Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

If you’d like to see just how polarized a high school faculty can be, survey them on how much they think homework should count in their overall course grade. You’ll get a range of responses from zero to one hundred percent. The start of a new school year for many teachers necessitates the writing of course syllabus documents, which means it is time to decide how much weight will be given to categories such as homework, class work, tests, quizzes, and class participation. The former high school math teacher in me has come to understand that by asking myself a simple question like how much weight I would give to homework or tests, I had an extremely flawed grading system that told me nothing about what it was my students knew and were able to do. Across the country, teachers are throwing away these dinosaur grading systems in favor of standards-based systems that more accurately measure and report student learning. Maybe your school district is making the switch to such a syst...

The Sanborn Regional School District is in the middle of a major educational reform transformation that has gained local, state, and national attention in recent years. In this article, Principal Brian Stack reflects on how he became associated with a dynamic team of teachers and administrators at Sanborn who have been leading this ground-breaking work.     "The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now." This ancient Chinese proverb kept reciting itself in my mind in the days and weeks after I went to my first workshop on competency education back in 2008. At the time I was a Curriculum Director for the Sanborn Regional School District in the Seacoast area of New Hampshire. The workshop changed my life and the lives of my fellow administrators because it gave us a completely new outlook on what competency education was going to do for our educational system in America. We were convinced that we needed to help ou...

In schools across America, the floors have just been polished and fresh paint now adorns many classroom walls. A dedicated team of hardworking custodians who take great pride in their work have spent their summer getting classrooms ready for a new school year. Students are even getting involved in the work . In a Seattle high school, students spent time cleaning and painting in an effort to promote a positive school culture and learning environment. Over the next couple of weeks, an army of more than 3 million educators will begin to transform these newly refurbished blank canvas classrooms into spaces that are conducive to learning in the twenty-first century. In a recent blog post, Michigan’s Warner Elementary School Principal Ben Gilpin reflected on his conversations with some of these teachers who were planning to Transform Their Learning Spaces this coming school year. As teachers plan their own classroom transformation, Gilpin offers three suggestions: 1.  ...