Lessons from the Maze

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• Develop your driving principles and beliefs, and base all your decisions on them. "These beliefs should be simple, clear, and universal," House said. She cited several examples: Effort matters more than ability. Expectations should be the same for all students. If students haven't learned something, we haven't taught it.
• Ruthlessly prune your practices, policies, and procedures to remove those that don't support your driving principles. "You'll have to slaughter some sacred cows," House said, "such as ability grouping, seniority and transfer practices, honors courses, and [overemphasis on] athletics."
• Make professional development comprehensive and ongoing. "For professional development to drive changes in classroom practice, we need to redefine it," House asserted. "It can no longer be viewed as a one-shot vaccine that will immunize students against poor teaching."
• Plan your communications carefully. "Having been a superintendent for 15 years, I can guarantee you that everyone will misunderstand everything on every possible occasion," House said wryly. Education leaders must make sure that employees, parents, and board members are "on the same page," she said. "For example, parents must clearly comprehend how basic skills are an integral part of standards-based instruction."
• Hold principals, teachers, and central office staff accountable for student performance results. Educators are used to having school quality measured by factors such as the pupil-to-teacher ratio, House noted. Yet performance outcomes—such as the graduation rate or the number of students reading at grade level—are the things for which schools will be held accountable. "They're also the things on which time, resources, and personnel must be focused," she emphasized.
• Educators cannot do the job alone, and neither can students. "Many urban students live in communities and sometimes in families that are toxic," House said. Issues of physical and mental health, substance abuse, housing, and unemployment must be addressed if all children are to achieve academic success. "Therefore, we as educators must [enlist] the support of every agency in the community to ensure that every child has a safety net of activities and caring adults."
• The central office cannot be the focus of the organizational structure. Administrative services must surround the school sites to ensure that all schools have the resources they need, when they need them, House said. "For decades, the central office has been the sun, and the schools have been the planets. For schools to more effectively educate all children, schools must be the group of suns at the center of the organization, and all support services must revolve around them."