The Struggle for Change in Our Schools

       This sign hung at the Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts this week during the annual MassCUE conference.  "MassCUE" stands for the Massachusetts Computer Using Educators.  The conference was also sponsored by the M.A.S.S. (that is, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents).  The sign begs the question, Why is it that schools (education) is not changing if everything around the schools are changing?  I think I know the answer...

       The sign reminds us that the world is changing.  Indeed it is.  The changes that have occurred in the world have been driven by market forces such as efficiencies in manufacturing.  They have been driven by technology such as computers and cell phones and the capacity of these technologies (and others) to accomplish tasks much faster and easier.  The sign says the workforce is changing.  One big factor is the lower demand for low-skill jobs.  Less workers are needed to do a job that took more workers a few decades ago.  This (again) is largely due to the creation of machines and equipment that have been built to do jobs faster and better than human workers ever could.


       The sign says that technology is changing.  Few would need any strong justification to argue this point.  Computer chips are constantly being made to be smaller and faster.  (Although this scenario may come to an end soon.)  Computers are smaller and more powerful.  And the applications of this great processing speed appear to be endless.  Finally, the sign suggests that students are changing.  Different clothes, different music, and (once again) technology available at every turn.  Of course, these "different" students are also living in this "different" world; so of course since they are living a different experience than their parents, it makes sense that students of today are different from students of 20 or 40 years ago.

       So why are we surrounded by change and yet we are stuck with relatively little change in our schools?  By "little change", I mean high school classes of about 30 students with one teacher doing most of the talking.  Course requirements nearly the same for all students, even though we have students with different needs and different abilities.  The school day has basically the same start and stop time as 50 years ago.  The school year is basically the same as 50 years ago.  (And not because of farming needs 100 years ago.)  I would argue that the changes to the world, the workforce, technology, and students occurred as a sort of evolution.  No one person or group of people orchestrated these changes.  They happened as a natural phenomenon of humans living on earth and trying to better their situation.  As a species, we are always looking for ways to improve our life and our surroundings.  So we develop better tables and better chairs and better cars and better watches and so on.  Each generation is a little better than the one before it for all of these things.  But a change in schools requires that we conscientiously do something.

       School change requires a community that wants the schools to change.  Someone has to propose the change (or changes).  Someone has to agree.  Then someone has to convince the school board.  And so on and so on.  In the end, while educators may see the need for change in our schools (and not all educators see this change), non-educators often don't see the need for this change.  The common expression is, "This is the way school was when I was a kid.  It was good enough for me, so it will be good enough for you."  The general public is weary of major changes.  Change is disruptive and unsettling.  It is uncomfortable.  People (as a group) don't generally want things to change.  They may accept changes that are forced upon them (such as a new cable company because the old one merged with the new one), but when given the choice it seems that most would vote against change.  This is why (in my opinion) schools are so slow to change.

       As an educator, it is frustrating because I sometimes wonder if we are preparing our students for anything more than higher-level coursework.  Are they learning the skills they need to succeed in the workforce of the 21st century?  Are they able to cope with the world that they will inherit?  Is a high GPA enough?  How do we help the public to embrace the sort of change that will benefit their children?

       Can we allow our schools to change?

Creating a Better High School - Part 2

       This is the second in a three-part series that will look at the structures in place in our current high schools that don't make sense or are not needed anymore.  I want to think about the best way that students learn and create a high school that will serve these learners.  I also want to think about the true purpose of high schools in our time.  My goal isn't to imagine a "High School of the Future", but instead to consider what can realistically be done today.  As always, I encourage my readers to add their thoughts and ideas.  Together we can create the high school that our students want and need today.

Create a Better High School

Part 1 - Current school structures that aren't necessary anymore.

Part 2 - How students learn and how schools can react to these learners.

Part 3 - The purpose of high school

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How students learn and how schools can react to these learners

        When I think about creating a new high school, I'm really thinking about all of the traditional structures of our current high schools that don't respond to the way students learn.  The typical high school class still consists of a teacher in the front of the room who does most of the talking while students sit in rows facing the front of the room and take notes.  Students generally only talk to answer a question; to which the teacher confirms or denies its correctness.  This sort of learning (generally) falls in the "Lecture" category which is the least effective strategy for helping students to learn.

       The organization Jobs for the Future has recently published a series of papers titled Students at the Center.  In this series, they list four principles of student-centered learning.  These are:

• Learning is personalized
• Learning is competency based
• Learning takes place anytime, anywhere
• Students exert ownership over their learning

These four principals lead to deeper learning which is the sort of learning that gets students exited about what they are learning and encourages retention of their learning.  Deeper learning prepares students for both college and careers because it teaches them how to solve problems, how to work with other people, and how to think critically.

       The "changes" needed in our current high schools are changes that respond to these four principles and respond to the best ways that students learn.  This will require changes for teachers as well as changes in the expectations for schools from our parents.  Part of the struggle of changing high schools is that every adult has had the same basic schooling experience.  We are comfortable with it.  Teachers teach the way they were taught--they didn't devise these structures, they just mimic from their high school teachers and the only changes are additions of what they thought their teachers should have done and subtractions of what they thought their teachers did wrong.

       We need our high schools to be the places in which students are still learning to write and read and do math and understand history and make and appreciate art and learn about physical fitness.  But all of this has to be done in a way that encourages learning as opposed to encouraging "getting-a-good-grade" and encouraging competition with other students.  Students need to actually solve problems, to work with each other, to talk and learn how to argue their point.  The college-bound students should be able to master the beginnings of Physics and Calculus; but should also be to experience the work of the field they aspire to enter.  They should be able to more than just what they are told to do.  They should be thinkers and reasoners and creators and doers.  The career-bound students should master the art of expressing themselves in written and oral forms; they (too) should experience the workplace before leaving high school.  They should know how to build on the basic skills of any job and seek ways to make it better.

       We want students to learn; we want them to learn how to learn; and we want them to learn in abundance.  Because learning doesn't stop when you receive your high school diploma.

The Science of Learning

       This is an exciting time to be a teacher.  The field of education, like medicine and energy and information technology, is growing in the knowledge domain.  We are constantly learning more about how children learn and the best ways to help them to learn.  Brain research and its connections to learning have been able to provide to our teachers simple strategies to help students to learn.  For instance, we now know that our student's brains grow and thrive when they are able to have good social connections with other students.  Therefore, we need to provide time for student-to-student discourse in the learning environments of our classrooms.  We know that the brain and the body are interwoven and are built to help each other.  That's why it is important for students to get up and out of their seats regularly during class time; and recess is an important part of learning and brain development.  Also, we know that fear and stress prevent students from doing their best in school because our brains are designed to err on the side of caution.  Fear shuts down our student's ability to explore and to try new things because their brains are more concerned with staying safe.

       In the past, teachers and relied on their own experiences as students themselves and later on their own teaching experience to help them to reach their students.  But this is never going to be good enough because we are all limited in our experiences to a particular school or a particular town or a particular age group of students.  The research findings and subsequent professional development about these findings help our teachers to learn about learning beyond what they see in their classrooms.  Initiatives such as Blended Learning, Universal Design for Learning, and Flipped Classrooms all stem from relatively recent research on how children learn best and how to incorporate these research findings into the classroom.

       Of course all of these exciting frontiers in education require (at least) some level of changing from the "known" image of the classroom to something different--and that can be scary for some people.  Present-day parents who sat in neat rows in every classroom and rarely spoke in class and worked on (the now-dreaded) worksheets all day long may be against anything different from what they experienced simply because "It worked for me."  That's why the research is so important.  It isn't some guy with and idea, it is actual science that is informing us of the most effective classroom strategies to help students to learn.  This is a good change for our students and a necessary change.

       This is an exciting time to be a teacher!

World-Class Education

       I'm not a competitive person.

       I'm one of those people who sees the value in the journey and believes that there is something to be learned from every situation.   And, "Who Cares" if I did better or worse than the next guy.

       As our public schools are taking their first steps to endeavor to teach our students at the same academic level with the highest performing countries in the world, we stand to learn much from our colleagues.  True learning is a complex process and enabling true learning via classroom instruction is an evolving process.  No single teacher can do it alone; we need the expertise that we can only gain from working together.

       This isn't going to happen if we are constantly concerned with gaining some sort of higher ranking than our neighboring school.  This can only be accomplished through hard work and constant dialogue with the teacher across the hall in-between classes; and during department and team meetings; and in the evenings via twitter chats and reading blogs and paging through journals and taking classes and...

       We are at a major turning point in public education in the United States.  We are making an honest attempt to raise standards and examine our teaching strategies.  We know that change is hard.  In fact I believe that the difficulty involved in this process of change is the piece that has prevented us from moving forward in the past and what may halt the process this time as well.

       The struggle to raise standards requires everyone to take an honest look their current abilities: teachers and students.  We can't be overly concerned about grades and we certainly can't be concerned about beating the next guy (or the next school) in some sort of artificial competition.  We will have a few years of teachers and students with the same abilities that are judged on different standards.  We are truly "raising the bar" and we have to expect some period of time before we are all able to clear that bar.

       It will happen, but it will take time and cooperation and hard work.  It isn't enough (anymore) for students to merely "do what they are told" in school.  They have to actually learn and use what they learn during the learning of future topics.  Teachers need to not only teach but also determine how well their students are learning--everyday.  Parents need to accept the results of standardized testing and encourage their children to ask questions and to spend more time reading and practicing and understanding.

       No one every became an olympic athlete without years of training.  That's what we are trying to do.  We want our students to compare with the best students in the world.  We want them to leave high school with multiple opportunities because they have the abilities to truly do whatever they want to do.  It's a marathon, not a sprint.

       So start stretching--we are in "training" mode.  And we need time to improve.

No More Worksheets!

       Here is a very simple test to determine the effectiveness of your child's mathematics teacher...

Question 1: Does you your child's mathematics teacher assign a lot of worksheets for homework and classwork?

If the answer is YES - Not a very effective teacher.
If the answer is NO - Likely to be a more effective teachers.



       This idea is a major shift in thinking for a lot of people--both for teachers and for non-teacher-parents alike.  Some would say, "How can you say worksheets are bad?"  Or, "I used worksheets when I was in school and I turned out fine."  And the internet is certainly full of sites with pre-made worksheets that are frequently downloaded and used by teachers.  So (I guess) the next argument is, "If so many teachers are still using worksheets, then why are they so bad?"  Here's why:

#1: We want students to understand the mathematics that they are learning.  Worksheets tend to encourage students to blindly follow procedures without knowing why they are doing what they are doing.  Students might get the answers correct, but if the problems were changed slightly they wouldn't know what to do because they never learned the "Why" of the procedures that they were using.

#2: If students know how to do something, then why do they have to do it 20 times?  It seems to me that if they can do it two or three times, that would be a sufficient amount of proof that they have learned the skill.  If a students does not know how to do something, then why are we forcing them to do something 20 times that they cannot do?  Have you ever completed a worksheet only to find that you made the same mistake on all 20 problems--and got everything wrong?

#3:  Worksheets are not engaging.  In Robert Marzano's book The Highly Engaged Classroom, we learn that students are more able to learn new concepts when they are engaged in the lesson.  He offers many strategies for increasing student engagement.  Worksheets tend to be boring and repetitive and very discouraging in terms of engaging students.

#4: We want students to communicate and collaborate with their peers during the learning process.  As students struggle with a new topic, it is valuable for them to know to ask questions and to try different approaches to solving a problem.  We call this Productive Struggle (also see here and here and here).  When students do worksheets, they are often working in isolation.  They are discouraged from talking at all with other students.  This creates a classroom in which students are expected to listen to the teacher lecturing and only to the teacher and then to learn the new content based on what they heard.  We know that this is not an effective method for learning (see The Learning Pyramid graphic).

       One reason that teachers like worksheets is that they are used to help control student discipline in the classroom.  Some teachers are not comfortable with students talking to each other and asking each other questions because they are concerned about losing control of their classes.  But we know that when students are engaged in an activity, they are focused on the activity and not distracted by anything else.  There is a benefit to allowing students to talk with each other.  And there are many strategies that can be used to do this in a productive and organized manner in the classroom.

     
       One of these strategies is the use of Math Tasks.  Math Tasks encourage critical thinking, student discussion, and questioning from students that lead to better understanding of mathematics concepts.  Many sources offer great Math Tasks for teachers to use.  Here are just a couple of them: Inside Mathematics and Mathematics Assessment Project.

       The goal of our public schools is learning.  We must use the best thinking we have to encourage thinking and learning among our students.  We don't want students to merely "complete" courses, we want them to learn, to understand, to retain knowledge, and to build upon their learned knowledge.

Learning, Smoking, and The Long Arc of Change

       When I think about the huge job of improving education outcomes among our students (especially our poor students) in America, I think about the amazing turn-around in behavior about smoking over my lifetime.

       It is nothing short of a modern-day miracle that smoking has declined so dramatically in the United States over the past 50 years.  In 1965, 42.4% of U.S. adults were smokers.  By 2003, that number was cut in half and in 2013 we were down to 17.8%.  And, of course, our population has risen quite a bit over this timeframe from 194 million people in 1965 to over 320 million people today.

       No one in the United States in 1965 would have ever believed that Americans would give up their love for smoking so dramatically.  Even with today's relatively low rates of smoking, nearly 70% of current smokers want to stop smoking.  It is nothing short of amazing the way this addictive behavior has changed in the United States in just a couple of generations.

       I believe that our public schools can look at this incredible event, this long arc of changed behavior, and that we can use it as a lesson for tackling the equally difficult task of improving the educational outcomes of our students.  We can examine the efforts that took place (and continue to take place) that convinced people that smoking is bad for you; and (perhaps) we can undertake similar efforts in our public schools.

       First of all, there was a national effort to inform the public of the dangers of smoking.  This began with the first surgeon general's report that provided proof that smoking was bad for your health.  Of course, there were lots of people of that didn't believe the contents of this report.  I'm sure there were people who pointed to relatives and friends who lived well into old age and smoked their whole life--and, therefore, refused to believe that smoking was bad for your health.  But more and more information came out from public and private sources about the dangerous health risks of smoking and eventually it became very hard for people to believe that smoking wouldn't harm their health.  As smokers died from lung cancer and other diseases, people began to link these deaths to their habit of smoking.  This gave people a personal connection to the ill effects of smoking and it convinced them to never smoke or to quit smoking.  As they grew up and had children of their own, this knowledge of the evils of smoking was passed on to the next generation.  And so, what started as a national effort from government sources, slowly became a combined effort of government and private resources that worked together to bring down the rates of smoking in America.


       I believe that a similar combined effort is underway in our public schools today.  We have a government that believes in the value of education and is dedicated in improving the education of our citizens.  We also have many private efforts underway that are striving to do the same.  We also have segments of our population that don't believe that education is important.  As with the smoking example, they point to friends and relatives that quit school in eighth grade and grew up perfectly fine.  But (as with the smoking example), we also have generations of parents that have regrets of not doing better and trying harder when they were in high school.  They look at their peers who went on to college or some sort of vocational training and now have higher-paying jobs.

       I believe that we can change the behavior of Americans toward the value of education--and all of the hard work that this entails--over the next generation.  I believe that we can see a country with higher high school graduation rates and higher college graduation rates.  And when this happens, we will reap the benefits of a more educated society.  We will see less crime, less people on welfare, less obesity, and a strong economy.  And I believe that this will happen within the lifetimes of our current high school students.

       We can do it.  We have done it in other areas of our society and we can do in education too.  We must do better and we will.

We Offer Opportunity

       We have all heard the expression, "Opportunity Knocks".  It conjures up images of something good coming your way.  It could be a new friend, a promising new relationship, a new job, or a chance to get some thing that you've always wanted.

       

       "Opportunity Knocks" also implies that this good thing is offered to you, but it is not thrust upon you.  You can take it or you can leave it.  As adults, we sometimes lament the opportunities that were offered to us that we did not accept.  We also (in hindsight) sometimes realize opportunities that we were offered and didn't recognize them as opportunities at the time.

       Our public schools offer opportunity to our students.  The opportunity to learn, to grow, to be responsible citizens, to be successful...  The process of educating children is long; it is divided into different school levels and different subjects.  It is offered by different people at different times.  It probably doesn't look like an opportunity some of the time.  But it is.

       We owe it to our students to help them to see the opportunity that is being offered to them.  We don't want them to have regrets of denying this opportunity later in their life.  We are the adults, we have the wisdom of years; the long view.  We have the moral authority to understand (as best as we can) how students think and how they learn.  We need to know how we can talk with them to make them understand the opportunity that is being offered to them today and everyday that they are in school.

       Public schools have many responsibilities to our students and to our society.  Teaching is only part of our job.  Ensuring that the learning is taking place is the (much more) important part of the job.

       Opportunities that come from our public schools should not be in disguise.  They should be made apparent and obvious to all of our students.  We want them to take advantage of these educational opportunities and we want them to grow and improve because of these opportunities.

     

Digital Learning

       This is an exciting time to be in education!

       Educators today grew up before the computer age (or as the computer age was beginning) and we  are witnessing the transformation to the digital learning environment in our schools.  We will forever be able to say, "We were there when...

• ...when our schools first got wireless internet
• ...when our students were allowed to use digital devices for the first time
• ...when we stopped using paper textbooks
• ...when we first used "blended" resources and then went totally online
• ...when we first allowed students to use cell phone as their "device" in school

       As with most major transitions, we are struggling with developing new rules and preparing for new unknowns.  Some of us are kicking and screaming our way to this new world of education; as other's of us can't run fast enough away from the past.

       And (I think) the public is struggling with what they expect from us (the public schools) as well.  Parents want their children to be prepared for the world that they will inherit.  But, at the same time, many parents are more comfortable with the old paper textbook coming home every night; "ten math problems"; "read a section from the Social Studies textbook and answer the questions at the end of the section."  They'll say, "That's what I did when I was in school...and I turned out just fine."  While other parents are calling their child's principal and asking what device is permissible under BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)--so they can get it for their child for Christmas or for their birthday.

       Yes, this is an exciting time to be in education.  Our schools are getting Chromebooks for students to use.  I met with a group of secondary mathematics teachers yesterday to talk about the new Techbook from Discovery Education.  Teachers use their school websites to communicate with parents.  And Google Apps For Education (GAFE) is all we ever talk about.

       The transition is happening now.  It's exciting!  It's great!  It's the right thing to do for our students.  It is the way our students live--now.  And it is the way they should be learning--now.

Common Standards

     Well, I've held out this long.  I've tried to stay away from politics in this blog.  But I've talked about grades and grading; I've talked about national testing; and I've actually talked about Common Core before.  However, this time I want to share my thoughts about Common Core and address some of the counter-arguments that (in my opinion) are not sufficient to justify a school district or a state to refuse to use them.

      I support the use of the Common Core standards for English/Language Arts and for Mathematics.  I also support the common standards for Science that are coming to our public schools.  I support these standards because they were created by experts; they were vetted by experts; and they give all 50 million U.S. students a fair and equitable education.  We all know that education throughout the U.S. is not uniform because individual state standards vary widely.  Common Core sets a level playing field for all.  Additionally, these common standards are consistent with those from countries that produce students with the highest academic abilities.  We all love competition and we all love to win; so I would think that we would all want our students to be able to fairly compete with anyone in the world for 21st century jobs.  Common standards allow us to do this.

     So here are some bad reasons for turning away from common educational standards:

1) I'm a Republican and Common Core is a Democrat thing--so I'm against it.

     We live in a partisan country.  Some people are strongly Republican and some are strongly Democrat.  If a cause aligns to a particular political party, then the loyal will support it no matter the cause and no matter the details.  But Common Core is not a Democrat thing and it is not a Republican thing.  It came from the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers.  Just as No Child Left Behind was not a Republican thing (Edward Kennedy co-wrote NCLB), Common Core is not a Democrat thing.

2) Common Core is too hard.

     Compared to the academic standards in some states, Common Core will appear to be more rigorous, less rigorous, or about the same.  Since different states had different standards in the past, this comparison will look different to people in different parts of the country.  But the goal of school is to teach and prepare students for the world that they will inherit.  The goal is not for students to get good grades.  We want our students to be successful, but too many of our students have been very successful in high school only to fail in college.  That is a national shame on our nation.  Common Core is trying to prepare students for both higher education and for the word of work.  If it is hard, then students are being well prepared for their future.  Isn't that something we all want?

3) It was implemented too fast.

     States were given four years between state adoption of the Common Core standards and the actual implementation of the Common Core standards.  I think that a lot of people feel that the Common Core came all of sudden--one year we didn't have it, and the next year we did.  There was a lot of planning behind the scenes that the general public may not have seen.  This is why it seems to be so sudden to some.  If there were ten years between adoption and implementation, some people would feel the same way.  Why should we wait to give our students a world-class education?  And why give up on it just because it was fast?

     Also, public education is often accused of moving too slow.  Fifty million students and three million teachers comprise a very large group; and it is often slow for this group to change.  If we drag out the change and take our time, it might never happen.  We have to "rip off the band-aid".  Now is the time

4) (This bad reason hasn't occurred yet, but it will towards the end of this school year.)  See, everyone did poorly on the test.

     This year, for the first time, the PARCC and Smarter Balanced tests will be administered to students in grades 3 to high school.  In all likelihood, overall student scores will be low
compared to their class grades in math and English/Language Arts; or compared to past standardized test grades.  And there will be all sorts of renewed calls to cancel Common Core.

     In fact, whenever a new standardized test is administered, scores are often low at first and then increase over time.  Remember, the content of the courses are more difficult, so naturally the tests will be more difficult and some students won't be able to rise to that challenge as well as other students.  Once again, the goal of school is to teach and help students to be prepared for their future.  We are not helping students by giving them easy tests and then telling their parents that they are smart and then having these same students struggle after high school.  Colleges will recognize these new tests that same way they recognize the SAT and ACT tests.  They have to be the sort of tests that really prepare our students for college.

     We have a real chance to improve the education of millions.  And it could happen to this current generation of students.  We can say that we were there when U.S. public schools took a bold new step toward becoming the new standard in world-class education.  This is education's "moon shot".  Let's make a real difference; let's give our kids the best!

Change What You Do (or else improvement will never happen)

     It seems we are constantly hearing and reading statistics that say American students are not achieving very well.  We rank low in reading and mathematics compared to other industrialized countries.  A quarter of our children never graduate from high school and the graduation numbers are even worse in college.  Our poor children and learning disabled children and minority children have lower rates of achievement than our white and economically advantaged children.

     All of this is true.  And we don't like it; and we want it to change.  We want all students to be successful; we want all students to graduate from high school; we want all students to be grow to be capable, responsible adults.  But this is a difficult problem--as is evidenced from the years and years of data with very little improvement on these fronts.

     Something has to change.  We cannot keep teaching the same way we have always taught and expect different results.  Teachers give their best everyday.  It isn't a matter of "not trying" or "not doing our best".  We have to do things differently.

     If I knew the solution(s) to this problem, I would tell you.  The best I can do is offer my ideas:

     (1)  We need to instruct students in a way that they respond to; we need to know what they "get" and what they don't get--so we can help them.
     (2)  We need to use more technology in a more effective way.
     (3)  We need to be more concerned about learning and less concerned about grades.
     (4)  We need to use valuable classtime for addressing student questions and much, much less classtime forcing students to complete worksheets.  (If they already know how to do the work, why force them to show us again and again and again.  If they don't know how to do the work, why force them to do ten problems that they can't do.)
     (5)  We need to increase student engagement every minute of every class.  There should be less teacher-talk and more student-talk.

     What are your five best ideas for changing teaching?  If you could do anything in your classroom to help students to learn better, what would you do?  We have to do something different if we want different (and better) results.

Common Core and Our Desire to Give the Best to Our Students

     During my 25 years in education, I've seen ideas come and go; I've seen programs come and go; and I've seen movements come and go.  I used to think that the education system was constantly dreaming up ideas that were initiated with great fanfare and then were let go as failures.  But I've come to realize that education is not a static thing; certainly National Education is not a static thing.

     A lot of thought and research and debate goes into new initiatives and I think that it is fair to say that educators are constantly thinking about students and the best way to help students.  Education is also constrained by limited funds and (sometimes) limited research.  Also, big problems that require big solutions are often very complicated.  But it is not an excuse to "do nothing" just because the task at hand is difficult.

  After the landmark report "A Nation at Risk" came out in 1983, our education system did their best to respond to the issues that were raised in this report.  Some problems have been addressed and some remain.

     We have to remember that time does not stand still.  The world is changing and that means that our schools have to change also.  The form of that change can be numerous and diverse; but change it must.

     I am living and working through the transition to the Common Core standards.  Once again, this is a big change that is responding to a big problem in a big way.  Change can be scary at times, but this change is very, very necessary.  I am confident that I will look back at this second decade of the century and say that I was part of the beginning of something big.  And I am proud to be involved in this change.

     This isn't the end of change.  Programs and ideas will continue to come and go.  Each one will do its part to help our students and to improve on the last change that occurred.  I've come to believe that change is good and it should be embraced.