Mitchel Nickols: Proper management true measure of school success

The school year is drawing to an end for most students, but school districts’ work continues throughout the year. As they prepare to submit final budgets for the upcoming fiscal year, districts focus on critical needs for educating youth effectively and efficiently.

Discussion topics include teacher salaries and benefits, which make up a large part of budgets, and building programs, school reconfiguration and sports, issues that bring concerned taxpayers to board meetings.

At times, the state’s Sunshine Act comes front and center if it appears a district is not transparent enough about releasing information and having open discussions before a vote on important issues such as hiring, disciplinary actions, busing contracts or bids from outside vendors.

But at the heart and center of all school decision-making ought to be school success and safety.

Let’s take on the issue of school success first, since I have rarely seen board meeting rooms filled with angered taxpayers questioning why reading, writing and arithmetic are not the greatest concerns for school success.

In the early 1950s, Rudolf Flesch reportedly offered to tutor a sixth-grader who had been held back. He was shocked that a 12-year-old could not decipher simple words. Soon after, he wrote the best-selling “Why Johnny Can’t Read.”

A 2016 article by Martin Cothran, titled “Why Johnny Can’t Add,” highlighted the importance of teaching about arithmetic and the need to get back to teaching the way students learned in the 1950s through the 1990s in California and Kentucky.

In 2013, CNBC’s Kelley Holland wrote an article titled “Why Johnny can’t write, and why employers are mad.”

One wonders if so much emphasis is being placed on critical issues regarding schools that we may have neglected the very reason schools exist — to educate all students.

In America, laws hold schools accountable. The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 aimed to level the playing field for disadvantaged students — poor students, minorities, students receiving special education services, and those who speak and understand limited or no English at all. It was replaced in 2015 with the Every Student Succeeds Act. Both intended to make sure students succeed, with success verified through tests.

Don’t get me wrong: School safety is very important as we attempt to curb school violence, bullying, institutional racism and implicit bias, and institute restorative justice and other efforts to enhance a climate conducive to learning. But equally important is for schools to make sure students are learning and succeeding at a rate that will allow them to globally compete in the marketplace one day.

If Johnny can’t read, write or do math, then we must rethink how our schools are approaching learning. Public meetings should be held. How old is the curriculum, and how is it being used? Do teachers understand it well enough? Does it include all students? What differentiation and personalized learning can take place?

How we manage our schools should be a true measure of how the schools are doing. Resources should be used in an equitable manner that ensures ongoing success through frequent monitoring and accountability of failure and graduation rates. A comprehensive plan must cover school success and safety while not losing sight of other issues that promote a healthy school organization.