"Play Is Problem Solving"

Early learning programs enrolling children as young as 3 years old are considered critical to closing achievement gaps, evident as early as kindergarten, and an important first step in a student's cradle-to-career trajectory.

But along with more formal integration of early learning into K–12 education comes a narrow focus on tested content and skills. Time for play-based activities is increasingly taken up with math and reading instruction. The Alliance for Childhood found that full-day kindergartners in New York and Los Angeles spend less than 30 minutes playing and four to six times more time on literacy, math, and test-taking. 

Several studies show the benefits of play: it allows students to develop social skills like empathy, reduces tendencies toward delinquency and emotional disturbances, and helps students practice impulse control.

As more states put funding toward early learning, play advocates worry that politicians will trade long-term social development gains for bumps in test scores, the Washington Post reports in this week's most-clicked SmartBrief story.

Arlington, Va., public preschools offer a model for developing programs—full-day preschool anchored to a play-based curriculum that integrates vocabulary and numeracy learning. Through 5th grade, students in these programs show test score gains more than those without.

What's the state of play in your school?

Better Leading Through Technology?

Post submitted by ASCD Scholars facilitator Tom Hoerr.

More and more, it feels like technology is an essential part of our lives. At times it feels like I live on e-mail; at times it feels like it suffocates me. I'm tethered to my computer and I just bought an iPhone. My weekly parent e-letter and staff e-bulletin are clever and relevant (if I say so myself), and I find myself having virtual meetings that take place on a computer screen. And wait until you see my PowerPoint presentation on multiple intelligences! But . . . is technology being marketed as a cure-all? Do we seek technological solutions where none is necessary?
 
How important is technology to leadership? Is it possible to be a good leader and not be technologically savvy? Can too much technological expertise hinder leadership? How does the pervasiveness of technology change leadership? Or does it?

Feed Up, Back, Forward

Feed Up, Back, Forward

Feedback, a complex and powerful resource for teachers, is characterized by three distinct components, say authors Fisher and Frey:

• Feed Up, or establishing clear purpose and learning goals
• Feedback, or ongoing response to student work
• Feed Forward, or using feedback to plan and modify future instruction

Checking for understanding, using common assessments, identifying and assessing specific course competencies, and meaningful practice toward state exams sets the stage for aligned multiple measures that allow for feeding up, back, and forward.

Not knowing what to do with assessment data can make this resource seem out of reach. How does your school make student data both meaningful and useful? 

Why Every Student Needs Critical Friends

Why Every Student Needs Critical Friends

Every student needs critical friends--peer critiques transform the classroom into an authentic audience, students tailor their work in consideration of wider array of feedback, and student engagement goes up because they realize their perspectives are essential to classroom progress.

But, author Amy Reynolds notes in her November EL article, using peer critiques means establishing a safe and trusting environment for students to practice being constructive critiques. It also takes patience and helping students overcome initial fear and resistance.

Have you seen students display the fear and difficulty in giving and accepting criticism that pervaded Reynolds's early attempts? If so, how did you deal with these issues?

The Quest for Quality Assessments

The Quest for Quality

Assessment quality and balance determine how reliable and useful the data collected will be, say authors Chappuis, Chappuis, and Stiggins in "The Quest for Quality." 

Using misinformation defeats the purpose of bringing in more results to inform our decisions, they write. The authors outline five keys to assessment quality:

• clear purpose
• clear learning targets
• sound assessment design
• effective communication of results
• student involvement

Guiding assessment balance means considering formative and summative applications, as well as whether assessments are meeting student, teacher, or district information needs.

To achieve balance and high quality in assessment practices, the authors conclude that all assessors and users of assessment results must be assessment literate, that is, "to know what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate uses of assessment results."

What does your school or district do to improve assessment literacy?

The Problem with Performance Pay

Special Topic: The Problem with Performance Pay

Performance pay requires districts to develop a new definition of performance based on our true goals for students and teachers, argues Donald Gratz in "The Problem with Performance Pay."

Teacher performance pay based primarily on student standardized test scores sets a low ceiling on what we expect from students and teachers, says Gratz, who headed research during the first phase of Denver's performance pay pilot (ProComp).

Denver successfully expanded its definition of teacher performance in part by looking at student academic achievement in terms of teacher-set objectives, not just standardized scores. Engaging teachers in the process and valuing their contributions, as well as considering multiple components beyond academics, led Denver to a system that benefits both teachers and students.

If the problem with performance pay is an overreliance on standardized test scores to determine teacher merit, what measures would you include in a true definition of teacher performance?

From Test Takers to Test Makers

From Test Takers to Test Makers

Norwegian educator Kari Smith ("From Test Takers to Test Makers") found that her students who were good at retaining factual knowledge and answering what and when questions often did well on tests but did not necessarily understand the material.

In contrast, students who did understand the material and the relationships between facts (they were good at answering "why" questions) had trouble demonstrating that knowledge at test time.

Frustrated with the quality of tests, and the data they were producing, Smith sought a way to better data.

The Next Generation of Testing

The Next Generation of Testing

The history of wide-scale, school-based assessment practices has been pretty circular:

1938 to late 1980s: Multiple-choice tests that measure only part of the skills and knowledge outlined by standards and tell us little about helping students do better.

Late 1980s to early 1990s: Performance-based tests that give a more comprehensive view of student learning, but they are expensive and hard to norm.

Early 1990s to today: Back to the bubble test.

"YouTube Meets Wikipedia"

Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger's recent launch of an online education video library got a lot of attention last week. WatchKnow.org houses thousands of educational videos for youth ages 3-18, as well as hundreds of videos for teachers and parents.

Site users can add their own videos or edit how videos are tagged or organized on the site. Videos for students can be filtered by age and are categorized by content area and then broken down into subtopics or skills. WatchKnow.org aims to not only capitalize on the Internet as a learning environment but also provide some much-needed order to the vast clutter of free educational videos online.

Does WatchKnow.org make you more likely to use educational videos with your faculty, students, or own children? And how likely are you to create and add your own educational videos?

Assessment: A Forward Look (1966)

As we consider how best to use multiple measures of assessment to determine the success of our schools, it's instructive to look back at the dawn of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which in its infancy used a far greater diversity of measures than it has in recent years.

In the November 1966 issue of Educational Leadership, J. Raymond Gerberich, an education professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, describes the thinking behind the development of NAEP, which wouldn't be administered until 1969.

Read the article: Assessment: A Forward Look (PDF)

According to Gerberich, It was designed to "obtain evidence about the progress of American education that will parallel the information presently supplied by an economic index, the Gross National Product." He recommends that in addition to basic skills and content areas, "interests, habits and practices" and "societal outcomes" should be assessed to give a fuller picture of U.S. schools.

Better Support for and from Middle School Parents

Ed Week's Debra Viadero has a great new piece profiling the work of Harvard University researcher Nancy E. Hill. Hill writes about how schools can better guide parents in supporting the scholarship of their adolescent or middle school-age children.

Hill's findings show the blanket K–12 recommendations school districts provide for parent involvement often underserve middle schoolers. Instead of helping with homework and chaperoning a field trip, Hill's research suggests parents beef up at-home support for academics by

• Communicating their expectations for their children’s achievement.
• Discussing learning strategies.
• Fostering career aspirations.
• Linking what children were learning in school, or were interested in learning, to outside activities.
• Making plans for the future.

Further, Viadero reports on Hill's discovery that it is incredibly important for parents, middle, and high school educators to be on the same page about academic pathways from middle school to college—in other words, the courses and academic supports a child needs to get into the high school classes that will prepare them for college.

Certainly the guidance counselor would be a big player in facilitating Hill's recommendations for parent involvement and making sure that parents and schools are clearly communicating academic pathways, particularly to those students whose parents may be less savy about navigating the system. Yet a recent survey shows a majority of high schools are freezing or cutting back on counseling staff due to budget shortfalls. We imagine middle school counselors are facing the same shortages.  

Hill's research shows how schools can better work with parents and guardians of adolescents, but schools need community support to be able to build this capacity. Help schools better serve families by getting involved as an Educator Advocate or whole child supporter.

The Many Meanings of "Multiple Measures"

The Many Meanings of "Multiple Measures"

Is anything that measures higher-order thinking a "multiple measure"? What about more than one opportunity to take the same exit exam? Is that a "multiple measure"?

From how state and federal policy define and apply multiple measures to classroom practice, Sue Brookhart looks at The Many Meanings of "Multiple Measures" in the November EL.

Multiple measures are designed to accomplish construct validity and decision validity, but as Brookhart points out, different definitions and different ways of combining multiple measures may not give an accurate picture of achievement or school effectiveness.

As an example, five states with graduation tied to a single exit exam narrowly define achievement and show the same or declining graduation rates over a three-year period. Whereas four states using a multiple measures graduation policy showed steady or rising graduation rates over the same period.

What meanings of "multiple measures" are at play in your school or district, and how does that affect teaching and learning?

A Novel Approach: Political Debate That Illuminates vs. Obscures

Given the uncivil discourse that's dominated most of the health care reform debate, should those of us who place children at the center of our decision making approach the coming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) with anticipation or dread?

ASCD Executive Director Gene R. Carter, in his November "Is It Good for the Kids?" column, reminds us of three key points: each child's success must be the key criterion for any education reform; any education policies that we create must translate into sound practices; and debate must illuminate issues, rather than obscure them.

Think reauthorization of ESEA can—or should—wait? Consider just a few sobering statistics:

• 27 percent of America's young people drop out of high school.

• Recent international tests in math and science show our students trail their peers in other countries.

• Just 40 percent of young people earn a two-year or four-year college degree.

• The United States now ranks 10th in the world in the rate of college completion for 25- to 34-year-olds.

ASCD members are unified in our call for reform of our nation's education law and stand ready to do our part. We advocate for the federal government to play a leadership role in equity and access for disadvantaged and special-needs student populations, support the development and training of highly effective educators, encourage effective education policies and services for every stage of a student's development, and promote innovative strategies and programs for 21st century students to be successful.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently urged us all to "roll up our sleeves and work together and get beyond differences of party, politics, and philosophy." Isn't it time that we demand each of our elected officials answer the following question: where do you stand on education?

(Post submitted by Barbara Michelman, ASCD Communications Director)

Notes from the School Psychologist

Some of the same qualities that make a great school counselor—humor, insight, and empathy—also make a great blogger. In Notes from the School Psychologist, clinical psychiatrist Rebecca Branstetter writes about everything from student motivation to parenting with verve, intelligence, and lots of good-natured sarcasm.

Some of our favorite posts include one on mentoring new counselors—Branstetter affectionately calls these newbies "manatees," a nickname her husband inadvertently coined—and another one titled "Psychologist vs. Puppy" that explores the links among dogs, spouses, children, and positive reinforcement. Branstetter also tackles heavier issues, such as a recent school shooting, with compassion and depth.

ASCD Testimony on Child Nutrition and Wellness

A report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released yesterday shows that in 2008 almost 15 percent of U.S. households were food insecure, meaning they had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year. This figure represents the highest rate of food insecurity since the report was launched in 1995. Moreover, children experienced instances of very low food security in 506,000 households in 2008, up from 323,000 households the year before.

These troubling statistics show that the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition and Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Reauthorization Act, which provides school meals to millions of low-income students, can’t come soon enough. In his remarks about the USDA report, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization presents an opportunity to make it easier for the food service program to cover all eligible children and to eliminate gap periods when children aren’t getting the nutrition assistance they need--at breakfast, after school, and during the summer.

Meep Learning Curve on Discipline

Zero-tolerance policies are often a last resort born out of frustration—the sort of scenario you can imagine resulted in the Danvers High principal recently deciding to ban the word "meep" from utterance on school grounds.

The problem is that zero-tolerance policies are a shoddy tool for changing student behavior. The meep kerfuffle in Massachusetts is going to live past its 15 seconds of fame in part due to reactions to the schoolwide ban.

But we're not here to bloggertunistically poke fun at the Danvers administration's headache—we're here to help. There's a moral to this meeping story, courtesy of authors Curwin, Curwin, & Mendler. From the 3rd edition of their best-selling ASCD book, Discipline with Dignity:

What to Do When More Than One Student Is Acting Out

Sometimes you may be faced with a group of students who are acting out at the same time or feeding off one another. The better you know the dynamics of your class, the more effective you will be in handling this type of situation.

The first step is to pick the one student in the acting-out group who is the one the other students respect the most, fear the most, or are amused by the most. Stopping the misbehavior of this student must come first. We call this strategy "The Leader of the Pack." At a separate time in a one-on-one moment, approach the leader of the pack to help you calm or quiet his crew. Appeal to the student's need for control. Often these students like the role of leader and fit naturally into it. You might say, "Rashid, there is too much talking going on while I am teaching. I need your help solving this problem because I notice that most other students look up to you. What do you think would work?" After suggestions are given, conclude with "I am counting on you to quiet your crew when I give you the signal. Thanks."

Meeting Students Where They Are

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600 to 1,000-word essays on the theme "Meeting Students Where They Are." The theme description is below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by December 7, 2009. 

Kids come to school with varying abilities, interests, learning styles, background knowledge, and social and emotional needs. How can educators accurately assess students’ current instructional needs and differentiate instruction to meet those needs? How can we connect the curriculum to students' interests, goals, and passions? Topics in this issue will include identifying students' background knowledge, interests, strengths, and learning styles; understanding and building on students' diverse cultural backgrounds; and overcoming challenging school structures that make it difficult to get to know students.

Fewer Topics and Deeper Learning Guide Math Success in Oregon's Middle Grades

Oregon middle schoolers in every racial, ethnic, and income group are demonstrating better mastery of math concepts—including algebraic reasoning, statistics, and geometry—than they did just three years ago, reports The Oregonian.

Teaching for understanding, not coverage of topics, takes precedence in Oregon's middle school math classes. Fewer topics allow more time an focus on student mastery, as well as time for teachers to assess student learning and collaborate on lesson development. The state is also benefiting from recently adopted, teacher-written middle school math curriculum called Oregon Focus.

Although overall middle school math achievement in Oregon is still pretty average, these recent gains are a positive sign—one that educators caution could be squandered when students arrive at high school, where one-size-fits-all math curriculum is blamed for stagnant student achievement.

Oregon's successful approach to teaching and learning math concepts might sound familiar to followers of our Most-Clicked series. Back in January, Oregon elementary schools made news with its concept-rich approach to math instruction.

Have You Been Used?

Post submitted by ASCD Scholars facilitator Jen Morrison.

Does working toward promoting the highest expectations for our students make us susceptible to manipulation?

Numerous stakeholders drive the conversation about education and they use all sorts of tactics. We've all encountered that parent, teacher, legislator, union rep, publisher, think tank, or administrator with an opinion about what goes on in schools, and sometimes they cause us to do things that aren't the most beneficial for our students.

Why are we so easily swayed and silenced? What are the costs and the remedies? How do we ourselves manipulate our own audiences of students, faculty, and community? And most important, what lessons are to be learned in the irony?

Rules & Procedures: Let Research & Your Students Be Your Guides

In this first of twin chapters (6 and 7), Marzano moves from content and pedagogy to classroom management. What are the most effective ways to set ground rules, establish procedures, and design the physical space of a classroom such that learning is encouraged? Dr. M has some simple, research-based suggestions.

1. Do not downplay the importance of the physical space. A clear traffic pattern; easy access and storage of materials; four steps only to the teacher's space; and flexible seating that can accomodate group collaboration, whole class instruction, and individual work are essential.
2. Establish a small set of rules and procedures. Smaller is better, the research indicates—the critical number seems to be five to eight.
3. Make the process of developing and maintaining rules and procedures a kid-driven one. Have students participate in the rules and procedures' creation, and check in with students regularly about how they are working. The classroom meeting, discussed in detail on page 129, is a powerful way to do this.

Stuck in My Head:

I first learned the essential difference between rules and procedures as a green teacher in the fall of 2000, reading Harry Wong's The First Days of School. Procedures are specific ways of maintaining larger standards of community, such as "No gum in class," or "Put your homework in the homework folder before you leave the classroom."

Rules, on the other hand, are overarching, "umbrella" expectations of behavior. Perhaps the most famous example is the two-rule code of KIPP schools, first developed by Rafe Esquith: "Work Hard. Be Nice." Mine even have been whittled down over the years to only two words: "PARTICIPATION" and "RESPECT." I generally give these words to kids at the beginning of the year, ask them to develop a class definition, and create guidelines for behavior from there.