Fifteen years ago a good friend was commenting on education. He compared making changes in education to watching a “slow parade of elephants.” Admittedly, a couple of decades ago education’s response to changing needs was very slow and hesitant. Today the situation is very different in many school districts. These districts that are finding success with an increasingly needy student population are characterized by two essential values – refection and flexibility.

This was very noticeable this week in our city’s schools. Principals and teachers from across the district met with the district’s superintendent and the curriculum director. Each school presented the mid-year progress they had made on the improvement initiatives they set at the beginning of the year. The school goals that were set were based on the district goals set by the CPS Board of Education last spring.

It was very impressive to see the work that each school has done to improve their educational processes to bring about greater student success. None of them were satisfied with just doing what had always been done. Instead, the staff at each building reflected carefully on the needs of their students last spring, researched solutions to these weak areas, and developed solutions based on the best information available.

What was impressive to the superintendent was that these groups did more than just reflect and plan. They also worked hard all year to put into practice the solutions they developed.

One good example of this is the work of the Columbus Middle School staff. They identified grade failures as a top area of concern. In examining the issue closer, they found that a cause of many failures was incomplete homework. They brainstormed solutions to this problem. What they came up with was creating time at the end of the day for students to work individually with teachers to help them complete their work and ask questions to improve their understanding.

When they did a mid-year check to determine if this intervention was working, they found that homework incompletion has been drastically reduced and the number of failures has gone down many fold. Likewise, academic office referrals have greatly reduced. Student and parent satisfaction, as measured on district surveys, has also been impressively positive.

After a mid-year examination of results, they have determined to continue this change in operation and continue to brainstorm other solutions to reduce the failure rate even more.

This is the type of work that is happening across the district. Teachers and principals are utilizing test data and other important student information in increasingly sophisticated ways. They are thoughtfully working together to create solutions and monitor success. Then they are making on-going adjustments as needed to continue to improve the results in critical district goal areas.

Virtually all the improvement that is taking place is because educators have embraced the core values of reflection and flexibility. The CMS example above shows the staff reflecting on important information. After much thoughtful consideration they came up with potential solutions to identified needs. From there, they implemented their ideas. Finally, they analyzed their results and made changes to further enhance their success.

None of this would happen if these educators were not flexible. Had they refused to change, student failure would not have been reduced. Fortunately, their flexibility in trying solutions is bringing about continual improvement.

So the next time you hear that education is a “slow parade of elephants” remember this example. Schools today are being more creative and responsive to student needs than was true in the past. As a result, district classrooms are getting impressive results even as students come to school with ever greater needs.

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