''Student outcomes don't change until adult behaviors change.''
- A. J. Crabill
The Guilford County (NC) Board of Education hired a consultant from the Washington, D.C.-based Council of the Great City Schools to teach them how to improve district performance. The consultant, A. J. Crabill, had turned around Kansas City's public schools in his eight-year tenure as the president of its school board. Both attendance rates and graduation rates rose by ten percent, the schools got the accreditation they had sought in vain for the prior 20 years, and the district got its finances under control. Crabill told them the same thing he told the Waco Independent School Board in Texas, where he is Deputy Commissioner of Governance for the Texas Education Agency: The key to reversing decline in a district is to manage time to focus on progress toward student-centered goals.Benefits of Goal-Based Time Management
- Academic performance improves. Crabill has tracked a correlation between districts with rapid academic progress and those with boards that spend at least half their time monitoring progress toward goals. Statistics strongly suggest a causal relationship: In 400 studies of a wide range of organizations, monitoring ambitious, specific goals improved outcomes 91% of the time (Locke and Latham).
- Motivation increases. Tracking progress harnesses the psychological power that Pavlov persuasively documented: Immediate incentives linked to a positive future outcome (which may or may not come to pass) reliably motivate us to act. Regular reinforcement in the form of punishments and rewards magnifies that effect.
- Waste decreases. If you're allegedly writing a book but actually surfing the internet, years can pass as you puzzle over your failure. More importantly, the book does not get written. If you simply wrote down the hours spent online, you would catch the cause in time to turn things around. You could correct course after one week, not a year, of non-productivity. The same applies to school boards sincerely confused as why student performance has not improved as they focus on operations and reporting requirements of state and federal bodies.
- School officials and state leaders cooperate. Underperforming schools often regard state officials as bullies. The Board of Education often regards underperforming districts as slackers. When Crabill told underperforming districts in Texas that they must attend weekend training on time management, it evoked resentment. After the weekend, though, the Waco ISD board president said that sharing a positive vision turned mutual suspicion into enthusiastic collaboration: It completely turned around the working relationship of the district with the Texas Education Agency.
- Boards lead by example. The board, the superintendent and the staff all face the same goal-tracking requirements. When the board holds itself accountable in this way, it sends a signal to the others; it is leading by example.
A Road Map
Where do you begin? In Texas, Crabill has blazed a trail. Its State Board of Education legislated district-level goal-tracking with heavy state oversight in the ''Framework for School Board Development'' (a.k.a. the ''Lone Star Governance Act'' of LGA). Following seven steps will make any district a pro at implementing goal-based time-tracking.- Ascertain where your time currently goes.
- Set targets for time allotted to student-centered goals.
- Create an interactive dashboard.
- Train board members, the superintendent and school personnel.
- Restructure future board agendas and staff schedules to increase time spent on goals.
- Regularly monitor and adjust.
- Use the data in evaluations.
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