Reading the same as Randeig?

I gave about 100 8th graders two reading exercises--one with real English words and one with scrambled words, except the first and last letter. I was thinking there might be some connection between one's ability with English and with scrambled words. I conjectured that struggling readers would be more unlikely to 'decode' the scrambled words.

I had visions of stunning Education journal publications. I would be heralded through every Education school between Tacoma and Parkland. Alas, I'm afraid it's not to be.

Almost every student seemed reasonably able to read the scrambled text. I had figured the "Cambridge University study" was a ruse. Either it was fake, or they got it way wrong--more like 85 per cent of my students could read the jumbled text. (I gave them comprehension questions for both readings, and I asked some students to read the scrambled text aloud. Very few flat out gave up trying. Most did reasonably well, actually.)

I still do wonder what this says about the emphasis on phonic decoding though.

Now it's History

Another study to be careful with...

Apparently, participation in National History Day is connected to better performance in all areas of a student's academic life. Ahhh, another magic bullet.

The coverage is careful not to claim that NHD causes students to do better. And nothing in the explanation gives the details necessary to make or reject such a claim.

It seems just as plausible to me that if NHD is optional, the students who participate are more likely to perform better in other academic areas because they're more serious students.

Even if it's not optional, and, say, a whole school districts were compared, it's just as easy to argue that school districts who have the resources--personnel, commitment, etc.--to undertake NHD are different from those that don't, and the kids in the former might have a wider variety of opportunities (beyond NHD) than the students in the former.

I like history, I wish we had more NHD-type activities. But I don't know that this is 'the answer.'

Colleges, too

A new study apparently finds that college students aren't learning. Universities are coming in for the same kind of criticism as schools, and to be honest, part of me welcomes the temporary respite. The schools aren't alone in making this supposed malaise we're in.

But, like so much else in contemporary policy discussions, the responses tend to come in the form of questions the commentator thinks s/he can now answer with this long-awaited data.

Do a Google News search of "learning in college" and you'll get articles like "Are students really learning anything in college?" and "Is college really worth it?"

If you to the Collegiate Learning Assessment, you'll find a lot (A LOT) of material, including this sample task that test takers do. Interesting and multi-faceted task. Of course, all we could really claim from the reported results is that 30 per cent (or whatever it is) of students (if the sample of 2000 was adequately representative) didn't improve on the kinds of tasks tested.

We'd have to assume that the tasks tested in the CLA either are the more important things one should learn to do while in college or those tasks are good proxies for whatever we think is good to learn, or both.

The skills, knowledge and wisdom reflected in the task above are worthy, no doubt. Whether they are the most important things to learn is debatable.

And, of course, whether the 30-whatever per cent who didn't improve on the CLA might have learned some other useful things is wholly indeterminate from the information reported.

More Vexation

In Education School--and in a lot of the school management trainings I've attended--you'll hear about relationships. You've got to have relationships with the students. General school climate, discipline, academic performance and so on are all better when the adults have good relationships with their charges. That too pithy saying about "they have to know you care before they care what you know" reflects the need for relationship.

On the other hand, my school district got a 5% discount on its liability insurance once all staff got a 'boundary invasion' training, the sum total of which was 'be smart, don't do anything that could even be construed as social, rather than instructional, with your students.' One of the most unnerving and risky places to interact with students is, of course, the web, particularly on social networks. The official suggestion today--don't be Facebook 'friends' with current or former students until they're 10 years out of school.

(As an aside, we should be clear that the purpose of these fancy PowerPoints from risk management consultants is to allow the district to say they did their part to instruct staff about 'these issues,' whatever those might be. So if a staff member does get in some sort of trouble, the district can distance itself from the offending staffer.)

Well, hours after our conduct bracing up, I got a magazine called Teaching Tolerance in my box. One of the articles in this addition, "Your Students Love Social Media...And So Can You: Want to engage students? Meet them on society's newest public square". A psychologist cited in the article says this, “From my perspective, this new technology is all a very positive thing. Social media has totally changed the communication model. This is so empowering.”

Wow! ALL positive? The new technologies are empowering, indeed. But this expert seems to neglect the all too evident empowerment for negative inherent in these technologies. Every technology and the institutional arrangements it creates offer opportunity for both good and evil. If by saying the above she means, 'it could all be so good, if we just used it right,' that's different...and unrealistic.

I am sure, for instance, that there are things teenagers know how to do with these technologies that their parents (and other adults) don't even realize are possible or available.

I'd like to be 'in relationship' with these students, so that I might be able to give some insight into decent and right conduct (electronically and otherwise), and so that they might have another person to hold them to account, at least in some degree.

But risk management says I shouldn't. And the bottom line of our in-service today...'protect yourself.' The leadership wants to manage away the risks that necessarily attend being involved in a relationship with another person. I understand their logic...and hope takes it on the chin again.

Sapenikg of Rdaneig

I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

This has made its way around for a few years now. "They" say that 55% of us can actually read this relatively easily. (I can, just a bit slower than normal.) The key is that the first and last letters must be correct.

If this is true--the 55% part, and the bit about reading the word as a whole, I have to wonder about the claims of the phonics devotees. Decoding--the phonetic deciphering of the word by parts--isn't apparently all that is going on.

I would bet, though, that struggling readers, or less practiced readers, are more often in the 45% than the 55%.

Hey, maybe I should test that.

A Problem FOR Public Schools

In previous posts I've talked about reading, the standardized test, teachers' incentives (to address the test), the difficulties schools have with Johnny's reading, and so on.

Another angle on all that....

As we are measured by how many students 'meet standard' on the test, we do try to identify students who were close last year, but need a little extra push in the time just before the test in May. We use the 3rd quarter of the year for an intervention course (smaller, more focused, extra repetitions, etc.). Every year, we identify 10 or 12 students who might benefit from that little bit extra and ask their parents about moving their student into this class. And every year, several say no. They opt to keep their child in what students typically call 'fun' classes--band, PE, computers, etc.

As I write this, I know it might sound strange. Why don't we 'just' get those kids to standard with the regular classes? That hasn't typically worked for this group in previous years. Why are we so instrumental about the test? Because that is the incentive structure we're faced with. Get better scores or be put in what's called AYP (or, more rightly, failure to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress. In a strange twist of the vernacular, a school "makes" AYP when they are doing fine, but they're "in" AYP when they're not.)

Again, good education is something of a sloppy and slow business. We wish it to be tight, so we measure outcomes on one battery of tests only.

Middle vs. Junior? What's the best practice?

Numerous school districts are considering reorganizing their schools for the middle years. Here's another example of the confusion over school reform and the implementation of so-called best practices.

Bethel and Puyallup currently use the junior high model (grades 7-9 in the same building, 10-12 at the high school) and are considering--or moving to, in Bethel's case--the middle school model (6-8 in one building, 9-12 at the high school).

Tacoma currently uses the middle school model and is considering moving to the junior high model.

Somebody (maybe two somebodies), in other words, is quitting best practice and moving to second-best practice.

Herein is reflected the conceptual and practical muddledness of 'best practice'--it's too hard to determine, measure, evaluate, etc., when you're talking about the widely diverse, even divergent, needs of such large numbers of people engaged in such a wide range of different tasks.

Yes, if we say 'raise the test scores' is the primary goal--and so much of what the reward and consequence structures communicate is just that, then we can more easily identify a best practice to accomplish that.

But we live in some measure of denial that we elevate (almost reify) 'test scores' the way we do, and so we allow ourselves to also pretend that we can identify the best practices for everything else, then drive toward all those other goals, too, all without ever facing the ways that those different goals might conflict with each other.

As I've mentioned before, it's hard to take seriously the talk of 'educating the whole child' when what we really care about are the outcomes of basically three tests--Math, Science, and Reading/Writing.

More on this some other time.

Steelers Jersey Story, Last Time

10 days ago, I sent the following letter to the publisher and the editor of The News Tribune. To this point, I've gotten no response.

-----

Dear....,

I wonder if you could tell me about the decision to make that such a prominent story (Top Story on the web site; front page, below the fold).

I'm discouraged to find it in TNT. While I know that a lot of people routinely unleash stridency in the comment section, if you look at those comments, you'll see they are particularly vitriolic. These comments, then, strengthen the impression that this story invokes serious authority-disorder bias (in this variant, constructing drama and conflict by the 'revelation' that the authorities are out of order--AM), and thus begins my real disappointment.

The schools are an easy target. And it's way too easy to frame a story in such a way that the school looks really bad. I can assure you of several things, though. My daughter confirmed that the school announced several times through the week that it was Seahawk garb only. Schools have several of those "spirit" days where they relax this or that dress code element. I'm sure they repeated several times, and nearly all understood--likely even the subject of The News Tribune's story-- the parameters. I can also assure you that a lot of kids complain about wearing the uniforms (my kids went through Truman) and wish for such relaxations. A lot of kids want more of this relaxation. The school leadership likes to use such special days as a reward, because most kids hew to the line really well for the vast majority of the year. Indeed, Truman has (or at least used to have) a behavior/citizenship incentive that has some opportunities for relaxed dress as one of the rewards. Further, I can tell you that if (now, likely when) they cancel such days, many (including some parents) will complain.

So, school leaders are reviled (by some) because of the uniform demands. They are reviled by others (look at the comments on the article site) because they occasionally relax those demands. Still others want more of those periodic relaxations.

And one 'violator's' personal story is way too easily constructed to make the school leadership appear ridiculous.

Obviously, I don't know this boy's story, but I will also tell you that there are plenty of kids at every school who push a little here, and stretch a little there. Do some thought experiments about other things he might have worn that violated, and imagine how the school should respond. What if he wore a polo with print? A polo with a Steeler's logo pinned on it? What if he wore a Seahawks jersey with a gang sign added to it? What if he wore Mariners--or Huskies, Cougars, etc.--jersey? The permutations go on. And some kids love to find those little angles and test them.

And, of course, when we enforce against that little push, the constant refrain is "I didn't do anything." So, here's a student who was in fact warned, then invited to change, then (and only then) sent home. He did do something. You may argue with the decision about allowing jerseys at all. You may argue with the allowance for only Seahawks jerseys. Fine...I may so argue. But given that (rather innocuous) decision, the student should follow that rule.

So, ultimately I'm discouraged that for his taking a stand on a fundamentally immaterial issue, you've facilitated this youngster getting his 15 minutes of fame.

(And, by the by, though I'm not assuming this of the student in this case, I can tell you there are plenty of kids who make such irrelevant stands on principle--or should I say, stands on irrelevant principle?--who don't make nearly such a stand on doing their school work, respecting others, etc.)

Finally, the schools have been looking bad for some time now. But you know as well as I do that plenty of good and hard-working teachers are sinking over at Baker (or whatever other failing school) for a whole lot of reasons way beyond the school's control. If journalism is supposed to check, monitor, watchdog, or comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable...whichever you choose, then tell this jersey story better.

Thanks. I know you get a lot of blowback on a lot of things about your coverage, so I appreciate you hearing mine. (As it turns out, I don't know if they did hear it.--AM)

Best,

Andrew

Junior Achievement

For the last several years, we have taken our 8th graders to Junior Achievement-Finance Park in Auburn, WA. It's a great hands-on day in which students make personal budgeting decisions, pay bills, and balance their checkbooks.

JA provides a workbook for doing preparatory lessons, extensive guidance in how to use the material, and plenty of follow-on curriculum.

If your school is thinking about this program, do it. If they're not thinking about it, it's worth considering.

The Jersey that won't go away

Letters and comments are flooding the local paper about the jersey story. In this letter, the author claims (as many commenters do in various places) that the school's action is unconstitutional. The headine--that the schools don't trump the Constitution--doesn't even make sense. The Constitution is not an authority or a specific administrative decision. The Constitution lays the ground work for how decisions are made.

And the fact of the matter is that the schools have innumerable rules that pull and tease the limits of what the Constitution establishes and allows. Certain forms of speech are not allowed in schools. Student property stored in lockers is subject to searches without all the same supporting documentation required in other settings. And, yes, dress is regulated.

The author of the letter suggests that the Steelers fan wanted to express another opinion. Again, if he'd worn a Seahawks jersey expressing his opinion with a gang sign or a sexual expression, the school would have banned it...AND EVERYBODY WOULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD AND AGREED WITH THAT DECISION. And NO NEWS STORY.

The most bizarre element here is that everyone is getting so worked up over a non-issue. Oh, it's the principle of the matter. What principle, you say? The letter writer's bottom line: "It's always good to challenge authority when you think they're wrong."

Governments, organizations, families, every structure that involves more than one person uses some amount of coercion (in the mix of persuasion, guilt, encouragement, pleading, etc.). And while none of us likes to be coerced, we do have to SUBMIT sometimes, and it wouldn't be called submitting except that it's NOT what we prefer. If we could all do what we prefer, it would be called harmony, which is short-lived and situational, at best, and we wouldn't have to submit to anybody or anything.

In other words, submitting to authority (which the school board code of student conduct calls for) only matters when it's not something you prefer or would choose for yourself on your own. But when we lose trust of the authoritative institutions in our lives (as we have), we feel ourselves less willing to submit. Unfortunately, more bad than good tends to follow from this.

Is this just a dream?

I can hear anxious parents now--"We've got to get Billy to sleep, or he'll end up depressed!"

Another example of what Neil Postman lamented about numerating our lives in studies and the demise of common sense. First, the sample size and the differences in outcome may or may not be, as they say, statistically significant. 33% of those who slept well also showed anxiety and/or depression. Not all that much less than the 46% of bad sleepers.

Second, other primary causes are not clear (at least in this news report). Could there be something prior to both sleep problems and depression that contributes to both? If so, then the relationship claimed between the two is spurious.

Third, the causation is wildly unclear. It seems just as likely that people who have (or end up with) depression don't sleep well as a RESULT of that condition. Or, more likely, the depression and the sleep problems are interactive.

In any case, one wonders whether anxious parents desperate to get their children to sleep might end up contributing to mental health problems that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

Mothering Tigers, Crouching Standardized Tests

Why does one even bother wading into the mess that is this supposed debate about Chinese mothering philosophy? Oh well, here goes.

In the last few days appeared first a WSJ article by Amy Chua professing that Chinese mothers are superior.

After lots of blowback from commentators, Chua said on NPR that it was tongue-in-cheek. I confess, I was fooled by the first article...I took it straight.

Still later, she 'talked back' in WSJ, to clarify.

So, of course, there's now a raging debate--which will probably flare out by the time I publish this post--about high expectations, nurturing and the balance between the two. (None of this, of course, hurts sales of the book version.)

Framing the debate in such a way, though, seems largely instrumental (what's the best balance for maximization of your child?) and lacking thoughtfulness about the content of those expectations (what, exactly, are we maximizing on?).

After all, by definition, half of children, like half of all adults, are below average. For instance, I will be a far below average chess player or ballet dancer, even if you give me 10,000 plus 10,000 hours of practice. Sure, I'd be much better than before, but I would still be lightyears behind Bobby Fischer or Mikhail Baryshnikov, or even a lesser great in either field. I would be an outstanding hack (well, at chess, maybe--I would just be a clumsy hack at ballet).

It is unreasonable for us to assume that all and everyone can achieve the same transcendent heights in whatever particular activity or discipline one chooses, just by working hard enough.

This may also have important implications for the standardized test we administer in school. We call the magic target (a 400 score on Washington's Measurement of Student Progress) 'meeting standard.'

Well, unless we set the standard ludicrously low (and it does seem to be dropping...more on that some other time), some students will not meet it. To put it another way, a bar so low that everybody passes doesn't really measure anything worth knowing. I had a student last year that got perfect scores on both the reading and math tests. She could have dropped dramatically and still met standard. Would we count her a success if she fell to 405 (from her 550 in math)? The answer is YES, she counts as a 'met standard' on our school's results.

So, the fact of the matter is that the test isn't really about measuring a student's progress for his or her sake (or information or guidance). We collect the individual yes/no results as a way to evaluate a school. It is, of course, an incredibly narrow measure, even on its own terms. For, if we really cared about progress we'd establish a metric of growth that would register success by increases (at least for students on the bottom part of the score spectrum).

We could for instance, call a student successful (passing), if s/he achieves 400 or increases in score by 10 points (which is fairly significant for those below 400).

Or, better yet, we could administer a shorter (usually about 1 hour) version of the math and reading tests, the results of which come overnight and the scores of which tend to parallel and predict MSP outcomes. Doing this (as my district does), we can actually chart growth through the year and across years, and we can show students their results so that we can set goals for the next test.

As it stands now, students take the MSP in May and receive their results the following October. So much later that the students have little prospect of actually understanding anything about their performance.

Let's quit avoiding the important questions, shall we. Of course we should set high expectations for children. What kind of expectations, though? And, how do we adjust our expectations as those growing children show varying aptitudes--across different skill sets, and compared to their peers?

Another Modest Proposal

How about a rule that anybody who wants to undertake school reform, or make arguments about it, even when using evidence-based studies, first spend one week--all day for 5 full days--in a class room?

A week in the same teacher's room, following him or her all week, seeing, hearing, participating in all the things s/he does.

I don't pretend this will make everyone see things the way teachers do, or, for goodness sake, the way the union does.

I do expect folks would have a fuller, more accurate sense of the school life, the teacher's life, the student life, etc.

Would make for a better conversation about school reform, I think.

Case in point

Wow! Speaking of authority and obedience as I did earlier today, in today's news I see that a student at Truman in Tacoma (where my daughter attends), the administration decided to let students wear Seahawks garb or their school uniform. A student who wore a Steelers jersey instead and refused to take it off was sent home (after being warned).

I feel for the principals there (whom I know). Look at the sanctimonious comments after the article. People write as if they know the situation, and they know that the school was dunderheaded.

I know how this goes. Teachers and administrators repeatedly announce and post that Seahawks gear will be acceptable on Friday (for the playoff game), and Seahawks gear only. I'd be surprised if they didn't specify repeatedly that only Seahawks gear would be an acceptable alternative to the school uniform. At Apple Cup time they probably allow Husky or Cougar gear, and nothing else. They probably have a few such days. If the Mariners were any better....Sorry, that's too much a cheap shot.

I'm not personally fond of these so-called spirit days at my school, so I don't wear any of that garb. But some students and some staff do.

You may say, 'Well, they shouldn't have such special dress days.' And maybe that is right. But given the fact that they did allow it, and this student refused to adhere to the adjusted rule, he was duly warned then sent home.

Do a thought experiment. What if he'd been wearing inappropriate clothing--gang sayings, sexual sayings, sagging pants, or the like? What if he was wearing a Seahawks jersey with a gang sign drawn on it? Should that be tolerated?

They relaxed the rule in one specific way for one specific day. I know some students feel like 'it isn't fair' that...well, fill in the blank with the myriad personal preferences each student might hold. But nothing ever is fair (in our own minds) when it goes against one's own preferences. And, of course, every school has numerous students that seek ways to test or push the rules. And as one commenter noted, this might likely ruin the prospect of any such special days in the future.

Whatever you think of this, though, don't rush to judgment of the school leaders. They weren't nearly as arbitrary or capricious as so many of the commenters think.

Moral Disorder

I went to the Tacoma School Board's study session on Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying last night. I have a thousand and one thoughts about what I heard, but I start with just a few.

We're stuck. We as a community, the school as an institution, parents who want to be involved, students who have to live together. We're all stuck.

Here's how.

The Board's policy on student conduct says simply this:

Students are expected to:

A. Conform to reasonable standards of acceptable behavior;

B. Respect the rights, person and property of others;

C. Preserve the degree of order necessary for a positive climate for learning; and

D. Submit to the authority of staff and respond accordingly.

Such abstractions are not unique to Tacoma. But just what is reasonable? Who decided? What is the order necessary for a positive learning climate? Do all students have the same needs and views of what is positive for themselves?

The interesting one in the list is D. Submitting to authority is, of course, uncool for students, but more to the point, is anathema to the messages the society and even the schools send about being yourself, expressing whatever you feel, maximizing yourself, etc.

There is, in other words, no logic present in the code, or in the sociology of the school that justifies the claim for submission.

We've dropped moral reasoning out (remember, everything has to be evidence-based), and made life a series of instrumental calculations. Will this advance my prospects? Will I get a better job, scholarship or status? Will I feel better by this?

In such an environment, how does one 'respond accordingly' to the authorities to which one is supposed to be in submission? How does a person in self-maximizing mode (which teenagers pursue with fervor) balance that with the responsibility to living in a community?

Proceed from here to the board's policy on harassment. After the regular language about all the factors of identity people may not be abused for, we are to be reassured by this:

The goals of this policy include appropriate intervention, restoration of a positive climate, and support for victims and others impacted by the violation.

Appropriate, of course, carries all the burden here. It seems to me that when you combine the ideas inherent in both these policies, a part of the appropriate response is to counsel the aggressor about the reasonable standards of behavior by pointing out the immorality of the conduct.

But having drained away our ability to make strong and coherent moral claims, we resort to a morality that's actually based on instrumentality. 'How would you feel if you...?' is a question that tries to get the perpetrator to identify with (see the instrumental consequences for) the target.

I always warn students to be careful with rhetorical questions...you never know how your respondent might answer. And, indeed, I've heard plenty of students profess that they wouldn't think it was a big problem to hear or experience this or that hostile thing they themselves just said; often they justify this by resorting to 'it's free speech....I'm just telling the truth' line of (un)reasoning.

Consider, instead, what an old friend of mine (who served for a time as campus supervisor at my school) used to say to students when they were agitated about 'getting in trouble.' He'd tell them that there is absolute morality and institutional morality. The school makes some institutional rules for how we live together while at school, and those only apply at school. (No gum chewing, for instance.)

Absolute morality are rules that apply everywhere. For instance, he'd explain that what we say to people should be governed by an effort to think of them higher than we think of ourselves (a biblical concept, by the way, that he would render without reference to the bible).

Having established a little bit more coherence of moral order, he could then point out when students had violated rules of absolute moral order. It made his conversations about conduct much richer and more powerful.

Because when it comes down to it, living well in a community means we're living in relationship to other people. And to make those relationships effective and good, we really do need to think highly of the others. And that should affect and constrain the way we speak.

Now, let's move toward an explication of how to live together positively in community, instead of just pointing out those negatives that we ought to get rid of. Can we do this...it will be tough, since we have great conflict over the moral order of how. The data have been hard to find evaluate.

What do we do now?

Everybody is staking the farm on incentive contracts for teachers. Michelle Rhee got the idea rolling in Washington, DC. President Obama seconded it in the Race to the Top program. Mark Zuckerberg poured Facebook money into Newark to support it. A heart-stirring movie made it easy to believe in. Rhee is so convinced, she called it the "way to fix schools." And now the school district where I live is considering it for their teachers.

But then comes a study from Vanderbilt University that says incentive pay didn't help raise test scores.

Now what? We're being pushed--no, driven--to focus on the data. The district where I work has a 'data team' that, well, looks at the data. For what I'm not exactly sure...I'm not on the team.

In any case, we keep getting bombarded with data, and we keep getting told that we must commit to 'evidence-based best practices.'

The editorial discussing the study ends with this almost comically dry observation:

The Vanderbilt study will be far from the last word on teacher merit pay.

Just what will be the last word? When will we know we've heard it? What will it be based on? Data? Common sense? Campaign contributions? Gates Foundation grants? Rock-paper-scissors?

The Evidence and The Test...I'll take the Tiger

The data, the evidence, best practices, standardized tests. Aaahhh, sweet delights of the school life.

Last year, my middle school got to pilot the online version of the standardized reading test, after years of paper/pencil tests. So, last year's test was doubly different for us. First, it was a new test (under a new state superintendent); second, we went electronic. I observed then that these two things would make the 2010 test a baseline that should serve as a new starting point in the search for trends and patterns. I don't think anybody in 'educational leadership' cares much for the requirements of useful analysis, though.

Not that it would matter, as I don't really know what to do with this.

Reading Passing at my school, for the 2008, 2009, 2010 tests

(Scores from OSPI Report Card)

6th grade 84.9 79.7 66.1

7th grade 73.2 74.2 69.2

8th grade 72.1 80.3 82.8

The 6th and 7th graders decreased significantly on their computer tests. (Move right one box and down one box to follow the same group over the years--an idea we never seem to talk much about when we're 'analyzing' the data each fall. The 2009-2010 6th graders achieved 81% passing in 5th grade.)

The 8th graders, however, significantly increased over their 7th grade performance, though they didn't quite make it back to their 6th grade performance.

One school, one of the four standardized tests (writing, math and science are the other three), indecipherable patterns (which would be even more muddled if I showed you the other test scores and also went back a couple of years).

Now, try to figure out which programs to emphasize for this school. For instance, what's a 7th grade language arts teacher to do--they face both the reading and writing test in the same year?

I hope the Governor's reorganization plan will make this all clearer.

A Proposal Somewhat Less Modest than Swift

Education reform is in the air. Indeed, it IS the air. The words are as ubiquitous as 'safety issue' on a school leadership team, 'ADHD' at a parent conference, 'EALR' and 'GLE' at a teacher in-service.

While this article is nearly 2 years old, it captures the recurring and consistent patterns of this rather tired discussion. I particularly like the headline--WA education advocates lobby for school reform. The advocates named in the title include 'education leaders,' like the state superintendent and a parent from Tacoma. Teachers and teacher representatives, the story tells us, were absent.

The only person in that bunch that really could be called an education advocate was the mother, from the Black Education Strategy Roundtable. The superintendent's advocacy is inflected with his organizational interest, and teachers, especially when represented by the union, have personal job interests at stake.

Organizationally speaking, that makes both the superintendent and teachers, education advocates AND pursuers of their self-interest. I, for one, have something less than complete confidence in the views of such advocates.

And frankly, the proposals that come out of such 'advocacy' are marginal, or at best, so generic as to be meaningless--

A longer school day and more credits for high school students, preschool for low-income kids, all-day kindergarten, more fairness in the way the state passes out money to schools around the state, and more money for librarians, counselors and nurses.

No surprises there, and hardly disagreeable, except on the part of the teacher's union, apparently.

But what really can come of this kind of proposal in a political climate and budget crisis such as we are currently experiencing?

So, a modest proposal for more school days (so less summer and vacation drop off), without adding to the 180 teacher days!

40 5-day weeks for students, with Fridays reserved for enrichment, special projects and activities, extra remediation, etc., and staffed by half the teachers. In other words, the teaching (and, perhaps administrative and classified) staff works 9 out of every 10 days, with one Friday off and one Friday at the special bonus day.

Cancel the in-service days, stop the numerous days off that only schools take, and so on. Make necessary adjustments for the normal holidays and we can get 200 school days for a little bit more operating expense.

Students get more instruction time, less vacation-related loss, and more time for 'bonus' activities, or class schedule variation.

This, of course, is not The Answer, but it seems more plausible than hopes for a reorientation that involves a few billion more dollars every year.

On the other hand, it is AN answer...it just depends on what the question is.

The Clarion Call for School Reform

I've seen firsthand how news titles don't necessarily match the article content. This piece is a case in point. "Education Reform" is all the rage, and to frame an article as part of that amorphous category makes the content of this particular discussion more important.

Does anybody seriously think that Billy's and Susie's (or any other child's) education is going to be tangibly affected by either the changes the governor proposes or the superintendent's demands for continuity?

The governor wants 'accountability' and claims her reorganization will save money. Organization charts don't reflect everything, but her reorganized structure seems to have a lot more boxes (for people and offices) than the current chart. That doesn't look promising for money saving or accountability.

The superintendent, all too predictably, wants to protect funding for his constituency.

This may be reform, but by the time its effects trickle down to the class room, it has much less of the impact the high bureaucrats had hoped for.

Are we so ungenerous that we can't congratulate success?

Congratulations to 2 Olympia High School seniors who achieved perfect scores on their SATs. The comments following the news article at this link reflect the 'messy spot schools are in' that I wrote about a few times back.

Note how quickly the 'debate' degenerates into critiques of the 'SAT industry,' to questions about whether the 2 may have cheated, and the time-worn claim about how badly the US fares by international comparison.

Even if you sing with the choir of the critics of schools, or of the current institutional arrangements, let's give these 2 their due. Any flaws in the educational system are not their fault. They just succeeded mightily within the parameters given to them. Does anybody doubt they would do well in an education environment reformed by the most recent study and implementation of the latest and greatest best practice?

I also find the 'similar articles' options interesting. Following a story about perfect academic accomplishment, you can read a story about the number of students who lack the basic skills for 2-year college.

Yes, it's both. There is remarkable achievement and glaring weakness; fantastic accomplishment and stunning underachievement (and much, much more) in schools.

When has it been otherwise?

The Right to an Education

I recently read the outstanding Technopoly, by the late Neil Postman. He points out, among other more important observations about how our infatuation with technology has blossomed into an ideological commitment (some representative excerpts), that we have numerated our understanding and evaluation of society and culture such that we think quantitative studies are somehow more profoundly compelling than our common sense.

Obviously, some social research has led to counterintuitive findings. But this quite serious New York Times article about private schools 'counseling out' (gotta love the euphemism) students the school no longer wants merely added to what even a casual observer of schools really should already know. Private schools can cull their populations according to whatever preferences or desires the school has. Public schools cannot.

I'll admit, in the last few years at my school we have convinced a couple of kids' parents that an online school option might be a better fit for their child. That's as many kids as we've had arrested at school so far this year (4 months). But those two will likely be back later this year.

The Problem with Public Schools

I’d guess that just by reading the title of this article you are already sharpening your intellectual knives. If you are predisposed against the public schools--either for their expense or their social role--you were probably thinking, “Problem with the public schools? There’s only one?” On the other hand, if you tend to support or like the schools (or at least yours), you probably thought, “What’s the use of another laundry list of failures in the schools?” If you work in the schools, you thought both, and probably added, “How many Gates Foundation (see the "Future of Education" material at the bottom of the page) studies does it take to blame teachers for every ill in society?”

Forgive me the conceit, for conceit it is. “The murky muddled situation in the public schools” seems unlikely to stir as much enthusiasm or grab the attention. But that is precisely the situation the schools find themselves in. I believe that it would help our civic discussion of the schools if everyone engaged in that conversation slowed down and took a more thorough look at the schools and the situation they find themselves in. Let me explain by example; let’s take reading.

Why can’t Johnny read? In 1955, Rudolf Flesch told us it was because Johnny was being taught wrongly. Memorizing sight words doesn’t help Johnny figure out (decode) new words when he encounters them, Flesch pointed out, so we needed to go back to phonics. Easy enough, so it seems. But the supposed persistence of reading deficiencies today means that either Flesch was wrong (he wasn’t--phonics-like decoding is necessary for new words, which eventually do become sight words...after reading them often enough), or nobody listened to Flesch (many did, and got caught up in highly emotional pedagogical debates), or something else is going on.

So, what do we know about Johnny and his reading? Let’s suppose Johnny is about to enter middle school, sixth grade, and he is already several years behind grade level in reading. Let’s work backwards these last several years, starting with that first day in sixth grade.

The first task is to determine the precise nature of Johnny’s reading ‘problems.’ If he has phonemic awareness difficulties (doesn’t know his letter sounds), he can’t decode words as he reads them, and he will quit reading within a few minutes of starting, for he will quickly struggle with what are basic words for strong readers. If, on the other hand, his reading mechanics are solid, and he reads with reasonable fluency, but has a comprehension weakness, Johnny might happily read but not understand any of what he’s reading. These are, of course, two different kinds of problems, requiring different intervention responses.

Johnny really needs to spend some time getting extra repetitions (just like exercise, strengthening your reading requires practice and repetition). At school, he needs a class where readers at comparable levels can work on the same skill deficiencies. Without an intervention, and left in a general language arts class, Johnny will read less successfully than the students who are reading grade level material, and will likely withdraw, intellectually, from the class (though he may desire to remain socially engaged, which ends up in general class room disruption as he tries to socialize about things far outside the material of the class). He will probably remain frustrated with reading, and he will not get that extra practice he so desperately needs.

Interventions are available for Johnny. Intensive programs of practice have been shown to get two years (or more) reading growth in one school year. 40 years of successful intervention seems compelling, but in the case of the so-called direct instruction programs (which are highly scripted), many individual teachers reject the program in deference to their own pedagogical values, their distaste for boring curriculum, or their gut feeling that the program ‘just isn’t right.’

Even so, many districts use such programs to great effect. So, why would Johnny fall so far behind so fast? Well, for a variety of reasons. Johnny may have indeed had a reading intervention in an earlier grade, but perhaps he moved and the new district didn’t have an intervention program, or anything in the same style and format. The demands for local control over schools, which has left us with nearly 15,000 independent school-governing bodies, means that incoherence from district to district is not only possible, but unavoidable. Partly for this reason (as well as others), frequent moving can have a deleterious effect on academic performance.

Reading intervention programs, for instance, are intensive and highly structured, so moving to a new district, even if done seamlessly, can disrupt the intervention gains, as Johnny gets evaluated, placed, socialized, etc. in the new district. It will be even harder for Johnny if his new district uses a different remediation program or system, as his earlier gains wouldn’t be as smoothly built upon as if he’d stayed in place. And if Johnny moves to a different state, the organizational confusion mounts even higher.

Johnny doesn’t have to move, though, for his situation to worsen. If Johnny’s school district suffered budget cutbacks significant enough, the school leadership had to make choices about which programs to keep and which to cut. The choice is not an easy one, as sometimes it can look like choosing to help one group of students instead of another, but in the end his district might have cut back on the particular reading intervention he needed.

Or maybe Johnny really did have a string of bad teachers. Men and women who neglected him, or whole groups of youngsters, and let the reading basics just slip by. This explanation seems among the more popular at the moment. One Gates Foundation study after rousing movie after Michelle Rhee-type incentive contract puts the onus for Johnny’s difficulties on teachers.

Fine enough, teachers should be accountable for their performance. But let’s be clear. In the current social conversation, teachers and schools are uniquely responsible for Johnny’s failure to read. Parents and students are treated as neutral (or even active but frustrated by the school’s ineptness) in this story, passive recipients of reading services from the schools. But to be successful at learning to read, Johnny and his parents need to be active, not passive. Let’s look at Johnny’s situation again to see how.

We know--from common sense as well as studies--that parents who read are more likely to raise children who read, and parents who don’t, won’t. We have no social mechanisms, though, available to hold parents to the expectation that they prepare their children for reading, or for school more generally. So, if Johnny’s parents do not make reading important by reading to him, and maybe--just maybe--teaching him the ABC song, and a few letter names before he shows up at Kindergarten, he’s already behind. Indeed, Kindergarten teachers can quickly predict which students will struggle deep into their school careers. A self-fulfilling prophecy, but not the one about teachers marking out strugglers and holding them down. Rather, the prophecy was written before the first day of school, and is fulfilled because parents who don’t read before Johnny went to school aren’t particularly likely to become more engaged in Johnny’s reading once he’s in school. But once delivered to the schoolhouse door, teachers and the schools will be held responsible for the outcome, and, subsequently, for making Johnny read.

So the schools try to devise reading intervention programs to address Johnny’s needs. But even an effective intervention program needs to be reinforced throughout other areas of the student’s life, say, at home. David Brooks reports on a recent study that confirmed what we should all know intuitively, namely, that a summer reading program (of just 12 books, as it turns out) could significantly stem the ‘summer drop-off’ so prevalent in struggling students. We also know, of course, that struggling students are precisely the ones least likely to read 12 books over the summer. They are struggling because they don’t read well. They don’t enjoy reading since they’re not strong at it, so they don’t read, and they suffer the summer drop-off, falling back again, and on it goes. This downward spiral can be reversed, of course, but it would take intentional and intensive work at school, at home, and during the summer. Intentional effort by teachers, parents, but most of all Johnny.

Read on...

The Problem with Public Schools, continued

So, what do we know about Johnny and his reading? Let’s suppose Johnny is about to enter middle school, sixth grade, and he is already several years behind grade level in reading. Let’s work backwards these last several years, starting with that first day in sixth grade.

The first task is to determine the precise nature of Johnny’s reading ‘problems.’ If he has phonemic awareness difficulties (doesn’t know his letter sounds), he can’t decode words as he reads them, and he will quit reading within a few minutes of starting, for he will quickly struggle with what are basic words for strong readers. If, on the other hand, his reading mechanics are solid, and he reads with reasonable fluency, but has a comprehension weakness, Johnny might happily read but not understand any of what he’s reading. These are, of course, two different kinds of problems, requiring different intervention responses.

Johnny really needs to spend some time getting extra repetitions (just like exercise, strengthening your reading requires practice and repetition). At school, he needs a class where readers at comparable levels can work on the same skill deficiencies. Without an intervention, and left in a general language arts class, Johnny will read less successfully than the students who are reading grade level material, and will likely withdraw, intellectually, from the class (though he may desire to remain socially engaged, which ends up in general class room disruption as he tries to socialize about things far outside the material of the class). He will probably remain frustrated with reading, and he will not get that extra practice he so desperately needs.

Interventions are available for Johnny. Intensive programs of practice have been shown to get two years (or more) reading growth in one school year. 40 years of successful intervention seems compelling, but in the case of the so-called direct instruction programs (which are highly scripted), many individual teachers reject the program in deference to their own pedagogical values, their distaste for boring curriculum, or their gut feeling that the program ‘just isn’t right.’

Even so, many districts use such programs to great effect. So, why would Johnny fall so far behind so fast? Well, for a variety of reasons. Johnny may have indeed had a reading intervention in an earlier grade, but perhaps he moved and the new district didn’t have an intervention program, or anything in the same style and format. The demands for local control over schools, which has left us with nearly 15,000 independent school-governing bodies, means that incoherence from district to district is not only possible, but unavoidable. Partly for this reason (as well as others), frequent moving can have a deleterious effect on academic performance.

Reading intervention programs, for instance, are intensive and highly structured, so moving to a new district, even if done seamlessly, can disrupt the intervention gains, as Johnny gets evaluated, placed, socialized, etc. in the new district. It will be even harder for Johnny if his new district uses a different remediation program or system, as his earlier gains wouldn’t be as smoothly built upon as if he’d stayed in place. And if Johnny moves to a different state, the organizational confusion mounts even higher.

Johnny doesn’t have to move, though, for his situation to worsen. If Johnny’s school district suffered budget cutbacks significant enough, the school leadership had to make choices about which programs to keep and which to cut. The choice is not an easy one, as sometimes it can look like choosing to help one group of students instead of another, but in the end his district might have cut back on the particular reading intervention he needed.

Or maybe Johnny really did have a string of bad teachers. Men and women who neglected him, or whole groups of youngsters, and let the reading basics just slip by. This explanation seems among the more popular at the moment. One Gates Foundation study after rousing movie after Michelle Rhee-type incentive contract puts the onus for Johnny’s difficulties on teachers.

Fine enough, teachers should be accountable for their performance. But let’s be clear. In the current social conversation, teachers and schools are uniquely responsible for Johnny’s failure to read. Parents and students are treated as neutral (or even active but frustrated by the school’s ineptness) in this story, passive recipients of reading services from the schools. But to be successful at learning to read, Johnny and his parents need to be active, not passive. Let’s look at Johnny’s situation again to see how.

Read on...

The Problem with Public Schools, still continued

We know--from common sense as well as studies--that parents who read are more likely to raise children who read, and parents who don’t, won’t. We have no social mechanisms, though, available to hold parents to the expectation that they prepare their children for reading, or for school more generally. So, if Johnny’s parents do not make reading important by reading to him, and maybe--just maybe--teaching him the ABC song, and a few letter names before he shows up at Kindergarten, he’s already behind. Indeed, Kindergarten teachers can quickly predict which students will struggle deep into their school careers. A self-fulfilling prophecy, but not the one about teachers marking out strugglers and holding them down. Rather, the prophecy was written before the first day of school, and is fulfilled because parents who don’t read before Johnny went to school aren’t particularly likely to become more engaged in Johnny’s reading once he’s in school. But once delivered to the schoolhouse door, teachers and the schools will be held responsible for the outcome, and, subsequently, for making Johnny read.

So the schools try to devise reading intervention programs to address Johnny’s needs. But even an effective intervention program needs to be reinforced throughout other areas of the student’s life, say, at home. David Brooks reports on a recent study that confirmed what we should all know intuitively, namely, that a summer reading program (of just 12 books, as it turns out) could significantly stem the ‘summer drop-off’ so prevalent in struggling students. We also know, of course, that struggling students are precisely the ones least likely to read 12 books over the summer. They are struggling because they don’t read well. They don’t enjoy reading since they’re not strong at it, so they don’t read, and they suffer the summer drop-off, falling back again, and on it goes. This downward spiral can be reversed, of course, but it would take intentional and intensive work at school, at home, and during the summer. Intentional effort by teachers, parents, but most of all Johnny.

Read on...

The Problem with Public Schools, Time

So we, as a community, are left with something of a mess. When Johnny falls behind in reading, and the school is the primary instrument of closing that gap, it will be an uphill battle. The situation would improve dramatically if Johnny were invested in the work. But if he’s not--and all too often, he’s not, then the task is all the more daunting. Here’s why.

Suppose Johnny gets two daily classes (one regular language class and one intervention class) devoted to reading work all year. His school will have focused work time equivalent to two full weeks--roughly 340 hours--on Johnny’s reading. If Malcolm Gladwell’s claims (in Outliers) about needing 10,000 hours of practice to achieve virtuosity is even half right, it takes at least several thousand hours--spread out over years--to master and sustain even high level reading skills, the kind that involves analysis, interpretation, prediction, inference, response, etc.

Even if Johnny had the ‘double dip’ of reading classes for the remaining seven years of his academic career, that amounts to less than 2400 hours, all of which would not be completely devoted to his own reading practice. Clearly, any remediation of basic skills by the school really requires that Johnny continue to practice at home.

To hope for even those 2400 hours in school is a pipe dream, though. The schools just don’t have the personnel available to offer the small classes that allow the greater repetitions Johnny needs. When general education class size maximums are 32, and remediation program requirements (according to the curriculum’s producers) call for classes of 12-15, the numbers just won’t pencil. Johnny might get one or two years of double classes, but after that he’s likely back into the general language arts classes.

Add to all this awkward and confusing state and federal rules, tied, of course, to the money they each dangle before school districts, and sometimes the regulations can undermine an individual school’s interventions. Some programs of support, which might be funded by specific government regulations, require Johnny to qualify for that program. If Johnny really needs intervention, but doesn’t qualify for the particular program, which might be the primary intervention that district has opted (or is compelled by law) to undertake, he might just end up in a general language arts class only. Only 170 hours a year, with 32 students, and many fewer extra repetitions.

(This continues...several more entries under January's archive.)