Wanted for Urban Schools: Fewer Amnesiac Policymakers-Part 1

Most policy entrepreneurs suffer from amnesia. Listen to what two Harvard professors said after working with Washington top and mid-level decision-makers in the 1970s. “We sensed around us—in our classes, in the media, in Washington—a host of people who did not know any history to speak of and were unaware of suffering any lack, who thought the world was new and all of its problems fresh … and that decisions in the public realm required only reason and emotion….” (Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers, The Free Press, 1986, pp. xi-xii).

My nearly five decades of working with urban school boards, superintendents, and federal and state policymakers lead me to a similar conclusion for educational decision-makers. The past is a foreign country that these decision-makers seldom visit and when they do, hardly remember what occurred.

Few policymakers are familiar with the history of urban districts and how they evolved through absorbing waves of earlier immigrants as well as past efforts to improve schooling for the poor. Instead these policy brokers draw from personal experiences while soaking up juicy stories others tell about schools. In ignoring earlier efforts at urban school reform, they either substitute their own pictures of what they think happened or they assume that nothing can be learned from the past because current conditions differ so much from conditions then (or they do both). They err.

Surely, there are no exact lessons to be drawn from particular reform episodes because while events may appear similar across two points in time—the failures of banks in the early 1930s and federal takeover of key commercial and investment banks in 2008—the contexts and consequences differ. But historical trends and patterns of behavior in urban districts do exist; knowing how and why those patterns emerged can be instructive to decision-makers. How, for example, did all public and private schools become age-graded and why have they been so for 150 years? Why have most teachers used textbooks decade after decade? Why do chronically low-performing urban schools appear again and again? Why is it so hard to deal with race and poverty in classroom teaching? Answers to these questions reveal the stability of urban schooling over time.

These enduring institutional structures and patterns of teacher and administrator behavior are anchored deeply in the financial and political dependence of tax-supported schools upon its communities and the powerful social beliefs and expectations parents, taxpayers, and voters have about what public schools ought to be doing with children and youth. Few urban school reformers acknowledge that Americans want public schools to achieve multiple, often conflicting, goals for children.

Historian William Reese summed up these many competing goals for public schools:

“Schools are expected to feed the hungry, discipline the wayward, identify and encourage the talented, treat everyone alike while not forgetting that everyone is an individual, raise test scores but also feelings of self-worth, ensure winning sports teams without demeaning academics, improve standards but also graduation rates, provide for the different learning styles and capacities of the young while administering common tests, and counter the crass materialism of the larger society while providing the young with the skills and sensibilities to thrive in it as future workers.” (William Reese, History, Education, and the Schools,(Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 159).

When urban school reformers, however, fumble decade after decade in grappling with largely poor and minority low-performing schools then these competing goals, social beliefs, and institutional structures are no longer trivial nuisances to be dismissed but central to analyzing why and how urban school reform goes awry and forging creative ways to improve schools and classrooms.

We need fewer uninformed urban policymakers frantically churning out reform after reform because, if they don’t, they will exit the district. We need more mindful, not mindless, plans informed by the past that have room for necessary adaptations and contains careful analysis of which incremental changes make the most sense to those who do the daily work—teachers and students.

In short, policymakers with amnesia need not apply for work in schools. Yet they do and get hired. And when they make decisions, invariably they commit frequent errors all in the blessed name of more and more reform. I take up these frequent mistakes in the next post.

Is Choosing a “Good” Hospital Like Choosing a “Good” High School?

Editors at U.S. News and World Report would answer yes to the question. Even though life and death haunt rankings of hospitals while decisions about high schools carry less momentous consequences, the magazine has created a market niche that bring in loads of cash to the company. In doing so, these ratings unintentionally (and unfortunately) converge with current policymakers’ yearning to make institutions more uniform and less complex, while reducing the diversity and flexibility of both schools and hospitals.

Magazine rating systems identify a wide range of criteria that medical and school experts use to judge quality, collect data on these criteria, sort the evidence, and rank in numerical order the best institutions in each category. Then the howling begins.

Those hospitals and high schools who move up the ranking ladder howl in joy; those that fall a few rungs, howl in anger. And those of us mystified by the process squirm. We wonder about the worth of magazine judgments when editors reduce the quality of hospital care and medical attention or the academic climate and classroom teaching to a number which in of itself is a result of squishing together other numbers.

Anyone over the age of 21 knows that any performance measure can be gamed. Judged on mortality rates, some hospitals avoid the sickest patients. Some high schools indirectly press low performing students to leave school. Knowing that any metric can be gamed leads those of us skeptical of rankings to scratch our heads and ask: Do such numbers mean anything in the real world where we do have to choose hospitals and high schools?

Again, the answer is yes. Middle- and upper-middle class consumers of medical care consider a hospital’s reputation, whether their illnesses match the reputed quality of the hospital, personal preferences, cost, and other reasons that may or may not correlate highly with best-hospital rankings. Educated patients and parents find these rankings helpful in making choices about “good” hospitals and high schools. They buy the magazine and pile up hundreds of thousands of hits on those website when annual rankings appear. Less informed working class and low-income consumers of medical care, however, lacking medical insurance, have little choice other than considering the closest emergency room.

Even though the reduction of quality and institutional complexity to what can be easily measured leads to frequent gaming by school and hospital officials to raise their rankings– that doesn’t bother me too much. What does bother me is how the definition of a “good” hospital or high school gets narrowed to what metrics are collected even though the range of definitions about “goodness” among people for each of these institutions vary a great deal.

What is “good” for one parent in choosing a high school is much less so for another. Sure, most parents want high schools to prepare their sons and daughters to get into college. Period. But there are also many parents who think a “good” high school is one where you can also learn skills that will lead to a well-paying job after graduation that won’t require someone to sit in classrooms for four more years. There are many parents that want schools where students learn by doing, provide service to the community, and where students and teachers work closely together in teams to solve problems while reconciling differences.

In short, there are other “good” schools that never get ranked because no metrics exist to capture their “goodness” or even if measures are around, they are not used for rankings. Not a startling insight, to be sure, but one that often gets lost in the rush to find short-cuts when information overload, multi-tasking, and just plain fatigue leave little time, much less, energy for parents (or patients) to make consequential decisions.

So what if those who do the rankings slide into solidifying a one-size-fits-all “good” hospital and high school, ignoring other definitions of “good” institutions? Rankings won’t go away; they appeal to wine lovers, car enthusiasts, parents, and patients; people see them as simple, time-saving tools. In a consumer-driven culture where everything gets converted into a commodity to be bought and sold, numerical rankings will persist.

Yet it needs to be said again and again that these rating systems, unfortunately, converge with the current standards-based testing and accountability systems in schools. Policymakers who thrive on standardization and simplicity rather than flexibility and complexity secretly love ratings for this reason. In a democratic society, however, where diversity in backgrounds and independent thinking are prized, even nourished, simplistic uniformity in a “good” institution is can destroy that diversity and thinking.

The Sham of “Best Practices”

In medical practice, evidenced-based “best practices” have led the way to improved health care in the U.S., according to its champions. In the federal stimulus legislation, over a billion dollars was devoted to determining “what works and doesn’t” (President Obama’s words) in diagnosing and treating patients. Now that is serious money for a serious cause.

In education, “best practices” are continually laid out by policymakers, researchers, and media journalists as guides for school boards, superintendents, and teachers to follow in improving student test scores and building better schools. Recent reports lay out “best practices” on classroom management, professional development, and school working conditions that “can revamp classrooms and schools to close the achievement gaps and promote excellence in learning for all students.” For the federal “Race To The Top,” the U.S. Secretary of Education laid out four models of turning around chronically low performing schools. These models were drawn from “best practices” for rescuing failing schools, even though some were contested.

Where does phrase “best practices” originate? I checked around the blogosphere and its origin seems to be in the business sector with management consultants and corporate gurus. It has become a buzzword across governmental, educational, and medical organizations. In becoming popular, the phrase has drifted away linguistically from its original meaning of effective practices in accomplishing goals to mean faddish or trendy activities.

Even in medicine. Jerome Groopman recently reported startling reversals in “best practices.” Based upon rigorous studies, an expert panel of medical researchers recommended to Medicare that it was a “best practice” to control blood sugar levels for very sick patients. “That measure of quality, ” Groopman said, “was not only shown to be wrong [by subsequent studies] but resulted in a higher likelihood of death when compared to measures allowing a more flexible treatment and higher blood sugar.” Groopman listed reversal after reversal of Medicare approved “best practices” for treating kidney disease, pneumonia, congestive heart disease, and other conditions–and I won’t mention the “best” age for women to have mammograms.

What is going on here with “gold standard” research studies (experimental design, random assignment of subjects, etc.) that initially become the basis for a Medicare prescribed “best practice” and then new studies upend the supposed “best practice” treatment?

According to Groopman, experts who recommended “best practice” treatments (and their advice became Medicare mandates to all physicians) “did not distinguish between medical practices that can be standardized and not significantly altered by the condition of the individual patient, and those that must be adapted to a particular person.” He gives the example of putting a catheter into a blood vessel, a procedure that involves the same steps for every patient to avoid infection. This “one-size-fits-all” mechanical procedure differs from prescribing a “best practice” for a complex disease such as diabetes, congestive heart failure, or breast cancer. Not making this critical distinction leads experts to overreach and, in time, turn a “best practice” such as hormone replacement therapy for women into a fad. A similar situation plagues school reform.

In reforming schools, except in particular narrow instances of practice–the use of phonics to teach young children to decode words–few expert panels (e.g., the National Research Council report on reading in 1998) sift the available evidence drawn from rigorous studies to recommend standardized practices. There is no Medicare in U.S. schools to prescribe “best practice.” Instead, blue-ribbon commissions, responding to a national problem (e.g., the Cold War space race, poverty, global economic competition) advise policymakers on standard practices–think Nation at Risk report in 1983–that should be used to improve schooling.

The distinction Groopman made that medical experts failed to sort out practices that can be standardized on all patients from those that must be adapted to a particular person has little traction in the world of reform-minded policymakers. Prestigious educational panels, issue reports, some anchored in research but most collections of practices that seemingly are successful with some students, some teachers, in some places. These panels then advise policymakers to standardize these seemingly successful practices on all schools.

Reform-driven policymakers are more interested in scaling up and uniformity (what Groopman referred to as one-size-fits-all procedures for inserting a catherer) then contextual differences among schools and districts (what Groopman referred to procedures that have to be adapted to a particular patient). I am not the first educator, nor the last, to make the point that school reform is a value-driven (not research-driven) business where policymakers depend far more on faith than facts and far more on uniformity than context.

In comparing “best practices” in medicine and education, I now see more clearly how (and why) state and federal policymakers, grasping for anything that looks like success, spread faddish and unstudied reforms. This is both a sham and a shame.

Confessions from a Skeptic on Computers in School

A quarter-century ago, I wrote Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology since 1920. In that book I described and analyzed the history of machines deployed in classrooms (film, radio, instructional television, and the newly arrived desktop computer) to help teachers teach more, faster, and better. Then I did something foolish in the final chapter. I predicted future uses of the computer in classrooms from my vantage point in 1985.

Of course, I was not alone in making predictions. Seymour Papert dove into the same empty pool that I did a year before my venture into prophesying:

“There won’t be schools in the future …. I think the computer will blow up the school. That is, the school defined as something where there are classes, teachers running exams, people structured in groups by age, following a curriculum—all of that.” (Popular Computing, October 1984, p. 11)

Based upon my research in schools and experience as a teacher and superintendent, however, I was far more skeptical about the penetration and use of computers than Papert. Here was my crystal ball look in to the future of computers in schools:

“I predict that … in elementary schools where favorable conditions exist, teacher use will increase but seldom exceed more than 10 percent of weekly instructional time [roughly 3 hours a week]. Pulling out students for a 30-to-45-minute period in a computer lab will, I suspect, gain increasing popularity in these schools…. In secondary schools, the dominant pattern of use will be to schedule students into [labs] and one or more elective classes where a score of desk-top computers sit…. In no event would I expect general student use of computers in secondary schools to exceed 5 percent of the weekly time set aside for instruction. I predict no great breakthrough in teacher use patterns at either level of schooling” (p. 99).

As events unfolded in the next quarter-century, my prediction flat-lined. Access to computers–desktops, laptops, hand-held devices, and interactive white boards–soared. In writing Oversold and Underused; Computers in Classrooms in 2001, I did find higher percentages of students and teachers using computers in preschools, secondary schools, and universities that ruined my 1985 prediction.

Since then hundreds of thousands of students and tens of thousands of teachers across the country have received 1:1 laptops and white boards. In researching classrooms since 2001, again, I have found higher use by teachers and students in both elementary and secondary classrooms. More teachers—my guess is over 30 percent across different districts—use machines for instruction (I include the whole panoply of available high-tech devices) regularly, that is, at least once or more a week. Another 30-40 percent use computers occasionally, that is, at least once or more a month. The remainder of teachers—still a significant minority—hardly ever, if at all–use machines for instruction. This continues to puzzle researchers and policymakers since they know that nearly all teachers have high-tech devices at home.

So my 1985 prediction on teacher and student use of computers for classroom instruction was inaccurate and died a quiet death. Compassionate readers seldom remind me that I flopped in peeking into the future. The facts are clear that students and teachers use high-tech devices for instruction more than I had foreseen.

Moreover, a quarter-century ago I ended the book by urging a moratorium on buying more computers. Whoa, was that a loser of a recommendation! Worse yet, I even repeated the call for a moratorium on deploying computers in schools—for largely the same reasons—in 2001. Of course, these calls were ignored then as they would be now.

One final confession. I stated clearly in Teachers and Machines and subsequent writings that the uses of new technologies for classroom instruction would seldom satisfy those advocates of more instructional use in schools because teacher use would tend toward the traditional and unimaginative—not all teachers, by any means—but enough to be a central tendency of classroom practice. Both of these predictions have turned out to be accurate, yes, accurate….so far.

Let’s say that if this were baseball, I would be batting .500, a number which sounds so much better than 50 percent wrong in crystal ball gazing.

I confess to my errors in foreseeing the future for no other reason than to remind readers, both champions and skeptics of computers in schools, that memorable predictions are rare. Except for the one I made last month about the state of computers in schools in 2020. Then again with 50 percent wrong in the past…..

Which Pictures of Teachers Implementing Policies Are Accurate?

These are actual radio messages sent to and from a U.S. navy ship a number of years ago.

U.S. Navy Ship: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the
North to avoid a collision.

Reply: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to avoid a collision.

Ship: This is the captain of a U.S. Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Reply: No, I say again you divert YOUR course.

Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER ENTERPRISE. WE ARE A
LARGE WARSHIP OF THE U.S. NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW.

Reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

I am reminded of this story whenever I consider the
disorderly, even messy way that policies enter classrooms.

In previous posts (September 9 and 12, 2009), I had pointed out competing images of
teachers as implementers. One picture in the heads of most state and federal
policymakers has teachers as one link in a long policy chain implementing new standards and following procedures. That image is a constricted view of teachers as technicians dutifully carrying out orders from the top—even when those orders—see the above exchange with the U.S.S. Enterprise captain—are mistaken.

Another image used to describe implementing classroom policies is pushing pasta. In this image, policymakers are helpless in determining what teachers do in their classrooms once the door is closed. Teachers are policy brokers who decide what they let in their classrooms.

I want to offer a third image nestled between the technician/policy broker ones that may be closer to the realities teachers face in implementing well-intended, even evidence-based policy decisions. That image is one of different worlds that policymakers and teachers inhabit—overlapping in some respects like Venn diagrams—but for the most part driven by different values and incentives. This picture may explain policymaker difficulties with teachers and why teaching practices seem so stable over decades. The world of classroom teachers has its own set of values and incentives that, like the above lighthouse that the U.S.S. Enterprise nearly ignored, few policymakers even notice, much less invoke.

Consider when a new instructionally-driven policy, say, hand-held electronic devices or a new reading program appears. Teachers ask: Can I learn it quickly or do I have to spend a lot of time figuring out what to do? Will it motivate my students? Does the program contain skills that are connected to what I am expected to teach and what students need? What happens if I need immediate help? Seldom do policymakers either anticipate or pay attention to such practical questions.

These questions reveal that teachers prize ideas and actions that payoff in learning and meaningful relationships with students. They seek concrete and specific solutions to practical classroom problems. The incentives that drive teachers to teach better in their classrooms come more from internal values than external rewards: the joys of seeing students learn and achieve goals, the service they render to society, and similar psychic rewards.

The world policymakers inhabit differs greatly. Their world is largely political where election cycles, budgets, media attention, and measurable outcomes determine job longevity and personal satisfaction. Incentives such as re-election, influencing others, and positive media dominate daily routines. The values of efficiency, effectiveness, and popularity rule.

Obviously, the worlds of teachers and policymakers overlap when it comes to the values of effectiveness although each would define differently which effects are most important and the measures used. Efficiency at the school and district levels—squeezing more test scores out of every dollar spent– is far more a policymaker value than one held by teachers.

In these different worlds, teachers bring moral and service values that differ from the technical, scientific, and reputational values that policy makers hold. Of course teachers seek improvement in students’ test scores but they prize far more changes in students’ attitudes, values, and actual behavior on academic and nonacademic tasks.

So which of these three pictures of classroom teachers implementing policy decisions realistically describes what happens in classrooms?

My guess is that on school health/safety issues the image of the policy chain with teachers dutifully following orders for fire drills, emergency exits, and protecting students does describes a slice of school reality. On policies that ask teachers to alter their daily habits of organizing the classroom and teaching differently, however, the “pushing pasta” metaphor is operative.

Why? Because the incentives and values of the policymaker world puts blinders on most federal and state decision-makers; they are either unaware of or choose to ignore the incentives and values that drive teachers thereby neglecting essential resources needed to help those who wish to alter their daily routines.

Most policymakers fail to inspect the pictures in their heads about school systems as organizations. Too often, they assume that teachers are like other employees in business, military, and other governmental organizations. The captain of the U.S.S Enterprise used the command-and-control view until he learned that he was communicating with a lighthouse. Then he shifted course.

11 Ways I Reduce Stress in My Academic Courses, Part 2 (By Jerry Brodkey)

What specific things seem to work in my classes to reduce stress and help students learn:

1. My goal is to minimize homework wherever possible. There are some who believe that an Advanced Placement course must assign killer homework. Homework is given only when it is necessary to support learning.

2. For most homework, students have more than one night to complete an assignment. Homework is generally accepted for full credit anytime within the typical two-week unit section. I tell students which days we’ll be going over homework, and why it will be advantageous for them to have it done by that time, but if they can’t do it by then, I’d rather have them do it later than copy blindly from a friend or not do it at all.

3. I minimize memorization. My classroom walls are filled with posters that give key relationships and formulas. Why memorize material that is literally at their fingertips with their smart phones, textbooks, and computers?

4. Students are encouraged to do as much homework as possible in study groups and with friends. There are some major assignments where teams are highly recommended.

5. When I ask a student a question in class, I offer students the option of simply stating “pass” and I go to other students. It doesn’t hurt their grade and it doesn’t alter what I think of them. I want students to know that I am not trying to embarrass them, or catch them daydreaming, or show them up in front of their friends. I am interested in hearing what they think. If students pass every time I call on them, that is not a problem for me or for them. I tell them I’ll continue to call on them, and I’d love to have them respond when they are ready.

6. I probably give eight or nine tests a semester in Calculus. I automatically drop the lowest test score when I compute their overall grade. Anyone can have a bad day feeling sick or overwhelmed. If they fail a test I let them know I still expect them to learn the material and I will work with them to see that they can master the ideas. After each test, the students correct the test including paragraph reflections on why they missed the problems they did and what they learned from their test.

7. Every student question needs to be honored. When a student is brave enough to raise their hand and ask a question, that question needs to be respected. A student asking a question probably represents many other students who are similarly unclear. A student question gives me clues to how effective my teaching has been and how I need to approach an idea from perhaps a different perspective.

8. I try to layer in review throughout the course. Topics like logarithms and derivatives are not easy. We circle back, time and again, to revisit these ideas.

9. I allow students unlimited time on every exam. If they are willing to work through their lunch or come in after school, that is fine. Even though the actual Advanced Placement test is timed, it hasn’t seemed to be a problem.

10. When things aren’t going perfectly on a lesson, and when the class time is ticking down, I can feel an internal pressure to speed up. I have to fight that feeling. Instead of speeding up, I slow down. Instead of raising my voice, I lower it. Simplify, simplify, simplify. If I don’t quite get to where I wanted to be when the bell rings, so what? So what if I haven’t covered the examples enough to assign homework? Give them a night without math homework. As long as I am keeping up with my overall pre-planned movement through the required curriculum, I am in good shape.

11. Perhaps most importantly, always focus on meaning. The more I teach, the more I find myself quietly facing my students and asking questions like: “What actually is the meaning of the concept of limit in calculus? Think about it, and try and formulate a clear statement of what this means? I know you can now do problems involving limits, but what does it all mean?”

For me, these steps seem to work. Each class is different, each year is different. What works with my highly motivated Advanced Placement Calculus students is not completely appropriate for my ninth grade Algebra I students. Some of those students need to feel more academic stress and need more homework practice rather than less. I am not saying every teacher in every situation should do what works for me.

Individually and collectively, as parents and teachers, what are we doing to our children? Are there ways to accomplish our important educational goals of high levels of learning and achievement without extracting such a tremendous human cost?

Helping High School Students Deal with Stress in Tough Academic Subjects (by Jerry Brodkey)

Jerry Brodkey teaches at Menlo-Atherton High School in Menlo Park, California. He has been a public secondary school teacher since 1975, and has taught most of the subjects in Social Studies and Mathematics. This year he is currently teaching ninth grade Algebra and Advanced Placement Calculus. He continues to find teaching to be challenging, enjoyable, and always intense. His undergraduate degree was from Rice University (BA 1974), and with graduate work at Stanford (MA 1976, Ph.D. 1987). This posting will be in two parts.

The summer months play an important role for teachers to reflect on their teaching and make plans for improvement as the next year looms on the horizon. Even though I have been teaching for thirty years, I still like to take a deep breath and prepare myself for the upcoming year. What worked and didn’t work last year? How can new ideas and methods be incorporated into my teaching? How can I make my classroom a better place for student learning and for each student as an individual?

At the end of last school year the newspapers were filled with the tragedies of student loss and reports of the great stress we are placing on our children. As a teacher, I have seen this grow over the years. For a certain group of students – those high-achieving, college-bound, Advanced Placement students –the junior and senior years are a time of tremendous pressure and strain. I see this daily in the Advanced Placement Calculus classes I teach. Many students are taking two, three, or even four AP classes. This course load is basically equivalent to being a freshman in college. They are working harder than I ever did at the two colleges I attended – Rice and Stanford. There are high expectations and high demands with additional pressure to be deeply involved in extra-curricular sports or other activities. The college application process is a nightmarish part-time job filled with anxiety and pressure.

When I look out at my students in my two Calculus classes, I often see tired young people who are at times overwhelmed. There are the school pressures but also the social pressures of making it through adolescence. Some students come from families undergoing ferocious economic problems. I worry about my students and worry about my own children as they approach middle school and high school. How will they navigate these treacherous waters?

As an individual teacher in one single classroom, I believe there are some things I can do to help. Over the last several years, I have consciously made an effort to set up my classroom to try and minimize student anxiety and stress while at the same time promoting excellent achievement and a deep understanding of the curriculum. I tell students the atmosphere I am trying to create is intense but relaxed, serious but comfortable.

It seems to be working. Three times a year I have my students write major reflection papers. Their comments reinforce for me the goals I am trying to achieve. A sample of student comments from this year are:

A. “Calculus was an island of tranquility in the middle of my stressful year, and literally in the middle of every day.”
B. “My stress level literally decreased the moment I walked in the door.”
C. “I enjoyed going to class, I enjoyed learning, and I enjoyed struggling.”
D. “This class, although very relaxed, pushed me to think a lot”
E. “The class was more fun than I thought it would be.”
F. “I really felt that you simply wanted us to learn, and you didn’t have to put us through torture to do that.”

The academic results seem strong, too. In 2008 48 of the 51 students I had who took the Advanced Placement test passed with grades of 3, 4, or 5. In 2009, 46 of the 50 had passing scores, with a predominance of 4’s and 5’s. I don’t take credit for these high scores – these are wonderful students who have been exceptionally well prepared along the way. Their success in Calculus is due to many factors – involved parents, excellent academic preparation, solid elementary and middle schools, and many other factors. Their success does show me, importantly, that learning can take place in an atmosphere that is designed to reduce anxiety and stress.

Part 2 of this post will appear in a few days.

One-to-One Pencils for Every Classroom

For this post, I am borrowing from John Spencer’s blog “Adventures in Pencil Integration” (with his permission). Middle school teacher Spencer creates a fictionalized Tom Johnson, a teacher in 1897 having a conversation with a colleague who runs a “pencil lab” in Johnson’s school. Spencer describes Tom Johnson’s “move into the twentieth century with paper and pencil integration initiatives.” Here is an excerpt.

“Do you really think we need a one to one ratio of pencils to students?”

“I think it will be valuable for students. It seems like it will probably enhance learning.”

“Yes, but they are already learning it in the Pencil Lab. I teach them penmanship skills and most of them have already learned to put together a document of words.”

“I assure you that I won’t be teaching pencil skills. Instead, we will be using pencils within the curriculum.”

“Tom, these kids don’t know the basics. I see how they treat my pencil lab. I’ve had four pencils stolen despite the fact that they are bolted to the desktop. Yours will be mobile. Kids snap off erasers. I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”

“I can’t blame him for being nervous. They already use his Pencil Lab for student projects and I’m guessing he’s worried that pencil-integration will eventually phase out the need for a penmanship class. Yet, honestly, he has done little to make the subject relevant. Do his students analyze the shift from an oral to a print culture? Do they look at the shifts in the world in an industrialized society and what it means for citizenship and for human identity? Do they create projects that simulate how people will use pencils in the workplace or in life? Do they write and read with pencils?”

John Spencer wants us to compare 1:1 pencils with 1:1 laptops and the hype that surrounds technology integration. After this excerpt was featured on Robert Pondiscio, “The Core Knowledge Blog,” John Spencer responded: “Thanks for highlighting the blog. You nailed it on the concept of trying to be satirical from both sides (tech is scary, tech is the messiah).

“You mentioned, perhaps unintentionally, it highlights what makes some of us find the very subject tedious. Talking about technology in the classroom isn’t exciting. Like the pencil, the real excitement will come when we can stop talking about it, when it is no more remarkable than the pencil.

“That was certainly intentional. Don’t get me wrong, I like technology but I hate the hype surrounding it.

Amen, I say. See John Spencer’s blog.

Breaking News! In the Same Subject in the Same School, Teachers Teach Differently!

As a teacher and later as superintendent, I used to snicker when I read research studies that stated findings confidently, brandishing strong numbers showing statistical significance about school phenomena that I and colleagues had known were true based on our experience. Subsequently, I became a researcher and I published studies on how teachers taught, technologies in schools, and how superintendents ran districts. In those studies, truth be told, I offered conclusions drawn from my data that must have sent other teachers and superintendents into hilarious guffaws.

These memories preface a few comments–and, I confess, a few chuckles–on a recent study completed by top-of-the-line researcher Brian Rowan and colleagues called the Study of Instructional Improvement ( sii final report_web file). Education Week and The Harvard Education Newsletter featured this study–thus, the title–”Breaking News” (Yes, there is a mildly sarcastic edge to the phrase).

The five year quasi-experimental study of three Comprehensive School Reform models (Accelerated Schools Program, America’s Choice, and Success for All) included analysis of 75,000 teacher logs from nearly 2000 teachers teaching literacy (reading and language arts) in grades one to five in schools across the nation in. What did they find?

They found that teachers in the three models varied in how much time they spent teaching reading and language arts in the same grade and school.

“…it would be very to find two first-grade teachers in the same school, one of whom focused on word analysis skills about one day a week and another who focused on this topic four days a week.”

With many more examples, the researchers pointed out that these variations in instructional practices was NOT due (yes, that is a NOT) to the students’ achievement levels, “their previous instructional histories … or to variations in ethnic and socioeconomic composition.”

They also found that the startling variation in teaching practices within the same grade and school came, again, NOT from “teachers’ professional preparation, … years of experience, or pedagogical knowledge.” If anything these factors “have only tiny effects on teaching practices.”

These findings are not intuitive or common sense; neither are they laughing matters. They confound and confuse all those fervent reformers who believed in their heart of hearts that these factors had large, not “tiny effects on teaching practices.”

Such conclusions would not surprise principals, instructional coaches, and supervisors who regularly visit classrooms and observe teachers. Nor did these conclusions surprise me–this is where the chuckles enter the picture–since I have spent many years visiting classrooms as a teacher, administrator, and researcher. The conclusions might, however, surprise teachers, school board members, state and federal policymakers, and parents since few ever have the chance or taken the opportunity to step into classrooms and stay for awhile.

The researchers concluded that “schools remain ‘loosely coupled’ organizations where teachers have considerable autonomy and function largely as curriculum brokers.” They call this conclusion a “dismal observation.”

The word “dismal” (how about the word “realistic?”) signals readers that these disappointed reformers/researchers would have welcomed data showing that teachers implementing these whole school reform models narrowed the band of variation in teaching reading and language arts so that students’ learning opportunities were not subject to the luck of the draw in getting one teacher or another. And they did find an exception buried in their data.

If there is any “Breaking News,” it is that in one of the three reform models–America’s Choice and Success for All–well-defined, specified programs with on-site coaches, principals pressing and supporting teachers to be faithful to the program design, led to classrooms where teachers hewed more closely to prescribed instructional practices. Whether or not, such faithful implementation of teaching practices translated into higher test scores, they cannot say. See PDF AERJ on instruction. What they can say is that variation in teaching practices shrunk considerably in these two models and students experienced more consistent teaching practices as they went through the grades. And that is news that even an ex-high school teacher and superintendent with plenty of miles on the odometer found both surprising and encouraging.

Raising the Maximum Compulsory Age of School is Another Bad Idea (By Rona Wilensky)

Rona Wilensky was founding principal of New Vista High School in Boulder, Colorado and served for 17 years before retiring in 2009. She is now a Resident Fellow at the Spencer Foundation.

The recent report on dropout prevention and recovery from the National Governor’s Association’s Center for Best Practices has as one of its recommendations raising the maximum compulsory age of schooling to 18 and creating penalties – loss of driver’s licenses or work permits – if students leave earlier.

The goal is to create a public policy statement that staying in school matters. The result would be a burdensome layer of record keeping and enforcement whose fruition would be an adversarial relationship between high schools and teenagers.

Of course it is desirable for students to stay in school for as long as possible and it is better yet if they master the curriculum and graduate. But given the reasons which the report itself identifies for school leaving – academic failure, disinterest in school, problematic behavior (getting suspended or expelled) and life events – mandating school retention is unlikely to make a real difference in learning even as it creates big problems for high school staff.

If we actually address the causes of dropping out it will be the rare student who leaves school before completion. So let’s put our energy into something positive instead of picking fights with young people who are practically adults.

What makes much more sense is the report’s recommendation to find ways for out of school youth, and particularly those most at risk, to easily return to schooling when they have figured out that going back is what they want to do. School people would much rather spend their time helping a struggling student who wants to learn than facing off with a truculent 17 year old who has been made to do what he or she doesn’t want to do.

When was the last time any of you tried to “make” a 17 year old do something? The fact is that they can and will just leave unless we are prepared to use substantive legal or physical force, a wasteful use of resources. And what happens if the school “wins” and forces kids to be where they don’t want to be? My experience is that angry youth have the capacity to make the lives of their peers, teachers and administrators utterly miserable. They will disrupt class, verbally abuse their teachers, harass their peers in the hallways and dare all the adults to make them behave. Eventually they will force us to suspend them and maybe they will misbehave so badly that we will have to adjudicate them. Which would be a truly tragic ending to an otherwise colossal waste of time.

These are not the kinds of relationships we should want with teenagers. We shouldn’t be in the business of trying to make them do what they don’t want to do. We should be trying to get them to want to do the things that are good for them. And it can be done – by building caring, trustworthy relationships with them; by offering meaningful and interesting classes; by creating opportunities that build on their strengths and let them shine; and by helping them with the very real problems they have in their lives. We want to win them over, not knock them down. We want to stand next to them cheering them on, instead of drawing a line in the sand and trying to force them to give in. We need their boundless energy working with us, not against us.

What we need is a system of easy in and easy out. This was the conclusion of one of my teachers after yet another round of unsuccessful effort with a genuinely reluctant learner. School would be a very different place if we would let high school students go when, for whatever reason, they can’t or won’t do school and if we would genuinely welcome them back, at any time, with all the supports in the world when they are truly ready to try. We might find that we had dramatically more energy for helping them if we didn’t spend so much of our time trying to compel them to do what, at a given point in time, they do not want to do. Why we might even have enough energy to deal with academic deficits; to create compelling learning opportunities; to prevent problematic behavior and to help them with out of school problems.