Page 43 - The Power to Change Anything

32 INFLUENCER

current education system essentially set kids on a course of suc-
cess or failure beginning in the first grade—independent of
what anyone did afterward.
Stunned and indignant, Reid was determined to find out if
there was something teachers could do to make a difference.
Weren’t there teachers out there who started with children the
model predicted would lag behind, but who helped the stu-
dents beat the model? And, if so, what was the difference be-
tween those who were successful and everyone else?
Here’s where Dr. Reid’s mix of genius and dogged determi-
nation came into play. She pored over the data until she found
teachers whose students did better in later years than before
being taught by those teachers. Some did considerably better.
“These were the teachers who beat the projections,” Dr.
Reid explained. “For whatever reason, their students beat the
model. We also were able to find teachers whose students did
far worse than predicted after spending a year under their
tutelage.
“I was curious as to what was going on with both groups,”
Reid continued, “so I gathered a dozen teachers whose students
were achieving better results than the model predicted and
asked them what methods they used to cause their students to
read at a higher level than expected. They didn’t know what had
led to success. Later I gathered teachers whose students had done
worse than predicted and bluntly asked: ‘What are you doing that
prevents the children from learning?’ After an extended awkward
silence, they confessed that they didn’t know.”
And now for the determination. For the next five years Reid
watched both top and bottom performers in action in order to
divine the vital behaviors that separated the best teachers from
the rest. She codified, gathered, and studied data on virtually
every type of teaching behavior she and a team of doctoral stu-
dents could identify.
With still vibrant enthusiasm, Reid announced to us the
findings. They had found certain behaviors that separate top