How Would You Define Great Schools?

The last several days have been incredibly enlightening. In consecutive days, I had the opportunity to take a bus tour of the “great” schools of Indianapolis and listen to a panel of experts discuss preschool education. While in all but a couple of cases, I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of the efforts of those who spoke about educating our children. However, I cannot say that based on what I saw and heard over the past two days that I’m remotely confident that our children’s future is in good hands or that their future looks promising.

CAN’T DEFINE GREAT

During the bus tour, I asked a “community leader” and former school board candidate to define the phrase “great school.” His initial response was that I had “asked a good question” and that “defining what is a great school is difficult.” My retort, in short, was that his response was nonsense and that describing what constitutes as a great school is simple. His follow-up reply to my uncomplicated question was equally inept. He said, “great schools begin at home.”

“Wow,” I exclaimed internally “is that it.” I silently wondered if there were any other worn out cliché expressions he planned to use! Not to disappoint, the next words out of his mouth were equally trite – “I want to reduce the school to prison pipeline.” Duh! Who doesn’t? Just a note to anyone else charged with improving the outcome of underrepresented and underserved children, eradicating the school to prison pipeline starts with “community and educational leaders” who can competently describe and instantaneously identify a “great” school.

For me, this was just one more poor example of an all too common educational blindness. Sadly, this time the banality came out of the mouth of someone who believed himself duly worthy of the community’s trust and a seat on the school board. Compounding the lack of original thought was the fact that the pronounced unawareness was uttered by one of those the community counts on to be informed.

Of this one thing, you can be sure, with educational acumen like his and that displayed by at least one other “educational leader,” there is hardly a need to wonder why America’s educational system is such a mess.

SCHOOL AND HOME

If great schools begin at home, why did I and others agree to spend our day riding a bus and visiting actual school buildings? What was the point of meeting with principals, teachers, and students? Why were the other bus riders and I left to listen to the inarticulate pontifications and propagandized ramblings of everyone but the people who mattered, the heads of households?

If great schools begin at home, why hadn’t the hosts of the event arranged for us to visit homes? Why were there no parents – the real consumers of education and the “headmasters” of the “real” schools – available for us to ask how they would define “great” schools? Since great education begins at home, I wondered why we didn’t merely ask a realtor to show us homes in the neighborhood?

CLEAN OR DIRTY GLASS OF WATER

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad once shared with Malcolm X a parable about a clean or dirty glass of water. The abbreviated version of the message is that when a person sees a fresh glass of water, they will choose the clean glass instead of the dirty glass. A great education is similar to a clean glass of water with one exception – most people have seen a fresh glass of water, but few have been able to experience great education.

While I don’t yet hold the title of “The Honorable,” I do believe that we can all do something good. And so on this day, my goal is merely to share with you ten things you should look for when searching for a “great school.”

GREAT SCHOOL

1. Visionary Leader – Great schools possess visionary leaders. Leaders who have clear and innovative ideas, high expectations and a sixth sense for the way things will be in the future. Visionary leaders blaze the trail that others follow. Visionary leaders will never have trouble defining quantitatively nor qualitatively what qualifies as a great school. You will know a visionary leader the moment you ask them what’s a great school because you will immediately be inspired.
2. Expectations – Great schools are places of high hopes and infinite possibilities. Great schools find minimal state standards and national competencies trifling. Great schools educate children with the intention of preparing citizens who will be ready, willing and able to change the world. Everyone associated with a great school expects that their students will be the standard for the most competent students in the world.
3. Why – Great schools are places where “why” is encouraged and answered. Educators have an explicit understanding of “why” they teach. Parents are free from ambiguity about “why” their children need an education. Children can unequivocally state “why” their education matters. All parties understand that they exist to live out the words of Marian Wright Edelman “Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.”
4. Holistic – Great schools operate holistically. The entire community partners with the school. Parents and community members are welcomed and treated as vital allies, members of the proverbial “village.” Parents and community members are trained and continuously educated about everything that makes a school and a community great. Great schools speak about all “villagers” in the collective “we” rather than the customary “us” and “them.”
5. G.P.S. – Great schools have a G.P.S., Graduate Profile Strategy. Great schools can tell you precisely where your children can go with the combined assistance of the school, teachers, parents and community partners. Great schools realize that education is a real-life journey with numerous identifiable and calculable destinations along the way. Like the GPS on your phone, a great school’s G.P.S. knows where your children need to go and the best route to get them there.
6. Creative and Innovative – Great schools are forward thinking. Great schools scour the earth for the best and most successful ways to help children achieve. Great schools refuse to be bound by “it’s the way we’ve always done it” mantra. Flexibility and imagination are hallmarks of great schools. There is but one exception to a great schools flexibility and ingenuity. The one rigidity is that all children must reach their educational destination – they can be early, but they must never be late.
7. Poverty Smoverty – Seeing poverty as an address – a longitudinal and latitudinal location – rather than a state of mind or a state of being, defines a great school. Great schools are caretakers of dreams. At great schools all children and families are encouraged to dream and to do so incessantly, to set goals to make the dreams a reality and then they are all provided with the requisite tools and techniques to make their dreams a reality. With hope, tools and an action plan, great schools help children, families, and communities transcend socio-economic shortcomings.
8. Collaboration Over Competition – Great schools are bastions of teamwork. In great schools, success is measured not by what is achieved by the top performing students instead success is measured by how slight the gap is between the first and last. Everyone associated with a great school willingly puts aside self-interests in favor of collaboration. Students, teachers, and families work together realizing that climbing to the top of the mountain feels empty when there is no one there to share your accomplishment. Great schools mean it when they say Together Everyone Achieves More.
9. Perennial All-Stars – Educators at great schools are perennial all-stars. Educators at great schools never rest on their laurels. Educators at great schools are motivated to become a G.O.A.T. – Greatest of All Time. G.O.A.T.s understand that the better prepared and skilled they are, the better prepared and skilled their students will be and the more effective and efficient society will function. Great schools will only allow children to be educated by those who believe in and are committed to being the greatest (teachers) of all time.
10. Social Entrepreneur – Great schools are operated using social entrepreneurial methodologies. Schools become great schools when they are led by ambitious and persistent educators who refuse to accept the status quo and our nation’s acceptable standards of educational mediocrity. A great school embraces its role as an agent for societal change and its responsibility for making the most significant impact possible on the community. The examples of other social entrepreneurs who reject the existence of the word impossible propel the work of a great school. Great schools work towards self-sufficiency; expressing little interest in relying on government intervention or duplicitous assistance from fake affiliates.

NOW YOU KNOW

The “community leader” may not have been able to define a great school but now you can identify a great school just as clearly as you can differentiate between a clean glass and a dirty glass of water. And by the way, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you wouldn’t want to drink contaminated water.

Not only should we refuse a dirty glass of water, but we must also stop accepting anything less than a great education.  Our first step towards a great education beginning today is to demand more of our “community leaders” and to raise the expectations of our children’s school.

How do you define a great school? Would you add anything to the list?

Take control of your child’s education today by enrolling in The Supa-Parenting Back to School Course.