In Alexandria I stayed a couple of nights (Days 3 & 4) at the house of Larry and Liz.  Larry is a history teacher at a parochial school outside of what was once England Air Base---> Holy Savior Menard Central Catholic High School.  Liz is a dietician for the VA.  In fact, they met when Larry, as a patient, announced to her his "plan" to lose 20 pounds.  By his telling, she very assertively challenged his "plan" as no such thing.  She wanted to know what the actual plan was...not merely the goal.  It reminded me how we tend to "plan" things for our school without actually having a true PLAN for how to get it done!

For instance, schools often "plan" to engage in continuous improvement without a viable plan for achieving that goal.  They want to be better, but they really only have the intent and a general idea of what it will take.  One school I worked at as an assistant principal improved from basically the lowest school rating in Texas to nearly the highest in a mere three years.  It went from an unacceptable school to the Intel School of Distinction (for middle schools) for 2009.  We accomplished this monumental task with a challenging demographic (80% low socio-economic states, 78% Hispanic) ...and we did so not merely by chance.  We turned this school around both because we planned to AND because we had a thorough plan.

EdClick is a solutions-based company specializing in continuous school improvement.  It was an instrumental part of the turnaround I mentioned above.  It enabled the re-institution of a climate of accountability in student discipline that was foundational to the overall dramatic improvement in school performance we achieved.  EdClick's Discipline Manager made conditions right for the many other components of our remarkably successful story!

The year-long journey I am now on---Education Ride 365---is an effort to promote the idea of continuous improvement in education and gather thoughts from citizens around the country on how that can best be done.  EdClick has tools to foster continuous improvement and the company is, in part, relying on me to make sure we stay in touch with what Americans (educators and non-educators) are thinking regarding the need to continuously improve our schools across this great country!