CEO shows heart for education

Hardy wants to find out what is blocking academic success in school district

Lorain City Schools Chief Executive Officer David Hardy Jr. says people are intrinsically driven to do great work.

So he’s sifting for nuggets of truth among narratives of 892 people interviewed to uncover what is blocking academic success in Lorain.

“When you see results not growing there’s something in the organizational culture that still needs to be investigated,” Hardy said.

The underachievement is hard to take, when students are capable of so much more.

“The reason why I do smile at this point is because I know that even though the challenges are great, the prospect of true change for kids is there,” Hardy said. “And I feel very confident that we will find solutions, and make the right decisions going forward. So the smile is for what will come, not the current state of what I’m seeing.”

An organization hired to interview people, TNTP, takes an attitude of listening to everything and fitting comments into the larger narrative of the community, he said.

“We’re not ‘digging’ for anything,” Hardy said. “We’re just looking for where we start. I think TNTP is doing a good job of navigating that.”

He asks TNTP what they’re hearing, and together they’re looking for trends.

“I think we can trust trends,” Hardy said, “and then there is quantitative data that will support things in a qualitative way.”

The biggest surprise he gleaned is from the high school.

“I still can’t get over our performance of our high school kids, some of the numbers,” Hardy said. “Again, qualitatively some of the numbers are scoring not even in the teens on the ACT scores, I’m talking 11, 12 on the ACT. To the number of the percentage of our kids who are college ready without remediation, that jumps out at me. I still can’t get that number out of my head.

“The other thing I thought was interesting was the trend of underperforming in math versus (English language learners),” Hardy said. “Most recently I look at it from a comparative lens. We’re creating young people who are ready to compete in the real world against other districts from across this country. So I start to ask, ‘What is our North Star? What are some of the stronger schools in Northeastern Ohio and Ohio in general and how do we stack up against them, regardless of race, ethnicity and class?’

“Because at the end of the day our kids are going out in the world and competing against them.”

So he compared Lorain with Rocky River, Westlake and Solon.

“Looking at where their performance is, and the gap, that’s the achievement gap. When I saw those two charts right next to each other, and saw those numbers, it caused a greater pause because of how far we are away from creating an equitable learning experience for our kids,” Hardy said. “That’s the opportunity we have.”

Money is not and cannot be an excuse for poor academic performance, Hardy said.

“At the end of the day our kids are going to show up and want to be educated every single day,” Hardy said, “and we cannot allow excuses to get in the way of that. Unfortunately in many districts across the country people use that as the reason, the difference. But the reality of the situation is we get up every single day to do work for kids and that is what we need to focus on, and if we didn’t do that, we’re selling ourselves short.”

There are many pieces and layers of human drama in the lives of urban children, he said.

“How do we help our teachers be better prepared for the challenges they face every single day in class?” Hardy said. “Every child is coming to their door from a different circumstance that they may or may not communicate outwardly but may show in other ways.

“How do we better prepare our teachers for that? And I think the answer to that is: One, we have to understand those challenges deeply that our students are bringing to our work every day,” he continued. “Two, we have to provide very dedicated time and effort to our teachers to create learning environments where little David walks into the classroom excited to be there regardless of where they just came from and see it as the safe haven, and create an environment around that which I think a lot of our teachers do. And three, I think that we need to think about some wrap around services for our kids. I know we’re doing some thinking about that right now, but building a strategy to help support our kids and our families facing these challenges even before they enter our school system as 3and 4-year-olds.

“Thinking broadly I think those three things will go a long way to help teachers meet every need our kids present,” Hardy said, adding that teachers believe this can happen.

“I think teachers wake up every day because they want to be great for kids,” Hardy said. “My dad being a teacher, even on his toughest days he wakes up and says, ‘You know what, I’m excited to see my kids again.’ I think that’s the way all of our teachers approach their work. I think the challenge now is how do we better support them to keep that fire burning, to keep them excited to see their kids every single day and make sure they have the tools to be successful.”

“At the end of the day our kids are going to show up and want to be educated every single day.”

— Lorain City Schools Chief Executive Officer David Hardy Jr