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“ For students, we needed to be able to answer a reallysimple question: ‘Where will I ever use what I’m being taught today?’”A prime example, Daggett tells the principals, of his academic Rigor/RelevanceFramework that has become a cornerstone of many school reform effortsthroughout the country. And then thereis the fact that Jack’s teacher knewenough about the boys’ interests thatshe realized a visit from a football coachwould engage and focus their minds.“Until you have a relationship with kidsyou can’t tell what’s relevant for them,and it is relevance that makes rigorpossible,” says Daggett, winner of oneof the College of Education’s prestigiousGallery of Success Awards in 2007.Daggett has given a similar talk hundredsof times to educators and educationstakeholders in all 50 states and abroadsince founding the International Centerfor Leadership in Education in 1991 inRexford, N.Y., near Albany. He hasassisted and consulted in all 50 states andhundreds of school districts regardingtheir school improvement initiatives— many in response to the No ChildLeft Behind Act and its adequate yearlyprogress (AYP) provisions.He currently has a staff of 38 full-timeemployees (half of whom consult) andmore than a 100 independent contractors, teachers and educational administrators throughout the country who actas additional consultants in spreadingDaggett’s school improvement gospel.Reaching across all demographics, hisfirm has worked with Louisiana’s 34lowest performing high schools and theEducatorl6lFall 2009worst performing high schools in LosAngeles, as well as affluent schools fromGeorgia to Hawaii.“I love what I do,” says Daggett. “We seeschools that are so dramatically outperforming where they were five or 10 yearsago. Brockton High School in Brockton,Mass., has more than 4,000 students,more than 70 percent of whom areminorities. After working with themfor three years they’ve become one ofthe highest performing high schoolsin the state.“Everybody said it couldn’t be done,but it can be. Why? Because the kids areexcited about school.”Daggett also has collaborated with theNational Governors Association andadvised educational systems in Canada,Argentina, Great Britain, Germany,Hungary, Russia, Japan and Saudi Arabia.The Successful Practices Network, a related nonprofit established by Daggett andhis wife, Bonnie, received a grant fromthe Bill and Melinda Gates Foundationto enable 600 schools to share their bestpractices. The Gates Foundation is alsofunding a five-year effort in collaborationwith the Council of Chief State SchoolOfficers to identify 75 of the highest performing high schools and analyze the bestpractices they are employing that wouldbe most effective in the 600 SuccessfulPractice Network schools.Says Raymond J. McNulty, Daggett’ssenior vice president who formerly wasboth a senior fellow with the GatesFoundation and Vermont’s educationcommissioner: “To improve public education, many funders such as the GatesFoundation are looking for great, replicable models of schools that appear to bebeating the odds. For example, schoolswhose students are 90 percent minoritieswho are achieving at the 90th percentile.“For years Bill has been finding thesegreat schools and sharing his findingswith others.”Now in its 17th year, the InternationalCenter’s annual four-day Model SchoolsConference draws more than 6,000 educators, and an annual three-day symposiumfor school districts draws 2,000 more.“We do no advertising and we have nonatural constituency like national principals associations, yet we outdraw mostmajor conferences in the country,”says Daggett. “People are voting withtheir feet because they love to see thesesuccessful schools.”Daggett developed his Rigor/RelevanceFramework over more than two decadesduring an educational career that includedbrief stints as both a high school businessteacher and soccer coach and as an assistant professor at two different colleges.While earning his doctorate at Temple,he spent a year each as a teaching associate at Temple and Russell Sage Collegein Troy, N.Y.

He was attracted to Temple’s doctoralprogram because of its emphasis on vocational education — not in the traditionalsense of educating students for tradessuch as carpentry or plumbing but bybringing theory to practice in order toeducate students for mid- and seniorlevel jobs. “It was a junior version ofHarvard’s MBA program,” says Daggett,“a case study approach.”At Temple the seeds of his rigor andrelevance concept were first planted.“In most universities you have silos, onecalled academic education and the othercalled professional schools, and theyusually never may they meet,” he says.“But the Temple program really integrated a lot of academics and case-studyapproaches to business.”Daggett was particularly influenced bytwo professors, William Sassaman, EdD(deceased), who chaired his doctoralcommittee, and Marvin Hershfeld, thechairman of the Vocational TechnicalDepartment and Distributive Education.“Marv was great on practice and Bill wasreally good at theory,” recalls Daggett.“Trying to meet both of their needs whiledefending my dissertation forced me tothink deeper and harder about howto bring practice and theory together.”After earning his doctorate in 1974,Daggett became an associate in businesseducation for the New York StateEducation Department — the first offour state posts that over the next 17years would include chief of the Bureauof Business Education, chief of the Bureauof Occupational Education Departmentand finally director of the Division ofOccupational Education Instruction.His initial task: “For students, we neededto be able to answer a really simple question: ‘Where will I ever use what I’mbeing taught today?’ It sounds crazy,but a lot of teachers can’t answer thatquestion, other than saying you can useit on the test, which is not what thestudents are asking us. They’re really asking, ‘How does this relate to the worldbeyond school?’”One conundrum facing the state: only 43percent of high school seniors were passing the rigorous N.Y. State RegentsExam, a voluntary test that qualified thestudents for reduced tuition at any stateuniversity. About a quarter of theremaining 57 percent took the exam andfailed, but Daggett says about 40 percentnever even tried. State educators weredebating whether all students should beforced to complete the kind of rigorousacademic program that would enablethem to pass the test, or should they begiven what Daggett calls a “watereddown program and call it vocational oroccupational education?”He believed focusing on just academicrigor for the 43 percent high achievers andon just job skills for the other 57 percentwere both doomed approaches. Instead,give both types of students rigorous,relevant education, and most will becomelife-long learners with the critical skillsEducatorl7lFall 2009

“Everybody said it couldn’t be done, but it can be. Why?Because the kids are excited about school”necessary to forge a career, not just betrained for a job that technology couldrapidly transform.help teachers answer that basic questionfrom students: ‘Where will I ever use whatyou’re teaching me today?’”The debate hit close to home for Daggett,who graduated 39th in his high schoolclass of 43 seniors and never tried to earna Regents diploma. “I never attemptedit because I didn’t think school wasreally relevant,” he recalls. “All I wantedto do was play sports, which I had moretime to do if I didn’t work very hardacademically.”As for the No Child Left Behind Act,Daggett says, “It was a strong conceptflawed in its implementation in that itcut off application of knowledge. Schoolsbegan to drop arts programs and careerand technical education programs inorder to double kids up in academics,and the test became the end line ratherthan the starting line of what we shouldbe doing.”But then he got his military draft lotterynumber: 4 — a guarantee that, as theVietnam War was being waged, he wouldbe drafted into the U.S. Army. “That wasa lot of motivation,” he says candidly.“I didn’t want to go to Vietnam.” So heearned deferments by first earning associate and bachelor’s degrees — he graduated both times magna cum laude — andthen by teaching.With the N.Y. State Education Department,Daggett was responsible for both monitoring and technical assistance; when budgetcuts forced the department to reduce itstechnical assistance services, Daggett took asix-month leave without pay to providesuch services. “I knew within a month thatI would never go back,” he says, “because Iwas booked for a year and could see thatthere was a huge demand for what I wanted to do: Provide technical assistance toEducatorl8lFall 2009Nonetheless, under President Obama,Daggett believes the NCLB concept willendure. “Originally No Child Left Behindwas sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy,” henotes. “A lot of people forget it wasn’t aspartisan as it ended up being.“I think you’ll see a relaxation in howschool districts and states can define howstudents are achieving basic academicskills, but I don’t see a backing off of thecommitment to that goal.“I also think the present economicdownturn will lead to a major focus onworkforce development-related programsand a much heavier emphasis on theintegration of academics and career andtechnical education for kids.”The NCLB concept strikes a particularchord with Daggett and his wife becausetwo of their five children are disabled.At the age of 11 their son Paul was struckby a car and, after a coma of five months,was left with severe speech and hearingloss. But today he is a college graduatewith a good job, a wife and two youngchildren. “I often say that the U.S. is theonly country in the world in which thatcould have happened,” says Daggett.Meanwhile their daughter Audrey, in hermid-30s, suffers from mental retardation,autism and epilepsy. “Daily life forAudrey is a struggle,” he says, “but sincepre-school she’s been supported by theWildwood Programs in the Albany area,a group we volunteer with that providesmarvelous support and services for ch

temple university college of education office of institutional advancement ritter annex 223 1301 cecil b. moore avenue philadelphia, pa 19122-6091 FEATURES 2 Dean’s Message 4 Relevance, Rigor and Relationships 10 Are You as Good in the Classroom as You Think You Are? 16 TESOL PROGRAM: Promoting Bilingualism in an English-speaking World