My daughter Courtney will soon be graduating from college with a teaching degree in elementary education.  To gain real-world experience, she has spent the past six months shadowing a 4^th grade teacher.

We recently spoke about how the teachers at this school feel about the principal’s periodic, unscheduled classroom visits, used to obtain a snapshot of how well teachers are engaging their students with their lesson plans.

While some teachers thrive on these impromptu classroom observations, saying these visits keep them on their toes and always prepared, others find it stressful trying to ensure students remain calm and attentive while the principal is in the room.  However, Courtney said, as the teachers develop a working relationship with the principal, the visits become less anxiety-provoking.

Teaching has always been a demanding profession, even more so today, with many states now mandating teacher evaluations.  In preparation for a 2012-13 Indiana requirement, one of our clients, Fort Wayne Community Schools (FWCS), has developed and put into practice a Four Step System of Support™ program that meets all state and Department of Education guidelines, including the directive that all Indiana school districts must have an annual, objective teacher evaluation system that is based on multiple measures and satisfies specific criteria.  Based on classroom observation and feedback, FWCS’s Four Step System of Support™ emphasizes providing support to make teachers better professionals, which ultimately leads to higher student achievement.

To discover how their teachers feel about this new program — Is it fair? Is it supportive of all instructional staff? Is it improving instruction? — K12 Insight conducted teacher focus groups, after which we worked with FWCS to jointly design a questionnaire to gather specific input on teachers’ experiences with the program.

All teachers deserve to have a voice, and they would undoubtedly appreciate being asked their thoughts on the program chosen as their evaluation tool. As my daughter Courtney discovered, teachers have strong, albeit differing, opinions. Other districts should think about following the FWCS model, implementing systems that both support and are supported by their teachers.

The job of a superintendent is truly a difficult undertaking.  In reality, most people have no idea what it takes to run a school district or what the superintendent must endure to keep things moving forward.

Having formed friendships with many superintendents nationwide, I have come to understand how hard it is to keep all aspects of a district running smoothly.  Successful districts are run by superintendents who are not just natural leaders but who are also adept at building a team of highly-qualified and effective administrators.

I compare the task of managing a school district to “holding a tiger at bay.”  It lumbers around its cage, ready to pounce and run wild at any moment.  It takes tremendous resources to keep that tiger well-fed and happily contained.

Superintendents manage districts with hundreds or even thousands of employees, with extremely limited resources. Yet, they must live up to higher expectations than any shareholder would expect of a corporate CEO.  As public figures, they are subject to public scrutiny and judgment.  A tough job to say the least.

K12 Insight helps superintendents and their leadership teams engage with all their internal and external stakeholders, leading to collaborative decision-making. By keeping community close and staff even closer, these districts foster vitality and build trust.

Every day, I advise superintendents against allowing themselves or their students to become casualties of budget shortfalls and increased workloads. And I tell them they’re not alone as they navigate this difficult journey. K12 Insight is here to offer our expertise in leading with transparency and engaging in ongoing, two-way dialogue.

A new study by a panel led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former chancellor of New York City’s school system Joel Klein warns that education is becoming a matter of national security.

Not only does the military face shortages of foreign language speakers and skilled science, defense and aerospace workers, but, according to the report, 30% of high school graduates do not perform well enough on aptitude tests to serve in the military at all. A startling 75% of young adults do not qualify because they are physically unfit, have criminal records or have inadequate levels of education.

In order to improve schools and maintain our national security as baby boomers are increasingly replaced by younger generations of workers, the panel recommends adopting core standards for education, improving school choice for students (particularly those in poor areas), and conducting federal audits to monitor schools’ progress.

All good strategies, but a critical component is missing — the voice of the student. More outreach is necessary to understand today’s students, including what motivates them and what they need to succeed. When traditional methods no longer work, we must try new ones.

Who better to help us understand how students learn than the students themselves? Only by engaging in these critical conversations and using the feedback to effect real change can we ensure that we prepare our students to live safe and successful lives.

In two short months, your high school seniors will be walking out your doors for the last time.  And while this will certainly be a time for celebration, it should also be a cause for concern.  How are you going to keep in touch with your graduates once they are off into the world?  How will you find out if they are successfully facing all of life’s challenges, and if your school system prepared them well for college and the workforce?  Unfortunately, most districts do not have a system for tracking this information, so reaching out to graduates is an ad hoc, “shot in the dark” exercise that is costly and yields few responses.

What can you do right now that will neither break the district’s bank nor require a huge investment of time and resources?  Collect their email addresses through a short online survey.  Explain that the district will follow up in a year to hear about their post-graduation experiences, using their feedback to improve the quality of education for future students.  Request that they keep their email accounts active or set them to auto-forward if they change their email address.

This brief time investment  will be well worth it, yielding higher response rates and more valuable feedback from future alumni surveys.

As a research analyst, I need to stay current on the latest survey practices and findings. In my free time, I comb through academic papers, newspaper articles and even blogs to discover the newest and most innovative ways to survey and engage people. The other day, I came across an interesting article by Sudhir Venkatesh that made some very intuitive points.

A sociologist was having problems finding willing survey participants. He would send emails, make phone calls and ask random pedestrians for a minute of their time, all to no avail. Eventually, he discovered that when he approached people in a more conversational way instead of asking them to participate in a survey, he was much more successful. Unsurprisingly, people responded better if they thought they were engaging in a conversation rather than being used as a data source.

Perhaps this finding is obvious, perhaps not. But the fact is that framing surveys as conversations is what K12 Insight is known for. Working with more than 300 school districts nationwide, we help superintendents provide a forum for stakeholders to voice their opinions and engage in two-way dialogue with district leadership. Indeed, surveys are about giving information and receiving feedback and if I learned anything from the article I read, it’s that all surveys should be conversations.

As I flew to Houston for the AASA conference a few weeks ago, I contemplated what I might hear that would catch me off guard.

With so many moving parts inherent in public education today, the risk is always high that something is falling through the cracks or simmering in the background.

What caught my attention was a request sent through our website by a school district in Georgia asking for more information about our services. The superintendent had contacted us after attending a session by Washoe County Schools Superintendent Heath Morrison and Chief Communications Officer Irene Payne.

Heath and Irene shared how, with the help of K12 Insight, Washoe had successfully transformed itself from a low-performing district with a high drop-out rate, to one proactively tackling difficult challenges, by communicating openly and transparently with their students, staff, parents and community members, inviting all voices to weigh in on critical issues. In so doing, Washoe made tremendous strides in student achievement, resulting in a double-digit increase in its graduation rate.

After attending this session, the Georgia superintendent immediately visited our website and filled out a contact form.  Within an hour, we had scheduled a meeting, during which he shared with me a list of impressive achievements in his district. He spoke of high achievement scores and participation, high graduation rates, and college acceptances, among other accomplishments.

This superintendent was most interested in how K12 Insight helps districts achieve cultural change. He spoke with intensity and urgency about bringing everyone in his district to the table, making them all part of the process, ensuring than not one voice would be left unheard.  There was a feeling that as a leader, as a custodian of the district’s trust, it was his responsibility to make this happen.

No matter how high-performing your district may be, it’s still vital to reach out to all of your stakeholders, earning their trust and ensuring that everyone is engaged in the critical decision-making process.

There is a dramatic change affecting more and more of my school district clients.  Teacher evaluations are becoming a hot-button issue in the evolution of our educational system, with the positive and negative implications being debated in Op-Ed pages, state legislatures and school board meetings. But when required by state law to implement teacher evaluations, how can school administrators carry out their obligations while still preserving and honoring the vital relationship with their teaching staff?

On a cold February morning, our CEO Suhail Farooqui and I set out to explore this issue on behalf of a client of ours in Michigan, a state experiencing its first year of mandated teacher evaluations. In focus groups comprised of teachers, union leaders and building level administrators, we encouraged an open dialogue about a range of issues. Yet the conversation consistently returned to the challenges presented by the teacher evaluation process. It became abundantly clear that beyond the obvious logistical and administrative issues, there is a communications hurdle to be resolved as well.

K12 Insight’s Climate and Engagement surveys delve into specific factors contributing to satisfaction and morale, while allowing administrators and teachers to fully understand the evaluation process.  Listening to survey feedback ­— and showing a willingness to respond to both positive and negative input — will help administrators build a reservoir of invaluable trust capital.

The current economic crisis has introduced many Americans and nearly all of our public school districts to a New Normal — the idea of having to do more with less. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke about this in 2010, at which point the idea was already getting old. So, when does the New Normal just become normal?

We have seen plenty of new ideas come and go without making much lasting impact. So why should this be any different?

In the ‘60s, this country was introduced to “New Math” — a program for grade-schoolers that was born largely out of the American reaction to the successful launch of Sputnik. The theory was that our math education was fundamentally wrong and had to be changed to compete with future generations of Soviet scientists. In reality, however, it was a terrible idea. Kids were learning about base 8 and base 6 number systems with no understanding of their real-life applications. New Math eventually went away, and teaching went back to traditional methods.

The ‘80s saw the introduction of New Coke. The New Coke formula was released as a response to major loss of market share due to competition from Pepsi-Cola. As it turned out, New Coke was tremendously unpopular and The Coca-Cola Company ended up reformulating again — essentially  reverting back to the original recipe — and releasing Coca-Cola Classic.

So is that where we’re headed? Is operating efficiently just a passing fad?

Many in the private sector are realizing levels of efficiency previously thought impossible and will likely be reluctant to inflate their teams again, even when profits return.  Similarly, as funding returns to our schools, administrators will be slow to loosen budgets, continuing to spend taxpayer dollars judiciously.

For now, it appears the New Normal is here to stay. If history is any indication, however, it may just be a matter of time before we revert to our old ways.

Congratulations to Dr. Heath Morrison, Superintendent of Washoe County School District (WCSD) in Reno, Nev., on being named the 2012 AASA Superintendent of the Year.

I have had the privilege of working with the Washoe County School District for the past two years, and in that period Dr. Morrison and his staff have truly embraced a culture of community engagement and transparency, proactively seeking feedback from all their stakeholders.  Based on that input, district administrators have made informed decisions on the district’s budget, school calendar, overall climate, as well as many other issues.

Through Dr. Morrison’s outstanding leadership, the Washoe County School District has seen tremendous gains in both graduation rates and student achievement.  It’s wonderful to see this recognition for such great accomplishments in the quality of education and communication in the second-largest school district in Nevada.

All of us at K12 Insight congratulate Dr. Morrison and the entire team at Washoe County School District.  Keep up the great work!

Read more about the announcement, and watch a video where Dr. Morrison shares some of the innovative strategies he has employed since joining WCSD in 2010.