Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

The movement of schools across the country from a traditional to a standards or competency-based grading model is calling into question the age-old practice of asking the Valedictorian and the Salutatorian to be the speakers at graduation. New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor recently published a story describing how several New Hampshire high schools have already abandoned this model in favor of one that opens up the privilege of being selected as a graduation speaker to a much broader cohort of deserving students. The practice of calculating class rank is obsolete in today’s educational environment. In a recent Phi Delta Kappan article, University of Kentucky Professor and educational reform author Thomas Guskey explains that Class Ranking Weighs Down True Learning .   He argues that schools must decide whether their intent is to select or develop talent. Selecting talent, he explains, is indicative of poor teaching because it is achieved when teachers and schools cr...

I would like to welcome you, the family and friends of our graduates, the faculty and staff of our school, the community members, alumni, School Board members, and the Seminary Trustees, to the campus at Sanborn Regional High School and our graduation ceremony-the 125 th for Sanborn.   My name is Brian Stack, and I am the Principal of Sanborn Regional High School. The students who sit before all of us tonight are the products of our community’s commitment to provide each of them with a world class education. Together, as a community, we have put Sanborn on the national map for what a twenty-first century education should look like. Educators from all over the country and the world study us and come to visit us just to talk to our teachers and students about their experiences at Sanborn, just like the team we hosted last month from the Chicago Public Schools. Governor Maggie Hassan spent a day sitting in our classes, learning from our students and our staff. Our school h...

In a high school cafeteria circa 1997, a certain young man who shall remain nameless sat during lunch furiously trying to copy his friend’s vocabulary booklet. In that booklet he was regularly asked to define 15-20 vocabulary words. Completion of that weekly vocabulary homework assignment was worth almost 30% of my – I mean his – final Language Arts grade. Each student was assigned the same weekly assignment because in 1997, homework was a one-size-fits all model. The educational community at the time subscribed to research such as that by Walberg, Paschal, and Weinstein who wrote about Homework’s Powerful Effects on Learning in 1985. Fast forward to today and few would argue the importance of homework on academic achievement, but in today’s world the purpose, amount, and type of homework that teachers assign looks vastly different than that of 1997. In the time of the Common Core, according to researchers like Dr. Robert Marzano , quality homework is tied to specific learn...

Last week I had a very engaging conversation with one of my teachers. After just two years in the classroom, she was at a point where she was looking for ways to take on leadership roles. Our school, like many around the country, is transforming the way we look at teaching and learning. Our conversation really got me thinking. Through our transformation process I need to cultivate teacher leaders more than ever before. Teacher leaders are the backbone of our work, and we as school administrators can’t do it alone. In a recent Education Week article, Westport Middle School 8 th grade Language Arts teacher Sarah Yost discussed A New Model of Instructional Leadership . Having reached a point in her career where she was trying to decide if she should move from teacher to administrator, she instead was offered the opportunity to take a more blended approach to play both roles for her school. As a master teacher, in additional to a reduced teaching load, she is charged with the...