Success in high school and college is a strong predictor of future employment, financial success, family stability, and health. It’s certainly true that a four-year liberal arts degree is not essential for this – skilled jobs in building trades and technical medical fields, for example, pay well and do not require a four-year college degree. But nearly every job offering middle-class wages requires some post-secondary education, at a community college, technical school or university.

When is the first time that you can recall being in a high-trust environment? Perhaps it was early in your career when colleagues and supervisors encouraged you, forgave your mistakes, and gave you a sense of confidence that allowed you to forge ahead to launch your career as an educational professional and make a difference for your students. Perhaps it was even earlier, when a teacher helped you break the bonds of perfectionism, encouraged you to try something new, and then encouraged you through the inevitable mistakes that accompany the risk-taking endeavor we call learning. But I would like to suggest that your first experience in a high-trust environment was much earlier.

Picture this: School starts and everyone is focused on assessing learning loss. Interventions are put in place but students continue to struggle. Schools struggle with lack of engagement, failing grades, and, increased behavioral issues. School teams are confounded and ask why? Why isn’t the learning loss being mitigated by reading and math interventions? The straight truth is because schools siloed social and emotional learning from the total equation. Instead of being the foundation for the reopening plan, many schools across the country attended to the academic side of the house without realizing the actual foundation relies on social emotional learning or SEL. 

Introduction:  The traditional 4-point scale, with A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, and F=0, has been used throughout the almost 400-year history of public education in the United States.   This article establishes the rationale that the traditional system, not the “new” system of the 100-point scale established in the early 1900’s, is the most accurate, fair, and respectful way to grade students

As the 2020-2021 school year opened, the principal and staff of Jackson Elementary in Elmhurst District 205 near Chicago knew what they didn’t know.  They didn’t know how parents would respond to their children learning remotely from home.  They didn’t how they were going to be able to keep up with changing schedules from remote, to hybrid, to in-person, and back again through the cycle according to the pandemic infection metrics.  They didn’t know how to keep focused on student learning, knowing that teacher and student health might preclude academic achievement.

Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (MPUSD) is the proud home to three comprehensive high schools and one alternative high school serving approximately 3,170 students. MPUSD, like many districts across the country, has worked incredibly hard to begin the new year and the new semester, and we have much to celebrate. Over the course of the first semester and with an extended grading window, the four high schools in MPUSD collectively reduced the number of Fs by 77%.

A recent study by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA confirms what many of us have long suspected: American middle and high schools are losing a shocking number of instructional days to suspension. Using discipline data collected from almost every U.S. school district, the study found that 28 districts lost more than a year of learning to this draconian discipline practice. And what populations were most affected? You guessed it: Black students and students with disabilities were disproportionately deprived of the opportunity to learn in the name of suspension.

The pandemic numbers continue to be grim, but we must be relentless in our support of student learning. While it is true that COVID-19 is a matter of public safety, so is literacy. If we do not revert the looming dropout time bomb, the public health crisis associated with dropouts will last for generations.  

Schools are facing an avoidable crisis – students dropping out of high school because of toxic policies that lead to a cascading series of failures that will undermine any reason for them to persist in their studies. When students to fail to complete high school, they face a lifetime of unemployment, poverty, increased health care needs, and greater involvement in the criminal justice system. If these students were inside a burning building, we would not convene focus groups, hire consultants, or begin a strategic plan. We would get them out of the burning building. There are only a few weeks left in the fall of 2020 to decide how to respond to this crisis.

This is the first in a series of brief articles about digital equity. Each week, we will provide educators and leaders with an immediately applicable strategy that will help students, teachers, and leaders focus on what matters most.

In my live and virtual travels around the country, one consistent concern I am hearing is the difficulty of establishing and maintaining emotional connections between teachers and students. We can’t wait for schools to resume live instruction for this vital part of learning. Here are five ideas you can apply right now.

Classroom observations can be a key strategy for improved teaching and learning, provided that they are conducted in a manner that gives teachers constructive and immediately applicable feedback as well as a chance to engage in a substantive conversation about their work with students and colleagues.

In the fall of 2020, schools are opening in a season of continuing trauma for students, families, and staff members. The deaths and illnesses of family, friends, and colleagues are perpetual reminders of how fragile life is and how the emotional needs of children and adults are a central responsibility of educational leadership.

We have interacted with thousands of school leaders and educators since COVID-19 essentially closed every school in the nation. In call after call, webinar after webinar, and video meeting after video meeting, these educators have expressed a growing belief that the start of the 2020-2021 school year will be anything but normal. Most anticipate there will be some form of remote learning involved even if students are able to physically attend school.

What will school look like in the fall? Will it be in-person, virtual, or some combination of the two? Teachers, students, and families are asking the same questions across the nation.

This is truly an unprecedented time in American educational history. I have been honored to continue relationships with schools across the country, albeit remotely, and am humbled by their leaders’ and faculties’ dedication to making this time as normal and productive as possible for their students

Many teachers are expert users of technology, so the focus on tech-based delivery is not too difficult for them. But some of their colleagues ­– and many of their students – are overwhelmed. In almost every school district, even those that have had one-to-one computer availability, a significant number of families have not had computers or internet access.

Twenty years ago, it was the first few hours after disaster struck that largely determined whether an organization would emerge from a crisis with its reputation intact.

The Marshall Memo is a weekly digest of the best ideas and research from a wide range of publications. Every Sunday, I sit down and read through the journals and magazines that came in that week (I subscribe to more than 60).

This week I was asked by an educator, “What does collaboration look like?” It’s a profound question, because the answer is much deeper than educators and administrators sitting around a table and being pleasant to one another. Collaboration is hard work and often requires a level of vulnerability that does not come easily to many faculty members.