Press

Essay: What A Teacher Score Doesn’t Tell Us

August 25, 2014

Dr. Steve Gallon III was mentioned in an article on StateImpact written by former Miami-Dade school teacher, Jeremy Glazer regarding value-added model teacher scores.

“My 37.5 doesn’t tell me how I can continue to grow professionally, nor does it tell me how I could help a “less effective” teacher improve. It’s simply a recipe for anxiety, anger, and shame.

There are effective ways to monitor teachers. One of my former principals at Miami Northwestern Senior High, Dr. Steve Gallon, peeked into our classrooms almost every day to see what was going on. He could see the ups and downs every teacher has, and he was able to praise us on our good days and help us on our bad ones. That was much more useful to me than my 37.5.”

Published in The Washington Informer

Educator Takes Aim at Achievement Gap

August 20, 2014

Dr. Steve Gallon III shares his thoughts on closing the achievement gap for male minority students in an article for The Washington Informer written by D. Kevin McNeir

“One longtime public school teacher and administrator who grew up in poverty in one of Miami’s most notorious neighborhoods, Liberty City, said the schools cannot help more black youth succeed without the assistance of the community and its leaders.

“In the past the tendency was to isolate the educational experience outside of the adversity faced by youth, especially black males, in the urban core,” said Dr. Steve Gallon, Ph.D., a 20-year veteran of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools and president and CEO of Tri-Star Leadership, an educational consulting firm in Miami. “You have to address the other gaps and at the same time schools must engage the community and collectively address the multiple issues on all fronts.”

“As for black males, we have to find ways to captivate their attention, engage and motivate them and then build relationships with those boys,” said Gallon, 45. “A football coach can have close to 100 boys on his team – four times the number of students in a classroom but he finds success because he’s able to persuade them to work for one goal and they see how practice pays off. We need to take that philosophy into the classroom,” said Gallon, the only child among six other siblings to graduate from college. ”