An Interview with Dr. Sally Kilgore, President/CEO of MRSH

Q. What kind of changes have you seen in public education in the last decade?

It's the centralization in what is taught and stricter accountability for student learning that has changed. With Federal laws requiring stricter accountability, many urban districts withdrew much of the autonomy accorded schools in the 80s. Districts often imposed specific expectations on classroom instruction—either in the form of textbooks or pacing charts. State academic standards have become increasingly specific.

Roughly drawn, I'd say these changes have created a new sense of urgency.

Q. What kind of barriers do you see to improving education for all children?

A sense of the urgency has one major problem: Superintendents, as well as principals, may be tempted to rely upon quick solutions. Yet to address the real challenge, they need to invest in the capacity of teachers—increasing their skills and diagnostic work with students, understanding the complexities of teaching reading. The search for quick solutions constitutes a barrier to achieving excellence in our schools for all children.

Q. No Child Left Behind. Very big topic in education. Is it really making a difference in our schools?

Yes, it is making a difference, but I am not sure if it is positive. Radical and healthy proposals are embedded in NCLB. First and foremost: The nation is committing itself to the goal of having children of all circumstances—regardless of their special need—proficient academically. That is a profound, healthy change in our understanding of what we owe children in their education. It's been my commitment for the past 20 years.

The implementation of NCLB, though, is quite challenging. The rules, as they have been promulgated at the Department of Education, have all sorts of intricate constraints. The Federal regulations, for instance, set some tough constraints on how states could establish their benchmarks over the next 12 years—benchmarks that lead to students in all conditions reaching proficiency, regardless of their circumstances.

Q. Do you think it (NCLB) will evolve into something different in five years, ten years? Do you think it has to evolve?

It has to evolve. Let's be clear, both the Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates will support NCLB. The question is what kind of adaptations will they encourage. Both of them, I think, will move toward more flexibility. We already see that happening in the Bush Administration. The question, then, is whether they will dilute the general commitment or set constraints that lead states to lower their standards.

Q. What is the most important thing that district leaders can do to improve student achievement?

Focusing on the issue of coherence. One benefit of the move toward centralization in many districts is coherence in what schools are expecting students to know and be able to do. Student mobility is always a problem in urban schools. Having the same text in reading, for instance, is a good thing.

But, coherence means a lot more than just having the same textbooks across schools. Coherence also means keeping the same textbook for awhile, so that teachers become facile with it as a tool. Yet, the urgency that pervades most urban schools encourages district officials to switch tools—such as textbooks. In the world of texts, however, there are marginal differences. The text is similar to a piece of technology. If you change it frequently, their ability to achieve some level of competence with the tool is compromised.

Oftentimes, then, it is better to train and improve the fluency that teachers have with an existing text. That's part of coherence. Allow teachers to gain some mastery of the tools they have to support instruction.

Another temptation of districts is to move principals or close schools. Good schools are extremely hard to create—they are not just buildings. They constitute a culture—of beliefs, habits, relationships—all of which support instruction. Healthy school cultures are much more fragile than bad ones.

The notion that we should close a school because enrollment is too small or move principals to salvage a weak school needs to be considered with caution. If it is a healthy, high-performing school, it would be much better to reconfigure the school attendance boundaries to preserve a good school rather than close it. Positive parent relations and teacher collaboration, for instance, are very important qualities one loses by reassigning people and closing down schools.

Coherence broadly conceived, to me, is one of the most important things districts leaders need to look at and need to value more.

The other is building capacity. Excellence in teaching requires educators to have the power, skills, knowledge, and habits that allow them to adapt strategies to the individual needs of students as well as to engage in collegial review of their work with other teachers. Thankfully, I see increasing commitment to invest in building teachers' capacity to serve all students.

Q. In the late 1980s, you were Director of the Office of Research for the U. S. Department of Education. What effect did that experience have on you?

Well, I guess the key word is “substantial.” I came to the organization with considerable understanding about how bureaucracies worked. But, it is one thing to have an intellectual understanding versus actually to live and walk in the halls of a real bureaucracy. Interestingly, I think, our Federal system works only because civil servants learn whose word they can trust. The most valued attribute, then, is their integrity—pushing something through the system happens only when other civil servants trust the motives of the “pusher.”

The endemic problem within all bureaucracies, though, is the degree to which information travels down, but not up. A good bureaucrat, a good leader, in fact, must have bad news traveling up to their offices. Only when they have the full range of information can they make good decisions.

I also learned the value of humor in surviving in a large bureaucracy. I lived a life quite similar to that old classic book out of the 1950s, Up the Down Staircase, or the British television series, "Yes, MInister." Many decisions made by others higher in the “food chain” made no sense or had consequences that were unanticipated. Unless you could laugh about it, you were certainly put at a disadvantage.

Finally, having been trained as a sociologist, I am especially grateful for the opportunity I had to be exposed to research traditions outside of my field—research on reading or leadership in schools. It was an extended graduate school. I could convene scholars from around the country to talk about a particular issue and how the research in that area ought to evolve. That was critical to my own future efforts. I would not be very useful if I hadn't had that opportunity.

Q. What was your most enjoyable aspect of that position looking back?

Oh my goodness. “Enjoyable” does evoke the laughter. I have always relied upon humor to survive. Yet, that would be wrong.

I think what was most enjoyable was the opportunity to focus on the educational needs of the country at that time. I was dealing with very modest resources to advance the cause of education research. We invested in research on teaching specific disciplines—history, math, science, and even foreign languages. The funds were small and usually required that recipients secure additional funding. That's not any different than what the Endowment for Humanities does—giving seed money and expecting organizations to obtain comparable funding elsewhere. I think that was probably an important contribution. I may not have enjoyed it, but, in the end, it was gratifying to see the results.

Q. What have you read lately that has influenced you?

The book in education that I have been mulling over is called Trust in Schools . It is authored by Barbara Schneider and Tony Bryk at the University of Chicago , who have been engaged in helping Chicago schools for over a decade. Their research led them to ask, “What conditions were most predictive of substantial change in student achievement?” And, as it turned out, trust relationships that exist between educators and the parents of the children served, among teachers, and then between the principal and his or her staff. What they found was that the ability to improve practices that require trust among all the relevant actors—parents, administrators, and teachers.

Many schools have very troubling relations between parents and educators. Educators still, and probably understandably, say, “We're great teachers, but the students just aren't motivated.” We have to confront the question: How can one be a great teacher when they fail to have impact on those with whom they are working? That is the kind of challenge that I think Trust in Schools, to some extent, addresses.

Q. What are the most important things that school principals can do to improve student achievement?

The most important principle, I would say, that applies to all leaders, is that you never let a forest fire that's burning at your feet – that's that urgency part – obscure the mountains you've got to climb. Oftentimes, it's so easy to walk into your office in the morning and you feel a forest fire at your feet. You see the smoke; your feet feel the flames. You respond to those immediate needs. That strategy will doom any efforts for school improvements, because a principal will lose perspective very quickly.

Beyond that, it depends on the starting point. Is the school at the bottom of the barrel and trying to move from 20 percent of their kids being proficient to 30, or are they seeking to move from 60 percent to 70 percent of their students demonstrating proficiency?

Like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, leaders need to focus differently, depending on the gap between where they are and where they need to be. First is coherence. Is instruction aligned with what is being assessed? Do you have a coherent program that is increasingly challenging across your grades? Do you have coherence across the subjects you are teaching such that they are reinforcing and providing students with new links and anchors for what they're learning?

Second, a school must have a professional culture. By that, first and foremost, I mean that children's needs come first. Often, troubled schools have allowed adult interests to override those of the children. Sometimes, educators spend most of their time trying to position themselves for the future, rather than worrying about what students need.

Professional cultures are about putting student learning first, relying on evidence to make decisions, seeking out help to improve, and collaborating and learning from each other. Professional cultures require that one be open and honest about what's working and what isn't.

The third issue: trust. As I mentioned earlier, trust is a real barrier to creating a professional culture. If you haven't built trust across teachers, if you are unable to mobilize parents who support what you are doing at home, then a professional culture may not materialize.

Finally, teachers need a very large tool box. Inside should be a number of different strategies to support student learning. Just as it makes sense that one needs a variety of screwdrivers to solve household problems, so, too, with teaching and learning. Just addressing the misconceptions children have requires numerous questioning strategies and activities. Tools that help nurture excellence among children are essential. Children have to be self-reflective and achieve excellence in their work.

Q. What's the most enjoyable part of your job, running MRSH?

The most enjoyable part, I think, for anybody who works with Modern Red and not just me, is the opportunity to be paid to make a difference in the lives of children. That's special.

The second thing would be the people in the schools with whom we've had the opportunity to work. We are extremely fortunate to have a variety of very talented people and continue to have new ones brought into the MRSH community. On the whole, teachers want their children to be more successful. What greater pleasure than to be surrounded by people who have a commitment to making things better for children that is quite real and palpable. Those things mean a lot to me and make it enjoyable.