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The California Context: How the CA Reading Wars Got Resolved: A Personal Story
The California Context
How the California Reading Wars Got Resolved: A Personal Story
by Bill Honig
Too many children in the United States do not learn to read well in their early years, and that failure damages them in their future school careers. Yet the research and evidence on how best to teach beginning reading is largely settled. (For a summary of foundational reading research and best practice, see the section below "The Role of Foundational Reading Skills.") There is no excuse for any youngsters beyond a very small number to fail to learn to read. Our most successful districts incorporate these ideas in instruction, but we still have a major problem in this country. Many less successful districts do not use this evidence-based approach, and a growing number have adopted alternative, discredited strategies such as "balanced literacy" programs that teach beginning readers to sound out only the first letter of a word (rather than all the letters) and use context clues to guess what the word is. Many of the students in these schools and districts never learn to decode properly and, as a result, are destined to remain weak readers. This situation is much like the case of military doctors who fail to put into practice the lessons learned in recent wars on how to minimize battlefield deaths from injuries.
I devoted a substantial part of my educational career to advocate for improved reading instruction based on the most potent research. I founded a group to promulgate these ideas (CORE) and wrote a book on the subject. The following is the story of that effort.
The Rise of Whole Language
Back in the 1970s when I was a member of the California State Board of Education, I wrote a pamphlet on reading instruction with JoEllen Taylor from Far West (now WestEd) entitled Planning an Effective Reading Program and published by them. We integrated using a skills approach to teach decoding and phonics with literature and writing-based strategies—a consensus that was blown apart in the late 1980s by the whole language movement's opposition to phonics instruction.
During my tenure as California's superintendent of public instruction, in the late '80s we developed the Reading and Literature Framework, which stressed the importance of students being well read and encountering and discussing rich, varied literature. The framework mentioned phonics, but as it turned out not forcefully enough to withstand the whole language movement, which was then gathering steam.
The proponents of whole language believe that teaching skills such as phonics hurts children. Instead, they advocate an alternative approach that stresses reading together and using pictures, syntax, and context to guess the meaning of words instead of learning how letters map to sounds to sound out the words on a page in a linguistically justified sequence of instruction. When they do use word attack skills they suggest students sound out the first letter and then use context to guess the word. They provide "leveled readers" that are not designed to practice letter/sound correspondences students have learned and don't distinguish between the sequence of letter/sound correspondences already taught and the more complex ones still to be addressed. Since English is complex linguistically such a strategy leaves many children confused and frustrated. Their position is based on the mistaken belief that learning to read is like learning to speak—a natural, unconscious process that is hindered by organized skill instruction. It isn't.
I had seen the deleterious effects of this approach 20 years before when it became widespread in the '60s as part of the free school movement. As a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher, I noticed that many of my entering students were never taught to read. Sitting them on a couch and giving them a book to read just didn't cut it.
Because of my work with JoEllen Taylor, I made the mistake of assuming that stressing the importance of literature and rich content would not detract from the necessity of teaching phonics. At the time, I had not yet even heard of the whole language movement and was not aware of its growing strength among educators so I was oblivious to the need to include in the framework very clear and detailed guidance about the importance of phonics.
Jeanne Chall had published the definitive study on teaching children to read, which demonstrated that teaching phonics produced much better readers than the looser strategy being pushed by an unfounded belief system like whole language. I had met and respected Jeanne, and when she saw a draft of the framework she called and warned me that people would use it to stop teaching phonics. I didn't believe her and assured her that educators would never make such a ridiculous mistake. It turned out she was right and I was wrong because that's exactly what happened. The framework was hijacked by the whole language movement.
It took a few years to realize what had happened. In one of his more destructive acts, Governor George Deukmejian eliminated the testing program in California in 1990, after a long campaign against me personally and public education in general. The long-standing California Assessment Program (CAP) was one of the best in the nation. We only tested at three grades. We used matrix sampling, which meant that each child only took a portion of the test. This allowed more thorough questions in less testing time and avoided the negative consequences of attaching tests to accountability. The current well-regarded National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is patterned after CAP.
In the '80s, CAP scores, including reading, were improving substantially—proof that our efforts were working. Reading scores leveled off at the end of the decade, but we didn't yet detect a trend to worry about. The governor claimed he abolished the program as a cost-cutting measure, but no one believed him. The result was a calamity. We were flying blind precisely when whole language started to significantly impair reading instruction. Thus, we made no course correction.
Persuasive Reading Research
In my years as superintendent, I had to think about a broad array of educational issues. When I left office in 1993, I felt it would be a welcome change to concentrate on just one educational area and get deeply involved in it. I picked beginning reading because I felt responsible for the way our framework was used by the whole language movement with such damaging results. So I started reading in depth and talking to experts about how children learn to read. In 1990, Marilyn Adams had published her groundbreaking work, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. It was based on extensive research confirming and extending Jeanne Chall's previous work on the processes children need to master to learn to read. I had not had time to read Marilyn's book because of an all-encompassing political conflict with the governor and legal proceedings stemming from that fight, but now tackled the book. The tome was hard for me to understand. I had to read it three times before I could comprehend all of what she was saying. Luckily, I knew Marilyn, and over the course of many phone calls, she graciously played the role of tutor, answering all my questions.
She then invited me to the 1995 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, which had been formed two years before. At the meeting Marilyn introduced me to the top reading researchers in the country. For several years Reid Lyon, who was head of the Behavior and Development branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, had made large grants to a network of research projects investigating why some children learn to read so easily and why others have great difficulty. The studies delved into how children learn to read, identified the difficulties many encounter, provided a broader definition of requisite foundational skills, and confirmed the importance of an organized, structured program for teaching beginning readers.
For those who are interested, what follows is a short description of their research: why, contrary to the claims of whole language advocates, most children do not learn to read naturally in the same way they learn to speak (especially in English, which is linguistically complex) and why children need to be taught in an organized fashion.
The Role of Foundational Reading Skills
First, these researchers examined speaking since print represents spoken words. When we listen to someone speak, a stream of sounds like the phonemes /m/ and /a/ /n/ all run together and we hear the word man. We have been programmed to recognize this sequence of sounds as a word and immediately connect that spoken cluster of sounds to the concept or meaning underlying it. For the process to be rapid, we have learned not to pay attention to or even discern the individual phonemes that make up a word but to perceive groups of these sounds as words. The process is very fast, unconscious, and efficient; otherwise we wouldn't be able to concentrate on the meaning of what the speaker is saying.
Initially, reading for understanding depends on recognizing the symbols on a page set off with spaces as a word that's part of our speaking vocabulary—sounding out the letters in the word until it is recognized as if it were being spoken (assuring that students are familiar with the meaning of the word being decoded at the start is crucial especially for English-language learners and low-income children). Later, meaning also comes from more sophisticated strategies that require recognizing syllables and morphemes, navigating complex syntax and text structures, extensively developing vocabulary, connecting to what you know and drawing inferences, and extending meaning by writing or discussing what you read.
So reading initially is a double code. The printed word stands for the spoken sounds of the word, which in turn represent the meaning behind that spoken word. Luckily, English uses the alphabetic system to represent spoken words in print. That system was invented eons ago by some unsung geniuses who figured out that spoken words in a language are made up of a limited number of discrete sounds (about 44 in English), which allowed for millions of potential combinations or words to represent concepts. Crucially, these prodigies also determined that one could represent those sounds by symbols (letters or combinations of letters), which when decoded and combined would generate the spoken word. The catch was how to make the process as rapid, automatic, and unconscious as speech so that a reader could concentrate on thinking about what was being read. Complicating the task of understanding what one reads is evidence that comprehending meaning suffers if more than about five percent of the words are not known automatically. The same is true of speech. It doesn't take many words that you don't hear or don't understand to stop you from comprehending what's being said.
The research community, relying on the latest brain research, discovered how good readers do it. The secret is to develop a growing corpus of automatically recognized words so that a word instantly pops into your head by just looking at it. Then students can read material with large numbers of automatically recognized words and keep growing their lexicon by reading new text, sounding out or decoding (eventually assisted by pattern recognition, as explained below) the few previously unencountered printed words found there.
What did these researchers discover about how people learn to automatically recognize a word? One of the most important findings was that both sounds (phonemes) and symbols (graphemes, or letters and letter combinations) were crucial to rapid retrieval of words. Hearing-impaired children, for example, usually read several grades below expected levels because their information about a word is limited to its letters. When they are taught to substitute signing for the sound information they reach grade level.
To make use of the full bundle of necessary information for rapid retrieval, a student must initially read through the whole word (sounding it out), which requires attending to all of the letters, connecting the letters and letter combinations to the sounds they represent, blending the sounds together, and linking the sounds to the meaning of the word in the context. When this process is successfully repeated several times, the student forms a neural model of that specific word in the brain that gets automatically activated upon seeing the word in print. The sounds of the word are stored in one part of the brain, the symbols connected to those sounds in another, and both are connected to the meaning stored in the frontal cortex. After a student has analyzed and correctly read a word several times, a neural model with all the information necessary for rapid retrieval is formed. (Some reading-disabled youngsters need focused interventions to succeed because they have brain-processing issues that make creating these connections or retrieving the information difficult.)
Thus, the royal road to master beginning reading is to develop the decoding tool—the ability to sound out words thoroughly so that they can eventually be stored and retrieved rapidly. As more and more words become automatic, students can read increasingly difficult text.
After a time, when students have mastered enough letter/sound correspondences, pattern recognition speeds up the decoding process. For example, if a student has learned to automatically recognize the word weight, by using analogy the student can more easily read and create a neural model for the word freight. This can only take place after the spelling pattern eight and its corresponding sounds were initially sounded out, practiced several times, and stored in permanent memory.
A critical piece of eye research demonstrated that effective readers see every letter in a word as they scan it, which activates the exact spelling and associated sounds stored in memory. I'm getting older now and sometimes catch myself misreading an i for an e in a word, which changes the meaning and makes me stop but proves I'm seeing each letter.
When teachers shortchange the process by teaching students guessing strategies such as looking only at the first letter and using context to "infer" what the word is, the full package of information never gets stored and quick retrieval is hampered the next time the student encounters the word (unless after guessing, the student uses phonics to sound out the word and confirm it's correct and then has enough practice to store the word—a process the whole language advocates discourage). Repeating the guessing strategy each time a word is encountered is far too cumbersome and error prone for efficient reading.
Most importantly, guessing from context, even if given the first letter of a word, doesn't work that well. In our Consortium on Reaching Excellence trainings (more about CORE later) we show a paragraph from Jack London's Call of the Wild, with every fifth word redacted except for the first letter. We then ask teachers who believe context can help them decode words to read the passage. In hundreds of trainings, not one person could read and understand the excerpt until, finally, one teacher read the entire passage fluently. I was amazed and asked her how she did it. It turns out she has a photographic memory and had stored the passage in her brain from previous readings. It is important to note that context clues are useful to determine if a word has been correctly decoded and makes sense in the context. There are also occasions when context clues can help readers figure out a word that is not yet in their vocabulary, but context strategies can't replace decoding. Finally, students need enough flexibility in decoding to try out various potential solutions to generating and combining sounds until they hit on a word that makes sense. For example, trying to break a word into syllables in different ways with different vowel sounds—"Is it re•cent or rec•ent?"
Alternatively, memorization strategies don't work either. If students try to memorize the unique configuration of each word they quickly are overwhelmed. There are just too many words in English for that approach to be successful, and children who rely on memorizing words without learning phonics flame out quickly.
As a caution, when educators use the word decoding, they may be referring to two distinct ideas, which is confusing. First, there is the automatic recognition of words that are stored for rapid and unconscious retrieval. Second, there is the conscious, effortful process of sounding out the word that must occur several times before it becomes automatic.
So why is this latter process difficult to master for many students? One complicating factor with learning to read in English is the linguistic complexity of the language. Learning to read in Spanish is much easier than learning to read in English because Spanish is almost completely transparent—there is nearly a one-to-one correspondence between the 22 phonemes in the Spanish spoken in the Americas and the 29 letters that represent those sounds. What you see is what you get. English, on the other hand, is all over the map reflecting the various historical contributions to the language—Anglo-Saxon, Danish, Norman French, Spanish, and so on, each with different linguistic patterns.
As a result, there are 44 sounds in English but only 26 letters, so some sounds are spelled with letter combinations. A student has to decide whether to look at one letter or a combination to generate the correct sound. Second, in English, unlike Spanish and other more transparent languages, there are many individual letters that stand for more than one sound. The letter a, for example, represents different sounds in the words cake, hat, and along. Conversely, many sounds are represented in several ways such as the long-a sound, which is spelled a in basin, a with silent e in late, ai in paid, ay in day, and so on. This lack of regularity confuses many children when they are first learning to read. Many get so frustrated they give up.
One major breakthrough in teaching reading in English was to structure the sequence of initial instruction to make it more like the transparent languages so that children aren't overwhelmed by the multiple ways sounds are represented in English—that is, make it more like Spanish. Beginning instruction should focus on the highest-frequency sound/spelling correspondences (single consonants and short vowels) and avoid multiple representations of sounds until students begin to understand how the alphabetic system works and get the hang of sounding out words. Then the less frequent and more complex combinations can be added without causing as much confusion.
That's why experienced researchers and practitioners advocate a sequenced rolling out of sound/spellings—from simple to complex—and teaching children how to read through, or sound out words thoroughly so the words are stored and can be automatically retrieved. It takes some time and practice for most children to master this skill, while others learn it without much effort. To support beginning readers, teachers must also provide reading materials that are made up primarily of words containing the sound/spelling relationships they have taught (decodable text). The materials should also include some irregular high-frequency words such as was and of, which must be memorized with the help of explicit instruction. Carefully selecting materials for decoding practice avoids overwhelming students with multiple sound/spellings they have not yet encountered.
Learning to sound out words in late kindergarten and early first grade—the tool a student needs to become automatic with a growing number of words—depends on the acquisition of several key precursor concepts and skills. Students must know print concepts (e.g., English text is read from left to right), be fluent in recognizing letters, be able to name letters and connect them with sounds, and extremely important, be able to hear the discrete sounds in spoken words (phonemic awareness), beginning, ending, and medial. In this last task, students must unlearn what has become second nature in understanding speech—they have learned to ignore the discrete sounds in words and just hear the whole word. Now we are asking them to reinstate their ability to hear the discrete sounds. For some that takes a bit of work. In fact, many adults, including teachers, have difficulty identifying the discrete sounds in words. For example, how many sounds do you hear in the word French? (There are five: /f/ /r/ /e/ /n/ /ch/.)
Most students can identify beginning sounds by mid-kindergarten and ending and medial sounds by the conclusion of kindergarten. Playing sound games especially with kids who haven't developed these abilities can help them master the technique. Many finally nail the skill of hearing discrete sounds as they learn to match sounds with letters in the course of phonics instruction.
Researchers also found that if students fail to master decoding by late kindergarten to mid–first grade to sound out and recognize simple words they haven't seen, their chances of ever becoming on-grade readers rapidly diminish. Since they don't have a workable method for automatically recognizing a growing number of words, they fall further and further behind. Many become confused or frustrated with the complexities of English and eventually give up or become alienated from reading. That is why Response to Instruction (RtI) strategies are found to be so effective. Good initial reading instruction teaches most to decode early, and the teacher intervenes rapidly when a student is not catching on. Giving students "the gift of time" by waiting to assist under the mistaken belief that they will eventually understand the process when they are more "developmentally ready" condemns large numbers of faltering readers to a lifetime of grief. Of course, teaching phonics and decoding must be accompanied by a rich oral language, literature, writing, discussing, and vocabulary development program as described in the California ELA/ELD Framework, explicated below.
One of the more unfortunate developments currently is the tendency in many schools and districts to ignore the significant number of students not mastering beginning reading because of the absence of a research-based beginning reading program and then assigning them to intervention groups when they are not making progress. A much better strategy is to teach them well initially and support those students who are confused immediately and not wait until the damage is done and they have become frustrated.
In later grades, students are taught how to decode multisyllabic words by recognizing syllable types and division patterns; using prefixes, suffixes, and knowledge of root words; and identifying larger patterns, or chunks, encountered in similar words already learned to help them decode new words. For more about multisyllabic word instruction and assessment, see Word ID: Assessment Across the Content Areas.
Also children should receive fluency instruction, if needed, to smooth out and speed up their oral reading. All these efforts should be accompanied by extensive reading of good stories and literature by and to kids, discussing stories, a good spelling or encoding program aligned with the sound/spelling instructional sequence, assigned writing, and the buildup of content knowledge.
Three Important Decisions
Reading researchers were reporting on exciting stuff, which explained a great deal about how best to teach our children. What they were saying was powerful, but it was presented in fairly esoteric technical language. I thought there might be a needed role for a translator—to put the research findings in a form that practitioners could readily understand and to work with schools to promulgate their ideas. So I made three important decisions. I started the Consortium on Reading Excellence (CORE) with Linda Diamond, Sheila Mandel, Ann Cunningham, and Ruth Nathan to work with teachers and administrators on incorporating this powerful research into practice. I also I wrote a succinct book published in 1996, Teaching Our Children to Read: The Role of Skills in a Comprehensive Reading Program. Here is the dedication:
This book is dedicated to those teachers, researchers, and leaders who have kept their common sense and are beseeching the educational community to reach an effective, working consensus on how best to teach our children to read. I hope the information provided here—which summarizes and highlights a tremendous amount of research and thinking by the leading experts in the literacy field—will help them achieve this laudable goal.
The third decision was to lobby at the state level for policies reflecting this new research. After leaving the state superintendent's office, I teamed up with Marion Joseph, a true force of nature, who had become convinced that the whole language movement was ruining the teaching of reading to California's children. I met Marion in 1965 when I was working for Pat Brown, then California governor, and she was working with Wilson Riles, then state superintendent. We became close (she always said she viewed me as her younger brother) but fell out when I ran against her boss in 1982. After I won, she withdrew from education and we lost contact. When I was the subject of a lawsuit brought by the state, she came to see me to find out if there was anything she could do to help. After the Language Arts Framework was disseminated, Marion noticed her granddaughter was not learning to read. After hearing gobbledygook from the teacher, she checked with her extensive school contacts. Marion was horrified at what she discovered about how reading instruction was being conducted under the influence of whole language.
Together we started lobbying key people in the state to change direction. The legislature, the new superintendent Delaine Eastin, Governor Wilson, and subsequently Governor Gray Davis got behind the effort. Marion was appointed to the State Board of Education, along with other phonics advocates, the legislature passed phonics bills and appropriated funds for professional development, and new textbooks were eventually adopted that were based on the new compelling research. An engrossing account of this effort was written by the well-respected Nicholas Lemann, published in The Atlantic magazine in 1997. The article captures how heated the controversy was during that decade.
The research findings on teaching reading I discovered in 1995, incorporated in my book which was used to start CORE, were the basis for the lobbying effort in California and were eventually enshrined in the 2000 National Reading Panel report, which was developed by some of the country's leading reading experts. The panel reviewed more than 100,000 studies and recommended the explicit and systematic teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics, a guided oral reading strategy, and fluency and comprehension strategies. A recent neuroscience research project from Stanford confirmed the earlier findings that supported the role of phonics and decoding. For a current summary of the latest research, see Linnea Ehri's article in the 2014 issue of Scientific Studies of Reading. The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles: A Blueprint for Solving Reading Problems by Louise Spear-Swerling and Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties by David Kilpatrick are among the best research-based books on how to teach children to read and explain some current misguided reading approaches that are still in widespread use. For an article featuring top educators affirming that almost all students can learn to read if they are initially taught correctly, see Liana Heitin's post in Education Week.
For a useful compendium on research-based reading instruction and strategies, see Honig, Diamond, and Gutlohn's Teaching Reading Sourcebook, Updated Second Edition, and its companion book, Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures, 2nd Edition. Both books were produced by CORE, where I am president. The Sourcebook was one of only 10 publications endorsed by the National Council on Teacher Quality to cover beginning reading adequately. Of the 10, it was the fourth most used publication for preservice teachers.
The same ideas were incorporated in the recently developed Common Core State Standards and in the new California ELA/ELD Framework based on those standards, which also stressed wide reading and the importance of a systematic buildup of content knowledge in the major disciplines. For a useful executive summary on the California ELA/ELD standards, go to this website.
Here is a short quote from a 2014 article authored by Jo Ann Isken, Carol Jago, and myself, which explains the ideas behind the framework:
The outer ring of the graphic [a symbol used in the framework] identifies the overarching goals of ELA/ELD literacy and instruction. By the time California's students complete high school, they should have developed readiness for college, career, and we added civic life; attained the capacities of literate individuals; become broadly literate; and acquired the skills for living and learning in the twenty-first century.
California has grounded the framework in these broader purposes of the language arts. We want students to be able to understand complex text and ideas as well as reason, analyze, persuade, and problem solve. We also wish them to encounter a rich liberal arts education—learning about the world, civic life, and the human heart, being well-read, and helping them reach their potential. We would like our youngsters to encounter a significant representation of the best classic and contemporary literature including novels, biographies, essays and plays as well as coherent content informational text in science, history, and the humanities. We would like them to experience the joy of reading engrossing stories and fascinating material.
So the ELA/ELD framework is about two main thrusts: First, attention to the totality of what students read both on their own in independent reading and in school in their liberal arts disciplines (including literature) during their school years, and second, the analytical, reasoning and literacy skills necessary to comprehend and apply knowledge gleaned from a variety of text structures. Both ideas are stressed in the multi-state Common Core ELA standards. To this end, the framework also recommends an organized independent reading program for each student to supplement what is read in school and provides advice on how to implement such a strategy in Chapter 2.
The developers of the ELD standards made a crucial decision from the start. They designed the standards to aid the large number of English-language learners in mastering the California Common Core Standards, which greatly facilitated the integration of the two sets of standards. They organized the ELD standards around five overarching themes—foundational skills, language, written and oral expression, content knowledge, and meaning-making strategies such as drawing inferences and making connections. The integrated ELA/ELD Framework adopted this architecture. All five themes work together to develop student comprehension.
The first strand is foundational skills. To understand the ideas in a text, the reader needs to automatically recognize almost all the words. For words already in the reader's speaking vocabulary, that is the role of foundational skills—to teach them a process for becoming automatic with a growing number of words. Foundational skills address how to teach them these skills and include phonics, word attack skills (learning how to sound out new words, handle multisyllabic words, and recognize word structures such as prefixes, suffixes, and root words), and fluency instruction. The foundational skills in the California framework are summarized in an extremely well written resource guide by Hallie Yopp, one of the authors of the framework.
The second theme, language, deals with the crucial topic of vocabulary, text structure and syntax, and academic language—all critical to understanding text. Academic texts in English contain a large number of words that appear infrequently but are essential to understanding. To successfully complete high school, students need to understand approximately 65,000 words, although some words are members of the same word family. Consequently, from the outset, there must be a rich vocabulary development strand coupled with an extensive independent reading program. This is particularly crucial for the large numbers of low-income or ELL students who start school knowing far fewer words than their middle-class and English-speaking peers. For a valuable resource, see the Vocabulary Handbook and CORE's Word Intelligence, which is a vocabulary program for middle-grade students. In addition, as material and sentence structure become more complex and demanding in upper elementary, students must learn to handle challenging elements such as complex sentences with multiple dependent clauses. Finally, different disciplines such as history and science organize information in different ways and students need help in navigating these varied text structures.
The third theme enhances comprehension by concentrating on a student's ability to express ideas in writing and speaking. This strand also includes spelling and writing conventions such as grammar. Often, until you have tried to explain something, you really don't know it.
The fourth theme deals with the vital role content knowledge plays in comprehension and the importance of a systematic buildup of disciplinary and cultural knowledge through organized class work and independent reading. See the vast work on this subject at Core Knowledge and "For Reading, Knowledge Matters More Than Strategies, Some Experts Say." See also "Why Reading to Learn Is Seldom Taught." And, finally, meaning making addresses the meta-cognitive skills of self-monitoring, drawing inferences, and thinking about what is being read.
For ELD students, the frameworks recommend that these strands be integrated into the regular instruction program (integrated instruction) and that schools provide a designated time for supportive instruction tailored to the language needs of the students (designated instruction).
Similar to math, English language arts shifts to a more active instructional program including book discussions, projects, research, and making arguments and taking positions in both writing and speaking.
I believe we have reached a broad-based consensus in California on the elements of good reading instruction and how best to deal with our large numbers of second-language learners. The frameworks are widely supported by educators and policymakers, although there are still too many schools and classrooms that have not yet incorporated the breadth of what these well-researched documents are recommending.
Reference Notes
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Chall, J. S. (1983). Stages of Reading Development. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Adams, M. J. (1996). Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gutlohn, L., & Bessellieu, F. (2014). Word ID: Assessment Across the Content Areas. Novato, CA: Arena Press. http://www.wordidassessment.com
Consortium on Reaching Excellence (CORE). http://www.corelearn.com/
Honig, B. (1996). Teaching Our Children to Read: The Role of Skills in a Comprehensive Reading Program. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. https://us.corwin.com/en-us/nam/teaching-our-children-to-read/book7412
Lemann, N. (1997, Nov). The Reading Wars. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/the-reading-wars/376990/
National Reading Panel, & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction: Reports of the subgroups. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/pages/smallbook.aspx
Yoncheva, Y. N., Wise, J., & McCandliss, B. (2015). Hemispheric Specialization for Visual Words Is Shaped by Attention to Sublexical Units During Initial Learning. Brain and Language. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X15000772
Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition of Sight Word Reading, Spelling Memory, and Vocabulary Learning. Scientific Studies of Reading. http://eric.ed.gov/?q=%22%22&ff1=subVocabulary+Development&id=EJ1027413
Spear-Swerling, L. (2015). The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles: A Blueprint for Solving Reading Problems. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.
Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (Essentials of Psychological Assessment). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Heitin, L. (2015, Jun 12). Can Most Kindergartners Really Tackle 'Emergent-Reader Texts?' Coaches Say Yes. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/06/can_kindergartners_tackle_emer.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters
Honig, B., Diamond, L., & Gutlohn, L. (2013). Teaching Reading Sourcebook, Updated Second Edition. Novato, CA: Arena Press. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/ – Teaching-Reading-Sourcebook-Updated-2nd-Edition
Diamond, L., & Thorsnes, B. J. (Eds.). Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures. 2nd Edition. Novato, CA: Arena Press. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/ – Assessing-Reading-Multiple-Measures-2nd-Edition
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2014). Standard 2: Early Reading: What Consumers Need to Know About Teacher Preparation. http://www.nctq.org/dmsView/Teacher_Prep_Review_2014_Std2
California Department of Education. (2015, Jul). English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools: K–12. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/elaeldfrmwrksbeadopted.asp
Slowik, H. Y., & Brynelson, N. (2015). Executive Summary: English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools: K–12. California Department of Education. http://www.scoe.net/castandards/
Isken, J. A., Honig, B., & Jago, C. (2015, Oct 15). California's Recently Adopted English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework: Translating the Common Core State Standards to a Coherent and Sequenced Curriculum for All Students. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/documents/elaeldfwsummaryoct15.pdf
Yopp, H. (2015). Resource Guide to the Foundational Skills of the California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/search/searchresults.asp?cx=001779225245372747843%3Agpfwm5rhxiw&output=xml_no_dtd&filter=1&num=20&start=0&q=Resource+Guide+to+the+Foundational+Skills+of+the+California+Common+Core+State+Standards+for+English+
Diamond, L., & Gutlohn, L. (2006). Vocabulary Handbook. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/ – Vocabulary-Handbook
Word Intelligence. http://www.wordintelligence.net/
Core Knowledge. www.coreknowledge.org
Heitin, L. (2015, Oct 29). For Reading, Knowledge Matters More Than Strategies, Some Experts Say. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/10/for_reading_knowledge_matters_more_than_strategies.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters
Cobb, V. (2015, Jul 21). Why Reading to Learn Is Seldom Taught. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-cobb/why-reading-to-learn-is-s_b_7841040.html
This entry was posted in Build-and-Support, California Context, Common Core, Curriculum and Instruction and tagged Accountability, Common Core, ELA/ELD, Reading Instruction, Teacher Tenure on April 26, 2016 by BillHonig.
The California Context: CA Policymakers and Educators Shift from Test-and-Punish to Build-and-Support
Photo Credit: Lukasz Stefanski / Shutterstock.com
California Policymakers and Educators Shift from Test-and-Punish to Build-and-Support
California, under the leadership of Governor Jerry Brown, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, Michael Kirst, president of the State Board of Education, and the legislature, and backed by almost the entire educational establishment and advocacy groups in the state, including the teacher unions, has embraced the long-range and comprehensive Build-and-Support strategy. California's approach is based on valid, reliable school improvement research and patterned after the practices and policies of high-performing states such as Massachusetts. All California stakeholders agree that educational performance in the state must improve substantially and that it will take 10–15 years of concerted effort to successfully implement the more demanding instructional program envisioned by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The specifics of the California strategy follow.
Ensuring Adequate Funding Levels
Early in his term, Governor Brown sponsored Proposition 30, a tax increase initiative that temporarily raised income tax rates on top earners and provided for a ¼-cent sales tax increase. It passed. Those funds and the economic recovery in the state allowed the governor, working with the state legislature, to increase per-pupil funding for K–12 by about 40% during his first term. The hefty increase was designed to make up for the precipitous drop in support caused by the recession. The governor and the legislature also revamped the educational funding system under the Local Control Funding Program (LCFP). It now gives districts more flexibility in how to manage their funds and to provide additional resources for high-risk students.
Adopting a Rigorous, Standards-Based Liberal Arts Curriculum
After widespread discussions, the State Board of Education (SBE) in California approved the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the English Language Arts (ELA) Standards, and the English Language Development (ELD) Standards. The later two were both later integrated into the ELA/ELD Framework. It also signed on to the CCSS-aligned Smarter Balanced Assessment Program (SBAC). California policymakers were careful to emphasize that the primary purpose of the assessments was to feed back information to improve instruction, not for high-stakes consequences. At the same time, they eliminated a cluster of existing state tests. The SBE, backed by the political establishment, postponed testing until the new SBAC tests were ready and refused to submit to federal pressure requiring that testing be tied to teacher evaluations. The state legislature also gave the SBE two years to devise a new accountability system.
Delivering High-Quality Instruction
Recognizing the need for additional support, the SBE authorized the development of frameworks to advise teachers and districts on how best to translate the standards into curriculum and instruction, deliver effective professional development, build collaborative teams, and adopt instructional materials consistent with the standards.
Useful California Content Frameworks and Support Documents
English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools
Executive Summary: English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools
California's Recently Adopted English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework: Translating the Common Core State Standards to a Coherent and Sequenced Curriculum for All Students
Resource Guide to the Foundational Skills of the California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects
Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools
Executive Summary: Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools
Making Meaning of the California Mathematics and ELA/ELD Frameworks–Helpful Tools for Every Audience (a white paper on how to use the frameworks)
History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools (Draft)
Science Framework for California Public Schools (Draft)
These frameworks have been widely supported in the state. The California Department of Education, county offices, districts, educational organizations, newly created networks of schools and districts, and especially the state teacher unions have been aggressively pursuing the implementation of the more active and deeper instruction envisioned by the CCSS. The California Teachers Association has been in the forefront of standards implementation efforts and has formed partnerships with Stanford and other educational entities to that end.
In 2012, State Superintendent Tom Torlakson formed a prestigious commission chaired by Linda Darling-Hammond and Chris Steinhauser. Darling-Hammond is one of the most respected school improvement researchers in the country, and Steinhauser is superintendent of the Long Beach Unified School District, which was designated one of the top school districts in the world. The commission produced Greatness by Design, a superb policy document that provides the blueprint for a Build-and-Support strategy in the state. In 2015, it followed up with A Blueprint for Great Schools: Version 2.0. These documents have had a major influence on practice in California, as has the expert advice of Michael Fullan.
In addition, the governor and the legislature invested almost $2 billion specifically for supporting the CCSS implementation and associated curricular and assessment changes and another $500 million for similar purposes in the 2015 budget. That latest allocation also included attracting, training, inducting, and supporting new teachers as one of the primary goals of the item, consistent with the recommendations of Greatness by Design, although there is still much to be done to revitalize the teaching profession.
Creating Useful and Fair Accountability Systems
In California, political and educational leaders proposed and the legislature enacted a plan to develop a new assessment and accountability system using multiple measures of student performance. The primary goal of the new system is to feed back information that will support local improvement efforts and not to punish schools and teachers. State leaders also created a new entity, the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, to support and review the CCSS and LCFP implementation and organize site visits and support for struggling schools.
Most districts have been hard at work on the day-to-day business of implementing the Common Core State Standards. In addition, two effective networks of districts have been collaborating on the CCSS implementation. One network, CORE Districts, is composed of some of the largest districts in the state; the other is the California Collaborative on District Reform. CORE Districts obtained a federal waiver to develop its own broader assessment system (although it had to agree to test-based teacher evaluation, which each district will soon be able to ignore under the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
A potent informal network funded by foundation support, the Consortium for the Implementation of the Common Core State Standards, was formed with representatives from major educational and government entities, districts, county education offices, teacher groups, the research community, higher education, and advocacy groups. It has helped on such key issues as implementation planning, coordinating the work of support providers, communication, technology, understanding the state mathematics and ELA/ELD frameworks, accountability, and new teacher policies. Its first publication, Leadership Planning Guide California, was intended to assist districts and schools in addressing the implementation of the CCSS. In 2015, the consortium produced user-friendly summaries of the math and ELA/ELD frameworks.
Resisting High-Stakes Testing
Moreover, almost every educational group has joined the political and educational leadership and the legislature to successfully resist federal demands for excessive high-stakes testing and accountability and not-ready-for-prime-time student and teacher evaluation schemes. The one exception has been the CORE Districts, which sought a waiver from severe No Child Left Behind (NCLB) penalties and were forced to accept test-driven teacher evaluation as the price for the waiver. Many of the districts are now struggling with implementing those evaluations, which have caused disharmony within the districts. In addition, although many in management continue to support such measures as test-driven teacher evaluation, their numbers are decreasing in the face of the Build-and-Support agenda being promoted by educational leaders across the state. Finally, the presidents and chancellors of the four higher education segments all signed a letter pledging support for the Common Core State Standards.
A brief summary of California's approach is available in a slide presentation by Michael Kirst and an article in CALmatters, "A Stanford Professor's High-Stakes Plan to Save California Schools." See also Jeff Bryant's 2015 interview of me in Salon and his follow-up article on California as a potential role model for the country. Lastly, see Charles Kerchner's blog post, "Can the 'California Way' Turn Around Underperforming Schools?"
How California Avoided the Push-Back Against the Common Core
There is widespread backing for Common Core in the state thanks to these efforts, particularly the tempered rolling out of the CCSS, the postponing of testing and accountability to allow time for implementation, and the divorcing of accountability from evaluations. The resistance to the CCSS that has erupted in other states from abrupt implementation and tying the standards themselves to high-stakes accountability has not occurred in California. The study Leveraging the Common Core to Support College and Career Readiness in California reports finding widespread excitement among high school teachers for the promise of the more active instruction offered by the CCSS.
In 2015, a poll by Children Now found 67% support among the general public in California for the CCSS. Interestingly, if respondents were asked only about the ideas behind the standards, without mentioning the name Common Core, support rose to between 85% and 93%. The findings were similar for parents who had children in public schools, and for those employed in the education field, 82% expressed support for the standards.
Build-and-Support Is Working in California
In 2013, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised a few cherry-picked states that had followed the administration's proposed reforms and improved their National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results. Duncan failed to mention the larger number of states that had also implemented the policies but did not grow and experienced lackluster results overall. In a glaring case of omission, Duncan never acknowledged California's reform efforts, which, although resisting many of the federal reform policies, topped the nation in growth in eighth-grade scores.
That trend has continued. From 2009 to 2015, California was first in growth, along with Washington, DC, in eighth-grade scaled reading score growth—up six points from 2009 compared to the national growth rate of one point. California was among the four-highest states in eighth-grade growth in mathematics—up five points from 2009 compared to a national decline of one point. California did not fare as well on NAEP fourth-grade scores. They have remained low with flat growth, mirroring the rest of the nation.
Added note: 2017 NAEP results have accelerated this trend, though there is still much work to do.
NAEP 8th and 4th Grade Reading and Math Average Scaled Score Growth for 2009-2017  California has the most second language students, the most diversity, and high levels of low income children compared to other states. Top growth scores nationally for 8th grade reading, 4th grade reading, 8th grade math. Weak growth for 4th grade math.
Reading: 8th grade: First in the nation. California growth +10 and now within 2 points of the national average. National growth +3 https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2017/#states/scores?grade=8
4th grade: Tied for 2nd nationally California growth +6  and now within 6 points of the national average. National growth +1 https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2017/#states/scores?grade=4
Math: 8th grade: Tied for 2nd nationally. California growth +6, Now within 5 points of the national average. National growth 0. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/math_2017/#states/scores?grade=8
4th grade: Tied for 15th in growth +1. 7 points behind nationally. National growth 0. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/math_2017/#states/scores?grade=4
Gaps have actually narrowed in the state. White student scores have not grown as fast as Hispanic and Black children.
Some subgroup info:
Hispanic growth scores for reading 2009-2017; 8th grade reading +10; 4th grade reading +8
Black: 8th grade +7; 4th grade -1!!!.
Hispanic growth scores for math: 8th grade +6; 4th grade +4
Black: 8th grade +5; 4th grade +1
Two California Urban Districts under the Federal Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) program showed top gains in NAEP.
LA: 8th grade reading average score growth 2009-2017. +11.  1st in nation. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2017/#/districts/scores?grade=8
4th grade reading: +10;  1st in nation (Tied DC)
8th grade math:  +8 (Tied for 3rd)
4th grade math: +1 (Not good—tied for 7th)
8th grade reading: +10. (2nd nationally after LA) https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/math_2017/#districts/scores?grade=8
4th grade reading: +9.  (tied for 2nd nationally)
8th grade math:  +3 (tied for 7th)
4th grade math +1 (tied for 7th)
Another set of data from the Urban Institute app which adjusts NAEP scores for language, poverty, race, and special ed. And whether the adjustments are accurate or not,  comparisons using the same standards are legit. http://apps.urban.org/features/naep/
One caveat is that the intervals on the ranks are still being scaled which might change
rank growth somewhat but the overall picture will remain very similar.
I took off the age control but let the others stay. (If you look at the website be sure to refresh after looking at math to allow you to click from math to reading and when you do remember to put off the age control) These data are ranks based on average scores, and if you mouse over the state it shows the growth in rankings. It is apparent that California has made large jumps in rankings this year from the past few years. (Florida has not grown as much but is at the top or near the top nationally in all the rankings—whether from state policy or district independent efforts needs to be determined)
In 8th grade reading we are now 14th in the country up from the low 40's as recently as 2013. In 4th grade reading we are 19th in the country up from the high 30's in 2015.
In 8th grade math we are 22nd up from the low 40's as recently as 2013.In 4th grade math (our weakest area where we need to undertake considerable work) we are 37th up from the low 40's in 2011 and 2015.
Some confirmation is provided by our most recent state testing, the SBAC. 11th grade reading scores. 60% now reach the "proficient" level—a level consistent with 4yr college work and the NAEP proficiency level which compares favorably to the other SBAC states that are much less diverse. To me, getting 60% of our diverse students to that level is impressive and a tribute to the hard work of our educational practitioners and policy direction. On the other hand, the state is much weaker in SBAC math performance at 11th grade (although improving) and math will be a major area of subsequent improvement efforts.
In addition, from 2010 to 2015, the Golden State improved its high school graduation from 74.7 to 82.3, an increase of 7.6 points, which is significantly greater than the improvement in the national rate. Despite having one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation, the state graduation rate is now higher than the national average. California Latino and African-American students progressed even faster. The rate of Latinos has increased 15% since 2010 to 78.5%; African-American students increased 11% to 70.8. Finally, in 2015, 43.4% of graduates completed all the necessary coursework to meet the minimum admissions requirements for the University of California and the California State University systems, a substantial jump from the 36.3% meeting the requirements in 2010.
Even though California scores have been increasing on NAEP, at least at the eighth-grade level, student achievement must improve substantially in the next decade. The first Smarter Balanced assessments based on the Common Core State Standards were given in 2015 and formed the base year for determining growth rates and improvements.
Preliminarily, SBAC reported four levels—standard exceeded, standard met, standard nearly met, and standard not met. It is important to understand what "standard" means. It was established to be comparable to the NAEP proficiency standards, which predict success in a four-year college credit-bearing course. Massachusetts, whose students score among those in the top countries worldwide, is the only state in which just over 50% of its students score proficient on NAEP.
The number of students in California meeting or exceeding the standard on the SBAC test at 11th grade is one indication of how many students are being adequately prepared for both four-year colleges and community colleges where students transfer to four-year colleges after two years or to one of the more demanding career tech pathways.
The 2015 scores in the 11th grade were decent in English language arts—58% of students reached the four-year college-bound level. The scores were low in mathematics—only 28% reached or exceeded the college-bound standard. This may be due to the shift in instruction called for by the CCSS or the greater language demands of the math test, or the test may have been too dependent on Intermediate algebra, which is not appropriate for many career paths. Researchers are currently examining the discrepancy between student performance in math and reading.
At elementary and middle grades, the percentage of students meeting the on-track to a four-year college standard was generally in the mid-30% in math and mid-40% in reading. The achievement gaps between low-income children or children of color and their higher-income or Caucasian peers increased from previous tests. This is most likely due to the fact that the new SBAC assesses deeper learning and provides a more accurate picture of actual performance.
Meeting the Challenges of Diversity and Underfunding
California has one of the most diverse groups of K–12 students in the nation: 54% Hispanic/Latino; 25% white; 12% Asian, Pacific Islander, or Filipino; 6% African-American; 3% mixed race; and 0.6% Native American. Its English-language learner (ELL) population is 25%, the largest in the nation. The states with the next largest ELL populations are Texas with 15%, Florida with 10%, and New York with 9%. Our state also ranks high in poverty levels.
Importantly, California spends significantly less per pupil than other states. In 2014–2015, it ranked 42nd after adjusting for cost of living, and it is significantly behind other states in additional support measures that affect school quality as well.
Yet, compared to the 12 other states that took the SBAC, California ranked in the middle of 11th-grade scores for both reading and math. None of the other states are as diverse. In the lower grades, however, California was either at the bottom or near the bottom. Unquestionably, much work is to be done in the state, but the Build-and-Support policy framework being pursued offers the best chance of substantial improvement during the next decade.
Career Tech Pathways
Many of us in California have one major problem with the Common Core State Standards, which is how the SBAC standards were set and how the CCSS in general are portrayed in the media. Although the literature maintains that the goal is "career and college readiness," as I explained above, the high school standards are actually primarily aimed at preparing students for four-year colleges or alternative career paths that demand the highest educational levels. This is particularly true of third-year high school courses in mathematics.
Many have questioned whether intermediate algebra (made more demanding by Common Core Standards) is an appropriate course for those preparing to be dental hygienists or to be trained in precision manufacturing. For those tech/prep students, rigorous substitutes such as statistics and quantitative reasoning or embedding these subjects in career tech application courses seems to be a better alternative. In fact, many states have pursued this direction. For example, Texas just recently changed its requirements.
The Charles A. Dana Center in Texas recently examined 34 career paths—from accounting to visual communication—to determine which math skills were needed. Most careers only demanded the use of the math learned through eighth grade that can be applied in complex and unique situations. See also "Programs of Study & Mathematics Alignment" on the Dana Center's website. It presents an analysis of the mathematical demands for nursing, communications, criminal justice, and social work.
Currently, about 40% of students nationally reach the levels needed for succeeding in a credit-bearing four-year college course. We should definitely be trying to increase that number, and the Common Core State Standards are valuable for that goal. Yet even for the college bound some flexibility is warranted. The University of California's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) establishes the courses that count for college admission, and the state university and community college systems follow its lead. Recently the BOARS committee approved some substitutions for intermediate algebra http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/committees/boars/documents/BOARSStatementonStatway.pdf and the community colleges are considering changes along these lines.
But that still leaves a large number of students who could profit from rigorous tech-prep pathways yet are usually neglected in a system that is primarily geared for the four-year college bound. California has lagged behind some other states showing leadership in developing these pathways such as Illinois, but it is now devoting resources and attention to this problem.
Robert Schwartz, of Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, has been one of the major national proponents of improving the pathways for the non–four-year college bound. See his Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century and Career Pathways: A Route to Upward Mobility, a paper he coauthored with Nancy Hoffman. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute also has been promoting alternative pathways. See the papers and video presentations from its Education for Upward Mobility Conference that are devoted to the issue. David Conley and Linda Darling-Hammond have also been champions of this approach. See the handouts on the California Department of Education web page that summarize their work. For a California perspective, see Career Technical Education Pathways Initiative, and for a national perspective, see The State of Career Technical Education. See also the fall 2014 online issue of American Educator, which is devoted to this topic.
Pamela Burdman has authored three excellent reports on mathematics college placement issues in California sponsored by the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) as well as a short article on the inaccuracies of college placement exams. A compendium of research from a conference on this subject can be found at a LearningWorks conference on the future of college math placement. The conference focused on three main issues:
Are there alternative paths to college other than the usual mathematics sequence that ends in intermediate algebra such as statistics or quantitative reasoning?
Is relying on a placement test an accurate and fair way to force students into remedial classes based on Algebra 2, which many will not pass. Are there better alternatives? Placement tests provide only a tiny percentage improvement on the predictions generated by merely relying on transcripts but do result in high levels of misplacement.
Are there more successful ways to teach the remedial classes?
In 2016, a major report by the Center for Community College Student Engagement made similar points about the deficiencies in our system of remediation, and a summary of the research demonstrates the defects of community college placement exams that 87% of community college students are forced to take.
Some extremely effective groups have been formed to support alternatives for the college bound and programs that offer rigorous preparation for the tech/prep bound. Among them are Linked Learning and ConnectEd. See also the High Tech High charter organization, which is devoted to school/career integration with an emphasis on project-based learning, and the many career academies that over the past two decades have been providing successful career preparation in important fields such as health, business, and manufacturing.
California has invested one-and-a-half-billion dollars in collaborative tech/prep grants aimed at two-year community college pathways to careers or four-year colleges or apprenticeships. This has been accomplished under the leadership of Governor Brown and the state legislature, with the full support of State Superintendent of Public Education Tom Torlakson. The investments have been made over the past few years and are slated to continue for the next few years.
Although some civil rights advocates are reluctant to support the premise that it is an unattainable goal for all students to become prepared for four-year institutions of higher learning, we are doing a disservice to many youngsters by only concentrating on that pathway. Many students who could succeed in a rigorous alternative route will falter under a four-year college prep sequence. These substitute pathways are a far cry from the old vocational education, which often became a dumping ground for low-performing students and devolved into tracking for minority and low-income students. One policy goal should be to maximize the number of students who qualify, attend, and graduate from four-year colleges, but we should also attend to the needs of those students who could profit from a rigorous tech/prep pathway.
The jury is still out on whether our large, diverse state will successfully implement the ambitious instructional program envisioned by the Common Core Standards over the next decade by following a Build-and-Support approach. So far, so good.
7/30/2016. Michael Petrilli has edited a just-released book Education for Upward Mobility (2016). This work contains essays under three headings. First, Transcending Poverty through Education, Work, and Personal Responsibility which includes chapters on the "Success Sequence" (graduate high-school, obtain a full-time job, and wait to have children until 21), tech-prep pathways, certification, and apprenticeship. Second, Multiple Pathways in High School: Tracking Revisited? which includes chapters on small schools of choice, college-prep high schools for the poor, and high-quality career and technical education. Finally, there is a section, The Early Years with chapters on the importance of the first five years, the centrality of knowledge acquisition in the elementary years, and issues of tracking in middle schools. Many of these authors support the main points in the article above.
7/30/2016 Two reports from the Education Commission of the States on what states require for early reading. California doesn't do as much as many other states. Although our ELA/ELD framework is solid, we are missing some of the other infrastructure. http://www.ecs.org/50-state-comparison-k-3-quality/; http://www.ecs.org/companion-report-50-state-comparison-k-3-quality/
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Blueprint 2.0 Planning Team. (2015, Jul 27). A Blueprint for Great Schools: Version 2.0. State Superintendent of Public Instruction. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/eo/in/bp/bp2contents.asp
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Federal Education Budget Project. (2012, Mar 28). Student Poverty Rate. http://febp.newamerica.net/k12/rankings/cenpov
Kerchener, C. T. (2015, Nov 23). Tax Proposals Would Lift California's Low School Funding. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/on_california/2015/11/tax_proposals_would_lift_californias_low_school_funding.html
Kaplan, J. (2015, Nov). California's Support for K-12 Education Ranks Low by Almost Any Measure. http://calbudgetcenter.org/?s=fact+K-12
Smarter Balance Results by State: 2014–2015.http://edsource.org/smarter-balanced-results/state.html and McCrea, D. (2015, Nov. 20). Personal letter to author.
Schulzke, E. (2015, Dec 12). How Much Math Do College-Bound Students Really Need? http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865643586/As-math-standards-nudge-upward-is-it-time-for-a-national-dialogue-on-how-much-math-high-schoolers.html
Fechter, J. (2014, Jan 31). State Nixes Algebra 2 for Most Students, Offers Other Math Options. http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/education/article/State-nixes-Algebra-2-for-most-students-offers-5194326.php
The Charles A. Dana Center. (2013, Jul). What Students Need to Know: Mathematics Concept Inventories for Community College Workforce Education Programs. The University of Texas at Austin. http://www.utdanacenter.org/higher-education/higher-education-resources/policy-resources/programs-of-study-mathematics-alignment/
The Charles A. Dana Center. Programs of Study & Mathematics Alignment. The University of Texas at Austin. http://www.utdanacenter.org/higher-education/higher-education-resources/policy-resources/programs-of-study-mathematics-alignment/
UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools. (2015, Jan 16). Statement on Approval of Statway. University of California. http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/committees/boars/documents/BOARSStatementonStatway.pdf See also UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools. (2013, Jul). Statement on Basic Math for All Admitted UC Students. http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/committees/boars/BOARSStatementonMathforAllStudentsJuly2013.pdf
Walton, I. (2013, Jun). Alternatives to Traditional Intermediate Algebra. Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. http://www.asccc.org/content/alternatives-traditional-intermediate-algebra
Symonds, W. C., Schwartz, R., & Ferguson, R. F. (2011). Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Pathways to Prosperity Project, Harvard University Graduate School of Education. https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4740480
Schwartz, R., & Hoffman, N. (2014, Dec 2). Career Pathways: A Route to Upward Mobility. edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Schwartz-Hoffman%20Paper-KLM%20(1).pdf
Thomas B. Fordham Institute. (2014, Dec 2). Education for Upward Mobility. http://edexcellence.net/publications/education-for-upward-mobility The papers from this conference have been published in a 2015 book edited by Michael Petrilli, Education for Upward Mobility, and a second video conference on the book was held in 2016. http://edexcellence.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=628bd73f1e90c900ee5ef4166&id=7894a573bc&e=ebbe04a807
California Department of Education. PSAA Meeting Webcast Archive 2014. Meeting Handouts. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/pa/psaawebcastarchive14.asp#dec2014handouts
California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office. (2013, Aug). Career Technical Education Pathways Initiative. http://californiacommunitycolleges.cccco.edu/Portals/0/reportsTB/REPORT_CTEPathwaysInitiative_082613_FINAL.pdf
Advance CTE. The State of Career Technical Education. http://www.careertech.org/state-CTE
American Federation of Teachers. (2014, Fall). American Educator. http://www.aft.org/ae/fall2014
Burdman, P. (2015). Publications. Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE). http://edpolicyinca.org/authors/pamela-burdman
Burdman, P. (2015, Nov 5). Math Placement Tests Deserve More Scrutiny. http://edsource.org/2015/math-placement-tests-deserve-more-scrutiny/90132?utm_source=Nov.+6+newsletter+John&utm_campaign=Daily+email&utm_medium=email
Learning Works. (2015, Nov 10). Testing and Beyond: A Summit on the Future of College Math Placement. http://www.learningworksca.org/testing-and-beyond-conference-nov-10th-2015-oakland-california/
Center for Community College Student Engagement. (2016). Expectations Meet Reality: The Underprepared Student and Community Colleges. The University of Texas at Austin, College of Education, Department of Educational Administration, Program in Higher Education Leadership. http://www.ccsse.org/nr2016/
Belfield, C., & Crosta, P. M. (2012, Feb). Predicting Success in College: The Importance of Placement Tests and High School Transcripts. Columbia University Teachers College Community College Research Center. http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/predicting-success-placement-tests-transcripts.html
Linked Learning Alliance. http://www.linkedlearning.org/
The California Center for College and Career (ConnectEd). www.connectedcalifornia.org
High Tech High. www.hightechhigh.org
Leal, F. (2016, Jan 26). $1.5 Billion Helping Career Pathways Take Off in California's High Schools. http://edsource.org/2016/1-5-billion-helping-career-pathways-take-off-in-californias-high-schools/93950
This entry was posted in Build-and-Support, California Context, Common Core, Conventional School Reforms, High--Stakes Testing, School Evaluation, Teacher Evaluation, Test-and-Punish and tagged Accountability, Common Core, ELA/ELD, High-Stakes Testing, Teacher Evaluation, Technology, Test-Based Accountability, Top Performers on April 26, 2016 by BillHonig.
How Top Performers Build-and-Support: Exemplary Models
How Top Performers Build-and-Support
Exemplary Models
Build-and-Support strategies not only have been based on extensive research but have proved to significantly improve performance in those districts, states and provinces, and nations that have followed their ideas.
There are examples of stellar districts that have achieved successful results by following Build-and-Support ideas. These include Long Beach, Garden Grove, Sanger, Whittier High School, Elk Grove, the High-Tech High School Summit, and the Aspire charter school networks, all in California; Montgomery County, Maryland; and Union City, New Jersey. All have pursued this more comprehensive, positive approach for years and place in the top ranks of international assessments. Conversely, Dallas, Texas, and Newark, New Jersey, are examples of the damage caused by a full "reform" strategy and its failure to produce results.
Sanger's journey—from a low-performing, high-poverty district suffering from substantial labor strife to a high-performing district where teachers and administrators have forged a close working relationship—demonstrates the power of the Build-and-Support strategy. Ironically, as a prime example of the deleterious effect of federal policy, in 2014 Sanger accepted a federal waiver under duress to avoid the severe penalties of NCLB (imposed by the feds even though Sanger grew faster than almost every other district in the state). However, district leaders then became worried that forced implementation of a test-driven evaluation would reverse its successful collaboration efforts. The problem should be solved in 2016 when the new ESSA measure becomes operative and when required high-stakes evaluation of teachers can no longer be mandated.
Similarly, Long Beach Unified School District, identified as one of the three top school jurisdictions in the country and among the top 20 in the world, has been building professional capacity around a strong, core curriculum for several decades with significant results. According to its superintendent, Chris Steinhauser, Long Beach's success stems from its attention to human and social capital development, including clinical experiences for new teachers; treating educators, parents, and community members with respect and trust; providing extensive coaching support for teachers and principals; orienting the district administrators to support schools; building teams at schools; implementing a strong liberal arts curriculum with a districtwide focus; developing cooperation with colleges and community organizations; and continuing a shared focus by all on instructional and curricular quality. Again, Long Beach has had consistent leadership for the past two decades under Carl Cohn (1992–2002) and Superintendent Steinhauser (2002–present). Long Beach has pursued educational improvement by developing a districtwide strategy that engages all teachers and schools in the effort as opposed to a punitive approach aimed at the lowest-performing schools. For why this is important, see Fiske and Ladd's comments. Finally, Long Beach has struck the right balance between school and teacher autonomy and district leadership, which is crucial in allowing each school to implement improvement efforts in its own way while adhering to an overall district strategy. For a perceptive article on this issue, see Larry Cuban's blog.
Another example is Garden Grove, which has one of the largest percentage of English-language learners in large districts in California yet has improved performance substantially in the last 15 years. Under the exemplary leadership of Laura Schwalm, superintendent from 1999 to 2013, and Gabriela Mafi since 2013, the district, among other Build-and-Support measures, has developed a robust human resources development program with two aspects. First, the district finds and keeps the best teachers by developing effective systems of recruiting, proper placement, inducting, granting tenure, and compensation. Second, it builds the capacity of current staff by comprehensive professional development, creates effective school site teams, and offers career advancement pathways that allow our best teachers a hybrid teaching and leadership role and the possibility of higher earnings.
These successful jurisdictions don't ignore accountability. But effective accountability must not rely solely or primarily on test scores. It should be designed around providing useful, timely feedback that will assist school, district, and local community efforts in improving instruction and student performance. And it should assiduously avoid causing the type of extensive collateral damage we have seen under high-stakes testing: narrowing the curriculum, discouraging cooperation, and emphasizing looking good on tests rather than providing quality instruction.
This more supportive philosophy guides the accountability system being developed in California and many other states. The state will be establishing an integrated hybrid of state and local indicators such as graduation rates, college preparation, career preparation, passing advanced placement courses, curriculum breadth and depth, student and teacher engagement, school climate, student suspensions or teacher absences, reclassification rates for English-language learners, and implementation and team-building efforts. The main locus of accountability is the school and district with local community participation, under the assumption and trust that the professionals in the school, not the federal government or the state, will be the driving force for improvement if they have the support they need. For an up-to-date report on these broader accountability ideas, see a 2016 paper by Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues, Pathways to New Accountability Through the Every Student Succeeds Act. In addition, see a 2016 report by Cook-Harvey and Stosich of the Stanford Learning Policy Institute, Redesigning School Accountability and Support: Progress in Pioneering States.
Data based on reasonable student testing and just-in-time student assessment are helpful when such data provide information back to the teachers, schools, and local communities to assist their continuous improvement efforts. California is a member of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and administered the first state assessments in 2015. However, results won't be used for accountability purposes until enough data are available for growth measures and potential targets can be validated. The state also wants to give teachers a chance to implement the curricular changes envisioned by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). However, as mentioned above, these end-of-year, broad-scale tests should be only one part of a broader accountability system and need to be combined with more sophisticated, accurate, and authentic measures of student performance such as end-of-course and periodic assessments, passing competency-based measures such as certificates, performances, portfolios, and projects.
Furthermore, state and district policy should recognize that negative fallout from testing is minimized if tests are not used primarily for formal, high-stakes teacher or school evaluations or to assess school progress toward impossible goals established by political entities that are far removed from the facts on the ground. Test results are most useful when viewed as one aspect of the main driver of improvement—a broad, collaborative, well-resourced effort to improve school, student, and teacher performance over the long haul.
There will be schools that struggle and need assistance. Site visits and support need to be organized, as envisioned by the new California Collaborative for Educational Excellence. The group will offer help, support, and site visits to struggling schools. For a national proposal along these lines, see Marc Tucker's blog post "ESEA Reauthorization and Accountability: A Chance to Do It Right."
Successful jurisdictions do not neglect the problem of incompetent teachers. It turns out that giving low-performing teachers a chance to improve is more effective when the efforts are part of a cooperative endeavor to improve instruction. First, many low-performing teachers will improve with helpful support. Second, low performers cannot easily hide in their classrooms if a concerted team effort is under way. For many, the exposure pushes them to improve or resign. California districts such as Long Beach, San Jose, and Garden Grove, as well as places such as Montgomery County, Maryland, and Massachusetts, are examples of jurisdictions that have embedded teacher evaluations in a broader instructional improvement effort, obtained union and teacher support, and used peer review techniques. They have found that this approach has proved more successful in dismissing or counseling out the worst teachers who cannot or will not improve, with considerably less collateral damage than the traditional method that relies entirely on a negative, high-pressure strategy.
A 2016 Aspen Institute report, Teacher Evaluation and Support Systems: A Roadmap for Improvement, chronicles exemplary practices in the nation exemplifying this more supportive approach.
Nations and States
What have the most successful nations and states done to improve student performance?
On the world stage, high-performing Finland had a mediocre system two decades ago. It initiated a long-term positive engagement strategy and revitalization of the teaching force and now substantially outscores Norway, which has a similar population and demographics but is stuck in a test-driven accountability mode. Finnish Lessons 2.0: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? is one of the best books on the topic. The author is Pasi Sahlberg, one of the primary leaders of the reforms.
William Doyle spent a year on a Fulbright scholarship studying the Finnish success story. He writes of a fantastic school in rural Finland and conversations with one of its top teacher educators. He contrasts the Finnish attention to revitalizing the teaching profession to the prevailing conventional "reform" strategy in this country:
[I]n the U.S., instead of control, competition, stress, standardized testing, screen-based schools and loosened teacher qualifications, try warmth, collaboration, and highly professionalized, teacher-led encouragement and assessment.
I should note, however, that Finland has stalled or declined in recent Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) tests. For a contrary view of Finland's rise and recent stall or decline, see The Real Finnish Lessons: The True Story of an Education Superpower. The author attributes Finland's past successes not to its education initiatives, but to the prominence teachers always enjoyed in that country as nation builders, the determination of families stemming from Finland's recent industrialization, and traditional teaching methods. The author further argues that the abatement of these factors is causing Finland's test results to decline. This report was prepared by a conservative think tank in England created by Margaret Thatcher, comparable to our Hoover Institution. The author doesn't think much of student or teacher collaboration. But there has been a raft of studies showing that collaboration among teachers and improving social capital and the prestige of the profession do make a significant difference. It will be interesting to see the analysis of this contrarian position.
In Canada, the province of Ontario has followed the same successful trajectory—revitalizing the teaching profession, creating effective professional learning communities at each school around teaching a vigorous curriculum, and using the capacity-building approach. The result was a substantial improvement in student performance. Poland has undergone a similar transformation using team building and continuous improvement strategies to boost performance. Also, Poland has chalked up enviable progress, as described in Amanda Ripley's book The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way. (Ripley visited three foreign countries for examples of world-class educational efforts—it's a shame she didn't visit comparable examples—in the US, for example, Massachusetts.) Many Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and Singapore and the city of Shanghai are among the highest performers in the world. All have been implementing continuous improvement strategies for decades. See, for example, Developing Shanghai's Teachers. On the flip side, Chile and Sweden adopted wholesale charter and voucher approaches and suffered severe negative consequences.
There are many success stories closer to home, but, unfortunately, they are the exception not the rule. Massachusetts is a poster child for why Build-and Support works. Over the past 20 years, the state has consistently pursued the comprehensive positive approach engaging, not vilifying, educators. It placed instruction at the core of its reforms, built capacity around improving classrooms and schools, upgraded the quality of the teaching force, and substantially increased funding. The Commonwealth carefully avoided most of the extreme reform approaches such as widespread charterization, attacking unions and weakening due process protections, and adopting punitive measures. Most importantly, Massachusetts has stayed the course for nearly two decades.
Specifically, in 1993 under the leadership of Commissioner of Education David Driscoll, the Bay State approved standards and curricular frameworks, developed an assessment system geared toward instructional improvement based on those standards and frameworks, organized professional development around the documents, raised requirements for graduation, installed rigorous charter school evaluations for approval, and initiated more stringent requirements and support for incoming teachers. Policymakers in Massachusetts also insisted that teachers earn a master's degree over the course of their careers. (For a comparison with Finnish initiatives, see Lisa Hansel's post "Seeking Confirmation" on the Core Knowledge blog.)
As a result, Massachusetts scores number one in our national NAEP scores by a wide margin. In international assessments it ranks right near the top in math and science, and at the top in mathematics in growth and performance level. Yes, it is home to numerous universities with high-level candidates who pursue teaching careers, a well-educated population, and a history of educational excellence, but such benefits aren't enough to explain its phenomenal world-class performance. Why the Massachusetts model has not become the guide for national and other states' improvement efforts, as Marshall Smith suggested several years ago, is bewildering.
Ravitch, D. (2015, Jun 23). Mike Miles Resigns as Dallas Superintendent. http://dianeravitch.net/2015/06/23/breaking-news-mike-miles-resigns-as-dallas-superintendent/
David, J. L., & Talbert, J. E. (2012). Turning Around a High-Poverty School District: Learning from Sanger Unified's Success. http://web.stanford.edu/group/suse-crc/cgi-bin/drupal/publications/report
Amadolare, S. (2014, Feb 27). Which Is Worse? A California District Makes a Tough Choice Between No Child Left Behind and Obama Education Policies. http://hechingerreport.org/which-is-worse-a-california-district-makes-a-tough-choice-between-no-child-left-behind-and-obama-education-policies/
Long Beach Unified School District. About Long Beach Unified School District. http://www.lbschools.net/District/
Mongeau, L. (2016, Feb 2). How One California City Saved Its Schools. http://hechingerreport.org/how-one-california-city-saved-its-schools/
Steinhauser, C. (2015). Personal conversation with author. See also Freedberg, L. (2016, Feb 22). State Must Adopt Guidelines for Parent Engagement in Schools. http://edsource.org/2016/report-state-must-adopt-guidelines-for-parent-engagement-in-schools/95124?utm_source=Feb.+23+daily+digest+–+Michael&utm_campaign=Daily+email&utm_medium=email
Fiske, E. B., & Ladd, H. F. (2016, Feb 13). Learning from London About School Improvement. The News & Observer. http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article60118256.html
Cuban, L. (2016, Feb 17). Reflecting on School Reforms: Scaling Up versus Short, Happy Life or Hanging In. https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/reflecting-on-school-reforms-scaling-up-versus-short-happy-life-or-hanging-in/
Knudsen, J. (2013, Sep). You'll Never Be Better Than Your Teachers: The Garden Grove Approach to Human Capital Development. http://www.cacollaborative.org/publications
Darling-Hammond, L., Bae, S., Cook-Harvey, C.M., Lam, L., Mercer, C., Podolsky, A., & Stosich, E. (2016, Apr). Pathways to New Accountability Through the Every Student Succeeds Act. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/our-work/publications-resources/pathways-new-accountability-every-student-succeeds-act/
Cook-Harvey, C. M., & Stosich E. L. (2016, Apr 5). Redesigning School Accountability and Support: Progress in Pioneering States. Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/publications/pubs/1406
Tucker, M. (2015, Dec 3). ESEA Reauthorization and Accountability: A Chance to Do It Right. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2015/12/esea_reauthorization_and_accountability_a_chance_to_do_it_right.html
Brown, C., Partelow, L., & Konoske-Graf, A. (2016, Mar 16). Educator Evaluation: A Case Study of Massachusetts' Approach. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2016/03/16/133038/educator-evaluation/
Thompson, J. (2015, Mar 30). John Thompson: A Teacher Proposes a Different Framework for Accountability. https://educationpost.org/john-thompson-a-teacher-proposes-a-different-framework-for-accountability/
The Aspen Institute. (2016, Mar). Teacher Evaluation and Support Systems: A Roadmap for Improvement. http://www.aspendrl.org/
Hancock, L. (2011, Sep). Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? Smithsonian Magazine. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/?no-ist=
Sahlberg, P. (2015). Finnish Lessons 2.0: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? New York: Teacher's College Press.
Doyle, W. (2016, Feb 18). How Finland Broke Every Rule—and Created a Top School System. http://hechingerreport.org/how-finland-broke-every-rule-and-created-a-top-school-system/
Sahlgren, G. H. (2015, Apr). Real Finnish Lessons: The True Story of an Education Superpower. Centre for Policy Studies. http://www.cps.org.uk/publications/reports/real-finnish-lessons-the-true-story-of-an-education-superpower/
Ripley, A. (2014). The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Tucker, M. (2016, Feb 29). Asian Countries Take the U.S. to School. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/us-asia-education-differences/471564/
Zhang, M., Ding, X., & Xu, J. (2016, Jan). Developing Shanghai's Teachers. http://www.ncee.org/developing-shanghais-teachers/
Alliance for Excellent Education. David Driscoll. http://all4ed.org/people/david-driscoll/
Chang, K. (2013, Sep 2). Expecting the Best Yields Results in Massachusetts. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/science/expecting-the-best-yields-results-in-massachusetts.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 See also Khadaroo, S. T. (2012, Sep 5). Is Top-Ranked Massachusetts Messing with Education Success? The Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2012/0905/Is-top-ranked-Massachusetts-messing-with-education-success
Hansel, L. (2015, Jul 9). Seeking Confirmation. http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2015/07/09/seeking-confirmation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCoreKnowledgeBlog+%28The+Core+Knowledge+Blog%29
Carnoy, M., García, E., & Khavenson, T. (2015, Oct 30). Bringing It Back Home: Why State Comparisons Are More Useful Than International Comparisons for Improving U.S. Education Policy. Economic Policy Institute. http://www.epi.org/publication/bringing-it-back-home-why-state-comparisons-are-more-useful-than-international-comparisons-for-improving-u-s-education-policy/
This entry was posted in Build-and-Support, Charter Schools, Common Core, High--Stakes Testing, School Evaluation, Teacher Evaluation and tagged Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Continuous Improvement, High-Stakes Testing, Professional Learning, School Evaluation, Teacher Evaluation, Teacher Tenure, Top Performers on April 26, 2016 by BillHonig.
How Top Performers Build-and-Support: Lessons Learned from Successful Districts
Lessons Learned from Successful Districts
When we examine assessments of educational outcomes, it is important to be aware of a potential trap articulated by social science statistical research. The fact that there are common measures in successful districts does not necessarily mean that a low-performing district will experience similar improvements if it adopts those measures. Each district, city, state, and nation has some special circumstances, and there may be prerequisites or unique tweaks required before the approaches will work in a new context. Moreover, the process of implementing new policy initiatives and maintaining a comprehensive, strategic view that interweaves various improvement proposals may be more important than the individual measures themselves. Yet there are some essential initiatives that every successful district has employed.
Components of Successful Strategies
Virtually every world-class district has adopted policies that actively engage teachers and administrators, build social capital, and develop collaboration and teamwork. These districts also put systems in place to ensure continuous improvement centered on building craft knowledge and becoming more proficient at delivering a demanding, broad-based liberal arts curriculum. They have a robust human resources development program with two aspects. First, the districts find and keep the best teachers by developing effective systems of recruiting, proper placement, inducting, granting tenure, and compensation. Second, they build the capacity of current staff through comprehensive professional development, create effective school site teams, and offer career advancement pathways that allow our best teachers a hybrid teaching and leadership role and the possibility of higher earnings. Successful districts also have implemented a pre-K or early education program and extensive extracurricular involvement of students. Researchers in both education and business recommend these methods as essential to success. In addition, while successful jurisdictions have carefully avoided the punitive approaches advocated by conventional reformers, most low-performing districts have succumbed to that agenda and thereby neglected the more effective, positive Build-and-Support approach.
A second major point is that just as teachers must become proficient in the many dimensions of teaching (as delineated in the companion article Provide High-Quality Instruction), districts must become adept in many aspects of leadership and support. Crucially, districts have to integrate improving teaching and learning a demanding curriculum into all their initiatives so that each effort pulls in a common direction. As important, they must shift from a superficial checklist-compliance approach to an approach that provides real support for schools and teachers.
Transforming the Central Office
University of Washington professor Meredith Honig (no relation) and her team at the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy published a significant report on how districts can reorient their administration to a school support approach. Their recommendations are based on the most valid and reliable research and the experience of our top-performing districts. The document delineated five components of successful district improvement efforts:
The Five Dimensions of Central Office Transformation
Dimension 1: Learning-focused partnerships with school principals to deepen principals' instructional leadership practice.
Dimension 2: Assistance to the central office–principal partnerships.
Dimension 3: Reorganizing and re-culturing of each central office unit, to support the central office–principal partnerships and teaching and learning improvement.
Dimension 4: Stewardship of the overall central office transformation process.
Dimension 5: Use of evidence throughout the central office to support continual improvement of work practices and relationships with schools.
Michael Fullan, professor emeritus of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, advises districts to address the entire school system using a small but powerful set of integrated initiatives. He cautions against an overly complex, by-the-book compliance orientation. Another helpful document on district effectiveness is the Common Core Leadership Planning Guide. It was developed in conjunction with some key policymakers, researchers, and educational and community leaders in California. The guide lists 10 areas that school districts should examine:
instructional materials and resources (both print and electronic)
capacity building and leadership
student learning feedback and assessment
alignment of fiscal and human resources—the recruiting, induction, assisting, and providing career advancement for teachers and other staff
support programs that bolster implementation
communication with stakeholders (including parents and community)
transition to higher education and careers
technology support for instruction, data, and assessment
A very comprehensive inventory, indeed.
Improving System Performance
The documents I've cited reflect the strategies pursued by the most successful districts in this country and around the globe—districts that avoided the more negative Test-and-Punish methods in favor of a Build-and-Support strategy. These districts respect and encourage their teachers and pay them decently. They placed instruction and teaching at the center of their improvement efforts and turned schools into learning institutions. These districts have a long-term strategic plan for building the knowledge and capacity of the staff and continuous improvement. They create positive working conditions that allow on-site collaborative teams to thrive. These districts use the most effective instructional materials. They have reoriented management (especially principals and teacher leaders) and provided time, knowledge, and resources to assist these efforts.
Improvement initiatives in the US come none too soon. According to the article "Want to Close the Achievement Gap? Close the Teaching Gap," on the whole, our teachers spend more time in the classroom than their counterparts in top-performing countries, significantly less time collaborating with other teachers on how best to improve instruction, and work in a much less supportive school atmosphere. See also Dana Goldstein's recent book, The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Embattled Profession, and the National Center for Education and the Economy's 2016 publication Beyond PD: Teacher Professional Learning in High-Performing Systems. Conversely, staffs in the most successful countries and districts in Asia, Europe, and North America spend less time teaching and invest the difference in working with one another to improve instruction. Consequently, they get better results.
Revitalizing the Teaching Force
These top performers have also substantially upgraded the quality of and respect for the teaching force by attracting new teachers from the top tier of college students, training and paying them well, supporting them in their school careers, and offering career advancement for the best practitioners who remain in the classroom and help other teachers as mentors. As an example see Joel Knudson's You'll Never Be Better Than Your Teachers: The Garden Grove Approach to Human Capital Development. Mentoring improves the performance of both the mentor and the teacher being helped.
Building a cooperative and supportive atmosphere was found to be essential for attracting and retaining these high-quality professionals. Two major national efforts along these lines have been initiated: Deans for Impact and the Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform (CEEDAR). See also a report on the importance of a long-term strategy for revitalizing the teaching profession.
Another key objective for districts is determining the best way to select, train, and support principals to lead continuous improvement efforts at their schools. On-site leadership is critical in building the systems that connect teaching, curriculum, and instruction, continuously improving all three, and increasing the degree of engagement of teachers, students, parents, and the wider community—all of whom shape the school climate. For a perceptive two-part series on how best to train principals to lead such a capacity-building effort currently under way in four states, see Marc Tucker's "Organizations in Which Teachers Can Do Their Best Work." For a comprehensive report on principal training, see The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning and 2015 standards for educational leaders.
BBS Companion Articles
Provide High-Quality Instruction
Mehta, J. (2016, Jan 8). Why "Queen Bees" and "Wannabees" Is Not the Right Way to Think About Global Education. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning_deeply/2016/01/why_queen_bees_and_wannabes_is_not_the_right_way_to_think_about_global_education.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=learningdeeply
Knudson, J. (2013, Sep). You'll Never Be Better Than Your Teachers; The Garden Grove Approach to Human Capital Development. http://www.cacollaborative.org/publications
Kirp D. L. (2016, Feb 13). How New York Made Pre-K a Success. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/how-new-york-made-pre-k-a-success.html See also Farran, D. C. (2016, Feb 25). We Need More Evidence in Order to Create Effective Pre-K Programs. http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2016/02/25-need-more-evidence-create-effective-prek-programs-farran Some experts have raised questions about the research base supporting early education and whether there should be massive expansion of the program. For example, see Kirp D. L. (2015, Oct 3). Does Pre-K Make Any Difference? The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/does-pre-k-make-any-difference.html and Frey, S. (2016, Feb 28). Groups Want Early Ed Block Grant Pulled From This Year's State Budget. http://edsource.org/2016/groups-want-early-ed-block-grant-pulled-from-this-years-state-budget/95285?utm_source=Feb.+29+daily+digest+-+Erin&utm_campaign=Daily+email&utm_medium=email
Early Learning. http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/earlylearning/index.html
Kronholz, J. (2012, Winter). Academic Value of Non-Academics. http://educationnext.org/academic-value-of-non-academics/
Honig, M. I., Copland, M. A., Rainey, L., Lorton, J. A., & Newton, M. (2010, Apr). Central Office Transformation for District-wide Teaching and Learning Improvement: Executive Summary. Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy. University of Washington. http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/school-leadership/district-policy-and-practice/pages/central-office-transformation-district-wide-teaching-and-learning.aspx
Fullan, M. (2015, Jul). California's Golden Opportunity. LCAP's Theory of Action: Problems and Corrections. The Stuart Foundation. http://www.michaelfullan.ca/california-release-a-golden-opportunity/
Consortium for the Implementation of the Common Core State Standards. (2013, Oct). Leadership Planning Guide California: Common Core State Standards and Assessments Implementation. California County Superintendents Educational Service Association. http://www.scoe.net/castandards/Pages/default.aspx
Darling-Hammond, L. (2014-2015, Winter). Want to Close the Achievement Gap? Close the Teaching Gap. American Educator. http://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/darling-hammond.
Goldstein, D. (2015). The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Embattled Profession. New York: Anchor. See also Goldstein, D. (2015, Spring). Quieting the Teacher Wars. What History Reveals About an Embattled Profession. American Educator. http://www.aft.org/ae/spring2015/goldstein
Jensen, B., Sonnemann, J., Roberts-Hull, K., & Hunter, A. (2016). Beyond PD: Teacher Professional Learning in High-Performing Systems. http://www.ncee.org/beyondpd/
Knudson, J. (2013, Sep). You'll Never Be Better Than Your Teachers; The Garden Grove Approach to Human Capital Development. California Collaborative on District Reform. http://www.cacollaborative.org/publications
Kirby, A. (2016, Mar 7). Teacher Mentorship Improves Performance on Both Sides. https://www.cabinetreport.com/human-resources/teacher-mentorship-improves-performance-on-both-sides
Deans for Impact. http://deansforimpact.org/ See also Deans for Impact. From Chaos to Coherence: A Policy Agenda for Accessing and Using Outcomes Data in Educator Preparation. http://www.deansforimpact.org/policy_brief.html
Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform (CEEDAR). http://www.ceedar.org/
Richardson, J. (2015, Nov 9). Looking Abroad for Answers at Home. http://www.learningfirst.org/looking-abroad-answers-home
Hull, S. J. (2015, Oct 14). Principals Matter—and They Need the Right Start. http://www.learningfirst.org/principals-matter-and-they-need-right-start?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LFA+%28Public+School+Insights%3A+What+is+WORKING+in+our+Public+Schools%29
Tucker, M. (2015, Aug 13). Organizations in Which Teachers Can Do Their Best Work: Part I. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2015/08/organizations_in_which_teachers_can_do_their_best_work_part_i.html See also Tucker, M. (2015, Aug 20) Organizations in Which Teachers Can Do Their Best Work: Part II. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2015/08/organizations_in_which_teachers_can_do_their_best_work_part_ii.html
The Wallace Foundation (2013). The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning. http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/Pages/The-School-Principal-as-Leader-Guiding-Schools-to-Better-Teaching-and-Learning.aspx
Superville, D. R. (2015, Oct 23). New Professional Standards for School Leaders Are Approved. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2015/10/new_professional_standards_for.html?r=608789257
This entry was posted in Build-and-Support, Common Core and tagged Accountability, Common Core, Continuous Improvement, Professional Learning, Teacher Tenure, Technology, Top Performers on April 26, 2016 by BillHonig.
How Top Performers Build-and-Support: Provide an Engaging Broad-Based Liberal Arts Curriculum
Provide an Engaging Broad-Based Liberal Arts Curriculum
A major component of every successful educational improvement effort is addressing the issue of what will be taught. Specifically, world-class educational performers provide all students with a challenging and engaging broad liberal arts curriculum—precisely the type of curriculum envisioned by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which have been adopted by more than 40 states. Many conventional reformers have supported the CCSS, seeing them as a mechanism for their high-stakes accountability agenda. Their position has been to establish national standards, assess performance against those standards, and attach consequences to low performance—the Test-and-Punish approach. I stand with a vast number of educators who, while rejecting an emphasis on test-based accountability, support the CCSS and the promise they hold for improving curriculum and instruction. The standards are consistent with what our most knowledgeable teachers and researchers have been advocating for years.
Why the Common Core State Standards Are So Important
The California Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts & Literacy (which almost identical to the national Common Core Standards) and the state's framework explicating them (listed below) are based on the deeper learning that is taking place in our best schools and classrooms—reading, writing, and discussing literature and complex text and ideas; synthesizing those texts and ideas to construct arguments; reading widely; and mastering core academic content in history, science, civics, and humanities to enhance comprehension and better understand the world.
Deeper learning entails mastering more complex thinking and applying twenty-first-century skills. Deeper learning also produces higher learning. For a scholarly treatment of the concept of deeper learning, see the work of Maggie Lampert, the Learning Deeply blog, and Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine.
Mehta and Fine define the term this way:
There is no consensus on exactly how to define deeper learning. For example, it has often been described as the integration of academic, inter-, and intrapersonal skills and knowledge. Recent research findings strongly suggest that in order to succeed in college, careers, and all aspects of adult life, young people require more than just a command of academic content. They also need to be able to solve complex real world problems, collaborate, communicate effectively, monitor and direct their own learning, and develop an academic mindset.
Among many cognitive psychologists, however, deep learning—or what they might call learning for understanding—refers to the ability to transfer knowledge. The idea is that knowledge becomes deeper when one can use it not only to address a problem in the context in which it has been taught, but also to understand or explain something in a different but related context. Rather than seeing isolated facts, deep learners see patterns and connections because they understand the underlying structures of what they're exploring.
The authors of this paper suggest that deeper learning requires the ability to transfer knowledge, and more. It often emerges at the intersection of mastery (knowledge of substantive content, including the ability to transfer), identity (driven by relevance to the learner), and creativity (the ability to act or make something from the knowledge).
However one defines it, though, deeper learning poses a multipronged challenge to current classroom practice and educational systems. It will require a major increase in the cognitive demand of the tasks that most students, particularly in high-poverty schools, are asked to complete.
The Common Core State Standards and the frameworks explicating them envision a substantial instructional shift to this type of enriched learning. (These frameworks are discussed in greater depth later in this article.)
I caught a glimpse of the future back in 1985, when I was California superintendent of public instruction and visited a seventh-grade classroom in Santa Barbara. The students were presenting research papers on college-level questions such as "What effect did the Galileo trial have on scientific investigation in southern and northern Europe?" I was amazed as teams of students presented their papers and then engaged in a sophisticated discussion with the rest of the class. Almost every student contributed. Discussants were serious, used sophisticated language, asked perceptive questions, and responded appropriately to what was being said. Afterward, when I met with their superb teacher, Naomi Johnson, it became apparent how much work had gone into creating the conditions that allowed the students to successfully participate in such an erudite academic discussion. She assured me that these advanced behaviors and abilities were also the result of several years of sustained learning in previous grades and tremendous efforts by the entire faculty at the middle school to assure that each class reinforced the skills students need to conduct research and actively contribute to academic discussions.
The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics are also internationally benchmarked—reflecting what math educators have been recommending: go deeper into fewer topics, incorporate practices such as modeling, discussion both in class and with peers, problem solving, and a greater emphasis on procedural skills, conceptual understanding, and application to increasingly complex situations. Both sets of standards, English language arts (ELA) and mathematics, build on existing best practices but demand significant changes in instruction. In addition, California combined the ELA Common Core Standards with state-adopted English Language Development (ELD) standards to create a framework that integrates both sets of standards, the ELA/ELD Framework.
The recently developed Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) offer similar pedagogical approaches in science, combining content and practices. These science standards have also been adopted by numerous states.
Similar documents have been developed to create national standards for history-social science such as the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. In addition, many states have drafted and implemented their own standards for history-social science. The importance of science and history-social science content is also emphasized in Common Core's ELA and mathematics standards.
Why Support the Common Core State Standards?
Most teachers in California are excited by the educational promise of providing an active, engaging curriculum, as called for in the new standards. They have long believed in and have expressed a strong interest in bringing the ideas to fruition. One of the most exciting aspects of the CCSS is that they incorporate the complex instructional expertise and practices that make up effective teaching. This means that implementing the CCSS can become the catalyst for every school to address each of the crucial components of effective instruction. It has been shown that failure in any one component affects successful practice and outcomes. Moreover, the shift to the more complex and active instruction envisioned by the CCSS requires schools to build collaborative teams and provide the support needed for continuous improvement in individual teacher and school performance. Each school can decide how to tailor its implementation strategy based on the needs of its staff. Depending on the teacher or school program, some proficiencies will become second nature while others may need constant attention. For more on the topic of effective teaching, see the companion article Provide High-Quality Instruction. For more about team building, see the companion article Build Teams and Focus on Continuous Improvement.
I know that the CCSS are controversial and that many people strongly object to various aspects of the standards. Some concerns do not relate to the standards themselves but to unwarranted classroom practices and misguided implementation policies. Examples include over-scripted instruction, assigning inappropriate activities to kindergarteners, or abuses at the state level such as New York State's decision to arbitrarily set cut levels so high that huge numbers of students failed the tests. Criticisms of the standards are often based on a misinterpretation or misreading of what they actually say. For example, many people decry the devaluation of literature, basing their objections on the standards' recommendation that 70% of high school reading materials should be informational text. However, a closer reading of the language in the standards reveals that the 70% refers to all high school reading, which means there would still be plenty of time in English classrooms for a full literature program. At the same time, incorporating some powerful essays, biographies, and nonfiction books such as The Double Helix into the English curriculum promotes the deeper learning educators seek.
I should mention that not all of my fellow Build-and-Support advocates believe in the value of the CCSS, as I do. In addition to opposing the Test-and-Punish approach, "market-based reform efforts," privatization of schools, and corporate overreach, Anthony Cody, Diane Ravitch, and a few other respected thought leaders reject the Common Core State Standards themselves. They think the standards are so entwined with high-stakes accountability that they are unsalvageable and not educationally warranted or legitimate. I disagree on both counts. Diane graciously allowed me to plead my case on her blog. I began my post with "Common Core Standards, YES. High-stakes Testing, Rewards and Punishments, and Market-based Reforms, NO. The California Story." My comments engendered quite the discussion.
For an intelligent critique of the Common Core State Standards, see also Thomas Newkirk's Postscript: Speaking Back to the Common Core. California made a concerted effort to address many of his criticisms in its adoption of the Common Core Standards, in the frameworks based on them, and in its implementation strategies, which divorced the Common Core rollout from test-driven high-stakes accountability. For more on this topic, see the companion articles in The California Context.
The Crucial Role of Content Frameworks
In California and other states, content frameworks translate the CCSS into guides for curriculum, instruction, professional development, and adoption of materials. They are critical in turning the standards into a workable curriculum. Ideally, the effort of schools across this country to implement a curriculum that reflects the content frameworks aligned with the CCSS or other comparably ambitious standards can be the centerpiece of an alternative Build-and-Support reform movement. The key is to detach implementation of the Common Core Standards from the high-stakes, test-based punitive measures too often linked with them. This is what California and a few other states have done.
Science Framework for California Public Schools (2015–2016 Draft)
The Common Core State Standards Are Not a Curriculum
Before I discuss the California mathematics and ELA/ELD standards as examples of the complexity of curriculum and the discipline-based instruction proposed, one clarification is needed. The most successful districts spend time, effort, and thought in translating standards into a coherent and sequenced curriculum and thus avoid the trap of thinking that standards alone will improve educational performance.
The CCSS delineate what students should master, but they are not a curriculum. Jumping from the standards to create lesson plans misses the crucial middle step of developing a sequenced, coherent curriculum. Creating a local curricular framework for the district or utilizing one from the state informs the sequence and breadth of instruction. Developing this "scope & sequence" is complex. And without it, implementation of the CCSS is destined to fail.
For example, one of the seventh-grade math standards is to use proportional thinking and percentage to solve problems such as "If $50 is 20% of your total funds, how much do you have?" The standard does not say how much instructional time should be invested in helping students master the requisite skills (actually quite a lot) nor does it list which strategies will be effective, recommend a progression of learning, or explain how instruction should correlate with previous units.
The same is true of Common Core's ELA & Literacy Standards. They stress the need for a coherent curriculum and a systematic buildup of knowledge through broadly defined literature and the disciplines. But the standards do not specify the actual content that should be used to reach those goals.
Unfortunately, many districts have not undertaken this crucial work. The Common Core State Standards Implementation Survey surveyed 818 districts in California, which represent 83% of state public school enrollment. In late 2013, only about one-third of the districts had created a scope and sequence for the CCSS in either English-language arts or mathematics for at least some grades. More than one-third of the districts reported that this work is planned "for the future," and about one-quarter reported that they are not planning to engage in this work at all. At the same time, only about half the districts were creating units or lessons, or aligning existing units or lessons with the new standards. The situation has improved since 2013, but many districts still have not adopted a coherent standards-based curriculum including essential materials.
Resources for Developing a Coherent Scope & Sequence
First, existing framework documents such as the one developed by California provide essential advice on how to structure the curriculum, including the order in which standards should be taught; how much time should be spent on each standard; how a standard fits in the larger context of the grade-to-grade buildup of knowledge; strategies for instruction, intervention, and assessment; links to resources; and illuminating vignettes. Teachers need this broader context to maximize the effect of adopted or available materials.
Second, many proprietary core reading and math programs offer a well-constructed scope & sequence. Among them are those adopted in California in mathematics and in ELA/ELD. Some open-source education materials also have sound scope and sequences. All materials have undergone extensive reviews and have translated the CCSS and state frameworks into a serviceable curriculum for teachers. The programs also allow flexibility so that our best teachers and districts can enhance their materials with a variety of open-source educational materials such as those listed by ISKME—a mix-and-match strategy. Also see a network of states devoted to sharing open-source material.
Third, many of the nation's best districts have developed their own scope and sequences, although many still incorporate basal texts in many disciplines based on their criteria. For example, Long Beach's scope and sequence documents provide a comprehensive "blueprint" for strategically sequencing and operationalizing the grade level/course standards in ELA and mathematics. The critical attributes of each document are units laid out in sequence by theme/title; an indication of how much time to spend on each unit; a narrative description of each unit explaining its focus and purpose; a description of the standards to be assessed for each unit; an assessment narrative detailing the formative assessment strategies and practices included in each unit so teachers can monitor how well the students are learning; a notation of formative assessment lessons to be included in each unit during the second half of the unit with time allowed for reteach/review; an explanation of the structure and purpose of the interim or end-of-unit assessment; a list of item types that may be included, along with the rationale; and finally the reading-level range of the texts used in each ELA unit. Long Beach provides very detailed advice. Other districts may wish to offer more general guidelines.
Fourth, many websites offer progressions and scope and sequences for instruction such as Achieve the Core and Illustrative Mathematics. A November 2013 report by Hanover Research contained an exhaustive list of Common Core curricular resources and planning tools that are used by various states. Another list of resources is available at the California Department of Education (CDE) website, and a national open resources list aligned to the Common Core can be found at OER Commons. Finally, an online Internet tool for California educator collaboration and resource sharing, My Digital Chalkboard, contains supporting links and resources. Many states have also produced curricular planning guides. For example, the Colorado Department of Education has posted its own guide (Colorado's District Sample Curriculum Project), as has New York. Many district scope and sequence efforts and units of instruction for standards implementation are available at the CDE, California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSESA), and county office of education websites. Most districts are willing to share their work.
The Role of Core Basal Programs
One question that is troubling educators is how much they should rely on traditional prepackaged, comprehensive basal programs. With the availability of online and open-source materials, some people are predicting the demise of these programs. We are not quite there yet. Textbooks can be very useful in certain instructional areas, if they are part of a broader curricular approach and supplemented by digital or niche resources. For example, in addition to oral language development and reading books aloud, teaching beginning reading in English requires an organized, systematic presentation of letter/sound correspondences, progressing from the easier to the more difficult. Children need practice reading "decodable text," or material that follows the letter/sound correspondences they have been taught. Designing such materials is complex, time consuming, and usually better left to knowledgeable sources.
Many textbooks have become too hefty—emphasizing coverage of content over depth. The new CCSS and corresponding frameworks propose deep learning, in which students learn how to read, evaluate, and create a range of multimedia. This requires differently designed materials. For example, Asian math textbooks are thinner and organized around challenging questions. In the US, publishers are creating hybrid programs that use both print and digital supporting materials. The recently adopted ELA/ELD materials in California are of high quality and reflect the values of the Common Core State Standards and California's 2014 English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework.
While relying only on traditional basal programs would be a mistake and deprive teachers of engaging, effective options, refusing to take advantage of some organized materials would limit and diminish instruction for most teachers. The vast majority of teachers resist demands that they develop a full curriculum on their own—they have neither the time, expertise, nor inclination. Striking the proper balance with a mix-and-match strategy offers the best approach.
Unfortunately, reformers have neglected the crucial role of curriculum and instructional materials in improving educational performance. Linda Diamond, one of finest reading educators in the country, uses the metaphor of a three-legged stool. Teacher's content and pedagogical knowledge of a strong, liberal arts curriculum is the first leg. Excellent instructional materials are the second leg. Doctors need the best tools, and so do teachers. Effective teams, support structures, and leadership are the third leg.
Improved Mathematics Instruction
As an example of the Common Core's consistency with powerful research, the mathematics standards aim for deep content understanding—both procedural and conceptual—and the ability to apply such knowledge in increasingly complex situations. Instruction envisions a more interactive classroom that marries content with practice standards such as asking yourself if the answer makes sense, modeling, questioning, and explaining.
While delving into each discipline in detail is not the purview of this article, I will attempt to provide the flavor of the changes in each discipline. As an example of an instructional shift in mathematics, Jo Boaler proposes that students work on provocative questions. In What's Math Got to Do With It?, she provides this example for third graders: "How would you solve 15 times 6 without pencil and paper?" This type of question stimulates a deeper understanding of the number system before students learn the algorithm and become procedurally fluent. Students can work in groups or individually to develop multiple ways of solving the problem and report back to the class for discussion of the pros and cons of each approach, all of which advance number sense.
Students might come up with these ideas: 6 times 10 and then add 6 times 5; 2 x 15, 3 times; 6 times 30 and divide by 2; 5 times 6, 3 times, and so on. Boaler challenges sixth graders with this math problem: A man on a diet can only eat ¼ of a pound of turkey a day. The market only sells packages of three slices, which is ⅓ of a pound. What fraction of the three slices can he eat? This question takes some thought, and there are several ways to solve it. (Spoiler hint: How many slices in a pound?) Or, a large cube that is painted on the outside that comprises smaller cubes of equal size, 10 by 10 by 10. How many cubes have one side painted, two sides, and three? Professor Boaler has collected scores of these engaging questions on her website. A steady diet of working on such problems produces deeper understanding and problem-solving abilities. For more on this topic, see "Not a Math Person: How to Remove Obstacles to Learning Math."
I would add another example. Most adults have difficulty with proportional thinking, especially percentage. Many try to solve problems by rote application of the cross-multiplication rule, which is complex, prone to error, and precludes thinking about the underlying relationships. If you give students a problem such as "2 is to 3 as what is to 9?" (in the form of a 2-inch-high stick casting a 3-inch shadow, and a tree casting a 9-foot shadow—what is the height of the tree?) and ask them to figure out as many ways to solve it as they can, they will develop a deeper understanding of proportional relationships. Students could approach the problem as:
2 is ⅔ of 3, so what number is ⅔ of 9?, or conversely
3 is 1½ times 2, so 9 is 1½ times what number?, or
9 is 3 times 3, so what number is 3 times 2?, or
the standard cross-multiplication procedure 2:3=x:9, so set up the equation 2/3=x/9, solve by cross-multiplying: 3x = 2 x 9 or 3x=18, 18 ÷ 3 = x, which leaves x alone and the answer is 6.
All of these methods work; each develops an understanding of proportional relationships. Outside the classroom no one proficient in mathematics would use the more complicated formulae in this situation. Instead, they would think about what is being asked and use one of the simpler relationships to determine the answer. Vignettes demonstrating examples of active classroom instruction are included in the California mathematics framework, and videos and grade-level content are available from numerous sites.
I know some people will question this approach, asking "Why waste all this time: Why not just teach students the most efficient procedure first?" Eventually, they need to learn to be automatic with a procedure so they can think about new material, but initially the opportunity to struggle with a question, to think about the relationships and concepts, and to communicate and listen to ideas is too beneficial to miss. Ask the Japanese who have perfected this method and lead the world in math performance. Often, learning to rely exclusively on applying a rule or procedure precludes deeper thinking about the problem: Which procedure makes the most sense?; which data is important or superfluous?; and does the solution comply with a reasonable estimate? Of course, some procedures just need to be eventually memorized such as multiplication facts. This is what the California Mathematics Framework advocates, although even in this case, there are proven strategies and patterns to facilitate the effort.
Jo Boaler argues that the way math has been taught in the US as a set of rules to apply—show a procedure, work a problem in front of the class, have students practice and do homework, and then test—is ineffective for many students. They forget the steps, plug in the wrong numbers to the formula, and don't know which procedures to use when they encounter a more complex problem, which is key to being able to use numbers. Classroom instruction usually masks this point by making it obvious which procedure to apply (a student will know that all of the day's problems are about multiplying fractions). For many students, when they encounter a problem without the clue they are stumped. Instead the CCSS standards of content and practice emphasize conceptual understanding in addition to procedural knowledge and application. Finally, a steady diet of a rigid instructional routine—get the answer by following the rules—alienates many students.
Facility with percentage provides a perfect illustration of the problem. Percentage is probably one of the most useful mathematical tools in everyday life. Yet only about 45% of the US population can use percentage effectively. Sal Khan has commented that Khan Academy collects data from millions of people around the world. They have discovered that percentage problems rank among the most difficult for large numbers of adults. This finding was explained years ago by Parker and Leinhardt in a 90-page article entitled "Percentage: A Privileged Proportion."
According to these and later researchers such as Susan Lamon, fourth graders are better at solving percentage problems than sixth graders. Since they have not been taught the algorithm, they think creatively using benchmarks. For example, when asked "What is 60% of 40?," fourth graders think: "I know 50% of 40 is 20, and 10% is 4, so it must be 24." Many students in later grades stop thinking and just attempt to apply a rule. (Witness the difficulty people have with tipping 15%.)
What is hard about percentage is that the tool is actually shorthand for conceptually complex relationships and meanings tied to a 100th scale, which was historically developed over thousands of years. The key issue is determining the base for comparison and the ability to flexibly shift bases. For example, imagine that your boss tells you that owing to financial difficulties, she has to cut your monthly salary of $1,000 by 10% for one month, but she will raise it 10% after the month is over. You won't be back to your previous level because the first base for the cut is $1,000, while the second base for the increase is $900. Or, a more common situation: The graduation rate in your school is 50% and increases to 60%. Is that a 10% increase or 20%? It is both, depending on what you are attempting to communicate. Ten percent more than 50% is a 10% increase compared to 100% (entire student body)—a standard way of evaluating schools, but the pool of graduates (represented by 50%) rose 20% (10/50). Tricky.
In middle grades, solving percentage problems is usually taught procedurally in a few lessons using the cross-multiplication rule. This results in massive failure rates. On assessments, significant numbers of eighth graders could not answer the question "What is 100% of 8?" If five to six weeks of class time are invested with heavy language mediation and numerous examples of comparing this to that and that to this, about 95% of students will become proficient in using percentage. This is an example of the CCSS approach—fewer topics taught more in depth.
Many students want to know why a procedure works and desire to tackle more complex problems using the practices delineated in the new standards. Direct instruction definitely has its place, and many successful teachers use it predominately and still manage to encourage deeper student thinking. But for most practitioners, posing complex questions and providing open-ended tasks should be added to their teaching routines. The California mathematics framework calls for teachers to determine a proper balance between direct instruction and more engaging activities.
What is mathematically most useful for the vast majority of people is the ability to figure out how to set up a problem and decide which data are relevant and which procedures to use—a skill that is developed through practice by encountering large numbers of problems and completing activities that require thinking. This idea was brought home to me when I was participating in a review of potential test questions for the CCSS-aligned Smarter Balanced assessments. At my table was Mike Kirst, president of the California State Board of Education and a professor from Stanford. Also present was the then chair of the University of California's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) committee who was an engineering professor at one of the UC campuses. We were given several questions to rank for difficulty. The one we all agreed was the hardest required only adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing but was challenging to think through, set up, and decide which procedures and practices to use and when.
The math used by most adults except for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations is the application of math learned through eighth grade such as fractions, rates, proportions, and percentage applied to complex or unique situations. Also important is the ability to reason quantitatively such as reading charts and extrapolating data. Andrew Hacker maintains that that ability is missing from most secondary math courses.
A 2016 study from OECD sheds some interesting light on strategies that help low-performing math students. The authors found that students don't necessarily hate math but have high levels of anxiety. Extracurricular activities, which don't need to be math based, help. A major finding is that the right amount of homework is crucial. Six hours of math homework a week reduces the odds of becoming a low performer—a whopping 70% compared to those doing little or no homework. Beyond six hours, homework becomes stressful and further results stall. Finally, in a controversial finding, in the US and a few other countries, ability grouping actually increased performance of struggling students.
For an in-depth analysis of implementation issues, see the reports produced by the Math in Common (MIC) network, which is devoted to the successful execution of the California Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. Owing to the complexity of this more demanding math instruction, many districts are shifting to have upper-elementary math taught by math specialists.
More Comprehensive and Engaging Language Arts
Reading, writing, discussing, and analyzing text in a more active manner are hallmarks of the English Language Arts (ELA) Standards. The California ELA/ELD Framework integrates two sets of standards: state Common Core English Language Arts (ELA) Standards and state English Language Development (ELD) Standards.
Following is a short excerpt from a 2014 summary of the ELA/ELD Framework authored by JoAnn Isken, Carol Jago, and me, which explains the ideas behind the framework:
The outer ring of the graphic identifies the overarching goals of ELA/ELD literacy and instruction. By the time California's students complete high school, they should have developed readiness for college, career, and we added civic life; attained the capacities of literate individuals; become broadly literate; and acquired the skills for living and learning in the twenty-first century.
California has grounded the framework in these broader purposes of the language arts. We want students to be able to understand complex text and ideas as well as reason, analyze, persuade, and problem solve. We also wish them to encounter a rich liberal arts education—learning about the world, civic life, and the human heart, being well read, and helping them reach their potential. We would like our youngsters to encounter a significant representation of the best classic and contemporary literature including novels, biographies, essays and plays as well as coherent content informational text in science, history, and the humanities. We would like them to experience the joy of reading engrossing stories and fascinating material.
The developers of the ELD standards made a crucial decision from the start. They designed the standards to aid the large number of English-language learners (ELLs) in mastering the CCSS, which greatly facilitated the integration of the two sets of standards. They organized the ELD standards around five overarching themes—foundational skills, language, written and oral expression, content knowledge, and meaning-making strategies such as drawing inferences and making connections. The integrated ELA/ELD Framework adopted this architecture. All five themes work together to develop student comprehension.
The first strand is foundational skills. To understand the ideas in a text, the reader needs to automatically recognize almost all the words. For words already in the reader's speaking vocabulary, that is the role of foundational skills—to teach them a process for becoming automatic with a growing number of words. Foundational skills address how to teach them these skills and include phonics, word attack skills (learning how to sound out new words, handle multisyllabic words, and recognize word structures such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots), and fluency instruction (the rationale and more details are covered in the companion articles The California Context). The foundational skills in the California framework are summarized in an extremely well-written white paper by Hallie Yopp, one of the authors of the framework.
For a useful compendium on research-based reading instruction and strategies, see Honig, Diamond, and Gutlohn's Teaching Reading Sourcebook, Updated 2nd Edition and its companion book Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures, 2nd Edition. Both books were produced by the Consortium on Reaching Excellence (CORE), where I am president. The Sourcebook was one of only 10 publications endorsed by the National Council on Teacher Quality to cover beginning reading adequately. Of the 10, it was the fourth most used publication for preservice teachers.
In 2015, Louise Spear-Swerling wrote The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles and David Kilpatrick wrote Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Along with the Sourcebook, these two books are among the best research-based books on how to teach children to read. They also explain some current misguided reading approaches that are still in widespread use. The companion article How the California Reading Wars Got Resolved: A Personal Story goes into further detail on the issue of the importance of foundational skills.
The second theme, language, deals with the crucial topic of vocabulary, text structure and syntax, and academic language—all critical to understanding text. Academic texts in English contain a large number of words that appear infrequently but are essential to understanding. To successfully complete high school, students need to understand approximately 65,000 words, although some words are members of the same word family. Consequently, from the outset, there must be a rich vocabulary development strand coupled with an extensive independent reading program. This is particularly crucial for the large numbers of low-income or ELL students who start school knowing far fewer words than their middle-class and English-speaking peers. For a valuable resource, see CORE's Vocabulary Handbook and Word Intelligence, which is a vocabulary program for middle-grade students. In addition, as material and sentence structure become more complex and demanding in upper elementary, students must learn to handle challenging elements such as complex sentences with multiple dependent clauses. Finally, different disciplines such as history and science organize information in different ways and students need help in navigating these varied text structures.
The fourth theme deals with the vital role content knowledge plays in comprehension and the importance of a systematic buildup of disciplinary and cultural knowledge through organized class work and independent reading. See the vast work on this subject at Core Knowledge and Liana Heitin's blog "For Reading, Knowledge Matters More Than Strategies, Some Experts Say." See also Vicki Cobb's article "Why Reading to Learn Is Seldom Taught."
And, finally, meaning making addresses the meta-cognitive skills of self-monitoring, drawing inferences, and thinking about what is being read.
Similar to math, English-language arts shifts to a more active instructional program including book discussions, projects, research, and making arguments and taking positions both in writing and speaking.
History, Civics, Economics, Geography, Humanities, and the Fine Arts
Changes in history/social science instruction follow a similar pattern as math and English language arts. The new California History-Social Science Framework and the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards encourage a more active curriculum. For example, in sixth grade, instead of marching through the growth of empires in Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, India, China, Africa, and Mesoamerica, teams of students may be assigned a particular area. Groups then investigate the history of their area, report to the class, and discuss the similarities and differences. Or, a teacher may pose the question: "Why did the Industrial Revolution start in England?" As in the other subject areas, understanding a combination of factual, conceptual, and historical processes seems the best mix, supported by powerful motivational content such as stories, narratives, historical fiction, biographies, projects, and performances.
Similar to the other disciplines, the new Next Generation Science Standards and the new California Science Framework elucidating them stress the marriage of content in physics, chemistry, life, and earth sciences, including health; evolution and human origins; practices such as modeling, explaining, and observing; active investigations and hypotheses generation; understanding historical science; the incorporation of larger cross-cutting themes such as energy; and motivational efforts such as biographies of leading scientists and stories of the fight to conquer various diseases. For a wonderful compilation of engaging and motivating stories of scientists, see Joy Hakim's Science Stories: Proof That Informative Can Be Engaging.
Other Crucial Student Learning
Similarly, teachers need to know the latest research and best practice related to how students learn and retain knowledge. Many of the works cited above will help. In addition, I recommend:
Building Blocks for Learning: A Framework for Comprehensive Student Development
How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, which discusses the importance of personal and relational skills
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, which covers the importance of self-monitoring and self-testing strategies
Mindset, which explains the importance of students believing that effort will lead to their success
Teacher and Student Evaluation: Moving Beyond the Failure of School Reform
Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning, which reviews the research on which strategies produce the largest effect size such as just-in-time intervention and actively involving students in the educational process
Practitioners should know where to go to obtain answers to key questions that arise from their efforts to improve instruction. High on the educational agenda should be making pedagogical wisdom available in a usable format to the professional learning teams at each site. School teams could then adapt those ideas to their individual students.
This article has dealt with the what of teaching and learning—the curriculum. See also the companion article, Provide High-Quality Instruction, which explores how teachers can best deliver that curriculum in the classroom.
Ground Efforts on Unassailable Research
Build Teams and Focus on Continuous Improvement
Bitter, C., & Loney, E. (2015, Aug). Deeper Learning: Improving Student Outcomes for College, Career, and Civic Life. http://educationpolicy.air.org/publications/deeper-learning-improving-student-outcomes-college-career-and-civic-life
Lampert, M. (2015). Deeper Teaching. Students at the Center: Deeper Learning Research Series. Boston, MA: Jobs for the Future. http://www.studentsatthecenter.org/topics/deeper-teaching
Amarillas, M. (2016, Feb 4). Deeper Learning, Metacognition and Presentations of Learning. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning_deeply/2016/02/deeper_learning_metacognition_and_presentations_of_learning.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campdfaign=learningdeeply
Mehta, J., & Fine, S. (2015, Dec). The Why, What, Were, and How of Deeper Learning in American Secondary Schools. Jobs for the Future. http://www.jff.org/publications/why-what-where-and-how-deeper-learning-american-secondary-schools
NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next Generation Science Standards: For States, By States. http://www.nextgenscience.org/
Heitin, L. (2016, Feb 23). Curriculum Matters: Eight Things to Know About the Next Generation Science Standards. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2016/02/next_generation_science_standards_8_things_to_know.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters
California Department of Education (CDE). (2013). Next Generation Science Standards for California Public Schools: K–12. http://www.cde.ca.gov/pd/ca/sc/ngssstandards.asp
National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). (2013). College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K–12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History. Silver Spring, MD: NCSS. http://www.socialstudies.org/c3
California State Board of Education. Content Standards. http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/
Ravitch, D. (2014, Jan 7). Bill Honig: Why California Likes the Common Core. http://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/07/bill-honig-why-california-likes-the-common-core-standards/
Newkirk, T. (2013). Postscript: Speaking Back to the Common Core. https://www.heinemann.com/shared/onlineresources/E02123/Newkirk_Speaking_Back_to_the_Common_Core.pdf
Honig, B. (2014, Jan 29). Coherent and Sequenced Curriculum Key to Implementing Common Core Standards. http://edsource.org/2014/coherent-and-sequenced-curriculum-key-to-implementing-common-core-standards/56704 See also Tucker, M. (2016, Feb 11). Building a Powerful State Instructional System for All Students. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2016/02/building_a_powerful_state_instructional_system_for_all_students.html
California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSEA). (2013). Common Core State Standards Implementation Survey: Statewide Summary of Results. http://ccsesa.org/common-core-implementation-california-status-report/
California Department of Education. (2014, Jan 15). 2014 Mathematics Adoption. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/im/sbeadopted2014mathprgms.asp
California Department of Education. (2015, Nov 4). 2015 ELA/ELD Adoption. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/im/sbeadoptedelaeldprogs.asp
OER Services. http://www.iskme.org/services/oer-support
Zubrzycki, J. (2026, Feb 26). 13 States Join Federal Open Resource Initiative. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2016/02/open_educational_resources.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters
Long Beach Unified School District. Scope and Sequence Documents. http://www.lbusd.k12.ca.us/Departments/Curriculum/ELA/curriculum_docs.cfm
Achieve the Core. www.achievethecore.org
Illustrative Mathematics. https://www.illustrativemathematics.org/
Hanover Research. (2013, Nov). Final Report–Common Core Implementation Tools. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1009965-commoncore-implementationtools-gates1113.html
California Department of Education. All Curriculum Frameworks. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/allfwks.asp
OER Commons. https://www.oercommons.org/
My Digital Chalkboard. https://www.mydigitalchalkboard.org
Colorado Department of Education. Colorado's District Sample Curriculum Project: Introduction. https://www.cde.state.co.us/standardsandinstruction/samplecurriculumproject
New York State Education Department. New York State Learning Standards and Core Curriculum. http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/cores.html
California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/
California County Superintendents Educational Services Association. http://ccsesa.org/
Dobo, N. (2015, Nov 4). The Federal Government Urges K–12 Schools to Try Open Educational Resources. http://hechingerreport.org/the-federal-government-urges-k-12-schools-to-try-open-educational-resources/
California Department of Education. (2015). English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools: K–12. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/elaeldfrmwrksbeadopted.asp
Boser, U. (2015, Oct 14). The Hidden Value of Curriculum Reform: Do States and Districts Receive the Most Bang for Their Curriculum Buck? https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2015/10/14/122810/the-hidden-value-of-curriculum-reform/
Consortium on Reaching Excellence (CORE). The CORE Approach to Building and Sustaining Lasting Academic Excellence. https://www.corelearn.com/About-Us/Our-Approach.html
Boaler, J. (2015). What's Math Got to Do With It? How Teachers and Parents Can Transform Mathematics Learning and Inspire Success. New York: Penguin Books.
YouCubed. https://www.youcubed.org/
Schwartz, K. (2015, Nov 30). "Not a Math Person": How to Remove Obstacles to Learning Math. http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/11/30/not-a-math-person-how-to-remove-obstacles-to-learning-math/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29
Heitin, L. (2015, Aug 13). Common Core's Focus on Concepts Is Key to Improving Math Education, Report Says. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/08/common_cores_focus_on_concepts_key_to_improving_math_education.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters
Parker, M., & Leinhardt, G. (1995). Percent: A Privileged Proportion. Review of Educational Research Winter 65. http://rer.sagepub.com/content/65/4/421.abstract
Hacker, A. (2016, Feb 27). The Wrong Way to Teach Math. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/opinion/sunday/the-wrong-way-to-teach-math.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
Cuban, L. (2016, Mar 10). The Wrong Way to Teach Math (Andrew Hacker). https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2016/03/10/the-wrong-way-to-teach-math-andrew-hacker/
Heitin, L. (2016, Feb 11). What We Know About Struggling Math Students According to PISA Results. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2016/02/what_we_know_about_students_who_struggle_international_math_test.html?r=1820170230&utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters See also OECD. (2016, Feb 10). Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed. http://www.oecd.org/edu/low-performing-students-9789264250246-en.htm
WestEd. Math in Common Evaluation. https://www.wested.org/project/math-in-common-evaluation/ See also Fong, T., Perry, R., Reade, F., Klarin, B., & Jaquet, K. (2016, Jan). Many Pathways to Student Success in Mathematics: Middle and High School Math Course Sequences and Placement Decisions in Math in Common Districts. https://www.wested.org/resources/many-pathways-to-student-success-in-mathematics/ and Perry, R, Finkelstein, N., Seago N., Heredia, A., Sobolew-Shubin, S., & Carroll, C. (2016, Jul). Taking Stock of Common Core Math Implementation: Supporting Teachers to Shift Instruction Insights from the Math in Common 2015 Baseline Survey of Teachers and Administrators. https://www.wested.org/resources/taking-stock-common-core-math-implementation/ and Flaherty Jr., J., Sobolew-Shubin, A., Heredia, A., Chen-Gaddini, M., Klarin, B., & Finkelstein, N. (2016, Sep 26). Under Construction: Benchmark Assessments and Common Core Math Implementation in Grades K–8. https://www.wested.org/resources/under-construction-benchmark-assessments-and-common-core-math-implementation-in-grades-k-8/ and Perry, R. R., Seago, N., Burr, E., Broek, M., Finkelstein, N. (2015, Jan 26). Classroom Observations: Documenting Shifts in Instruction for Districtwide Improvement. https://www.wested.org/resources/documenting-shifts-in-instruction/
Disare M. (2016, Feb 16). 75 Schools Will Overhaul Math Teaching, a Move Fariña Says Will Reduce Inequity. http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2016/02/16/75-schools-will-overhaul-math-teaching-a-move-farina-says-will-reduce-inequity/#.VsYgQ4-cE2w
Isken, J. A., Honig, B., & Jago, C. (2014, Nov 15). California's Recently Adopted English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework: Translating the Common Core State Standards to a Coherent and Sequenced Curriculum for All Students. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/resourceselaeld2016.asp
Yopp, H. (2015). Resource Guide to the Foundational Skills of the California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/documents/foundskillswhitepaper.pdf – search=Yopp 2015 Resource guide&view=FitH&pagemode=none
Honig, B., Diamond, L., & Gutlohn, L. (2013). Teaching Reading Sourcebook, Updated Second Edition. Novato, CA: Arena Press. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/
Diamond, L., & Thorsnes, B. J. (Eds.). (2008). Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures. 2nd Edition. Novato, CA: Arena Press. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2014). Standard 2: Early Reading. What Consumers Need to Know About Teacher Preparation. http://www.nctq.org/dmsView/Teacher_Prep_Review_2014_Std2
Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Diamond, L. & Gutlohn, L. (2006). Vocabulary Handbook. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/
CORE. Word Intelligence. http://www.corelearn.com/word-intelligence.html
National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). (2013). College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. http://www.socialstudies.org/c3
Hansel, L. (2015, Aug 27). Joy Hakim's Science Stories: Proof that Informative Can Be Engaging. http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2015/08/27/joy-hakims-science-stories-proof-that-informative-can-be-engaging/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCoreKnowledgeBlog+%28The+Core+Knowledge+Blog%29
Stafford-Brizard, K. (2016). Building Blocks for Learning: A Framework for Comprehensive Student Development. Turnaround for Children. http://www.turnaroundusa.org/what-we-do/tools/
Tough, P. (2013). How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., III, & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House.
Lavigne, A. L., & Good, T. L. (2014). Teacher and Student Evaluation: Moving Beyond the Failure of School Reform. New York: Routledge.
Hattie, J. (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning. New York and London: Routledge.
This entry was posted in Build-and-Support, Common Core, Conventional School Reforms, Curriculum and Instruction, Privatization and tagged Common Core, Continuous Improvement, ELA/ELD, High-Stakes Testing, Math Instruction, Privatization, Reading Instruction, Technology, Test-Based Accountability on April 26, 2016 by BillHonig.
Why Conventional School "Reforms" Have Failed: Four Nostrums of Conventional School Reform
Why Conventional School "Reforms" Have Failed
Four Nostrums of Conventional School Reform
The reform movement has failed to produce results overall, and reputable evaluations have shown that individual reform measures also proved to be ineffective. Turnaround schools, charter schools, incentive schemes, or test-based school and teacher accountability have had either nonexistent or trivial effects. In his book Visible Learning, John Hattie writes that even when reforms produced small gains, they fall far below the improvements brought about by validated initiatives. In this article, I examine four other nostrums of reform.
Major Problems with Teach for America (TFA)
Teach for America (TFA) attracts bright, motivated graduates from our top colleges who agree to teach in public or charter schools for two years. They receive just five weeks of training and then are thrown into schools to sink or swim. Not surprisingly, many flounder and, at the end of their two-year commitment, leave the classroom in large numbers. By the end of five years, large numbers have left teaching. You cannot build a profession on a two-year commitment with minimal training.
Gary Rubenstein is a former TFA teacher. For a devastating, ongoing critique of TFA's practices, see his blog. In another alumni critique, Andrew Gerst offers suggestions for improvement based on the Aspire charter management organization training model. Aspire has a one-year internship, which results in large numbers of neophytes performing well in their second year and staying in the profession. Both critics claim that TFA is unwilling to spend its considerable profits to fix flagrant deficiencies. Many former TFA teachers, now dissident apostates, have written about major flaws with the program. See also an interview with Daniel Katz who recommends that his students not consider Teach for America. The organization has been addressing some of these issues. TFA has a small pilot that requires a longer commitment and provides an initial year's internship, is beginning to invest more heavily in first year coaching, and is allowing local TFA regions to institute changes in the model.
One of Rubinstein's most powerful points is that although many TFA teachers leave at the end of two years, some stay in education and wind up as unseasoned principals and superintendents. Despite the teachers' limited backgrounds in education and minimal experience, good political connections enable them to move into these important positions. Many of these young TFA veterans prove to be disasters as administrators. In part, this is due to their unwillingness to learn from competent educators and their ignorance of educational best practice. Of course, it did not help matters that they often were cast as knights in shining armor coming to save inept over-the-hill educators.
Mathematica conducted an evaluation of a small number of high school TFA teachers and found essentially no advantage in hiring them. The analysis found no difference in reading scores and only a negligible difference in math. A recent report on elementary TFA teachers also found no effects and revealed that most were planning to leave the profession quickly. In addition, their view of the training received had fallen compared to that of participants in previous years. For a critical review of the report, see Vasquez Heilig's blog.
Barbara Veltri is a former TFA trainer. She wrote a disparaging analysis of TFA's practices claiming, among other deficiencies, that a large number of TFA teachers are especially ill equipped to teach math. Katie Osgood adds to the discussion by describing how TFA's heavy indoctrination of teachers hampers their classroom effectiveness. The hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the program and its infrastructure could have been invested in supporting new teachers who wanted to make education a career and who were willing to get the proper training. Finally, Julian Heilig and Jameson Brewer have produced several podcasts titled Truth for America detailing the shortcomings of TFA by former TFA teachers.
Teach for America has turned into a massive financial enterprise—with assets worth nearly $500 million and managers earning absurdly high salaries. In 2013, its two co-CEOs received $382,000 and $342,000, respectively, and TFA founder Wendy Kopp received $156,000 for an eight-hour workweek during that same year. TFA obtains large federal and state grants as well as funding from conservative foundations that seem eager to replace competent experienced teachers with cheap raw recruits. For providing these low-cost replacements, TFA charges districts a hefty sum. In 2013, it received grants of $74 million in "government grants" and charged districts an additional $32 million in "service fees." Not bad for a supposedly charitable nonprofit organization staffed by raw recruits, many of whom will be gone in two years. Fortunately, the word is getting out about TFA. Its enrollments are down, and districts are starting to eliminate the program.
In 1969 I was part of a similar federally funded project called Teacher Corps, which truly was a solid program. Our cycle had 40 people from different walks of life and different ethnic/racial backgrounds. We were 10 African-Americans, 10 Asian-Americans, 10 Hispanics, and 10 whites. The major difference between Teacher Corps and Teach for America's program was that we did not limit our commitment to two years, and a respected school of education at San Francisco State University managed the program. We were given extensive training, not only in the summer before we started as interns, but for one full year after that. The education I received both at the college and on-site in the schools was excellent. No sink or swim. The Aspire charter school network has a similar internship program as do some of our best performing public school districts.
In promoting itself, Teach for America has used rhetoric closely aligned with the narrative used by some of the more extreme members of the "reform movement." Its leaders have the unfortunate habit of claiming that public schools and teachers are inept and have nothing of value to teach TFA, and that only its recruits can save America's failing schools. This is how the organization attempts to energize and motivate its trainees—by tearing down the existing structure. We got some of that in Teacher Corps, but were very quickly disabused of this arrogant attitude when it turned out that our supervising teachers in the schools actually knew what they were doing. We learned a great deal from them.
Many Teach for America teachers who chose to stay in education have become stellar professionals. Many others have left under duress after two years or to take more lucrative jobs in the corporate sector. But it is absolutely indefensible to build up your own organization by castigating public schools, allowing your teachers to replace qualified veteran teachers because they are cheaper, and allying yourself with extreme reformers who are bent on privatizing public education.
How About Merit Pay?
Merit pay sounds like a good idea. Pay our best teachers more and teachers will strive harder and stay in the profession longer. Unfortunately, just about every study has found that merit pay does not improve student or teacher performance. A few evaluations have reported gains from merit pay, but the increases were negligible. Merit pay schemes cause considerable collateral damage by forcing teachers to compete against each other, instead of encouraging and rewarding team-building and collaboration. Often merit pay proposals also use ill-conceived mechanisms for determining who gets rewarded. The result is that a significant number of deserving teachers get overlooked, while low-performing teachers get rewarded. Ironically, the extra money is not what motivates most teachers; they would rather be part of an effective group effort.
At any rate, there is a much better way to reward our best teachers and keep them in the profession—career ladders. Let our most proficient educators earn more money, but we should require them to mentor existing or new teachers and take on instructional development or leadership roles in addition to their classroom duties. They would earn more pay, but instead of merit pay's something-for-nothing approach, they would contribute their talents to the continuous improvement efforts at the school. See the report written by Catherine F. Natale and her colleagues, Creating Sustainable Teacher Career Pathways: A 21st Century Imperative. Why pay our best teachers stipends without receiving additional help from them? Most teachers strongly oppose merit pay, but few have objections to paying our best practitioners for taking on additional responsibilities. In fact, there is already a strong precedent for career ladder strategies. In secondary schools, department chairs receive a stipend when assuming additional duties.
Is Test-Based Retention Effective?
Similar problems occur when test results have high-stakes consequences for students. Comparable to using test performance for teacher evaluations and merit pay, single application tests should not be used to decide whether a third grader gets promoted to fourth. As discussed in the companion article Have High-Stakes Testing and Privatization Been Effective?, performance on a standardized test isn't sufficiently accurate, and there are much better ways to determine student progress. It might be acceptable to use the information from once-a-year test results as one piece of data (albeit a very weak source of information) to ascertain what a student knows and to fashion appropriate instruction or intervention. But relying primarily on a broad-scale assessment to determine a high-stakes decision such as promotion is especially dangerous and unfair.
Many states that have adopted retention schemes offer students alternative methods to avoid being retained. Even so, holding students back is still an unsound policy. Sadly, many districts have lately been forced to adopt retention policies under state legislation authored by conservative governors and legislatures, many of whom are at the beck and call of the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). These harsh legislative mandates were passed under the guise of ending "social promotion." This flies in the face of 30 years of research that has shown this strategy does not work and causes substantial harm to those children held back. These policies are tantamount to educational malpractice—research condemns them as academically, emotionally, and socially harmful to the student retained and to the class he or she is placed in. Retention is also very expensive—costing about $11,000 per student for one additional year of schooling. The money could be spent on far more effective approaches. See also David Berliner and Gene Glass's 50 Myths & Lies That Threaten America's Public Schools and the Education Week article "Should 3rd Grade Be the Pivot Point for Early Reading?" Thankfully, some states are now retreating from such an ill-advised policy after witnessing its disastrous results. However, Nevada just adopted a retention scheme.
This valid and reliable research has found that when compared to the performance of students who are held back, the performance, graduation rates, and emotional health of similar struggling students who are promoted are all appreciably higher. The retention strategy often is based on noneducators' unsound assumption that first-, second-, and third-grade students fail because they are not trying hard enough, and if they are held back or threatened with retention, they will exert more effort. The fact is that these students do not lack motivation. I have yet to encounter a child who doesn't possess an intense desire to learn how to read. But I have witnessed the pain caused to youngsters who are separated from classmates and made to feel like failures because of misguided policies.
Two reports that studied retention found improvement in performance in later years. But, as critics of the reports and the report writers themselves point out, what the studies actually showed was that intensive intervention will lower failure rates. They never compared intensive intervention for comparable students not held back with intensive intervention and retention, which of course is the issue.
Virtually all cases of reading failure stem from a deficiency in initial reading instruction and the lack of proper intervention, even in kindergarten. There really is no excuse for not implementing the powerful knowledge about how to teach youngsters to read. Successful reading instruction and timely intervention will teach almost every student to read, and for those still having problems, support in the next grades will be much more fruitful than retaining those students. In addition, most retention plans concentrate policy on the third grade, which is several years too late. For a review of this research covering best first teaching practices and timely intervention, see the white paper on foundational skills in the California ELA/ELD framework and an article by Linnea Ehri summarizing what is known about beginning reading. Struggling students should not pay the price for a school's failure to provide evidence-based instruction and early intervention. See also David Kilpatrick's Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties and Louise Spear-Swerling's The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles: A Blueprint for Solving Reading Problems.
Further, all too often the retained student encounters the same instruction in the new class that the student received previously, thus producing little improvement. Then too, placing a resentful, older, and usually male student in a third-grade class when he is chronologically and socially ready for fourth grade, isolated from friends, and labeled a failure is a recipe for a problem-plagued year.
Forced retention of elementary students is a cruel and mean-spirited policy. What is frustrating for educators is that this politically imposed "solution" to reading difficulties hardly ever helps struggling students but does cause tremendous damage to those children and the school. It is another example of a highly touted "reform" that ignores a compelling body of research, adopts a simple but wrong solution to a complex problem, fails to pursue what does work, and then blames the victim.
How destructive this "reform" could be was brought home to me personally a decade ago. I will never forget the poignant conversation I had with a retained first grader. I was at the park with my three-year-old granddaughter, Annika. While she was playing, I struck up a conversation with a boy who was amazingly skillful on the monkey bars and who turned out to be quite engaging—overall, a great kid. In the course of our chat, I asked him how old he was (since he was so physically coordinated) and what grade he was in. He was old enough for second grade but had been retained in first. This was his previous teacher's recommendation as the best approach for helping his struggles with reading. All of a sudden, these strong emotions emerged as he started to talk about being held back, his sadness over being cut off from his friends, his anger at what had been done to him and not knowing why they did it, and his sense of personal failure.
All this surfaced during a 15-minute conversation. I did talk to his grandparents who were with him at the park and counseled them to raise the issue with the parents, but they seemed reluctant to challenge the teacher or the school on the issue. What has never left me was how mature and outgoing this child was—even while suffering from a profound sadness from what had happened to him. And I was struck by how the people in the system, while thinking they were doing something helpful, had in fact caused him tremendous humiliation and anguish for naught by following such a benighted policy. What also bothered me enormously was that he was made to pay for the school's mistakes. The school did not know how best to teach him to read, did not have support systems in place to help him other than holding him back, and placed misguided faith in the efficacy of retention. It reminded me of the doctors hundreds of years ago who caused patients substantial harm by bleeding them, under the mistaken belief that such a practice was beneficial.
A similar heartbreaking story unfolded for thousands of children in Mississippi who were held back when the governor sponsored legislation for strict retention but never funded support for early intervention.
Is Technology Innovation Key to School Improvement?
Many reform advocates tout technology as a critical disruptive element that will enable schools to perform better at less cost. Many opponents of conventional market-driven reform strategies initially worried that the movement to incorporate more technology in schools or to replace teachers with computers was just a ploy to sell unneeded devices or an invitation to corporate America to privatize education by replacing public schools with low-cost corporate schools. The experience in many states gives credence to these concerns. The terrible results from virtual charter schools, discussed at the end of this article and in the companion article Charter Schools Are Not the Key to Improving Public Education, are clearly a cautionary tale. For a 306-page handbook on the corporate takeover of our schools, see American Revolution 2.0: How Education Innovation Is Going to Revitalize America and Transform the US Economy.
A second objection to the use of technology to improve schools is based on Clayton Christensen's disruptive innovation, one of the theories promoted by reformers. Christensen's innovation has wreaked havoc on many neighborhood community schools without actually improving student or teacher performance. Critics argue that massive disruption does not seem appropriate for important public institutions like our schools. Jill Lapore seriously questions Christensen's research in "The Disruption Machine: What the Gospel of Innovation Gets Wrong."
Finally, the critics of technology express concerns that standards, test production and grading, and newly required materials and training are all being proposed in order to create huge new markets for the private sector. I am less apprehensive about this point. There is plenty of room for a vibrant public school sector to use the expertise of private and charitable entities in its pursuit of an effective Build-and-Support strategy. Proprietary instructional materials can supplement open-source materials. For an excellent example of the growing open-source material segment, visit the ISKME website. For an article about open-source materials, see "Free Online Content Helps Teachers Meet Common Core Demands." See also the Common Sense Media website for reviews of digital and other educational materials or the tips for blended learning.
The more active curriculum envisioned by the Common Core standards and the Next Generation Science standards could profit from digitally delivered activities that are sophisticated, dynamic, and engaging. For example, a digital platform offers students the chance to investigate an epidemic in another country using online synchronous collaboration, access digital content that explains why the Industrial Revolution started in England, or participate in virtual science labs with simulations and graphic modeling. Relevant materials could be organized for these activities, thus avoiding open-ended Internet searches that are often overwhelming and unproductive for students.
Further, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles developed by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) demonstrate how technology has the potential to provide all students with access to rich, effective curricula, including those with physical disabilities, learning differences, or limited proficiency in English.
For information about web tools, see the links provided by EdTechReview. Adaptive technology can drive instructional improvement by giving students immediate feedback, adjusting content and the amount of scaffolding to their individual needs, and organizing and reporting student performance data to help teachers track growth in important standards in real time. See, for example, the GOORU site.
One exciting development in the educational technology sector is the growing interest in gamification, or the use of game-design mechanics and principles to motivate and engage students. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is at the forefront of research in this field. For a list of 100 websites in this area, see "Play to Learn: 100 Great Sites on Gamification" and The Game Believes in You, a recent book on the subject by Greg Toppo. See also the article "Frontiers of Digital Learning Probed by Researchers" and "Can Digital Games Improve Our Schools?," a nuanced perceptive article by John Thompson.
Two books offer a critical analysis of eLearning games and digital simulation, questioning whether virtual activities actually produce results or work for all children. Our past experience with other supposedly "breakthrough" innovations suggests that the most appropriate approach is to avoid going overboard and to insist on balance.
Some educators and parents are worried about student privacy issues, but with proper prohibitions against selling data and restricting its use to feedback to teachers, those fears can be minimized. The potential power of these initiatives is too important to ignore.
Finally, there is the push for blended learning and performance-based instruction using technology. In blended-learning settings, a student works with a teacher and digital devices. In proper balance and if done right, blended learning could greatly enhance the curriculum. For an example, see Blackboard K–12. However, as widely documented, blended learning can be misused. For an international cautionary note, see a recent report that recommends a balanced approach after finding that too much technology in the classroom actually lowered student performance.
The jury is still out on whether technology innovation will improve instruction or suffer the same fate as previous technological fixes such as hyped teaching machines several decades ago, which turned out to be a huge fiasco.
As mentioned previously, virtual or online charter schools have had major problems in performance. Investigations have revealed some high-profile scams and exploitation. A 2015 report produced by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), Mathematica Policy Research, and the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found that virtual charters result in the loss of a full year's worth of instruction—a disastrous result. Both Samuelsohn and Stober have questioning the value of virtual schools have been published by many different sources.
Unquestionably, some technology advocates go too far and envision a future where machines and software replace expensive teachers and eliminate the social aspects of learning under the guidance of a competent, caring teacher. So far, that nightmare has not been realized.
Several major issues need to be more fully explored. One major question is how different students profit or fail to profit from technological solutions. Some youngsters have no problem with digital learning, while others become easily flummoxed or bored. Another concern is how to avoid overindulgence in unproductive games, prevent the hampering of social development, and escape the tendency to replace robust traditional instructional activities with low-level computer-based busywork.
Summing Up: The Failure of Conventional Reform
The ineffectiveness of current federal and state policies based on conventional reformers' agendas should not have been surprising. Fifty years ago, W. E. Deming warned of the negative side effects of an overreliance on evaluation strategies and incentive schemes. Fear tends to make employees disengage, narrow their efforts, or game the system so they appear compliant. It diverts attention from and decreases motivation for collaborative teams and local structures that allow for continuous improvement. This ruinous situation is well known in the social sciences, articulated as Campbell's law.
As Diane Ravitch explains:
The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
That is exactly what has occurred far too often in our educational system during the past decade under policies pursued by conventional "reformers." Knowledgeable educators predicted that these initiatives would fail, but their warnings were ignored. As foretold, high-stakes, test-driven accountability has resulted in narrowing the curriculum, gaming the system or cheating, using unproven and unfair reward and punishment tools (such as the recent teacher evaluation debacles in many states), and encouraging superficial teaching to the test to the detriment of deeper learning. It has diverted attention from, de-emphasized, or belittled the policies that actually produce substantial results. No wonder the results have been disappointing.
More importantly, punitive management techniques and demonization of teachers and schools have not only eroded support for the institution of public education but have created widespread alienation among teachers.
This is why recent polls found that teachers in the US score among the highest on scales of liking their profession but among the lowest on satisfaction with their working environment, the very opposite of the engaged professionals we need to perform effectively in the difficult circumstances encountered in schools across the country. For example, a recent survey of 30,000 teachers by the American Federation of Teachers found high stress levels among teaching staff:
Only one in five educators feels respected by government officials or the media.
Fourteen percent of educators strongly agree with the statement that they trust their administrator or supervisor.
More than 75% say they do not have enough staff to get the work done.
Seventy-eight percent say they are often physically and emotionally exhausted at the end of the day.
Eighty-seven percent say the demands of their job are at least sometimes interfering with their family life
A MetLife survey found that in the face of ill-conceived reforms and political and societal censure, the percentage of teachers who were "very satisfied" dropped dramatically from 62% in 2008 to 39% in 2012. See also Jeff Bryant's blog post "We Won't Get Great Teachers by Treating Them Badly."
Worse yet, the Test-and-Punish regime has convinced many teachers to leave the profession, a costly decision for schools and students, as reported in Revolving Door of Teachers Costs Schools Billions Every Year. High-stakes testing is one of the major causes of the wholesale flight of teachers from harsh "reform states" to more supportive jurisdictions. There are serious shortages of teachers in states such as North Carolina, Utah, Indiana, and Kansas. England has suffered similar effects from a Test-and-Punish regime.
Ironically, these studies also show that teachers yearn to break out of the traditional isolated culture of most schools and work together with their colleagues in an effort to become better at what they do. We should give them the chance to enlist in this crucial effort.
Broad swaths of the public have begun to turn against Test-and-Punish and privatization strategies; it is time for our political and opinion leaders to follow suit. The reaction to Arne Duncan's resignation on October 1, 2015, as national secretary of education is instructive. Of the 228 comments written in response to a New York Times article reporting the event, it was hard to find even one supporting the aggressive policies the Obama administration had pursued. The comments were uniformly negative and angry—accusing the administration of devastating public education and providing the least effective educational leaders in recent history.
A statement by the Network for Public Education captures the spirit of the commentators:
The policies of the US Department of Education [under Duncan's (and Obama's) watch] have inflicted immeasurable harm on American public education. The blind faith in standardized testing as the most meaningful measure of students, teachers, principals, and schools has distorted the true meaning of education and demoralized educators. Punitive policies have created teacher shortages across the nation, as well as a precipitous decline in the number of people preparing to become teachers. The Race to the Top preference for privately managed charter schools over public schools has encouraged privatization of a vitally important public responsibility.
As I stated in the conclusion to the introductory remarks on this website: Public education has always been central to the continued health of our democracy and our way of life. So-called reformers have foisted a set of initiatives on our schools based on an outmoded management philosophy and a flawed analysis of what it takes to improve education. These policies ignore history, research, and experience, which is why our best schools and districts have studiously avoided them. The reformers' proposals not only thwart the measures actually needed to improve our schools but their initiatives threaten to put the whole enterprise of public education at risk. We need an immediate course correction to follow the lead of our most successful schools and districts in creating effective learning communities at each school and, finally, building the educational profession that this country deserves.
9/1/2016 A new report by the US Department of Education finds teacher incentive schemes ineffective. https://www.cabinetreport.com/curriculum-instruction/teacher-bonus-pay-barely-moves-the-dial-on-test-scores
7/30/2016 On-line Algebra students fare worse than those taught by a face-to-face teacher. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2016/07/online_algebra_worse_for_high-performing_students.html?r=1556213501
7/30/2016 Larry Cuban questions whether the hype on blending learning is accurate. https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/proof-points-selling-and-marketing-blended-learning-to-educators-and-parents/
Have High-Stakes Testing and Privatization Been Effective?
Charter Schools Are Not the Key to Improving Public Education
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Harris, G., & Rich, M. (2016, Oct 3). Arne Duncan, Education Secretary, to Step Down in December. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/us/politics/arne-duncan.html
Amrein-Beardsley, A. (2015, Oct 3). U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan Resigning in December. http://vamboozled.com/u-s-secretary-arne-duncan-resigning-in-december/
This entry was posted in Charter Schools, Common Core, Conventional School Reforms, High--Stakes Testing, Teacher Evaluation, Test-and-Punish and tagged Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Continuous Improvement, High-Stakes Testing, Merit Pay, Standardized Tests, Teach for America, Technology, Test-Based Accountability, Test-Based Retention on April 26, 2016 by BillHonig.
Why Conventional School "Reforms" Have Failed: Teacher and School Evaluations Are Based on Test Scores
Teacher and School Evaluations Are Based on Test Scores
The reform movement has failed to produce results overall, and reputable evaluations have shown that individual reform measures also proved to be ineffective. Turnaround schools, charter schools, merit pay, or test-based school and teacher accountability have had either nonexistent or trivial effects. In his book Visible Learning, John Hattie writes that even when reforms produced small gains, they fall far below the improvements brought about by validated initiatives. In this article, I examine the failure of one of the major initiatives of the reform movement: high-stakes teacher and school evaluations based on student test scores.
Firing Teachers Based on Students' Test Scores Is Not the Answer
A major problem with the "reform" strategy is its tremendous overemphasis on removing incompetent teachers based on students' test performance and enshrining mass firings as a key objective in school improvement efforts. For those who are seeking a "simple" way to improve educational outcomes, this approach has broad superficial appeal. Up until the repeal of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in late 2015, test-based accountability of teachers was a key component of the Obama administration's educational policy and the price for relief—in the form of waivers—from arbitrary federal requirements. ESSA eliminates a national teacher evaluation system based on standardized tests scores and the federal government's ability to grant waivers.
Incompetent teachers should be let go if, and only if, credible and fair methods are used. But personnel changes must be part of a broader push for instructional improvements and efforts to raise the performance of all staff—measures that produce much higher effects on student achievement. For examples of these more positive measures, see the Aspen Institute March 2016 report Evaluation and Support Systems: A Roadmap for Improvement.
Up until several years ago, the reform agenda had primarily relied on test-driven, high-stakes accountability systems to punish or reward schools—a questionable enough approach, as discussed later in this article. A recent shift compounded the error when districts and states began to use the tests to also evaluate teachers and administrators and mete out punishment, termination, or rewards.
Often accompanied by hostile, anti-teacher rhetoric, teacher evaluation systems based on test scores became a central plank in the reform movement. That is why some "reformers" have virulently campaigned against teachers' unions and due process (tenure) rights for teachers. They see these protections (which should be streamlined when they become too cumbersome) preventing the unfettered ability to eliminate incompetent teachers and frustrating what in their minds is the most viable strategy to improve schools—firing bad teachers and pressuring the rest to improve.
As an aside, the article "Tenure: How Due Process Protects Teachers and Students" explains tenure in the context of due process rights and provides a cogent rationale for fair process protections during dismissal proceedings. Also, see Dana Goldstein's excellent book The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession, which provides a gut wrenching picture of historical harm and arbitrary treatment teachers received before these due process rights were secured.
Many reformers as well as their political and media supporters frame the current debate about educational direction as a clash between themselves—the only ones who are trying to improve schools—and lazy or incompetent teachers and their unions. They contend that those who attempt to block their reform efforts are just trying to protect teacher prerogatives. This is why many policymakers and pundits take a confrontational rather than a cooperative stance. But educators' opposition to the reform platform is much broader and goes much deeper than this all-too-common specious analysis. It is not that teachers (and their representatives) do not want to improve performance or that they do not see the need for schools to get better at what they are doing. Almost every professional wants that. What teachers and most district and school administrators object to is the path reformers have laid out toward accomplishing that goal. They view reformers' Test-and-Punish reform initiatives as ill advised and ineffective at best and detrimental at worst. And they are correct.
Teacher Quality: Putting the Issue in Perspective
Contrary to the reform movement's superficial and overheated rhetoric, the quality of teachers, while significant, is not the only important influence on student performance. According to various research studies, it accounts for only about 10% of student achievement. Bashing and blaming teachers is not a new trick. As recounted in Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, this destructive ploy has emerged several times in our history, driven by "moral panic." It is unjust to single out teachers as the primary cause of underperforming students and schools and, at the same time, fail to address more influential factors.
As one example, family and social dysfunction is on the rise and has had a devastating effect on educational performance. This is particularly true among working-class families. Robert Putnam's important new book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, reveals the alarming growth in recent decades of social pathology among white working-class families. During the same period, professional families have stayed much more stable. Socioeconomic levels continue to significantly outrank all other influences on student performance.
Of course, it is easier to blame teachers for not reversing the damage done by wage stagnation and the dramatic decrease in blue-collar jobs in this country over the past decades rather than tackle these larger problems directly. In the US, we have seen rising levels of inequality, the increase of single-parent families, a steady climb in drug use, and the dearth of supportive services. Reformers' penchant for blaming teachers and school administrators for low school performance conveniently absolves other societal institutions and actors of their responsibility for ameliorating injurious socioeconomic trends. Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, one of the most respected commentators on how best to improve schools, offers an alternative view. She has called for "reciprocal accountability," which requires that all major stakeholders share the responsibility for school performance improvement, not just teachers who are so easily scapegoated.
Julie Rummel provides a poignant much-needed teacher's perspective of the harsh reality encountered in many of our schools. She moved from a dysfunctional poverty-stricken school where she was labeled a "mediocre" teacher to a more upscale campus where she was regarded as great. She essentially made no changes in how she taught or connected with her students.
In a new infographic, Kevin Welner of the National Center for Education Policy reinforces the unfairness of expecting schools to reverse the deleterious effects of poverty by themselves.
Finally, A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, an organization devoted to addressing these broader issues, just relaunched its efforts following the enactment of the federal ESSA legislation.
Isabel Sawhill and Edward Rodrigue list three measures that had a major effect on whether an individual would remain in poverty. They found that graduating from high school, being in a family with at least one full-time worker, and being at least 21 and married before having children correlated closely with economic success. They describe this as "the success sequence." According to these researchers, only 2.4% of those Americans who follow the success sequence will live below the poverty line, while over 70% enjoy at least middle-class incomes, defined as at least 300% of that poverty measure. For those who do not meet the three criteria, 79% will live in poverty. Only one of these measures is directly school related—graduation rates. Having an adult with a full-time job depends on successful job creation efforts.
According to Isabel Sawhill, "If we want to reduce poverty, one of the simplest, fastest and cheapest things we could do would be to make sure that as few people as possible become parents before they actually want to." Here is an example of what could be done to substantially lower teen pregnancy and thus improve educational performance. From 2009 to mid-2015 a dramatically successful program in Colorado slashed the teen pregnancy and abortion rates by nearly 50% by providing free long-term birth control devices such as IUDs for teenagers. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation initially funded the program, but when the grant ended in 2015, the Republican-controlled legislature killed a bill to support this successful effort. Private donations saved the program for a year.
Tests Are Not Reliable Measures of Teacher Performance
Considering in-school issues, the technical ability of current student tests to accurately identify high- and low-performing teachers is woefully inadequate. In the past few years, a compelling body of research has emerged that demonstrates the dangers of test-based teacher evaluations. Three major research institutes—American Education Research Association (AERA), the National Academy of Education, and the American Statistical Association (ASA)—have forcefully warned against employing these measures for teacher evaluations. The AERA issued standards for teacher evaluation measures, which virtually no existing instruments meet.
Currently, Value-Added Measures (VAMs) is a popular tool. It claims to assess growth by aggregating individual scores adjusted for socioeconomic measures. Like other tools in widespread use, it is not accurate enough for evaluating teachers. A seminal critique of the growing use of test scores and value-added measures was written by Linda Darling-Hammond, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley from Arizona State University, Edward Haertel from Stanford, and Jesse Rothstein from University of California, Berkeley. Their research revealed how inexact the measures were, and they present case studies of egregious misidentification—when excellent teachers have been misidentified as low performing and unfairly dismissed. In Teacher and Student Evaluation: Moving Beyond the Failure of School Reform, Alyson Lavigne and Thomas Good provide a comprehensive analysis of the history of teacher evaluations. Their analysis also found the present strategies to be defective. Further, Rick Stigins in his 2014 book, Defensible Teacher Evaluation: Student Growth through Classroom Assessment, reviews the major deficiencies in current high-stakes, test-driven teacher evaluation.
In March 2015, the respected publication Educational Researcher devoted an entire issue to critiques of the most common VAMs, plus some supporting statements with caveats. For a list of the top 15 research articles that discredit the use of test scores and VAM approaches, see Amrein-Beardsley's VAMboozled website. The site includes a recommended reading list and lists 86 articles that have raised major technical concerns about VAM. For an exhaustive list, more information, and research articles that discredit the use of test scores and VAM approaches, see briefing paper Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers and the article "Studies Highlight Complexities of Using Value-Added Measures." Both make a compelling case against test-driven teacher evaluation. Professor Edward Haertel from Stanford has written a particularly persuasive admonition against this practice, as has Leo Casey in his article published in the esteemed, peer-reviewed journal Teachers College Record titled "The Will to Quantify: The "Bottom Line" in the Market Model of Education Reform."
Two reports published in 2016 underscore the serious limitations of VAM. The first describes how VAM use failed in the Houston Independent School District (HISD); the second, produced by REL at WestEd, discusses how deficient VAM is in predicting teacher quality.
For further reading on the limits of VAM as a measure of teacher quality, see also "A Reanalysis of the Effects of Teacher Replacement Using Value-Added Modeling" by Stuart S. Yeh, Beardley's blog post "The (Relentess) Will to Quantify," and a critique of New York's plan to use VAM methods to evaluate teachers. Finally, the Melbourne Graduate School of Education website has a compelling video lecture on why test score evaluation does not work.
Evaluations Based on Test Scores Misidentify Teachers
These well-respected researchers make the following points. The section "Standardized Tests Are Not the Best Measures of School or Teacher Quality" in companion article Reformers Target the Wrong Levers of Improvement made the case that such scores fail to accurately measure deeper and broader learning.
As importantly, student tests were never designed to be used for teacher evaluation and suffer from high levels of misidentification, or noise. Studies have shown that if we use current tests, a teacher who is ranked at the 50th percentile could be anywhere from the 85th percentile to the 15th. A significant number of teachers bounce from top to bottom, or vice versa from year to year. A recent report from the US Department of Education found very high misidentifications—even with three years of data per teacher. One-fourth of the teachers identified as "low performers needing remediation" were actually at the mid-range of performance, and one-fourth of teachers who were deemed "average" were actually in need of professional development and support. That level of imprecision should be unacceptable for any respected profession.
A team of renowned researchers set out to demonstrate the absurdity of using student tests to determine teacher effectiveness. They found that changes in the height of students, which is obviously independent of teacher influence, was nearly as predictive of teacher effectiveness as test scores.
Examples of Test-Based Evaluations That Fail Exemplary Teachers
As a result of districts using these suspect measures, there have been numerous cases of top-flight teachers receiving negative scores and of teachers who were identified one year as "stellar" receiving a low rating the next. In some cases this occurred because a teacher voluntarily agreed to take a more difficult class. Then the teacher suffered by comparison with the easier class (s)he taught in the previous years.
The telling case of Pascale Mauclair clearly demonstrates how dangerous it can be to use such dubious evaluation measures. She agreed to teach a harder-to-educate class and did a superb job, but instead of getting congratulated she was identified by the press as "One of the Worst Teachers in the City." A study conducted by Darling-Hammond and her colleagues also documented tragic cases of misidentification.
Finally, some teachers are taking the issue to court claiming the current evaluation procedures are so arbitrary that they are fatally flawed. An example is Sheri Lederman's case before the New York courts. Each year she works with students who achieve double the average student proficiency rates in the state, but since her students scored so high in previous years, she did not meet the state's ill-conceived standard requiring growth from year to year. As a result, Lederman received a low rating. The trial court held the existing system was "arbitrary and capricious" as it applied to her, and voided the rankings based on test scores.
Consequently, when such growth measures are used, results can be extremely arbitrary at the upper ends. My favorite example is the ludicrous case of Carolyn Abbott, an exemplary teacher of gifted students in New York City. Her students made huge gains each year, invariably scoring at the highest levels. In one year, her previous gifted class scored at the 98th percentile and, based on that high performance, her predicted next year's score became the 97th percentile. The actual score landed at the 89th percentile. Many of her gifted students saw no reason to try hard on the state test since they were doing much more advanced work. On other tests that had consequences for students, they scored in the highest ranks. Even though Abbott was doing an exemplary job, the newspapers dubbed her the "Worst 8th Grade Teacher in the City." The real story was the complete opposite.
I have some important feedback for the news media in this country: Shame on you for rushing to publish teacher rankings when you know, or should know, that these lists are bogus and prone to error. Even the more thoughtful advocates of VAMs caution against their use for high-stakes personnel decisions.
Other Flaws in Test-Based Evaluation Systems
As previously mentioned, test scores and even evaluations by principals tend to track the socioeconomic status of the student population. So schools in low-income areas have a significantly higher number of low evaluations and fewer high evaluations—a clearly unjust situation and a surefire detriment to attracting our best teachers to these areas in need.
In addition, no one yet has solved the problem that most teachers are not math and reading teachers. Thus, they do not teach the math and reading content tested on the new PARCC and SBAC assessments, yet they are still held accountable based on those test scores. As a result, many teachers are now suing after receiving low evaluations based on the test performance of students they never taught. Another major defect in the measures being used for evaluation is that different assessment instruments yield widely dissimilar results. This is further confirmation of the inaccuracy and inadequacy of these measures.
Further, individual evaluations do not take into account school context, which has a large influence on teacher performance. The students of two similarly talented teachers will score differently if one group of students is in a school led by an effective principal with working teams, a good school climate, and active engagement of students and parents while the other is in a dysfunctional school with none of these attributes.
Finally, yearly decisions about which students get assigned to which teachers can tremendously skew a teacher's evaluation. Nonrandom assignment of students vitiates a key requirement of valid teacher evaluation systems, subjecting teachers to potential principal favoritism and pressure from parents. Newer VAMs that are being used more and more were supposedly designed to correct this, but apparently they have not. Conversely, one of the best predictors of student achievement is whether teachers are assigned to teach classes in their areas of expertise or classes that match their skill set. Ironically, when districts use the information from test-based evaluations as a proxy for mis-assignment and then reassign teachers to subjects aligned with their preparation and experience, students enjoy a much greater boost to performance than performance improvements resulting from firings using value-added teacher accountability. Perhaps the best use of high-stakes testing is holding administrators accountable for proper assignment of teachers, instead of serving as the unsound basis for teacher evaluation.
Test-Based Evaluations Do Not Measure Good Teaching and Harm the Profession
Do evaluations based in large part on math and reading test scores actually measure "good teaching"? A 2014 report by well-regarded researchers Martin Polikoff and Andrew Porter says no. They looked at six districts nationwide and found that measures of students' opportunity to learn (OTL) the content specified in standards and measures of instructional quality, both of which have been found to be highly predictive of student learning, showed weak or zero correlation with the VAM tests being used to evaluate teachers.
The upshot of all this research is that not only is test-based teacher evaluation unfair to the limited number of teachers who can benefit from professional support, but the arbitrary threat issued to all teachers impairs their performance and discourages them from remaining in the profession. The Test-and-Punish approach has also had a damaging effect on efforts to recruit new talent. Defective evaluation schemes have many negative consequences, including teachers avoiding hard-to-teach children and resisting collaborative team-building efforts. The demeaning rhetoric about widespread teacher incompetence is another key factor contributing to growing teacher demoralization. For more on this topic, see the companion article Reformers Allowed Their Rhetoric to Be Hijacked.
The op-ed piece "Standardized Tests Don't Help Us Evaluate Teachers" is an in-the-trenches summary by a Los Angeles Unified attorney who helped create teacher evaluations and now finds them defective. In The Teacher Wars, Dana Goldstein offers an excellent account of the disastrous consequences of personnel decisions tied to student test scores. For an excellent summary of why test scores should not be used for consequential evaluations, see David Berliner's piece.
Finally, a 2016 extensive report on teacher evaluation policies by Thomas Toch recommends using evaluative information primarily for program and teacher improvement. This shifts the major purpose of evaluations from rooting out the lowest performers to policies aimed at lifting the whole staff.
The business community has been moving away from ranking schemes for decades, recognizing that such evaluations are superficial, work against team building, cause lower performance, and discourage risk taking by employees. In a clear case of hypocrisy, many business leaders have no compunction about recommending such discarded measures for schools.
Fortunately, many school districts and states have been withdrawing from or minimizing the use of mandatory test-based teacher evaluations leading to dismissal proceedings. Many others are using teacher evaluations as just one of many data sets that provide useful information and feedback to teachers and faculties about where to concentrate improvement efforts. Three examples are Tulsa, the state of Michigan, and Houston. State Action to Advance Teacher Evaluation, a comprehensive report by the Southern Regional Education Board, and the California blueprint, Greatness by Design, advocate using evaluations to feedback useful information for teacher improvement.
One of the most prominent architects of teacher evaluation, Charlotte Danielson, whose rubrics are in widespread use, has castigated the present way evaluations are being conducted and used. Even New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who was a strong advocate for test-based high-stakes teacher evaluation, has backtracked, and the New York Regents have halted required state test-based teacher evaluations for four years. Many educational leaders such as New York's Nassau County superintendents had warned against this practice. Some political leaders , such as Hillary Clinton, are also beginning to speak out about the dangers of test-based teacher evaluation. Finally, a court in New Mexico found that using VAM scores based on tests is too imprecise to be used to attach consequences to the results.
Bill Gates, one of the strongest proponents of teacher evaluation strategies, has issued warnings about their overuse:
Too many school systems are using teacher evaluations as merely a tool for personnel decisions, not helping teachers get better. . . . Many systems today are about hiring and firing, not a tool for learning.
In response, to this growing resistance to test-based teacher evaluation, the recent reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), now named the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), ignores test-based teacher evaluation.
A More Effective Approach to Teacher Evaluation
Preliminarily, advocates of high-stakes teacher evaluation have a misguided view of "teacher quality." They think it is a static individual attribute that—after the first few years—can't really change. A more sophisticated viewpoint sees teacher quality as dynamic, which does and should grow over time. Esther Quintero, a management expert, supports this point of view. Writing for the Albert Shanker Institute blog, Quintero explains:
In the US, a number of unstated but common assumptions about "teacher quality" suffuse the entire school improvement conversation. As researchers have noted . . . instructional effectiveness is implicitly viewed as an attribute of individuals, a quality that exists in a sort of vacuum (or independent of the context of teachers' work), and which, as a result, teachers can carry with them, across and between schools. Effectiveness also is often perceived as fairly stable: teachers learn their craft within the first few years in the classroom and then plateau, but, at the end of the day, some teachers have what it takes and others just don't. So, the general assumption is that a "good teacher" will be effective under any conditions, and the quality of a given school is determined by how many individual "good teachers" it has acquired.
In British Columbia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore, none of these assumptions seems to be at work. Teacher effectiveness is not something fixed that individual teachers do or don't possess. Rather, effectiveness is both a quality and an aspiration of schools: Schools ought to be organized and resourced so that teachers continuously and collaboratively improve. In these high performance systems, the whole (school effectiveness) is greater than the sum of its parts (individual teacher effectiveness) because, as Susan Moore Johnson argues:
Whatever level of human capital schools acquire through hiring can subsequently be developed through activities such as grade-level or subject-based teams of teachers, faculty committees, professional development, coaching, evaluation, and informal interactions. As teachers join together to solve problems and learn from one another, the school's instructional capacity becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
The Learning Policy Institute published a report by Kini and Podolsky, Does Teaching Experience Increase Teacher Effectiveness? A Review of the Research, which debunked the idea that teachers don't continue to become more effective after the first three-year learning spurt. Obviously, well-constructed professional learning will enhance the normal growth process.
It is important to dismiss incompetent teachers if their dismissal is done fairly and is part of an overall effort that gives teachers the support and time they need to improve before they are dismissed. With the right resources and approach, many low-performing teachers become good teachers. Our most successful districts do not ignore struggling teachers. They use effective assessments that include feedback, peer participation and review, and support. They have organized schools to be learning institutions in which all staff can continuously improve. These districts are also careful when making initial hiring decisions and granting tenure. Ironically, districts that follow these more supportive evaluation strategies often end up with higher dismissal rates than those following the pure Test-and-Punish approach. See the policy brief Evaluation, Accountability, and Professional Development in an Opportunity Culture, which outlines proven, more positive approaches to teacher evaluation.
Lavigne and Good have surveyed the best research and practices in the field. In their 2015 book, Improving Teachers Through Observation and Feedback, they offer powerful suggestions for correctly conducting evaluation in the service of improved performance. Their proposals markedly differ from what most districts are currently doing. In fact, Lavigne and Good emphasize useful feedback and cooperative effort, as opposed to formal evaluations. Information from a teacher's student tests can help that teacher improve instruction when valid methods, measures, and strategies are employed, and checked for accuracy. Again, student test data should not be used in personnel decisions but as part of a broad-scale effort to collect evidence that will help teachers and schools improve. The current emphasis on narrowly conceived test-based, high-stakes teacher evaluation is unfair and ineffective.
A major report by the Network for Public Education, Teachers Talk Back: Educators on the Impact of Teacher Evaluation, reinforces the view that test-based teacher evaluation is harmful and evaluations should instead focus on improving instruction as some states such as California have done.
Does Dismissing Incompetent Teachers Improve Student Outcomes?
This is the most crucial question for those who support Test-and-Punish. First, after a decade of intensive effort to pursue teacher evaluation schemes, the results have been negligible. Rick Hess reports on a study conducted by Matt Kraft and Allison Gilmour. According to Hess:
[The authors] look at teacher evaluation results in 19 states that have adopted new evaluation systems since 2009. Unfortunately, all that time, money, and passion haven't delivered much. Kraft and Gilmour note that, after all is said and done, the share of teachers identified as effective in those 19 states inched down from more than 99% to a little over 97% in 2015.
Second, the fact is that fixating on just the three to five percent sliver of teachers who are not performing, even if the evaluation process were fair and accurate, affects only a small fraction of teachers with limited payoff. In a school of 20 teachers, eliminating one incompetent teacher will help one class of students but does nothing for the other 19 classes. However, making test-based evaluations and dismissals a major policy component drags 19 other teachers into the vortex of legally justified yet burdensome and what are often superficial evaluation schemes.
When compared to schoolwide initiatives aimed at improving the entire staff and unleashing their potential as a coordinated team, the effect sizes of firing a failing teacher on overall student performance are small. Contrary to recent reform rhetoric, even if three to five percent of incompetent teachers were dismissed tomorrow, student gains would be minimal. There are much more productive strategies to improve student performance.
Recently, a media frenzy erupted over a research report that claimed a huge benefit from firing the worst teachers. This report sensationalized the effect of replacing a poor teacher with an average teacher by stating that the lifetime earning benefits of a given class would increase by $266,000. Diane Ravitch has questioned the methodology used in the research report. Even if the research were valid and findings accurate, the boost in earnings is quite trivial. As the report itself states, the figure amounts to about a discounted $7,000 per student per lifetime, or less than $200 per year. Put another way, the reported effect sizes are tiny compared to the payoff from other improvement strategies. Finally, the report admits that correlations are low at 0.5, which means that large numbers of teachers are identified as lacking who aren't, and similar numbers are identified as proficient who are actually struggling.
Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) was a major study sponsored by the Gates Foundation. It found that the measures of teacher effectiveness did predict student performance in mathematics, although, again, effect sizes were small. Significant technical issues were raised about the methodology of this study as well. Critics have asked: Were random assignments fully carried out? Did the teachers of hard-to-educate students participate in sufficient numbers to validate the results? Were all the data reported? Is the report based on the flawed assumption that test scores, principal evaluations, and student surveys predicted the same thing?
However, the most damning objection to using the MET report to support high-stakes testing for personnel decisions comes from the report itself. It cautions against such use, saying the researchers did not determine or even consider if evaluation for high-stakes personnel decisions might well negate their findings. The report makes the conjecture that teaching to the test, narrowing curriculum, gaming the system, and failing to cooperate with other teachers competing for bonuses could very well lower student performance. Finally, and critically, this report does not present any evidence that identifying who is a high- or low-quality teacher resulted in improving instruction.
As demonstrated by the extensive research cited above, there is thin to nonexistent evidence suggesting that a reform strategy focused on firing incompetent teachers produces any significant gains in student achievement. Further, policymakers' misplaced emphasis on the few suspected lowest performers comes with a huge cost. Frequently, all teachers regardless of their demonstrated capabilities are evaluated by expensive, hugely complicated, and time-consuming procedures. These evaluations gravitate toward a checklist mentality of individual items, which trivializes teaching instead of seeing it through a more complex and accurate lens. In addition to the previously mentioned Teacher and Student Evaluation: Moving Beyond the Failure of School Reform (Lavigne and Good, 2014) and The Teacher Wars (Goldstein, 2014), a video produced by WestEd provides an excellent summary of the best research and principles of effective professional evaluation systems.
Can Evaluations by Principals Fix the Problems of Test-Based Accountability?
Relying on principals' classroom observations cannot obviate the deficiencies of using test scores to evaluate teachers. Evaluations of teachers by principals are heavily influenced by the socioeconomic levels of their students. According to Alisha Kirby:
As the components of teacher evaluations remain under debate among policymakers, a new study suggests the results of classroom observation may hinge more on the students' capabilities than the teacher's.
Analysis from the American Institutes for Research and the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education found that students' behavior and prior academic achievement weighs heavily on teacher performance and can skew the results of an evaluation.
"When information about teacher performance does not reflect a teacher's practice, but rather the students to whom the teacher is assigned, such systems are at risk of misidentifying and mislabeling teacher performance," reported Rachel Garrett of the American Institutes for Research and Matthew Steinberg from the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.
Two papers reached the same conclusions. One paper is Leading via Teacher Evaluation: The Case of the Missing Clothes? The other one is Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
Further, most principals are not adequately prepared to conduct accurate teacher evaluations. Many now find themselves spending an inordinate amount of time conducting formal classroom observations with extensive item checklists in hand. They are visiting each classroom several times a year rather than spending the time needed for schoolwide efforts that will improve curriculum and instruction. It is a case of evaluation run amok. Lavigne and Good provide a chilling example of this pathology. Under Tennessee's byzantine and excessive teacher evaluation system, principals must visit each teacher's classroom four to six times a year. In a school of 20 teachers, that means spending between 176 and 260 hours per year on observation, not assistance. Some research even suggests that classroom observations for purposes of evaluation actually reduce performance.
A pilot report from Chicago found small effects when principals used an evaluation strategy that included two observations of reading teachers per year. The results of the evaluations were used for teacher and school improvement, not harsh consequences. A key finding was that extensive training of principals in observation techniques and how to use the evaluations in program improvement made a large difference. Finally, many walkthroughs by principals miss the essence of good teaching and instead concentrate on trivia, according to Peter DeWitt.
A Narrow Focus on Dismissing Teachers Detracts from Effective Improvement Measures
Crucially, such a narrow policy focus on dismissing a few teachers often leads to a failure to address other vital in-school measures, which significantly influence the performance of all teachers and the achievement of students. For example, large numbers of teachers leave inner-city schools each year. Teacher churn and the resulting heavy use of substitutes are a major reason for low student performance. Excellent teachers are leaving the profession due to the stress of teaching in low-income urban schools and dreadful working conditions. This problem overshadows the damage done by a few underperforming teachers.
Several researchers have recommended policies aimed at encouraging the retention of our best teachers. The New Teacher Project (TNTP) published a report in 2013 entitled The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools. The report laments that most districts do not have policies to encourage the highest-performing 20% of teachers to stay, and as a result the districts suffer high attrition rates. Top teachers want collegiality, being part of effective teams, better working conditions, somebody paying attention to them, and career paths that allow them to keep teaching but take on additional responsibility helping other teachers or solving school performance problems and earn more money. Districts that solely concentrate on firing incompetent teachers miss this much larger and more productive target.
It is also important to recognize that the quality of the curriculum and instructional materials is just about as important as teacher quality. For more about the importance of curriculum and educational resources, see the companion article Provide High-Quality Instruction.
In addition, the level of school funding matters. Yes, money does make a difference. Recent reports by moderate and conservative institutions refute reformers' often expressed claim that expenditure levels are not a key component of quality. The reports find that increased funding results in improved student performance, and conversely, cutting school budgets depresses outcomes. Similar results were found in Indiana after the state drastically cut educational support. The companion article Provide Adequate School Funding covers the role of funding in its discussion of district/state support for improving schools.
For a review of the literature that has revealed funding matters, see Does Money Matter in Education? Unfortunately, the "money doesn't matter philosophy" and political antipathy to public education in this country have substantially hampered school funding. Most states are spending below their 2008 expenditures, and some are cutting even more.
Equally important is site and district leadership, particularly as they relate to building systems that connect teaching, curriculum, and instruction; to continuously improving these elements; and to improving the school climate by increasing the degree of engagement of teachers, students, and parents and community. A recent report by Thomas Kane from Harvard found teacher perception of the school being a good place to work improved performance. In math, the amount of professional development and teacher feedback also helped. Principal leadership accounts for about one-quarter of in-school measures of student performance, teacher quality about one-third.
For a perceptive two-part series on how to best train principals to lead and a description of efforts currently under way in four states, see the Marc Tucker's blog posts "Organizations in Which Teachers Can Do Their Best Work," Part 1 and Part 2. For a comprehensive report on principal training, see The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning and the standards for school leadership approved by the National Policy Board for Educational Administration in 2015.
There are other essential components of effective improvement efforts: provision of social support and medical services, ongoing professional development and team building for all teachers, and the use of just-in-time assessment systems and valid data on each student's progress to inform instruction.
Reform measures that emphasize terminating incompetent teachers based on questionable methods not only lower teachers' morale and efficacy, but inevitably lead to conflict with staff who understand the underlying flaws in the strategy. The evidence is clear—conflict between key stakeholders tends to sabotage the cooperative efforts needed to achieve effective reform. As many have said, "You can't fire your way to educational greatness."
Targeting the Lowest-Performing Schools with Closure and Other Drastic Measures Is Usually Ineffective
When it comes to evaluating schools, high-stakes accountability based on tests has been just as ineffective and just as problematic in terms of unintended consequences. Concentrating on five percent of low-testing schools and responding to their performance with drastic measures—closures, mass firings, or conversion to charters—has produced negligible results. Such reform measures do, however, severely impact those schools, their students, and the surrounding communities. This is even more concerning given that many of the affected schools were unfairly misidentified. They were actually progressing equal to or better than the remaining schools in the district. The failure of school turnaround policies has been documented by a number of respected sources. According to the National Education Policy Center's description of a meta-analysis by Tina Trujillo of University of California, Berkeley and Michelle Renée of Brown's Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Trujillo and Renée stated that school turnaround policies are "more likely to cause upheaval than to help." See also pages 96–97 of the previously cited Teacher and Student Evaluation: Moving Beyond the Failure of School Reform, and for an overall study of turnaround strategies, see Emerging State Turnaround Strategies, a report prepared by the Education Commission of the States.
States that used tests to grade schools have found major problems with accuracy, and many have reversed the policy. For a critique of Florida's 15-year failed effort to get school grades right, see "School Scandals Reveal Problem with Grading Schools." For a broader, balanced critique of Florida's reform initiatives, see the Shanker Institute's policy brief. Many have questioned whether the state reform formula and direction were actually the driving force behind the early gains. Instead, they point to the efforts made by excellent local superintendents who stressed the Build-and-Support approach. Florida's gains have since stalled following school-funding cutbacks, massive charter expansion, and stringent accountability measures. There are reports showing that segregation and in-school deficiencies considerably outweigh school-to-school comparisons in predicting achievement gaps.
This research demonstrates that, as of yet, the knowledge base for identifying failing schools is not sufficiently developed to allow for fair assessments. As a result, many local sites are labeled as failures simply because they have large numbers of poor and/or students of color. In addition, there is no clear research-based consensus regarding the best ways to intervene in low-performing schools. For example, recent evaluations of the federal School Improvement Grants program aimed at the lowest-underperforming schools found a slight overall improvement, but one-third of the grantees actually had falling scores. The feds are currently providing a bit more flexibility to applicants under the program, admitting that their previous prescriptions were off base. Moreover, even if reform efforts were fair and successful, focusing on the few schools at the bottom ignores the vast majority of children. As Michael Fullan, one of the most respected leaders of the Build-and-Support approach, has pointed out, policies aimed at improving all schools have far better results. Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd made a similar point in an op-ed about successful low-income districts in London. The districts that flourished pursued a districtwide strategic improvement plan as opposed to targeting the lowest performers, used broad accountability systems that went beyond test scores, and provided support for low-income students.
9/14/2016 Where school turnarounds have been successful they have been embedded in over-all district efforts to improve and have avoided a punishment approach. A new report by the Center for American Progress https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2016/09/13/143922/7-tenets-for-sustainable-school-turnaround/ has found seven important issues for successful school turnarounds:
Grant districts, and ultimately the state, the authority to intervene in failing schools.
Provide significant resources to support planning and restructuring and leverage competitive grants.
Treat the district as the unit of change and hold them accountable for school improvement.
Create transparent tiers of intervention and support combined with ongoing capacity building and sharing best practices.
Promote stakeholder engagement.
Create pipeline programs for developing and supporting effective turnaround school leaders.
Embed evaluation and evidence-based building activities in school implementation
7/30/2016 Audrey Amerain-Beardsley reviewed an excellent piece from twenty years ago by Ed Haertel on the deficiencies of test-based evaluations of teachers. http://vamboozled.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Haertel_1986.pdf She details six major points Haertel makes, all consistent with the article above.
7/30/2016 Another researcher debunks the value of value added measures for teacher evaluation. http://vamboozled.com/vams-are-never-accurate-reliable-and-valid/ Another district eliminated VAMS for teacher evaluation. http://vamboozled.com/no-more-evaas-for-houston-school-board-tie-vote-means-non-renewal/
Reformers Target the Wrong Levers of Improvement
Provide Adequate School Funding
Aspen Institute. (2016, Mar). Evaluation and Support Systems: A Roadmap for Improvement. http://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/teacher-evaluation-support-systems-roadmap-improvement See also Brown, C., Partelow L., & Konoske-Graf, A. (2016, Mar 16). Educator Evaluation: A Case Study of Massachusetts' Approach. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2016/03/16/133038/educator-evaluation/ Humphrey, D., Koppich, J., & Tiffany-Morales, J. (2016, Mar). Replacing Teacher Evaluation Systems with Systems of Professional Growth: Lessons from Three California School Districts and Their Teachers' Unions. https://www.sri.com/work/publications/replacing-teacher-evaluation-systems-systems-professional-growth-lessons-three Taylor Kerchner, C (2016, Mar 21). Five Lessons for Creating Effective Teacher Evaluations. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/on_california/2016/03/five_lessons_for_creating_effective_teacher_evaluation.html
Kahlenberg, R. D. (2015, Summer). Tenure: How Due Process Protects Teachers and Students. American Educator. http://www.aft.org/ae/summer2015/kahlenberg
Goldstein, D. (2014). The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession. New York: Doubleday.
Haertel, E. H. (2013). Reliability and Validity of Inferences About Teachers Based on Student Test Scores. Educational Testing Service. http://www.ets.org/research/policy_research_reports/publications/publication/2013/jquq
Putnam, R. D. (2015). Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. New York: Simon & Schuster. For other works on the same topic, see Morsy, L., & Rothstein, R. (2015, Jun 10). Five Social Disadvantages That Depress Student Performance: Why Schools Alone Can't Close Achievement Gaps. Economic Policy Institute. http://www.epi.org/publication/five-social-disadvantages-that-depress-student-performance-why-schools-alone-cant-close-achievement-gaps/?utm_source=Economic+Policy+Institute&utm_campaign=26b9c8a34e-EPI_News_06_12_156_12_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e7c5826c50-26b9c8a34e-55876685 Berliner, D. C. (2013). Effects of Inequality and Poverty vs. Teachers and Schooling on America's Youth. www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=16889 See also Summers, L. H., & Balls, E. (2015, Jan). Report on the Committee for Inclusive Prosperity. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2015/01/15/104266/report-of-the-commission-on-inclusive-prosperity/
Rich, M., Cox, A., & Bloch, M. (2016, Apr 29). Money, Race, and Success: How Your School District Compares. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares.html?_r=3
Darling-Hammond, L., Wilhoit, G., & Pittenger, L. (2014, Oct 16). Accountability for College and Career Readiness: Developing a New Paradigm. Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/publications/pubs/1257
Glass, Gene. V. (2016, Apr 5). Take All the Credit? You'll Get All the Blame. http://ed2worlds.blogspot.com/2016/04/take-all-credit-youll-get-all-blame.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EducationInTwoWorlds+%28Education+in+Two+Worlds%29
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Amrein-Beardsley, A. (n.d.). All Recommended Articles About VAMS. http://vamboozled.com/recommended-reading/value-added-models/
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Harris, E.A. (2016, May 10). Court Vacates Long Island Teacher's Evaluation Tied to Student Test Scores. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/nyregion/court-vacates-long-island-teachers-evaluation-tied-to-student-test-scores.html
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Amrein-Beardsley, A. (2015, Oct 8). Teacher Evaluation Systems "At Issue" Across U. S. Courts. http://vamboozled.com/teacher-evaluation-systems-at-issue-across-u-s-courts/
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Polikoff, M. S., & Porter, A. C. (2014, May). Instructional Alignment as a Measure of Teaching Quality. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. http://www.aera.net/Newsroom/RecentAERAResearch/InstructionalAlignmentasaMeasureofTeachingQuality/tabid/15510/Default.aspx See also Barshay, J. (2014, May 13). Researchers Give Failing Marks to National Effort to Measure Good Teaching. http://educationbythenumbers.org/content/researchers-say-pennsylvanias-measurement-teacher-effectiveness-doesnt-measure-good-teaching_1238/ and Ravitch, D. (2016, Mar 16). John Thompson: The Utter Failure of Standardized Teacher Evaluation. http://dianeravitch.net/2016/03/16/johnthompson-the-utter-failure/
Johnson, S. M. (2015, Jul 29). Four Unintended Consequences of Using Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers. The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/07/29/four-unintended-consequences-of-using-student-test-scores-to-evaluate-teachers/
Kirby, A. (2015, Aug 27). High-Stakes Teacher Evaluations May Not Help. https://www.cabinetreport.com/human-resources/high-stakes-teacher-evaluations-may-not-help See also Bryant, Jeff (2016, April) We Won't Improve Education by Making Teachers Hate Their Jobs. http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/we-wont-improve-education-by-making-teachers-hate-their-jobs/
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Toch, T. (2016, May). Grading the Graders: A Report on Teacher Evaluation Reform in Public Education. Center on the Future of American Education. https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/f47qnfh63wfxhxqu88pu5r0y0tkbo6bk
Feintzeig, R. (2015, Apr 21). The Trouble with Grading Employees. The Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trouble-with-grading-employees-1429624897 See also Korkki, P. (2015, Jul 11). Why Employee Ranking Can Backfire. The New York Times. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/business/why-employee-ranking-can-backfire.html?_r=1&referrer
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Can Evaluations by Principals Fix the Problems of Test-Based Accountability
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Knudson, J. (2013, Sep). You'll Never Be Better Than Your Teachers: The Garden Grove Approach to Human Capital Development. http://eric.ed.gov/?q=source%3a%22California+Collaborative+on+District+Reform%22&id=ED557950 See also Tucker, M. (2016, Apr). How to Get a First-Rate Teacher in Front of Every Student. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2016/04/how_to_get_a_first-rate_teacher_in_front_of_every_student.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=top_performers
Sawhill, I. V. (2015, Sep 8). Does Money Matter? http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2015/09/08-does-money-matter-education-sawhill See also Jackson, C. K., Johnson, R. C., & Persico, C. (2015, Fall). Boosting Educational Attainment and Adult Earnings. http://educationnext.org/boosting-education-attainment-adult-earnings-schoolspending/
Ravitch, D. (2015, Oct 20). Indiana: Less Money, More Chaos. http://dianeravitch.net/2015/10/20/indiana-less-money-more-chaos/
Baker, B. (2012). Revisiting That Age Old Question: Does Money Matter in Education? http://eric.ed.gov/?q=Does+Money+Matter+in+Education&id=ED528632 See also Baker, B. (2016). Does Money Matter in Education? Second Edition. http://www.shankerinstitute.org/resource/does-money-matter and Spielberg, B. (2015, Oct 20). The Truth About School Funding. http://34justice.com/2015/10/20/the-truth-about-school-funding/
Leachman, M., Albares, N., Masterson, K., & Wallace, M. (2016, Jan 25). Most States Have Cut School Funding, and Some Continue Cutting. http://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/most-states-have-cut-school-funding-and-some-continue-cutting
Kane, T. J., Owens, A. M., Marinell, W. H., Thal, D. R. C., & Staiger, D. O. (2016, Feb). Teaching Higher: Educators' Perspectives on Common Core Implementation. http://cepr.harvard.edu/teaching-higher See also Hull, S. J. (2015, Oct 14). Principals Matter—And They Need the Right Start. http://www.learningfirst.org/principals-matter-and-they-need-right-start?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LFA+%28Public+School+Insights%3A+What+is+WORKING+in+our+Public+Schools%29 and Center for Education Policy Research. (2014–16). Teaching Higher: Educator's Perspectives on Common Core Implementation. http://cepr.harvard.edu/teaching-higher
Tucker, M. (2015, Aug 13). Organizations in Which Teachers Can Do Their Best Work: Part I. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2015/08/organizations_in_which_teachers_can_do_their_best_work_part_i.html
Tucker, M. (2015, Aug 20). Organizations in Which Teachers Can Do Their Best Work: Part II. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2015/08/organizations_in_which_teachers_can_do_their_best_work_part_ii.html
The Wallace Foundation. (2013, Jan). The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning. http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/Pages/The-School-Principal-as-Leader-Guiding-Schools-to-Better-Teaching-and-Learning.aspx
Miller, T. D., & Brown, C. (2015, Mar 31). Dramatic Action, Dramatic Improvement. Center for American Progress. http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-school-turnaround See also Burris, C. (2015, Sep 4). School Closures: A National Look at a Failed Strategy. http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/2015/09/school-closures-a-national-look-at-a-failed-strategy-2/?can_id=012f354d90b87664b362dda6a4b2980d&source=email-school-closures-a-national-look-at-a-failed-strategy&email_referrer=school-closures-a-national-look-at-a-failed-strategy and American Institutes for Research and Mathematica Policy Research. (May 2015). Evaluation Brief: State Capacity to Support School Turnaround. National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20154012/
Trujillo, T., & Renée, M. (2012, Oct 1). Democratic School Turnarounds: Pursuing Equity and Learning from Evidence. National Education Policy Center. http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/democratic-school-turnarounds
Aragon, S., & Workman, E. (2015, Oct). Emerging State Turnaround Strategies. Education Commission of the States. http://www.ecs.org/press-release-emerging-state-turnaround-strategies/ See also Felton, E. (2015, Oct 19). Are Turnaround Districts the Answer for America's Worst Schools? http://hechingerreport.org/are-turnaround-districts-the-answer-for-americas-worst-schools/
Ehrenhalt, A. (2013, Oct). School Scandals Reveal the Problem with Grading Schools. Governing. http://www.governing.com/columns/col-school-scandals-reveal-testing-ignorance.html
Di Carlo, M. (2015, Jun). The Evidence on the "Florida Formula" for Education Reform. Albert Shanker Institute. http://www.shankerinstitute.org/resource/evidence-florida-formula-education-reform
Sparks, S. D. (2015, Oct 6). Studies Probe How Schools Widen Achievement Gaps. Education Week. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/10/07/schools-help-widen-academic-gaps-studies-find.html?r=258221469&cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1-RM
Klein, A. (2014, Sep 15). New Turnaround Options Detailed in Draft SIG Guidance. Education Week. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/09/17/04sig.h34.html
Fullan, M. (2011, Nov 17). Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform. http://education.qld.gov.au/projects/educationviews/news-views/2011/nov/talking-point-fullan-101117.html
This entry was posted in Charter Schools, Common Core, Conventional School Reforms, High--Stakes Testing, Teacher Evaluation, Test-and-Punish and tagged Charter Schools, Common Core, High-Stakes Testing, Merit Pay, School Closure, School Evaluation, Standardized Tests, Teacher Evaluation, Teacher Tenure, Test-Based Accountability, Test-Based Retention on April 26, 2016 by BillHonig.
Under each talking point is a tweet sized comment with a link to the appropriate article either stand-alone or headed by a bullet. If you like the tweet, please retweet it to your followers or networks.
Test-and-Punish Has Not Produced Results but Build-and-Support Has
Conventional reforms such as test-and-punish (e.g., high-stakes, test-based teacher and school evaluations) and privatization through market-driven competition have not produced results. Since 2009, when the harshest "reforms" were implemented, NAEP scores have been flat or down. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2
Since 2009, when the harshest "reforms" were implemented for schools, national scores have been flat or down. http://ow.ly/Z2rN303kxn2
High-stakes, test-based evaluations, privatization, & market-driven competition have not produced higher performance. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
Performance improved substantially in states and districts such as Massachusetts, Long Beach Unified, and Garden Grove. They avoided punitive "reform" measures and instead pursued a build-and-support strategy. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2/
Big gains in states and districts which avoided punitive "reform" measures & instead pursued build-and-support ways. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
The state of Mass. & the districts of Long Beach & Garden Grove exemplify successful build-and-support strategies. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
Newark, NJ, and Union City, NJ, offer a perfect example of the contrast between "build and support" and "test and punish". Newark forcefully pursued a flashy, conventional test and punish and choice reform package. The results were minimal, morale plummeted, segregation increased, and communities were devastated. Union City followed a build-and-support strategy. Results were spectacular and the district is now a leader in the nation of districts which substantially beat the socio-economic odds. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2/
Newark schools adopted test & punish & choice. Miserable results. Union City adopted build & support. Huge success. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
Build-and-support strategies include adequate funding; implementing a broad liberal arts curriculum; placing instructional improvement as the main driver for increasing student performance; engaging teachers, parents, and communities; building school capacity and teamwork to foster continuous improvement of curriculum and instruction; initiating comprehensive human development programs; and shifting district administration and leadership from compliance to support. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2/
Build & support includes adequate funding, making instruction central, & engaging teachers through team building. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
. Build-and-support districts and states primarily use accountability measures to feedback useful information on school improvement efforts and minimize their use for high-stakes personnel and school closure decisions. These districts and states examine test-score data but as only one measure (and one of the weakest) of quality and growth. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2/
Successful districts use accountability to assist improvement efforts & minimize their use in evaluation decisions. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
In the public debate about school improvement, we rarely step back to consider a crucial underlying question: What do we want for our children? There is a tendency among reformers to view job preparation as the primary goal of education, ignoring the vital role schools play in promoting democracy and developing well-rounded individuals. Obviously, career readiness is important, but we should adopt two other central goals in educating young people: to spur their active civic participation and to enable them to lead full lives made rich by learning. All three of these goals are equally valid. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/the-three-goals-of-public-education/
Schools' goals should include civic participation & maximizing student potential in addition to job preparation. http://ow.ly/YWaE303l23g
Test-and-punish strategies and choice, competition, and large-scale charter expansion measures are based on several faulty assumptions: accountability pressure produces results, test scores alone are the best way of measuring school or teacher performance, high-stakes teacher and school evaluation is accurate and improves achievement, turnaround strategies and portfolio districts work, and massive charter school expansion improves overall performance.http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/why-have-conventional-school-reforms-failed/
Test-and-punish strategies & large-scale charter expansion measures are based on several faulty assumptions. http://ow.ly/O99U303kxNk
Conventional reform nostrums such as using Teach for America's raw recruits, using incentive schemes such as merit pay, holding students back based on test scores, and using technology to replace teachers have also been shown to produce little or negative results. See http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/four-nostrums-of-conventional-school-reform/
Using TFA's raw recruits, merit pay, student retention, & hoping technology will replace teachers have been a bust http://ow.ly/38U7303kyav
. Conventional reforms aim at the wrong leverage points, such as external accountability and governance change, when they should use drivers that develop the internal capacity of schools and districts to improve. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/why-have-conventional-school-reforms-failed/
Top-down accountability & governance change are far less effective than building the capacity of schools to improve http://ow.ly/O99U303kxNk
Conventional reforms such as test-and-punish and large-scale charter expansion not only fail to produce improved performance but they cause considerable collateral damage to schools, teachers, students, and communities. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2/
Test-and-punish measures fail to produce results & cause considerable collateral damage to schools and communities. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
A MetLife survey found that in the face of ill-conceived reforms and political and societal censure, the percentage of teachers who were "very satisfied" dropped dramatically from 62% in 2008 to 39% in 2012. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/four-nostrums-of-conventional-school-reform/
Enduring ill-conceived reforms, surveyed teachers who were " very satisfied" fell from 62% in 2008 to 39% in 2012 http://ow.ly/38U7303kyav
Instead of a pursuing broader goals for students—job preparation, civic participation, and reaching individual potential—conventional reforms have narrowed instruction at the expense of deeper learning by focusing only on math and reading scores. High-stakes accountability has encouraged extensive test preparation, gaming the system, and disincentives for teachers to collaborate. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/why-have-conventional-school-reforms-failed/
Conventional reforms narrowed instruction at the expense of deeper learning focusing only on math and reading scores http://ow.ly/O99U303kxNkHigh-stakes accountability encouraged extensive test preparation, gaming & disincentives for teachers to collaborate http://ow.ly/O99U303kxNk
Many schools in the US need to improve—we fare badly in international comparisons, but the conventional reform program is not the right remedy. Successful, world-class educational institutions follow a Build- and-Support approach and eschew high-stakes Test-and-Punish and privatization and market-based competition strategies. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2
World-class educational institutions eschew high-stakes accountability, privatization & market-based strategies. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
Many US schools must improve, but test & punish & market-based reforms aren't the right remedy; build & support is. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
The teacher pay penalty is bigger than ever. In 2015, public school teachers' weekly wages were 17.0 percent lower than those of comparable workers—compared with just 1.8 percent lower in 1994. http://www.epi.org/publication/the-teacher-pay-gap-is-wider-than-ever-teachers-pay-continues-to-fall-further-behind-pay-of-comparable-workers/
Teachers' pay is falling further behind what other professionals earn & stands 17% behind comparable workers now. http://ow.ly/fNx2303l7lN
15. Evaluations of the main conventional reform policies show nonexistent or trivial results and often cause substantial harm to school capacity, teacher morale, and the health of communities. Build-and-Support measures demonstrate results several multiples higher. They improve engagement and morale instead of causing collateral damage. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2
Conventional reform policies show nonexistent or trivial results and often cause substantial harm to schools. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
Build-and-support measures perform several multiples higher than conventional reforms with no collateral damage. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation Based on Test Scores Is a Bad Idea
Making firing the lowest performing teachers based on test scores the center of reform efforts has not worked. That approach also detracts from efforts to raise the performance of all teachers. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
A central plank in the reform agenda is firing the lowest performing teachers using test scores. It hasn't worked. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
Current measures of teacher performance based on student test scores, including value-added measures (VAMs), are unreliable and result in misidentification of teachers. . http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
Measures of teacher performance based on test scores are unreliable & result in misidentification of teachers. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
Relying on multiple classroom visits by principals to correct the deficiencies in test-based teacher evaluation has proven problematical. A more productive use of a principal's time would be in building effective teams and organizing the school as a learning institution. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
Using classroom visits by principals to correct the deficiencies in test-based teacher evaluation has not worked. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
Building effective teams & organizing the school as a learning institution are the best use of a principal's time. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
Teachers only account for about 10% of school performance. To single them out as those primarily responsible for low-performance is unfair. Out-of-school measures such as socio-economic levels and parenting affect student learning much more. In-school measures such as leadership by principal, curriculum, adequacy of resources, and wraparound services are also important determinants of student achievement. These measures often get neglected in the exclusive attention given to teachers. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
Teachers account for 10% of school quality; labeling them as primarily responsible for low-performance is unfair. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
Incompetent teachers should be let go if, and only if, credible and fair methods are used. Personnel changes must be part of a broader push for instructional improvement efforts to raise the performance of all personnel. These efforts will produce much higher effects on student achievement. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
Incompetent teachers should be let go if credible & fair methods are used & embedded in broader efforts to improve. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
Many "reformers" are now shifting from approaches emphasizing "fire the worst teachers" strategies to approaches stressing the improvement of all teachers through team-building, focusing on instruction, providing helpful structures and information for continuous improvement, and enhancing site leadership. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
Many reformers are shifting from emphasizing "fire the worst teachers" to stressing the improvement of all teachers. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
Charter Schools Are Not the Key to Improving Education
Charter schools are not the key to improving education. There are some excellent charters and some terrible ones, but most offer an education no better than their public school counterparts. Too much emphasis on charters detracts from improving non-charter public schools—and in many cases causes harm to the remaining schools and communities. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Charters aren't the key to improving education. Some excel, some lag but most are no better than other schools. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Overemphasizing charter schools detracts from improving the remaining public schools & often causes them harm. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
When charters enroll more than about 20% of a district's students, a tipping point occurs causing substantial harm to the district. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
If about 20% of a district's students enroll in charters, a tipping point occurs causing substantial district harm. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
About 6% of students attend 6,500 charter schools. Many states have drastically cut funds for the other 94% of students attending regular public schools, diverting education dollars to the small number of students attending charters. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
States have severely cut funds to the 94% of students at regular public schools while increasing funds to charters. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Only about one-quarter of charter schools score better than non-charter public schools, one-quarter score worse, and most score the same—even assuming test scores are the best measure of quality. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
About 25% of charter schools score better than non-charter public schools, 25% score worse, & most score the same. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Charter schools should be scoring much higher than regular public schools. They have the built-in advantage of more motivated parents and a more supportive peer group of students associated with more motivated parents. Magnet public schools in Los Angeles, which also benefit from more highly motivated students and parents, significantly outscore charter schools. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Charters should score higher than public schools. They have the advantage of more motivated parents and students. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Many charter schools have artificially raised test scores by being extremely selective in who they admit, by eliminating low-scoring students, and by not back-filling empty slots. It is not unusual for a beginning class of 100 students to fall to 30 students a few grades later. The charter school then unfairly touts the scores of this more rarified group compared to regular school students. Public schools must take all comers and can't refuse to fill a vacancy. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Charters artificially raise scores by selective admissions, eliminating low-scoring students & not back-filling. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Studies have shown that a focus on market-based competition—instead of school improvement—often causes educational harm. Many charters concentrate too heavily on the test scores needed to attract and hold students to the detriment of deeper learning. Many spend inordinate amount of funds on marketing the school and paying their top administrators large salaries. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Market-based competition often harms schools by forcing heavy marketing costs & a focus on raising test scores. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Charter schools have increased segregation and, when coupled with the closing of a neighborhood public school, cause substantial harm to the local community. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Charters have increased segregation & when paired with closing a neighborhood public school harm the community. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Charter schools can drain funds from the remaining public schools. If too many charter schools are opened, it can cause major financial problems for the local public school district. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
If too many charters are opened, it can cause major financial problems for the local public school district. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Most states have weak financial accountability for charter schools causing rampant fraud, embezzlement, and misappropriation of public funds. Most low-performing charter schools are never closed. Charter advocates estimate that over 1,000 low-performing charter schools out of the 6,500 existing charter schools should be closed. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Charter advocates estimate that over 1,000 low-performing charters out of the 6,500 existing charters should close. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Most low-performing charter schools are never closed. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Most states have weak financial accountability for charters causing rampant fraud & misappropriation of public. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Many states have offered charter schools sweetheart deals in which they profit greatly or convert public funds to private use. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Many states have offered charter schools sweetheart deals in which they profit greatly or convert public funds to private use. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Many charter schools have created a harsh, no-excuses educational program with a prison-like atmosphere that harms children. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Many charter schools use a harsh, no-excuses educational program with a prison-like atmosphere that harms children. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Many charter schools concentrate on producing high test scores to the detriment of deeper learning. Charter school students fare poorly when other measures of quality are used and when they get to high school or college. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Many charters so focus on high test scores that deeper learning is neglected & their students fare poorly in college http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
The charter school movement is based in part on an erroneous theory that public schools cannot work because they are monopolies and private institutions can work because of competition and choice. This theory ignores the many public school examples of success. To debunk this private-choice theory, private school scores, when adjusted for the socio-economics, are actually worse than public school scores. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Contrary to conventional wisdom private school scores, are worse than public school scores for comparable students. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Virtual charters have been a disaster—on average students lose about a year's worth of instruction in them. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
For-profit charter schools should be forbidden. For non-profit charters, states should enact financial and performance accountability and transparency comparable to that of public schools. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
For-profit charters should be forbidden–too much chance of diverting public funds and getting off mission. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Non-profit charters should be held to the same financial &performance accountability as public schools. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Vouchers do not improve student performance. They also drain funds from public schools (in part by providing public funds to some families who were previously paying private school tuition and in part by diverting funds from public schools). Finally, vouchers may support religious or other schools that have highly questionable curriculums. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Vouchers have not improved student performance. They also drain funds from public schools. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Vouchers may support schools with highly questionable curriculums. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Charters claim to give parents a choice, but often the one choice not available to parents is to concentrate on improving their existing public school. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Charters claim to give parents a choice, but often no choice is offered to improve their existing public school. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Charters should revert to their original mission—clusters of excellence, which along with the best non-charter public schools should be beacons for all. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
Charters should revert to their original mission—being beacons of excellence along with our best public schools. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
Privatization Forces Have Hijacked the Reform Movement
Anti-public school forces have used harsh reform rhetoric demonizing teachers and schools to justify huge cuts in public education, eliminate teacher protections, and enact punitive reform policies in such states as Louisiana, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/reformers-allowed-their-rhetoric-to-be-hijacked/
Anti-public school forces used harsh reform rhetoric demonizing teachers to justify huge cuts to our schools. http://ow.ly/xojE303cYwp
Some charter-school advocates have successfully convinced governors or mayors to close large numbers of public schools have them converted to charters. This has happened in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia. In New Orleans, just about the whole public school district was eliminated. These closures have not improved educational performance. They have resulted in two-tiered, segregated school systems and devastated local communities. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/reformers-allowed-their-rhetoric-to-be-hijacked/
Reformers have convinced some politicians to close large numbers of public schools and convert them to charters. http://ow.ly/xojE303cYwp
Many conventional reform advocates have shifted from a severe reform agenda. They now promote a more balanced approach concentrating on supporting instructional improvement, team building, adequate funding, charter accountability and transparency, improving site leadership, and progressive personnel policies. Some are now seeking cooperative efforts with Build-and-Support advocates. http://ow.ly/xojE303cYwp
Many conventional reform advocates have shifted from a severe reform agenda to a more build and support approach. http://ow.ly/xojE303cYwp
Components of Build-and-Support
Components of the Build-and-Support approach include a broad based liberal arts curriculum, engaging and active instruction, team building and collaboration around teaching curriculum and instruction, district leadership, and adequate funding. http://ow.ly/dhMd303d0t4
Build-and-support includes engaging liberal arts, school team building, supportive leadership & and adequate funding http://ow.ly/dhMd303d0t4
The Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics hold the promise of improving curriculum and instruction and encouraging deeper learning. The standards are consistent with what our most knowledgeable teachers and researchers have been advocating for years. Similar standards have been produced for Science (NGSS), and History-Social Science. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-an-engaging-broad-based-liberal-arts-curriculum/
Common Core Standards are consistent with what our best teachers and researchers have been advocating for years http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH
Similar standards & frameworks explicating them have been produced for Science (NGSS), and History-Social Science. http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH
California has produced subject-matter frameworks explicating the promising Common Core and other standards. http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH
The secret of successful implementation of the ambitious Common Core is to divorce these educationally sound standards from high-stakes accountability schemes and provide both time and resources for translating the standards into successful classroom and district practices. States such as California have pursued this path. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-an-engaging-broad-based-liberal-arts-curriculum/
The secret of successful implementation of Common Core standards is to divorce them from high-stakes accountability http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH
Also crucial is to provide both time & resources for translating standards into successful classroom practices http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH
California has done both of these. http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH
Implementing these standards and the frameworks based on them could be the needed catalyst for building teams, fostering collaboration, and creating the capacity for continuous improvement at each school. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-an-engaging-broad-based-liberal-arts-curriculum/
Implementing standards could be the catalyst for building teams and the capacity for continuous school improvement. http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH
Standards aren't a curriculum. States and districts need to develop frameworks and scope and sequences to assist in translating standards into a workable curriculum, effective instructional materials, and, successful professional learning. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-an-engaging-broad-based-liberal-arts-curriculum/
Translating standards into effective practice requires a workable curriculum, materials, & professional learning. http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH
Teaching is not a trivial pursuit. According to one formulation by Danielson, high-level instruction is a combination of proficiency in delivering content, using best practices, creating safe and effective learning environments, managing classrooms, engaging students, producing learning by all students, and being able to work with other staff and develop professionally. Good teachers become effective in each of these domains. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-high-quality-instruction/
Teaching is not a trivial pursuit–teachers need to master a range of complex behaviors. http://ow.ly/UinK303dg7R
At a school, building effective teams that continually try to improve staff performance is the most powerful method of increasing student performance. Individual efforts such as self-study are important, but team efforts such as discussing how to ameliorate deficiencies in the school program or encouraging peer classroom visits with debriefings are even more powerful. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/build-teams-and-focus-on-continuous-improvement/
Building effective school teams that continually try to improve is the best method of increasing student performance http://ow.ly/V25c303dgou
Contrary to much "reform" rhetoric, money to pay for build and support efforts makes a difference. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-adequate-school-funding/
Contrary to much "reform" rhetoric, money to pay for build and support efforts makes a difference. http://ow.ly/xkxa303dgWY
Districts play a crucial role in creating the supportive structure for continuous improvement. Improving leadership by principals, creating opportunities for teacher leadership, establishing structures, providing time for collaboration, developing effective systems for gathering useful information, building progressive human resources systems, designing wraparound services with other local agencies, and engaging teachers, administrators, students, parents, and community members in joint improvement efforts. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/lessons-learned-from-successful-districts/
Districts play a crucial role in creating the supportive structure for continuous improvement. http://ow.ly/NpkI303dgNx
Successful districts demonstrate how build and support works. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/lessons-learned-from-successful-districts/
Models of exemplary build and support districts. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/exemplary-models/
California, following Massachusetts's approach, is implementing a build-and-support strategy with increased funding and a strong liberal arts curriculum as envisioned by the Common Core Standards, other applicable standards, and the frameworks explicating them. California is also giving responsibility to local districts, designing accountability to assist improving instruction, enacting multiple measures for accountability, and encouraging engagement and collaboration. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/ca-policymakers-and-educators-shift-from-test-punish-to-build-support/
California, following Mass., is implementing a build-and-support strategy. Find out what they are doing. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/ca-policymakers-and-educators-shift-from-test-punish-to-build-support/
California has differed somewhat from the Common Core Standards. It has combined its English language arts (ELA) standards with its English language development (ELD) standards to accommodate the large number of English language learners. It wants to not only maximize the number of students prepared for four-year colleges but also to increase the number of students in rigorous career-tech pathways—a way to truly implement the "college and career" language in the standards. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/ca-policymakers-and-educators-shift-from-test-punish-to-build-support/CA's ELA/ELD framework combines both sets of standards to accommodate its large number of English language learners http://ow.ly/hGFv303dhqo
Maximize students prepared for 4yr colleges but also assure that the rest qualify for rigorous career-tech pathways http://ow.ly/hGFv303dhqo
This entry was posted in Build-and-Support, Building Better Schools, California Context, Charter Schools, Common Core, Conventional School Reforms, Curriculum and Instruction, High--Stakes Testing, Privatization, School Evaluation, Teacher Evaluation, Test-and-Punish on April 2, 2016 by BillHonig.
BBS Articles Index
The School Improvement Debate
The Three Goals of Public Education
Teacher and School Evaluations Are Based on Students' Test Scores
Reformers Allowed Their Rhetoric to Be Hijacked
Ground Efforts in Unassailable Research
Exemplary Models of Build-and-Support
California Policymakers and Educators Shift from Test-and-Punish
to Build-and-Support
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Rose Marie on The California Context: How the CA Reading Wars Got Resolved: A Personal Story
BillHonig on The California Context: How the CA Reading Wars Got Resolved: A Personal Story
BillHonig on The Big Picture: The Three Goals of Public Education
ida oberman on The Big Picture: The Three Goals of Public Education

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