Achieving Equity and Excellence. Douglas Reeves

PART II

       Understanding What Equity and Excellence Schools Do Differently

       3 Organize Their School or District as a Professional Learning Community

       4 Display a Laser-Like Focus on Student Achievement

       5 Conduct Collaborative Scoring

       6 Emphasize Nonfiction Writing

       7 Utilize Frequent Formative Assessment With Multiple Opportunities for Success

       8 Perform Constructive Data Analysis

       9 Engage in Cross-Disciplinary Units of Instruction

      

PART III

       Applying the Research in Your Schools

       10 Discover the Equity and Excellence Mindset

       11 Change Behavior Before Belief

       12 Transform Vision Into Action Through Teacher Leadership

       13 Improve Coaching, Feedback, and Evaluation

      

PART IV

       Creating Accountability in an Equity and Excellence System

       14 Establish Accountability as a Learning System

       15 Enact System-Level Accountability

       16 Enact School- and Department-Level Accountability

       17 Explain the Story Behind the Numbers

       Epilogue: Giant Leaps, Not Baby Steps

       References and Resources

       Index

      About the Author

      Douglas Reeves, PhD, is the author of more than thirty books and many articles about leadership and organizational effectiveness. He was named the Brock International Laureate for his contributions to education and received the Contribution to the Field Award from the National Staff Development Council (now Learning Forward). Dr. Reeves was twice named to the Harvard University Distinguished Authors Series. Dr. Reeves has addressed audiences in all fifty U.S. states and more than thirty countries, sharing his research and supporting effective leadership at the local, state, and national levels. He is founder of Finish the Dissertation, a free and noncommercial service for doctoral students, and the Zambian Leadership and Learning Institute. He is the founding editor and co-publisher of The SNAFU Review, a collection of essays, poetry, and art by disabled veterans. Dr. Reeves lives with his family in downtown Boston.

      To learn more about the work of Dr. Reeves, visit Creative Leadership Solutions at https://creativeleadership.net, or follow @DouglasReeves on Twitter.

      To book Douglas Reeves for professional development, contact [email protected].

      Introduction

      Allow me to offer a conjecture about you as the reader of this book. Your interest in student equity and excellence is not passive, as you have a personal and professional interest in seeing more students succeed. You have lost patience with solutions offering long-term results when the students you encounter need results right now. You are weary of commercial programs that “worked” with a group of students far, far away, but have been ineffective with your students. And you are impatient with the rhetoric of blame and excuses that serve only to remove the sense of urgency you know is essential to help the students you serve. You may be an educational leader, teacher, parent, or policymaker, but whatever your role, you have a deep sense of responsibility for the children from your own home and those from homes you may never visit but which are, nevertheless, part of the fabric of a society that can be far more just and equitable. If any of these descriptions fit you, please read on.

      This book aims to improve the results of all students in your school, no matter their background or socioeconomic status, from the moment you begin applying the principles in the following chapters. This book offers no long-term, five-year plans for success, but rather, examples of how students can make dramatic improvements in achievement, behavior, and attendance in a single semester. You will find a methodology not based on faraway research, but on identifying, documenting, and replicating the results in your school and your community. The local and relevant evidence can be replicated within your budget, your bargaining agreement, and your community’s culture. You will find no rhetoric of blame, but rather the promise of hope that tomorrow will be better than today because you already know what to do, right here, right now, without changes in state or local policy. You will find a proven change methodology that does not rely on the traditional and discredited philosophy of persuasion before action. You will find the fundamental truth that action—not studies, not rhetoric, not leadership charisma, but action—is what leads to change that works. That is inside-out change, based on modeling from successful students, teachers, and schools all within your own neighborhood.

      The fundamental argument of this book is that equity and excellence must be dual goals for every school, not mutually exclusive goals in which the pursuit of equity is the mirage laid in front of schools serving high populations of students in poverty, and excellence is the exclusive province of schools serving students in wealthy suburbs or elite private schools. As Robert Pondiscio (2019) explains:

      The last several decades of education policy have set equity and excellence at war with each other. If you are wealthy, with the means to pay tuition or move to a community with great schools, you have ready access to excellence. If you are poor, black, or brown, you get equity and an impotent lecture: on fairness, on democracy, or, infuriatingly, on the need for patience and restraint. (p. 322)

      Anthony Muhammad and Luis F. Cruz (2019) similarly make the case that the path to change is culture, not rhetorical flourishes or the displacement of rigor with sympathy,