Having spent three decades in the trenches of Catholic education, both as a teacher and an administrator, I have witnessed educational paradigms and approaches shift multiple times. My journey began in the days when assessments were straightforward – a test, a grade, a report card. Today, the landscape is a fairly overwhelming labyrinth of standards, rubrics, formative and summative assessments, and ever-evolving digital approaches. Throw in some overly cute and complex jargon (one of my least favorite things about education) and you have a cloudy picture, indeed.

Yet the fundamental purpose of assessments remains unchanged: to gauge student learning and to inform our teaching. The question should be pretty damn simple: are our assessments truly effective?

In my early years, assessments were often dreaded both by students and teachers. They were seen as necessary evils, a means to an end. I remember handing back graded tests, knowing that for some students, these marks represented not just academic performance but self-worth. This weight of assessment was, and remains, one of my own, personal horrors of education (check out my Halloween Week post).

As with any horror, there is hope. 

Over the years, I have seen movement towards more nuanced and humane approaches to assessment. This evolution is not merely a trend but a profound shift in understanding. Educational professionals have come to realize that assessments are not just about measuring knowledge but about fostering growth. The rise of formative assessments – those that inform instruction and provide feedback during the learning process – has been so very important. These assessments are less about judgment and more about guidance, less about ranking and more about growth.

In Catholic education, our mission adds another layer to the assessment conundrum. Our schools are not just academic institutions. They are communities of faith and character development. This mission must permeate every aspect of our pedagogy, including assessments. We are called to educate the whole person – mind, body, and spirit.

This holistic approach means that our assessments must go beyond traditional academic metrics. We must consider how we assess character, faith, and service. These elements are harder to quantify but are essential to our mission. I have seen schools implement reflective journals, service portfolios, and peer assessments to capture these dimensions. While these methods may lack the neatness of a numerical grade, they provide a richer, more comprehensive picture of our students’ development.

The challenges of modern assessments are vast. Standardized tests still loom large (they are making a comeback in college admissions, kids), driven by external pressures and policies. These tests often fail to capture the full spectrum of student abilities and they are certainly not equitable. Technology, while offering innovative assessment tools, also presents challenges in terms of access and equity. And then there is the ever-present issue of teacher workload: crafting, administering, and grading assessments is no small feat.

There is light. Technology, used thoughtfully, can provide adaptive assessments that meet students where they are. Collaborative assessments can foster a sense of community and shared purpose. And, importantly, ongoing professional development can empower teachers to design assessments that are both rigorous and compassionate.

Hope that keeps us going. It is the hope that our assessments, when aligned with our mission and thoughtfully designed, can help our students not just learn but flourish. It is the hope that we, as educators, can continue to grow and adapt, finding new ways to meet the needs of our students. And it is the hope that, despite the challenges, we can make a difference – one assessment, one student, one day at a time.

One of the things I adore most about living the life of an educational leader is August. I love the start of the year rituals. I love opening faculty meetings. I love registration days. I love orientations. And, the more I do them, I love speaking with the parents of incoming students.

The process of speaking with these parents often begins almost a year before orientation, when students and their families start the process of discerning which high school to choose. Tours, open houses, and interviews all influence that decision, they are important for the school to get right, and I have enjoyed taking part in them.

I have engaged in more interviews, open houses, and welcome speeches than I care to number. What I share with families and students has become repetitive, though not disingenuous. It has become rote, though not heartless. It has simply become practiced.

What has surprised me in recent years is that one of the themes I repeat in these contexts has become a truth in how I proceed as a principal: parents are the best partners a school has.

This is a significant shift from early in my teaching career when I dreaded a parent phone call (my career pre-dates email) and early in my administrative career when an email or a phone call would cause me no small amount of stress. 

Upon receiving a contact from a parent, I typically felt that there was something wrong, that I had done it, and that I was being called out for it. This reaction must be adjacent to Imposter Syndrome. It is as powerful and as destructive as that disorder.

Perhaps it was becoming a parent myself that leavened these dark feelings. Perhaps it was transitioning into administration where the contacts were more frequent that improved my take on them. Perhaps it was growing as a person and as a professional.

Regardless, I have come to embrace what is obviously true: the adults our students live with are our best partners in the work we do. They can be our best supporters if we are proceeding in transparent and clear directions. They can be our advocates with their students when they understand our approaches. 

What I realize now is that schools cannot miss out on creating positive contacts with parents. These relationships must be as strongly constructed as possible before they are tested, and they sometimes are. As educational professionals, we must own the fact that parents and guardians trust us with their most valuable and loved companions – their children – and we are required to act accordingly.

This means listening. This means talking. This means communicating.

This means that what we do must always be done in the context of knowing that our students’ parents are a critical part of their lives, more critical than we, and are a critical part of our “audience.” What happens in school should never stay in school. That is not what schools are designed for. Schools are designed to shape and educate and mold students in preparation to face an increasingly complex world. 

Parents are our best partners in this work. As educators, we should embrace that truth.

In the time honored tradition of fixing the barn door after the cow has come home, I present a post about politics and the classroom the day after the US presidential election. I am writing this post weeks before Election Day and I plan to resist the urge to revise it no matter the outcome of November 5, 2024.

In prior presidential election years, the schools in which I have served have approached engaging with political events in widely varied ways. There was a year in which the staff was directed to not discuss anything political, even among themselves as professionals (political conversations that year were referred to as “sweater conversations” as in “your sweater looks nice” or “your sweater looks like it will hasten the end of democracy.”). There was a year that the entire school took a day out of the curriculum to engage on the mechanics of American elections, inviting guest speakers, hosting a parade of delegates, and holding a mock election. There was the year the entire cycle seemed to be ignored.

I think educators can over-think our approach to elections. This is no surprise. Educators can overthink approaches to anything. Elections in schools do not need to be overthought.

I believe a number of things about how schools, especially high schools, should approach elections. 

We have to follow the mission of our schools.

Sometimes, the mission of our schools will call us to wade into politically charged, hot-button topics more than we might have liked. That is the cost of doing business in mission-oriented contexts.

We have a responsibility to teach and model respectful discourse.

This is incumbent upon us in all years, not just in election years.

We have a responsibility to keep our personal politics personal. 

Teachers, counselors, and coaches have too much influence over students to share their personal politics.

We have a responsibility to educate our students about how American elections work.

If we are not going to teach our students what it means to vote and how elections work, who will?

Should we talk about issues? Yes, we should. Should we help students who are 18 register to vote? Yes, we should. Should we speak about what an awesome responsibility we have as Americans? Yes, we should. Should we honor the American democratic process in our approach to elections? Yes, we must.

As I noted earlier, I wrote this post weeks prior to the 2024 election. I wonder if I will be proud of or disappointed in how I led my school to engage with the election this year. Time will most certainly tell.

It is Halloween Week. This is the 13th installment of this volume of the blog. These are two signs of mystic and dreadful portent.

EEk!

This past summer, I was lucky to take a vacation with one of my best friends through upstate New York. As we drove on our pilgrimage, we had hours in the car to speak about any and all kinds of topics. We are both educators and he is one of the few I can say is more veteran than I. We both have opinions about the work we do, both as individual professionals and as educators who are part of a broader professional community. We both have strong opinions.

My good friend has a much, much longer view of things than I do and he embraces salvific history as philosophy for his life in a way that I can only admire and love. But, in the short term, I am the more optimistic of us. I can, typically, find more immediate silver linings.

On the topic of education our short term and long term perspectives – our every perspective – seem aligned.

Modern education is broken and we are not sure it can be fixed.

The list of the challenges faced by educators is long, complex, and thorny. 

• Students have changed.
• Parents are too involved.
• Parents are not involved enough.
• Teachers are not as good as they once were.
• Curriculum is far more complicated than ever.
• There are complexities around race.
• There are complexities around gender
• Funding is down.
• Confidence is down.
• Teachers are not respected.
• Cell phones and technology overall make the work impossible.
• Cultural values have shifted.
• There is a sharp generational divide between faculty and staff.
• Respect is missing from almost all stakeholders.

And on, and on, and on. This list is off the top of my cursor. Surely there are more issues and more of them are more difficult to solve.

The horror of education.

There is much here to force cursing of the darkness. There is much here to lament. There is much that is horrible.

This is year 34 for me. 34 years of this work. 34 years of this horror. 

And I come back, excited, ready, smiling. I come back for more and more and more.

As does my good friend, and he’s been doing this longer than I.

To me, the horror of education is like the horror found in a good Stephen King story – the challenge of overcoming it is ALWAYS met by ordinary folks doing extraordinary things. Stephen King stories are scary, but they end, almost always, in hope.

Working in education can be scary but it is hope that inspires us to come back for more.

It is a shared hope.

It is a grounded hope.

It is a steadfast hope.

It may not solve the horror of education, but it certainly does not hurt.

I watched the first three seasons of the shocking, smash hit Succession and hung in until it got to be just a bit much for me. It seems there is only so much reprehensible behavior I can stomach, even when it is fictional. 

For the uninitiated, the premise of the show concerns the passing of the proverbial torch from one generation of a family to the next. The patriarch of the family is the mega-wealthy owner of a multimedia empire and discerning which of his children will take over the company is the grist that grinds the show’s mill. 

Great concept and one that – stripped of the hyper-histrionics – has something to say to many of us in the world of education. 

In my experience, schools are not particularly great at succession planning. The schools in which I have served have not had solid structures in place to ensure that the next generation of leaders are training for the roles as the current generation are doing them.

This is, perhaps, because schools – especially private schools – tend to have fairly flat hierarchies. There is also a stigma associated with going from the classroom to administration. Surely many in the education field have heard (or shared) the adage: “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, administrate.” 

As an administrator, please allow me to say “ouch.”

For whatever reason, schools in which I have worked do not have systems in place to ensure leaders are getting on-the-job training.

This often means that, when hiring upper level administrators, in particular principals and presidents, schools look outside their own ranks. Of the four private, Catholic schools I have served, this has been the case in my tenure more often than not.

I did the math. In my career, I have worked for 11 principals and five presidents. 16 different upper level administrators. Of those 16, only four have been internal hires.

Four. 

We are not developing from within. Our successors are coming from outside our ranks. Most, but not all, are coming from within our networks, but not within our halls.

Perhaps this is not a problem and, if it is, given national trends in tenures of administrators, perhaps it is not solvable.

But I think it is a problem. I think our schools should foster leadership and encourage people to serve. I think our schools should develop the next generation of leaders. I think it is incumbent upon current leaders to ensure this happens.

Hiring leaders from outside is like hiring anyone: It is something of a crapshoot. You truly do not know what you are getting until the hire in is place. If you have hired well, terrific. If you have not, oh boy.

As a principal, I have the ability to put structures around succession in place.

This needs to be a goal of mine and I think it should be a goal of all educational leaders.