70621 Arizona Business and Education Coalition Leadership Conference

Arizona Business and Education Coalition (ABEC) Conference

Each year since their 2001 formation ABEC holds an annual conference. ABEC is a 40+ member board with equal numbers of business and education folks. They and their counterparts in many states have effectively addressed the 1990’s problem of business and educators being siloed in their quest to improve education. Their joint discussions have resulted in many partnerships and initiatives let by groups who are linked to the coalition.

This years day and a half conference in Scottsdale was amazing in itsi speakers, presentations and quality. The focus was on K-12 Leadership. The masterful conference design of started with the Imperative, Expectations and Collaboration. The next day sequence was Building Consensus, Leadership Matters, Daring to Lead, Courage to Tackle the New Global Agenda and closed with Implications for Arizona Leaders. Whew! I kept thinking that for every person in the audience, another four should have attended – including our legislators.

I can only pick a one item from my notes from each section for this blog:

Imperative: Nintendo spends $147 million on game technology R&D but our federal government spends less than $50 million on K-12 education technology R&D. We must determine have core academic skills and arts, P.E., music and career path exploration with top teachers and instructional technology.

Expectations:

Review of the study “Beat the Odds” found principals that continually delivered academic performancei well above expectations (based on demographic and other analyses) , or drove their performance from well below to well above expectations in a couple of year.

A second group was presented the Arizona Academic Scholars Initiative. This is a structured program for increasing Arizona core academic requirements including a second language.

Collaboration: Must support great causes with a passion, and work together. Big business can model training programs that invest thousands per employee where school districts now spend $100 per teacher. Must continue to lead with how we think, problem solve and innovate as Americans. The next big issue is study and recommendations on funding formula for K-12 education.

(Note: Ted the eD) Bob Rosenberg’s and my grand friend was Senator David Kret, an MIT and Motorola engineer, who in the mid 1970’s wrote the current funding formula legislationi – Chapter 15, Title 9.0. Since that time it has been incrementally twisted and turned, and become antiquated. Many current critical needs are not being addressed while legacy funding keeps spend on lower priorities. Davis also wrote his PhD dissertation at ASU College of Education on the subject of school finance. Might be good to reference this document as school funding is studied. I also hear rumors of TEF. This stands for a movement to do a systems design of all aspect of school finances: Taxes Education Funding. Its about time.)

Arthur Ryan, CEO of Prudential have a rousing keynote address the next morning. Much progress has been made in the states and nationally to set standards and build business-education advocacy organizations. National Governors Association, now under Janet Napolitano is focused on Innovation and Education. Must have uniform and standard process that all states will use to assess the graduation rate. Must have data and everybody from students, teachers to legislators and governor knowing how to use data to assess and support learning. Must have all aspects of education system aligned to goals of State, Districts and Schools – be supporting goals, with barriers removed. Must have school choice within public school system (how about micro-choice with eLearningi formative assessmenti – each student-teacher chooses incremental learning path in real time – Ted the eD). And finally must be strongly linked to workforce and higher education needs.

Leadership and Achievement: McRel www.mcrel.com meta-study showed strong academic gains for:

Collaborative goal setting

Goals are for both student achievement and instructional program and are based in researchi

Continual board support for these goals

Resources are dedicated for professional development of both teachers and principals to achieve district goals

The Superintendent monitors-evaluates instructional program, impact of of instruction on achievement and impact of implementation on implementers.

Autonomy for principals with expectation of alignment to district goals and use of resources for professional development. Site-based management can run amok without goals for instruction and achievement.

Gains are about 10 percentile points! This means one letter grade improvement in academic performance. Some headlines claim that Arizona last in K-12 is match only by 13 other states who also claim to be last. Regardless of our position in the academic pecking order, 10 percentile points change by all schools would thrust us well above any other state on the NEAP test.

Courage for Systemic Change: After lunch Mr. Hector Montenegro, Superintendent of the Ysleta School Dist. El Paso, Texas (66,000 students) gave such an energetic, funny, fact filled and loud presentation that I just sat back, and went with the flow. My only conclusion is that with a brilliant superintendent, with a grand set of education and national class experiences, using just the right goals, policies, expectations, charisma and interventions can transform any district to a high performer. (Unfortunately there are not 99 potential leaders of his caliber for each of the 1 out of a hundred leaders making it happen right now. I guess we need to have the courage to bill the systems and invest the funds to assure that pipeline is built (Ted the eD)

Courage to Tackle the New Global Agenda: Lattie Coor was again on the mark with Aspirations, Objectives, World Class. Educate to world standard:

* On the NEAP standards have all our students proficient in seven years and advanced in 20 years. Scale Arizona’s performance to TIMS (international standards) until we get into the top five nations classification. Have one national criteria for graduation. Achieve national leadership as defined in NAS’ “Rising Above the Gathering Storm.”

* Build Arizona’s next middle class generation with a preponderance immigrants into a thriving resource and citizenry for Arizona.

* From a study of 15 years of past policy the summary is that Arizona wants a TIMS class K-12 education, 12% increase in graduation rate in 12 years (2020) and a four year math program with highly educated and trained teachers.

* Need to develop plan to prepare next Arizona generation for middle class.

* Invest in the future. Make it real, thoughtful investment, not just budget for the moment.

* Keep High Schools but develop many grow pathways beyond 10th grade base on work of the National Center for Education and Economy.

To wrap it up (I left before the final audience discussion) ABEC presented:

Bill Harris – Science Foundation Arizona: Lattie should run for office! Ireland a poorest county in Europe invested in education include free college for its brightest student, and now it is the economic model of Europe. We are like a frog in water being heated on the stove (see burning platform below!). Our legislature argues about tax cuts not on what is the best way to make significant investments in education.

John Wright III – President of Arizona Education Association: Teachers perform heroically under their work load, then we pile on more work. We need to set goals but we must have measures and feedback with teachers in the conversation.

Suzanne Schweiger-Nitchals – President of AZ School Boards Assoc.: Must have common view of the end. By the 1940’s we had made a huge investment to improve education, we have to now reinvest in education.

Barbara Clark – Motorola: We have lack of attention and urgency, like the image of standing on a burning platform in the early 1990’s. When the call to action comes, step up. Get teachers into the conversation and push for change.

Jim Zaharis – Greater Phoenix Leadership: Major change in 5 years from Prop 301 to CEO’s getting involved. Must do it. Must achieve with ADP Algebra national standard and test. Must follow systems plan like ThinkAZ to implement effective change.

Gregory Wyman – Supt. Apache School District: Superintendent does not have the power of a CEO, just the responsibilities. Quality is better but competition is different. We must use technology in education in a way never used before if we are to compete.

Ivan Johnson – VP Cox Communications: Continually reinventing business, apply the same process to K-12 education.