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Remarks of M. Hayes Mizell at a conference of grantees of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and its Program for Student Achievement. The conference was held on March 6, 1997 in Chicago. Mizell is Director of the Foundation's Program for Student Achievement.

THE Priority: Student Learning


When I was younger -- much, much younger -- I read comic books. I know this may shock those of you laboring under the impression that my commitment to "high content" has been life long, but it is really just another example that young adolescence is a developmental process shaped by experiences of many different types and quality. I should add that I also read literature other than comic books -- a set of biographies with orange covers on a lower shelf in the Aberdeen, Mississippi public library comes to mind -- but I enjoyed comic books. I bought them, I traded them, and when I didn't have money to go to the cowboy movie on Saturday afternoon, I sold used comic books from the front porch of our house. I read all kinds of comic books including Classic Comics, a kind of illustrated Cliff Notes, but I tended to shy away from "Tales of the Crypt" and other violent comics that I didn't consider to be much fun.

My favorite comic books were those that featured characters we now call "super heroes": Superman, Batman, Captain America, the Green Lantern, the Torch, the Submariner, Plastic Man, and, yes, even Wonder Woman. One of the super heroes I liked was Captain Marvel. Every super hero has a gimmick, but Captain Marvel was unique. As you know, characters like Superman and Batman are adults who disguise their powers in the persons of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne. This allows them to mingle with ordinary people but at critical moments they transform themselves and use their super powers or their super talents to bring criminals to justice.

At the beginning of each Captain Marvel episode the central character was a newsboy, an emerging young adolescent, named Billy Batson. However, at sometime in his life he had the good fortune of encountering a wizard named Shazam who bestowed special powers on Billy. When Billy was confronted with a crisis he called upon these powers by shouting the word, "Shazam!" which is not a word but an acronym: S for Solomon (meaning wisdom); H for Hercules (strength); A for Atlas (stamina), Z for Zeus (power); A for Achilles (courage) and M for Mercury (speed). As soon as Billy yelled "Shazam!," the god Zeus would hurl a lightning bolt to Earth, it hit Billy Batson, there was a cloud of smoke, Billy was transformed into Captain Marvel, and in red tights, bulging muscles, and the symbol of a yellow lightning bolt on his chest, he sped off after the bad guys.

I am thinking of Captain Marvel today because I suspect that what made that super hero appealing to me many years ago lingers in the unconscious of those of you engaged in middle school reform. Is there not a teacher among you who has wished that at certain times on certain days you could say "Shazam!" and be instantly transformed into a less vulnerable, more powerful classroom leader? Is there not a principal here who has fantasized about hurling a lightning bolt down the hall, hitting the teacher whose instruction is as ineffective today as it was three or five years ago, instantly changing that teacher into a wholly new person? Is there not a central office staff person here who dreams that someday the "Billy Batsons" in principals' offices and teachers' lounges will recognize that they are in trouble, see the need to change, want to change, and at least cry for help?

We know, of course, that middle school reform is not a comic book experience, but that does not stop us from yearning for a Zeus, whether it is the school board or the superintendent or the central office or the principal or the Clark Foundation, to hurl the lightning bolt that will change everything.

No lightning bolts will rain from the sky

We are here today to become stronger and more powerful, not by yelling "Shazam!" but by learning from one another and bolstering one another's resolve to forge ahead in the face of daunting obstacles. No lightning bolts will rain from the sky or from this podium. No one will magically transform you into more effective educators. That is up to you.

We can begin by being clear about the focus of this day and the days that follow. You will hear a lot of talk today about standards, but this meeting is not 'about' standards, just as it is not 'about' implementing standards. This meeting is about learning. It is about teachers learning. It is about principals learning. It is about central office staff learning. It is even about the Clark Foundation learning. Unless we all learn more and become much more proficient at what we do, the middle school students we care about will not perform at the higher levels of which they are capable. Student performance is directly linked to our performance. Standards are a means to improve both.

We cloak standards in a lot of complex concepts and education jargon, but at their core they are a way for us to concretely communicate our academic expectations for students. For far too long, middle level educators have been unclear and confused about how to do this. In fact, I believe this continues to be true for most middle school educators. This is one reason we need standards.

We cloak standards in a lot of complex concepts
and education jargon, but at their core they are a way
for us to concretely communicate our academic expectations for students.


Unless we are clear about what we want students to know and be able to do, the lives of these students will be torn by rip tides of conflicting messages about the purpose of their schooling. This describes, of course, the current situation in many of your schools. Students do not read your schools' mission statements or school improvement plans, and if they did read them, these statements would make no more impression on students than they do on adults. For students and for adults, your schools communicate their purposes through the attitudes and actions of individual teachers and administrators.

Some teachers communicate that their purpose is to get through the day unscathed. Students understand this message very well and their performance reflects the teachers' lassitude and focus on the clock. Other teachers communicate that their purpose is to teach the students Awho want to learn." This message is not lost on all the other students whose performance reflects their teachers' lack of commitment and misplaced priorities. Conversely, there are teachers, many of them in this room, who communicate every day through their fiery determination, dogged preparation, and unflagging support that their students can and will learn. It is not surprising that these students' academic performance and on-task behavior is the envy of many less successful teachers.

Yes, the middle level schools in your communities are sending many different messages to young adolescents. Some of these messages are like a mantra on an auto-reverse cassette tape, so incessant, so numbing, and so divorced from positive action that no one pays attention any more: be responsible, be quiet, be on time, behave. Other messages suggest that because students are placed at risk by their own developmental issues and by many dark forces in their communities, the students are powerless, bringing nothing to their school experience except the need to be protected. In effect, the school communicates not only that these students are weak, but because they are weak the school must respond in kind, lowering its expectations for both students and the school.

If we want students to learn, we have to get our message straight. Standards can help us. If standards are clear and meaningful, we can use them to communicate among ourselves and to others what students should know and be able to do as a result of their experiences in the middle grades. Standards can provide educators, families, and communities with a better understanding of the purpose of middle school education. We can use standards to focus ourselves, our schools, and our students on learning and performance. Standards can help us become more conscious of the quality of student work, and prompt us to more closely scrutinize and more productively agonize over that work. Standards can be a tool for teachers to help students understand that effort and completion of work are important steps towards carrying out an assignment, but it is the quality of their work that indicates the level of their performance. If we do it right, students will learn more and perform at higher levels. Even test scores will increase.

To achieve these results, however, we will have to work our way out of a lot of bad habits. If student learning is going to become the most important thing in your schools, everything else cannot be equally important. The priority is the priority. Number one is number one. Standards are not number one; they are a means to achieve number one, student learning. Middle school reform is not number one; it is a means to achieve number one, student learning. Staff development is not number one; it is a means to achieve number one, student learning. Testing is not number one; it is a means to achieve number one, student learning.

If students do not learn more, then our use of standards is flawed. If students do not learn more, then we are reforming the wrong things or reforming the right things in the wrong ways. If students do not learn more, then we either are not developing staff effectively or they are not using their development in ways that benefit students. If students do not learn more, then our testing is for the wrong purpose or we are using the test results in the wrong ways. There are really two challenges here: to work ourselves out of the bad habit of making everything the priority, and the challenge of holding ourselves accountable for the means achieving the ends.

If students do not learn more, then our use
of standards is flawed. If students do not learn more, then we are reforming the wrong things or reforming
the right things in the wrong ways.

During the past fourteen months, your school systems and schools have taken important steps towards using standards to increase student learning and performance. While politicians and pundits debate the virtues of national and state standards, your school systems are among the very few in the nation trying to make standards work. You know better than the critics that advocating standards is one thing, putting them to work for students is quite another.

In most of your school systems, standards are now at least a topic of considerable conversation. There are more teachers and administrators and parents who understand why standards are important, and who are beginning to use them to focus their teaching and their schools' missions. There are also those who have put the standards on the shelf, waiting to see if performance standards and assessments will follow. These are the people who have decided that rather than doing what is right, they will wait until the price of not doing what is right becomes too high.

Some of you still consider standards-based reform as one more project, one more activity on your schools' very long list of "priorities." However, you cannot achieve this reform at the margins. If you try, you will see marginal results. Your schools will either use standards to mobilize the entire school community for student learning, and hold yourselves accountable for the extent to which students do or do not perform at standard, or your schools will continue business as usual with the usual results. These may sound like harsh words, but they are not nearly so harsh as the consequences students will face if we do not help them learn how to perform at higher levels. If we do not believe that most students can perform at standard, and if we are not serious about implementing reforms that will enable them to do so, then there is no point in even having standards because students will never know the difference.

As I have said, this meeting is about learning, not merely about standards or implementing standards. What are we learning? At the Clark Foundation, we believe most of your school systems have now passed through the first phase of standards-based reform. You have content standards in place, or should have, and you are well on your way towards developing performance standards or grading guidelines. More teachers are becoming knowledgeable about standards and rubrics. There is more agreement with schools and across districts about what to teach and when to teach it. There are teachers who display standards prominently on their classroom walls, and, more importantly, make sure that students understand that a lesson or a project is linked to one or more specific standards. You have made a good beginning, but it is only a beginning.

Efforts to enable students to perform at standard are wide, but not deep

As you know, each of your school systems and each of your middle level schools has made a commitment that a certain percentage of graduating eighth grade students will perform at standard by the year 2001. In most cases, this percentage is quite high. Some people doubt that the eighth grade class of 2001, this year's fourth graders, will be able to perform at the levels necessary for your school systems and schools to meet the goals you have set for yourselves. The fact that some of your school systems are getting out of the starting gate more slowly and less efficiently than others is not encouraging. It causes us to wonder if there are fundamental problems of school system priority, culture, management or strategy that make it unlikely you will be able to meet your goals. These school systems now have the additional challenge of convincing us that they can successfully overcome their slow start.

For all of your school systems, however, whatever their stage of development, efforts towards enabling students to perform at standard have been wide but not deep. Most schools and classrooms have changed little. There has been little change in teacher or principal performance. Perhaps this is to be expected because to date your emphasis has largely been on systemic efforts to develop standards, disseminate them, educate people about them, and train teachers how to implement them.

We have to move beyond this phase. Our challenge now is for schools to aggressively embrace standards-based reform, not simply as one more project but as the centerpiece of schools. The term "standards-based reform" is broad and includes many different actions and activities. However, what characterizes all these actions is that schools use them to help students learn what is necessary for them to perform at standard, and the actions hold some promise of being more effective than current practices. Under standards-based reform, no school or classroom practice is politically or professionally or educationally or bureaucratically "correct." The only criterion for what you do is whether the practice enables students to learn what they need to perform at standard. Learning and evidence of learning as they both relate to standards must become the driving force of every middle level school.

I realize this will not be easy. It will require many teachers and principals to take the radical step so vividly described in the chorus of an old spiritual: "gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside." There are a lot of educators out there crouching defensively behind the swords and shields of personal preferences, comfortable teaching styles, and cherished beliefs about middle school education, all unsupported by evidence they benefit students. There are schools that are so cold, so focused on everything but learning, and so obsessed with daily operations that they might as well be swords and shields. Students will not perform at standard if this continues. Teachers and administrators have to lay down their swords and shields and pick up the challenge of doing whatever is necessary to increase student learning.

Under standards-based reform, no school
or classroom practice is politically or professionally
or educationally or bureaucratically "correct."
The only criterion . . . is whether the practice enables students to learn what they need to perform at standard.

If your school systems and your schools are going to meet the performance goals you have set for yourselves, standards-based reform will have to penetrate much more deeply into schools. This is not to say that central offices should abandon their systemic initiatives to advance standards-based reform across all middle level schools throughout their districts. In fact, it means just the opposite. School boards, superintendents, and central office staffs must be even more strategic and aggressive to get schools to take standards seriously and implement reforms that will enable students to perform at standard.

Can't wait for site-based decisionmakers who fail to act

School systems cannot take this step, however, if they value site-based decisionmaking more than increasing student performance and if they are excessively patient with schools that fail to take whatever action is necessary to increase student learning. It is essential for school systems to consistently communicate to all their middle schools that it is important for students to meet standards, to hold schools accountable for increasing the levels of student performance, and to provide schools with the freedom and support to implement reforms for this purpose.

Systemic initiatives are important and we must sustain them, but if increasing proportions of students are going to perform at standard, it will only happen in places where teaching and learning come together. Schools are not the only places where this can and should occur, even in relation to standards, but schools bear most of the burden for the formal teaching-learning process. In schools, we find this process most visibly and intensely manifest in interactions between teachers and students. If more students are going to perform at standard, we are going to have focus much more on improving the substance and quality of teaching and learning.

Recently, the National Assessment of Educational Progress released the results of its most recent mathematics assessment. It reported some student performance gains that are encouraging. However, it also reported that only 25 percent of eighth graders reached the competency level of "proficient." In California, 49 percent of eighth graders could not solve a problem that involved money and they could not identify the fraction represented by a shaded portion of a rectangle. Let's face it, these problems of student performance, not to mention eighth grade students meeting your standards, will not be solved in state legislatures or central offices. The only way we will obtain better results is to focus expectations, resources, and support directly on teachers and students. Standards can help us.

. . . (I)f students are going to perform at higher levels, teachers must be central to the next phase of standards-based reform. We have to create conditions under which teachers increase their knowledge about and their comfort with the content they teach; only when this is the case will they become creative and flexible enough to meet the learning needs of all their students. We have to provide the expectation and support that will cause teachers to sharpen their pedagogical and classroom management skills to more effectively engage all students in learning. We have to make sure teachers have access to and effectively use standards-based curriculum and materials, rubrics, and assessments. We have to provide teachers the time and support not only for all this, but for collaborating with one another to carefully examine student work and change their practice to improve the quality of student work.

In most school systems, and in most schools,
there is a very weak link, or none at all, between staff development and teachers using what they learn
through staff development to enable students
to perform at standard.

If you are going to put a new emphasis on teaching and learning, tied explicitly to students performing at standard, you will have to come to grips with important infrastructure issues. One starting point is for schools and school systems to understand in greater detail how they currently use existing staff development resources and with what effect. I believe that in most school systems, and certainly in most schools, there is a very weak link, or none at all, between staff development and teachers using what they learn through staff development to enable students to perform at standard. Schools must become much more intentional and vigilant about using all forms of staff development resources as means to increase student learning. Yes, I agree that schools need more resources for staff development, but I believe they must also demonstrate that they use their current resources strategically and effectively to increase student learning.

Principals need to know more about reform

None of this is possible, of course, without true reform at the school level and without
principals providing strong leadership. It is not enough for principals merely to rally the troops. Principals must become much more familiar with the landscape they are asking their teachers to traverse. In other words, they need to know almost as much as their teachers about content and performance standards, assessment, rubrics, and similar issues. If principals expect teachers to improve their knowledge of content and the effectiveness of their instruction, and if principals are going to position themselves to make better use of staff development resources to achieve these results, then principals will have to increase their own knowledge base and skills. School systems that take the initiative to provide quality professional development for this purpose will be making a wise investment, and increasing the likelihood that principals will provide effective leadership for the second phase of standards-based reform.

None of this will come easy. There are all manner of pot-holes and washed-out bridges along the way. Experience has taught us that few of your current superintendents will be with you at the end of this journey. The same will be true of many principals. There will continue to be budget crises, illnesses, scandals, and more projects, initiatives, and special programs, some of which will contribute to student learning but many of which will not. All of these will be distractions from the task of helping students learn what they need to perform at standard. Even worse, they can lead to detours and serious setbacks.

There is only one way to make sure your school systems provide the expectation and support you will need to press forward in spite of these obstacles. Standards-based reform and its connection to student learning must be understood, really understood, and embraced by your communities, school boards, superintendents, central office staff, and building-level administrators and teachers. People other than you have to care about student learning and understand why and how standards-based reform is a means to achieve it. This means you will have to do a much better job of making standards understandable to many more people, and providing more useful information about school and student performance to all segments of your communities.

You will know you are making progress when the next time your school board interviews candidates for superintendent, the community demands that the school board focus the candidates on this central question: "How will you make sure that our principals and teachers get the professional development, support, and supervision they need to enable students to perform at standard?" You will know you are not the only ones willing to do almost anything to increase student learning when even the poorest and least English proficient parents crowd school board meetings demanding better use of resources, more support, and more accountability for student learning.

Many of your school systems and schools
have only made the progress they have because
day after day you have kept pushing for middle school reform, winning converts one by one to the cause that all middle level students should and can achieve at significantly higher levels.

None of this is possible, however, without your leadership. Many of your school systems and schools have only made the progress they have because day after day you have kept pushing for middle school reform, winning converts one by one to the cause that all middle level students should and can achieve at significantly higher levels. Even though you have been pushed and tugged in different directions, you have kept your focus on student learning, always circling back to standards-based reform.

We continue to expect a lot of you. We know it is tempting to stick with the planning, with putting the building blocks in place, because you know how to do that. You have done it many times before, students have come and gone, but the horizon of increased student learning has continued to recede. When are we simply going to focus on student learning, and do whatever is necessary to make sure that all students learn at significantly higher levels?

We are not asking you to do what you know how to do, we are asking you to do what you do not know how to do, or . . . to do what you know how to do for some students, but do it for all. We are asking you to increase student learning not in the long term but in the near term, by June 2001. Like Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth century English essayist, we believe, "Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."

The task at hand is hard and I know you are sometimes tired and dispirited, wondering if anything is really getting better, wondering if you are making progress. When you have those moments of doubt, I hope you will reflect where your school system is, and where your schools are compared to three years ago. I think most of you will see that you have made demonstrable progress, and that the only way you have done it is through a lot of faith and hard work with a vision of the day when many more students are performing at standard than you or your communities thought possible.

Yes, it would be nice to be Billy Batson, to cry "Shazam!" and for everything to change in a flash of lightning, but you are not Billy Batson. You have more in common, it seems to me, with the Apostle Paul. He also went on long and dangerous journeys, carrying a new message of hope many people did not want to hear. Like Paul, you might also say, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed...Therefore, we do not lose heart." You can increase student learning. For the sake of your students, you must increase student learning. Do not lose heart.

Thank you.


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