Getting Better: Improvement Science during COVID-19

As everybody in the education sector is painfully aware, the COVID-19 outbreak has drastically changed the way we think about and execute our jobs for the foreseeable future. Normal life has been put on hold while we determine how to navigate the uncertain months ahead. Questions materialize much faster than answers, and it is difficult to keep up with the near constant updates coming from federal, state, and local officials. I am hard-pressed to identify a moment in my life that has been as impactful, rapidly-evolving, and confusing. I don’t believe it’s hyperbolic to say that this is a truly unprecedented time for those of us in education.

Seven Early Lessons about Shifting Education during a Crisis

Once we at the United Schools Network learned about Governor DeWine’s school closure order on the afternoon of March 12, the pivot to remote learning began immediately. The first thing we did was create a COVID-19 Task Force in order to start planning for the initial three-week closure. While those plans were quickly implemented, we’ve now transitioned to creating longer term plans that address learning needs as Ohio schools will remain physically closed to May 1 and possibly beyond.

This limited (hopefully) blog series is our attempt to share what we’re learning during the pandemic. We’ve outlined seven early lessons in this post, which are focused on setting a network or district up for success throughout the closure

Getting Better: Illusory Correlations, Oh My!

Do most people only use 10% of their brain power? Are some people left-brained and others right-brained? Does playing Mozart’s music to infants boost their intelligence? Is the defining feature of dyslexia reversing letters? Do students learn best when teaching styles are matched to their learning styles? Are we in the middle of a massive epidemic of infantile autism? Contrary to popular opinion...no, no, no, no, no, and no.

Improvement Science Tool: Fishbone Diagram

Why are we getting the outcomes that we currently do? In my last post, I implored organizational leaders to slow down and take the time to deeply understand this question before moving ahead with solutions.

The only way to understand current outcomes is to step back and see the system - the people, the policies, the attitudes, and the physical environment - in which a problem resides.

Getting Better: Mise En Place, Please

Modeling our own behavior based on the top .0001% in any sector is a fool’s errand. In fact, with all due respect to Einstein, I would argue that maintaining a cluttered desk is counterproductive to success for 99% of us mere mortals.

Slow Down to Speed Up

The methods of improvement science are often counterintuitive at first glance (which is probably why I love the approach!). Take the title of this blog post for instance - Slow Down to Speed Up. When we launch an improvement project with a school, very early on in the project I display this quote from Albert Einstein on a slide -"If I only had one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution." - and ask participants what they think it means. To me, what Einstein is getting at is that it is well worth the time investment to deeply understand a problem before diving headlong into solutions.

Why Evidence-Based Practices Don’t Work: Part II

There’s a large gap between the current state of education sector R & D and our aspirations for this research. As sectors, education and medicine have lots in common and analogies are often drawn between the disciplines. However, when it comes to evidence-based practices, there are stark differences between the two fields.

Getting Better: Vive La France!

Not long ago, in late October, the National Assessment Governing Board released the results of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Generally speaking, the results were met with disappointment among those in the education sector, with the exception of a few laudable bright spots: D.C. and Mississippi. Approximately one month later, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) announced the results of their 2018 study, which evoked a similar word as the NAEP results: disappointing. American students, as compared to American students of yesteryear and present-day students around the world, have stagnated.

Getting Better: Can we nudge our students toward better habits?

Many years ago, I found myself trapped in an interesting cycle with my dental hygienist. A few times each year, I would stretch out on her chair and sit patiently as she picked at, polished, and flossed my teeth. While the overall health of my mouth held up under her close scrutiny, she always mentioned one habit I couldn’t seem to shake.

Why Evidence-Based Practices Don’t Work: Part I

To be clear, I am in favor of building a strong education R & D sector. However, it’s important to acknowledge the serious shortcomings of the current system. It is because of this current state that I am arguing that evidence-based practices don’t work.

I’m making two claims.

Claim #1: The current evidence-base in education research is extremely thin at best and completely misleading at worse.
Claim #2: By their very design, studies that result in evidence-based practices discount externalities instead of solving for them.

Getting Better: Is the 21st Century Really All That Different?

December 31st, 1999 was not your average New Year’s Eve. While excitement about the turn of the century was palpable, uneasiness permeated as the second hand of everybody’s watch made its final revolution of the 20th Century. Y2K, the catchy acronym assigned to the collective nationwide fear that computer systems were doomed to fail at the stroke of midnight, was on the tip of everybody’s tongue.

Probably Wrong, Definitely Incomplete

On its face, probably wrong, definitely incomplete doesn’t inspire confidence. However, we put this phrase in the footer of almost all of the documents we create at School Performance Institute (SPI) to remind us of its value as a core ethos of our improvement work. When people first see this phrase they typically have a reaction something like, “Wow, that doesn’t inspire confidence!”

We disagree.