Have a Good Life

Bill Daggett is the founder and Chairman of the International Center for Leadership in Education. He has worked all over the world helping schools improve and currently hosts the model school conference which showcases the 40 top performing schools in the country.

• Other nations were doing some things better than us, but not everything. One thing we do much better is educating ALL students.
• No nation in the world that would do what public education was doing for my family.
• Spoke in 29 nations in 2 years.
• Pulled company back to focus on America.
• Carefully interviews people who need help, and mentor the schools to help them.
• 5,000 - 8,000 people at Model Schools Conference in June.
• Teaming is important. We have created artificial silos that don’t help students learn in real-life situations. School
• Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships for ALL students
• Schools are organized for ease of the teachers, not students.
• Schools are organized for the top 1/3 of the students.
• Want to motivate kids? Better make it relevant for them.
• Interdisciplinary teams.
• To start find two people who are willing to work together and go from there.
• Build your master schedule around them.
• Takes about 3–5 years for these initiatives to work.
• We need the common planning period between disciplines.
• Gotta pick the battles you are going to fight.
• That’s too revolutionary and revolutionists get killed.
• Breaking staff into thirds - Lunatic Fringe (let’s do every new initiative), Realists (I need some data to change first), Over My Dead Body (I’m not changing for nothing!). And it is not always broken down into even thirds.
• Just leave the bottom third alone. Spend your time and resources on the top third.
• Took 7 years working with that district for Brockton High School to start changing.
• Teachers need an ongoing network of people beyond their own building.
• Running Interference: Find ways to unlock teachers potential and remove roadblocks (state regs, parents/kids, union).
• Get parent advocates. Talk to the parents of students who are doing a really great job. Get that parent to run for school board. Over time, it grows.
• Public education has been around for a long time, you won’t change it overnight.
• Measure what matters.
• Academic Tenacity - do kids feel school is relevant? Do they feel safe? WE Surveys help find out if kids feel connected to school.
• Do students and teachers agree that what is being taught is relevant?
• Student and parent engagement are important.
• Content, Methodology, Academic Tenacity, Parent/Community. We are so hung up on Content, that we can’t get to next three items. High performing schools don’t begin with content, they begin with getting the kids engaged.
• Culture trumps strategy.

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