ASCD Inservice

Contrasting Attitudes of Japanese and American Teachers (1982)

In the March 1982 issue of Educational Leadership, research associate Takiko Morimoto explores the attitudes of Japanese and American educators by comparing survey results from a small sample of teachers in Los Angeles with a small sample in Tokyo. Asked about their role in the classroom and within the larger social context, the two groups of teachers differed significantly in approach, outlook, and practice.

Read the article: Contrasting Attitudes of Japanese and American Teachers (PDF)

Extrapolating from survey results, Morimoto notes that just as Japanese factory workers more closely identify with their companies than do American workers, Japanese teachers more closely identify with their schools. Japanese teachers surveyed favored shared decision making and top-down reforms and saw teaching as a personal mission with great value. For example, more than half of the Japanese teachers polled would give up summer vacations to help improve their teaching, and close to 90 percent would refuse to take a second job if it would compromise their teaching—even if they needed the money.

By contrast, American teachers in Morimoto's sample were more likely to see schools "chiefly as a workplace." Morimoto explains that for the Americans surveyed, personal enrichment and self-actualization were more important than a sense of social duty. These American teachers also found teaching less personally satisfying than their Japanese peers did. (Flash forward to the future: Public Agenda and Learning Points Associates' recent study where 40% of teachers identify as "disheartened": Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today.)

Facing First-Year Challenges

Little support and even less classroom experience combined to make Deirdra Grode's first year teaching chaotic and almost her last. It didn't have to be that way. Grode says training on how to organize the classroom and learning, better understanding of differentiating instruction, and a coach to guide her practice would have made her first year much smoother.

In this month's "In the Classroom with Deirdra Grode" column, Grode shares her first-year frustrations and why schools need to meaningfully consider some basic new teacher supports, like DI, classroom management, and mentoring, if they want to build stability and continuity among staff—and ultimately—student learning.

What essential support did you have, or wish you had, in your first year?

Deirdra Grode was the 2008 ASCD Outstanding Young Educator Award winner. In August, she assumed the position of codirector/principal K-8 at the Hoboken Charter School in Hoboken, N.J. She previously taught 7th and 8th grade social studies and language arts teacher at the school. Her monthly column appears in the Education Update newsletter.

Platooning Ballooning at the Elementary Level

Platooning, or departmentalizing instruction according to content area, is on the rise in elementary schools, according to last week's most popular SmartBrief story. High-stakes tests that target subject areas and grade levels are cited as the big motivator in this pedagogical shift.

Critics of platooning say young students benefit from the continuity and stability of one teacher year-round, and that one teacher can more easily make connections among multiple content areas. Advocates say its a cost-neutral way to focus teacher training to meet and exceed heightened content standards. Evidence that platooning is better or worse for learning is unclear, because definitions of content specialists vary from school to school.

Is the one-teacher-per-classroom model inadequate for elementary students? Does platooning in the early grades have a silo effect on learning? Or do young students benefit from being assigned subject-specific teachers?

Measuring ARRA’s Impact on Education

Late last week Vice President Joe Biden hosted an event to highlight jobs saved or created with money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Two ASCD members were featured at the event: Jill Neustadt, a math content coach at Brown Station Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Md., and Crystal Turner, a reading interventionist also in Montgomery County, Md.

Neustadt works with both teachers and students to help make math instruction more effective. She supports her colleagues through collaboration, joint planning, and by observing their lessons and providing feedback. She also team-teaches in a 3rd grade math classroom and is the sole instructor for a 5th grade math class. In addition, she supports struggling students and more advanced students needing acceleration.

Previously, Neustadt was an academic intervention teacher, but her job security was never stable because these positions were typically funded through grants. ARRA helped Brown Station maintain the valuable services that Neustadt provides to both students and staff.

Why Should We Care About Teacher Leadership?

Presenter Ann Nkiruka Ifekwunigwe posed this question to a room of attendees Sunday morning in her ASCD Fall Conference session, "Preparing Successful Teacher Leaders: What Have We Learned?" She then shared some research about why teacher leadership is a worthy concern:

• Many teachers who continue teaching beyond their fifth year fall into traditional teacher routines and experience a reduced interest in teaching (Huberman, 1989).
  
• Successful teachers may leave teaching because they become dissatisfied with the established teacher career path, one that provides little opportunity for advancement unless one moves into school administration (Towery, Salim, & Hom, 2009).
  
• Today's novice teachers are interested in having regular collaboration with their colleagues, greater flexibility in their work day, and an expanded sphere of influence and opportunities for career advancement (Danielson, 2006).
  
• When teachers pursue leadership roles that provide greater influence in curriculum and instruction, they may not feel the need to become an administrator to grow professionally (Ackerman & Mackenzie, 2007).

Educators in Ifekwunigwe's session shared some perspectives on teacher leadership, for example

• We need  leaders—administrators are overwhelmed and can't do it all.
• To keep teachers in the classroom, professionalize leadership and give extra money to go with it.
• Some teachers leave teaching because they aren't given opportunities to prove themselves.

Why do you think we should care about teacher leadership?

How Can Educators Take Back the Mic?

(Post submitted by ASCD Scholars facilitator Jen Morrison.)

I once worked in a large, top-down, bureaucratic district where, as a teacher, I was expected to follow a detailed pacing guide, give weekly district assessments, and work only from the adopted textbook. At a district meeting ostensibly advertised as one for gathering teacher feedback, I shared that the district lessons were inappropriate in content and level for my inner-city students and that the district's testing schedule disallowed important time for instruction and extended, student-chosen reading.

I remember being told that they were looking for comments regarding revision of specific district test items and that successful teachers in the district used these materials and followed procedures. In so many words, I was told to be a professional.

In her comment to our previous ASCD Scholars post, Karen Hulse wrote, "One of the greatest skills we can teach and model for our students is the ability to actively engage in discourse." What happens when that discourse is not expected or invited, when we as professionals are expected simply to do what we are told? This doesn't just happen to teachers. It's an issue at all levels.

One of the major understandings I gleaned from last week's discussion was that we, as educators, must find ways of engaging in respectful discourse. How can we open up the larger discourse and make certain that the voices of educators are included in policy at all levels?

I Do It, You Do It, We Do It

At ASCD's Fall Conference, ASCD author Doug Fisher is discussing what methods work in the classroom during his session, "Better Learning Through Structured Teaching." Fisher says the balance between teacher responsibility and student responsibility in the classroom is key to student success. By setting up a structure in the classroom, educators can reach students and ensure that they are actually learning, instead of hearing and seeing the lesson but not having it register.

Fisher says there are four structures, two focused on educators and two focused on students, that must be balanced out in the classroom:

Educators

• Focus lesson ("I do it")
• Guided learning ("We do it")  

Students

•  Collaborative learning ("You do it together")
•  Independent Learning ("You do it alone")

In order for students to learn properly, all of these structures must be balanced with teachers and students interacting with each other and students learning to to solve problems on their own. 

To Laminate or Cut/Keep/Create Curriculum

This morning at ASCD's Fall Conference on Teaching and Learning, author Heidi Hayes Jacobs spoke about upgrading curriculum for 21st century learners, or what she calls "Curriculum 21." Her forthcoming ASCD book of essays on the topic is due out in January 2010.

In her presentation, Jacobs questioned a lot of the stagnation and resistance to change in education. But don't call her a reformer: "I don't like being called a reformer; I'm into new forms," she told the crowd. Particularly, this involves new forms for school curriculum that are shaped by looking at what schools are doing and asking what we should we cut, keep, and create. "You can choose to "laminate" or cover the curriculum, or you can look at what needs to be cut, kept, and created so that students are learning today what they need for the future."

In your school, is curriculum "laminated," or are you in the ongoing process of deciding what to cut, keep, and create?

Read more about this presentation on the Conference Daily site.

Marzano on Feedback That Improves Teaching

How do supervisors systematically give teachers feedback so that they improve? To answer this question, in his Fall Conference session "Supervising the Art and Science of Teaching," Robert Marzano also had to address how supervisors don’t give teachers feedback that helps them improve.

Particularly, there are some fundamental flaws in the assumptions underlying common walk-through procedures, for example, assuming that frequent feedback is beneficial to teachers. To this assumption Marzano gives a qualified yes—frequent feedback is beneficial if it accurately reflects the complexity of teaching and learning. This means a checklist looking for the nine instructional strategies from Classroom Instruction That Works or the seven elements of Madeline Hunter's lesson design will not cut it.

Similarly, just because a lesson includes so-called "high-yield" strategies does not make instruction any more effective. Marzano says there are no such things as "high-yield" strategies, only "high-probability" strategies.

So how can supervisors approach observation in a way that supports effective instruction?

21st Century Skills to Revolutionize High-Stakes Tests?

This morning at ASCD's Fall Conference, Paige Johnson talked about the buzz around teaching 21st century skills and why it's a worthy topic.

On assessments, she brought up an interesting new development: Denmark is piloting a high school exit exam (Danes call it a "leaving exam") where students will be able to be fully online while taking the test. Any online resource will be at their disposal during this high-stakes assessment.

So what does that mean for assessment design? Briefly, Johnson said we'll need tests that require thinking and performing in novel situations, not just answers you can Google, cut, and paste.

Does this sound like the kind of makeover assessments need? Does it raise the spectre of the old curriculum debate of content versus skills?

How Did Test Scores Become King?

Post submitted by guest blogger Gerald Bracey. A longtime champion of accurate analysis of education research and vocal advocate for public education, Bracey died October 20, 2009.

In my article in the November Educational Leadership ("The Big Tests: What Ends Do They Serve?"), I mentioned a 50-year trend toward seeing test scores not just as a necessary tool, but as a sufficient measure to evaluate students, teachers, schools, districts, states, and nations. It's worth considering how we got to this point. 

Criticism of U.S. public schools grew greatly at the start of the Cold War. Two influential critiques were Arthur Bestor's Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Public Schools in 1953 and Rudolf Flesch's Why Johnny Can't Read in 1955. In the midst of this hostility, the Soviet Union dropped a bomb, so to speak: Sputnik, the first manmade satellite to orbit the earth. Public shock at being bested by the Russians sparked even more attacks on the U.S. education system. 

These earlier criticisms did not invoke test scores as evidence of the schools' inadequacy, but later critics would. Bobby Kennedy insisted that the effects of 1965's Elementary and Secondary Education Act be evaluated, and the only available instruments were various norm-referenced, standardized tests. Tests took center stage.

In 1977, a College Board panel examined recent declines in SAT scores and blamed the changing population of students taking the test. The media and the public blamed the schools. The 13 indicators of national mediocrity in 1983's A Nation at Risk all referred to test scores. The message was clear: Information coming from teachers and administrators could not be trusted. We needed scientific, precise, objective measures of school outcomes. Tests, it was said, met these criteria. 

Well, if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. With only tests as tools for accountability, we've overlooked many other outcomes we should work for in schools. 

What important school outcomes do you think we're ignoring with our laser-like focus on test scores?

The Kinds of Knowledge Principals Use

A new article from the International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership explores the types of knowledge principals use and need, underscoring the need for more principal training that develops candidates' experiential or tacit knowledge.

The article identifies three big motivations to better understanding the nature of the principalship and the cognitive tools principals use to do their jobs:

• In many districts there is a crisis in succession.
• In many instances preparation programs appear to be deficient, even misdirected.
• There is uncertainty about the kinds of knowledge principals now need.

Here's article author Lazaridou's table highlighting the international reach of the succession/principal shortage; read the article to discover the four general areas, and 12 specific subsets, of knowledge principals identified as comprising their ever-evolving job descriptions.

Principals, is there a particular body of knowledge (i.e. organizational, interpersonal, experiential) you draw on most in your day-to-day, and how much did your training draw on flexing this sort of knowledge?

Source: Lazaridou, Angeliki. "The Kinds of Knowledge Principals Use: Implications for Training." International Journal of Education Policy & Leadership, October 19, 2009. Volume 4, Number 10.

Duncan Puts Ed Schools on Blast

Last week saw the most clicks landing on coverage of Arne Duncan's speech at Columbia University's Teachers College, where the Education Secretary criticized U.S. education schools for ill-preparing K-12 teachers. High enrollment programs like education bring in the bucks, but often, universities choose to spend that money on smaller, more prestigious programs like physics, Duncan said. The government has also been remiss in setting the licensure bar too low and disinvesting in high-quality mentoring programs, he added.

In his speech, Duncan cited former Columbia Teacher's College President Arthur Levine's 2006 report Educating School Teachers, which warned education schools to raise their standards and align program goals or prepare to be totally replaced by alternative certification programs. Duncan said the teachers he's talked to say education schools fall short on two main points:

Do We Pay a Price for Being Nice?

The norms in education are different than in politics. We don't throw shoes at leaders, we don't yell "You lie" during a speech, and we don't heckle and boo when someone is speaking.

But does that politeness carry a cost?

Do we sacrifice student welfare by being too nice to one another? Should we worry less about being civil than about students learning? Or should we always treat everyone in a civil manner, even though we know they're wrong?

(Meet the Scholars responding to this post by visiting the 2009-10 ASCD Annual Conference Scholars Yearbook or by clicking on their name in the comments below.)

Continuity of Learning and H1N1: What Questions Do You Have?

If you missed ASCD's web seminar H1N1 and Continuity of Learning: Meeting Students' Learning Needs When they Return to School, set aside some time to listen to the archived version of the presentation at our H1N1 page. Hosted by ASCD author and faculty member John Brown, this informative online seminar addresses the timely question of how educators can prepare for the possibility of lengthy and wide-spread absences due to H1N1.

Concentrating on students' return to the classroom, Brown briefly discusses the Department of Education's recommendations on H1N1 before reviewing a number of helpful tips and tools that educators can use as they plan for this year's flu season. He explores what a H1N1 continuity plan should cover, underscores the importance of collaborative planning, and highlights the power of diagnostic assessment and its relationship to student learning needs.

Whether you're currently dealing with students returning from extended absences or still preparing for the possibility, ASCD wants to help.

• What questions do you have regarding continuity of learning and classroom instruction?
  

• What kind of support do you need as you grapple with students' varied needs and gaps in knowledge?

Let us know what's keeping you up at night as you deal with H1N1.

Fastest-Growing Facebook Demographic Is Over 55

Dude, your teacher totally has a Facebook account.

WaPo wonders what's next for social networking, we wonder if teachers are the fastest growing professional demographic on Facebook? There's a lot of talk about how social networking is shaping the profession, but how are educators shaping what's next in social networking?

Image source: National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 2009

Leadership for the 21st Century: Breaking Down the Bonds of Dependency (1998)

Because of work overload and competing responsibilities, principals often find it challenging to blaze new trails and lead proactively. In the April 1998 issue of Educational Leadership, internationally known educator Michael Fullan writes about how principals can overcome some of these obstacles and become leaders in school reform. 

Read the article: Leadership for the 21st Century: Breaking the Bonds of Dependency

For Fullan, the demands of the job—the "constant bombardment of new tasks and the continual interruptions"—create a context that encourages principals to depend on quick fixes and one-size-fits-all solutions. He suggests "giving up the search for a silver bullet" and instead recommends taking concrete steps that will lead to school reform. These steps include respecting those who you want to silence, forging new alliances, managing on both an emotional and rational level, and staying hopeful in the face of adversity.

With principals still feeling the weight of immense responsibility, Fullan's advice feels relevant almost a decade later. His prescription for school reform encourages leaders to shrug off insecurity and take charge in smart and effective ways.

The Carrot Revolution

We stumbled on the intriguingly titled blog the Carrot Revolution while digging through Dangerously Irrelevant’s new subject-specific education blog wiki. What a find. Here art educator David Gran pulls together resources for teachers, students, and artists with an eye toward bucking the status quo. 

The blog is filled with eye-catching pictures and video and includes posts on everything from animation to art history. Recent entries describe various projects Gran has concocted, like the photography assignment called "Jump!" that uses the work of Phillip Halsman as inspiration to catch students' expressions in midair. 

If you're looking for new ideas in your art classroom or just want an engaging read, head over to the Carrot Revolution at http://carrotrevolution.blogspot.com.

Can Focusing on Student Needs Bring Peace To Ed. Wars?

Last week's most-clicked ASCD SmartBrief story lauds schools who side-step the politics of pedagogy and adapt teaching practices to meet their students' needs.

Career and college preparation, skills and content--education writer Karin Chenoweth editorializes that good schools do both by starting with the clear goal of educating all students, and then doing whatever it takes to make that happen.

It sounds simple: When students don't learn, change your practice based "not on a preset philosophy, or a set of program prescriptions, but on what would best help students learn."

Is this maxim at work in your schools? If not, what complicates curricular decisions?

A New Curriculum for a New Century

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600–1,000-word essays on the theme "A New Curriculum for a New Century." The theme description is below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by November 9, 2009.

Now a decade into the 21st century, it’s time to stop talking about a new curriculum and start developing and using one. Already under great pressure to educate for a highly technological, fast-changing global economy, schools need to consider how curriculum and its delivery should change to meet the needs of students living in a world undergoing revolutionary changes. Through current examples and provocative expert insights, this issue will offer ways to jumpstart the critical conversations about the school curricula and teaching formats necessary for a new century, including content; assessment; program structure and instruction; and the habits of mind students, teachers, and administrators need to get it all done.

Do the Draft Standards Measure Up?

Wednesday, October 21 the comment period closes on the proposed Career and College Readiness Standards for English / Language Arts and Mathematics. This is your last chance to let the NGA and CCSSO know whether they achieved their objectives of fewer, clearer, higher standards, and whether content and cognitive skills are well matched.

Then at the end of the month, Scroll down after the jump, or check next week's issue of ASCD Express (free to all members) to read the full analysis of the proposed E/LA standards by our guest teacher-blogger, Dina Strasser.

Strasser gives the proposed standards credit for being fewer and clearer, but questions a definition of college and career readiness shaped primarily by corporate sources, with very little use of peer-reviewed education research sources, not to mention the exclusion of stakeholders like the National Council of Teachers of English. Her biggest criticism of the proposed ELA standards goes like this:

" . . . the primary aim of education is holistic. We are supposed to be helping our young people become both aware and expressive of their individuality, their general well-being, their talents and joys, their ethical code, their desire for life-long learning, their sense of place, their local and global communities, and their responsibilities as members of the human race. These are what ensure that students are healthy, functioning members of our society. They are certainly my ultimate goals as a teacher, with language—particularly aesthetic, creative, and reflective language—as the vehicle. Yet beyond cursory mentions of citizenship, no sentiments like these—not a drop—are in the current draft of the standards. Narrative, reflective, and creative communication receive related short-shrift in these standards, if they are included at all. All these things are included, notably, in other international standards of language, such as those of Finland—one of the highest performing nations on the planet." (Full article after the jump)

If you've read them, what's your impression of the draft standards?

What Makes or Breaks a Principal?

Principals often face a paradox, note the October EL authors of "What Makes or Breaks a Principal":

"The bold action needed to improve the school's performance often puts staff relationships at risk."

Complicating matters, typical principal certification programs and professional development often don't educate on professional relationship building. The authors explain how leaders develop three clusters of relational skills and qualities crucial to school leadership:

• Acting as consultants to translate pedagogical knowledge into practice
• Mediating conflict and reaching consensus
• Valuing relationships

Relationship skills can make or break a school leader. How do you stay sharp on these so-called soft skills? How have the relationship skills of school leaders had a positive or negative effect on your school?

Coming Soon: ASCD Scholars

Starting next week, check this space for dispatches from ASCD's newly formed, select group of educators from around the world—the ASCD Scholars. Over the 2009–2010 school year, they'll discuss topics in education leadership through the lens of the education situation in their country or region or germane to their job title, and they'll invite you in on the conversation by posting here on Inservice, tweeting on Twitter, and writing for ASCD Express.

Tackle education leadership theory, research, challenges, and practicalities of implementation with the ASCD Scholars, led by administrator and classroom teacher duo Tom Hoerr and Jennifer Morrison (pictured). Look for new content from the scholars every two weeks on Inservice, help us keep the conversation growing, and share us with your professional learning network.

Check out the ASCD Scholars Web page to learn more about this dynamic new group of leaders.

Weighing Enthusiasm vs. Experience of Alt. Certified Teachers

Transition-to-Teaching, Teach for America, and New Teacher Project Teaching Fellows--in the past few years, the path to the classroom has dramatically changed, particularly in urban districts. In Indianapolis, a city that has long struggled to fill teaching vacancies, school officials are eager to enlist these energetic new recruits, saying the new teachers' enthusiasm offsets their inexperience. Programs like TFA are also highly competitive and select candidates that average higher test scores than their ed. school peers.

As Stephen Sawchuck reports, Indiana is a flashpoint state in the debate over licensure. Notably, the New Teacher Project recently studied human resources policies in Indianapolis Public Schools, and made recommendations that would give principals more autonomy over staffing decisions.

Critics of the trend to prefer alternatively certified teachers over those who take a traditional four-year route to the classroom claim that students pay the price for expediting the teacher training process. Reading instruction, especially, has been identified as a weak spot for alternatively certified teachers. While these programs ratchet up literacy training, the federal government last week stepped in with $43 million in new Teacher Quality partnership grants, money that'll largely go to residency programs at schools of education.

Will one route to the classroom emerge as the new gold standard?

You can bet we're considering these topics as we plan the May issue of Educational Leadership on How the Teaching Profession is Changing. (P.S. the deadline to submit articles for this theme is December 1, 2009.)

The Power of Two

Post submitted by Principals William Sterrett and Matthew Haas.

Because of our frantic schedules, principals often have no meaningful dialogue, in any consistent manner, with a peer. As we describe in our October EL article ("The Power of Two"), the two of us have found a way to make peer-to-peer dialogue happen.

As two young principals from the same school division, we formed a working partnership and meet monthly to discuss issues that confront us and the mechanisms behind our successes. While it took some work and planning to get this tete-a-tete consistently on our calendars, once it was set up, we honored it with care. One of us leads a small elementary school, the other a comprehensive high school, but we've found good instruction in each setting is similar: It involves building positive classroom community, engaging students, tight collaboration, and a sincere desire to see all students succeed. 

Emphasizing cooperation over competition also helps our professional relationship. Charles Warner, a consultant/trainer and active blogger at www.MediaCurmudgeon.com, notes that "if in fact competition brings out the 'beast' in us, then . . . cooperation surely brings out the 'best' in us (see Warner's article on this topic).

We'd like to hear from you: Have you found creative ways to regularly meet with a peer to bolster your leadership?

Teaching Social Justice

Last spring, EL stirred up social justice in its May issue. This fall, Deirdra Grode talks about teaching through a social justice lens as a way to raise student engagement and consciousness.

Read Grode's latest column, "Teaching Social Justice"

In one example, Grode weaves social justice content into reading comprehension and writing practice tests. She finds students eager to show they can handle more complex topics, and the high interest content transforms a fairly dry assignment--practicing for state assessments--into an opportunity for students to do some of their "most thoughtful work."

Grode teaches social justice as both stand alone units, and as themes integrated into lessons across content areas.

How do you approach social justice topics in your classroom?

Deirdra Grode was the 2008 ASCD Outstanding Young Educator Award winner. In August, she assumed the position, co-director/principal K-8 at the Hoboken Charter School in Hoboken, N.J. in August. She previously taught 7th and 8th grade social studies and language arts teacher at the school. Her monthly column appears in Education Update newsletter.

The Outside-Inside Connection

The Outside-Inside Connection

Challenges you face inside the school are connected and compounded by things happening outside the school. So, says Thomas Hatch ("The Outside-Inside Connection"),

It's not enough for principals to be good administrators of staff and school operations and good instructional leaders--they've also got to be the liaison to those outside the school, acting as "spokesperson, negotiator, and champion of the school's interests."

Leave all these responsibilities up to the principal alone, and you're bound to encounter one of these problems down the road:

• Principal burnout
• Over-attention to external issues alienating the principal from what's going on in the school
• Leaders who leave a school take the power of their networks with them

Hatch says principals must constantly scan the school community for concerns and opportunities for partnerships, and seed school advocacy among community members, all while keeping the big picture of school needs in mind.

Principals, how do you leverage the outside-inside connection at your school?

Mastery Charters as National Model?

Last week, everyone was reading about Mastery charter schools in Philadephia. The schools and their leadership are getting props from the Obama administration for their rigorous college-prep-for-all curriculum model, wed to a strict behavior code, and emphasis on personal responsibility and interpersonal skills.

Mastery's school years and days are longer, struggling students attend mandatory Saturday tutoring sessions, and students must achieve a grade of 76 percent or higher in order to advance grade levels. Based on success at Mastery's initial school site, former Philly schools chief Paul Vallas enlisted Mastery to convert three of the district's most-troubled middle schools to charters. At all sites, school violence is way down and student achievement is much higher.

DOE Secretary Duncan calls Mastery "a national model" for school reform, and under Duncan's four options for turning around failing schools, organizations like Mastery are definately poised for expansion.

And this raises some familiar questions from critics like whether rural areas would be able to pony up new staff required in most charter-style takeovers, whether students fall through the cracks of charter enrollment procedures, and what sort of quality assurance measures will govern charter expansion.

Halving Dropout Rate Would Yield $45 Billion

With President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan seriously committed to high school reform, it's time federal policy focused on turning around high schools with abysmal achievement and dropout rates—according to presenters at a discussion on turning around high schools convened by the Alliance for Excellent Education September 25 ("Economic Imperative: Turning Around the Nation's Lowest-Performing High Schools").

Action is especially needed on the 2,000 or so "drop-out factories" that Robert Balfanz and associates at Johns Hopkins University identified as the home school of half of all high school dropouts in the United States.

Two common themes emerged throughout the briefing:

• The need for common standards, uniform throughout the United States, spelling out what competencies a high school graduate must have.
• The pressing need for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to be reauthorized in a way that provides funding for middle/high school reform and is deliberately designed to address the crisis of substandard high schools and the dropout rate.

The Alliance for Excellent Education has long called for federal action to establish uniform accountability measures in all states, with the goal of ensuring that four years in any high school will prepare students for success in college and careers. AEE President Bob Wise said the current approach of all 50 states setting their own standards and assessments--with the federal government stepping in only to impose "one-size-fits-all" remedies for failing schools--is ineffective: We need common college- and career-ready standards for all high school graduates in the nation.

Wise and AEE Director of Strategic Initiatives Lyndsay Pinkus presented data estimating the economic impact of the high U.S. dropout rate: If we could cut the dropout rate in half, $45 billion would be returned to the U.S. Treasury. This estimate comes from taxes recouped from high school graduates being employed at higher pay (rather than dropping out and into underemployment)  and savings in federal funding for remediating high school dropouts  who enter community college.

Health and Learning

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600–1,000-word essays on the theme "Health and Learning." The theme description is below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by October 26, 2009. 

Research shows that healthy children learn more, so how can schools forge a healthy environment? This issue will examine programs ranging from creating school-based community health clinics to keeping physical education part of the school day; from implementing discipline policies that make hallways and classrooms free of physical or emotional violence to teaching students about nutrition and fitness; from helping students maintain a healthy body image to helping them avoid self-destructive behaviors. We also welcome research on the links among physical and mental health, student motivation, and achievement.