Sustaining Great Progressive Schools: Leadership, Courage, and Fulfilling Democratic Purpose

Presenter: Carl Glickman, Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos

This session is presented in separate parts. Use the buttons at the end of the transcription to navigate between each part.

Part One

DON ERNST: My name is Don Ernst. I am Director of Government Relations at the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. It is my pleasure to introduce our speaker this afternoon.

Carl D. Glickman holds the Roy and Joann Cole Mitte Endowed Chair in School Improvement at Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, in the shadows of Lyndon Johnson, where he is involved in a unique interdisciplinary Ph.D. program for public-spirited community and school leaders. Furthermore, he remains advisor to the League of Professional Schools, a nationally validated network of K through 12 schools, devoted to democratic learning of all students.

Carl serves in leadership roles in university, State and national commissions to improve schools, teacher education and academic programs. He recently served on the boards of Kids Voting U.S.A. and, along with Executive Director of ASCD, Gene Carter, served on the National Commission for Service Learning, shared by former Senator John Glenn. And he currently serves on the new Commission on Education and Public Purpose, chaired by past presidential candidate and Congresswoman, Patricia Schroeder, and sponsored by the Civil Society Institute.

Carl began his education career in 1968 as a Teacher Core intern in the rural South. Since then, he has been a principal of award-winning schools, and he has held faculty appointments in the departments of curriculum and supervision, educational leadership and foundations of education. And in 1997, he was awarded the highest faculty career award at the University of Georgia for bringing stature and distinction to the mission of the University. In 1999, students honored him as the faculty member who had contributed most to their lives inside and outside the classroom.

The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development published his last book, Leadership for Learning in 2002. And this past month, Jossey-Bass Publishers released his newest book which, by the way, I think has one of the most beautiful covers that I have ever seen — and of course, one cannot always tell a book by its cover — but Holding Sacred Ground: Leadership, Courage, and Endurance in Our Schools, that's the name of the book. Holding Sacred Ground already has been acclaimed as one of the most important writings in education today and that no informed citizen, no informed citizen, can afford to ignore this book.

Carl works with schools and communities throughout the United States, Canada, the Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa. He and his spouse, Sarah, a former middle school teacher and currently a multi-school volunteer, split their year between Athens, Georgia, and San Marcos, Texas. And they spend summers with their widely dispersed family and grandchildren in a small fishing camp in St. Albans Bay, Vermont.

Carl is a good friend of mine, a good friend of ASCD’s, and he has been known to provide good impersonations of John Kennedy, as you will see in a moment. I almost feel as if I should be nominating somebody here rather than introducing.

Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Carl Glickman.

[Applause]

CARL GLICKMAN: Thank you very much.

I am looking out at this group and I noticed that most people are seated on the right. I was trying to think whether or not that is a political statement or it is because the doors on the way out are towards the right.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: To us, it's the left.

DR. GLICKMAN: Okay, right.

Well, I want to thank you all for coming out at this time. There are two kind of brief comments or, actually, two and a half, because I want to thank Don for his introduction. We have been close friends over a lot of years and been involved in a lot of issues in education. We did mention in the introduction that my spouse and partner and best buddy, Sarah, is here in the room. The reason I wanted to tell you that is you do not where she is, so be careful what you say about the speaker because she may be seated next to you.

[Laughter]

CARL GLICKMAN: The second comment I want to make is about badges. I notice, as one gets older, the importance of name tags and badges increases over time. But I also notice as I get older I forget sometimes that I still have my name badge on — when you go out in the community or you get in the airplane or you go to your general store or whatever. So, it is very nice to see you all here. It is very nice to see you with your badges. When we do finish up, you have another session perhaps, but travel well and safely.

Today's talk is really based in part on an article that just appeared in Ed Leadership this past month, which was derived from a set of writings that I did in the book, Holding Sacred Ground. It is a topic that I think is dear to our hearts. I have it broken up into different sections, with some guiding questions. The reason I am telling you this at the very beginning is if one of the questions is not particularly interesting, then hopefully we will follow with another question that might be more interesting.

The questions in this sequence, in looking and examining at what I call the great progressive American schools in the United States, which I spent the last two years taking a look at, raises certain questions about what is an American education for students in the broadest sense. How do schools sustain high quality education with public purpose for students across generations, across generations of people retiring, moving in, moving out, political swings, economic swings?

What does instructional leadership look like in schools that promote ongoing improvement of classroom teaching and learning? How do progressive schools respond to State and Federal high-stakes testing and accountability? What are the traditions, symbols and ceremonies that are found in these schools? And, finally, what is the word which defines a great American school?

So, let me try to give a little bit of explanation as you think of your own responses. I may check with you at the end to see how you have responded to these questions. But the first one, What is an American education for students? is a pivotal one, particularly at this point in time in the United States. Democracy is the belief that citizens have the capacity to educate and govern themselves in ways profoundly better than what a king, an oligarch or tyrant could do for them. It is the belief that participation is the best way to both educate and live.

David Matthews, former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, has questioned whether we have lost the public in public education. He says that the failure of American education is not in the individual accomplishments of students, but, rather, the failure is not completing the work of the American Revolution. And that work is about narrowing the disconnect between the rhetoric of democracy, words that we freely use, such as equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all citizens, with the tragic inequities that continue to exist between the rich and the poor and those well educated and those who see little hope for being educated.

The evidence of disinterest in the concept of democracy in itself is shocking. The average adult American today does not attend a single public, civic or community meeting a year. The decline in citizen engagement in communities, neighborhoods or government affairs has dropped more than 40 percent since 1950. And in many areas in America, the only places where citizens voluntarily see people different from their own group of friends, families, church, mosque, temple, business acquaintance, or hobbyist is at the shopping mall. And the shopping mall is a place to browse and walk by each other. It is not a place to sit and figure out how do we strengthen the places where we live.

Keeping informed about local, state or national affairs has continued to drop. And at the same time we are trying to expand and protect democracy around the world, we are having a hard time keeping it here at home. The simple act of voting in national elections is consistently an activity of less than the majority of Americans. In state and local elections, very often less than 10 percent of citizens make the decisions of who will be elected. The lack of youth involvement in public affairs is a legacy inherited from previous generations, particularly from the World War II baby boom generation, who dramatically removed themselves from public affairs.

I want you to listen to some very, very recent statistics. Fifty-seven percent of all youth, across all economic lines and educational attainments, between the ages of 15 to 25, are completely disengaged, with no awareness, no interest and no involvement in civic life. Even more recently, with a war pending, with people taking to the streets and the economy stagnating, two-thirds — this just came out four weeks ago — two-thirds of our freshmen college students do not think it is important to keep up on politics and national/international affairs. We are talking about now.

We have a devastating achievement gap in America, and we have a devastating gap in citizenry in America. And I would like to submit to you that they are intertwined. Achievement and participation are related to each. Let me be very, very blunt. "We, the people," is a phrase that Americans still like to state about themselves but rarely practice.

America is on the cusp of a failed experiment. It is not a failure for corporations or individuals or national wealth. It is not a failure of military power or being a world power. But it is a failure to improve education of all citizens so that "We, the people" means just that, all of us having a stake in engaging with each other in building better neighborhoods, communities, states, nation, and world.

Tilting towards democratic vitality can only happen through the quality and nature of education that we provide for our students. I am not talking about civics and I am not talking about social studies. I am talking about how youth learn how to use what they learn in school to make a contribution to a larger community, an education that prepares all students with the choices of democratic citizenry.

There is hope. I have seen schools that have done such work; 20 to 30 years they have sustained it. And I have examined these schools, 18 of them, that reflect the diversity of ethnic populations, economic status and distribution throughout the United States. As I said, these schools have from 20 to 30 years of documented student success. The students in these schools outperform students in comparable schools on student indicators, such as graduation rates, achievement test scores, employment secured, post-secondary accomplishments, intact families, longer and healthier lives, in active citizenship and leadership in their communities.

What I was struck by on each visit, whether in a rural primary school in the South, an intermediate suburban school in the West or a high school in the urban North, was the explicit commitment of each school to democratic values. Whether in the displays of student work in the halls, the service learning activities in the neighborhood, the words written on school publications, or language used by students, faculty and parents in discussing their schools, it was clear that curriculum assessments, promotion and graduation requirements reflected the belief that academic learning goals in contribution to larger communities are integral to each other.

These schools expected that all their students would be able to demonstrate how they use their learning in school before they graduate from our particular place. Students were expected to develop portfolios, exhibits, demonstrations, or presentations that connected learning across academic subjects to a real setting, and made a contribution to that real setting. Each student was guided by formal assessments that specified the quality of work worthy of earning school credit.

I observed kindergarten children using their pre-reading skills and learnings of geometric designs to develop illustrated books for families of preschoolers in their community. I found 11- and 12-year-olds using the study of science, ecology and habitats to protect wildlife in their local park. I saw middle-schoolers using art, history and English to develop displays of the history of their own town, which became permanent collections in their local library. And I found secondary students working on a range of graduation projects, including increasing the census participation in their town, increasing AIDS awareness in their state, developing new engineering designs for a bike path around a restrictive highway, reducing economic and racial stratifications in their neighborhoods, increasing work options among the unemployed, and conducting scientific experiments of ways to purify the water and conserve soil in their immediate neighborhood.

The best way to illustrate this to you is to show you just a brief clip. It takes about four or five minutes. It was produced by the National Commission of Service Learning. This is the nature of work that I was able to observe in the various schools that have sustained what I call an American education for multi-generations. Could we see that clip right now?

[Videotape is shown]

CARL GLICKMAN: What you just saw was a part of a videotape from the National Commission on Service Learning that John Glenn chaired. In the past, what I have referred to in terms of great American schools, is the idea is they take the concept of democracy and they do not just leave it in their vision statement. They actually use practices, methods and assessments to see, to ensure that students use what they are learning academically in ways that they can make real contributions to a larger community.

In the book, Revolutionizing America's Schools, which I wrote, I never referred to it as service learning. Service learning to me is sort of the capstone of a whole different set of processes that give students more responsibilities and choice about the application of what they are learning in school to issues that are real outside of school.

The idea that learning can be enhanced academically, socially and aesthetically by students, that it deepens academic learning, by students using their learning to contribute to issues of a larger world are really found in practice in public schools in the United States. What you have just seen, what we have studied, has found that less than 12 percent of students who go through 12 years of public school ever have an experience like that.

So, the question becomes one as we see declining participation of citizens in their larger world, and students see no connection of what they are learning academically to how they can use their minds, their hearts and their body to not only learn for their own advancement, but to learn in ways as a citizen that contributes to the advancement of other people. That is a serious, serious issue.

So, let me move from this beginning issue, about what do we say if we are a public school, we provide an education for the public, and then in examining these schools that have done this work over many generations. Let's go to some of the beginnings of some of these schools. How do schools sustain this type of work? What is the foundation that they establish?

Now, you are going to think I am a little strange at this moment, because I am going to talk to you about Meriwether Lewis. You all know who that person is right? In 1805, Meriwether Lewis, prior to beginning his presidential commission to explore and map the Northwestern United States, he spent nearly a year in preparation for this trip with President Jefferson. He visited experts in botany, geography, astronomy, native cultures, language, trade, health , and medicine.

Meriwether Lewis knew how to navigate rivers, hunt, and live in the wilderness, but he was aware he was entering territory that he had never been in before, and he needed to be able to anticipate all the things that he currently did not know so that he could handle whatever might occur.

So, how did he go about doing this? He hired a crew of 25. He had a special boat built, made of metal, with great capacity for storage of food and supplies, that could be navigated by paddles, sail, pole, or carried over low water in dangerous currents. And, lastly, he hired a senior person, General William Clark, that he insisted must be his co-commander, with equal authority in all matters of planning, traveling, and supervising.

Actually, he got into all kinds of battles with Jefferson and so on, who wanted he to be in charge and he said, no, we cannot do this unless I have someone else who knows a lot about the things that I do not know that will have equal authority.

Now, whether you view of Lewis and Clark's expedition is heroic or tragic depends on your vantage point, but they did make it across the land. And for that to have happened — and the parallel with schools — is, first, they put the right personnel together. And then, when they found out that some of the right personnel was not exactly right, then they made modifications. Then they tried to figure out all the information they needed. They tried to develop interpersonal relations among the members themselves. And then they anticipated the need for all kinds of supplies, some they used and so they did not use. And then they shared and developed leadership among the crew.

Now, what I found in the beginning stories of these schools that I examined, there are some parallels here. The parallel is people looked at the principal of most of these schools as the reason that these schools were successful at the beginning. What is often overlooked is that there are people never known, invisible in many ways, who were just as important in the beginnings of those schools as the person who had the official designation.

In some of these schools, the people who were most important were the secretary of the school, or the custodian, or student leaders who might rally parents, or a teacher association representative. The genius of formal leadership in creating schools that are true to American purpose is this ability to plug into this myriad constellation and understand that leadership comes from multiple places. The civil rights movement is instructive of that. We know who the heroes of the civil rights movement are, but in local towns and communities, the leaders of the civil rights movement, people, even to today, do not know who they were. Because they did not want anyone to know who they were because they were not doing the work to be known.

So, then the question becomes, how was leadership and moral authority and power used in the beginnings of these schools, the beginning designs or redesigns? Let me give you a few examples.

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