Transformative Principal

Welcome to Transformative Principle, where I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

I'm your host, Jethro Jones.

You can follow me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.

Okay.

Welcome to Transformative Principal.

I am your host, Jethro Jones.

You can find me on all the social networks at Jethro Jones.

And Transformative Principal is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network.

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I'm excited today to be joined by KC Knutson, who is the MTSS Coordinator at the Northwest Educational Service District.

Prior to this, he was a senior educational consultant where he focused on facilitating the establishment of inclusive classroom schools and districts to effectively cater to the diverse needs of all students.

He is a big fan of UDL and MTSS frameworks, and he has extensive experience in providing professional learning, coaching and technical assistance, specifically aimed at supporting the implementation of inclusive practices using UDL and MTSS.

His background in educational leadership includes significant roles, such as the Director of Teaching and learning, assistant superintendent, executive director, principal, assistant principal, and teacher Casey.

Welcome to Transformative Principal.

Great to have you here.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's my pleasure.

Glad to be here.

Well, we, uh, got connected because a couple weeks ago I had Patrick Re on the program and he quoted you, and after he quoted you, I was like, I gotta talk to this guy.

So the quote that he said was that 2% of our teachers need evaluation and 98% of our teachers need coaching.

And that just spoke to my heart, went right as a bolt of lightning to my heart and I That was right on.

So let's start by having you describe the difference between coaching and evaluation and what that means in this context of this quote.

Yeah, well, um.

Patrick's a great guy.

He's doing some amazing work specifically around coaching, so I'm, uh, not surprised that that didn't, that that did land with him.

The, um, the statistics are crazy.

Um, a across the state mo most recently, um, I was doing some work with the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network out in Pennsylvania, we got into this conversation about, um, the, the shifting role of the.

Principle in the necessary shifting role.

And we looked specifically at the Pennsylvania data it hits right at about 98% rated proficient.

Right?

So your um.

You've got all kinds of evidence.

And if you look state to state, it's somewhere between 95 and like 98% of educators that are being rated proficient.

so what that tells me is there really are very few educators that need to be evaluated, right?

So when, uh, when I'm working with principals.

Um, I like to say grow versus grade, grow versus grade, and that 98% of your staff need and want to grow and get better the service of their, uh, kids.

So the, that.

If, if we're gonna go with the grow versus grade mentality, then that does mean let, let's talk coaching, right?

And let's really start to, uh, ramp up our capacity to coach the, um, there is such little research that says we should be evaluating.

uh, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but the Gates Foundation spent $212 million.

Studying this,

It is crazy.

yeah.

And here's what they found, right?

Teacher evaluations do not lead to improved student achievement.

evaluations do not lead to improved teacher effectiveness and teacher evaluations do not improve the retention rate of effective teachers.

So talk about a lose, lose, lose, and we continue to invest so much, uh, time and effort.

Um, I, so I went down this rabbit hole.

Okay.

Let me ask you, let me ask you a question there, because if there's so much evidence that these don't do the things we want 'em to, why are we still doing 'em?

What's your hot take on that?

Well, you know, my hot take is people are actually trying to improve that, that practice and uh, um, I find that policymakers.

Do tend to, uh, value accountability in and maybe hyper value accountability.

Mm-hmm.

in the state of Washington, the, um, when we look at what we're trying to do with the evaluations, we've got these three really research-based professional
practice frameworks we're trying to put a small percentage of our staff on comprehensive evaluation and a large percentage of our staff on targeted.

Evaluation.

if you dig into the language behind targeted evaluation, it's coaching, it's agreeing on something within your professional practice that you wanna get better at.

And it is, it's zero risk

Mm-hmm.

you default to your comprehensive evaluation rating.

So even if you stink it up that year while you're trying to, you know, innovate and take this, this risk with the support of your.

Principle, you're still gonna be rated proficient.

Mm-hmm.

I think we're trying to get better at it in some places and, and I would, you know, give props to the state.

and I, we're still not leveraging that targeted evaluation to be coaching the way that we need to be coaching.

Yeah.

could be a capacity issue with principles.

Yeah.

So I, I agree with those, those pieces as well.

And, um, having been a principal prior to, uh, now in, uh, Alaska and Utah had a different perspective on what they were trying to do.

And there's a lot of, uh, similar efforts being made in that direction.

But the reality is.

Is that you, I think you said it correctly that, um, policymakers hyper value, uh, evaluation and, uh, Nick Fisher used this phrase.

He said the, this is the same reason why we do standardized testing.

It is legislatively convenient.

To be able to say, here's your particular score or whatever.

And even though everybody knows that it's baloney and that it doesn't really give what we're trying, like what we're really trying to do in teacher evaluation or student achievement, we still do it because it's legislatively convenient to do that.

And, and I think that teachers unions and uh, and they have a vested interest in this as well.

And, and they want to be able to say like, here's this process you have to go through to discipline or get rid of a teacher, and they want that to be a comprehensive.

A powerful thing that that is onerous on the administrators who are trying to get rid of teachers.

Now that happens to so few, and to be honest, in my experience as a principal, it's actually easier to get rid of a teacher for their own bad actions than it is to evaluate them out, is what I would call it.

Um, and so the, the.

It's like everybody understands this is a bad idea and yet it's the best thing that we've got right now and and I appreciate efforts like Washington's
to make it focused on that targeted evaluation rather than the comprehensive and to not punish people and to make it risk free to do some sort of growth.

But I think you're absolutely right about the idea of.

Uh, principals not having the capacity to know how to coach their own teachers.

And that's something that I work on with all, all the principals that I work with in my mastermind of how do you help teachers through these, uh, things that they're struggling with, and how do you help them get better?

That, and that's critical work.

Mm.

when I think about like, um.

How do we induct new administrators into our school systems?

And then how do we support them they're there?

I don't think we do a good job of

Mm-hmm.

we teach, um, our, our principals how to have those coaching conversations.

And you know, one of the places where we kind of fall down too is, um.

We don't spend a lot of time talking about what quality instruction looks

Mm-hmm.

and the, this might be another thing that's legislatively convenient and I love that term

Yeah.

I wish it wasn't so darn applicable.

I know, feel free to use it as much as you want.

Okay.

I will, um, I think about, um.

The this, uh, the term would be precision over profusion, right?

so, uh, when, when we see what happens legislatively, every time we're talking about the, the calendar and the school day, we're trying to add more seat time.

And more seat time.

And more seat time.

that's profusion, right?

Whereas what we need to be valuing is this precision of craft and what do we need our educators to be really good at?

And it turns out they don't have to be good at a whole bunch of stuff.

There are a few things that show up in the research over and over and over again.

So I think a place where we can get more powerful and, and help our.

Principles to be the Transformative leaders that they can be is, let's talk about that precision.

help you have deep understanding of what quality instruction looks like so that you can help coach that and toward that with your staff.

Like that's, that's a place where we need to, you know, shift

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well there's, there's this idea.

Of knowing what high quality instruction looks like.

And so in, in one district that I worked in, we created high yielding practices for educators, a hype certification that basically said, here are the things that you should be doing as a teacher to be effective.

And, and those are, those were very helpful because it made it very clear from our perspective.

This is what you need to be doing and, and if you're doing these things, then good results are gonna come.

You don't have to be perfect in everything, but if you do these things as best you can, that's gonna be better than you just, you know, trying to teach however.

You may have been taught to teach in whatever program and how you like, survive the day to day, which is a very real thing of what am I gonna do with these kids today and how am I gonna make it meaningful?

And, and having principals trained in that also is exceptionally valuable.

And one little caveat that I would add.

Is that instruction is different than student learning.

And if the focus is on instruction, then that's a little bit different than when the focus is on what students are actually learning, which is, you know, a whole other conversation.

But we're not here to talk about that one.

But people who listen know that I have that little burr in my saddle, so I gotta, gotta make sure I get that in.

Well, okay, let's talk a little bit about that Burr.

Okay.

of all, I have to say, uh, I bet you were a pretty darn good principal

Thank you.

that, uh, I mean, what you're talking about there, what you were establishing was what Anthony Ham calls the instructional floor.

Mm-hmm.

minimum quality

Exactly.

that we can expect to see from class, to class to class?

And, um, so the, the bur in your.

Saddle.

There is a great bird to have.

I'm a fan of coaching.

I think when you hold it up to anything else.

It's the thing that changes practice, it's job embedded.

It's happening in the space where the materials are within the context with your kids.

And we know that, uh, quality coaching programs have a 0.49 effect size, which is moving into that medium to large effect size.

It's on the other side of the hinge point for Hadie, right?

And that 0.49 effect size on instructional practice.

A 0.8 effect size in student outcomes.

So The implications there are that, um, we've gotta be pretty darn good at our craft in order to get to the student learning part of it.

And then when we're thinking about what our precision of practice, it's leaning into those things that actually have impact on learning.

So if we don't continue to center, like what's the impact?

Like what's, what's the student understanding and learning and what are they figuring out how to.

How to do

we can, we can on a lot of practice

Exactly.

For me, that's part of where UDL comes

Mm-hmm.

So the, um, we talk a lot about evidence-based practice and, and you better be grounding your instructional floor in evidence-based practice.

But then that evidence-based practice, in order for it to be high yield, has to be learner informed and universally designed.

'cause I can have an evidence-based practice like, um.

Let's say student discourse, right?

And opportunities for students to respond.

But if I'm not looking at my kids and thinking about what do they need in order to access that evidence-based practice, do they need pre-discussion opportunity?

Do they need sentence stems?

Do they need discussion protocols?

Because they need supports.

Their home language is different than the the language of instruction.

That's where we've gotta be learner informed.

That's the only way that evidence base.

It goes to high yield in our context and classroom, so keep that, burn your saddle and

Yeah,

fight.

that's right.

And, and so I, I love that approach of how you describe that because it, the, the best practices in the world can still fail.

And if, if it works for 95% of the students, the 5% of the students are still failures in that regard.

And, and for me.

That's not acceptable.

And you know, the, the great thing about the No Child Left Behind Act was that it was no child left behind.

Unfortunately, it didn't live up to its promise in the name, but that is truly the reality.

We cannot be leaving kids behind and letting them squalor over here in this, in this lack of learning because of whatever situations are.

Preventing them from learning, sometimes teacher action, sometimes teacher inaction, sometimes school policies.

And we need to take all those things into consideration because the.

My, my approach is that school needs to be about learning, not about instruction.

And that's one of those core beliefs that I have that I'm not gonna be able to be convinced that it's really about instruction, because it really should be about learning.

But the instruction needs to be an important part of that.

But to me, I always put learning.

Over instruction as our priorities, but that doesn't mean that I think we shouldn't have good instructional practices.

You know what I mean?

Does that make sense, Casey?

It, it totally makes sense to me.

And I have, in my head, I have these three kind of drivers that, that I call, call the learner objectives.

Right?

for our system, what do we want our system to do?

We want our system to produce kids that know how to be seen and heard in the world.

We, we want it to produce kids that know how to function in the world, and we want it to produce kids that.

Thrive in the world, right?

So then that means in our schools and classrooms, we gotta create contexts where kids are seen and heard and they practice how to be seen and heard where kids can function in the classroom and where they can thrive in the classroom.

And so to me that is, that's being learner and learning centered.

Then we think about what are the practices that help kids to be seen and heard, to help all kids, some, to be able to function and all kids to, to be able to thrive.

That, I mean, that's our logic model.

If we're not doing it in the context of our, our schools and classrooms, why would we think that all of our kids are gonna be able to do this in the broader community?

And we keep leaving a whole bunch of kids out of that equation.

Yes, a absolutely, and and that's something that I've been, you know, hammering again and again and again over the years.

And, um, I. And what's so cool is we didn't know each other before we got on the call today, and yet, uh, I can see how we are very much aligned in these things and, and the need for bringing all of our, all of our kids forward.

So let's, let's talk a little bit about what the role of the principal is.

In all of this, how, how does a principal who's got these somewhat Orwellian or just terrible evaluation standards hanging over their heads, how do they emphasize this idea of coaching instead of evaluation?

What would be your advice to someone who.

Who still has to do these things besides just not doing them, which, you know, we could talk for a while about how, how to do that, but that was, that was my approach in a lot of situations that I just didn't do the evaluation as they wanted me to do it because I knew that it wasn't necessary, but.

A lot of people are scared of doing that, so that's not the solution.

But if you guys are listening and you wanna chat with me more about that, just reach out and I'll tell you the secrets to doing that.

But, but how do, how do, what advice would you give a principal in this situation?

Got these evaluations?

How do I manage it?

Okay, let me start a little bit bigger than that and just

Oh, okay.

That the principle is principle.

Yes.

The principal, PAL is principal, PLE,

Yeah.

and the, I think the research is really clear about that, and I'd kind of like to dig into Linda Darling Hammond's work around this idea that schools change life trajectories.

So, um, individual pockets of isolated excellence do not life trajectories.

Right?

It's a, it's, uh, uh.

It's everybody, right?

It's the, it's the, uh, it's the collective commitment.

And when we, you know, when we follow that effect size and we look at what collective, uh, efficacy does for student outcomes, that's where we start to really work magic.

So the principle is critical in creating a, a community, right?

Equity requires community.

So what is the, the role that, that the principle is?

Playing in that we, here's the thing, I, I like to think of two visual models.

One of them is the wagon wheel that puts the principal in the center of the wheel he goes out each of the spokes or she goes out each of the spokes and works with each of the individual teachers providing feedback, trying to help, you know, improve practice.

other model is the, the neurologic.

the, the web of the brain,

Mm-hmm.

right?

And in schools that de privatize practice and take the principle out of the center of that wagon wheel and get people talking about each other's practice, get people into each other's classrooms, each other in meeting those expectations are the instructional floor.

That's where the magic is.

So now you're trying to say, okay, I don't want to be the wagon wheel, because non-negotiables and external accountability are something completely different than collective commitments and internal accountability.

and external accountability don't get you to collective efficacy ever.

And yet here we have this evaluation system that is wagon wheel,

Mm-hmm.

right?

So you have to figure out how to orient yourself in.

You're, you're one part of this de privatizing practice, and so when you're going in that you have to outta the gate, change the nature of the conversation with your teachers say, this is a coaching conversation,

Mm-hmm.

This is figuring out how you wanna get better.

one person in your life, in this school community that can help with that conversation.

I can be a connector.

So if we're, know, if we're, I've gotta, I have to be in here, here two times a year.

Right?

But let's figure out who you want to have in here beyond that, or do you need me more than that?

Because we're creating a relationship that actually is, is one that's, you know, based on radical candor and, and helping you to improve versus Gotcha.

Mm-hmm.

So I think you have to be transparent outta the gate and say, there is no gotcha here.

This is, you know, I'm one person in your life that can help to, to coach the, if you, um, if you're sitting in that principal chair and you've never
received any professional learning, professional development around what it means to coach and what the different stances are, I think that's critical.

then thinking about like the language that we use is so important.

How we figure out how to sit shoulder to shoulder with our teachers and have a third thing in the room.

That that's the thing that we talk about.

Um, tho those are some of that skillset that we assume that you have just because you got ES escalated to that chair that that's part of the work.

Right.

Yeah, and, and I think an essential part of the work and helping, I, I really like that idea of the wagon wheel versus the node of a, of a network that is much more powerful for my problem with the term of the, uh, instructional leader in the school is that it assumes that.

Uh, the title assumes that this person is the be all and end all, and that's just not the case.

And I've, I've learned so much more about instruction since leaving the classroom and going into administration.

Guess why?

Because I've seen so many different people teach, you know, and that's not rocket science, but being it like, I love the idea of de privatizing.

Um, the instructional practices because it's not like go in your room and close the door and nobody knows what goes on in there, and these magical children come out like that's not helpful to anybody and certainly not the kids.

If they have one great teacher who hoards all the information about how to be excellent, that's not helpful to anybody.

But if everybody.

Says, Hey, here are the things that are working and here's what we're doing.

That's working well, and here are the non-instructional practices, but the community building, the relationship building, the, uh, what I call organic skills that you develop, uh, which people typically call soft skills.

These are the organic skills that we are developing in the classroom.

Those things go so far to help improve everybody and raise everybody to a higher level.

And that's, that's how it has to be in order for us to really make those schools, uh, a place that does change life trajectories.

I,

I, I a hundred percent with you.

And, and the, I mean, we could talk a lot about the research that you just nailed

yeah.

right there, but the, the

But I try to make this approachable so that normal people who aren't researchers can say, yes, this, we can do this and it can work.

But, um, but you're right, this, the stuff that I'm saying isn't just like, Hey, I just pulled this outta thin air.

This is stuff that actually does work and is valuable.

Yeah, for sure.

The, I mean, when we, when we drill down into idea that precision over profusion, we're gonna name those few things that you know, we, we've, we've worked backwards from what our kids need and our student population.

We're naming those things.

Then to get to collective commitment on that, to have goal consensus, The role of the leader, really, they describe it as supportive leadership in the service of empowered teachers.

And so you're supportive enough to empower the teachers to do this work together?

Right.

And then, um, the, the teachers work together to build this cohesive knowledge set and skillset that they're recognizing in their community is important.

Turns out that the.

Other leg of that stool, that three-legged stool is embedded reflective opportunities to talk about your practice, which includes

Yep.

Yeah.

So the bringing us kind of back full circle, if, if, if you're a part of that process, because you have to be as an evaluator, change your orientation for 98% of your staff.

Understand it as an opportunity for reflective, embedded, you know, practice conversations.

That's, it's huge.

Yeah.

And if, if you are actually in your teacher's classrooms and are aware of what's going on, you can very comfortably do that and still meet the requirements of the evaluation and, you know, that, that is so key.

Um, the last question that I ask is.

It we've talked about a lot.

So what is one thing that a principal can do this week, an action item to be a Transformative leader like you, Casey.

Well, I think the,

the, the, uh, the big thing right here is getting to de privatization in our school.

And, uh, I, I, I think getting out of that wagon wheel, and one of the ways that you do that is, is you think about the, the teams, right?

Who are the teams of people that are doing the work in your school and the sit down for 30 minute and do a teams audit.

When do I have people meeting together in the service of student learning

Is it really happening?

The, of the things that I see that scares the cred outta me is when there isn't a, a school leadership team that is capturing the collective wisdom of the school community and processing that with the principal.

I'll see, I'll see these principals that are trying to operate as a lone wolf in, in schools, and it's, it's just too complex a craft for that.

So do, do a. Teams audit.

I know that may sound a little bit kind of off track from, you know, what we've been talking about this whole time, but, um, that's because, because community creates equity, right?

And so you've gotta be thinking about that and how, how functional are those, are those teams and do they know what their purpose is, what problem they're trying to solve?

Yeah, I, I think that is perfectly in line with what we're talking about is you have to.

Uh, you have to take time to work on your school, not just in your school.

And this is one of those things that you need to do, is you need to say, when are teachers required and supposed to be working in a team?

And what are they doing during that time and is that an effective use of their time?

And, uh.

Uh, heaven forbid I say anything bad about PLCs, but if your PLCs are not producing the kind of results that they should be, then you better do something to
change it because that is powerful, powerful time that can be used in a much more effective way if it's not getting you the results that you're looking for.

And you just have to be aware that, that, that those structures may need to change, and you have to have the courage to walk in and change them if they're not providing what they need to.

Yeah.

I mean those need to be small group coaching conversations with them by colleagues

Yeah, totally.

yeah, that run parallel with the the coaching conversations that you're now gonna have instead of.

Evaluation conversations.

right.

Yeah.

start layering those parallel practices and opportunities for educators to work with each other to get better.

It's, yeah.

Yeah, if, if your PLC meetings are just people looking at data, you're missing the boat and it, it needs to be more than that.

And I love how you said it, that it needs to be a. A, a coaching conversation with those teachers that, that that is what it's about.

And yeah, um, I think we can have a whole nother conversation about that.

In fact, I need to see if that's my next book is How to Make Your PLCs Put The Coaching Back in PLCs, professional Learning Coaching Communities.

There we go.

it.

All right.

We'll see how this goes.

Casey, thank you so much for being a part of Transformative Principle today.

This was awesome.

Thank you.

My pleasure.