Above the Line: Greensburg Lets Students Teach the Adults

What Paperwork Can't Remember

Des Moines Municipal Schools in New Mexico beats the outcomes its context would predict. Superintendent Kodi Sumpter explains why: a teacher evaluation is a relationship, not a form. Someone has to come back and remember what the teacher was trying to become.

I expected teacher coaching to be an important factor in Greensburg's success. But when I asked, Tom Hunter kept saying it was the children.

Hunter is the superintendent of Greensburg Community Schools in Indiana. I asked why Greensburg was above the line. He didn't start with an observation rubric.

He started with preschool.

The chart

It started with preschool

Greensburg is rural and working-class. Too many children were arriving at kindergarten already behind, especially children from poverty. Indiana doesn't provide universal free preschool, Hunter said. Impressively, Greensburg built its own.

Before the program, Greensburg was retaining almost 20% of kindergarteners each year, because too many children weren't ready when they arrived. After the preschool program began, Greensburg held a steady streak of retaining zero students each year.

That changed life for children.

It also changed life for teachers. Kindergarten teachers weren't inheriting the same preventable gap.

Reading became the metric

Reading became the metric for the next round of success. Hunter dropped a hard line: "You can't have many opportunities if you can't read."

Greensburg began using the science of reading about three years before Indiana required it. Reading scores rose in the early grades and then in the upper grades as those students moved through the system.

This year, Greensburg gave Indiana's third-grade reading test to second graders as a baseline. About 70% passed; the state average was in the 40s.

See the pattern? What teachers were doing in preschool, kindergarten, first, and second grade was working. And it motivated them: the test doesn't just measure children. It taught the adults what was working and what wasn't.

The throughline

Greensburg still does the standard adult work of improvement. Hunter says the teachers meet by grade level, study what is working, and make changes. But in his telling, data isn't only pressure from above. It comes from the kids.

The throughline: invest in students, then let their success teach the adults. Hunter said student success is what motivates teachers. Greensburg publicizes that success because, in his words, there is nothing better for teachers than knowing their hard work is paying off.

What coaching should notice

Instead of making coaching obsolete, this changes what coaches should notice. When I asked Hunter what kind of feedback would actually help a teacher, he said he wanted to know what happened between teachers and students. Were student questions acknowledged? What did students actually get out of class?

I came to Greensburg looking for teacher coaching. Hunter's answer was that the most important feedback may already be sitting in the classroom.

A district could tell teachers what students are capable of.

Greensburg tries to let students show them.