Engaging Parents & the Community in Schooling

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600 to 1,000-word essays on the theme "Engaging Parents and the Community in Schooling." The theme description is below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by May 26, 2010. 

When it comes to parent and community involvement in schools, school leaders recognize that it takes staff time and sound organization to pull off these efforts, whether a school is hosting tutors, offering internships, or running a parent center that helps strengthen learning and family life. What kinds of initiatives work well to harness family and community resources? How do they get funded? What is the payoff for students but also for the wider community? We welcome stories about innovative programs that break down the barriers between school and community and provide mutual enrichment for all concerned.

Preparing to Teach Digitally

Have you heard the news? The entire public school system in Oregon has opened up the option for schools to use Google Apps for Education.

Mashable and others are highlighting some of the benefits of Google's free suite of applications (like secure e-mail, shared documents, video, and forums): it's cost-effective; students are engaged, leading to achievement gains; and it teaches skills kids need in college and careers.

But like a lot of stories about technology in the classroom, there's a teacher-size hole in this one. How are Oregon school leaders systematically preparing teachers to use Google Apps for Education? How are teachers writing great lessons using Google?

Ironically, around the same time the news in Oregon broke, we were talking to Bill Ferriter (@plugusin) about his latest Digitally Speaking column for Educational Leadership, "Preparing to Teach Digitally": 

plugusin    @ASCD_Inservice: I think the hope we place in digital tools—instead of in teachers using digital tools—is discouraging.

plugusin    @ASCD_Inservice: Tools don't engage learners.

plugusin    @ASCD_Inservice: Good lessons—built from an understanding of students and content and delivered by good teachers—engage learners.

plugusin    @ASCD_Inservice: Granted, tools can be used to make engaging lessons easier and to make learning more efficient.

plugusin    @ASCD_Inservice: But without a good teacher making decisions based on their knowledge of kids, content and instruction, tools are useless.

"Preparing to Teach Digitally" includes ideas for getting started with digital tools in the classroom, but at its core, it's all about putting those tools in the hands of teachers adept at differentiating instruction and customizing learning.

Ferriter's article demonstrates that, while what's happening in Oregon is exciting, the real story is what teachers, and their students, do with new technology.

Teacher Leaders: What We Imagine

Post submitted by Renee Moore, author "The Teachers of 2030" in the May 2010 issue of Educational Leadership.

Rarely have policymakers listened to America's best teachers. To bring teacher voice from the margins to the center of the policy debate, the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ) established a virtual community called the Teacher Leaders Network. The TLN TeacherSolutions 2030 team—made up of 12 recognized classroom experts who teach in diverse settings—spent more than a year reviewing research, interviewing futurists, and looking ahead to 2030. Our recent Educational Leadership article is a partial view of what we anticipate for the future of teaching.

Here's our vision:

• By 2030, students and families will have endless learning options. Teachers who can customize learning experiences and deliver them in both physical and virtual environments will be highly sought after.
• Traditional school classrooms will morph into dynamic study groups, enhanced by the Web's potential for connectivity. Expert teachers will engage students in interactive global learning communities using 3D Web environments, augmented reality, and mobile technologies.
• Standardized tests will be only one of many tools used to evaluate teacher effectiveness as local school communities adapt performance-based compensation programs that fit their context. Guiding these reforms will be unions that have matured into professional guilds and that base membership on levels of expertise.
• The teaching profession will develop into one which talented people can enter, advance, and exit via multiple paths.

The essential component of this vision is teacher leaders. We can begin to build the required teaching force today by investing in residency programs, hybrid teaching roles, and promising models of collaborative teaching that bridge both face-to-face and online learning opportunities.

Our vision of the teaching profession in 2030 may disturb some and thrill others. We realize that this vision will require massive re-engineering, but we will never create what we do not dare to imagine.

What do you imagine the teaching profession will look like 20 years from now?

What Newsweek Gets Wrong

Newsweek seems to think repeating dramatic and trite sentiments about teaching is the way to improve the profession. We prefer thoughtful discussion of solutions that help create good teachers.

In "Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers," Thomas and Wingert not only downplay all the factors that help create good teachers, they rely on the opinions of a handful of think tanks, as opposed to talking to and quoting any working educators. Perhaps that's how they came to the cockamamie conclusion that much of the ability to teach is innate. In a letter to Newseek editors, ASCD Executive Director Gene Carter responds,

As a career educator and the executive director of ASCD, an education association of 170,000 educators worldwide, I have yet to meet a master teacher who would claim to have been born with the appropriate skills to successfully "inspire young minds as well as control unruly classrooms."

The (mostly educator) authors in the May Educational Leadership know that "supporting teachers is neither dramatic nor easy."

They discuss the lasting benefits of different teacher preparation programs, how to best support and evaluate teachers in their first few years, how teachers are driving their own learning, and working with communities to grow local capacity to improve schools. 

We're not the only ones calling bull on Newsweek:

• Barnett Berry at Advancing the Teaching Profession
• Claus von Zastrow at Public School Insights
• Diane Ravitch at Bridging Differences
• Philly Teacher
• Robert Pondiscio at Core Knowledge

Is your school community on team Newsweek or team Educational Leadership?

How Green Was (Is) Your Classroom?

A New York Times blog post on 10 classroom ideas for recognizing Earth Day was last week's most popular ASCD SmartBrief story. Here's a quick tour of how some edubloggers embraced the green theme:

• Web 2.0 Classroom got us ready for Earth Day with a tour of Google Earth layers.
• Some classrooms used Earth Day, in particular, to practice going paperless. (TeachPaperless)
• We bet more than a few of you took advantage of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption to teach about volcanos. (Core Knowlege)
• Larry Ferlazzo helped us calculate our carbon footprint. 
• Earth Day's not just about what happens in the classroom; the lunchroom matters, too. What would happen if schools embraced Meatless Monday? (Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project)
• Bill Ferriter created this Drop.io resource for his students on the advantages and disadvantages of different alternative energy sources. (@plugusin)

Do you teach green throughout the year? What'd you do to mark this day?

The Art Teacher's Guide to the Internet

Art educators looking for tools, tips, and illuminating discussions in their field will find all three at The Art Teacher's Guide to the Internet, a blog from Gainesville, Fla., art teacher Craig Roland.

Roland is active in the National Association of Art Educators, and he recently discussed an upcoming group session on the topic of "What's Worth Teaching in Art?" that he'll be part of at their national conference. The session will be run using the Pecha Kucha technique, with each presenter showing 20 images for 20 seconds apiece. Beyond the unique structure of the session, he's eager to discuss the many issues all art educators surely grapple with, including teaching media skills and teaching about other cultures. Readers can take an online poll to contribute to the conversation.

The blog also provides helpful and relevant tools educators can work into their lessons. For example, Roland recently highlighted the Oscar-nominated animated short film Logorama as a tool for discussing the impact of logos on our society and pointed to discussions and lesson plans on logos as a way to extend the theme.

Read The Art Teacher's Guide to the Internet at http://artjunction.org/blog.

The Juvenile Decency Corps: An Answer to Delinquency (1964)

"Delinquency is a spiraling problem," begins an article in the May 1964 issue of Educational Leadership. In the article, readers are treated to the uplifting story of a quaintly named and highly effective community project in Washington, D.C., that channeled the best instincts and intentions of a variety of groups in an urban neighborhood to dramatically reduce delinquency.

Read the article: The Juvenile Decency Corps: An Answer to Delinquency (PDF)

Operating during the summer, the project, organized by the local Commissioners' Youth Council, targeted the three blocks of the community where delinquency rates were highest and aimed to work with the students to help them "have a good time yet stay out of trouble." The project featured activities like tutoring, sports, arts and crafts, field trips, and neighborhood beautification. Smartly, the program found parent volunteers to open their homes as hubs for the various activities.

The leaders of the corps acknowledged skeptics who doubted the program could overcome negative influences present in the lives of many of the children but insisted it could be "a lustrous influence that will reveal new horizons and illuminate the paths to a better life." The lowered incidence of delinquency and the inspiring profiles of youth leaders who blossomed in the program give credence to this view.

In light of present-day efforts to lift students and communities through integrated Promise Neighborhoods (PDF), this look back at a small but effective program is inspiring. It's a clear case of many members of a community coming together to provide constructive ways for youth to channel their energies—a good idea in any era.

Mobile Learning: You Can Take It with You

Take a survey of your students—they might not all have Internet access at home, but a good many, if not all, have cell phones. In 2004, the Pew Research Center reported that 45 percent of teens had a cell phone. In 2009, that number jumped to 75 percent.

Students have a powerful tool at their fingertips all day long, yet they're often told there's no place for their mobile devices in a learning environment. At "Growing Up with the Mobile Net," a seminar presented today by Common Sense Media, author Liz Keren-Kolb noted that this leads not only to "powered-down" students, but also "powered-down" pedagogy.

Panelists agreed that we tend to create artificial barriers between where and how kids learn. Mobile devices present an opportunity to permeate those barriers.

"You can't take a SMARTBoard home with you," but you can use your phone to take photographic samples, Google text for further research, record written data, and text assignment updates to collaborative teams, Keren-Kolb said .

Kipp Rogers, principal at Passages Middle School in Newport News, Va., shared how his school is using cell phones in and out of the classroom. "We started just basically using the calculator function," Rogers said. Now they're using mobile devices to get and give feedback, as a stopwatch in gym, as a journal, to keep a school calendar, to communicate assignments, and even as part of homework assignments. Homework participation, by the way, has gone up at Passages since they started incorporating mobile technology.

Learning Time Extended and Amended

"Adding more hours would ostensibly provide more time for everything that occurs in schools. In the best schools, this means more academic learning time. In poorly managed schools with inexperienced teachers, it means time will continue to be lost, but in greater amounts."

--Elena Silva in On the Clock: Rethinking the Way Schools Use Time (2007), for Education Sector (quoted in "Time Well Spent," Education Update, May 2007)

"If time alone were sufficient, every expanded learning time school would be a great success," Chris Gabrieli remarks in "More Time, More Learning" in the April EL. Strong human capital, data-driven instruction, and a culture of high expectations are the baseline conditions Gabrieli insists for schools looking to benefit from extended learning time. 

At Clarence Edwards Middle School, the Boston school Gabrieli profiles in his article, added learning time is used to better individualize learning and strengthen core instruction, one of Gabrieli's 10 key recommendations for successfully implementing more learning time.

Edwards students get an added hour each day for small-group instruction and tutoring, plus science and social studies, as well as enrichment activities, have more time in the stretched schedule. Prior to these reforms, Edwards typified the urban achievement gap. Now, the school is a national model for school improvement. That's due to its well-designed implementation, but Gabrieli also notes that middle school is a flashpoint where added time has the potential to confer big benefits to high-poverty students.

Last month, educator Deirdra Grode asked what you thought about extending school. Here are the Twitter-friendly versions of some of our reader responses:

Why Guidance Counseling Needs to Change

What's behind the low rating of services delivered by high school guidance departments, as reported in the 2009 Public Agenda survey With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them?

"Why Guidance Counseling Needs to Change," in the April EL, notes that capacity is one huge challenge. The number of students pursuing postsecondary education has ballooned, yet most schools provide an average of 1 counselor per 265 students (with states like California tipping the scales at nearly 1,000 students per counselor).

But even if the student-to-counselor ratio was more manageable and if counselors' time was not monopolized by scheduling and administrative tasks, the article's authors contend schools need to reimagine counselors as more than just maitre d' to a menu of postsecondary options.

If we recognize that students need more than a high school diploma to be successful in today's job market, why shortchange them the professional support to manage career and college pathways?

Defining DI

The education sector is hot with talk of differentiated instruction (DI), but how often do teachers get to see and share what DI looks like in practice?

To address this disconnect, last week's most-clicked ASCD SmartBrief story laid out a basic foundation for differentiating: start where each child is in his or her learning, and tailor instruction to what each needs to meet academic goals.

The article talks about getting to know where students are coming from—their academic and personal history—and using these details to build a repertoire of modifications that speak to students' needs.

Visit ASCD's clearinghouse on differentiated instruction for articles, books, and videos on this topic. ASCD Express, a free e-newsletter, recently devoted an issue to "Establishing and Managing a Differentiated Classroom."

To Improve Reading, Teach Writing

Post submitted by Educational Leadership Editor Deborah Perkins-Gough

"We need to stop pussyfooting around about writing!" That was the unequivocal message delivered by Steve Graham, lead author of the Alliance for Excellent Education/Carnegie Corporation report Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading, at a panel discussion on April 14 in Washington, D.C.

We know that writing is a core skill (90 percent of white-collar workers and 80 percent of blue-collar workers say that writing is important to their job success), and we know how to teach writing effectively. Then why do students receive so little writing instruction after grade 4, especially in the content areas?

Most educators know intuitively that writing skills and reading skills are interdependent. But the new report is the first meta-analysis providing experimental evidence that requiring students to do more writing and teaching them specific writing skills improves students' reading achievement.

"No Time to Teach Writing"

Panelist Tanya Baker, director of national programs for the National Writing Project, lamented that the report's findings swim against the tide of the last 10 years of national education policy, when accountability demands have left many teachers feeling that "there is no time to teach writing." 

Is that tide turning? One hopeful sign is that the draft Common Core Standards (available at www.corestandards.org) place renewed emphasis on writing across the curriculum. Graham's report, which provides quantitative research evidence of the benefits of writing instruction, may help push schools in a new direction—one that will result in more meaningful, rigorous learning.

What's the state of writing instruction at your school?

New Approaches to School Data

Dreams of seamless data manipulation in schools are, in reality, a clerical nightmare for teachers outfitted with basic record-keeping instruments like three-ring binders ("data notebooks") and sticky notes ("exit slips"). That's Bill Ferriter's (a.k.a. the Tempered Radical) insight on the disconnect between rhetoric on using data in schools and how teachers are actually supported in data use. His post, "Your Data Dream. My Data Nightmare," is not all critique; he shares what he and his colleagues are doing to track student learning and use data to drive instructional decisions.

Your turn: 

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600 to 1,000-word essays on the theme "New Approaches to School Data." The theme description is below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by May 12, 2010. 

How are new ways of gathering and reporting data changing how schools evaluate students and, in some cases, their teachers? Should report cards be reconfigured to reflect a teacher’s or school’s deeper understanding about their students? How can teachers use data to encourage learning and students’ desire to improve instead of stigmatizing failure and setting it in stone? Articles will focus on new ways schools are reporting comprehensive student progress that take into account the whole child. Some schools are using database technology, portfolios and performance assessments, and project-based learning among other innovations to gather data reporting student achievement. What are secondary schools doing to offer specific proof that their graduates’ credentials support reality?

Where Are Our Greenfields?

The biggest barrier to better teaching and learning is the creaky, bureaucratic education system itself. So says Rick Hess, author of Education Unbound: The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling.

Formal barriers like state licensure rules and caps on charter school growth, as well as status quo thinking—for example, how districts attract new talent—limit innovation and creative problem solving in the education sector, says Hess.

"Greenfield schooling," Hess argues, requires removing these sorts of barriers, creating the conditions to leverage talent and tools from a variety of sources, to the kids that need them.

Hess takes on these topics in "Where Are Our Greenfields?" in the April 2010 EL and tomorrow at an American Enterprise Institute event. Join the conversation by following ASCD's coverage of this event on Twitter (@ASCD), 4:00–5:30 p.m., eastern time.

Bonus: Check out the free e-newsletter ASCD Express as it takes on "Reconfiguring 'School'" from several angles, including Hess's.

Cautions on Value-Added Models

As education policy marches toward broader consideration of student data, the question becomes less whether states will use student achievement data as part of teacher evaluations and more how states will do this.

In her EdWeek commentary, Susan Fuhrman noted that "any plans to reward or punish [teachers] for gains their students have or have not made control for differences among students in their family situations and other factors that are beyond the teachers’ control." Although value-added measures are the best method for controlling for these factors, value-added is far from perfect. Some of Fuhrman's cautions include

• Over-reliance on standardized test data.
• Assessments not aligned to reflect grade-to-grade achievement growth.
• Student mobility and class size possibly skewing growth data.

Would you add any cautions of your own?

Sparse Change

Post by Scott Herrmann, 2010 ASCD Conference Scholar 

Over the past several decades, the educational community has embraced a variety of initiatives and reform movements. Each of these was destined, or so we thought, to fundamentally change how students experience school, and better prepare them for their futures.

In the United States, we have been introduced to A Nation at Risk, Goals 2000, individually guided education, open classrooms, tech prep, outcomes-based education, professional learning communities, and school-to-work initiatives. Now, we hear that the latest reform movement, No Child Left Behind, will most likely be receiving a major overhaul.

Why have none of the major education reforms truly reformed education? Why is it that, despite these reform movements, our students' experience in the classroom looks much like it did 20, 30, even 40 years ago, with the only major difference being which electronic teaching tool we plug into the wall?

Alternatively, is this just a problem in the the United States? Have reform efforts in other countries been more successful? If so, what makes a reform initiative grow legs and really make change?

Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh

Post submitted by Educational Leadership Associate Editor Naomi Thiers

What if all public schools in U.S. cities could close the achievement gap? Gerald Grant, author of Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh (reviewed in the April Educational Leadership) argues that Raleigh, N.C.—and a sprinkling of other cities—has found a formula that can make all schools that good.

The formula Grant describes is called socioeconomic integration. This means deliberately joining urban and suburban areas into one school district, enticing suburban families into inner-city schools by creating magnet schools, and assigning students to schools as necessary to maintain a healthy mix of socioeconomic levels and races. As the book review notes, Raleigh is the shining example of how socioeconomic desegregation can raise all students’ boats. Unfortunately, the three-decades-old policy is now threatened by the results of a recent school board election.

Could Your Students Be More Motivated?

Teachers know that engaging and inspiring students requires building positive relationships and creating relevant lessons. In a recent presentation, author and motivation expert Bob Sullo also added setting realistic expectations, creating a needs-satisfying classroom, and teaching students to self-evaluate as conditions conducive to positive student motivation.

So what does this look like in practice?

Starting next week, you and your colleagues can hash that out with Sullo in his live chat series on student motivation. Using his ASCD book The Motivated Student: Unlocking the Enthusiasm for Learning as a guide, Sullo takes your questions on getting students excited about learning without using fear, coercion, or external rewards.

After each live chat, Sullo will post some questions and topics for discussion on the "Inspiring Student Motivation" group wall on ASCD EDge so that participants can share strategies, ask questions, and provide suggestions about how to foster internal motivation and academic success.

Mark your calendars:

April 15: Live chat, 7:00–8:00 p.m., eastern time
Topic: Chapters 1, 2, and 3 of The Motivated Student

April 22: Live chat, 7:00–8:00 p.m., eastern time
Topic: Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of The Motivated Student

May 6: Live chat, 7:00–8:00 p.m, eastern time
Topic: Chapters 7, 8, and 9 of The Motivated Student

May 13: Live chat, 7:00–8:00 p.m, eastern time
Topic: Chapters 10 and 11 of The Motivated Student

May 20: Live chat, 7:00–8:00 p.m, eastern time
Topic: Chapters 12, 13, 14, and 15 of The Motivated Student

Turning Ed. Speak into Plain Speak Backed by Results

In the April Education Update feature, "Should Your School Detrack to Close the Achievement Gap?," Stamford School District (Conn.) Superintendent Josh Starr discussed one of the barriers to community support for detracking: language.

Being able to explain things clearly and simply—parsing for parents terms like differentiated instruction, tracking versus ability grouping, professional learning communities, and how tests will be used—is a vital, ongoing part of Starr's work. 

"Without being too technical, parents need to understand what's going to change and need to see evidence of their kids doing solid academic work," he says.

Nonengagement is not an option for school leaders. In Connecticut, Stamford Residents for Excellence in Education have their own Web site and have been a powerful voice against detracking. Earlier this school year, NPR reported that efforts to detrack the very diverse Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J., are repeatedly shot down by well-organized parent groups who fear their higher-tracked children will be shortchanged by mixed-ability groupings.

When leading school reforms, how do you bridge the gap between what you say and what your school community hears?

My (Imaginary) Beer Summit with the President

Post submitted by Mike Rose, author of "Reform: To What End?" in the April 2010 issue of Educational Leadership

A few weeks ago I did a blog talk with the National Writing Project, and one of the participants posed this teaser: If I were to have a few beers with President Obama, what would I say to him about education?

Once the Budweiser relaxed me, I think I'd ask him about his own education. What does he remember about elementary school or middle school, particularly those teachers who made a difference? And what books mattered? Was there someone in high school who helped him see things in a new light? When did he begin to sense that school could enable him to use his mind in the world? What issues in law school most caught his fancy? Can he think of ways to bring those issues into the elementary school classroom?

I imagine that the answers from this exceptionally thoughtful man would be vibrant with ideas and feelings. One more Bud, and then I'd ask him how the spirit of these answers could better inform his education policy.