Blankstein's Failure

When thinking about the Gahanna-Jefferson school district I feel strongly that the best way to promote success and achievement is to have teachers focus on intervention and enrichment in order to improve student learning. There is a definitive need for this particular focus and it is aligned with pre-existing ideas already within the district and could be accomplished during professional development days already put into the school calendar. Due to this, the implementation would be rather seamless and would reiterate many of the ideas presented by Blankstein in his book Failure is Not an Option.
When determining the biggest need for the district I started by looking at the data and what was a deficit across the board for all schools and, therefore, all teachers. The most recent state report card showed that the district received an overall rating of an F when it came to gap closing. This proves that there is a definite need in this particular area. By paying close attention to intervention and enrichment it will hopefully help close the gaps present within the district and will help more and more students to succeed. Furthermore, our buildings have all been tasked with trying to establish Professional …show more content…
This would help to ensure that teachers found the professional development useful and, if not, can ensure that the focus the following year is changed to something else that teachers find more valuable. In addition, I would be sure to look over the students’ performance on the standardized test at the end of the year to see if any gains were made in the area of student gap closing. Looking into whether or not this particular focus actually improved student achievement would be essential to knowing if the professional development was successful and if the strategies learned should be continued in future