And as much as I’d like to agree with Jon that the Educon axioms suggest an alternative narrative, I still don’t see an “elevator pitch” that articulates those ideas in sound-bitey ways that people will take a chance on. And I do mean take a chance. As natural and as logical as those axioms may seem to the attendees at Educon, I’m not sure the general public is able or willing to accept them for their own schools. I know the parents at SLA have done so, and I’m totally hoping to be convinced otherwise, but for now, it’s easier to put “Students First,” the name Rhee has wrapped her “reform” around.

That new message is the hard part, and we grappled with that during our session. In fact we tried to plan around it, and I actually think we got a decent start on it. But try as we might to trust that we’d eventually coalesce around that “new story,” it was obviously on our minds. Take a look at the ideas we added to the brain dump doc:

It needs some organization, no doubt (and if anyone wants to take a shot at that, have at it), but there are definitely some great thoughts that we’ve already amassed. We’ve also got 38 people who have committed to getting about 2,000 parents organized, and John Pederson was nice enough to put together a Facebook group that we can use, all of which leaves me hopeful that we can actually make this idea come to fruition.

In a nutshell, here are the logistical themes that we can glean already:

  • There should be a consistent, formal presentation piece followed by facilitated discussion
  • Part of the presentation should involve students, perhaps in helping to create a video
  • Create a way for these conversations to be captured and continued…make a movement
  • We want to think about a name and a brand and a marketing plan.
  • We want to plan the facilitation of these events carefully and provide opportunities for organizers to connect and plan together.
  • And, let me add, we’re going to need some folks to take on an organizing role around some of these specific tasks. (Don’t be shy.)

But it’s gonna come down to the message. I think what we’re going to be suggesting is a conversation around transform, not reform, a conversation that necessarily will move parents out of their comfort zones a bit to really look at how schools simply have to change to better serve our kids. But even that last statement is loaded with all sorts of assumptions that I’m not sure are fair to make. Thus, the problem.

So, time for some ideas on next steps. What’s our next move?