So often as a society we forget how fantastic our people in the classroom are. It's not that we don't think highly of them, we do. If you aren't there each moment of each day, you don't have a chance to notice the little things like the moment a teacher kneels next to a child and hands them a kleenex or the 11pm email to a parent saying I'll look into that first thing tomorrow. We forget when we hand out information about PARCC or Smarter Balanced that those very same people will be spending hour perseverating on what they need to "teach" their children in order to "ensure" they will be successful.
When administrators talk Common Core, immediately they talk assessment. We aren't learning Common Core because Common Core is good, we're learning it because the hammer is coming, 2014-15, we will be assessed. It will be digital. Are you ready? Are we? Should we be? Will these assessments actually meaningfully measure meaningful information?
Our teachers are questioning. They are thinking of those little ones. They are thinking about what it is their children need to learn, not because I tell them to or the state tells them to, but because they are kneeling next to that child, emailing that parent and asking themselves what will this child need to be a happy successful adult in the future. Is it just ELA, Mathematics, and Science or is it more? Will preparing them for a standardized test prepare them for the real world? Is our goal to fill their brains or help them become good citizens of our world? These questions are real and legitimate.
There are many good things in the Common Core. Like all documents, it's not perfect. Explicitly, I believe that several of the ELA Anchor Standards broaden our view of literacy. However, this conversation is lost as we focus on the tests. So much effort, energy, and finances are being focused on compliance assessments that the quality learning may be lost. If we think back to final exams. All the studying, all the cramming, all the energy preparing. We took the test. It never covered all that we studied all that we "learned." A tremendous amount of human capital went in. How many of our students remembered that content a week later, a month later, a year later, a decade later? I am sure three of my former students reading this jumped up and shouted "Electronegativity." And that's the point, lets focus on improving learning, adding value, and creating deep understanding. If we simply focus on the assessments the learning will be lost and meaningless.
In the summer of 1990, while I was looking at colleges, the Detroit Tigers had a pudgy first baseman who was hitting the ball over the fence at a rate faster than any I had ever seen. Each night I would come in and ask my dad, did Cecil hit another one. After a while, my dad would remind me that he was nowhere near the pace to break the record. As I probed further with him, he would explain to me that in 1961 Roger Maris hit 61 home runs but it took him 162 games, in 1927 "Babe" Ruth hit 60 home runs in 154 games. Statistically "Babe" Ruth was still the record holder. It was fun to watch Cecil hit 52 that year, but clearly the "Babe" was still the home run king.
The great thing about many baseball statistics is that the numbers mean something. They are comparable from year to year and generation to generation. Passed down as sacred texts from which we can ask, "Who was the greatest?" or "How would this guy have played on that team?" Unfortunately, this doesn't always hold true. Pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1968, Bob Gibson had an ERA of 1.12, perhaps the single greatest season by a pitcher in the Modern Era. The trick is we will never know. After years of descending Pitcher ERA's, beginning in 1969, Major League Baseball lowered the pitchers mound from 15 inches to 10 inches. Unlike changing the number of games in a season, through which the numbers could be pro-rated, the impact of this was not quantifiable in a linear manner. The next season Gibson had a ERA of 2.18. No one knew if this was better or worse. In 1981 Nolan Ryan had an ERA of 1.69, 1985 Dwight Gooden pitched to a 1.53, and Greg Maddux had a 1.56 in 1994. The numbers were no longer comparable. Bob Gibson remains the best pitcher of his ERA and Dwight Gooden in the 45 years since, but we will never know who was the best.
In education we also are always looking for accurate comparable information. How is my child doing? Do they know enough? How do they rank in the world? As concerns were raised in the 80's and 90's, States began to administer their own assessments to ensure academic achievement and communicate an accurate picture to parents about their child's performance. Regardless one's belief of the validity and value of these measures, in 1988 Illinois parents received the Illinois Goal Assessment Program (IGAP) results for their child. For eleven years, parents received a consistent report about their child's achievement. In 1999, Illinois parents began receiving results from the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) based on the Illinois Learning Standards. Like the lowering of the mound in baseball, the content and standards had changed, leaving the IGAP comparable to IGAP and ISAT comparable to ISAT.
In 2002 President Bush signed the "No Child Left Behind Act" as he reauthorized funds for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This law dynamically changed the purpose and framework of accountability and assessment, requiring accountability, achievement levels, and measurements of schools and districts through Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) and Annual Measurable Achievement Objectives (AMAO). Under this law, schools needed to eventually have 97 percent of their students and student subgroups attain certain state designated levels of achievement as approved by the Department of Education. A law intended to create an America similar that mythical land described by Garrison Keillor, "Welcome to Lake Wobegon where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average."
In 2008, Illinois eliminated the Illinois Measure of Annual Growth in English (IMAGE) assessment as required by the Department of Education with state officials telling educational leaders that we know the ISAT isn't an appropriate assessment for Second Language Learners, but the Feds are telling us we have to so we are. This created the asterisk in school achievement. The populations changed from the 1999-2007 to the 2008 and beyond assessment. Each school and district could look at their pre-2008 and post-2008 and make independent decisions regarding their rate of improvement. Parents of non-ELL students were not impacted. Their child's reports remained the same. Schools still had a familiar and consistent standard of content to compare their data. While the records weren't the same, like the race between "Babe" Ruth & Roger Maris they were comparable.
Unfortunately, we no longer live in that world. The last consistent data set for the ISAT was the 2012 administration. Like many states throughout the land, Illinois has crafted a plan to earn a waiver from the Department of Education. Essentially saying as they did in 2007 and 2008 that the Feds are making us do this, Illinois has created 4 years of non-comparable assessments:
2012 - Last Traditional ISAT
2013 - ISAT with New Cut Scores & 20% Common Core Content
2014 - ISAT with 100% Common Core Content
2015 - PARCC
In doing this, for nearly half of an elementary student's learning career parents will be unable to accurately compare one year to the next. Schools and Districts are being given talking points to explain why these changes are accurate and appropriate but are not given the tools to accurately convert the data because the State simply can't. It's too many variable changes. Neither state nor school officials can't truly say how much children's learning has grown using these State provided measures.
Unfortunately, the "Steroid Era" has hit education and government. In 1998 Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa "broke" the home run record with 70 and 66 respectively. In 2001 Barry Bonds hit 73. Numbers I used to know. Tainted numbers as we look back recognizing we don't know how many of these individuals cheated to break the record. In fact, as Major League Baseball players and owners turned a blind eye the conditions changed and all of the hitting and pitching performances are so suspect because of the variables of steroids that no one trusts any of them. In education, we are changing too many variables for parents. New content, new standards, annually changing tests are creating a lack of trust by both educators and parents in the data. Like the "Steroid Era" performances, the results at some point become unbelievable.
Principals and teachers are explaining to parents that their 8 year old exceeded standards in Reading in 2012 but only meets standards as a 9 year old in 2013. These same parents look at the (950 to 1100) Lexile information of what their child could read to improve and discover that appropriate books to push their child to that next achievement level include and find that Harry Potter , the Lord of the Rings, and the Lightening Thief series don't fit, why don't you have your child read 1984, the Hobbit, or the Hitchhiker's Guide. All great books but all too complex for the 9 year old mind.
Parents and educators want meaningful information about our children. We want to trust our Federal, State, District, and School leaders to provide an accurate and consistent picture about our children's learning. Just as we can compare the swimming records and performances of Mark Spitz, Matt Biondi, and Michael Phelps, we want to know that the pool, the water, and the race are essentially the same. That way we can marvel at the performance regardless of how much the training and technology has impacted it. For us, the race is essentially the same.
This is a dangerous time for us as educational leaders. We risk changing so much that we make the race moot. Go down the street and ask someone how many home runs Barry Bonds hit. Then ask them how many Roger Maris did. I bet you know your answer already.
Somewhere along the line, we became afraid of the parents. Maybe it happened after A Nation at Risk, maybe it was before. I was too young at the time to remember. But somewhere, we lost the parents trust and we became afraid that the parents would judge us and say we were doing a bad job. Once we became afraid, we changed from having unique classrooms where we were doing unique things to needing to do the same. Maybe it started at the top in some curriculum director's or superintendent's office, maybe it started at the bottom in some pair of pre-school teacher's classrooms, but it started. We said to ourselves. If I am doing the same thing that you are doing at the same time, they can't tell both of us we are doing the wrong thing. It's ok if I give page 37 as homework to all of my students if you give page 37 tonight as homework to all of your students. They won't judge us because we are both doing it. The sameness spread like wild fire. Recipes were created. This is what unit 7 looks like. Here is the pacing guide. I think Joe Average, our students can get 80% on unit 7 if we all take 12 days. We have curriculum integrity if all of our 4th grade students do all of the same activities in all of our schools at the same time. Over time, we had a recipe for each grade. Oldest children in a family received the same input of experiences as their younger siblings 2-3 years later. For each grade, we had a back of the box recipe. This is what the learning experience for 8 year olds will look like. This is what the learning experience for 6 year olds will look like. They can't judge us because we are being fair. Everyone gets the same thing. Oh, your kid is a high achiever? We give all of those high achiever this slightly more difficult story on the same topic. It has seven letter words in it instead of five letter words. We differentiate for that. How can they judge us? We are all doing the same. I'm no different than my colleague in the room next door, the school next door, or the district next door. Yes for a long time Betty Crocker instruction has won and innovation has left the building.
The defensible position, this need for doing generally the same thing for the majority of our students at generally the same time has led to a repression of student growth and a decimation of creativity within schools. When one analyzes the instructional staff, one can identify a myriad of similarities but also a myriad of differences. To require each teacher to do all of the same activities would put some teachers in advantageous positions because their strengths fit within those activities and others in positions of deficit because those activities require instructional techniques in their areas of deficit. The impact to children would be that some children would grow more and some less. Even though programatically we believed we were providing the same learning experience at the first point of implementation it fails to support student growth.
The analogy fails further when we actually look at the student's needs. The assumption built upon "born on" dating that the majority of 7 year olds need this and the majority of 9 year olds need that, most children have similar strengths and similar deficits and can maximize growth by following this pattern of learning experiences with that sequence of activities doesn't match the reality within a family unit much less a classroom, school, district, or community. Ask a parent, do their children have the same strengths and growth areas. A majority will identify some similarities and some differences. If we do Betty Crocker teaching for the two kids, can we possibly maximize growth for them?
It'll be ok. As long as we are doing the same thing, we can't be judged. It must be right.
It's just not true. Neither children or teachers are widgets. They can not simply role of the assembly line floor, having gotten the same treatment and have grown to their maximal potential. As school, district, and classroom leaders we need to embrace a different defensible position, one that acknowledges the strengths and growth areas of our staff and students. Instead of the Betty Crocker input hypothesis, we need to look at outputs. Instead of every student and every teacher participating in the same activity, we need to develop systems in which children have common goal areas such as development of geometric knowledge and common curriculum objectives such as we will understand that a triangle is a shape or we can identify the sides and verticies of a triangle and allow teachers and children to move up the ladder of geometric knowledge as they are ready to take on the next challenge. We need to embrace teacher and student differences, allowing them to develop different learning experiences to meet these curriculum outcomes and encourage them to move up the ladder as they are ready for the next step. We need to recognize that it is ok for me to be at a higher rung in geometry and a lower rung for computation, my teacher can provide me with great opportunities to help me move up each of those ladders.
If we allow for this diversity. Allow teachers to have outcome integrity instead of input integrity. We may see something marvelous, children growing at a quicker rate because their teacher had the freedom and support to meet each of them at their instructional level. Instead of some children feeling bored because they had done this and other children feeling frustrated because the activity was beyond them, each child can have an instructional experience that is ready for them.
It's not easy. We can't have 25 different activities going on at the same time as we teach geometry. As we analyze our students we will find that there are similarities. I may have 5 groups of students in my class in geometry. My teaching partner may have 4 groups in their class. If we combine the classes, we have 6 groups. Each teacher could do three groups. That could be doable. Together we can do it.
It is a new defensible position, one based on student outcomes instead of instead of input recipes.
In the United States, our children enter school at 5 years and spend 12 years of full day education and 1 year of half day education.
12 years * 176 school days/year * (6.5 hours/day - 60 minutes recess & lunch) = 11,616 hours
1 year * 176 school days/year * (2.75 hours/day) = 484 hours
Total hours in public school = 12,100 hours
12,100 hours is a gift or a curse depending on how it is used. Think back to your journey through those 12,100 hours. What was asked of you during that time? What did you do during that time? Did your class look like this?
Did your class like like this?
While the tone is different in each scene, the scenes themselves are rife with minimal engagement. In most classrooms we no longer sit in rows, a teacher-centric formation, choosing pod or paired structures to encourage partner collaboration and communication. However, have our practices changed as with the redesign of our classrooms. How many of those 12,100 hours is teacher-centered information transfer or whole group conversation and how many are students doing things, conversing, making judgements, making mistakes, and correcting them. It's not enough to rearrange the desks, we need to rearrange our practice.
Walk into a classroom. 24 students listen to 1 child make a 5 minute presentation. Over the course of a week, each child presents:
25 students * 5 minutes = 2 hours and 5 minutes
For 2 hours and 10 minutes of class time, that child is participating for 5 minutes. 5 minutes! Presentation is important. Learning to be an audience is important. Having an authentic critical audience is important. There are better ways. The same learning can be accomplished by breaking the class into five groups. Each having small presentations. Each sharing. Now, the audience experience is 20 minutes instead of 2 hours. Learning goals accomplished, and percent of time direct engagement has gone from 4% of the time to 20% of the time.
This same concept of time savings holds true in whole group vs. small group instructional design. When leading a math class, count the number of students who participate during the hour. Count the frequency of their participation and the amount of time they participate for.
Typical 25 student middle school whole group math class:
10 minutes homework/concept review
20 minutes teacher introduces new concept (7-10 children participate or ask ?s)
10 minutes guided practice - teacher rotates and supports
5 minutes complete your assignment
Now that same class done as centers:
0-15 Minutes
16-30 minutes
31-45 minutes
Group A - 8 students
Learn new concept with teacher (4 ask ?'s)
As a group, apply math concept to real world problem. Explain how you got there
Review assignment with classmates and determine why you have differences. If complete, try math challenge problem
Group B - 8 Students
Review assignment with classmates and determine why you have differences. If complete, try math challenge problem
Learn new concept with teacher (4 ask ?'s)
As a group, apply math concept to real world problem. Explain how you got there
Group C - 9 Students
As a group, apply math concept to real world problem. Explain how you got there
Review assignment with classmates and determine why you have differences. If complete, try math challenge problem
Learn new concept with teacher (4 ask ?'s)
The level of engagement increases as we let go of the teacher-centered design and move to an engaged learning experience. Student participation increases by the vary nature of the small group. The more intimate setting allows for more targeted instruction on the concept and with fewer students present, a child is more likely to be called on and more willing to ask questions. In addition, the other students not working with the teacher are more meaningfully engaged. Instead of sitting and listening to the teacher interact with one child at a time, they are doing things. Reviewing work, applying concepts, having critical academic conversations. They also could be doing either traditional or digital review of concepts previously learned. The shear number of students active in the class increases the learning productivity of that time.
Is this more work for teachers? Yes. Does this mean we will be repeating ourselves multiple times? Yes. Does this allow us to be more targeted in our instruction? Yes. Will this be more preparation of activities? Some. Could this drastically increase student's engagement in math class? Yes.
12,100 hours is a lot of time. It can be the long drawn out experience in which the student is an observer or it can be a creative laboratory in which children are consistently given challenges and engaged in opportunities to over come them. The choice is our. How do we want our students to spend their time? What do we want to be the products of our time with them?
In 1983 a report was released. A Nation at Risk, the results of an 18 member Reagan-era investigation warning that if we as a nation didn't do something about our schools that we as a country were falling behind. This report started the narrative regarding how we as a country and how schools need to change in order for our country to succeed. During this same year, Star Wars VI, The Return of the Jedi, and The Right Stuff were in movie theaters. That was thirty years ago. And perhaps the panel was right, we did need to change.
A Nation at Risk did start the era of reform. The narrative about schools and learning changed. With reform came standards, state testing, accountability, the whole language-phonics debate, more reform, harder tests, more accountability, value-added based on standardized tests, more standards, harder standards, more accountability, college & career readiness, No Child Left Behind, AYP, more standards, more accountability, digital tests. The fly wheel of the narrative spun. In some aspects of schooling, we did learn to value key ideas: IDEA = All children have a right to a Free and Public Education regardless of disability, 504 = We need to make reasonable accommodations to support an employees ability to function in the workplace (schools are the work places for children) No Child Left Behind = we can't just educate our majority of successful kids, we need to look at our subgroups of diverse needs and educate them also, Value Added = all children have a right to learn, grow, and improve, not just the neediest.
In their essence, each of these initiatives have some benevolent purposes. As a result of these we have improved, changed, and reformed. However, the narrative hasn't changed. The flywheel about schools failing has reached desperation levels. The arguments about how we check, the level of standardized testing, and the push to have more curriculum at earlier ages has continued. Each week I receive emails: are we ready for Common Core, are we ready for PARCC. Salesman playing off the narrative that if you aren't ready, you will be marked as failures. Published for not making AYP.
Guess what, the narrative is just plain silly at this point. There is no other way to describe it. In 1991, Johnathan Kozol wrote Savage Inequalities: Children in American Schools. In it, he compares the have schools such as New Trier High School in Wilmette, Illinois, and the have nots of East Saint Louis, Illinois. Guess what, 22 years later, New Trier is still one of the best schools in the nation. Still one of the haves. Still has some of the best children in the world. A program all of us can be envious of. By the way, they also failed to make AYP. Stevenson High School, birthplace of Professional Learning Communities movement and learning by doing. They also fail to make AYP.
So what are these children, ones educated just prior to A Nation at Risk and ones educated since them doing. How has our society faltered as we have taken the baton from the Greatest Generation and handed it to the Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y. What are the products of these children of schools of ever increasing failure producing: Inventions of the 1980s: DNA Fingerprinting, Doppler Radar, Prozac, Cell Phones Inventions of the 1990s: World Wide Web (HTTP), DVDs, Fuel Cells, Viagra Inventions of the 2000s: iPods, iPhones, Android, Bluetooth, iPad
Yes, these children of generations of failing schools have globalized the world and essentially made Star Trek real. Everyone has the Star Trek communicator, on TV they can create the holodeck, we all can put Uhura's ear piece on and talk to anywhere in the world, Google Glass is a version of Geordi La Forge's visor. Want to talk to the shipboard computer like Captain Picard or Commander Riker, try one of these two phrases with your smartphone: "Siri, I would like" or "Ok, Google" and Siri and Google now will get you your answer. Clearly, the children of our schools have failed. Clearly, the teachers and principals of our schools have failed. In the 47 years since Star Trek we haven't invented the Warp Drive and the Matter Transporter.
I sat with four principals on Friday, discussing our data, data-informed learning, and narrowing our learning targets. A veteran leader, one who I respect and admire, asked how is it that we go from being a "School of Excellence" one year to not making AYP the next. We worked hard, the kids aren't learning less, in fact we are doing better things than we have. This principal is right. He is telling us that we need to control the narrative. We, as classroom leaders, building leaders, district leaders, and legislative leaders need to refocus the narrative. Stop worrying about the next reform, the next standards, the next higher level of accountability. Lets find reasonable levels for growth, reasonable amounts of accountability, and reasonable levels of independence and innovative thinking.
Even though the reports indicate that our schools our failing, the only thing failing is the narrative. It is time our legislators and national reform advocates reflect on the world around them, just as Luke Skywalker asked Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda to do 30 years ago and reflect on their point of view. Perhaps, like Luke discovered within Darth Vader, we will find that there is a lot good within our schools.
Our teachers are questioning. They are thinking of those little ones. They are thinking about what it is their children need to learn, not because I tell them to or the state tells them to, but because they are kneeling next to that child, emailing that parent and asking themselves what will this child need to be a happy successful adult in the future. Is it just ELA, Mathematics, and Science or is it more? Will preparing them for a standardized test prepare them for the real world? Is our goal to fill their brains or help them become good citizens of our world? These questions are real and legitimate.