Tag: Improvement

Improvement isn’t just a method. It’s culture.

Deeper learning and continuous improvement are answers to different halves of the same question. The future of schooling, and the future of our communities, depends on our willingness to reintegrate things we have allowed to drift apart

How a New York City network used weekly 1:1 attendance check-ins to cut chronic absenteeism — and why pizza parties miss the students who need help most.

Many schools and districts have responded to this challenge by ramping up attendance incentives such as prizes, parties, or special privileges intended to draw students to school. These approaches often withhold a positive experience until an absent student behaves differently, reflecting a common belief that the right reward will motivate students to attend more consistently. Unfortunately, research points to a mismatch between this solution and the nature of the problem.

In my years of working with teachers and school leaders as an improvement coach, I’ve learned to listen closely to what is unsaid. Variation is data. Silence is data. And an entire group of kindergarteners consistently being silent in class? That is definitely data. 

Edwards Deming, a founder of continuous improvement methods, once brutally summarized the field of education as “miracle goals and no methods.” Having spent the past 30 years trying to spread deeper learning to more students more often, I recognize myself in this sentence.

Ben Daley explains how his instinct to avoid reinforcing hierarchy kept him from getting the full benefit from improvement reviews.

What happens when you bring together two dozen schools—from rural K-12s to large urban high schools—with the shared goal of reducing chronic absenteeism?

Allyson Fritz shares what she has learned about conducting empathy interviews from her work on reducing chronic absenteeism in Washington State. The first rule: an empathy interview is about LEARNING, not changing other people's behavior.

Now that I support 19 schools, I’ve come to understand that the “conduit role” is necessary but not sufficient. The real power of the “data lead” role lies not just in presenting the data, but in bringing together the people who need to talk about it, facilitating their conversations, and supporting them as they turn insights into action.