100-Day Leaders. Robert Eaker

grades of A, B, C, D, or F for identical performance, based on differences in teachers’ idiosyncratic grading systems (Reeves, 2015). Grades are notoriously inaccurate because the grade may reflect not the student’s proficiency in the subject being graded, but a host of other factors, ranging from parental support to literacy. Grades are rarely specific, as four students could receive a grade of C for entirely different reasons, such as proficiency, attitude, participation, and parental advocacy. And grades are rarely timely—the first sign of trouble is a low mark at the end of the semester when, in fact, schools know within the first two weeks of the semester whether students are in danger of failure. We have seen schools that have elaborate and sophisticated data warehouses and the information they need to identify and intervene for students who are at grave risk of failure, but they fail to transform this information into decisive leadership actions. It is as if the students are patients who submit to an expensive and detailed diagnostic procedure that yields important information for life-saving treatment but the hospital sends them home without a treatment plan or a word from the physician.

      In sum, even though leaders know that feedback is a critical ingredient of success, they often squander this essential resource, and the feedback to teachers and students fails to meet the essential requirements of effectiveness.

      The third leverage point is nonfiction writing. When students write to describe, compare, evaluate, or persuade, they engage their critical-thinking faculties and build literacy skills. Our research concludes that nonfiction writing is associated not only with improved composition skills but also with improvements in reading comprehension, mathematics, science, and social studies (Reeves, 2002). Our research in successful high-poverty schools reveals the profound impact of nonfiction writing. In low-performing schools, the vast majority of student writing was fiction, fantasy, poetry, or personal narrative. In high-performing schools with similar demographic characteristics, there was a much more balanced approach in student writing, including expository, persuasive, and descriptive writing (Reeves, in press).

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