A Different Way to write School Policy

Published on December 9, 2019

Last updated on November 1, 2024

How are policies made?

Typically, when schools and districts make policies, they follow what I call the “Screw-Up” process. it’s a time-honored process that we have all seen the results of.

Here’s how it works:

First, a person screws up somehow. They do something that leads to someone getting hurt, or more often, embarrassed.

You see, people don’t like to be embarrassed. It is not good for their egos, so when that leader or board or whoever is embarrassed, 2) they implement a new policy to make sure that never happens again.

The problem with this approach is two-fold.

First, egos are fragile and they can get offended again. It happens all too often.

Second, the policies that are in place are in place because something happened, often long ago, and in order to make sure that doesn’t happen again, they implement a policy.

Outside of school, you can see examples of shoe- and underwear-bombers who make our security screening more of a hassle than it used to be.

A good example in a school I worked in where we had an unwritten policy that you weren’t allowed to paint the walls. Just the mention of the word paint caused visible reactions to anyone who had been there more than three years. Although this was unwritten, the hoops required to get any paint up on the walls were almost not worth it.

It was only there because one person screwed up, many years ago. For all eternity, at that school, anything to do with painting the walls was refused at the word paint! (Happy ending, we were able to some upkeep and get some better painted walls than just ugly institutional white!)

The other way we (re)write policies manifests itself as someone is “getting away” with something. This objection is often brought up in the name of “equity” or making sure that everyone does everything the same way. People who argue for equity are often misunderstanding that the point of equity is doing things differently for people, but that’s another blog post topic.

In my current district, I was recently tasked with rewriting the concussion policy. I took a much different approach to it.

I asked a key question as I was doing research:

How can I rewrite this policy so that it better serves kids?

There were a few key areas of the policy that, if left unclear, would make it very damaging to students who experienced a concussion. One of the ways that I approached this policy was to ask what is actually best for students. The original policy was written so that it was all in favor of the adults in process, but not the student.

How? Let me illustrate.

When a student suffered a concussion, they were required to make up the work they missed while recovering. This essentially led to the opportunity for adults to “punish” the student who suffered a concussion.

Of course, this was never their official response, but the language allowed them to act in an unfortunate way.

Many students who suffered concussions at my school felt that there was no hope of them ever catching back up in their classes, and resigning to the fact that it was easier to just give up for the rest of the semester.

Teachers would expect that kids make up the work that they missed while healing. At face value, this seems totally reasonable. But when it comes down to it, a student who suffers a concussion probably should be out for at least a week following the incident.

They can get back gradually, but that’s a mountain of work that kids need to make up.

This problem was especially compounded when the sport they were playing ended and they didn’t need the eligibility.

Seeing this as an area of great concern for the kids, I specifically changed the wording of the policy to make it better for kids. Kids who suffer concussions are exempted from any work they miss while progressing through the stages of the return-to-learn protocol .

When the policy explicitly states that their work must be exempted, this serves the students and the adults.

It serves the students because they can not do the work and not feel guilty about missing it. Depending on the class, they’ll need the knowledge they missed, but not necessarily the work. More on this in a minute.

It serves the teachers because they can simply exempt the work in their grade book and not worry about that student doing the work or grading it later.

Regarding the approach to policy changes that I described, this is a much better approach to adjusting policy.

One of the complaints about this part of the policy is that kids will miss holes in their learning. My response is that doing the work does not equal knowing the content. As we have seen. If there is key content missed during that time, we need to seriously question if it is content that is truly necessary, or if it could be summarized or simplified in a way that the student could still be successful.

The other complaint was that a student could pretend they were still suffering to prolong their exempt status. That’s certainly true. And on a case-by-case basis, much easier to support kids in that situation than force everyone to make up all the work, even if it is unsafe for them to do so!

Here are a couple brief examples of policies that, while well-intentioned, hinder student learning or experience:

• Teachers can only use adopted curriculum (textbooks that are purchased every six years, if it happens that often).

• In order for kids to see YouTube videos, they must be pre-approved by a clearinghouse (in my experience, one person) in the district.

• Reduction in staff and reduction in force policies that ensure that the last person hired is the first person let go. I’ve lost a number of promising young teachers as a principal purely because they were the last ones hired.

If we take these examples and look at them from the perspective of how we can help kids, we could focus on different parts of them.

• Teachers have academic freedom to use the best materials available, and the district makes every effort to ensure textbooks are available that are 6 years old or less.

• YouTube filters exist, but anyone can “approve” videos and the district clearinghouse gets a list of videos that have been “approved”.

• This last one is tough, and there is a lot to the ideas around teacher evaluation and measurement of effectiveness, and the idea of honoring those that have given their lives to teaching and not throwing them out because of a capricious rule that would negatively impact them. Honestly, I don’t have a great answer for this, but one thing I suggested in my district recently was that we could give teachers opportunities to move within the district, before RIS and RIF happened so they could have a chance to be somewhere they wanted. Thankfully, the district did implement this and we had much happier teachers all around.

As you look at the policies that impact your students, and as you start to rewrite, ask which parts of the policy inadvertently impact students negatively, and which empower kids in the most ways possible?

As you rewrite policies, start with teachers describing the policies that make learning for their students difficult.