Making the Case for Prevention and Intervention

Investing in the early years of school-based learning via an aviation metaphor

The Brief Case 📚→💼→📈→📊

The 1 in 60 rule: A 1 degree offset angle at 60 nm equates to 1 nm of displacement.

via Skybrary’s “Rules of Thumb”

In aviation, if a flight is off course by one degree, then for every 60 miles traveled, it will also be one mile off target from its destination. A commercial plane traveling 600 mph that is off course by just one degree will be 10 miles from its intended milestone after one hour.

If you were responsible for that flight’s arrival, several parameters would likely run through your mind continuously: the length of the flight in terms of both time and distance to the target; the number of degrees off course at the outset; the efforts required to move a complex machine back on course if/when a deviation arose; and so on.

Luckily, unless we are severely misjudging our audience, you are not responsible for the arrival of any large planes. You are likely responsible, however, either directly or indirectly, for the passage of a very essential part of our school populations: our youngest learners.

Though all metaphors have their limits, we believe it is worth thinking of the development of young people as individual flight plans. The length of the flight, K - 12 schooling, is 13 years, and the intended destination is typically a stage (literal) where a diploma is conferred. Though the missions, programs, and outcomes of schools differ, it is safe to say that the destination is also a shared state of being wherein all graduates are confident, thoughtful, kind, and motivated learner-citizens primed to make a positive contribution to the world. Metaphor at full stretch, the 1 in 60 rule of thumb should most definitely guide our thinking and planning as we oversee the individual flight paths of the learners in our care: work done for students at the outset of the journey to set them on course for their intended destinations benefits every student and any school that is part of that journey.