Misalignment

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

Last week I triple

dog-dared

readers to listen to an excerpt from a speech by Dr. Richard

Elmore

of Harvard University:

• The

resilience of teacher culture

(6:28)

[Dr.

Elmore

‘s full speech and other excerpts are available on my Podcasts page]

One of the reasons Dr. Elmore’s speech speaks to me so much is that it raises

quite vociferously the issue of misalignment. In my

work with schools and districts, I see numerous examples of misalignment,

including:

• classroom pedagogy that fails to regularly employ high-yield instructional

strategies to achieve optimal results;

rather than students’ needs;

who need them the most;

are most needed;

lot of wasted instructional time

;

We say that we want results. We say that we want high levels of achievement

for all students. But we are not doing what it takes to achieve the results that

we say we want.