June 6^th Edition - Best of Edition & Title II Day of Action

Title II Day of Action 

Please Join Educator Organizations at the National and State Level for a National Day of Action in Support of Title II Funding on June 7. There are three simple ways to participate:

1. Send a pre-written letter to Congress

Send this pre-written letter to Congress about the importance of Title II, and its importance in providing professional development for educators. 

2. Tweet #TitleIIA, #FundTitleIIA @[Senators and Reps]

Here are some sample tweets you can use:

• #TitleIIA is critical for teachers, school leaders, and principals to do their jobs effectively; cuts threaten this ability.
  
•  Millions of teachers, principals, and school leaders depend on #TitleIIA to improve schools and instruction in the classroom.
  
• #ESSA allows states to use 3% of #TitleIIA funds for PD for principals; cutting decreases the chances to seize this opportunity.

3. Call your members in Congress! 

Unsure who your Representative is? – Visit the Find Your Representative tool. Unsure what to say? - Here is a script you can use when speaking to a staff member of the office.

• I am a [insert title and organizational affiliation] and I am calling to urge Senator/Representative [insert name here] to restore cuts made to Title II, Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Title II, Part A provides critical funding to states for the purposes of preparing, training, recruiting, and retaining high-quality teachers, principals, assistant principals, and other school leaders.
• I am extremely concerned that President Trump sought to eliminate funding for Title II, Part A in his FY 2019 budget because this will severely disrupt many states’ ESSA implementation plans and hamper educator’s efforts to increase student achievement.
• Given the unique role that principals and teachers play in ensuring that our nation's students have high-quality learning experiences in order to be college and career ready, educators must be afforded the necessary opportunities for professional learning and growth as they work to improve teaching and learning in all schools. 
•  I urge Senator/Representative [insert name] to restore Title II, Part A funding to its ESSA authorized level of $2.295 billion in FY 2019.

We hope you can join us on June 7^th to support our nation's principals! 

Being Vulnerable and Strong at the Same Time

by Joe Schroeder, PhD Associate Executive Director, AWSA

John Hattie (Donohoo 2016) cites collective efficacy as the variable with the highest effect size on student achievement. This makes sense because, in such a case, we have a whole faculty feeling effective—able to actually accomplish better student achievement and equitable conditions for all. But collective efficacy does not happen on its own. Such collective efficacy is a product of leaders and teachers building a particular organizational culture, what Michael Fullan describes as collaborative culture or what Jon Saphier refers to as adult professional culture (APC).

A draft publication in November by Saphier makes a bold statement important to any leader wishing to have major impact on student learning: “Our learning and research, supported solidly by 40 years of school improvement work and by the research [in a bibliography of over 50 cited publications], indicates that there will be no sustainable improvement in student results and no elimination of the achievement gap until leaders and teachers succeed in building a particular organizational culture.” This article aims to briefly share key attributes of such a culture and the leadership that can develop it.

Read more.