Dr. Burton serves as a Turnaround Specialist for the Rensselaerville Institute based in Albany, New York. He was music teacher from 1983 to 1989, and then became a principal In August 2001 Dr. Burton was assigned as the Principal to Cherokee Park Elementary. At the time of his appointment the school was in Corrective Action with a SPS of 44.4, and about to be taken over by the Department of Education. Dr. Burton retired from Caddo Parish Schools in 2017 as a Distinguished Principal and was hired by the Rensselaerville Institute where he currently serves as a Turnaround Specialist. He is also the CEO and founder of Passion Driven Leadership. These allow him to pursue his passion which is to help and support leaders in education. He and his wife Wanda have twin boys and three lovely grandchildren. He is the author of Reframing American Education.

• Academic Efficacy - If teachers trust principals and teachers and parents trust teachers, you create an environment of academic confidence.
• Asking teachers if they’re willing to grow.
• Teachers created and owned the school environment.
• Our problem wasn’t getting teachers but choosing the right teachers.
• How to turnaround schools?
• Leadership implements attitudes and cultures that is going to turn around.
• Kids first
• Responsibility
• Vision
• Communication
• Fiscally responsible
• Using data to inform decisions, not drive it.
• Four types of data: academic, perception, demographic, background.
• Sometimes schools look at background data and superimpose that on their academic data.
• Data-informed means you drill down deep and see what the context of the data tells them.
• Implement strategies that help students think.
• Close the hope gap before we close any other gap.
• The Case Against Standardization
• She thought the scores were high because she
• We beat teachers up with data.
• We get lost in doing the work.
• Different skillset than just leading
• Cracking the code of code cracking - Christopher - Seton Hall
• There is NO empirical research regarding standardization that it works.
• The power of coaching
• It’s more about class than it is about black and white.
• We do it because educators don’t control
• How do kids learn better without standards?
• We’ve hounded that teachers teach standards not students. This is wrong!
• When students own the learning process, it’s a win win for everyone.
• It’s hard for us to
• Trust is very important. Accountability often erodes trust.
• How to be a transformative principal? Change your mindset. Think about how you can transform yourself. Reflect.

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Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, amplifies world-class voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized globally for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms.

John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

Learn more about professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. Learn more about some of the newest titles:

• Michaela: The Power of Culture by Katharine Birbalsingh
• Teaching WalkThrus: Visual Step-by-Step Guides to Essential Teaching Techniques by Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli
• Putting Staff First: A blueprint for revitalising our schools by John Tomsett and Jonny Uttley
• The Teaching Delusion: Why Teaching In Our Schools Isn’t Good Enough (And How We Can Make It Better) by Bruce Robertson
• Stop Talking About Wellbeing: A pragmatic approach to teacher workload by Kat Howard

John Catt is also proud publisher of the new book from Transformative Principal host Jethro Jones: SchoolX: How principals can design a transformative school experience for students, teachers, parents – and themselves Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
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• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

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