“Are you institutional managers or instructional leaders,” William Daggett, president, International Center for Leadership in Education, asked principals at the Institute’s first general session.

While emphasizing that American schools are not failing, he challenged principals, whom he called “the single most important ingredient” to a successful school, to consider ways that can make instruction more relevant to today’s students.

“The problem is that the world outside of our schools is changing four to five times faster than change occurs inside our schools,” he said. “Principals have to create more pressure for change than resistance to change in schools. Great schools spend a large amount of time showing individuals why we need to change.”

Daggett promised to spend the initial part of his presentation making principals “feel guilty” because everyone involved in education from teachers to principals to governors to parents is “part of the problem.”

“The first step in solving any problem is identifying the problem,” he said.

He also outlined the qualities his organization has found in successful high schools across the country and offered resources, including data and lesson plans, from his center to participants. Additionally, he indicated he would send a copy of his PowerPoint presentation to members of The Partnership. Daggett can be contacted through the Center at www.LeaderEd.com.

Principals are facing challenges in three areas that demand educational change if we are to prepare students for the future: technology, globalization and demographics, he reported.

“Information technology is exploding, and kids are natives to that world while we are immigrants,” he said. “Anyone who doesn’t carry a PDA simply isn’t living in the kids’ world.”

Daggett reported that Microsoft and three other corporations unveiled in a January meeting a watch that included a total computer. Other manufacturers are producing computers as part of pens, lapel pins, necklaces and other jewelry. The president of Levi Strauss announced that within two years his company expects to have computers inside buttons of clothes. Asking how many schools prohibit students from bringing PDAs to school on days when mandated tests are administered because of the access they can provide, Daggett wondered what prohibitions would have to be initiated with these new developments.

“The young are the early adapters of these technologies,” he said. “Are we going to prohibit students from bringing them to school, or work with them in using them?”

Daggett also pointed out the growth of China as an industrial power and the population growth in other nations.

“The United States has nine cities with one million people or more; today China has 100-plus,” he reported. “In the year 2020, China will have 160 or more cities with one million or more people, and it won’t even be the most populous nation. India will be.

“Yet, next school year the U.S. will have 1.4 million students enrolled in French classes, but only 28,000 in Mandarin Chinese and Hindu combined. Why? Because we have more French teachers.”

Daggett frequently asked the principals “Why are you doing what you doing?” and whether it was relevant to student needs.

It also called for greater attention to reading, saying it wasn’t an elementary school problem and that a major reason students fail math tests in high school is that they can’t read and understand the work. He said that every teacher must teach reading and pointed out that his research showed reading requirements in high school were “consistently lower than what is required by employers.”

As principals move to improve schools, he said that we’ve “got to take something off the plate of teachers,” but that the decision must be made based on what kids need and what is tested rather than what is convenient for existing lesson plans.

“As school leaders, you should mess with instruction before you mess with structure. In any school, one third of the teachers are ready to try anything; a second third is cautious about new ideas and will ask questions, and a third will resist change.”

He urged principals to get relevant, quality instructional materials into the hands of the top group and they will make it work. Eventually, more and more teachers will use it, he said.

“We can change schools if we focus on each and every child, but don’t focus on each and every adult.”