The following highlights are filtered for the convenience of school leaders.

These are highlights of a draft re-authorization proposal released on October 11, 2011 by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee as reported in Education Week by Alyson Kline.

No AYP - Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP is eliminated.

No Achievement Targets - There would be no specific achievement targets, either for entire groups of students, or for particular subgroups, such as minority students, English-language learners, or students with disabilities.

Continuous Improvement - States would have to ensure that all students are making "continuous improvement" in student outcomes.

Intervention - States would decide how—and whether—to intervene in schools.

Continue the following initiatives: the Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, and Promise Neighborhood programs

Testing remains in place, but eliminate the 2013-14 deadline for bringing all students to proficiency in math and reading.

Teacher Evaluation - States will be required to develop new teacher evaluation systems and teacher and principal evaluation systems based on multiple factors, including student achievement and classroom observations.

"Value-added" no longer a requirement - Evaluations would not need to incorporate "value-added" testing, but states would need to have at least four levels of ratings.

Not in personnel decisions - Schools would have to use the evaluations to inform professional development, but not necessarily to help make personnel decisions. That would be a shift from the administration's waiver package, which specifies that evaluations have to be used for personnel purposes, although the waiver guidance is silent about whether that would specifically entail hiring, firing, and pay bonuses.

Low Performing Schools

Bottom 5% - States also would be required to identify the 5 percent of lowest-performing high schools, as well as elementary and middle schools. The interventions would be similar to the four options spelled out it in the regulations for the School Improvement Grant program. And under the "restart" option, a school could choose to convert to a charter school or become a magnet school.

Dropout Factories Targeted - There would be more intensive interventions for those schools, as well as for so-called "dropout factories"—high schools with graduation rates below 60 percent.

35% of Teachers Replaced - There would be some changes and some additional options. For instance, under the strategy known as "turnaround" schools could keep 65 percent of their teachers on the job (right now, it's 50 percent).

Achievement Gaps - States also would have to identify the 5 percent of schools with the biggest achievement gaps between subgroup students and other students, and develop a plan for addressing the problem. Districts with achievement gap schools that aren't able to close their gaps would lose the ability to get a leg-up in federal funding competitions.

"Whole School Turnaround" option - Schools also would be permitted to employ a "whole school" turnaround. They would have to partner with an organization that has a proven track record of success, as demonstrated by rigorous research, according to a committee aide.

Common Core State Standards

• States will be required to set college- and career-readiness standards, either with other states or alone.
• The adoption of the standards shifts the role of the federal government into "partnership with states."
• The Standards "take away the need or achievement targets because CCSSO has agreed to adopt "performance goals."

Change of Focus

Sen. Harkin said the strength of the bill was that it "focuses on teaching and learning, not testing and sanctioning."

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:35 PM | Permalink

In a recent webinar for the National High School Center, Brockton High School (MA) Principal, Sue Szachowicz, attributed her school’s success to the purposeful and hard work initiated by the staff.  “Making change takes tenacity, not brilliance,” she said.

Szachowicz "discussed her school’s experiences in planning for and implementing school-wide literacy, which has resulted in dramatic academic gains in student achievement for both Reading and Math.

Sue's 10 Keys to Literacy Success (in my words):

1. Literacy is the key to raising academic performance.
2. Improving student literacy skills requires the involvement of the entire school.
3. Focus on building teacher capacity over time.
4. Identify, clarify, amplify, and model good instructional practices during professional development.
5. School wide instructional practices that are both "defined" and "aligned" benefit all students by providing each student with repeated exposure to research-based practices throughout the school day.
6. Data-informed initiatives ensure that the focus remains on student needs instead of adult "wants."
7. Change takes time, years in fact. Look at a school wide literacy initiative as a long-term process by building layer by layer, year after year.
8. Any long-term initiative should grow and evolve over time. A literacy initiative should look different in year five than it did in year two.
9. Changes and modifications to any initiative must be based on the assessed needs of the students.
10. "Schools cannot wait for teacher buy-in. Results are what convince the staff." If leaders approach a school wide literacy initiative as a long-term process, there is no need to wait for total agreement before beginning nor is there a need to force everyone to be at the same level all at once.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:12 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

On August 31 “NBC Nightly News” Brian Williams moved into a commercial break with a tease of his next segment.  “As more and more school districts are moving to a four-day week, parents are asking, ‘What are we supposed to do with our kids on that extra day?’.”  While enduring two minutes of upbeat advertising for medications to lessen the impact of a variety of hideous diseases, I was extremely upset.  “Good grief, the school week is being cut to four days and the number one parental concern is daycare,” I thought to myself.

When the actual story unfolded it quickly became apparent that it would exceed my worst fears.   The actual focus of the piece was a series of comments by educators praising the benefits of the abbreviated school week.  A principal at an Oregon high school explained that due to budget problems the district had moved to four longer days of school in lieu of the traditional five-day week.   He was quick to point out that the students would be in school the same number of hours and not to fear that any taxpayer money was being wasted teachers were required to come to work on Fridays to do planning.  He then began to explain how student performance was improving under the new plan.  “It’s a paradox, less is more, less is more for these kids’ learning.”  The piece continued with several more references to how this seemingly contradictory set of circumstances was a positive for the students in the system.   In another school system preparing to move to the shortened week, an educational leader explained that this change was not about saving money but rather improving education.

A defiance of logic and reason

Perhaps these folks have never heard of the “Hawthorne Effect” where individuals tend to improve their immediate performances as the result of increased attention or change whether it is positive or negative.   Arguing that the addition of another day away from school will result in improved academic performance is ignoring the fundamentals.  Assuming that these high schools are on block scheduling (if not imagine an adolescent taking seven classes every day over a ten-hour period) the four-day week would have the typical student taking a math course on Monday and Wednesday and then setting that curriculum aside until five days later on the next Monday.  Throw in a holiday and there will be nearly a week between classes.  The same problems would exist for any discipline requiring retention of skills such as foreign language or music.

There would be equal problems for after school activities.  Picture trying to whip a marching band into shape after a school day that has lasted from 7:30 in the morning until 5:30 that evening?  Would dinner be served before or after rehearsal?

Research shows that human beings have limited attention spans.  For teenagers those numbers can usually be cut in half.  Going back to that class schedule, how academically effective would an extra 25 minutes be in those 115-minute blocks?  And who would want to be teaching osmosis or how a bill becomes a law in hours nine and ten of that elongated school day?

Finally, the principal in the story announced that attendance at his school had also improved.  That can happen when you reduce the number of days by 20%.

The much bigger question

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the financial circumstances facing states and communities are going to improve in the near future.  More and more difficult budget decisions are going to be required.  If the past is any indication, much of that burden will be placed on education.  Such a course of action is wrong; making arguments that it will make learning better is worse.  The current unemployment numbers reveal the folly of this approach.  The correlation between employment and education is clear.  Individuals without a high school diploma are three times as likely to be jobless than someone with a degree.  The core problem in this country is not a lack of work; it is a lack of appropriately trained workers.

Taking the wrong path

To perfect one’s serve in tennis which approach would be better—practicing one hour a day, seven days a week or just hit the ball for seven hours on Monday and take the next six days off?   The better path is obvious.  Those folks in Oregon and the more than 100 other communities that have moved to a four-day week seem to believe that the truncated school week is a model for improving their schools.  It is not.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:15 AM | Permalink

Technology and diets have one thing in common. Neither works unless you work them, and, when it comes to school technology, for the most part, we educators are more like dabblers than implementers.

In a recent New York Times article, Matt Richtel put it bluntly. "Schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning."

I'm not sure what approach Richtel is talking about. I will be just as blunt. We cannot fairly evaluate something that we have not implemented. We can't say that a diet didn't work if we never tried it. Until every student has his or her own device, we have not fully implemented technology. We are still dabbling around the edges of technology integration.

In fact, we educators are unintentionally doing more harm to the argument for more technology than we are doing any good. Because we are so used to "making do" with less, we are actually doing technology integration a disservice by allowing people like Matt Richtel to believing that we have fully implemented technology in our schools when, in actuality, scarce resources are forcing most schools to tinker around the edges giving lip service to technology integration without the tools needed to make it happen school wide.

Novelty, Nicety, or Necessity?

Twenty years ago, computers where a "novelty" in schools. Teachers would tell students, "We're going to the computer lab tomorrow." A few innovative teachers were willing to take a risk to use computers and technology as a "special" part of the learning experience in their course.

Since then, technology and computers have evolved to "nicety" status. Schools have both fixed and portable computer labs, but, in general, students don't use computers in most classes on a daily basis. Computers are "nice," but not a integral part of the teaching-learning experience. In other words, we can do without them.

I have even gone into schools where students did have their own laptop and I would see signs on the classroom doors "bring your laptops today." I remarked to one administrator that when those signs disappear, you will know that you have moved from "nicety" to "necessity."

In the "necessity" stage, computers are just as essential as paper and pencil used to be. I knew that we had reached the "necessity" stage when our teachers started complaining that the repair desk "was not turning around laptops fast enough, and my students can't participate without their laptop. They are lost without them!"

Learning Is a 24/7 Process

Learning doesn't stop when the students leave the classroom. If the students are denied access to the resources they used in the classroom, how can they be expected to carry on with the learning process? In most schools, students share computers or they have the use of a computer. In all but a handful of schools across country, we simply aren't there yet. Until each student has his or her own device 24/7, we haven't fully implemented technology.

Think about it! What would the classroom be like if we had no paper and not enough pencils or pens to go around? We already know. Students would be writing on pieces of slate with chunks of chalk. Can you imagine a teachers wheeling a cart into a classroom once or twice a week and telling students, "come up and pick up your pencil and paper?"

How extensive would your personal use of technology be if you had to share a computer with two or three other people in your office? My guess is that you would be years behind where you are right now. I know that I would. The fact is that, when it comes to adults, we know that they need their own computing device. Why not our students?

I have believed for a long time that, until each student has his or her own computing device, we have not fully implemented technology and we cannot claim to be serious about integrating technology into instruction. Going from a high school with an excellent computer to student ratio that took years to achieve, my move to a school in which every student had a laptop confirmed for me that my dreams of a paperless classroom and 24/7 learning could be realized.

For example, our district had made a sizeable investment in a well-known content management system (CMS). I was committed to having all our teachers trained and actively using the system. After going to my new school, which had a one-to-one initiative, I realized that my previous efforts were window dressing. Not until I personally witnessed what we could do with a CMS when every student had his or her device, did I realize what a waste of time my efforts were.

All means all, not most!

As long as fixed or portable computer labs are the best that we can do, technology will be a "novelty" or a "nicety." Only when every student has a personal computing device will technology become a necessity. Until then technology integration is only an experiment, and a partial experiment at that.

To Matt Richtel, I say give every student his or her own device and give us three to five years to fully implement tem and to change the culture of the classroom, then evaluate technology in the schools.

Next: Is BYOD the answer?

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:46 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

When No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was first presented in the early years of the Bush Administration it represented a significant shift in educational policy.  End-of-course exams like Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL) were soon to become a measure of a school’s success.  The initial requirement of a 70% pass rate in English and Math appeared challenging but reasonable.  Of course, most educational professionals acknowledged that such a level could only be a starting point.  When the SOL exams became a barrier to graduation, no one would have been satisfied with such a low target.  As the Fairfax County Public Schools (VA) Coordinator of Math told me at a department chair meeting at the time, “We have to be striving for something closer to 100%.” 

In the first few years before NCLB went into effect, most systems struggled to reach the 70% level but each year brought higher scores and by the time this requirement had become mandatory the majority of schools were deemed to be making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).  In slow, realistic increments the benchmarks began to rise.  These initial goals continued to be well within reach.  

The collision of idealism and reality

There is, however, a time bomb planted deep inside the legislation.  The necessary pass rate for AYP reached 89% last year, a point that became difficult to attain for an increasing number of schools especially in the sub-groups of Special Education and some minorities.  But more importantly, there was a lack of common sense at the endpoint of this relentless march upward. 

In 2014 the requirement for AYP will become 100%.  While such a percentage would literally leave no child behind it also empowers certain students to hold an entire building hostage by choosing to fail a test or at least not giving it their best effort.   

Why would a student not give his best on a standardized test?  Because some tests, although the results are included in the school’s data, are not considered barrier tests for the student.   It doesn’t matter what the student makes, but it can be devastating for the school’s statistics and their AYP.

Surprisingly, as 2012 testing comes into focus, there has been plenty of activity but little effort to address this reality.  Instead of facing the obvious—some children are going to be left behind regardless of the effectiveness of a school— band aids are being applied to the program.  In lieu of adjusting impractical expectations, special temporary exemptions are being issued.  Schools are being given additional time to reach an unreachable goal. 

The irony in all of these machinations is that if the majority of schools did attain test results with no failures, it would be likely that the methods of assessment and/or grading would have to be considered suspect.  Virtually every outcome of 100% is a source of concern.  When Saddam Hussein would win an election with 99.1% of the votes everyone knew the results were rigged.  Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon children are all “above average”, a statement which is intended to be satire, not reality.  Expecting a typical school to have a perfect pass rate is equally ridiculous.  The result of such expectations will be to place inordinate pressure on the school staff and test creators to find ways to pass even the most recalcitrant of students.  In such a case the validity of all test scores will be diminished.  In addition, the recent spate of cheating scandals would likely increase in the wake of such outrageous expectations.  Ask a successful teacher what they would think if every student in all of their classes made an “A” on their final exam.  The answer would reflect on the quality of the test and/or whether it had somehow been compromised. 

Listen to the coach

Vince Lombardi wrote, “Always strive for perfection.  Though you will never achieve it, you may pass excellence along the way.”  Apparently, the authors of NCLB did not read the coach’s book.  Everyone wants all students to be successful.  But this is an aspirational goal, not a realistic one.  Any 100% rule can neither be implemented nor enforced.  However, instead of changing the rule to reflect authentic academic success for as many students as possible, there has been a flood of exceptions, exemptions and excuses.  It is time for a more realistic approach.  While it is true that a rising tide will raise all ships, exam grade inflation will not do the same for actual student performance.   A requirement of a 100% pass rate will surely lead to a disastrous scenario.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:17 AM | Permalink

By Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

The key to creating an illusion is to distract the viewer.  Draw the attention away from the sleight of hand and the audience will believe they have seen magic.  Apparently this technique is now a key element when dealing with the analysis of standardized test results.  The plan appears to be to use some new and often outrageous assertion to distract the public and “abracadabra” many of the problems inherent in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and end-of-course standardized testing magically disappear. 

The latest form of deception is an idea being floated by educational leaders in Virginia.  They are considering a proclamation announcing that a “pass advanced” on the state’s Standards of Learning (SOL) exams is an indication of college preparation.  The word “advanced” in most contexts indicates a significant level of accomplishment; in this case, however, it should not be confused with readiness for post high school study. 

It is actually more of a numbers game

At first glance a “pass advanced” might appear to be a significant achievement.  It requires a score of 500 or more on a test scaled to go from 200-600 (400 is required for passing).  But as in other forms of magic, these numbers are an illusion.  Like many other end-of-course exams being used for NCLB, the SOL is a four-option multiple-choice test with no penalties for wrong answers.  Consequently the actual range of scores is not nearly as large.  The laws of probability decree anyone answering 50 such questions would start with 12 or 13 correct responses simply by random guessing.  In 2011 a passing score of 400 on the Algebra 1 exam required 23 correct answers.   As a result of that scale, every student begins with a score of at least 340.  Thus the real possible range is 340-600.  Suddenly a tally of 500 does not seem quite so “advanced”. 

Forty-four correct answers will earn a student a 500.   Even if this were an exam with open-ended questions and penalties for wrong responses, mastery of only 88% of the curriculum is hardly college-level work.   But with a multiple-choice, no penalty format, 44 accurate responses represent much less.  A few quick calculations reveal that if a student can answer 42 questions, probability will produce the missing two from the remaining eight.  Now the mastery level is down to 84%--a “B-“on most grading scales.  Even those numbers are a bit skewed.  If an individual can eliminate one or two potential answers in a question the likelihood of a successful “guess” increases exponentially. 

Adding to these misperceptions is the limited nature of such forms of questions.  They cannot require multiple-step responses or demand a true demonstration of mastery of the most complex or intricate aspects of a subject.  They can only ask questions that have reasonably simple answers.  It quickly becomes clear that based on almost any analysis, a pass “advanced” on these tests is not a predictor of college success. 

To get quality, you need quality

As Mel Riddile discussed in a previous post, tests made on the cheap are susceptible to both cheating and inflated results.   If Virginia and other states want to administer tests that are indicators of future educational success, they will need to move away from the current easy-to-grade and inexpensive formats and invest in exams that will accurately measure a student’s mastery of a class.  Until then, any claim of academic prowess based on the results is nothing more than an illusion and distraction.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 06:41 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

The test scores for the Washington D.C. schools are in and while they are generally disappointing what is more informative is the fact they clearly demonstrate one of the fundamental causes of low academic performance—poverty.

This is not a new or original discovery.  Mel Riddile organized data clearly indicating that the U.S. scores on the most recent PISA tests were far more about socio-economic issues than poor teaching.  But these numbers from the Nation’s Capitol place an exclamation mark on his assertions.

A quick tour of Washington D.C.

I once heard someone say that zip codes are the best predictors of standardized test scores.  Three of the eight wards in the District of Columbia reinforce the validity of that comment.

Ward 3:  has a median household income of $97,690 and less than 4% of families with minor children are below the poverty line.  

Ward 7:  More than one-third (34%) of families with minor children live in poverty, and the median household income is $34,966.

Ward 8:  The poorest of the city’s eight areas where two of every five children (40%) have incomes below poverty level and the median household income is $31,188.

A comparison of scores

The elementary and secondary math pass rates in Ward 3 indicate that students scored more than 40 points higher than those in Ward 7 and 50 more than Ward 8­. Test results in different subject areas parallel those of mathematics.

But there are other areas that demonstrate the imbalance between rich and poor.  Using the city’s own criteria for teaching excellence, the IMPACT evaluation, the vast majority of the higher rated educators gravitate to the wealthier areas.  Only 71 of the top 663 teachers in the system worked at 41 schools located In Ward 7 and Ward 8.  That represents an average of less than two per school.  In the ten Ward 3 schools there were 135 of these educators placing on average more than 13 highly effective teachers per building.

A vicious cycle of failure

These statistics underscore what is already known.  Students at poor schools do not perform as well as those at wealthy ones.  It also emphasizes that in an era of accountability based in large part on these results, a preponderance of the top educators in a district will migrate to the more well-to-do buildings.  School leaders need to recognize this disparity and address it by offering incentives for top level administrators and teachers to work at low-performing schools. These could include both financial rewards and a different and enlightened approach to measuring progress in test results in areas that traditionally do poorly.

Otherwise, the academic story in Washington D.C. will continue to be a microcosm of entire country.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:13 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

In a recent post, Mel Riddile highlighted several of the shortcomings associated with the latest method for determining graduation rates mandated by the U.S. Department of Education.  While the goal of this policy is worthy—standardizing the calculations throughout the nation—the resulting process is flawed, unfair and ultimately inaccurate.  The two key problems are an arbitrary time frame and an unrealistic as well as potentially punitive accounting for transfer students. 

Simple does not equal accurate

The ultimate goal of a graduation rate should be to measure a school’s effectiveness in producing successful students.  One of the reasons why the accuracy of this statistic has been so elusive is that it depends on so many variables.   In attempting to simplify the process, the Department of Education has built a method of measurement that will make for easy computations but misleading results.  What this overhaul ignores is that schools with high rates of poverty, mobility and ELL populations will be evaluated on information that does not truly reflect the academic performance occurring in their building. Dr. Riddile explained the problems with this new system from the perspective of a principal.  Here are three stories to illustrate the view from inside the classroom.

Easy come, easy go

In schools with high mobility the percentage of students who spend their entire academic careers at the same location can be surprisingly small.  My former school had an annual mobility rate of about 30% meaning that approximately one of every three students left during a typical year.  But during that time the size of the student body was extremely stable.   With remarkable consistency virtually every individual who moved to a new district or returned to their home country would be offset by someone coming in the opposite direction.  I once taught an introductory ELL course, Individual Math 1, which began the year with 24 students and finished with the same number.  Only one-half of those students were enrolled for the entire course.  This level of movement is not a reflection of the quality of education being provided; rather, it reveals the nature of the student body.  Consequently, under the new Department of Education guidelines while the actual instruction in that classroom may have been excellent, the dropout rate of these ninth-graders bordered on 50%.   Clearly labeling unverified transfer students as dropouts places an unfair burden on such schools.   The alternative, precise tracking of all of these individuals as mandated by this plan, would be far too costly in terms of time and energy. 

A tale of two graduates

Maria was in my Algebra 1 class.  She was smart, hardworking, reliable and the mother of a one-year old son.  Her boyfriend (soon to be her husband) and the baby lived with her family while she completed high school.  During her freshman year she made a detour to give birth but when she returned the next year there was no request for special treatment.  She passed my class and all of her other classes.   After five years at the school marched across the stage at graduation.  When I last heard from her she was an assistant manager at a bank.  While the data may label her as a drop-out, I can promise you she was not.

Michelle, my second example, was a quiet and petite member of my Pre-calculus class.   A refugee from Viet Nam she did not look like a 22-year-old.   But the path to her senior year of high school was very different than most.  What should have been her middle school years were spent either on a boat or in a prisoner of war camp.  When she finally arrived in this country she had the life experiences of an adult and the education of a child.  As a 17-year-old “freshman” she had to overcome language and emotional difficulties few others could even imagine.  Despite these immense challenges she succeeded in a college preparatory curriculum to earn a diploma as she approached her 23^rd birthday.  Though her story was far from traditional it deserved positive recognition by any legitimate measure.

Numbers cannot measure everything

As a mathematician, I would love to be able to state that every human endeavor can be measured quantitatively.  Unfortunately such precision is not always possible.  Even baseball, the most data driven sport on the planet, cannot evaluate simply on numbers. Every pitch, every swing of the bat, every spit is recorded, calculated and documented.  But despite this wealth of statistical data there are players in baseball who need to be seen to be appreciated.  There are no precise metrics to measure breaking up a double play, diving to catch balls, sprinting on every play or simply being unselfish. 

Formulating a simple yet accurate device for determining high school graduation rates is equally difficult.  What many of the educational policy makers may not understand is that the diversity of a student body is not just about ethnicity, religion or socioeconomic status.  It also includes both the time required to graduate and the stability of their residency.  This most recent attempt by the Department Education is clearly not the answer. 

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:25 AM | Permalink

Master teacher, Sherry Singer, taught Advanced Placement Biology for approximately fourteen years and then switched to International Baccalaureate (IB) Biology for another fourteen years. Sherry taught for much of her career in what National Geographic Magazine called "the most diverse high school in America." When I need an expert teacher's opinion, Sherry is one of my "go to" people. 

I was looking for a veteran teacher's take on the recent cheating scandals. So, I asked Sherry, "You have probably read about the cheating scandals in DC, Atlanta and elsewhere.
Were you concerned about cheating on IB Exams?  Here is why I am asking. It seems to me that cheating is more of a problem on inexpensive, easy-to-score, multiple-choice tests than it is on a well-constructed assessment that require students to write and explain their answers.

In her own words, here is Sherry's take on cheating and quality assessment:

"You are correct.  I was never worried about cheating in my IB classes.  My classroom tests were always at least 50% essay or data analysis.  These types of assessments are almost impossible to cheat on. 

The IB has clearly thought out ways of discouraging cheating on their end-of-course exams.  Dave, our IB Coordinator, would always recruit IB teachers to be invigilators during the exams.  But we could never invigilate exams in our own subjects.  So I could not have helped students with answers even if I wanted to!  Back packs, cell phones, etc. were left outside the testing area.  No one was allowed to talk after entering the testing area.  One of my favorite IB exam stories was one of my students became sick during the exam and actually threw up in the testing area.  One of the invigilators took him to the restroom got him cleaned up and he came back to the exam, finished the exam and received a score of 6 out of a possible 7.  IB makes students tough! (He is a cardiologist today.)"

The Bottom Line

If students can copy and text answers to each other, and, if teachers can erase incorrect responses, we should admit that these inexpensive tests with poorly constructed questions tell us very little about what students know and what they are able to do. Why are we wasting so much money going through the motions? Why not spend the money on quality assessments that are much better indicators of learning? Instead, we end up spending valuable education dollars on test security and on investigating and firing cheaters at the same time we are laying off teachers and increasing class sizes.

We know how to construct high-quality assessments that, in Sherry's words "are almost impossible to cheat on." How can state and district officials look at themselves in the mirror and rationalize and justify firing teachers and principals and closing schools on the basis of the cheapest assessments money can buy? Bad karma?

A while back, I was having a conversation with a member of our school community lamenting the fact that no one every bothered to check to see if the school programs in place were actually working for our neediest students. She looked at me quizzically and replied, "Mel, you don't get it. This is the South. Here it's about appearances. It's not about if something works. It's about saying that we are doing something."

Activity Does Not Equal Success

I interpreted her statement to mean that "activity equals success." Fortunately or unfortunately that type of thinking is not confined to the southern part of the country. Truth be told, the "all show, no go" approach to education has been going on for too long in too many places.

For example, according to a report, some California middle schools have close to one hundred percent of their 8th graders taking Algebra. You may recall that the previous Governor of California thought it would be a good idea to mandate that all 8th graders be enrolled in Algebra 1 or at least a course that was labeled Algebra 1. It didn't matter if the 8th graders were prepared or ready for Algebra1. "More and more eighth-graders in California are taking algebra I or higher, regardless of whether they are ready for it." The residents of California could now sleep soundly knowing that no 8th grader was being denied the opportunity to enroll in Algebra.

The report compares affluent Manhattan Beach with an 8th grade Algebra enrollment of 44% to much less affluent Lennox with a participation rate of 94% and an embarrassingly low proficiency rate of 27%. The 44% participation rate doesn't concern John Jackson, principal of Manhattan Beach Middle School. "Our job is to get them ready for high school, and that's what we do really well," he said. Bingo! Principal Jackson's mission is to help students learn so that they will succeed in high school not to fill seats with underprepared students. What a novel idea!

According to researcher Tom Loveless, "the comparison of Manhattan Beach and Lennox mirrors an odd trend that is happening statewide. While the overall rate of eighth-graders taking algebra is skyrocketing, the change is most dramatic among low-income school districts serving disadvantaged minorities."

"According to Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, and a critic of California's algebra rush, "If you're a student from a disadvantaged background - and are African-American or Hispanic - you are more likely to be placed in an algebra class in eighth grade than if you are a white suburban kid in an affluent district. The schools in the suburbs still have standards for entrants."

Loveless' research uncovered some other interesting findings:

- In the bottom 10th percentile of U.S. eighth-graders in mathematics about a third of the low scorers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress were enrolled in algebra I or higher.

- "A large percentage (of algebra I completers) is functioning at the second- to third-grade level. For instance, they don't know fractions."

- A third of students who performed poorly in regular seventh-grade math were nonetheless placed into algebra I in eighth grade, "with almost no chance for success."

- The study concluded that while taking algebra in eighth grade serves the most prepared students well, it also has set many students up to fail.

I am a big proponent of students taking Algebra in the 8th grade. I spent two years in my last school district campaigning for a doubling of the number of 8th graders taking Algebra. To accomplish this, I proposed that our district align the math curriculum K-7 so that by design all students would be prepared to succeed with a grade of C or higher, in Algebra I in grade 8. At the time, we had only 20% of our 8th graders taking Algebra, which was one-half the average participation rate of the surrounding school systems--40%.  While I knew that an aligned curriculum would include all students in our efforts to prepare them for Algebra, I knew that not all would, in fact, be ready. However, I believed that we had a moral and ethical responsibility to give all students the same chance at readiness. Previously, only students in the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program were enrolled in a curriculum designed to prepare them for Algebra 1 in grade 8.

Now, it is a long way from 40% to 100% even in one of the most affluent regions of the country. I knew that successful, and I emphasize successful, completion of Algebra in grade 8 is one of the best indicators of college success and graduation. Notice that I didn't say college admission. I said college graduation.

In addition, I know that students who take at least one math course beyond Algebra II score significantly higher on college admission tests, and, therefore, have a better chance of gaining admission to the more competitive colleges and universities.

I have high expectations for all students. I want all students to be college and workplace-ready upon graduation from high school. I am for increased rigor. I strongly favor a standards-based, mastery learning approach. However, I am not for filling seats so that I can brag about how many students are enrolled in a specific course.

Throw them in the water and see if they can swim

The approach now being taken with 8th graders and Algebra I is the same approach that many high schools took and are taking to increasing enrollment in Advanced Placement courses. Don't undertake the years of hard work it takes to build math and literacy skills so as to prepare students to succeed in these courses. Just assign students to the courses and brag about your participation rate. If and when you are questioned about low passing rates, blame the teachers. This convoluted thinking has resulted in a disastrously low national pass rate on AP exams of 15.9% as well as many frustrated and demoralized teachers.

Access without excellence is malpractice!

To me it matters that these students succeed in these courses because I believe in them. They have the ability. It is our job to teach them. When they fail, it undermines their confidence. Also, within a few short months, these students will be enrolled in college courses that are moving at twice the speed of a high school AP course. If they can't handle half speed courses, how will they handle full speed?

The Bottom Line

School leaders should seek to increase enrollment in Algebra I and all higher-level courses. However, let's do it the right way by building the pipeline. The development of literacy and math skills is a PreK-12 issue. That means that we need to have high expectations and the will to do the hard work of building literacy and math skills from day one. Simply placing students in courses regardless of their readiness level is akin to malpractice. No longer is it our job to sort students. It is our responsibility to raise them up to higher levels. Whatever it takes!

Posted by Mel Riddile at 12:21 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Teaching is a tough, time consuming job.  I knew a high school English teacher who would periodically have to take a day of sick leave for the purpose of grading an overwhelming amount of student work.  With a pair of grocery bags crammed full of essays in hand, he would leave the building provisioned to spend the next day at home pouring over a huge pile of papers for hours.  This ritual would occur at least four times a year.

For most teachers at my former school, the concept of “contract” time was laughable.  Technically the workday began at 7:15 a.m. and ended at 2:45 p.m.  However, the faculty parking lot was always half full by 6:15 a.m. and anyone arriving after 7:00 was hard pressed to find a spot. Even when I left school as late as 5:00 p.m., dozens of cars were still there.  Suffice it to say, a high-school teaching schedule is a full-time job.  Anything that reduces the amount of time available to undertake that task robs individuals of the ability to perform at their maximum level.

With those factors in mind, Mel Riddile has raised a concern about the persistent practice of assigning teachers extra-duties.  He quotes the superintendent of a large school system who is trying to intervene on behalf of teachers who are being overwhelmed with an escalating series of tasks that detract from their primary job of educating.  This is a legitimate concern that continues to have a negative impact on the academic success of schools.

It is not a new problem

This unfortunate tug-of-war between administrators and teachers has been a perennial problem.  It has been the root cause of much of the tension that exists among the two groups.  From the teacher’s perspective there is a sense that the administrative team does not trust them to use non-class time appropriately.  In addition, many of the tasks assigned are viewed as not being part of their job description.  Finally, in this era of high accountability, most teachers feel there is not enough time to both teach effectively and perform other non-educational chores. 

One example of this conflict occurred when my former district expanded the school day from six to seven periods.   The additional class would afford students an opportunity to take four additional classes during their high school careers.  Though the school day was to be lengthened by about thirty minutes, the vast majority of teachers were comfortable with the longer work day.  They assumed they would continue to teach five classes, work with the same number of students for virtually the same amount of time.  The additional period would give the master schedule more flexibility and could offer an increased number of interesting and unique courses.  The expanded school day would be offset by a second planning period which would allow more opportunities for collaborative planning, preparation and grading. 

Unfortunately, the policy makers saw the new schedule differently.  In a move that clearly indicated that they felt teachers could not be trusted with this new “additional” time the “Individual Professional Responsibility” (IPR) was born.   The IPR was a requirement that teachers spend one of those “off” periods engaged in tasks assigned by the local administrative team.  These responsibilities included cafeteria duty, working in the attendance office and returning used library books to their proper place on the shelves.  For several years every teacher in the building would not only be required to perform such mundane tasks, they had to log in their time and give written explanations of precisely how they had spent their IPR time.  To the teachers the entire process conveyed a message that if unsupervised they would simply use non-class time to drink coffee and read the newspaper in lieu of academic pursuits.  Mercifully, thanks to the hard work of some enlightened principals this practice died out over time, although I am not sure it was ever officially terminated.  But the misguided perception that expanding a teacher’s job description has no impact on their classroom work still exists.

Replacing one bad idea with another

 While the IPR faded, there were plenty of other items to take up extra time.  Initiatives were being introduced that would reduce a teacher’s ability to focus on their students.  District programs to monitor student progress (e-Carte and Abacus) were mandated activities - even though they were inferior to the assessment tools already in use at the school.  The staff had a difficult choice.  They could either stop using approaches that had been proven effective or perform the same analysis twice to meet district requirements.  And, of course, all such programs came with lengthy training.  Poorly conceived staff development and unnecessary faculty meetings added to the problem.   What was most frustrating for the teachers was the total disconnect from the inordinate amount of time already being spent on important non-classroom activities such as parent conferences, faculty and department meetings, after school extra-curricular activities, evaluation discussions, recertification requirements, reviewing textbooks, etc.  There was scant recognition that there were already plenty of “extra” duties to fill in any excess time.

The next big thing

The most ominous current demand on teachers concerns remediation of students who are performing poorly on standardized tests.  Ironically, the same superintendent who wanted to ease the pressure on teachers has also requested that his state’s barrier exams be administered earlier in the year with the burden of remediating those who fail to be left to the teachers in an unspecified and unfunded manner.  It is a plan that sounds suspiciously like more extra duty.

It is time to reassess the components of a typical teacher workday.  From the view of both the teacher and administrative staffs the focus must be on finding ways to best utilize the time of every staff member to better serve the academic performance of the student body.  Finding ways to keep staff members occupied with duties that do not move toward that goal is unacceptable.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:58 PM | Permalink

I could have sworn that goalie Tim Thomas was talking about the evaluation of principals when he met with the press following the Boston Bruins victory in the Stanley Cup Finals. Thomas, whose meteoric rise from minor league obscurity to Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the National Hockey League Finals, had a reaction that reminded me of how I felt when I received an "all exemplary" evaluation a few years ago.

When the press asked Thomas how it felt to be the MVP, he matter-of-factly responded that 'if I get off to a bad start next year, the MVP may buy me some extra time, but I know that if I don't produce, I will be gone.'

I felt no joy from my A+ evaluation. Most high school principals have learned over time that when something good happens, something bad will come along to bring you back down to earth. When our school was honored with a Presidential Visit, to the surprise of my staff, I decided to hold the regularly scheduled Faculty Advisory Committee meeting that same day. When asked why, I responded, "They will make certain that I am brought back to earth."

Why no happiness from a stellar evaluation? First, I felt more of a sense of relief than joy. I had taken a big career risk going to work in a high-poverty school just as our State (Virginia) decided to become a high-stakes accountability state, and I had paid a heavy personal price for it. I didn't have a good night's sleep for over five years.

Nevertheless, nothing could have been more rewarding than working with an outstanding group of teacher leaders, all of whom had years of service in that school, to turn the school from the ranks of the condemned to that of the commended. Second, the opinion of the people in our school was more important to me than the evaluation mainly because the evaluator had no idea what I actually did. Finally, and most importantly, like Tim Thomas, I knew that the evaluation wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. I knew that I served at the pleasure of the Superintendent and the School Board and that I could be removed and replaced on a whim. Something could go wrong the next day, and, if it was expedient to do so, I would be unceremoniously thrown under the proverbial bus without hesitation.

My attitude toward the current discussions about better ways to evaluate principals is simple. Bring it on, because it doesn't matter. As one of my first principals told me, "you can delegate responsibility, but you can never delegate accountability." The principal is solely accountable for everything that goes wrong in a school, and believe me, there is a lot that can go wrong in a school.

Being a principal is similar to being a coach in a professional sport. When things go wrong, it is the coach's fault. When things go well, it was because the team had good players. In school, when things go wrong, it is the principal's fault. When things go right, it's because the school has great teachers.

The Bottom Line

The principal must answer for everything that happens in a school. The evaluation methodology will not change the culture, which is set up to squeeze those in the middle--the school principal. True, over time, principals can earn some extra credit that may buy a little extra time, but a principal can and will be removed at a moment's notice irrespective of their most recent evaluation.

Instead of focusing on evaluating principals, the emphasis should be first on building the capacity of current principals to do their jobs and secondly on reducing principal turnover.  However, building capacity and reducing turnover will require more effort than I believe the so-called experts are willing to exert or fund.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:03 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

The Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) exams, which are representative of many of the end-of-course assessments utilized as barriers to graduation throughout the country, have plenty of room for improvement.  In previous posts I have made a number of specific suggestions for upgrading the SOLs.  That said,  I must admit that a new “improvement” advanced recently  in the “Washington Post” by some of Virginia’s educational leaders rendered me virtually speechless.

“Several prominent Virginia superintendents are pushing the state to give (SOL) standardized tests months earlier in the school year, a shift they say would reduce the impact of testing on classes and free teachers to offer more meaningful lessons.

“A change in the testing calendar would allow more time to teach ‘key 21st century skills that are linked to college and career readiness,’ the superintendents wrote to state Superintendent of Public Instruction, Patricia I. Wright, in April.”

The new plan would allow those students who fail the exams in the first semester to retest one or two times later in the year.

Not nearly as simple as it looks

There is no question that for many students end-of-course exams are outrageously easy.  Over an eight year period in the honors Algebra 2 classes at my former school, no student ever failed the corresponding SOL.  And certainly a portion of our students, based on our internal assessments, could indeed pass the exams by the end of the first semester.  However, at least in terms of the math curriculum, the people making these proposals are not accepting certain realities.

A close inspection of the May, 2011 test scores for my former school is enlightening.  During that session 28% of the Geometry students in the building did not pass the SOL.  One fifth of the Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 also failed.  What would those numbers have been if the test had been given four months earlier? 

An episode that occurred several years ago may help answer that question.  The district leadership was in turmoil because the scores on the Algebra 1 SOL the previous year had dropped dramatically at nearly every school.  At a department chair meeting the concern of the math coordinator was palpable. We were tasked with going back to our schools and trying to find the root cause of the across the board decline.  I asked my lead Algebra 1 teacher why it had happened and she instantly replied with a single word—“snow”.  We had lost two weeks to inclement weather that year and that translated into two fewer weeks of review.  Those ten school days were sufficient to have a negative impact on the students' performance.  This new plan would be the equivalent of three months of snow.

Another factor that cannot be measured precisely by statistics is the damage done to the fragile confidence of the most at-risk students when they fail a test that they are woefully under-prepared to take.   How many students who fail the exam in January, but could have passed in May, will be too discouraged to continue? Conversely, what is the motivation for students who have passed the exam in January, to continue the course with the same intensity as they exhibited prior to the exam?

Pros, cons, and something in-between

The Virginia superintendents are very clear about why this change would help successful students.  One of them explained, “Our students are bored because they’re not doing the hands-on kind of learning that they’re great at.”  Unfortunately, they are a bit vague when it comes to their plans for the students who do not pass the test.  According to the “Post”:

“Testing Virginia students in the first half of the school year would also allow time for teachers to tailor remediation efforts to those who do not pass the exams the first time.”

No details were forthcoming about what this “remediation” effort would look like.  It was not designated as after school, during school, a weekend activity or within the daily class schedule.  What was clear was that regardless of the format, the teachers will be responsible for the implementation.  If the ultimate goal is to create a better academic environment for students, placing ambiguous and unfunded responsibilities on teachers is misguided.  Any remediation plan that puts all of the pressure on teachers without providing any clear program for the additional time necessary for execution is destined to fail. 

Making this into a good idea

The apparent goal of this proposal is to diminish the importance of the end-of-course exams by administering them in January.   While this may indeed have validity for many, if not most students, there are other students who, given less time to prepare for the exams, will become unacceptable collateral damage.   

Ironically early testing could be an excellent approach if it were properly utilized.  One possibility is to test the students in January and establish who has passed the tests and who has not.  Then move those students into two different groups.  Those who have succeeded can move forward and enjoy the “21st Century Education” so desired by the various school leaders.  The ones who do not pass would be placed into special courses that would focus on the subject matter needed for success.  While some may negatively categorize this idea as tracking and draconian, the truth is that these tests are barrier exams for graduation.  It is not hyperbole to state that failing these exams could possibly have negative life-long consequences for some students.   Developing classes specifically to ensure that students pass exams that are required for graduation is the best course of action for all involved.  Clearly, moving all tests to the first semester without adequate planning for all students is not.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:09 AM | Permalink

Is the title of this Washington Post article a rhetorical question? Of course students will blackmail teachers and schools. I know they will because they already are holding teachers and schools hostage all over the country and the so-called experts don't have a clue.

Why? Because, while many states are perfectly willing to close schools, fire teachers, and fire principals, they are not willing to hold students accountable for the results of their state assessments. They are not willing to take the political risk of making state assessments barriers to graduation. They lack the moral courage to stick with their stated values about the need for a quality education for all, because they don't truly believe in their own students. They fear that many students are not capable of achieving at higher levels. Legislators are running from the inevitable political fallout that will result from what they fear will be dramatically declining graduation rates.

Fear not all ye faint of heart! One state, Virginia, stuck to its promise and required all students to pass six of eleven end-of-course exams, which were used to calculate adequate yearly progress. Despite the most rigorous standards and assessment system in the country, graduation rates and proficiency rates continue to improve.

It is common knowledge to anyone who has worked in a high school in the last decade that students routinely "flag" or "Christmas-Tree" tests. Teachers and principals in many states have based their careers and the fate of their schools on the hoped for, good will of their students. Unfortunately, even if 90% of the students put forth 100% effort, which is unlikely, the remaining 10% will undermine even the best efforts of teachers and school leaders to raise test scores.

One principal in another state lamented to me that, despite having one of the best college admission rates in his entire state, his school is now on the "needs improvement" list because his seniors thought it would be funny to draw Mickey Mouse on the answer sheets on last year's assessments. The joke was on the school.

From another perspective, many of these students have been repeatedly tested since the third grade and they have reached the breaking point. They are sick and tired of spending long hours taking tests from which they never receive feedback. By high school, they have figured out that these tests have no direct effect on them. Colleges will never see the results and their grades will never suffer. Consequently, if they don't "feel" like taking the test seriously on a given day, they don't. So what? Well, the principal gets fired and the teachers are transferred that's "so what." Meanwhile, those seniors are away at college having a good laugh at the expense of their alma mater back home.

The Bottom Line

Unless everyone in a system including state officials from the governor on down, district offices, schools, principals, teachers, and students are held accountable and hold themselves personally accountable, there is no system of accountability. What we have in many states is not a system of accountability but rather an excuse to scapegoat convenient targets of opportunity--principals, teachers, and "failing schools."

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:04 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

It would seem logical that a local community college would be an excellent source to evaluate the quality of the education high school students were receiving.  Kristen Amundson, a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates and current communications manager for Education Sector, relayed some chilling data concerning the shortcomings of Virginia schools in a recent article in the Washington Post.  According to Ms. Amundson:

“At NVCC (Northern Virginia Community College) 2,913 of the 4,719 freshmen (62 percent) require remediation in one or more subjects. In other Virginia community colleges, as many as 80 percent of students arrive on campus needing at least one remedial class.”

Over the years Northern Virginia Community College has received national respect for the success of its students.  As a part of the Virginia Consortium students who earn grades of “A” or “B” in courses at the school can transfer those credits to any four-year state university.  Many talented individuals use two years at NVCC as a low-cost alternative for the first half of their college degree which they can complete at prestigious schools such as the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech. 

A disturbing imbalance

The fall schedule for NVCC reveals a major problem.  At the Alexandria campus there are 32 sections of Math I.  This is a non-college credit class that is designed as a remedial course that covers topics that should have been learned in high school.  Meanwhile Math 151, the freshman entry-level math course requiring a prerequisite of Algebra 2 and Geometry has a total of 11 sections.

The big lie

The state of Virginia thinks so highly of its Standards of Learning (SOL) end of course exams that the governor opted out of the Department of Education “Raise to the Top” competition because he believed the state’s standards far exceeded those of the federal government.  When one looks at the graduation requirements for the state, that contention seems valid.  To earn a diploma in the state students must pass three math courses at or above the level of Algebra 1.  In addition, they must pass at least one math SOL and in most cases two in order to “verify” those credits. 

On paper these requirements would appear to preclude any of the problems being encountered by NVCC.  The prerequisites for Math 151 are basically identical to those of a Virginia diploma.  And yet to meet the needs of the incoming freshmen, almost all of whom are products of Virginia high schools, there are three times as many remedial math courses as college-level.  The answer may be in how the state defines “mastery”. 

In May, 2011 in order to “pass” the Algebra 1 SOL exam a student must correctly answer 23 of 50 multiple-choice questions.  While on the surface that requirement might seem low (it equals to a 46% score) the reality is much worse.  On average random guessing on four-option multiple-choice questions will result in correct answers one-fourth of the time. Thus, a student can earn a passing grade by knowing the correct answer for 15 of the 50 questions (30%) and then by guessing on the remaining 35 questions net 8 or 9 more which will then total at least the required 23.  Though this level of knowledge could hardly be considered “mastery”, it does receive the label “passing”.  Even more disturbing is the fact that a few years ago that required pass number had been 26.   Is it really that surprising that a student with these credentials is struggling as a college freshman?

It is time to demand more

Sadly, the Governor is correct.  The state of Virginia does have comparatively high standards.  The problem is they are clearly not nearly high enough.  Instead students are receiving a potentially dangerous mixed message. They are pushed to go faster by taking Algebra 1 in middle school and abolishing all non-honors courses.  When too many begin to falter the requirements for defining “success” are lowered. The result is a transcript full of wonderful sounding classes and a plethora of graduates with woefully inadequate academic skills. 

It is time to stop looking for semantic shortcuts and begin the difficult process of demanding more.  The mere act of placing wallpaper over the cracks in our academic walls is not enough. 

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:25 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Evaluations that have value

Academic success has been directly linked to the quality of a school’s teaching and administrative staffs.  Ideas are constantly being presented for improving educational personnel.  But singular approaches such as merit pay, improved evaluations, and easier termination policies will not individually accomplish that goal.  What is needed is a multi-faceted program that will address all of the shortcomings in the current system. Previously, eight fundamental areas were presented that need to be addressed in order for districts to be able to hire, improve and retain the most talented educators.    

This is the fourth in a series of articles that will detail the steps needed to implement those improvements.  In earlier posts hiring practices and effective interviewing techniques have been discussed. Part 4 will focus on the evaluation process.

Changing more than the format

Nearly every proposal for improving teacher evaluation revolves around the use of data particularly standardized tests.  While that is an important item for consideration, the most pressing reform may well involve redefining who is best qualified to actually perform those evaluations.  The first step in true evaluation reform should be to create a new set of individuals who are responsible for this portion of the process. 

Not the best choice for the job

In most school districts the primary responsibility for this process falls to the local administrative team and there are many assistant principals who are well equipped to review the work of a staff member.  But even though the vast majority undertake this time-consuming task with a high level of commitment, they have an overwhelming array of day-to-day responsibilities. For example, the AP who evaluated the math teachers at my former school was tasked with the discipline of more than three hundred freshmen, administering (and evaluating) three different departments, implementing the testing plan for state barrier exams, hall duty between change of classes, supervising several extra-curricular and athletic events and interviewing candidates for vacancies.  In addition there were the almost daily emergencies that always arise in a high school.  A majority of administrators have similar job descriptions.  It is not surprising to find the time to evaluate teachers falling toward the bottom of this lengthy “to-do” list. 

Creating professional evaluators

A better option for school districts is to train a group of master teachers to become full-time, system-wide professional evaluators.  Such individuals would be significantly better equipped to accurately assess the skill of an instructor than administrators who in all likelihood were not hired primarily for their evaluation skills.  The money required for forming such a cadre could be offset by a reduction in administrative staff and an improved evaluation process.

An even more important argument for this innovation revolves around fairness and consistency.  School-based evaluators cannot help but be somewhat biased by their daily interaction with the staff.  Within a building there is an intuitive sense of which individuals perform well and which perform poorly in the classroom.  These reputations are rarely based on quantitative data; they are the result of comments by students, parents, faculty and other subjective experiences.  Minimally these unsubstantiated ideas can influence the amount of effort spent on an evaluation.  If pressed for time, an argument could be made to shorten the observation of a teacher who is widely “recognized” as being outstanding.  Conversely, negative sentiments from the school community can result in closer scrutiny of less well respected educators.  In either case a measure of fairness is compromised. 

A team of district-based evaluators would eliminate this problem and would also create consistency throughout the system.  The evaluations at school A could be compared with confidence to those at school B.  A number of issues ranging from merit pay, transfers and the termination of contracts could be resolved more reliably.      

What would the process contain?

Here is one hypothetical fix for the ineffective and unproductive teacher evaluations that are sadly typical.  Three professionals would form a teacher’s evaluation team.  One (generalist) would be a highly trained observer who is thoroughly versed in the fundamentals of good teaching.  Another (curriculum specialist) would have similar training but would have taught in the subject field being observed.  The third would be an assistant principal at the school. The generalists and curriculum specialists would be required to have at least ten years of successful teaching experience in addition to extensive training in observing and interpreting classroom activities.  Successful retired teachers could be an outstanding and economical talent pool for these positions. 

The actual evaluation process would be intense.  At least five formal observations would be required.  The generalist and specialist would have two announced and two unannounced.  Additional observations can be done when necessary or desired.  A local assistant principal would perform one unannounced visit.  This experience would familiarize the AP with the teacher being evaluated.  The results of this observation would not be included in the final document but should allow the administrator to better understand and interpret the input from the other team members.  All observations would encompass an entire class period.  The two announced would be videotaped which would become a central component in post-observation conferences.  The videos would also be available to the other members of the team.  When appropriate, standardized test scores and other pertinent data would be included in the overall assessment.  Evaluators will, of course, be carefully trained in analyzing such data and how to utilize it in a fair, accurate manner.  At the end of the process, the three observers would meet and create the overall rating that would then be shared with the teacher.   The primary source of the final conclusions would be the two observers; the role of the AP would be to coordinate the process and provide further input if needed.

The next steps

The purpose of an evaluation should be to both determine the quality of one’s performance and to construct approaches to improve and enhance skills.  Ultimately it should also be a tool in determining pay, advancement and termination.  Those will be the focus of the next part of this series.  

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:09 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Head Blogger's Note: The Teacher Leader references the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) Testing Program that employs a rigorous high school assessment system of eleven end-of-course exams, which act as barriers to graduation and are used to calculate adequate yearly progress (AYP).

Midway through the teacher evaluation portion of the “Building the Best Educational Staff” series, I came to a startling realization.  It had become obvious that one issue under discussion required separate attention—the use of standardized test scores in the high school evaluation process.

It sounds so good on paper

The hottest ticket in all new evaluation plans is the inclusion of these statistics. Everyone is talking about the need for this component.  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan brings it up at every opportunity and Bill Gates has spent millions of his own dollars to research the issue.   Even I have written in favor of it. In the abstract it is such a great idea. These tests are quantitative measures of student achievement that can allow a fair comparison of teacher performances.  It has it all—clarity, accuracy and ease of implementation. There is, however, one serious drawback.  It cannot work.

There are inherent problems

There is one aspect of these arguments that is continually overlooked—the actual percentage of students in high school who take these standardized exams.  Though regulations vary from state to state, using Virginia as an example, the reality is that most teachers do not have state or district tests to evaluate their students’ work.  As the Coordinator of Curriculum at my school one of my responsibilities was to formulate a testing schedule for the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) exams.  What I discovered as I worked to make the most equitable plan possible was that more than two-thirds of all classes taught in the building were not being tested.    How can the bedrock of an evaluation system be built on a formula that is appropriate for only 33% of the classes?  And this is not a question of core vs. electives.  In Virginia, no Physics classes are tested.  Likewise, 9th, 10th and 12th grade English, pre-calculus, United States Government and all foreign languages are excluded.  Will there be a different evaluation for Biology and Physics teachers?    If a person has a schedule that includes both World History I and Government classes will a hybrid evaluation be necessary?

In an attempt to make the use of test scores more accurate, many systems are working on plans that will measure progress from year to year rather than in a single “snapshot” of a group of results.  While that may work when measuring Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 students, problems quickly arise in science and social studies.  What is the precise impact of the work in Earth Science on performance in Biology or Chemistry?   How can one compare World History 2 to United States History?

Good questions, shaky answers

When the use of test scores in teacher evaluations is given close inspection the aforementioned concerns quickly become apparent.   One example of evaluation idealism colliding with actual reality was presented recently in the Washington Post. The paper had a question and answer session with Jason Kamras chief of human capital for Washington D.C. Public Schools.  Mr. Kamras is the principal architect of the two year old IMPACT teacher evaluation system.  This plan uses test score input as 50% of a teacher’s evaluation.  Unfortunately, Mr. Kamras’s responses to many of the questions were not inspiring.

When asked why so few teachers were being evaluated with the “value-added” test system he responded:

“You know the grades we test [on the DC CAS, 3 through 8 and 10]. You have to knock off third grade because we don’t test second grade, so you have no benchmark. You have to knock out 10th grade because we don’t test in ninth grade, although that’s changing. You always have some [teachers] drop out because they didn’t have enough kids.”

The follow up question was obvious.  What can be done about this shortcoming?  The response concerning alternative evaluations for non-testing teachers was equally troubling and unclear.

“We looked at portfolios and lots of other things. And then you’ve got to push a little bit. How do you do portfolios? Everybody has a different idea of what a portfolio is…Actually it’s really hard to demonstrate growth clearly and quantitatively…When we looked at it in depth, what we came to was that the operational burden to do this well was simply probably beyond the capacity of the school system at this point.”

It is not reassuring to have an evaluation program built on proposals that include “lots of other things.” 

What does it all mean?

The use of student standardized test scores as a segment of teacher evaluations can be valuable if used properly.  It should not be cast aside or ignored as inherently unfair or inaccurate.  But what its proponents must keep in perspective is the limited scope of these data.  It is not a magic formula for determining all teacher success. 

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:25 PM | Permalink

As measured by gains in student achievement, teachers, even experienced, mid-career classroom instructors, improved as a result of their participation in a formal evaluation process. An Education Week report cites two studies conducted in Cincinnati, which has an extended history using a formal evaluation system consisting of four formal observations. In Cincinnati, teachers are given a rating relating three standards: classroom practices, classroom management, and questioning and discussion techniques.

In addition to discovering that 1. Teacher participation in a formal evaluation process improved student achievement, the first study concluded the following:

2. Classroom Management Improves Math Performance

The study found that "while overall teaching practice was the best predictor of student achievement, classroom management was more highly correlated with better math performance."

3. Questioning Improves Reading

Teacher use of open-ended questions was more highly correlated with student performance than classroom management.

In a second study, also conducted in Cincinnati, student performance not only improved in the year that the mid-career teachers were being evaluated, but the improvement in student performance continued and even increased in the years following the evaluation.

It is important to note that in the Cincinnati evaluation system teachers are not evaluated annually and that the evaluation process does not use a value-added component. In addition, the Cincinnati teacher evaluation system connects to a career ladder for teachers, which may be a motivating factor.

Implications for School Leaders

- Teacher evaluation is not the most enjoyable part of a school leader's job. However, knowing that teacher evaluation improves student achievement makes the process more meaningful.

- If school leaders want to make a difference in student achievement, teacher evaluation is a no-cost way to do so.

- Teacher evaluation is most effective when the teachers are clear on what behaviors will be evaluated, and if both teachers and principals have had extensive, multi-year professional development. Cincinnati was chosen precisely because both factors were present. In addition, many states and districts are proposing similar evaluation models and Cincinnati's decade long experience should help inform future practice.

- Even more encouraging is the fact that student achievement continues to improve in the years following a meaningful evaluation process of even the most experienced teachers.

- It makes sense that questioning improves reading, but I wonder why classroom management makes a bigger difference in math classes. Perhaps the sequential nature of math demands continuous attention and student engagement--students miss out if they miss a step in the process.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:52 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

There is no easy fix

In order to retain its status as a global leader the United States must create a world-class educational system.  To that end, numerous efforts are being made to find the correct formula.  Charter schools advocate longer hours and teacher freedom; a New York City school offers starting salaries of $125,000; Bill Gates has spent millions to study teacher evaluation and policy makers stress the need for accountability by using standardized tests.  Recently Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell offered a new merit pay program designed to assist under-performing schools in finding good staffing.  A variety of other incentive plans have been proposed with the intent of attracting top-level talent. While these and other ideas have varying degrees of merit, individually they are insufficient.   

There is no simple solution

Building a winning team whether on the athletic field or in the classroom requires many ingredients.  Ask successful coaches for their winning secrets and their response will be complex.  They cannot point to one particular element that consistently results in a championship team.  Likewise, no one-dimensional approach can produce outstanding educators in every classroom.  Looking for a “quick-fix” only delays the formulation of the sweeping set of policies required to populate every school with an excellent staff. 

It is a complex problem

In a recent post Mel Riddile has made a strong case that money alone will not create great teachers.   Based on his thoughts and my own educational experiences I believe that the following seven issues must be addressed to guarantee excellence in teaching staffs:

1. A commitment to hiring policies that result in offering job opportunities to the most effective candidates.
2. Establishing an evaluation program that results in a fair, consistent analysis of teacher performance and both improves effectiveness while identifying underperforming staff members.
3. Formulating a policy for removing teachers in an equitable but efficient manner.
4. Abolishing “last hired-first fired”.
5. Creating meaningful staff development programs which have proven quantitative evidence of success in the classroom. 
6. Competitive salaries with common sense rewards for outstanding work that can be measured in a clear and accurate way.
7. Create leadership positions for teachers that will give them consequential input into educational policy.
8. Ensure that all schools, especially those with challenging student bodies, have outstanding staffs.

More philosophical than fiscal

Over the next few weeks I will address these eight issues and present a comprehensive approach for hiring, improving and retaining outstanding educational staffs.  At a time of limited budgets, an important aspect of this plan is the low cost.   The major expenditures are in time and commitment, not dollars.

Next:  Hiring policies and strategies that find great talent

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:41 PM | Permalink

If you have been reading my latest posts, you might jump to the conclusion that I am against accountability, including merit pay for teachers. Nothing could be further from the truth. I embraced accountability because it forced us to do what we should have been doing all along--hold all students to higher standards. As a principal, I worked in a high-stakes accountability state (Virginia), and that accountability system gave our school the leverage it needed to promote increased rigor and high expectations for all students.

What does a high-stakes accountability environment look like? In a high stakes accountability environment, everyone including students and schools are held accountable.

In too many states, there is accountability for teachers and schools, but no accountability for students. In those states, the destiny of the school and fate of the teachers rests on the good will of the students. If the students feel like taking the state test, they do. If they don't feel like it, they "flag the test." How can so many states hold everyone but the students, who actually take the tests, accountable? It makes absolutely no sense.

I worked in Virginia throughout the first decade of the SOL, Standards of Learning, assessments. Initially, the tests were set up to discredit and embarrass public schools. However, when just about every school failed the tests, the parents revolted and the state threw out the old guard and worked with schools to develop a fair system, which included the following for high school:

Schools were held accountability.

• Eleven end-of-course exams
• Schools had to achieve a 70% proficiency rate or lose state accreditation.
• Schools were held to graduation targets.
• Schools who failed to achieve prescribed targets were required to go through a school improvement process.

Students were held accountable.

• The end-of-course exams acted as barriers to graduation.
• Students were required to pass the courses and six of the eleven end-of-course exams in order to earn a diploma.
• At the urging of the Virginia Association of Secondary Principals, the State strengthened existing attendance laws and stepped up enforcement.
• No students were "Christmas-treeing" tests in Virginia. Students took the test seriously because they counted for them and, even if they had the six required verified credits, they cared because their teachers cared so much.

Note: There was no statistically significant change in graduation rates in the barrier year, 2004, because the State initiated a "Project Graduation" initiative that began in 2000.

Teachers were not held individually accountable.

There was no need to hold teachers personally accountable, because they held themselves to such high standards. Our teachers expected more of themselves than anyone else would ever expect of them. They felt a sense of shared responsibility and a commitment to their students, their colleagues, and to the school as a whole. They understood that test scores reflected on "our school" and on "our students." In fact, teachers were so committed to student success that we had to be very careful how we reported test results, lest we single out or inadvertently identify any one individual teacher. Our teachers took each test score personally. Instead of having to light a fire under our teachers, we had to hold hands and sooth hurt feelings, because they cared so much.

That is the kind of accountability environment we want. We want students to take the tests seriously. We want the teachers to care about the success of their students. We want a collegial environment that encourages collective effort and cooperation. We want the students to say that the "teachers would never give up on us."

Why Do We Need Merit Pay?

Coming from that experience explains why I don't understand the merit pay argument. Anyone who knows teachers knows that money is not a motivator. They don't need to be cajoled with promises of bonuses to dedicate themselves. In fact, like most achievement-motivated professionals, teachers are insulted and demotivated by the use of tangible rewards. Teachers want what Frederick Herzberg called "motivators"--recognition, challenging work, responsibility.

Pay teachers as professionals! Pay them in proportion to their contribution to society. Stop nickel-and-diming them with promises of meager bonuses!

What Teachers Really Want

Supportive Leadership - More than anything else, including higher pay (45%), 40,000 teachers surveyed reported that they want supportive leadership (68%). Supportive leadership ensures that all of the following are available to teachers in the school.

Sense of Purpose - In the long run, what most motivates teachers is a sense of purpose--the desire to make a difference in the lives of their students. After all, that is why we became educators. However, when teachers drive old beaten up cars and they can't even afford to live in the communities in which they teach, it is hard to talk to them about a higher purpose.

Mastery - Teachers want to feel that they are skilled professionals. They want to feel that they are continually growing and improving. They want quality professional development that actually helps them improve their practice.

Self-Direction - Teachers want input into the key decisions that impact their profession on a daily basis. They want opportunities to collaborate with their colleagues.

Team - Teachers want to feel that they are a part of a collective effort. Teaching does not have to be lonely endeavor. Schools work best when teachers are committed to each other and the success of their students.

Professionals - Teachers want to be treated as professionals. They want to be treated like people not workers.

The Bottom Line

Professionals keep score, but their score is actually a true reflection of actual performance. Some of the current practices, such as not holding students accountable for test scores, and some of the proposals like merit pay and value-added teacher evaluations fail to pass the reality test and set up schools to fail. For example, our school wide literacy effort made a big difference in student performance on State assessments. However, since literacy strategies were practiced in every classroom every day, it was impossible to single out an individual teacher to receive a merit pay bonus.

Team efforts should garner collective rewards. Merit systems pit one teacher against another competing for scarce resources--the merit bonus. We need to reward and encourage collective effort not the individual all-stars teachers, who exemplified 20th century assembly line schools.

School leaders want and welcome accountability, but lets make it a meaningful and fair system, not one that singles out individuals for rewards or punishments. School leaders rely on the voluntary cooperation of teachers, students, and parents if the school is to succeed. Set us up to succeed!

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:08 AM | Permalink

"We are purpose maximizers!"--Daniel Pink in Drive

I have to give them credit. So-called school reform experts absolutely refuse to let facts or research get in the way of what they honestly believe is a good idea. One has to go back almost one hundred years to find studies that demonstrate that pay motivates workers and those studies related to factory workers who were engaged in the performance of mechanical tasks.

I have searched and searched, but I have found no research that indicates that merit pay in any way motivates educated professionals or anyone who uses cognitive skills in their work. In fact, there is considerable evidence to indicate that pay for performance schemes actually "demotivate" everyone except workers engaged in mechanical or physical tasks.

Despite all the facts saying that merit pay does not work, prominent public and private officials as well as several major foundations insist that merit pay for teachers will raise student achievement. Perhaps this is a clear indication that the so-called reformers don't view teaching as a profession, or at least teaching in public schools is not a profession. Of course, those who teach their children in private schools, are professionals, who deserve to be well-paid and have excellent working conditions, including small class sizes. Those who teach the children of the masses on the assembly line will have to get bye with less.

I learned from practice

Take it from me, I worked in a merit pay system that we were all delighted to see end. Merit pay never improved student achievement and was extremely divisive. It drove a wedge between teachers, who guarded their file cabinets like Fort Knox, lest one of the colleagues find and use one of their ideas in one of their lessons.

Instead of encouraging teachers to work collaboratively, merit pay placed them in competition against each other. In addition, the absence of a growth model or any valid way of measuring student progress, the system degenerated into a “dog and pony show.” Those who could put on the best show were awarded merit pay. Merit pay also put a lot of pressure on principals and assistant principals to overrate teachers. If you, as an evaluator, didn't rate them high enough, they appealed and the district capitulated and then viewed you, the evaluator, as something less than competent. In the end, merit pay became an expectation not an exception. In fact, some schools in our district had 90% of their teachers receiving merit pay.

Research says forget merit pay

Long time school reformer, Michael Fullan, in his book, All Systems Go, directly and pointedly addresses the whole idea of merit pay saying, “Merit pay pleases a few and angers the rest.” He goes on to write at length about what research shows actually motivates teachers and merit pay is not even on the list. By the way, neither are punishment, threats, or coercion.

Here is Fullan’s list of “Incentives That Work for Teachers:

• Realizable Moral Purpose (Fullan cites this as most important)
• Good salaries (not incentives or merit pay)
• Decent Surroundings
• Positive Climate
• Strong Induction
• Extensive Professional Learning
• Opportunity to work with and learn from others
• Supportive, and even assertive, leadership
• Helpful Feedback
• Reasonable Class Size
• Long-term Collective Agreements

More Research on Teacher Pay

Research on motivation does not support the use of financial incentives for long-term professional growth. One study found that merit pay "was very unlikely to have raised employee motivation appreciably; it may indeed have been demotivating on balance." Pay motivates "piece workers" on an assembly line (Taylor), but it is not a factor in motivating professionals or knowledge workers. At best, merit pay is a temporary “satisfier" (Herzberg).

A recent report stated emphatically, "I find no evidence that teacher incentives increase student performance, attendance, or graduation, nor do I find any evidence that the incentives change student or teacher behavior. If anything, teacher incentives may decrease student achievement, especially in larger schools."

In yet another study findings suggested "students taught by incentivized teachers did no better or no worse than students taught by regular salaried teachers.

The incentive scheme "did not set off significant negative reactions of the kind that have attended the introduction of merit pay elsewhere", the researchers wrote. "But neither did it yield consistent and lasting gains in test scores. It simply did not do much of anything."

Is there any case in which pay would motivate teachers? Researchers Akerlof and Yellen, found that "paying great people a little more than the market demands, helped attract better talent, reduce turnover, and boost productivity and morale. In fact, the firms making the irrational and seemingly frivolous choice to "overpay" their employees, rather than construct elaborate incentives, outperformed their competitors."

In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink reinforces the idea that incentives increase output only for workers engaged in simple, straightforward, mechanical tasks. However, in occupations that involve even "rudimentary cognitive skills," monetary rewards actually lower performance. Pink points out that we are "purpose maximizers." We care about mastery and we want self-direction. Money and the focus on pay and incentives "unmoors us from purpose."

My Take

Teachers deserve to be well compensated, but merit pay is not the answer.

Pay teachers as professionals who engage in high order cognitive skills every minute of every day. Pay teachers like unskilled factory workers, part-time workers, or Peace Corps volunteers and that is what you get. Pay teachers like assembly line workers engaged in simple mechanical tasks and we get assembly line schools that sort students for success. We will never attract top graduates or raise the quality of education by paying teachers less than we pay our bus drivers, which is the case in the Washington, D.C. area. We need to pay teachers enough to take money off of the table, but because we refuse to do so, pay remains an issue.

What Teachers Want

Supportive Leadership - More than anything else, including higher pay (45%), 40,000 teachers surveyed reported that they want supportive leadership (68%). Supportive leadership ensures that all of the following are available to teachers in the school.

Sense of Purpose - In the long run, what most motivates teachers is a sense of purpose--the desire to make a difference in the lives of their students. After all, that is why we became educators. However, when teachers drive old beaten up cars and they can't even afford to live in the communities in which they teach, it is hard to talk to them about a higher purpose.

Mastery - Teachers want to feel that they are skilled professionals. They want to feel that they are continually growing and improving. They want quality professional development that actually helps them improve their practice.

Self-Direction - Teachers want input into the key decisions that impact their profession on a daily basis. They want opportunities to collaborate with their colleagues.

Team - Teachers want to feel that they are a part of a collective effort. Teaching does not have to be lonely endeavor. Schools work best when teachers are committed to each other and the success of their students.

Professionals - Teachers want to be treated as professionals. They want to be treated like people not workers.

Finally, if we insist on rewards, reward teachers with better working conditions and better equipment. Reward the behaviors that we really want. We want schools and teams of teachers to succeed, not individuals. Therefore, if we insist on providing incentives, we should reward schools not individuals.

My Final Take

Principals and school leaders don't control teacher compensation, but we have a big part in providing supportive leadership that focuses on what is important--a higher purpose, mastery, self-direction, team effort, and professionalism. In fact, when you think about it, money can't buy any of the most important things that teachers say they want. Treating teachers like professionals, like people, and not workers will go a long way to reconnecting them with the sense of purpose that they most desire.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 01:06 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

In an essay published in the Outlook section of the Washington Post, John Sener has decided that by successfully making 18 of 20 free throws in a gymnasium he has, using the same criteria used by analysts of standardized testing, successfully proven that he is a better basketball player than Michael Jordan.  Using similar logic he dismisses the poor performance of American students on the PISA test as irrelevant.   

When in doubt, ridicule

 When my former school posted outstanding scores in the state’s standardized tests I was surprised by the number of questions other educational leaders raised about our “ethics”.  Mel Riddile would explain to me that when you have poor outcomes you have two options—work harder and smarter or find a way to bring the competition down.  Unfortunately, the latter approach appears to be the one favored by Mr. Sener.

His argument is that standardized tests in general and the PISA international test in specific are inaccurate indicators of the quality of a country’s educational system.  He begins with sarcasm and then drifts into the surreal.

“Once you truly understand the awesome power of test scores, you will embrace them, as I have done — especially after realizing how standardized testing proves that I am a better basketball player than Michael Jordan.

“Don’t laugh; I have the test results. I read something in a blog somewhere about how MJ recently made 16 out of 20 free throws in a friendly shooting contest. Pretty good, but I thought I could do better. So I went to my local gym and practiced and practiced until I achieved my aim: 18 out of 20 free throws! I’ll send you the video, if you like. (Or you could do what most people do with PISA scores and simply take my word for it.)”

Making the basket; missing the point

Based on his free-throw shooting (real or otherwise) Mr. Sener reaches several conclusions about the PISA test scores in the United States.

“You may argue that it’s not a fair comparison, but that’s what so great about this — simply use the same rules we apply to judging PISA scores, and it’s perfectly fair.  So what if it’s not a head-to-head competition? PISA’s not a head-to-head competition. The students take the tests at different times in different places under different conditions. Heck, they take the reading test in different languages.”   

His second explanation of the poor performance of U.S. students is their lack of interest.

“…what makes you think that American students take PISA seriously? When I tested my teenage son’s knowledge of the PISA exam, he just looked at me quizzically, since he’d never heard of it…Do you really believe that every student who takes the PISA has the same amount of practice?"  

To assess for yourself whether increased practice would affect the outcome of US students’ scores on the PISA tests, go to http://pisa-sq.acer.edu.au/ .

Not all air balls

Mixed into the misguided basketball analogies Mr. Sener does make some excellent points which should be emphasized.

“Standardized tests don’t measure most skills, yet opinion leaders and policymakers constantly tell us how America’s education is going down the toilet based on those scores...There is no place in standardized tests for creativity...You would be wise to ask these questions, even though standardized tests don’t care about curiosity, either.”

Ignored problems do not go away

There is no question that standardized testing does not answer all of the questions of how to measure learning and good teaching.  I have long argued that the Standards of Learning (SOL) exams given in my state (VA) did not indicate mastery of a subject and the method of administering the tests was poor.  But I also knew that though imperfect this new accountability was a step in the right direction.  Prior to such tests there were virtually no quantitative measures of the relative performances of students from classroom to classroom, school to school or district to district.  These results clearly indicated discernible patterns that, if used correctly, could be of great value. 

While this standardization did not equate to the level of precision that would be optimal, it did offer critical insights into the quality of teaching.  In every school the staff forms subjective conclusions as to which teachers are effective and those that are not.  During the ten years I observed SOL testing (VA) the results of these exams closely matched these informal evaluations.  Based on substantial data, the students of certain teachers routinely outperformed others.  While such statistics can and were misused, they did provide a limited amount of quantitative proof of student comprehension, weaknesses and the quality of the work of their instructors.

These outcomes were not enough.  The testing methods need to be improved to better reflect the actual knowledge acquisition.  They must demonstrate a legitimate understanding of a wide range of material.  This process is still in its infancy and far from a finished product.  The potential for improvement is present if the willingness to keep an open mind is maintained.

But simply ignoring any measurement that indicates a serious problem in American education is reckless.  A country where more than three of every ten students drop out of high school and only 30% attain a college degree is hardly in a position to dismiss a poor global performance with sarcasm and ridicule. 

Note: At the high school level, Virginia administers eleven end-of-course (EOC) exams, which are used both as barriers to graduation and to calculate adequate yearly progress (AYP). Only a few states use EOC exams for accountability purposes and as barriers to graduation.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:11 AM | Permalink

Washington State and South Carolina have recently proposed alternative paths to the principalship.

Apparently education is the only profession that believes that it can increase the quality of those working in the profession, teachers and administrators, by reducing the minimum qualifications to enter. Actually, education professionals are not making such ludicrous recommendations, because unlike most professions, education is not controlled by practicing professionals. Education is controlled by legislatures, state departments of education, and a few high-profile foundations!

Imagine that there was a shortage of physicians in a specific field or region and a proposal was made to increase the number of physicians by allowing anyone with a master's degree in any field to become a physician. Substitute attorneys, accountants, dentists, or airline pilots for physicians in the previous statement and you get the idea.

In reality, the proposals in Washington State and South Carolina represent the latest in a long line of reform recommendations based on the belief that "anyone can do it." Anyone can teach, even with only five weeks of training. Anyone can be a principal.

Washington State - Thumbs Down

In a recent editorial, NASSP Executive Director, Gerald Tirozzi, addresses the Washington State plan. Tirozzi writes, "The shrinking pool of school leaders is a complex problem for which alternate certification provides an answer that is, to borrow from H. L. Mencken, “clear, simple, and wrong."

Tirozzi goes on to make some salient points:

-"These principals will have no credibility with teachers."

My Take: Research proves that the major weakness of school leaders is the ability to set instructional direction--instructional leaders. So, the answer to correcting that weakness and to improving student achievement and eliminating the achievement gap is to hire principals with no teaching experience?

- "The least qualified leaders will land in the highest need schools."

My Take: No reputable school system or school would hire a principal with no experience. What that means is those school systems and schools that are the poorest and most remote will be the only ones in the market for these alternative route principals. Ironically, it is these under-resourced schools that need the best, most experienced leaders and teachers. They also have the highest turnover in principals and teachers.

- It is hypocritical to advocate one educational approach for the masses and another for your own child. "Many a legislator sends his or her child to highly personalized private schools staffed by well-trained and experienced educators who, free from the burden of test prep, capitalize on a child’s natural curiosity with a curriculum as robust in art and music as in reading and math. There’s no hypocrisy in that—every parent wants the best for their child. The hypocrisy lies in legislators using their day jobs to advocate for a different kind of education for everyone else’s child."

My Take: Not only have the so-called reformers not attended public schools themselves, but they would never allow their own children to attend public schools with larger class sizes and less-qualified, underpaid teachers. Their mantra is 'High-quality education for my child and what we can afford for your child.'

South Carolina' Proposal - Thumbs Up

You can probably tell that I am not a fan of alternative certification plans for teachers or principals, particularly those that take shortcuts. When I first started heard about South Carolina's alternative route proposal, I was feeling the same way until I read an article that outlined the key features. Currently, South Carolina allows someone with a bachelor's degree in teaching can become a principal by being a certified classroom teacher for at least three years, then graduating from an approved college program in school leadership. The new proposal would allow someone with a master's degree in any field to enter a program that involves being an assistant principal for three years, then passing an exam to become a principal. When I read the phrase "serving as an assistant principal for three years," it caught my attention and, at least, partially changed my mind.

My Take: If someone, who has been a successful manager in a business, is willing to take a pay cut to enter education and will serve a three-year apprenticeship as an assistant principal, I say bring them on! Keep in mind that these individuals would not only serve an apprenticeship, but they would have to exhibit exemplary performance in order for the district to appoint them as principal after three years.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:37 AM | Permalink

In my last post, I asked Should Your Child Teach? My intent was to point out that, just at the time when we need quality teachers the most; teaching is being made a less attractive profession. This needs to change! A veteran teacher wrote me saying the following:

"Let me start with "amen". This is personal for me.  My daughter-in-law in Texas (who has a degree in English and a master's in Library Science) has decided to pursue a career in Special Education.  She is completing the necessary coursework and testing and now is faced with not getting a job due to budget cuts.  She is very discouraged, as would anyone else in her position. My son in California wanted to be a teacher/coach with his math degree and athletic background.  He is currently earning several times more than a teacher in the private sector.  It was way too easy of a decision for him."

While the search for teaching jobs may discourage some, it turns out that finding a teaching job may be much easier in some regions than in others. This assumes that budget shortfalls will come to an end and local funds will be available to hire new teachers.

Education Daily reports that a recent study from National Center for Education Statistics indicates that public and private elementary and secondary school enrollment increased by 10 percent between 1994 and 2007 and will continue to increase by 6 percent through 2019.

The best place to find a teaching job will be in the South and West. A 12 percent increase in high school graduates is expected in the South and a 9 percent increase is expected in the West. Decreases of 14 percent in the Northeast and 7 percent in the Midwest are expected.

Among the findings in Projections of Education Statistics to 2019:

• Seven states are expected to see enrollment increase by more than 15 percent: North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and Utah.

• All of the New England states, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan are expected to see enrollment decrease by more than 5 percent.

• The number of new teacher hires in public schools is projected to increase 40 percent by 2019.

Essential Questions for School Leaders

What does it mean for schools if student enrollments are increasing at the same time that fewer are enrolling in teacher preparation programs? My guess is that, just as the Common Core assessments are implemented, there will be a severe shortage of teachers. Who will suffer the most? As usual, rural schools and schools in less attractive, high-poverty areas will again find themselves at the end of the line when hiring new teachers.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:33 AM | Permalink

Background: Nationally, two-thirds of students are not reading on grade level by the fourth grade, the earliest year of testing in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). That proportion rises to four-fifths for low-income children, according to NAEP results released last year.

A recently released national study indicates that students who are not proficient readers in third grade are significantly more likely to drop out. "Students who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave high school without a diploma than proficient readers."

It's Poverty Not Stupid (3-6-8) "Poverty compounds the problem."

Students who have lived in poverty are three times more likely to drop out or fail to graduate on time than their more affluent peers;

• If they read poorly, too, the rate is six times greater than that for all proficient readers.
• For black and Latino students, the combined effect of poverty and poor third grade reading skills makes the rate eight times greater.
• Poverty troubles even the best readers: Proficient third graders who have lived in poverty graduate at about the same rate as subpar readers who have never been poor.

“We will never close the achievement gap, we will never solve our dropout crisis, we will never break the cycle of poverty that afflicts so many children if we don’t make sure that all our students learn to read,” said Ralph Smith, executive vice president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Specifically, the study found:

• One in six children who are not reading proficiently in third grade do not graduate from high school on time, a rate four times greater than that for proficient readers.
• The rates are highest for the low, below-basic readers: 23 percent of these children drop out or fail to finish high school on time, compared to 9 percent of children with basic reading skills and 4 percent of proficient readers.
• The below-basic readers account for a third of the sample but three-fifths of the students who do not graduate.
• Overall, 22 percent of children who have lived in poverty do not graduate from high school, compared to 6 percent of those who have never been poor. This rises to 32 percent for students spending more than half of their lives in poverty.
• For children who were poor for at least a year and were not reading proficiently in third grade, the proportion of those who don’t finish school rose to 26 percent.  The rate was highest for poor black and Hispanic students, at 31 and 33 percent respectively. Even so the majority of students who fail to graduate are white.
• Even among poor children who were proficient readers in third grade, 11 percent still didn’t finish high school. That compares to 9 percent of subpar third graders who were never poor.
• Among children who never lived in poverty, all but 2 percent of the best third-grade readers graduated from high school on time.

The study concluded that improvements are needed in the following areas:

1. improving the schools where these children are learning to read
2. helping the families weighed down by poverty
3. better federal, state and local policy to improve the lot of both schools and families
4. aligning quality early education programs with the curriculum and standards in the primary grades
5. paying better attention to health and developmental needs of young children
6. providing work training and other programs that will help lift families out of poverty.

Essential Question

Can high schools or middle schools afford to wait until students arrive at their doors with reading problems?

• The development of math and literacy skills is a PK-12 issue, not an elementary issue, not a middle school issue, and certainly not a high school issue.
• Vertical articulation between all levels is one key to improving literacy skills.
• Curriculum alignment is another key.
• Cross-content literacy instruction (Common Core ELA Standards) and whole-school literacy initiatives are another key.
• Keep in mind that, even if under-resourced students are proficient by third grade, they must have direct, explicit literacy (reading, writing, thinking, discussing) instruction every year thereafter or they will not progress.
• Literacy skills predict future math performance, which, in turn, predicts future college completion.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:11 AM | Permalink

Education Week reports that educator's greatest fears are coming to fruition. We may be unintentionally ruining our chances of raising student achievement by driving out those who we need the most--teachers. Just when we need them the most, budget cuts and the current climate are decimating the teaching ranks. While many veteran teachers are postponing retirement, and layoffs are driving many from the profession, the number of new hires is dropping. In Minnesota alone the number of new hires is down by "more than half in the past 11 years.

Killing the Golden Goose

How could it be a surprise to anyone that "heightened public scrutiny of teachers will discourage even more prospective teachers from entering K-12 schools." Many are asking, "is teaching a viable and respected profession?"

"Why would you go into this (teaching), if there are constant cuts, layoffs, unfair criticism that you are responsible for every flaw in society ... pay freezes [and] elimination of collective bargaining rights?"

Even those who hear the calling to teach are being frozen out of jobs by the current economic conditions. "Fewer people...appear to be waiting it out."

"As baby boomers retire and new teachers quit, a 2010 national report warns that the teaching pipeline will collapse at both ends. First-year teacher attrition has steadily increased and the nation has the oldest workforce in more than half a century, according to the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future."

The Bottom Line

At a time when school leaders are feeling even more pressure to raise student achievement, teaching positions are being cut. One principal told me that his staff has been reduced 20% over the last two years while his student population, which is increasingly more diverse and much poorer, has increased 18%.

Teacher prep programs are experiencing declines in enrollment. So, when budgets finally stabilize, school leaders will find many veteran teachers retiring and the pool of applicants significantly diminished--the perfect storm. In this scenario, who suffers the most? If you said the poorest schools who serve the neediest students, you are correct.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:58 AM | Permalink

I frequently use Reagan National Airport and my flight occasionally lands late at night. So, the story about two planes landing while the one and only air traffic controller on duty slept, caught my attention. Like many others, I was shocked to learn that more than a few airports, some of them considered major hubs, routinely schedule only one controller on duty.

My thoughts immediately turned to a recent airport experience. I was in an unnamed airport in a major city waiting in a long security line. For the sake of fairness, I must admit that, in most airports, security has gotten better in the past year. In this case, the line was getting longer and longer, yet there was only one security station screening passengers. I thought to myself, surely they will open more lines. I was wrong.

I counted thirteen uniformed TSA employees standing idle while they watched passengers screening through one checkpoint. It reminded me of when I was a kid listening to the adults joke about the state road crews. "One has a shovel or a broom and five others are watching."

I then imagined a scenario in which the one traffic controller on duty was sleeping while downstairs thirteen TSA employees observed one security checkpoint. Talk about misplaced priorities.

In my mind, landing planes takes priority over confiscating hair gel. Having more than one air traffic controllers on duty at a time is a non-negotiable. Clearly, some airports are majoring in the minors.

School leaders can use the misplaced priorities of our airports as a learning experience. Truth be told, most schools don't consistently do the things that improve student performance. We must decide on our priorities--two, no more than three, areas of focus. Next, we must say no to everything else. Our focus must be non-negotiable. Finally, we must continue until we have both mastered our priorities and accomplished our goals and objectives.

Ask yourself. What are our "must do's?" What are our "need to do's? What are our "nice to do's? In other words, what "must" we do every day in every classroom throughout our school in order to raise student performance? Once we determine our priorities, we must resolve to do those things with fidelity. We must do them consistently day in and day out, and we must do them over time, in many cases, for years.

Focus: Clear and Simple

For ten years, our school had a clear and simple focus. Note, I didn't use the word "easy," because there is nothing easy about improving student attendance and literacy skills. That is not to say that those were the only things we did. We totally revamped our approach to math, integrated technology, enhanced our ESL program, reduced suspensions, changed our school calendar to year-round, began mandatory after-school tutoring for any student with a "D" or "F" in a core academic subject, and list goes on and on.

If you asked our teachers about our school improvement plan, they would respond, "R-A-G-S to Riches"--Reading plus Attendance means better Grades and a Safe school." In other words, if we improved student literacy skills (Reading) and raised Attendance, student performance would improve (Grades) and discipline referrals and suspensions would go down (Safe). Here's the key. For almost a decade, our plan never changed. While we continually enhanced our strategies, our focus never changed. We never waivered.

The Secrets of High-Performing Schools

High-performing schools consistently do what other schools do not. No misplaced priorities here. No majoring in the minors either. High-performing schools have fewer priorities and they are obsessed with reaching their goals. At the recent NASSP School Showcase the presentations made by several schools made it crystal clear to me that schools serving large numbers of under-resourced students must have a student-focused obsession, and that obsession must relate to the specific needs of the population that the school serves.

The three schools all served under-resourced students. However, the three high schools varied in size, had very different demographics, and were located in states with very different economics and education policies. The context in which these schools operated was about as different as they could possibly be.

Although they were very different in appearance, the three schools had a lot in common. They each had a laser-like focus on student success that bordered on an obsession. In fact, these three schools were so obsessed with student success that they were willing to overcome any obstacle that got in their way.

Literacy: Brockton High School (MA) is a large (4,350) urban high school that has focused on raising the literacy--reading, writing, thinking, discussing--levels of ALL students, particularly its large ELL population. Principal, Susan Szachowicz, and a "handful of fellow teachers" organized a school wide campaign that brought reading and writing lessons into every class in all subjects, including gym. According to a New York Times article, Brockton's literacy-for-all success has defied the "small is better orthodoxy" proving that any school can beat the odds and raise student performance.

Attendance: The audience turned to each other with looks of disbelief when the staff of Arroyo High School (CA) posted their three-year attendance figures. Arroyo's average daily attendance was well over 96%. For a large, high-poverty, high minority, urban high school, 96% is phenomenal. However, I could see the enthusiasm abate as the staff spent about twenty minutes describing all the initiatives the school used to improve attendance. As I have emphasized over and over again, improving student attendance is all about hard work and will power, and the Arroyo staff have plenty of both. Arroyo's success formula is simple. Get the students to attend school every day and make sure that the students succeed.

Course Failure: The presentation began with a simple but very effective slide that pointed out that, over a three-year period, Barberton (OH) High School had reduced course failures from over 2,500 to 350. The staff at Barberton must have read Bob Balfanz's dropout research that points out that course failure is one of the best indicators of dropping out of school. Admittedly, a school could reduce failures by simply lowering standards. This was not the case at Barberton, where the focus was clear and no obstacle too big to overcome. The staff used small learning communities, flexible scheduling, a unique master schedule, student-led conferences, and an advisory program among other strategies to significantly improve student performance.

The Bottom Line for School Leaders

We simply cannot afford to waste time, money, and effort on programs and strategies that will not improve our schools. Schools cannot have fifteen priorities and do them well. The more we try to do, the more we spread out and dissipate our effort. Focus is power! The reality is that "we do more when we do less." Saying no is much harder than saying yes to new initiatives, but saying no is the right thing, the courageous thing to do. Resolve today to stop majoring in the minors! Become obsessed with your priorities.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:40 PM | Permalink

In a recent public appearance a prominent American made the following comments:

"We have piled on a lot of standardized tests on our kids. Now, there's nothing wrong with a standardized test being given occasionally just to give a baseline of where kids are at."

"Too often what we've been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools."

"Let's find a test that everybody agrees makes sense; let's apply it in a less pressured-packed atmosphere; let's figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years; and let's make sure that that's not the only way we're judging whether a school is doing well."

"Because there are other criteria: What's the attendance rate? How are young people performing in terms of basic competency on projects?"

"I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you. And young people do well in stuff that they're interested in. They're not going to do as well if it's boring."

These are messages that more than a few teachers and principals want to hear--less testing, less pressure, less punishment of schools, more meaningful assessments, more focus on high-interest material.

If someone had told me that those were quotes made by President Obama In a town hall meeting hosted by Univision, I would have never believed it. Perhaps the fact that he has two school-aged daughters has helped reality sink in. We can only hope.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:24 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

The teacher’s lament was plaintive.  He had just been informed that the principal wanted to meet with him about an undisclosed topic.  “I know exactly what he wants to talk about.  It’s my grades—too many “F”s.   I am working harder than I ever have.  I have created a dozen different interventions.  But I can’t change my grading policies.  I know what my students need to be successful.  They are failing because they don’t know the required material.  I’m just giving them what they have earned.”  Another teacher had told him that she had recomputed her grades to avoid “the meeting”.  He then closed with the inspiration of this post.  “I’ll tell you what it is.  It’s grade inflation by intimidation.”

Not as simple as it looks

Virtually every day a new proposal is introduced to save public education in the United States.  Too many of these plans are more focused on reducing failing grades than on the creation of more successful students.  The mere act of lowering the number of “D” and “F” grades does not automatically improve academic performance.  To the contrary, an argument could be made that by giving inflated, inaccurate assessments students are being mislead as to their skill level and misplaced in future courses. 

The grades teachers assign are an important component in assessing their work but it is not a precise tool.  Like every other statistical measure it must be utilized by someone who understands all of the factors at play in any particular classroom.  The broad conclusion that an individual “gives too many poor grades” can be a dangerous oversimplification.

A long inflationary cycle

The presence of grade inflation is not a new phenomenon.  More than 25 years ago teacher evaluation meetings at my school always began with an examination of the “D/F rate."  An assistant principal would look at a printout giving the teacher’s percentage of students receiving grades of either “D” or “F”.  Unfortunately those raw numbers did not always tell the complete story.  For some students a grade of “D+” was a triumph over adversity and past history; for others a “C+” was a reflection of little or no effort.  But for the teachers the former would count as a negative statistic while the latter was of little or no concern.  Without understanding the complete context, individual grades and D/F rates mean little.  But the message, however misguided, was clear—better grades indicate better teaching.

This pressure was relentless.  During a discussion of the topic in a math department meeting one teacher stated the obvious.  “Listen, we are all math people here.  We have the capacity to construct our grading in whatever way they want.  Just tell us what percentages to have and we can make it happen.”  Whether she was serious or not, her contention was accurate. 

Over the years due to a variety of influences the inflation of grades has occurred.  In a typical suburban high school in 2011, a GPA of 3.0 which in theory translates into a “B” which is above average will rank a student in the middle of their class.  Though nearly all measures of achievement clearly indicate little or no improvement by today’s students, at least on paper their academic performance is clearly on the rise.

Parents join the fray

When the AP Biology teacher walked into the parent conference, she was confident that her position on the matter to be discussed was secure.  The student had missed the scheduled mid-term exam to go on a family ski trip.   Prior to the vacation he had presented a form for a prearranged absence.   The teacher had checked the block that indicated she did not approve.  In addition she had written on the paper what she had told the student in person—he would have to take the exam on his first day back at school.  This timing was appropriate since it was in keeping with the class policy she had established on the first day of school and until he took the exam none of his classmates could review their results.  

Though the student had accepted these stipulations, when he returned he informed the teacher that he was not prepared.  She insisted he take the test as per their agreement.  His score was low and resulted in his grade dropping from a “B-” to a “C” for the quarter.  

Some parents are more equal than others

The student’s father was a highly-regarded physician in the community.  During the preliminary discussions at the conference he appeared disinterested in the arguments being presented.  After about ten minutes he held up his hand and said, “Let me be clear.  I really don’t care about all of these details.  I just want to know what it is going to take to make this grade into a “B”.  I don’t care if it is a retest or just exclude him from the mid-term or whatever, let’s find the answer.”  The teacher refused to alter the grade and was asked to leave the meeting.  Later that day the principal informed her that the “C” had been changed to the desired “B”. 

An issue of fairness

Based on this change, the teacher was faced with an ethical dilemma.  Giving this student a “B” would lessen the value of the grades earned by the other students in the class.  Consequently, she decided to proportionally raise everyone’s grades.  Once again, while no additional learning had actually taken place, on paper every student in the course had improved their academic performance.  Not surprisingly, as the details of this episode spread throughout the staff, teachers began to have second thoughts when enforcing valid policies that might result in lower grades.

A time and a place

Many school districts have designed creative methods to give the appearance of reduced disciplinary referrals, absenteeism and dropout rates.  Too often grades are also just another statistic to be manipulated in order to give the appearance of improved success.  There are some teachers whose grading indicates either an inability to correctly assess student performance or ineffective instructional skills.  Such situations must be addressed directly and corrected immediately if education is to be successful. 

But the danger is when lockstep grade expectations are placed on an entire faculty or school district.  There should be cause for concern when a conversation with a teacher who has years of successful experience begins with “you are giving too many bad grades”.   Grades are meaningless if they are not a legitimate reflection of student learning.  The key to truly improving grades is to ensure that students are gaining mastery of the subject matter.  When knowledge acquisition is attained, D/F rates will decline.  And more importantly, they will indicate real academic progress.  

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:37 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Like Mel Riddile, I saw the recent “60 Minutes” segment featuring the TEP School (The Equity Project) in New York City.   The opening tease about a school offering teacher salaries of $125,000 drew my attention.  The segment itself was riveting.  The discussions of hiring, firing and tenure policies in the report were persuasive.  The passion of the teachers and the school’s founder was palpable.  The stories of 80 to 90 hour work weeks were a testament to dedication.  The scenes with the students interacting with their instructors were exhilarating.  The evaluation process with peer involvement and regular administrative visits was inspiring.  I turned to my wife, a retired high school teacher, and announced “I think these people are on to something.”  That enthusiasm was significantly diminished during the final two minutes of the segment. 

Despite the high pay, long hours, classroom enthusiasm and attention to detail, student academic scores fell in the school’s first year.  Of course, one year is hardly a fair trial period but an actual drop in such results is a valid point of concern as well as a reason for some reexamination.

A benign dictatorship

I recently heard in a discussion on NPR that a global dictator would be required to ensure that the world would productively address climate change.  The rationale is that with an all-powerful individual making the decisions, the necessary policy adjustments could be put into place without the intervention of special interests.  It is a parallel analogy to the account that a dictator was the only person who ever successfully made the Italian trains run on time.   Democracy can be so messy.

The TEP model is also a one-man operation.  Its founder and principal, Zeke Vanderhoek, hires and fires the teachers, observes their classes on a regular basis and makes all policy decisions.   Because of his complete control he has been able to creatively increase salaries, easily remove underperforming teachers, eradicate tenure and quickly implement program changes.  All of these factors are positive steps toward improving education.  Plus, as a result of his immense power, his teachers do not have to deal with the same type of bureaucracy other educators face in traditional schools.  If they need an answer or wish to make a suggestion, they need only walk down the hall.   

What has gone wrong?

Working 80 hours a week is impressive.  That amount of time is a clear reflection of commitment but not necessarily a formula for success.  As much as I would love to play in the Major Leagues, even if I spent 12 hours a day, seven days a week in the batting cage, I am not going to successfully hit a Roy Halladay fast ball.  Likewise, a teacher who works twice as many hours is not automatically twice as effective.  Every experienced educator has worked with people who arrive ten minutes before the first bell, leave shortly after the buses and are remarkably successful teachers.  On the other hand, some of the most unproductive educators I have encountered spent voluminous hours in the building.  While no one is quite sure what they were doing, there was no doubt as to its ineffectiveness.  A school’s success is measured by student performance not by the time cards or paychecks of the teachers.  Though it is still early in the process the overriding question remains:  Why is the immense sacrifice of time by the TEP staff not yielding better results?

A potential answer could be found in the administrative structure of the school.  There is no question to the commitment of Mr. Vanderhoek.  It is readily apparent that his primary desire is to create a positive learning environment for the students and teachers.  But he is not unique.  There are multitudes of educational leaders whose passion to find a winning educational formula would match his.  And the majority of those individuals understand that the best recipe for success requires multiple ingredients.  (Here is an additional perspective by an NYC parent.)

Good education needs cross pollination

Portions of the TEP model should be replicated throughout school systems in the country.  Similar effective hiring, firing and evaluation policies must be created to form the best teaching staffs possible.  Highly qualified principals have to clearly possess the institutional power to implement their vision of academic excellence.  But this path needs to include a diverse and significant amount of outside input.  Teacher opinions should be constantly sought.  Other programs should be observed and studied.  Stories of success and failure must be shared at every level both vertically and horizontally.   Strategies that have been proven to work need to be utilized and refined; those that do not should be discarded. 

The lessons of the TEP School’s first year are that relying on only one person’s interpretation of best practices can thwart maximizing potential outcomes.  And when teachers are working 90 hours a week and significant student progress is not occurring it is a clear warning that something is terribly wrong.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:02 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

In a recent article in the Washington Post, Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City Schools, outlined his recommendations for improving public education.  Mr. Klein begins with the assertion that the path to success goes through teachers and their evaluations.

“Any reform worth its name must start by recognizing that teachers are our most important educational asset. That's why we need to treat teaching as a profession, by supporting excellence, striving for constant improvement and ridding the system of poor performers.”

He also addresses the continuing issue of last hired, first fired.

“Consider the fight over teacher layoffs. In many states, you must lay teachers off solely based on reverse seniority - last in, first out. That's nuts. Do you know anyone who would say ‘I want the most senior surgeon’ rather than ‘I want the best surgeon’? Sure, experience matters. That's why, in baseball, the rookie of the year is almost never the most valuable player. But the rookie of the year is better than a whole lot of 10-year veterans, and every baseball team takes this into account when deciding its roster.”

A point of concern

Mr. Klein finishes his discussion with some thoughts about teacher evaluations.  He feels that tenure allows poor teachers to retain their positions and that it is critical that methods be found to remove underperforming educators through a prescribed process.

“Other, more traditional methods of evaluation could also be applied, such as adopting a set of criteria that can be evaluated by principals and/or master teachers.”

I have bolded the word “principals” because they are my primary concern with Mr. Klein’s recommendations.  If this group is to be instrumental in the hiring, firing and promotions of the teachers in a building, it is crucial that they are clearly qualified to make such decisions.

Better evaluations are needed at every level

The constant focus of the vast majority of educational reformers is on teacher evaluations.  Since I have committed tens of thousands of words to that subject, I obviously agree.  But it is naïve to believe that there are not factors other than teacher performance that can affect student success.   The principal, the educational leader of the staff, is arguably the most important overall influence in the academic environment of the school.  But few are privy to the process used to determine the effectiveness of a school’s principal.  While every new initiative for teacher assessment includes more effective input, support, transparency and easily quantifiable outcomes, for the vast majority of school staff members the evaluation of the job being performed by their principal remains a mystery.

A vague, haphazard process

My most recent experience with the evaluation of a principal illustrates my concerns and those of other teachers.   Before the end of the first semester in the principal’s initial year, a panel of six teachers was convened by an assistant superintendent.  We were never informed how this particular group was selected.   It was certainly not a true cross-section of the staff.  The emphasis was on individuals who had been at the school for extended periods and who had leadership positions. A series of extremely generic questions concerning the new school leader was asked.  Our responses were all virtually the same.   As I looked around I felt as though I was watching a group of “bobble” heads (including myself) as we repeatedly nodded in agreement and said that the school was continuing to move in a positive direction.  The panel had no way of knowing that in the first few months as principal, she was maintaining policies similar to her highly successful predecessor.  However, if a follow up meeting had been conducted six months later, the answers would have been significantly different.  Unfortunately, such a gathering never occurred.

Wrong time, wrong place

The second portion of the principal’s evaluation process was a multiple-choice questionnaire that was given to the teachers at an emergency, afternoon faculty meeting.  Again there were no preliminary discussions or explanations.  The nearly 100 queries were vague, inappropriate and/or redundant but no teacher sought clarification.  Anyone who has ever tried to initiate a serious, significant discussion in such a setting understands the peril in expecting a great deal of candor or assistance.  Reinforcing the perceived disinterest by the district was the lack of any follow up.  The results of the responses were never given to the faculty.  At that point, at least from the perspective of the teachers, the evaluation of their principal had been completed. 

Improving evaluations for everyone

Great schools need both outstanding teachers and equally talented administrators.  If reformatted evaluations are the answer for teachers, might this same strategy be utilized for administrators as well?  Here are some suggestions from the teacher’s point of view.

Make the process transparent.  Mutual respect between the administrative and teaching staffs is critical.  The faculty should be aware of what standards and expectations are being applied to administrators.  The process should be clearly explained by the people who will be conducting it.  Volumes have been written about teacher evaluations; far too little has been revealed about the procedures in place for assessing the individuals who will be doing those appraisals. 

Solicit individual teacher input on a continuing basis.  Group discussions can be undermined by peer pressure or overly persuasive individuals.  Instead of convening a panel every few years, the people responsible for evaluating principals should be in regular contact with multiple staff members throughout the tenure of the school leader.  These conversations should be conducted with a significant and diverse portion of the staff.  It must be clearly indicated to those participating in these one-on-one conversations that they are confidential in order to ensure that honest opinions are being given.  I recently had a teacher confide to me that he had been less than truthful when asked about a principal’s performance and felt guilty when hearing workroom complaints a few weeks later.   Evaluations are only as good as the data they acquire.   Similar meetings should be held with parents, students, and auxiliary staff members.

And please stop the multiple-choice faculty meeting questionnaires!

Principals should also be judged on student progress.   Student performance is included in every new proposal for teachers.  In some cases it is even being published in major newspapers.   Yet there seems to be little attention at least in public to such results in the evaluation of principals.  To the contrary, when the math students at my school were making impressive gains on standardized tests there were multiple district investigations focusing on possible abuses.  When the scores dropped precipitously no similar analysis was forthcoming. 

There is little doubt that teacher evaluations are a key component to the improvement of our educational system.   Successful methods of analyzing the effectiveness of a classroom instructor will improve the best and weed out the weakest.  But if principals are to play a pivotal role in those assessments they must face the same level of scrutiny.  These instructional leaders must be the best a school district can provide.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:24 PM | Permalink

I received this message from a former colleague in an email this morning. "Did you see 60 minutes last night?  A school is paying teachers $125,000 per year and their student score are NOT going up!"

The title of the 60 minutes segment was "NYC charter school's $125,000 experiment: Does a non-unionized school that pays teachers a higher salary get better results?"

Background

Would teachers be willing to give up tenure and job security for a chance to earn a lot more money? "There's a school in New York City that's trying to prove just that. It's a bold new experiment in public education called "TEP," which stands for The Equity Project, a charter school that is publicly funded but privately run. It's offering its teachers $125,000 a year - more than double the national average." Zeke Vanderhoek is TEP's founder and principal.

"TEP aims to prove that attracting the best and brightest teachers and holding them accountable for results is the essential ingredient to a school's success. Could this school become a national model for the future of public education? That's the $125,000 question."

Demographics

TEP students are mostly African American and Hispanic, and almost all of them come from poor families. More than two-thirds of the students are reading below grade level when they get to TEP." There are currently 247 fifth and sixth graders and 15 teachers. That is a ratio of 16.5 students for every teacher.

Why pay teachers $125,000 a year?

"Because they're worth it, because teachers are the key, and if we can pay them this with the existing dollars, why aren't we doing it?" Vanderhoek replied.

"I don't think paying people more makes them a better teacher. You take a mediocre teacher, you double their salary, nothing's gonna change. So, if you wanna attract and retain talent, you have to pay for it. And that is ultimately how student achievement will be impacted," he added."

How are TEP teachers different?

According to the principal, "They're not. There are great teachers in almost every public school in the city. The difference is that they are often the exception, not the rule. So what we're trying to do is build a school where every teacher is a great teacher."

Student Engagement

Teachers must "produce some evidence that the students in their classrooms move from point A to point B," Vanderhoek explained. "In order for students to demonstrate that growth, they have to be into it. And so the teacher has to be able to engage students."

Closing the Achievement Gap

According to 60 Minutes, "the school's challenge is one that has bedeviled American educators for decades: how to get poor, minority, inner city kids to achieve at the same levels as kids from more affluent neighborhoods."

"The difference between a great teacher and a mediocre or poor teacher is several grade levels of achievement in a given year," Vanderhoek replied. "A school that focuses all of its energy and its resources on fantastic teaching can bridge the achievement gap."

Where does the money come from?

"There are no state-of-the-art facilities - classes take place in trailers. And the money that would go to pay for an assistant principal, reading specialist and other staff goes into teachers' salaries. But that means the teachers have to do those jobs as well."

Note: The report never indicated if the school requires students to apply, nor did the report indicate if the school served special education or ELL students.

Teacher Evaluation

Teachers are continuously evaluated by the principal and by each other.

Expectations of Teachers

According to one teacher, "The greatest benefit of working at TEP is that it's not okay to just be okay. And every lesson does need to be laser focused and super sharp so that you can get the best outcomes from it."

Students Say

"They actually care if we succeed and pass college."

"In my old school, I didn't really get that much attention and help with my class work, so I didn't do as well. Here, I'm getting As and Bs because the teachers stay on top of you and they actually help you when you need help," another said.

Teachers on Teaching

"You just have to believe in the kids. And I know that they can learn. And if there's a roadblock, if they're not getting it you know, look at me (teacher) first."

Tenure: If you have a pulse

Most charter schools like TEP are not unionized and don't offer teachers tenure.

"The idea that somebody could have a job for life no matter how they perform is not good for people in that job, much less for the students who have to suffer if that individual has gone downhill," Vanderhook said.

Asked if he thinks tenure should be abolished in general, Vanderhoek said, "Yes."

"If you have a pulse, you get tenure," former NYC Superintendent, Joel Klein said.

Can TEP be scaled up?

Klein says that traditional public schools can't follow the TEP model. Vanderhoek is able to make personnel decisions based on performance, but most schools can't because of tenure.

"It's virtually impossible to terminate an incompetent teacher. The process is so cumbersome that very few people will try. And so, as a result, we virtually get rid of no one for poor performance in the city," Klein said.

"In New York City more teachers have died while on the payroll than have been removed for cause. Over the past three years, out of 55,000 tenured teachers, only seven have been removed for poor performance."

Criteria for Evaluating Teachers

"Is the classroom managed in a way that supports instruction? Second, are the kids engaged? Are they on task? And third, is there evidence that students started at point A and grew to point B?" he explained.

Does More Mean Better?

Teachers indicated that it was not uncommon to put in 80 to 90 hours a week at TEP.

Disappointing Results

"When the fifth graders took the New York State math and reading exams, the results were disappointing. On average, other schools in the district scored better than TEP."

Note: There was no mention of the beginning and ending proficiency levels reached by the school.

It takes time!

"We don't have a magic wand. We're not gonna take kids who are scoring below grade level and bring them up in a year," Vanderhoek said.

"You're the head of the school, the principal. Why do you get to keep your job?" Vanderhoek was asked. "Ultimately to build an excellent organization is going to take time. And if that doesn't happen let's say four years from now, then I shouldn't keep my job," Vanderhoek said.

My Thoughts

- A school that has total control over hiring and firing and also controls which students attend and which students do not attend the school, in my mind, should show significant improvement. How can it not?

- Principal Vanderhoek is correct. It does take time to "build an excellent organization." The culture--attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and behaviors of the adults--must change and culture does not change in a year. TEP teachers were educated at the same colleges and universities as those teachers in other schools. So, why should they be any better or worse than any other teachers? The ultimate question is "Are the teachers better teachers for having taught in that school?" Are the students and teachers being set up for success? Does the culture of the school focus on student success or adult wants?

- There was a glaring omission from the schools criteria for teacher success--classroom management, student engagement, and improved test scores. Given the demographics of the school that consisted of large numbers of under-resourced students, the school staff should consider adding cross-content literacy instruction to their criteria for teacher success.

- The students are saying all the right things about their teachers. That combined with the fact that the teachers are working 80-90 hours a week and not getting results might indicate that they are not working on those things that raise student achievement and working longer will not produce better results. Activity does not equal success.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:27 PM | Permalink

This week I am blogging from the NASSP Conference in San Francisco.

"More is easy. Better is hard."

This morning I listened to Bill Daggett of ICLE talk about school improvement. Bill said something that I have heard him say many times before. In fact, I have used the same statement in many of my own presentations. What Bill said went something like this. "Teachers and principals in high-performing schools are not working harder than their counterparts in other schools, but they are working different."

I had to pause and recall our experience in moving from a good to a great school. I often describe the first three to five years as "dog years." Each year seemed like seven in terms of the stress and workload. However, the last four or five years were a lot different.

It seemed like we were working harder in the early years mainly because we were doing so much experimentation. We were trying to figure out a school wide approach to improving literacy and how to turn around our Algebra I performance. We were inventing things that no one else had done before. We were pioneers or "edunauts" as I called education improvers.

We were changing on a daily basis and that is stressful, but stressful doesn't mean working harder. It just seemed that way. Our teachers were already arriving early and leaving late and that never changed. From my perspective, I could not ask any of them to work harder.

We needed to get better and better is harder. What did change was that we were reaching "tipping points" and we started to see things change. We were actually making progress.

Our students were improving dramatically and it seemed like it happened in an instant. We would work and work and hope that we were doing the right thing. Then, all of a sudden, we would see improvement. We couldn't point to the exact moment when all the students were in class on time, or when all the teachers were teaching bell-to-bell, or when our reading performance and algebra achievement jumped, but it happened, and the positive changes began to gain momentum. Success became contagious.

I liken the school improvement process to an airplane taking off and eventually reaching cruising altitude. A lot of energy is expended in the takeoff and the climb to the desired altitude. However, at a point the plane reaches altitude and seems to ease off. Although the plane continues to expend energy, it seems to be taking less effort.

We never stopped working hard, but we were working in a different way, and different is hard, at least at first.

As we moved through the stages of change from forming, storming, norming on the way to performing, we were working just as hard but we were enjoying it more, and here is the key. We were making progress. We were making a difference with our students, and that made us even more determined. We simply refused to go back to the way it used to be, because the way it was was simply too much fun, and because we were having fun, everything seemed to be much easier.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:25 PM | Permalink

This week I am blogging from the NASSP Conference in San Francisco.

I used to say, "show me the data." However, it has gotten to the point that I no longer need to look at a school's data to know that a school is thriving or struggling. I can simply listen to what the staff of the school talks about. High-performing schools talk about students and how they are meeting their needs. Struggling schools talk about adult wants and adult needs.

Student-Focused

After attending three School Showcase presentations this morning it became crystal clear to me that schools serving large numbers under-resourced students must have a student-focused obsession, and that obsession must relate to the specific needs of the population that the school serves.

The three schools all served under-resourced students. However, the three high schools varied in size, had very different demographics, and were located in states with very different economics and education policies. The context in which these schools operated was about as different as they could possibly be.

Although they were very different in appearance, the three schools had a lot in common. They each had a laser-like focus on student success that bordered on an obsession. In fact, these three schools were so obsessed with student success that they were willing to overcome any obstacle that got in their way.

Literacy: Brockton High School (MA) is a large (4,350) urban high school that has focused on raising the literacy--reading, writing, thinking, discussing--levels of ALL students, particularly its large ELL population. Principal, Susan Szachowicz, and a "handful of fellow teachers" organized a school wide campaign that brought reading and writing lessons into every class in all subjects, including gym. According to a New York Times article, Brockton's literacy-for-all success has defied the "small is better orthodoxy" proving that any school can beat the odds and raise student performance.

Attendance: The audience turned to each other with looks of disbelief when the staff of Arroyo High School (CA) posted their three-year attendance figures. Arroyo's average daily attendance was well over 96%. For a large, high-poverty, high minority, urban high school, 96% is phenomenal. However, I could see the enthusiasm abate as the staff spent about twenty minutes describing all the initiatives the school used to improve attendance. As I have emphasized over and over again, improving student attendance is all about hard work and will power, and the Arroyo staff have plenty of both. Arroyo's success formula is simple. Get the students to attend school every day and make sure that the students succeed.

Course Failure: The presentation began with a simple but very effective slide that pointed out that, over a three-year period, Barberton (OH) High School had reduced course failures from over 2,500 to 350. The staff at Barberton must have read Bob Balfanz's dropout research that points out that course failure is one of the best indicators of dropping out of school. Admittedly, a school could reduce failures by simply lowering standards. This was not the case at Barberton, where the focus was clear and no obstacle too big to overcome. The staff used small learning communities, flexible scheduling, a unique master schedule, student-led conferences, and an advisory program among other strategies to significantly improve student performance.

The Bottom Line

These three schools demonstrate that there are no quick fixes. Even though these schools shared a student-focused obsession it took years of hard work, dedication, determination, and sheer will power to realize success. However, their obvious pride and sense of accomplishment make it obvious that the effort was all worth it.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:30 PM | Permalink

"Truancy is a nationwide epidemic and the old tools don't work."--Travis Knox, President of AIM Truancy Solutions

Desperate to improve student attendance, schools are now using GPS devices to track truant students. According to a recent report schools in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Kentucky, Kansas and California "have resorted to fitting students with hand-held GPS devices the size of a cellphone." Parents must voluntarily agree to have their child receive a phone call each morning reminding them to go to school on time. In addition, the student is required to enter a code to track their location five times each day.

Early reactions indicate that the program is having a positive effect. With a few exceptions parents agreed to allow their child to participate.

Miss school and you miss out. That was the message that we continually conveyed to our students. Turning around a low-performing school or improving the performance of under-resourced students often means improving student attendance and reducing truancy.

When we began our effort years ago, our average student missed over nineteen days of school each year. We knew that, unless we could improve attendance, we would have little chance of raising student performance.

There is no simple solution to improving attendance. It takes a lot of hard work. Improving attendance can only be done one student at a time and it means doing everything possible to encourage students to attend regularly.

Wake-up calls mean we care

Years ago our school began using a hand-me-down roto-dialer to make daily wake-up calls to our most frequently absent students. Like those in the aforementioned pilot programs, we found little parent resistance. In fact, we had parents of students with good attendance request that their child be put on the call list, because they left early for work and they wanted to make certain that their child arrived at school on time.

Shortly after the program began, a student walked up to me and said, "At first, I didn't like getting the calls, but I am a senior and this is the first time that I felt like the school actually wanted me to be here every day.

Surveys of school dropouts cite the most frequently given reason for dropping out was that no one at the school cared if they attended.

Persistence Pays Off

Wake-up calls were only one part of our efforts to improve student attendance. We learned that our students would regularly attend a safe, orderly, clean, and inviting school, particularly if the students felt that the teachers sincerely wanted them to succeed.

We also learned that the best way to change student behavior was to change our own behavior. Doing the same things the same way would not make the school more inviting. We had to do a lot of soul-searching. We had to change our expectations, and make some painful changes in our grading and homework policies.

Everyone in the school played a key part. Through the tireless efforts of the staff we were able to reduce the annual absence rate from nineteen days per student to less than eight days per student.

Schools Need Support

The challenges faced by schools in their attempt to encourage regular student attendance clearly points out the flaws in our accountability system. Schools, teachers, and principals are held personally accountable for student performance when they have no influence or control over attendance laws or their enforcement. In far too many instances, enforcement of attendance laws is non-existent. Students literally show up when they feel like it.

In the same way, schools in many states rely totally on the good will of their students to put forth their best effort on state assessments because their is absolutely no consequence for students who do poorly. Students can literally "Christmas-tree" a state assessment and nothing happens.

The careers of teachers and administrators as well as the reputation of the school and the school district depended on the good will of the students. If they don't feel like taking the test, there is no consequence.

From experience I have learned that unless everyone—students, teachers, administrators, schools, and school districts-- is held accountable for student performance, there is not true accountability. Unless everyone is working together toward a common goal, we have no accountability system. Instead, we have a system that scapegoats those who work in schools.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 07:37 PM | Permalink

Here are the latest facts on the implementation of the School Improvement Grants (SIG):

• 2,138 - schools identified by states as eligible for SIG funding
• 833 - schools awarded funds
• 470 - high schools receiving SIG funds
• 45 - percentage of funds going to high schools
• 1/3 - high schools identified by states due to low graduation rates
• 1/3 - high schools identified by states due to low student achievement
• 23 - percentage of funds going to middle schools
• 36 - percentage of high schools funded who are "dropout factories"
• 50 - percent of SIG schools designated as "Central City"
• 25 - percent of SIG schools designated as rural
• 72 - percent of schools that chose the "Transformation Model"
• States who used 100% of SIG funds for high schools - AK, DE, FL, IL
• States who used more than 80% of SIG funds for high schools - MT, NC, NY, OR, TX
• States who used 20% or less of SIG funds for high schools - IA, MD, MA, ND, NV, SD, UT, VT, VA, WA, WV

Posted by Mel Riddile at 02:10 PM | Permalink

According to Dean Fixen, co-director of the National Implementation Network, the federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program is doomed to fail. SIG won't fail because the program is a bad idea. SIG will fail because the improvements will never be properly implemented. Even though the "intentions are great, the ultimate execution falls flat."

According to Fixen, schools have a 95 percent chance of failure when they use the standard school improvement approach:

1. Attempt too many initiatives.

2. Attempt to do too many things in too short a period of time.

3. Choose the latest popular strategies, even if those strategies have nothing to do with the actual needs of the students.

3. Provide one-shot training.

4. Pay little attention to "on-the-spot practice during training."

5. Fail to provide adequate targeted, follow-up coaching.

Fixen goes on to explain that "schools feel pressured to quickly hire more staff and pile on new evidence-based interventions. According to the data on implementation, those are pretty much the wrong things to do. It’s our tendency to add more things in hopes that we’ll find the right combination that will lead to a better outcome.”

A friend of mine recently lamented, "I told them (school) to keep it simple, but they keep adding more things." "Positive change is more likely in a turnaround school when you simplify the number of initiatives you take on and do a bang-up job implementing them, Fixsen said. A school reform grant program that emphasizes innovation without adequate implementation support is like attempting to drive a car without any gasoline in it, Fixsen added."

What or How?

In our obsession with the search for quick fixes and magic bullets we spend virtually all of our time deciding on the "what" and very little time on the "how" of school improvement. Ironically, we pay little or no attention to what has been identified as the major weakness of school reform over the past fifty years--implementation.

Fixsen points out that "The education field continues to reinvent a misshapen wheel, and the problem is not a lack of well-meaning, competent educators or best practices, he said. Rather, it’s that too few educators and policymakers know the basics of effective implementation." We don't need more research and more ideas we need to do a better job of implementing what we already have.

It's not just schools

Education is not the only field with implementation problems. Implementation "is the huge missing link in education and all of human services," Fixsen said. "We are as a human race just finding this stuff out. These are global issues."

Recommendations for School Leaders:

1. Choose a small number of major initiatives. I prefer two or three. The operative word here is "major." A school may have a number of strategies and practices supporting a major initiative. For example, a school wide literacy initiative may include a literacy council, diagnostic assessments, and cross-curricular vocabulary instruction.

2. Work with the "willing." Involve those staff members who have already have skills or an interest in a specific initiative. Let them test out possible approaches.

3. Grow leaders - Unless a school wide initiative has visible teacher leadership, it will probably fail.

4. Think both short-term and long-term. Big changes usually mean a shift in the school culture and will probably take years (3-5) to become permanent. However, it is important to realize some quick-wins early in the process. Vocabulary instruction may be a way to help students in the short-run, while building the collective capacity of the entire staff to integrate literacy into daily instruction may be the long-term approach.

5. Professional development should be consistent, ongoing, and job-imbedded. Think in terms of a multi-year training schedule. Build teacher participation and peer observation into your professional development plan.

6. Constantly monitor and measure everything you do to ensure fidelity of implementation--are we doing what we say we are doing and are we doing it the right way?

7. Insist upon fidelity. Refuse to move on to the next stage until you have successfully implemented the current strategies.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:10 PM | Permalink

New research may help school leaders with two important challenges that they face on a daily basis. First, in these tight budget times with fewer teachers, larger classes, and fewer resources, how do we improve student performance? How do we do more with less? What are some no-cost ways that we can improve our schools?

Second, given the complexity of course content, particularly in high schools, how do we enhance our skills as instructional leaders? How do we give meaningful feedback to teachers that will enhance their instruction even though we may have little or no background knowledge regarding the content of the course? For example, how do we give feedback to a world language teacher when we have never studied the language and cannot understand a single word they said in the lesson?

A recent study summarized in Science magazine and reported in a New York Times article titled To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test may be a key to unlocking some keys to the teaching and learning process. However, to find those gems, school leaders need to read between the lines.

Practicing Retrieval

When I read the abstract, my first thought was that this study would serve to support and defend the current obsession with standardized testing. The study concludes "practicing retrieval produces greater gains in meaningful learning than elaborative studying." In other words, the simple act of taking a test may improve learning better than any other studying technique including note taking and "concept mapping."

Furthermore, the researchers concluded that testing might enhance learning far beyond the recall of simple facts. They report "retrieval practice is an effective tool to promote conceptual learning about science."

The Times article went on to say, "The research, published online Thursday in the journal Science, found that students who read a passage, then took a test asking them to recall what they had read, retained about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods. One of those methods — repeatedly studying the material — is familiar to legions of students who cram before exams. The other — having students draw detailed diagrams documenting what they are learning — is prized by many teachers because it forces students to make connections among facts."

Counterintuitive?

Students who used intense review, also known as "cramming" for a test, as well as other popular methods to aid recall such as "concept mapping" or "mind-mapping" believed that they would have better recall of the content. On the other hand, those who took a test after reading a passage believed that they would remember less. In reality, the reverse was true. Ironically, those who took the test and believed that they had learned less actually learned significantly more than their hard studying counterparts.

The real proof of learning

The only evidence of learning is remembering. Notice that I didn't say "memorizing." Remembering is the key. In this case it is the practice of remembering (retrieval) that improves learning. Think about it, if a student cannot remember the essential concepts of the lesson, did the student really learn it?

“I think that learning is all about retrieving, all about reconstructing our knowledge,” said the lead author, Jeffrey Karpicke, an assistant professor of psychology at Purdue University. “I think that we’re tapping into something fundamental about how the mind works when we talk about retrieval.” The Times reported that "several cognitive scientists and education experts said the results were striking.

The researchers divided the students into four groups. One group simply read the content. The second group read and studied the text in four five-minute bursts. The third group used a widely popular strategy known as "concept mapping." The fourth group read the passage, wrote a free-form essay, reread the passage and then took another practice test.

A week later the students were re-assessed and "the students in the testing group did much better than the "concept mappers." They even did better when they were evaluated, not with a short-answer test, but with a test requiring them to draw a concept map from memory."

The experts were surprised by the results of the study. They cannot explain why retrieval testing helps. "The Purdue study supports findings of a recent spate of research showing learning benefits from testing, including benefits when students get questions wrong. But by comparing testing with other methods, the study goes further."

This is a Big Deal

Cognitive psychologist, Dan Willingham indicates “It really bumps it up a level of importance by contrasting it with concept mapping, which many educators think of as sort of the gold standard. Although “it’s not totally obvious that this is shovel-ready — put it in the classroom and it’s good to go — for educators this ought to be a big deal.”

It Throws Down the Gauntlet

Howard Gardner, an education professor at Harvard who advocates constructivism — the idea that children should discover their own approach to learning, emphasizing reasoning over memorization — said in an e-mail to the Times that the results “throw down the gauntlet to those progressive educators, myself included.” Educators who embrace seemingly more active approaches, like concept mapping,” he continued, “are challenged to devise outcome measures that can demonstrate the superiority of such constructivist approaches.”

More Testing?

After reading between the lines, my initial reactions to this article turned out to be unfounded. This study does not promote or denounce standardized testing. Nor does the study promote memorization or rote learning. This study simply supports quality classroom instruction, but how?

Look 4s for School Leaders

Closure and Learning - The focus of instruction is not what teacher teaches but what the students learn. The close of every lesson should focus on what the learner has learned not what the teacher has taught. The question is how does the teacher know that the students have learned and mastered the lesson unless there is some type of formative assessment--quiz, test, or activity.

Remembering - The only evidence of learning is remembering. When observing a lesson ask yourself how does the teacher know that students will remember what they just learned?

Checks for Understanding - Teachers should pause frequently during a lesson to check for understanding. How frequently? As a rule of thumb, teachers should check students understanding approximately every fifteen minutes, which approximates the attention span of the average adolescent. According to the Science study, one of the most effective checks for understanding is the quiz used as a formative assessment. Teachers can pause and ask students to write a summary or take a brief quiz on what they just learned. Immediately re-teaching a concept to a classmate may also be used to test practice retrieval.

Timing is critical. When it comes to recall, tomorrow is too late. Teachers need to check for student understanding before students leave the classroom each day.

Feedback - "Feedback is the breakfast of champions." Unless students practice recall (retrieval) and get immediate feedback they will not remember.

Defined Instructional Practices - Some students absolutely need a highly structured classroom room environment characterized by identifiable instructional practices, smaller units of instruction, more frequent assessments, coupled with frequent and immediate feedback. However, students who can function equally as well in low or highly structured classrooms are not penalized in any way by the use of structure. In other words, when in doubt, use a more structured approach.

Formative Assessments - How often should students be assessed? How frequently students are assessed or asked to practice retrieval depends on their familiarity with the content and the student's level of mastery. When students are introduced to new content or when they are struggling with a particular concept, they should be assessed more frequently. For example, the skills of proficient and advanced readers need only be assessed annually, while students reading at the basic level or below basic need to be assessed regularly. Frequent assessments mean more feedback. A quiz or summary essay at the close of a lesson will do more for student recall than extensive homework assignments.

Mapping - Instructional strategies like "concept mapping" are effective, but they work better if they are used as part of "practice retrieval." The act of creating a "concept map" in and of itself does not improve learning unless the student makes use of the map as a part of the "practice retrieval" process. Teachers should show students how to use the concept maps to review for a test and not assume that the students know how to do so.

What this study really says to school leaders

This study emphasizes the critical importance that school wide defined instructional practices, which include frequent checks for understanding, play in the learning process. When the teacher asks students to reflect on the lesson by practicing retrieval and the students receive immediate feedback, learning improves by as much as 50%.

Next: Checks for Understanding

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:50 AM | Permalink

According to a report by Catherine Gewertz of Education Week, a study released today by the Center on Education Policy, indicates that testing at the high school level will increase.

• More states are using assessments as barriers to graduation and requiring other exams that are not linked to graduation. Twenty-eight states now have such requirements, up from 26 in the 2009 report.
• Three quarters of the nation’s students now attend schools in states that give exit exams.
• Twenty-three states currently give end-of-course tests. Only seven use them as exit exams, but another 10 plan to begin doing so.
• States increasingly are requiring students to take a college-entrance exam—the ACT or SAT—or a workplace-readiness test such as WorkKeys.
• More states also are requiring or considering some form of portfolio assessment.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 05:33 AM | Permalink

Recently, Jay Mathews of the Washington Post, in preparation for an article on the accuracy of school incident reports, asked me to respond to the following question: "Do security incident reports adequately describe the climate of a school?" Here is my complete response.

The answer is simple. No single data point can accurately depict student performance nor can incident reports describe the climate or culture of a school. Experience has taught me that the only way to truly assess the climate of a school is to spend time in the school and to use that time to observe as well as to gather data from multiple sources.

Ask the teachers!

What teachers say is a much better indicator of school climate than incident reports. I admit that I pay close attention to reports from teachers, which identify specific issues and incidents. Experience has taught me that teachers are generally reluctant to make such reports, but when they do, it is usually a sign of a much larger problem.

What affects consistency in reporting?

I have found discipline reports to often be inconsistent within a school and wildly inconsistent among a large number of schools across a district. Schools in which several administrators deal with student discipline could have a wide variation in how some incidents are reported.

The more serious the incident, the more consistent the reporting. Many schools and school systems have zero tolerance policies for drugs, weapons, and gang-related behaviors. The more clearly defined the behaviors, the more consistent the reporting within a school.

NCLB has dramatically improved the consistency of reporting. States like Virginia developed reporting systems that met federal requirements and districts aligned their reporting to match state systems.

Another factor that greatly impacts the consistency of reporting relates to the police presence in a school. In schools with a full-time school resource officer, the reporting will be more consistent.

Pressure to avoid negative labels

We know that schools are under tremendous pressure to raise test scores. However, that pressure pales in comparison to the need avoid the stigma of being labeled a "persistently dangerous" school. Parents will absolutely refuse to send their child to a dangerous school and school leaders know it.

School Discipline and Grey Areas

Like most school issues, there are a number of grey areas, and that is particularly true when reporting student behavior. For example, one student brings a knife to school to protect him, but since the blade is shorter than that specified in the code, the knife is not considered a weapon. Another student goes on a camping trip and forgets that he left his knife in his backpack. However, because the knife is of a specified length, it is considered a weapon.

Generally speaking, the tendency is to downplay incidents. In fact , I cannot imagine a case in which a school would want to overstate the number of serious incidents. Truth be told, some principals pressure school resource officers to downgrade some incidents. Likewise, some police officers don't want to deal with juveniles and the juvenile court system and they want to downgrade incidents.

Data can be misleading

In the short run, a school can look better when less is done. Principals can reduce the number of incidence by not showing up or by simply doing nothing. Schools that take a less aggressive stand could look better on paper than they actually are in real life. On the other hand, schools that actively and consistently address discipline issues could, in the short run, have a high number of incidents. In that case, the school could look worse on paper than it actually is.

The Bottom Line

School culture is a product of the values, beliefs, mindsets, and behaviors of the entire school community. Just as no school and no student can or should be judged on the basis of a single data point, neither can the number of incidents portray the culture or climate of a school. When it comes to reporting student behavior, I would trust first-hand experience and the word of the teachers and students rather than a state or district report that simply lists the number of incidents.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:01 PM | Permalink

"There are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics."--Mark Twain

The release of the 2009 PISA results this past week has created quite a stir and has provided ample fodder for public school bashers and doomsayers who further their own philosophical and profit-motivated agendas by painting all public schools as failing. For whatever reason, these so-called experts, many of whom have had little or no actual exposure to public schools, refuse to paint an accurate picture of the state of education.

Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, should be providing the nation with a proper vision and focus for public education. He knows our challenges all too well. He confirmed that he gets it when he recently wrote me saying, "We must build a culture nationally where great educators ... choose to work with children and communities who need the most help." I believe his message is sincere and heartfelt and it is spot on. However, overstating a problem in order to increase the sense of urgency around school improvement is just as bad as understating the problem.

This week, Duncan had a golden opportunity to use the PISA results to provide focus for our education efforts and to point us in the right direction. Instead, he dug himself deeper into the pseudo-reformers' hole--more charter schools, more reliance on competition and free-market strategies, more testing, more use of test scores to evaluate teachers, more firing of principals and teachers, more closing of low-scoring schools--when he said, "the PISA scores released this past Tuesday were "a massive wake-up call," because the scores show American students holding relatively steady in the middle of the pack of the developed nations taking the international exam.

There is, however, someone who recognizes that the data is being misinterpreted.  NEAToday published remarks from National Association of Secondary School Principals Executive Director, Dr. Gerald N. Tirozzi, that have taken "a closer look at how the U.S. reading scores on PISA compared with the rest of the world’s, overlaying it with the statistics on how many of the tested students are in the government’s free and reduced lunch program for students below the poverty line." Tirozzi pointed out, “Once again, we’re reminded that students in poverty require intensive supports to break past a condition that formal schooling alone cannot overcome.” Tirozzi demonstrates the correlation between socio-economic status and reading by presenting the PISA scores in terms of individual American schools and poverty.  While the overall PISA rankings ignore such differences in the tested schools, when groupings based on the rate of free and reduced lunch are created, a direct relationship is established.

With strong evidence that increased poverty results in lower PISA scores the next question to be asked is what are the poverty rates of the countries being tested?  (Listed below are the countries that were tested by PISA along with available poverty rates. Some nations like Korea do not report poverty rates.)

Leveling the playing field

A more accurate assessment of the performance of U.S. students would be obtained by comparing the scores of American schools with comparable poverty rates to those of other countries.

Schools in the United States with less than a 10% poverty rate had a PISA score of 551.  When compared to the ten countries with similar poverty numbers, that score ranked first. 

In the next category (10-24.9%) the U.S. average of 527 placed first out of the ten comparable nations. 

For the remaining U.S. schools, their poverty rates over 25% far exceed any other country tested.  However, when the U.S. average of 502 for poverty rates between 25-49.9% is compared with other countries it is still in the upper half of the scores.

Mathematically Speaking

The results of the latest PISA testing should raise serious concerns.  However, the overall ranking of 14th in reading is not the reason to be concerned. The problem is not as much with our educational system as it is with our high poverty rates. The real crisis is the level of poverty in too many of our schools and the relationship between poverty and student achievement. Our lowest achieving schools are the most under-resourced schools with the highest number of disadvantaged students. We cannot treat these schools in the same way that we would schools in more advantaged neighborhoods or we will continue to get the same results. The PISA results point out that the U.S. is not alone in facing the challenge of raising the performance of disadvantaged students.

Additional observations from PISA results:

·      Shanghai, China topped the list with 556 but is not included in this analysis because Shanghai is a city not a country and because only 35% of Chinese students ever enter high school and because "when you spend all your time preparing for tests, and when students are selected based on their test-taking abilities, you get outstanding test scores."

·      Of all the nations participating in the PISA assessment, the U.S. has, by far, the largest number of students living in poverty--21.7%. The next closest nations in terms of poverty levels are the United Kingdom and New Zealand have poverty rates that are 75% of ours.

·      U.S. students in schools with 10% or less poverty are number one country in the world.

·      U.S. students in schools with 10-24.9% poverty are third behind Korea, and Finland.

·      U.S. students in schools with 25-50% poverty are tenth in the world.

·      U.S. students in schools with greater than 50% poverty are near the bottom.

·      There were other surprises. Germany with less than half our poverty, scored below the U.S. as did France with less than a third our poverty and Sweden with a low 3.6% poverty rate.

·      Having recently listened to Sir Michael Barber talk about the amazing progress of the reforms in the United Kingdom, I was absolutely shocked to see that the UK, with 25% less poverty, scored below the U.S. average.

The Real Meaning of PISA: It's Poverty Not Stupid

If the so-called experts would have honestly and responsibly reported the PISA results, we might now be on the road to responsible school improvement instead continuing down the road of "reform de jour."

President Bill Clinton is famous for his campaign slogan, "It's the economy stupid!" When it comes to student achievement and school improvement, it's poverty not stupid! Researchers report that perhaps the only true linear relationship in the social sciences is the relationship between poverty and student performance. While there is no relationship between poverty and ability, the relationship between poverty and achievement is almost foolproof. To deny that poverty is a factor to be overcome as opposed to an excuse is to deny the reality that all educators, human services workers, law enforcement officers, medical professionals and religious clergy know and have known for years.

PISA reports average scores. The problem is that the U.S. is not average. While the U.S. is the top country in global competitiveness, we also have the highest percentage of students living in poverty and, regretfully, poverty impacts test scores.

To Secretary Duncan, poverty is not an issue that educators must address. At least he won't admit it in public. Apparently, he wants to take away all the excuses from teachers and principals. When I met with Duncan, I asked him if he had read the book or seen the movie, Blind Side. He indicated that he had and that he had enjoyed it very much. I reminded him of the pride and sense of accomplishment felt by the teachers in the private school attended by Michael Oher. In their minds, they had performed a miracle. I pointed out that, in high-poverty schools, a Michael Oher is the average student. In schools like ours we have hundreds of students like Michael Oher who depend on our school for everything including food, clothing, and emotional support.

The Bottom Line

School improvement is not an event. It is an ongoing process that has no end. As a principal, parents and community members would repeatedly ask me, "When can we stop our comprehensive school-wide literacy initiative? I would answer, "We will stop emphasizing reading, writing, thinking and speaking when our parents repeatedly complain that their children are reading too fast with comprehension that is too high and when our students' writing skills are so superior that they are regularly winning Pulitzers and other literary awards." Smiles would erupt throughout the audience. They got it. They understood that literacy skills can always be improved and so can our schools.

There are three compelling reasons why we must improve our schools:

1. We have a moral and ethical obligation to provide every student with the best education, the kind of education that we would want for our own children.
2. In a knowledge economy, the country with the best-educated populace will have the highest standard of living.
3. Every dropout as well as every graduate who is not prepared for at least some post-secondary education and training is and will continue to be an economic and social burden on their local community and on this nation for their entire life.

The challenge of ensuring that each and every student is a life-long learner prepared to contribute in a global community is daunting enough. We don't need more hyperbole, particularly from those education insiders who should know better. For those of us who are deeply committed to improving the performance of every student, this rhetoric is counterproductive because it seriously erodes our ability to hire teachers, obtain resources, and gain the confidence and support of our communities.

We count on our leaders to provide focus and direction. Sadly, our education leaders don't trust us enough to tell us the truth. The problem is that we will never solve a problem that our leaders refuse to admit even exists. The comparison of PISA scores by poverty clearly identifies our strengths and challenges as a nation. Our schools with less than 50% poverty) are some of the best in the world. Our extremely high-poverty schools, with over 50% poverty, are among the poorest performing internationally.

Instead of labeling all schools as failing, we must find a way to raise the performance of our students in under-resourced schools. Instead of looking to low-poverty countries like Finland for direction, we should be looking to take what we already know about educating students in high-performing, high-poverty schools like our Breakthrough Schools and scaling up their successes across the nation. We continually look for gold in other countries when, all along, we are sitting on Acres of Diamonds.

Truthfully, you and I know all too well that Secretary Duncan, who led schools in Chicago, is aware of the relationship between poverty and student achievement, but he doesn't trust us enough to tell us the truth. He is afraid that we will use poverty as an excuse and that we will forget about our disadvantaged students. Ironically, by not acknowledging poverty as a challenge to be overcome, Duncan is forgetting about our disadvantaged students. Duncan needs to deliver the message that all our students deserve not only access to an education, but access to an excellent education. He needs to repeatedly remind us that, when it comes to school improvement, it's poverty not stupid.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When we were told that states had to ask for grant money just so they could hire consultants to fill out Race To the Top (RTT) applications, we had to know that the costs of administering and reporting would be high. However, no one guessed just how high those costs would actually be. Here are two examples:

• A school district in Geauga County (OH) calculated it would have gotten $100,000 but needed to spend $212,000 on the needed changes.
• In Rockville Centre Union Free School District on Long Island, Superintendent William Johnson estimates it would get less than $10 per student from the Race to the Top grant that New York state won, but would need to spend $13 to $15 per student for a new teacher evaluation system.

Read the full report to get the whole picture.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:58 AM | Permalink

I hesitate to address the sensitive topic of international comparisons with school leaders who have to face the reality of leading schools on a day-to-day basis. However, I wasn't subjected to the kind of attacks on public schools, teachers, and principals that we have experienced of the past year. In the past, when NAEP or PISA results were released, we simply shrugged our shoulders and moved on. Today, however, our teachers and community expect us to respond when asked. In fact, our silence on this matter could be deafening.

That is why I put together some talking points for school leaders on the 2009 PISA results. I have drawn from a number of sources including the Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD), which coordinates the international assessments and the Washington Post.

Background

• Begun in 2000, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a system of international assessments that focuses on 15-year-olds' capabilities in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy.
• PISA is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries. 38 OECD nations and 28 partner nations participated in the assessment.
• PISA includes measures of general or cross-curricular competencies such as problem solving.
• PISA emphasizes functional skills that students have acquired as they near the end of compulsory schooling.
• The U.S. sample for the latest results includes both public and private schools, with 165 schools and 5,233 students participating in all. Schools are randomly selected and 15-year-old students within those schools are randomly selected.

2009 Results

• Reading: The U.S. average score in reading (500) was not measurably different than other OECD countries. U.S. female students scored higher than male students.
• U.S. 15-year-olds had an average score of 500 on the combined reading literacy scale, not measurably different from the OECD average score of 493. Among the 33 other OECD countries, 6 countries had higher average scores than the United States, 13 had lower average scores, and 14 had average scores not measurably different from the U.S. average. Among the 64 other OECD countries, non-OECD countries and other education systems, 9 had higher average scores than the United States, 39 had lower average scores, and 16 had average scores not measurably different from the U.S. average. 

• Math: U.S. average score in math was lower than the OECD average. Male students, in general, scored higher than female students. Since 2006, U.S. has caught up with 9 countries.
• U.S. 15-year-olds had an average score of 487 on the mathematics literacy scale, which was lower than the OECD average score of 496. Among the 33 other OECD countries, 17 countries had higher average scores than the United States, 5 had lower average scores, and 11 had average scores not measurably different from the U.S. average. Among the 64 other OECD countries, non-OECD countries, and other education systems, 23 had higher average scores than the United States, 29 had lower average scores, and 12 had average scores not measurably different from the U.S. average score. 

• Science: 12 other OECD countries had higher average scores than the United States.
• On the science literacy scale, the average score of U.S. students (502) was not measurably different from the OECD average (501). Among the 33 other OECD countries, 12 had higher average scores than the United States, 9 had lower average scores, and 12 had average scores that were not measurably different. Among the 64 other OECD countries, non-OECD countries, and other education systems, 18 had higher average scores, 33 had lower average scores, and 13 had average scores that were not measurably different from the U.S. average score.
• Male students scored higher than female students. Overall score was higher than 2006, and the gains in science exceeded those for math.
• The US is one of three nations that give more money to highly advantaged schools than to disadvantaged schools.
• Overall, private schools do better on PISA...until you account for SES.
• There are number of high performing economically disadvantaged schools in the US: "success is possible against all odds."

U.S. Strengths and Weaknesses

• U.S. students showed the best relative performance in answering questions that judged students’ ability to reflect and evaluate information. On that measure, the United States ranked seventh out of the 34 OECD nations.
• The weakest area for U.S. achievement was in accessing and retrieving information, for which students tied for 19th place with France.

Behind the Facts

• The PISA rankings are determined by nations’ average scores. "Some researchers have suggested, however, that average score comparisons are not useful: even presuming that the tests have some meaning for future accomplishment, average students are not likely to be the leaders in fields of mathematics and science."
• In the last administration of PISA, the United States has 25% of all high-scoring students in the world. Among nations with high average scores, Japan accounted for 13% of the highest scorers, Korea 5%, Taipei 3%, Finland 1%, and Hong Kong 1%.
• The fact that one of four high-scoring students came from the United States and the remaining high-scores came from the other 58 countries participating "suggests that many American schools are actually doing very well indeed."
• "Well-resourced schools serving wealthy neighborhoods are showing excellent results. Poorly resourced schools serving low-income communities of color do far worse."
• The U.S. had many more students scoring at the lowest levels; these kids likely can’t compete for the good jobs in the country."
• "Americans in low-poverty schools look very good, even in mathematics. They would be ranked third in the 4th grade (among 36 nations) 6th in the 8th grade (among 47 nations). This is important because while other developed nations have poor children, the U. S. has a much higher proportion and a much weaker safety net. When UNICEF studied poverty in 22 wealthy nations, the U. S. ranked 21st."
• The highest scoring countries have less diversity and less poverty.

PISA confirms what we already know. The U.S. is quite capable of producing top performing students in well-resourced schools serving middle class neighborhoods. Under-resourced schools in poor neighborhoods do not fare as well.

Resources:

OECD

Are today’s students prepared for the knowledge economy of the 21st century?

PISA: Who made the grade? (OECD)

Washington Post

Do international test comparisons make sense?

Hysteria over PISA misses the point

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:54 AM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

Previously, Mel Riddile has asked whether there is a schism within high school faculties as a result of the continual emphasis on standardized testing.   He quotes a teacher who believes there is such a problem—the core teachers feel they are receiving an unfair level of scrutiny while the non-core believe they are being ignored. 

A perfect storm of discontent  

There is little doubt that the public spotlight is squarely on a school’s standardized test scores and the teachers whose students produce them.  Schools are accredited, ranked, and publically evaluated based on the results of a few tests in a limited number of subjects.  Virtually every conversation concerning teacher evaluation begins, and too often ends, with a desire to use student test scores as a major component. With the misguided encouragement of educational leaders some newspapers have ranked teachers based on their students’ results. Virtually every discussion of merit pay includes student scores as a primary consideration.

It is not surprising that this fixation on certain numbers has split teaching staffs into two separate camps.  The pressure on those who are responsible for tested classes is immense and often oppressive.  As it ratchets up during the year, these teachers become increasingly resentful of their colleagues who do not have to deal with similar issues.  Intensifying these sentiments is the irony that so much attention is being given to a group that represents less than one third of a typical high school staff.

These ingredients result in the great disconnect within the teaching community.  If test results are a must in evaluation and merit pay, what does that say about those who do not produce such scores?  Many teachers are forced to ask some tough questions.  Do policymakers mistakenly believe that all educators produce such scores?   Or worse, do they feel that creating an evaluation for those teachers is not a critical concern?  Likewise, should they be excluded from merit pay consideration?  Regardless of the reasons, the message they hear is clear—if you do not create standardized test data within your classroom, you are relegated to a lesser status.

This educational caste system gets worse.  It turns out that not all standardized tests scores are equal.  NCLB focuses on only the results of math and English exams.  The exclusion of science and social studies from this mandate places the teachers of those subjects in a difficult position. While they have the same curriculum pressures as math and English colleagues, their work is clearly not considered as important. The state of Virginia has affirmed this stance.  While a score of 400 on the end-of-course exams is required for a “pass”, the state established a special policy for students in the two non-NCLB curricula—if a student takes the exam twice and scores at least 375 on one of the attempts, they are eligible for a “locally verified credit”.  The teacher and school are still charged with a failing score but a student who has mastered less than 35% of the material is declared successful. 

No cures but some ways to help

While it is impossible for any school to totally alter the educational culture, there are steps that can be taken to lessen the chasm between core and non-core teachers.  As Dr. Riddile noted in his post, the implementation of a literacy program at his school was woven into the entire curriculum.  This approach was the result of both necessity and design.  In order to be successful, this initiative needed to be incorporated into all subjects rather than implemented by the English department alone.  By asking every discipline to embed literacy into all of their classroom activities, staff members had an equal stake in a critically important program.  Every meeting, email or memo in regards to this program was appropriate for the entire staff.

The school took a number of additional steps to mitigate this problem.  The goal of each of these concepts was simple—demonstrate to all teachers that every class was important.  These included:

The end of year testing schedule did not negatively impact non-tested classes. Many schools adopted testing schedules that would involve massive disruptions to all classes for an extended period of time.  Considering that more than two thirds of the classes in our building did not have end-of-course exams such an approach was deemed to be unacceptable.  Our test schedule was designed to ensure that every class would meet during the entire testing window.  The length of the periods would be altered to allow appropriate time for the exams but no class was lost.  Also since testing was done within the period the subject was taught, no students were pulled from other rooms to test. 

Discussions of SOL (state assessment) issues were limited to staff members who were directly affected.  At department chair meetings, the core department chairs would meet as a group after the conclusion of the topics pertaining to all subjects.  Likewise, faculty meetings were focused on topics of general interest.

Another possible solution

Authentic success in almost any endeavor is the result of an outstanding team effort.  Improvement in standardized test score is no exception.  Why not acknowledge this achievement as a school-wide effort?  Instead of awarding merit pay to individual teachers whose students exceed certain standards, a practice that can cause divisions within a staff, reward the entire school when the student body attains prescribed benchmarks.  Either give a bonus to all staff members or make the award in the form of extra funding for the school and its programs.   While such an approach would not end all friction among teachers, it would certainly be a good starting point.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 09:04 AM | Permalink

In a recent post, The Teacher Leader pointed out “Successful teaching cannot begin until students are regularly attending class." Student attendance is not something any school leader wants to talk about, but it is a topic that we must address. Because time-on-task and direct, explicit instruction correlate highly with achievement, the first responsibility of every instructional leader is to ensure that our students actually show up every day.

Upon arriving at my new school, I proceeded to ask our teachers a simple question. What do we need to do in order to improve? I will always remember what our Science Department Chair, Sherry Singer, said to me. “Mel, our students don’t come to school, and, when they do, they can’t read.”

It was from that simple question and Sherry’s straightforward response that our decade-long school journey began. We believed that turning around our school hinged on attendance and strong literacy skills, it was on those two focal points, attendance and literacy, that we formed our “R-A-G-S to riches” school improvement plan—Reading plus Attendance will result in better Grades and a Safe school.

This month's issue of Education Next featured an article entitled Truants: The Challenges of Keeping Kids in School. The article made a number of salient points about attendance and truancy:

• There is a direct line from truancy to dropping out of school, juvenile crime, gang membership, drug use, teen pregnancy, poor health, receiving public assistance, and a whole host of negative behaviors.
• Schools are losing huge amounts of state funding due to poor student attendance.
• California - Reports that 24% of its 6.2 million students are considered truants.
• Wisconsin - 15.4% of students are truants. 62 percent of African American students were identified as truant.
• New York City reports that 24% of the high school students are truants.
• Washington, D.C. has a 20% truancy rate in which students were absent for 15 days or more without an excuse. D.C. spent $11 million on no-shows.
• Los Angeles posts a 16% truancy rate, which translates into a loss of 130,000 student days of state funding.
• Gender - Truancy is divided equally between boys and girls.
• Family - 50% live in single-parent households.
• Poverty - One-third live in poverty.
• Truancy laws are generally target parents and enforcement is "typically lax."
• Context Affects Attendance - A lack of food, unemployment, a lack of parental education, and parents in poor health all negatively impact attendance.

School staffers, social workers, prosecutors, and police officers repeatedly asserted that "Truancy is never the problem, it is the symptom."

Taking Action to Improve Attendance

• Students who miss school miss out.
• Improving attendance is hard work. It is more about will and determination than it is about technique. We must do everything in our power to encourage students to attend school. Our attendance rate started at a low 89% and, within two years, we improved to 96%. Going from 19 days of absence per student to 7.5 days per student added over two weeks of school of instrution without costing us a dime.
• Attendance is a prime early warning indicator of dropping out. "Information about absences may be the most practical indicator for identifying students in need of early interventions (Allensworth & Easton, 2007)."
• Students with a 10% or more absence rate have less than a 20% chance of graduating. Keep an updated list of students with attendance problems, set up parent conferences and, most importantly, insist that parents attend.
• Establish interventions for rising 9th graders. Don't wait for the problem to emerge. It will be too late.
• Students will attend school when they feel wanted. Make "wake-up" calls. Use technology to call the homes of students who are habitually late to school.
• Students will attend if they feel invited. In fact, the number one reason dropouts cite for leaving school is that no one cared if they were there. Let your students know that you want them in school every day.
• Students will attend school when they believe that they can succeed and that the staff is committed to their success. Set up a system of tiered interventions that ensure that students are never allowed to fall behind. Your students should say, "In this school it is hard to fail. The teachers won't let you fail. They never give up on you."

Posted by Mel Riddile at 03:23 PM | Permalink

by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

For years Mel Riddile and I shared the belief that there were a number of factors that could have a significant impact on the success or failure of students on standardized tests.  When scheduling the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) exams we took great care to create a positive test-taking environment.  Now there is research that indicates such concerns were justified. 

A recent study of the results of SAT testing in Indiana has found that each change between daylight savings and standard time adversely affected student performance.  Indiana was chosen because counties in the state could independently choose whether or not to participate in daylight savings.  This option created data from two different groups of students—those who changed their clocks and those who did not. 

The Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics found that students who lived in areas which used daylight savings had scores that were consistently 16 points lower than testers who did not have a time change.  A loss of this magnitude could be critical and should serve as a warning to anyone responsible for planning test schedules.  

Some points to consider

While the SAT is different in many ways from end of course barrier exams, the lessons to be learned from this research are clear.  If a simple one-hour shift can demonstrably cause negative consequences, it is incumbent on school leaders to take great care in creating a plan for large scale testing.  Here are some suggestions that worked at my school.

Keep the testing areas small.   Many schools in our district would place hundreds of students in large testing areas such as the cafeteria or gymnasium.  As a direct result of their size these locations would have high levels of confusion, distractions and poor discipline.  To avoid those complications we designed our testing to place students into classrooms, computer labs, or small common areas.  The rule was that no more than three classes (about 75 students) could be placed at any one site. 

Maintain a testing schedule similar to the regular school day.  Rather than alter the normal sequence of classes we built our plan to work within the framework of the traditional day.  Classes met in the same order as they had all year.  The testing periods on a particular day would be lengthened to provide additional time.  No class whether it was an SOL course or not was eliminated during the entire testing window. More importantly this procedure ensured that students who had a tested course during the second block of the day took their exam in the second block of the day.  Schools that implemented special schemes for testing would often lose all sense of continuity.  Students who took a subject in the afternoon might take the exam in the morning or a morning class might be tested after lunch.  Could such a variation cause lower scores?   Think daylight savings time.

Have teachers proctor their own students.  Another advantage of maintaining the normal class sequence is that it allows teachers to work directly with their classes.  Special schedules will usually preclude this possibility.  There are many good reasons for keeping teachers and students together.   Students feel more comfortable asking questions of someone with whom they have a personal relationship.  Teachers will do whatever is necessary to ensure that their students have the best possible circumstances to test.  And there are far fewer discipline issues when proctors know the individuals in the room. 

Place classes from the same curriculum in a testing site.  The untimed SOL exams took dramatically different amounts of time to complete.  A typical Algebra 1 group would take more than two hours to finish while most Biology 1 students would be done in an hour.  Whether a school’s policy is to let early finishers leave or to require that those who are finished wait for extended periods of time, the academic climate in the testing area will be negatively affected.  Also, the initial verbal directions for tests can vary from one discipline to another thus adding to the confusion.  And finally, teachers from the same department are more likely to be able to work together smoothly.

Create the testing schedule well in advance.  In order to plan effectively teachers and students should be informed of the schedule as early as possible.  Whether an exam is on day one or day seven of an eight day testing window is significant.  Our goal was to always distribute the schedule at a department chair meeting two months in advance of testing and answer questions at a faculty meeting prior to the dates.

Not easy, but critical

A testing program that maximizes performance is especially important for certain groups of students.  Individuals in ELL or those with special needs are continually straddling the line between success and failure on standardized tests.  Every advantage or disadvantage a school provides in the design of its testing program can change the trajectory of these young lives.   Such an approach is often not the most convenient choice for the adults in the building.  A student-oriented scheme requires intricate planning, extensive explanations, multiple revisions and demands full participation by every staff member.  But these concerns are a small and reasonable price to pay for our students. 

Posted by Mel Riddile at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

According to a report issued today by America's Promise Alliance, over the last decade, the nation's high schools have made significant progress in reducing dropouts and improving graduation rates. The report is part of "Grad Nation," which is part of a comprehensive, "10-year campaign to mobilize the nation as never before to reverse the dropout crisis and enable our children to be prepared for success in college, work and life."

Here are some of the highlights from Building A Grad Nation:

• The national graduation rate improved from 72% to 75%.
• 29 states demonstrated significant gains.
• Vermont and Wisconsin were the first states to reach a 90% graduation rate.
• Graduation rates for minority students--African American, Hispanic, Native American--improved the most.
• There are 261 fewer dropout factories (high schools with promoting power of 60% or less).
• 400,000 fewer students attend dropout factories.
• 25 of the 100 largest school districts had a 10% or greater increase in graduation rate.
• 12 states raised the compulsory school age.
• 47 states now have longitudinal data systems that will monitor students over time.
• 3 states have early warning systems.

Bottom Line

School leaders and teachers are to be congratulated for our efforts in turning the corner on the dropout crisis. However, we need to be aware that expectations are rising and the bar has been raised. The federal government now requires states to use the standard four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate that reflects the number of students who receive a diploma four years after they begin high school. I will have more to come on graduation rates and accountability as well as "early warning indicators."

Posted by Mel Riddile at 10:52 AM | Permalink

Here's a news flash. The National Assessment Governing Board has convened an ad hoc committee to study the motivation of 12th graders to take the NAEP assessments. I can save NAGB a lot of time and money. Ask any high school teacher or principal and they will tell you. If you are testing 12th graders, and the tests don't matter, forget it. It is a waste of time and money. However, like most issues in education today, no one bothers to ask anyone who works or has worked in a school. After all, what do they know?

Wake Up People

Kids across the country are "christmas-treeing" tests, not because they are not motivated, but because they are smart. This is not a protest against tests and testing. Students know what tests matters and what tests don't.

As I have reported in the past, teachers and principals across the country are being victimized by state testing programs that holds teachers and schools accountable but not students. The fate of public education in those states rests on the good will of the students. If students feel like trying, they do. If they don't feel like trying, they simply "Christmas-tree" the test by drawing patterns on the answer sheets.

I worked with one district in which all the high school principals were fired or replaced and hundreds of teachers fired or transferred on the basis of student test scores and that state had absolutely no student accountability.

In yet another state, a high school principal lamented that his students inexplicably decided that they were not going to put forth their best effort on the state tests. Despite the school sending record numbers of students to four-year colleges, the high school was placed on a state list of “low-performing schools.”

I worked in a high-pressure, high-accountability state that held high schools accountable by using eleven end-of-course exams to calculate adequate yearly progress. However, students were also held accountable. The tests were used to award course credit and as barriers to graduation. In this context, everyone, students, teachers, and administrators took the tests seriously. In the early days of the state program, only the schools were held accountable, and it was difficult to get the students motivated to take the tests.

Been NAEPed?

Three years ago, our school was "chosen" to participate in NAEP testing. A team for the state DOE descended on us and took complete control of the selection of students as well as the testing logistics and conditions. Our seniors were "randomly" selected to participate. The DOE team decided that testing would take place in the gym, a location that no one that was serious about the test would have chosen. The DOE team not me, the principal, delivered the charge to the students. I have no idea how our kids did, but I was certain that I didn't want my job to hang on the results.

No Feedback, No Effort

"Feedback is the breakfast of champions." Students know that neither they nor anyone else will ever see the results of their NAEP test. They know that their school will not be held accountable. They know that the results will not reflect on their teachers.

Don't Count = Don't Care

Diane Ravitch understands when she writes, "The students know that the tests don't count, that there are no individual scores, that no one will ever know if they did well or poorly, and they are not motivated to do their best. 

The public does not realize that NAEP is a sampling test, and it is not given to every student. They also don't realize that no student takes the entire test, only a portion of it. The seniors may not know that they are part of a national sample, but they know that this test will not affect their grades, their likelihood of graduating, or their plans after high school."

Others wrote comments supporting Ravitch's position.

Senioritis

"As a recently retired high school principal, I can attest to the fact that 12th graders, infected with "senioritis," do not care about the NAEP tests. They have mentally moved on from high school. In Arizona, until seniors had to pass our state assessment tests in order to get a diploma, they did not care about it either. If we are to use the NAEP tests, we will have to come up with something that is in the students' self-interest."

Fed Up With "Testing Nonsense"

"Diane is right that these particular tests are a waste of money. My high school senior and her friends are fed up with all the testing nonsense they've endured for years."

Sick of being guinea pigs

"Way back in 1983, as a highly motivated, successful high school senior at a competitive science/math boarding school, I was given the same standardized test several times over the year. By the last time we took it, my friends and I were deliberately choosing wrong answers because we were sick of being guinea pigs."

Christmas-Treeing Defined

Diane Ravitch gets the last word. "NAEP tests don't matter. And seniors know it. They doodle on their test papers, or they select answers with a pattern, like all B, or all C, or ABCD/ABCD. Or they leave questions blank, without even bothering to make a guess. The government should stop wasting money on this test in this grade, and the usual critics should turn their fire elsewhere."

The Bottom Line

If you work in a high school in a state that has no accountability for students, you will have to do everything possible to earn the good will of the students. Hopefully, you and the staff have a big "emotional bank account" from which to draw.

Posted by Mel Riddile at 08:07 PM | Permalink