Addressing the External Factors

March 10, 2010 – 8:13 am

It is clear that health factors play a role in learning. Even adults have challenges being productive and alert when they aren’t feeling well, so it’s no surprise that children have the same challenges when they are in school.

Earlier this week, a study was released that states the importance of coordinating efforts to address health disparities that can hamper learning. Charles E. Basch, the author of the study, says “At the national level, we’re on the verge of investing billions in our educational system, and the return on those investments is going to be jeopardized unless these health issues are addressed in a much more cogent way.”

I couldn’t agree more and would take it a step further: we must address health factors as well as the other external factors children face.

I am happy to see the President’s proposed investment in Promise Neighborhoods and the Secretary’s enthusiasm for community schools as an approach for school improvement. I want to see more.

By lbornfreund | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Research Rejects Obama School Turnaround Plans

March 7, 2010 – 9:47 pm

This month as some states are winning huge Race to the Top (RTTT) federal stimulus grants from the U.S. Department of Education and when President Obama is including RTTT strategies in his proposals for reauthorization of the federal education law, it is time to look at what research says about turnaround plans being required for states and school districts to qualify for the federal dollars.

On February 23, a Central Falls, Rhode Island school board fired the entire staff of the community’s high school as one of four strategies the President and Secretary of Education are prescribing for schools deemed “failing” under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The President declared: “…if a school continues to fail its students… there’s got to be a sense of accountability. And that’s what happened in Rhode Island last week at a chronically troubled school…”

The four strategies include: Turnaround—replace the principal and at least half the staff, along with changing governance and the instructional program; Restart—reopen the school under a charter management organization or an educational management organization; School Closure—close the failing school and enroll the students in other schools; and Transformation—replace the principal, bring in new curriculum, more instructional time, and community connections. These strategies are untested; there is no evidence that, apart from the “transformation” model, they will raise academic achievement. Research instead supports efforts to work with existing staff for improvement. After five years studying schools that have been successfully turned around under NCLB, the Washington, D.C., Center on Education Policy concludes: “Schools that have raised achievement enough to exit NCLB improvement have often done so with multiple strategies tailored to their individual needs.”
The Consortium on Chicago School Research (Organizing Schools for Success, 2010) reports that successful schools continually work at five essentials: inspired leadership; parent-community ties; professional staff capacity; student-centered learning; and academically demanding instruction. The Consortium demonstrates that school reform is more difficult to accomplish, while all the more important, in racially-and poverty-segregated communities with extremely high family mobility and high rates of child abuse and foster care.

Stanford University researcher Linda Darling-Hammond, (The Flat World and Education, 2010) declares that America must “finally renounce its obstinate commitment to educational inequality” by confronting poverty, growing resegregation, minimal social supports for children, and unequal allocation of well-trained teachers and excellent curriculum.

Diane Ravitch, education historian and long supporter of performance accountability, choice, charters, and merit pay, has abandoned such ideas. In The Death and Life of the Great American School System (2010), Ravitch denounces strategies favored by RTTT, rejecting the “fantasy that schools serving poor children might be able to construct a teaching corps… exclusively of superstar teachers… if only school leaders could fire at will.” “Closing schools,” she writes, “accelerates a sense of transiency and impermanence.” “The question for the future is whether the continued growth of charter schools… will leave regular public schools with the most difficult students to educate, thus creating a two-tier system of widening inequality.” Concludes Ravitch: “The goal of evaluation should not be to identify schools that must be closed, but to identify schools that need help.”

Each week, the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries publishes a short column, Witness for Justice. The post above appeared as the column on March 8.

By janatucc | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Newsworthy

March 4, 2010 – 2:57 pm

Today the US Department of Education announced 16 finalists (15 states and DC) for Race to the Top. Yesterday, Secretary Duncan testified before the House Committee on Education and Labor about education and building a strong economy. Rhode Island School District and local teachers’ union is compromising to preserve jobs. Teachers say supportive leadership is most important for teacher retention (more details on this later). Kansas City is considering closing 26 of its 60 schools. And, a US Department of Justice study found a big drop in children’s bullying.

Feel free to share other newsworthy items you’ve found!

By lbornfreund | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (0)

Grad Nation

March 2, 2010 – 4:30 pm

Figuring out how to lower high school dropout rates is a major challenge. The fact that 1.2 million high school students dropout each year is unacceptable. So, I applaud President Obama and Secretary Duncan for making this a key area of focus.

But, I am less enthusiastic about their approach so far. To improve America’s lowest performing schools, the President has outlined four options  states and school districts must use if they want to access the $900 million available for this “school improvement” initiative. Here are the models:

  • Turnaround Model: replacement of the principal and at least half of the school staff, adopt a new governance structure for the school, and implement a new or revised instructional program.
  • Restart Model: closure of the school and reopening it under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization or an educational management organization.
  • School Closure: Closure of the failing school and enrollment of the students in other, higher-achieving schools in the district.
  • Transformational Model: School leadership focus on four areas: teacher effectiveness, instruction, learning and teacher planning time, and operational flexibility.

In my opinion, the first step to improving any school is to determine why it’s failing. How is the school climate? Are students and teachers building meaningful relationships? Are teachers supported by administration? Is there strong school leadership? Do they have time to collaborate with and learn from other teachers? Are parents and the community actively engaged in the school? Is the school building partnerships with organizations to provide opportunities and supports to address the external factors students face?

In the President’s remarks at the America’s Promise Alliance event yesterday,  he said:

Of course, getting it right requires more than just transforming our lowest performing schools. It requires giving students who are behind in school a chance to catch up and a path to a diploma. It requires focusing on students, from middle school through high school, who face factors at home, in the neighborhood, or in school that put them at risk of dropping out. And it requires replicating innovative ideas that make class feel engaging and relevant — because most high school dropouts in a recent study said the reason they dropped out was that they weren’t interested in class and they weren’t motivated to do their work.

So that’s why we’ll build on the efforts of places like Communities in Schools that make sure kids who are at risk of dropping out have one-on-one support. That’s why we’ll follow the example of places like the Met Center in Rhode Island that give students that individual attention, while also preparing them through real-world, hands-on training the possibility of succeeding in a career.

More resources should be invested in the types of things the President mentioned above if the Administration is serious about lowering dropout rates and improving low-performing schools. I’m not convinced that is where the bulk of the proposed funding is intended to go.

By lbornfreund | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Stone Soup

March 1, 2010 – 1:42 pm

Cross-posted at The Critical Skills Blog.

I have a folder on my desktop called Blog Fodder. I bookmark pages that I think are interesting and worth sharing and which spark some loquacious tendency in me. Typically I discover a theme and I’m off to the races. Sometimes I don’t. Today is one of those “don’t” days, so rather than serving up my typical smooth-as-silk-soup- style post, I’m sharing something a bit more stew-ey. Think of it as Stone Soup, Interweb-style.

First, in case you missed it, the Washington Post has the story of mass-teacher firings in Central Falls, Rhode Island.has the story of mass-teacher firings in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Edweek has posted this response, calling the measures “draconian.”

In related news, today President Obama unveils this plan for 5,000 of the nation’s lowest-performing schools. Under this plan, $900 million will be made available to districts that are willing to engage in one of four reform strategies: reform instructional strategies and improve teacher effectiveness, the “turnaround” model, “which requires replacing a principal and half the school staff and setting up a new structure of school governance and instructional program,” a “restart” in which schools close and then reopen as charters, and the final “closure” model in which kids are sent to a better school in the district.

“There’s got to be a sense of accountability,” Obama told the group. “Our kids get only one chance at an education. We need to get it right.”

The Washington Post has this today, about President Obama’s launch of “Grad Nation,” his new initiative to ensure that 90% of today’s 4th graders graduate. He’s supposed to share the details at the America’s Promise Alliance, but their website is describing it as

a 10-year campaign to mobilize the nation as never before to reverse the dropout crisis and enable our children to be prepared for success in college, work and life.

And while we’re talking about the USDOE, Arne Duncan will be hosting a Call with High School Students to Discuss Presidential Commencement Challenge and Education Reform on March 3 at 3:30 EST. Want to join in? Dial-in: 888-970-4134 Passcode: SCHOOLS

Edutopia provides a forum for Nicholas Provenzano (aka The Nerdy Teacher) as he builds on the February 23rd #edchat about students and their passion for learning. If you’ve never been a part of #edchat, get thee to Twitter tomorrow evening! It’s the best 140 characters you’ll ever read.

Finally, I really enjoyed this take on student motivation. She points out that motivation isn’t something a kid has or doesn’t have. The question, though, is why schools don’t tap into what motivates kids. On a related note, USA Today explores what it means to re-envision the Senior Year.

So there you have it. All the Edu-News that’s fit to blog.

By laurathomasantioch | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

In the News

February 28, 2010 – 3:59 pm

This week was the last week in a busy month for public education:

Both Republicans and Democrats have concerns about the President’s proposed education budget.

Charter schools are the topic of the House Ed & Labor Committee’s first ESEA reauthorization hearing.

Diane Ravitch said President Obama’s education agenda sides with the “corporate style reformers.”

Under a proposal from the Obama Administration, states would be required to adopt college and career ready standards to be eligible for Title I funding.

Experts outline a vision for better student assessments.

In a “big think” interview, Pedro Noguera talks about improving failing schools.

A new study suggests living in poverty has the most impact on children aged 0-5.

By lbornfreund | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Play Schmay

February 23, 2010 – 11:58 am

Crossposted at The Critical Skills Blog.

It’s February break in my little corner of the world- at least for my kids and my husband- and I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would have done as a kid if someone gave me a whole week off during the shortest (and yet, through some twist of the space-time continuum, longest) month of the year. In my midwestern- school experience, February break just wasn’t a thing that happened. If we were lucky, we got a long weekend at Easter. If it snowed too much, well, we didn’t. One would assume, then, that this break would be near nirvana for my kids- that they would be filled with plans to sled and play outside and maybe even bust out their scooters and bikes if the weather cooperated.

Yeah. Not so much. On Saturday and Sunday both, I took a page from my own parents’ book and told them both they had to go outside. Yes, I threw my kids out of the house, into the sunshine and fresh air. Go. Out. And. Play.

They were bumfuzzled by the whole idea. Play? What? Could I be a little more specific? (No. The concept isn’t that complicated.) Was I coming out to play with them? (No.) What should they play? (I don’t know, but you’re doing it outside.) I could feel my frustration turn to sheer sadness as I realized that my kids just didn’t know how to play in an unstructured environment. My husband finally took pity on them and made some suggestions. “Go explore between the two rows of pine trees. There’s space there to build a fort. Or go walk around the neighborhood and see if anyone else wants to play.” They managed a good 45 minutes out there, but they still came back in with a faintly confused air- sort of a “What was THAT all about?”

Apparently, they’re not alone.

www.bigstockphoto.com/search/allowed/According to the folks at The Alliance for Childhood, many kindergartners get about 30 minutes of recess each day- but they get 2-3 hours of instruction and testing. This means a lot of time sitting, listening, and being given structured tasks to complete. This also means a lot less time to figure things out for their themselves on the playground, to learn what American Academy of Pediatrics describes as how to be “free agents, not pawns in someone else’s game.’’ The right to play- and the time to learn how to play- should be a non-negotiable in school, but it’s not. More and more, schools are eliminating recess in their race to make Adequate Yearly Progress. I think it speaks volumes that, even in sources touting the importance of play, they use test-friendly language and tout the links between recess and student achievement (which is code for “higher test scores”).

In fact, the state of play has become so poor that there are now businesses cropping up, ready to teach our kids how to play. Playworks will happily provide coaches to:

transform recess and play into a positive experience that helps kids and teachers get the most out of every learning opportunity throughout the school day. These coaches become part of the school community, working full-time to provide organized play and physical activity through the five components of the Playworks program. They organize games and activities during recess, provide individual class game times and run a leadership development program during school hours.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the folks at Playworks. I imagine they do great work as do the folks at Play60, the NFL initiative to get kids to play for at least 60 minutes each day. It makes me sad, however, that we live in a country that needs them. For whatever reason, we’ve lost confidence in recess and we’ve lost confidence in our kids’ ability to “do” recess. When they’re young, we buy into the (false) belief that the world is an inherently unsafe place (check in with the folks at Free Range Kids if you want to learn more about that) and so we supervise and structure and protect them to the point that they don’t learn how to explore, the essence of free play. When they get older, we sacrifice their playtime (at a rate of 40%) at the altar of test prep and instruction- though the evidence actually shows that to be a counter-productive pedagogical choice.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my kids didn’t know what to do when I made them go out. One thing’s for sure, though, I’m going to keep sending them outside until they figure it out.

By laurathomasantioch | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

The Sticky Wicket of High Test Scores

February 19, 2010 – 5:01 pm

Crossposted at The Critical Skills Blog

One of the schools with whom I am very involved (let’s call it Brookside) has struggled with its NCLB status in the last few years. Widely considered to be a “good” school, the students and teachers nevertheless struggled with the local, standardized measure of “good”- the NECAP. They did well, but they didn’t do well enough in one subject for one particular sub-group and so, as we all know happens, they took a long hard look at their options and they decided to game the test. I suppose that they, like many, rejected the notion that the test was a valid, reliable measure of student learning in this case. When you reject that presupposition, then you find yourself looking for ways to manipulate the data so that it says what you believe to be true (without doing anything immoral or illegal- just to be clear). As we all know, the perfectly valid and reliable testing instrument has not been created, so there is some logic to this argument. Then again, as an assessment instructor, I know that standardized tools like the NECAP have their place- just not the place of honor that they hold under NCLB.

So anyway, getting back to Brookside. As the teachers and parents looked over the scores and the looming specter of “restructuring,” they made a startling realization. There are a zillion modifications that can be made in the way the test is administered, many of them requiring additional staff and time, but all available to all students, and nearly none of them had been utilized in the past. One didn’t have to have an IEP to qualify, one just had to be a student! Rather than herding the whole 3rd grade into the cafeteria to take the test together, they could take it in their classrooms, at their desks. Easily distracted students could take the test in a separate space, could take frequent breaks, could eat and drink if they wanted…Who knew?

A plan was hatched, the PTA was recruited, snacks were provided and voila! Test scores went through the roof. Brookside was “good” again! Hooray! Let’s celebrate! Let’s shout the news from the rooftops, in the paper, in notes-home-to-parents!

Except…when we reject test scores as a true measure of success, can we really, with integrity, celebrate them when they’re high? If we say over and over again that high stakes tests are damaging and that no single data point should ever be used as a measure of student learning, then what do we do when they tell us we’re doing well? Are we really able to reject the “good” news of Proficient w/ Distinction with as much passion as the “bad” news of School in Need of Improvement?

This is certainly a sticky wicket for those of us in schools that have traditionally done well. It’s still stickier for the teachers and parents of the students in those schools, trying to come to terms with voices in our heard arguing simultaneously that “test scores mean nothing” and “I’m so proud to be connected to such a good school!” The reality that test scores can influence everything from the value of my home to the way my kids are perceived by their teachers, well, that’s pretty sticky too. As a mom, I must admit that I was happy to see the high scores my kids brought home. As an educator, I was instantly ashamed of my momentary flash of pride. I of all people should know that those percentile markings measure only the way that my kids performed on a single test on a single day. I know this- I preach it to my students.

But until we as students and parents and teachers are able to live and work under an educational policy that allows us to live within our pedagogical beliefs, this sticky wicket will just grow larger. We’ll continue to experience the cognitive dissonance of knowing one thing to be true- that test scores are but a single point in a large constellation of measures- but also knowing it’s opposite- that we live and die by whatever standardized assessment is cooked up next.

By laurathomasantioch | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Opportunity to Learn?

February 19, 2010 – 7:42 am

Earlier this week the Governor McDonnell unveiled Virginia’s “opportunity to learn” agenda. Knowing what the Schott Foundation’s Opportunity to Learn (OTL) Campaign encompasses, I would’ve expected Virginia’s legislation to include the following essential elements: access to highly effective teachers, early childhood education, college preparatory curricula, and equitable instructional resources.

But it doesn’t. Virginia’s “opportunity to learn” legislation establishes provisions for:

  • the expansion of high-quality charter schools;
  • Virtual schools; and
  • College partnership lab schools.

Are these bad ideas? Not necessarily, but they don’t guarantee equitable opportunities for all children, which is what OTL is all about. It’s based on research that states when a child has the essential elements mentioned above, that their performance outcomes are both higher and more equitable.

If state governments are serious about ensuring ALL students have the opportunity to learn, they should focus investments in: improving teacher preparation, recruitment, and retention; funding quality early learning opportunities for children birth to five; ensuring students have access to a rigorous, well-rounded curricula, and ensuring that schools and teachers have the resources needed for all students to learn at high levels.

By lbornfreund | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Snow Day

February 18, 2010 – 3:06 pm

Cross posted at The Critical Skills Blog

Snow days are pretty common where I live. Last year, between ice and snow, I think we had two weeks of them plus about a dozen delayed starts. This year, in some bizarre natural phenomenon, we’ve had none. Until today. Today, the 16th of February, we have our first snow day of the year (based more on the anticipated intensity of the storm at the end of the day than the actual amount of snow on the ground this morning). Sitting with my kids this morning watching the first flakes fall, I’m struck by how different today feels than the snow days last February. Last year, snow days resulted in groans and frustration and a growing awareness that we’d be in school until July if it kept up. By the end of winter, we were looking at a June 26th or 27th Last Day of School and, even though every teacher, paraprofessional and administrator I know did their best during those late June days, I can’t say that the kids were focused on learning anything past the end of the second week. Those last days were about time, not about learning- in spite of New Hampshire’s movement towards the awarding of credit by demonstration of competency rather than seat time. We may believe that seat time doesn’t ensure learning, but our policies and our systems haven’t caught up.

This year, other parts of the country are dealing with the snow day issue. States more used to heat closing than snow are going to find themselves in the shoes we wore last year. Maybe once the rest of country experiences what those of us in the North have lived with for years, we’ll see a shift in perspective away from measuring educational effort in terms of numbers of days, minutes or hours in school each year and towards an real assessment of the quality of the educational experiences offered and the demonstration of what has actually been learned.

By laurathomasantioch | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (2)