“The brick walls are there to keep out the people who don’t want it as much as we do.”
– Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture

The thing about conventional wisdom is that it usually applies…unless it doesn’t. History is filled with agents of change who overturned—or just ignored—conventional wisdom. Brick walls and other obstacles in one’s way to something important are always there…unless one refuses to see them.

I’ve seen this phenomenon in two very different fields I have been reading about lately, the stock market and education. Different domains, different goals, same phenomenon.

First the stock market. I’m reading a book called The Physics of Wall Street by James Weatherall. In discussing the well known “efficient market” theory, Weatherall makes my point. (The efficient market theory says that prices of stocks are essentially fair, because they are based on all the publicly available information about a company. According to the efficient market theory, when new information comes out about a stock—for example, the company is about to introduce a hot new product—the level of demand in the market to buy the stock will automatically adjust the price based on this new information.) Markets seem “efficient,” he says, because they correct for each new piece of information. That is, unless you can predict that information.

“So-called sophisticated investors…identify certain patterns and then adopt trading strategies designed to exploit those patterns,” says Weatherall. “These sophisticated investors are what make the markets random.” Each new piece of information is quickly gobbled up in our information-rich environment and is incorporated into the new price of a stock.

Herein lies the rub: “But if you’re the first person to notice such a pattern, the argument about self-correcting markets doesn’t apply.” In other words, the efficient market theory is a great way to describe the behavior of stock prices on the market…unless you can tell what’s coming when others can’t.

I think most people think the efficient market theory tells them that it’s useless to try to “figure out” the stock market, because it’s all random anyway. But it doesn’t. It is saying, “Be the first to uncover an inefficiency. Then you can be ahead of the game while others face the illusion of randomness.”

What about in education? Take Grant Wiggins, half of the duo that wrote the seminal guide, Understanding by Design. (Wiggins and his colleague, Jay McTighe, popularized “backward design,” in which educators begin planning with their goals and success criteria in mind and proceed with activities only when those goals and criteria are clear.) Last year, Wiggins commented on his blog in what is now a noteworthy post about a new book by Australian researcher John Hattie.  Hattie performed a meta-analysis, examining and combining hundreds of education studies to assign an “effect size” for each of dozens of interventions and factors in student achievement. The higher the effect size, the more powerful this intervention or factor in raising student achievement.

Hattie found that “home environment” has an important effect on student achievement, but it is far from the most powerful. There are, he asserted, dozens of things that are completely in the control of schools that outrank home environment as more powerful factors. In other words, Hattie concluded that educators could counter the effects of a deleterious home environment by pursuing specific practices at their schools.

Hattie never said that these practices are easy to implement, but none of them are foreign to educators.  They include such familiar concepts as focused classroom discussion time, specific intervention programs, and cooperative learning.  All of them would seem to require a school-wide commitment to a consistent approach in a targeted area.

A commenter on the blog (actually, more than one) took issue with this conclusion. The commenters stated something to the effect of, “I’m offended – how could you rank such and such ahead of home environment? Obviously you haven’t seen my school or met my students! The kids are poor, they don’t read at home, etc. Your other interventions just wouldn’t work.”

Wiggins countered by saying (and I am paraphrasing), “I suppose that your school has not tried, at least with a concerted effort, any of the interventions that scored higher than home environment. If that’s the case—and it takes a school-wide effort and careful focus to make any of these things happen successfully—of course home environment seems to dominate. It’s the highest factor in student achievement that is present at your school.”

The point is not that there is a magic, specific, research-based “effect size” attached to each intervention, but that you can counter a seemingly overwhelming factor with a more powerful one, provided that your school community commits to a certain direction and then sticks to a well-informed plan. If you throw up your hands and say, “Nothing can counter poverty effects”—as much of the anti-education reform crowd seems to be doing—you are reinforcing your own hypothesis by not even trying something potentially more robust.

That obstacle, that brick wall, is there, lurking as the most powerful factor in student achievement…unless it isn’t.

And let’s be clear: Once a school has established patterns of unsafe student behavior, ineffective practices and poor academic performance, it is very, very hard to turn it around.

Don’t believe me?  A few years back, “turnaround” became a buzzword in reports about education policy.  Have you seen “turnaround” in any headlines lately?  Probably not.  That’s because turnaround, while far from a bad idea, is very, very hard to pull off.

In 1991, Minnesota passed America’s first charter school law.  Forty states have since followed suit, always making this explicit promise to charter school operators:

We’ll give you more autonomy, but we’ll hold you more accountable than we do conventional public schools.  We will shut you down if you are not meeting your goals.

Nationally, the promise has not been kept.  There is a growing cry from the charter sector itself and from the press for state authorizers to hold charter schools more accountable and close down the the charters that don’t meet their standards.

The story in New York is different.  We have been blessed with the State University of New York (SUNY), which has been recognized by the national authorizers’ association as one of the most rigorous authorizers in the country.  As SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute says on its website, “the SUNY Trustees do not automatically grant charter renewal; a school must demonstrate that it has earned it.”  SUNY instructions to schools up for renewal include reference to the “high honor” of serving the state’s children and families, an honor that is not bestowed lightly.

On February 26, the trustees determined that Harlem Link had met the Institute’s rigorous expectations and gave the school an unqualified five-year renewal, the most generous that SUNY offers .

Gaining the renewal was no mean feat.  While several other schools also received five-year reauthorizations, the SUNY trustees judged some other schools wanting, and some schools even judged themselves to be failures.  In the last two years, two charter school boards in Albany surrendered their charters to SUNY rather than apply for renewal.  KIPP did the same thing, opting to reorganize one of the Harlem schools within its network rather than present a case for renewal.  And at that February 26 meeting, SUNY granted a two-year renewal with strict goals that, if not met, will lead to automatic closure without another vote for the United Federation of Teachers’ Charter School in Queens in 2015.

To achieve our renewal, our staff members, students and families have worked extremely hard.  In particular, the last two years have featured a herculean effort as we have aggressively put in place organizational changes associated with the Common Core State Standards and other reforms.

Having been a part of many different school communities with varying levels of achievement and stability, I know that hard work and good intentions are only two among many ingredients for success.  At Harlem Link, we have:

• set goals and chosen priorities;
• intelligently stewarded our resources to put them to work in focused efforts around those goals;
• seen ourselves as a learning organization.

Because education is a fully human endeavor and humans are unpredictable, dealing with setbacks is the name of the game for schools.  While each of our eight years of operation have brought new structures, systems and energy, we have been relentelessly self-critical and have never been satisfied or assumed that we had no room to grow.

Turnaround is hard, and so is replicating someone else’s success in your own classrooms.  Regardless, educators are famous for stealing ideas from each other.  The best professional development for teachers is usually to visit the expert teacher next door and walk away with a plan.  We have no designs on changing the face of education or solving the thorny problems facing school districts large and small.  But I know that the timeless principles that we have employed to achieve renewal can apply across communities.  I look forward to using this blog to elucidate and discuss those principles, and I hope you will join me.

Note: This essay received an Honorable Mention in our essay contest because, while it is outstandingly, written, the author received a degree of parental support not provided to other entrants.  There were no rules against this support, however the judges deemed the work of other students to be done individually.

Recent incidents involving violence, such as the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, have brought to the forefront the subject of making communities stronger, safer and better. It is true that violence, which is any type of crime or harm to another person, must be stopped but we must go beyond this line of thinking. Actually, everyone has to accept the challenge to create a healthier, safer community that would bring in benefits for all community members.

The effects of violence are disastrous, for we all know that violence tears apart communities and it does not allow communities to come together. Weapons are a major factor contributing to violence, especially guns. It has been reported that one out of five children take weapons of some kind to school. However, weapons are only part of the problem; feelings, behaviors and attitudes are just as important. Bullying takes place when someone who is often thought of as different or weak is abused in some way, or when someone is made to feel bad by being made fun of, or even when lies are being spread about someone. Bullying can happen anywhere as in workplaces, schools, or even through electronic tools like Internet. It must not be forgotten that bullying can sometimes result in very violent events such as in the case of Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999 where the two shooters were known to have been bullied for years in school.

A number of steps may be taken to bring about safer and better neighborhoods and communities. Laws such as gun control laws should be passed, and members of law enforcement such as the police officers should indeed be in the picture. Community problems must be recognized and dealt with properly. For example, school teachers should be aware of bullying and should take appropriate actions to stop bullying. Of course, community members must communicate among themselves and work together to build community standards and expectations that come down on crimes and harms to others, and thus move towards setting up communities where everyone can live in peace and harmony.

Look out your window. What do you see? You see someone getting hurt. Or you’ll see someone being carried away in an ambulance. Like Trayvon Martin—he was killed for no reason. He was gunned down for just having an Arizona can and a bag of Skittles in his hands. We should get rid of gun violence and make peace in the world. It’s great that the man that killed him is in jail, but Trayvon still isn’t here. He might have had a lot of great dreams, but it’s not fair that a family lost their son and brother. This is why I think the world should change.

Now turn on the TV. It’s going to be sunny weather, but not for the kids that where killed in Connecticut, those innocent little kids were killed for no reason. Kids six to seven had dreams, great big dreams but that was taken away from them. Also those kids where not even able to see the world yet. Those kids only got to live the first six to seven years in life; they weren’t even able to see their teen years. This is why the world should change.

There are a thousand ways that we can change the world. First, we can get more security in the schools and stores. Nothing would happen if we had more security. Also, the world needs more cops. If cops would actually do their jobs nothing would really happen. This is how I think we should change the world.

They should make it even harder for a person to be able to get a license for a gun. And really do an extensive background check on the person who is trying to get one. If the government would stop pumping guns into urban areas we would be less likely to be walking around killing each other over senseless things.

Since I became an educator about 15 years ago, I have had a sinking feeling every time I have heard the famous West African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.”  I’ve actually felt sick to my stomach hearing it while immersed in the culture of our school system.  I could never pin down exactly why until I had the opposite feeling on October 18—the night of our first alumni reunion.

I’ve had that sinking feeling because I’ve known, even though I have not been able to articulate that knowledge, that the box we put ourselves in when we think about “school” doesn’t create the environment we mean when we talk about a village.  In terms of school life, our reunion was countercultural.  Three years—middle school, practically a lifetime—had gone by, but there were our babies, all growing up.  Reveling in their individuality, they told us how proud they were of where and who they were, and how prepared they felt after graduating from Harlem Link.

And there we were for the strugglers, playing the role of critical friend now that we don’t have to be the enforcer.  Because we are no longer in a position of authority, we can engage in a safe, different and productive way those few children who reject seemingly all behavioral interventions.

“I don’t have to tell you what to do anymore,” I told one scholar who had been asked to leave two schools since graduating from ours.  “And you don’t have to take my ___ anymore, either.  I’m still going to tell you the same things I used to, but now you can be sure it’s because I care about you and not just because I am doing my job and bossing you around.”  She smiled—sheepishly.

Where is the village?

Not only do our peer schools not keep up with alumni, but legal interpretations of the FERPA law actively discourage us from being involved in the lives of our students once they leave; under current federal regulations of FERPA, former schools are no longer “interested parties” with a right to access student contact information.  More important, and I think one reason for this regulation, staying in touch and staying involved are not values of the school system.

I’ve never been to a West African village (the proverb is generally attributed to the Igbo people of Nigeria),  but because of my own experience living among a swarm of relatives as a child, I’m going to guess that those villages are organized sort of like my own Italian immigrant family.

Let me focus on one aspect of my childhood: intergenerational relations.  In my family, old people continue to be part of the fabric.  When their kids have grown up and moved on, when their careers have come to an end, when they don’t need as much living space as they used to, they don’t go off to a nursing home to die.  They move in with their children.

My grandfather lived with my aunt and her husband for the last 15 years of his life.  Discharged from intensive care in a hospital when a medical storm seemed to have passed, he died at home, sleeping on an easy chair, as peaceful as the breeze.  I was 10 years old.

Nonno wasn’t some distant old man whom we made special trips to visit; he was as much a part of the family as the aunt and uncle he lived with, or another aunt and uncle who lived next door to me.

He transmitted faith in a way no religion possibly could.  I knew that Nonno prayed to his wife’s memory and for her peace, while looking up at a old, brown photograph of her hanging in his small room, every night from when she died suddenly in 1956 until his last days more than 30 years later.

He was the genial, appreciative father figure who watched cartoons with me every Saturday morning while my older sister was off doing activities.  He didn’t understand English, but he understood joy and love, and he gave them even more than he received them.

When he died I didn’t understand shock, so I wasn’t sure why I didn’t cry for three days, but then I couldn’t stop.  We were at my aunt and uncle’s house when it hit me that he wasn’t coming back.  My cousin took me to her room and laid me down on the bed.  “I’m not a baby,” I thought, “but, okay, I will lay down and cry.”

My mother had had a zia in Astoria who lived with her daughter and son-in-law until she died not long before Nonno did.  So the concept of death wasn’t new to me when Nonno died.  But there we all were, in mourning in our own ways together, and unsure how we could deal with life without him.

Nonno was important to each of us in a different way.  Whether he was giving guidance to his children, handing out orange Tic Tacs to his 11 grandchildren, making funny attempts at broken English or showing the example of a life faithfully and earnestly lived to everyone, he gave something to everyone in our family.

I do not see this in our school system.  In fact, I don’t see anything even remotely like it.  The impulse of most adults in the school system seems to be to care, just not too much.  I was told about this boundary over and over again when I started teaching.

This is the advice I heard: Don’t get too involved in the lives of your students, because you are bound to be disappointed.  And anyway, who knows where they are going to end up?  What could you, their third grade teacher, do to keep them out of prison?  Their home life is such a mess.  And don’t go visit to learn about it first-hand; take my word for it. Besides, it’s probably dangerous.

I hope it is self-evident how destructive these words are.

But it isn’t just the attitude that’s the problem.  It’s the structure—or, rather, the lack of structures that encourage longitudinal thinking about children and meaningful, ongoing relationships with them.

With test-driven accountability as a sole measure of a child’s progress, everything is placed on this year’s teacher, as if Johnny walked in to my classroom as a blank slate.  Calculating “value added” by considering where Johnny scored last year and how far his teacher can move his score this year (rather than his final test score alone) addresses this problem the way Google Translate would have helped Nonno learn English.  It would have been a nice tool (had it existed in 1987), but what was really needed was the human connection.  Value-added data formulations acknowledge that children have actually had prior experiences with other teachers, and that’s an important start, but they do nothing to address the future relationship between today’s teacher and tomorrow’s alumnus.

The older residents of the village

I would like to see us reframe our thinking about the outcome of “school.”  It’s not only about this year’s test, or this year’s graduates, or this year’s teaching and learning.  It’s about the impact of our work and our relationships on the lives of the children in our care.  And those lives extend far into the future, rather than coming to a full stop at the end of June.

The older residents of the village, it turns out, aren’t the people you picture when you think about a school community.  I’m not talking about the gray-haired principal, or the wizened special education teacher, or the grandfather who volunteers with the PTA.  I’m talking about the alumni, who are now downright invisible.

In a time when schools and communities are clamoring for more support, alumni are a powerful untapped resource for our school system.  And they are continually ignored, because to many members of our school communities, they seem irrelevant—or, worse, threatening.

Difficult questions

I believe alumni are also ignored because it’s so darn hard to pin them down.  How would you evaluate the impact of a teacher and a school on a child 20 or 30 years into the future?  That task is even more confounding when we live in a time when a third or even half of a school’s teachers might have moved on to other schools or careers by next year.

If it truly “takes a village” then why does our definition of village end in June?  How can we preserve the relationships that teachers form with their students longitudinally at a time of so much change and movement?

I don’t care about the difficulty of answering these questions.  Even a cursory examination of them reveals that they raise all sorts of interesting questions about assumptions we are making.

The problem is that no one seems to be asking them.