Death of a Tradition?

Technology is changing many of of the traditions we associate with school. Yearbooks, prom photos, and other traditional items high schoolers generally purchase are getting replaced by photos taken on iPhones and digital cameras. Can you blame students? The choice is $60 for a yearbook versus easily recording memories themselves in an album on Facebook for free, and in a matter of minutes. Yearbook publishers have taken note and are trying new ways to entice customers. Book/DVD combos and access to online materials are becoming more popular and keeping some students interested—for now.

I don't think memories should cost anything," Paul Tee, a senior at Liberty High School in Frisco, Texas, told the Dallas Morning News. Only half of his school's population shelled out money for a traditional yearbook. Tee plans on getting his photos from prom online from a friend.

"I have issues with kids saying they can't afford it and then buying a pair of $100 jeans," said Linda Drake of the Journalism Education Association. "I don't see the school spirit. I don't see the school camaraderie."

Does diminished interest in yearbooks and school photos signal a drop in school spirit, bad news for the yearbook club, and/or less revenue for school fundraising? How might schools take advantage of this evolution in school culture?

Research's Inside Scoop

With over 1,400 stories—many of them on educational research—under her belt, veteran Education Week reporter Debra Viadero knows a thing or two about studies. In her new blog, Inside School Research, she serves as an impressive guide through the often tricky terrain of education research, providing summaries of recent findings and insights into their implications. Recent posts include a comparison of two studies on privately managed schools, a look at the effectiveness of Teach for America, and an update on the state of the What Works Clearinghouse.

Parents in Support of the Whole Child

The National PTA has signed on as a partner in ASCD's Whole Child Initiative, joining more than 40 other whole child partners that represent a broad swath of the education, arts, and health and wellness fields.

ASCD's partnership with the PTA is significant because the Whole Child Initiative is grounded in the belief that responsibility for educating and supporting the whole child neither starts nor stops at the schoolhouse door. That means businesses, community agencies, policymakers, and families must align with schools to provide conditions that support learning for each student.

Moreover, outside of educators, parents are the single largest group visiting the Whole Child Initiative's Web site. More than 40 percent of the site's visitors identify themselves as parents, a percentage that has steadily grown since the site launched just over two years ago.

ASCD Executive Director Gene Carter says ASCD will collaborate with the PTA to provide these parents with the resources and expertise they need to ensure that their children are receiving comprehensive education and support services.

Educators: Does your school encourage and support parent involvement? Parents: Do you feel welcome to contribute at your child's school?

Discuss: Credit Recovery

"If credit recovery is the primary means for helping kids graduate, it defeats the purpose of giving kids a quality education versus moving them through the system." –Representative for Karl Dean, Mayor of Nashville

"For those reasons, I'm also skeptical about credit recovery." –John Bridgeland, CEO of Civics Enterprises

Comments taken from May 1, 2009 EWA panel, Dropping Out: Why Kids Leave and What Brings Them Back

Discuss online options for credit recovery at EdWeek's "Online Credit Recovery" chat, this Thursday, May 28, 2-3 p.m. (EST).

 

Parental Help with Goals Gets the Grades

In a new meta-analysis on parental involvement, researchers found the highest positive effect on student achievement among middle schoolers whose parents engaged them in goal setting that valued education as integral to future successes.

Though middle school is often marked by declining interest in academics in favor of social pursuits, it's also the time when adolescents begin to internalize personal goals. Parental guidance on goal setting and learning or studying strategies tied to achieving those goals goes a long way for students at this age. 

Parental involvement with homework had less of a clear connection to academic gains--some students found parents helpful, while others found their parents' help confusing or over-bearing.  

Chapter 9 of the new ASCD book, Changing the Way You Teach, Improving the Way Students Learn (Martin-Kniep, Picone-Zocchia) gets into goal setting and planning as part of growing strategic learners. Here's an excerpt:

ASCD Express Calls for Submissions

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600–1,000-word essays on the theme "Preventing Dropouts." The theme description is below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by June 9, 2009.

The high dropout rate of high school students—hovering around 50 percent in the hardest-hit urban schools—concerns educators, state officials, and the federal government. Research shows that when students feel connected to their schools, they're more likely to persevere to graduation. What can secondary schools do to ensure that students stay engaged in their learning and remain connected to their school communities despite the challenges that beset them at home, in class, or within the wider community? What can school leaders do to improve instruction and overall school culture so that students not only understand the value of education but also feel valued as people whose contributions to society will increase over time?

No Quitters in High School

Education policy talk these days has centered on the education stimulus, but important high school redesign legislation was introduced by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Representative Dave Loebsack (D-IA) earlier this month. The Secondary School Innovation Fund Act would provide critical resources for innovative secondary school redesign to dramatically raise high school graduation rates and stem the flow of high school dropouts.

Specifically, the legislation would

• Expand on the success of emerging models like multiple pathways to graduation, early college high schools and dual enrollment, and early warning intervention systems.
• Support a variety of secondary school redesign strategies such as personalization, improved transitions into and out of high school, expanded learning time, postsecondary and work-based learning opportunities, and a rigorous curriculum aligned across grades and with postsecondary education and the workforce.
• Provide resources for high-quality research and evaluation to ensure funding goes to programs with a proven track record in raising student achievement.

In this month’s Is It Good for the Kids column, ASCD Executive Director Gene Carter reminds us about the imperative to increase the number of high school graduates. He writes 

“Four years ago, 30 students entered a high school classroom. This month, nine of those students won’t walk across the stage to receive their diplomas because they’ve dropped out. Out of those nine, four will be unemployed, three will receive government assistance, two won’t have health insurance, and each will be eight times more likely than their peers to go to jail. Those nine kids are part of the 1.2 million U.S. students who fail to graduate every year, jeopardizing their futures and costing our economy billions of dollars in lost wages.”

Carter goes on to cite President Obama, who has said, “Dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself; it’s quitting on your country.”

ASCD will work with Senator Reid and Representative Loebsack to garner support for the Secondary School Innovation Fund Act on Capitol Hill, solicit additional sponsors, and advocate for its enactment. We invite you to advocate with us. Use ASCD’s sample messages to either thank your senators and representative for cosponsoring the bill or encourage them to support it.

How Teacher Evals. Get Misused

Data from The Widget Effect, to be published in June 2009. Slide presented at today's SMHC Webinar on recruiting highly effective teachers in tough economic times. New Teacher Project President Tim Daly called for teacher evaluation systems that differentiate levels of performance, and tightly align with professional development. SMHC's Co-Director Allan Odden added that teacher performance ratings should be validated by student performance data.

Daly said the boldest use of "Race to the Top" stimulus funds would be to give us ways to measure teacher effectiveness that are usable for different things--i.e. teacher recruitment, career ladders, retention--and not just how teacher evaluation is currently used--to dismiss teachers.

Reading, Writing, and Rx

From the April 27, 2009, New Yorker article "Brain Gain," by Margaret Talbot:

[Martha] Farah questions the idea that neuroenhancers will expand inequality. Citing the "pretty clear trend across the studies that say neuroenhancers will be less helpful for people who score above average," she said that cognitive-enhancing pills could actually become levellers, if they are dispensed cheaply. A 2007 discussion paper published by the British Medical Association also makes this point: "Equality of opportunity is an explicit goal of our education system, giving individuals the best chance of achieving their full potential and of competing on equal terms with their peers. Selective use of neuroenhancers amongst those with lower intellectual capacity, or those from deprived backgrounds who do not have the benefit of additional tuition, could enhance the educational opportunities for those groups.” If the idea of giving a pill as a substitute for better teaching seems repellent—like substituting an I.V. drip of synthetic nutrition for actual food—it may nevertheless be preferable to a scenario in which only wealthy kids receive a frequent mental boost.

What do you think? Should selective use of neuroenhancers like Ritalin and Adderall be considered for students with fewer educational opportunities?

Are Noncollege Youth Sidelined?

U.S. high school-age youth who aren't enrolled in traditional college prep classes are not being invited to participate in challenging community service or complex conversations about civic dilemmas, according to Peter Levine's "The Civic Opportunity Gap," in this month's Educational Leadership.

Whopping youth voter turnout was highly touted in the 2008 presidential election, but only 1 in 14 non-college-educated youth turned out at the polls (compared to 1 in 4 with some college credit), Levine notes. Although Levine, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, points to several causes of this "civic education gap," the different options that public schools present college-bound compared to non-college-bound teens is one culprit, he insists:

Researchers Joseph Kahne and Ellen Middaugh found that, within a given high school, students taking college preparatory courses were more likely than those taking less advanced courses to report that their classes included such experiences as service learning, classroom discussions of issues, field trips, or visiting speakers. When we compare suburban schools to urban and rural schools . . . we find that privileged schools are more likely to offer interactive civic education.

Middle and high school educators: Does your school welcome all students into civic activities and classroom discussion of social problems? Are some kids sidelined into menial volunteer tasks?

ASCD Express Calls for Submissions

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600–1,000-word essays on the theme "The Transformational Media Center." The theme description is below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by May 25, 2009.

The school library has been the "media center" for years now, but what kinds of media, access, and support do the best centers offer students and teachers? How do librarians or media resource experts build working relationships with teachers to benefit students? How are media specialists leading the charge to help students negotiate the new literacies they'll need to cope with the ever-growing sea of digital information?

My Back Pages: No Age Barriers to World Understanding (1946)

"Today, as teachers, we find ourselves alternately amazed and frustrated by the speed at which things are happening . . . learning experiences and training materials for children must take cognizance of this new and amazingly real and interdependent world."

With international conflicts ongoing and an increasingly worldwide financial crisis, educators today are hearing familiar calls to educate students for the realities of the interconnected globe. Yet the above quote, from Boulder, Colo. elementary supervisor Marie Anna Mehl, comes from her October 1946 Educational Leadership article "No Age Barriers to World Understanding" (PDF). In the article, she writes of the urgency to educate children with a sense of social responsibility, particularly in light of the awesome power of the atomic bomb.

In a case study of her efforts to reform her schools’ social studies curriculum, Mehl details the importance of cultivating world understanding in the "grass roots" of the early grades, through both experiences such as cooperative learning and discussion of the world's different cultures and economic realities. She casts these two strands as complimentary, as children who are "emotionally sensitized" to working together will better understand the interconnectedness of the worlds' people.

How do you integrate issues of global cooperation and interconnectedness in your classroom?

Mrs. Cassidy's Classroom Blog

It's hard to miss all the buzz around blogs in the classroom—and hard not to be skeptical that a classroom blog is more gimmick than useful tool. For all the skeptics out there, Mrs. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog makes a pretty compelling (and fun) case for the medium.

Blogging out of Moose Jaw, Canada, Cassidy’s 1st graders are excited to share their learning with an online audience through video postings to the blog on anything from learning to count to describing how to ice-skate. For a truly classroom 2.0 experience, watch Mrs. Cassidy's class's Skype call to an Alabama classroom. The class read Dr. Seuss’s Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? in honor of the author’s birthday. Each student also has an individual blog to share stories and opinions as the students learn to write. And in a moment of reflective learning, they contribute to a video explaining why classrooms should use video.

Stirring Up Justice

What happens when adults send youth the message that certain social justice issues are off limits? In "Stirring Up Justice," Laurel Schmidt says, "Children may well respond to the discovery that the topic of social justice is off limits by thinking that

• Injustice is a fact of life; there's no point in trying to change human nature.
• Injustice is unfortunate, but getting involved is too discouraging.
• Perhaps the victims brought it on themselves. They deserve it."

Schmidt acknowledges that social justice can be messy, exhausting work, but asks, "Are there some behaviors or conditions that we simply must address, no matter how difficult or unpopular our work will be?"

What behaviors or conditions do you believe schools have a responsibility to address? How has or hasn't your school engaged in these issues?

Schmidt notes that "kids rarely accept injustice as the status quo".

What issues have you seen students get fired up about? How did you respond and why? 

ASCD Express Calls for Submissions

Deadlines Extended!

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600–1,000-word essays on two separate themes: "Becoming a Master Teacher" and "Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom." The theme descriptions are below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by May 26, 2009.

Becoming a Master Teacher

Being the best in any field takes talent, vision, patience, and much hard work; and for those in education, it's no different. Master teachers—whether nationally board-certified, five-star rated for educator quality, or recognized by peers and community—are invited talk about what it took to reach the top. Articles will cover the role of teacher evaluations, merit pay systems, and other innovations that encourage high-quality teaching.

Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom

Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner believes that all people have nine intelligences—ranging from verbal-linguistic intelligence to musical intelligence; bodily intelligence; and existential intelligence, or the capacity to tackle the deep questions of human existence and the meaning of life. How can teachers use Gardner's insights into human intelligence to help their students approach content through a variety of lenses? What kinds of lessons and learning activities can help students recognize and value their intelligences, manage their learning, or strengthen a particular intelligence that may be underused?
 

Practice, Practice, Practice (Or: Homework, Homework, Homework?)

Hang onto your hats, folks. If you’re mired in the homework/no homework debate, read on for some very interesting commentary from Dr. Marzano in Chapter 3 of The Art & Science of Teaching.

Summary:

It is essential for students to not merely be exposed to new knowledge, but actively and authentically work with the knowledge. Not every kind of work fits every kind of knowledge, however.

When teaching procedural skills (how to accomplish something step by step), you also need to allow students to practice those skills. This practice should be frequent and simple at first, giving way to more complex activities. Importantly, students should reflect consistently on their own use of the procedures and come to an understanding that works for them individually: changing, adding, or deleting steps as necessary.

When teaching declarative knowledge (concepts or ideas), you need to create activities that allow students to review and revise. By making active corrections, connections, and reflections, students incorporate their knowledge into their long-term memories, like pressing pieces of pottery into a mosaic. There are seven pages at the end of this chapter that give some solid practical tools for working with declarative knowledge in class.

Stuck in My Head:

By far the most interesting writing in this chapter to me is Marzano’s position on—you guessed it—homework. And serendipity strikes! As I write, commenters are raging over this Inservice post on "The Homework Lady," Cathy Vatterott.(Full disclosure: I attended Homework Lady’s workshop at ASCD's 2008 Annual Conference and loved it.)

For those of you out there spurning Homework Lady's seemingly anti-homework policies, it's worth mentioning here that Marzano's own homework recommendations echo Vatterott’s nearly point for point. See below for a list.

Southern States Prioritize Adolescent Literacy

The Southern Regional Education Board is calling on its 16 member states to develop a comprehensive plan for improving adolescent literacy. The SREB report acknowledges that schools generally stop teaching reading too early, and that students need direct vocabulary instruction and text comprehension strategies in middle and high school, as well.

Adolescent students particularly struggle with making the leap from stories to formal texts. Students learn to read in the early grades, and literacy instruction revolves mainly around stories, with a little bit on reading informal texts like newspapers, and very little on how to read formal texts, like textbooks. In the later grades, students struggle when asked to decode increasingly technical texts.

As part of a comprehensive adolescent literacy program, SREB states might train all middle and high school teachers to teach reading.

The Window into Green

How can we expect future generations to be able to comprehend and solve environmental problems if we only arm them with "bumper-sticker answers to lapel-pin questions"?

Environmental literacy, says Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director of the Lower Merion Conservancy, has been side-lined by NCLB mandates, a sort of ad hoc, a la carte approach to environmental learning opportunities, and a cultural shift toward indoor leisure activities. 

Educators and policymakers can reverse these trends; tons of data on the benefits of environmental and outdoor education and promising models lead the way to change. Weilbacher says,

As I recount in my article, "The Window into Green", in the May issue of Educational Leadership, a resurgent wave of interest in the environment has been cresting, and it turns out that teaching kids about the environment in the outdoors does them a world of good in other areas too.  
 
The evidence mounts: greener kids are smarter, too. But what are the obstacles to better environmental education? 

Planning the Possible: How Schools Can Use Stimulus Dollars for Lasting Impact

This week, ASCD releases its report, "Planning the Possible: How Schools Can Use Stimulus Dollars for Lasting Impact". The report synthesizes data and policy recommendations on the ARRA funding, and answers questions like

• How is the stimulus funding being distributed over the five different government programs? (Title I, IDEA, Innovation fund, Ed Tech, SFSF)
• For each distribution, what are the potential uses for funds?
• How do the states match up on funding levels?
• What are the stipulations about how funds can't be used?
• What are the deadlines for committing funds?
• Why invest in professional development, and what are the features of effective PD?

"Planning the Possible" lays out the ARRA funding situation in clear terms, and identifies a range of ASCD programs, products, and services engineered to provide sustained, capacity-building professional development to elevate teacher effectiveness and improve student achievement.

The report is completely available online--check it out and let us know what you think. What's your district's PD area of focus or high need? What ARRA guidance hasn't been covered? How is your school or district already responding to the ARRA infusion? What future programming or services from ASCD would help your school or district's reform efforts?

Discuss: P-20 Lip Service

"NCLB might as well be the elementary education act—the secondary provisions are not there. We talk about focusing on proficiency, but proficiency for what? It should be so that students can graduate from high school and move into college without remediation. Unfortunately, I see more P-20 lip-service than actual people from higher education sitting down in a room with K-12 educators, talking about what students need to know, to go from early learning to college graduation."

--Celia Sims, Legislative Assistant to Senator Richard Burr (R-NC)at the Alliance for Excellent Education's Meaningful Measurement: The Role of Assessments in Improving High School Education in the Twenty-First Century on April 14, 2009