Identifying At-Risk Students

Research shows that 9th grade is the make-or-break year for turning around students at risk of dropping out. In her Sunday morning session, "Graduation Pathways," Paige Ponder from Chicago Public Schools presented the Emerging Early Warning System they use. She named four unique groups of students who emerge as at-risk students:

1. Students who are overage at entry; they've struggled in grades K–8. Sixty percent are off track already, and only 27 percent graduate.
2. Students with high absence rates by the end of fall semester. Eighty-one percent are off track, and only 19 percent graduate.
3. Students with high rates of course failure at the end of fall semester. They are, by definition, off track, and only 34 percent graduate.
4. Students with high rates of course failure at the end of spring semester. They are also off track for graduation and only 39 percent graduate.

What strategies are being used by your school systems to ensure students walk across that graduation stage?

High-Poverty, High-Achieving Schools

In their Saturday session, William Parrett and Kathleen Budge focused on "Poverty and Underachievement: How Schools and Districts Lead Students to Success." Their research shows that schools that are high-poverty and high-achieving have a common factor that stands out: a professional accountability for learning.

Every person in the school has a "relentless responsibility for kids' learning. They exhibit a courage and willingness to take action and attempt to influence every sphere that touches a child's life—the classroom, the school, the district. The most successful schools also reach out to families and communities," they said.

They pose the question—Why don't we implement what we know works?

Fisher & Frey: Feed-Up, Feedback, & Feed-Forward

In their Saturday session, "Feed-Up, Feedback, and Feed-Forward," Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey talk about teachers spending WAY too much time on feedback. "Feedback is very popular, but you can spend three hours grading every essay, marking every error in spelling, transition, and grammar, but it's important to remember that the students gave you the best that they had at the time. Now they are going to do one of two things with your feedback. They are either going to throw it away and take the grade or they are going to revise what you told them to do. Now their essays reflect about 25 percent of your work, not theirs."

Fisher and Frey  emphasize that we have to be very careful about feedback—it is not formative assessment. "The critical component to feedback is to transfer the responsibility back to the student."

How have you successfully done that in your own teaching?

Principal Kafele On Closing the Other Gaps

In a conference focused on closing achievement gaps once for all, Newark Tech High School principal Baruti Kafele took a different stance. Speaking about motivating black males in school and life, Kafele said, "I'm not concerned with the achievement gap." For Kafele, more relevant to his students were the

• attitude gap
• relationship gap
• opportunity gap
• relevance gap
• learning gap

For Kafele's students, and for many black boys, failing to attend to these gaps means the difference between a business suit or a prison jumpsuit. I teach my students, then I teach the content, noted Kafele. "I have to know my students first to deliver content—relationships are key."

Kafele starts every day with the reflection, Who am I? Why am I? What is my role? What is your most recent evidence? Early in his career, Principal Kafele set his purpose with working with boys at his school: teach them something about who they are, entrepreneurship, & manhood. He asked his audience to examine why they teach?

"We must always remain mindful of the power and influence we possess as educators, and we must use every opportunity we have throughout the day to make our students aware of their greatness. If we fail to do this, the streets have a way of picking up the slack."

What gaps threaten your students success? What do you do daily to close these gaps?

Six Questions for Strategic Teaching

"How you teach not only has a dramatic effect on what students learn but also on how students learn to think," author Harvey Silver told his Fall Conference audience today.

Effective strategies are versatile, build skills, and help students learn content. As part of his interactive presentation, Silver suggested six questions to ask when selecting the right strategy for the learning task:

• How does the strategy fit into unit design?
• What learning styles does the strategy engage?
• What facets of understanding does the strategy develop?
• What hidden skills does the strategy build?
• How does the strategy incorporate research on instructional effectiveness?
• What types of knowledge does the strategy teach?

A common approach to strategic teaching can help schools move from conversations about "us" and "them" to a culture of "we," Silver added.  

How do you select teaching strategies?

Go to the Strategic Teacher group on ASCD EDge to download presentation materials and chat with other strategic educators.

What Will New State Stewards Mean for Common Core?

Most national attention related to the midterm elections has focused on the Congressional races, but there are sure to be equally significant changes at the state level.

A whopping 37 states are holding gubernatorial elections this year, and 24 of those races are guaranteed to result in a new governor because incumbents are term-limited or have chosen not to run again. Meanwhile, 8 states will be selecting top education officials. All this impending turnover is critical for education, because governors and chief state school officers have considerable influence over state education policies and decisions.

One much-watched effort under the purview of governors and chiefs is the Common Core State Standards Initiative, led by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). To date, 39 states and D.C. have signed on to the common core but many will have to entrust a new crop of leaders, who haven't been involved in the effort, with putting the standards into practice.  At least 8 states and D.C. (which will have a new mayor, superintendent, and school chancellor) will have entirely new leadership tasked with implementing the common core standards:

• California, Georgia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wyoming will have both new governors and new school chiefs after midterm elections.
• New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee will have new governors who are in charge of appointing the state school chief.

New Mexico Under the Radar, but for How Long?
New Mexico is an interesting case. Susanna Murphy, the state's outgoing secretary of education, quietly adopted the standards just last week, perhaps taking the opportunity before the new governor appoints her replacement, who may or may not be as supportive of the effort. It is unclear what Susana Martinez, the Republican candidate for governor leading in the polls, thinks about the recent adoption.

On one hand, Martinez has questioned current Governor Bill Richardson's education record, which means she could be skeptical about the common core adoption. On the other hand, she has criticized the state's culture of low expectations for students, calling for higher standards. Martinez and Diane Denish, her Democratic opponent who also has called for higher standards, along with New Mexico's papers and current leadership, have been oddly silent on the issue and the state's recent adoption.

California Chiefs on Board
In California, common core adoption moved from contention to certainty this summer, with a unanimous school board vote. Now both the governor and chief state school officer seats are up for grabs. Although the governor's race has focused largely on public school funding issues, both candidates for school chief, Larry Aceves and Tom Torlakson, have gone on the record in support of the common core.

Fuzzy Future in Georgia?
Although Georgia's Republican gubernatorial candidate, Nathan Deal, supports the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education and local district flexibility in choosing education reforms and making spending decisions to streamline bureaucracy, he's not in the same camp as Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who described the administration's support of the common core as being akin to a "federal mandate."

Deal, who leads his opponent Roy Barnes in the polls, seems convinced of the state-led nature of the common core. He's created an education plan that commends the common core for the costs it saves Georgia and the flexibility the state and districts have to make the standards their own. Barnes's education platform, which doesn't explicitly mention the common core, focuses on preserving teacher pay, giving educators more of a voice in legislative and policy discussions, and "targeting the essentials."

John Barge, the Republican candidate for state superintendent, isn't as supportive of the common core. This past summer, he wrote a blog post equating the standards with more federal control over education and has also questioned whether accepting the state's Race to the Top grant is worth the extra federal involvement in the state's education system.

New Stump Season for Common Core
Regardless of what happens November 2, the NGA and CCSSO leaders of the common core effort will have to think about how to engage and educate new leadership on common core next steps. They may even need to be prepared to resell the common core to a few skeptics.

Sign up to receive special analysis of next week's mid-term elections delivered right to your inbox. Two extra editions of ASCD's Educator Advocates newsletter will analyze the election results -- the winners, the losers, the impact on state and national education policies and priorities, and what it all means for educators and students.

Noguera: Policy Raises the Bar, But Educators Lift Up the Nation

This morning, Pedro Noguera took the stage to open ASCD's 2010 Conference on Teaching and Learning, advocating a bolder vision of school reform. After his session, he took questions from attendees. Check out a recap of this informal Q & A in the Conference Daily.

Noguera put narrow mandates on achievement as measured by high-stakes state tests in his crosshairs and called for broader efforts to close the achievement gap, particularly considering how schools are affected by social and economic factors in urban environments.

Noguera, who's a state authorizer for charters in New York and acknowledges union shortcomings, nonetheless criticized distorted school reform propaganda like the recent film Waiting for "Superman". To say unions are the problem and charters are the answer without showing positive examples of school and union partnerships, or recognizing that 40 percent of charters are worse than public schools, is distorting the issues, Noguera said. In the current reform landscape, the complexities of education issues are not getting through, he added.

Noguera echoed sentiments of Richard Rothstein (closing general session speaker at this conference—watch the livestream Sunday morning) that schools can't do it all and that NCLB's scarlet letter-style approach to reform will not work.

What Noguera does endorse are whole child approaches to education and a well-rounded curriculum. He cited examples from Brockton High in Massachusetts to the Bronx's Eagle Academy to Texas's high-performing, high-poverty Brownsville School District.

He challenged policymakers to consider how current and proposed reforms connect to the realities of school communities. And he encouraged school leaders to open their doors to the community and better capitalize on the instructional resources down the street or even across the hall.

Without strategies, NCLB's 2014 goalpost is just a date. Raising the bar is easy, how school communities get to there is the real challenge. To that challenge, there's no gimmick solution. In fact, Noguera said, the solution is the same as it's always been—whether we have teachers in place who have command over content and can teach it in multiple ways, do we have the ability to build relationships, what are our support systems for the multifaceted needs of students, is our leadership behind our efforts, and are parents and community involved and accountable too?

"The future of this country will be determined by what's done in our schools," Noguera said. He closed by asking attendees to spend the weekend discussing,

"What are you doing right now to focus on the right things in your school?"

In Case You Missed It

Missed any ASCD-related items this week? We've got you covered:

• Couldn't make it to ASCD's Fall Conference? Make sure to check out our livestream of various sessions featuring esteemed educators discussing cutting-edge topics.
• For those who are at the Fall Conference, here are some helpful guides on what to see, where to eat, and information on neighborhoods while you are in the Bay Area.
• Famed tenor Plácido Domingo, general director of the Washington National Opera, expresses his support of a whole child education and funding for the arts. Watch the video from the Whole Child Blog! 
• “Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” Michael Fisher asks students for their feedback on the education system.
• The newest issue of ASCD Express is up and asks what it takes to hire and retain good teachers.
• Make sure to join the Strategic Teacher group on ASCD EDge for the latest discussions and information on coming events, including one at Fall Conference.
• Several educators express their views on how to close opportunity gaps in the newest issue of Educational Leadership. Learn how your school can achieve this by reading these helpful articles.

Add your own highlights in the comments, and check this spot for our regular weekly digest of ASCD activities.

To Close Achievement Gaps, Look Beyond Schools

Post submitted by Richard Nisbett, author of "Think Big, Bigger . . . and Smaller" (November 2010 EL) and distinguished university professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

No Child Left Behind dictated that race and class differences in academic achievement be eliminated by 2014. Surely the U.S. Congress should have known that such a goal was not achievable. Even if the schools were to do a spectacular job of improving education for minorities and the poor, eliminating the gaps would be possible only if substantial progress were made in changing home, neighborhood, and peer factors. Children's academic abilities may be tied as closely to these factors as to anything that goes on in school.

Fortunately, we know there is a lot that can be done to reduce the gaps that occur before children even start school. There are now effective home visitation programs teaching parents how to engage their children in intellectually stimulating talk and activities. There are also effective early childhood education programs; these emphasize intellectual growth, last at least one-half a day five days a week, and are much more ambitious than most Head Start programs. The most effective programs are not cheap, but the return on the education dollar has been estimated to be four to eight dollars for every dollar spent.

The opportunity exists to also make better use of the summer for less advantaged kids. Over the summer, kids in lower socioeconomic groups lose IQ and academic skills while kids in the upper-middle-class gain. Undoubtedly the reason lies in the fact that kids with higher socioeconomic status engage in more intellectually challenging activities and environments over the summer than kids with lower socioeconomic status do. Some of the gap could be narrowed by charitable organizations providing library reading programs, summer camp experiences, and museum visits—the kinds of activities that probably contribute to upper-middle class kids' ability gains over the summer. The same kinds of activities could be provided in after-school programs. The gaps are not going to be closed completely any time soon, but community-supported activities outside the school system might make a serious contribution.

Is it too optimistic to hope that nonschool forces can be mobilized to help bridge achievement gaps?

How Can We Improve Formative Assessment?

Since the beginning of this year, my school has embarked on an effort to use more holistic assessments of student learning—to put more emphasis on formative assessments and less on summative assessments. What modes of assessment can give us the best picture of students' learning and help us close achievement gaps?

—James Han, teacher and research activist, St. Anthony’s Primary School, Singapore

 

Remember the Purpose of Assessment

We should think of all assessments as formative. Why give a student a test if not to learn from the students' responses how to adjust instruction? The purpose of assessments is to answer the questions, Where is the student today, and how can I help the student grow tomorrow?

Although there is no single best assessment to gauge understanding by a student, some types of assessments give a clearer and fuller picture of the students' comprehension. The more we move away from fill-in-the-blank, multiple-choice, or true-false questions and toward questions that require more complex and detailed answers, the better we can assess the students' understanding of the subject. If possible, teachers should try to conference individually with students so that the students can explain their answers or demonstrate their understanding with authentic learning tasks. I also suggest allowing students show their comprehension in a variety of ways. The best assessment is actually to have multiple assessments of the same topic or skill.

—Ben Shuldiner, principal, High School for Public Service, Brooklyn, N.Y.

 

Plan Backward from the End Task

There is an axiom relative to instruction: start where the student is. Ongoing formative assessment allows the teacher to guide the instruction to the end product. When we focus on a summative task, we should ask ourselves, What does the student need to know and do to accomplish the task? For example, if the summative task will include writing an editorial about climate change, both instruction and formative assessment should include not only the relevant scientific content but also how to compose an editorial. This backward planning of instruction ensures that the students have the opportunity to develop all the skills and knowledge they need to meet the demands of the performance task.

—Ron Klemp, professor, Santa Monica College and California State University, Northridge

 

Let Students Choose How to Show Understanding

Giving students an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of content completes the circle that, to coin a now-common phrase, begins with the end in mind. Before you even begin a unit of teaching, identify what students need to understand. Step back and summarize all the standards addressed in a unit. Make content relevant. Then, consider the various modes to demonstrate understanding and provide a choice of response activities. Some students are artists, others writers or builders. Choosing the method of response gives students the ability to demonstrate true understanding.

—Tracy Broccolino, manager, Connections Virtual Academy, Baltimore, Md. 

 

Each month in Educational Leadership's "Among Colleagues" column, practicing educators will draw from their own experience to share advice about challenges their colleagues face. This month's participants are some of the 2010 ASCD Annual Conference Scholars.

What's Fair and Meaningful for Grading Students with Disabilities?

Grading students with disabilities can present a Sophie's Choice for educators:

Failing students with disabilities who have shown tremendous effort and progress clearly seems unfair. Giving passing marks to students who have not met prescribed performance standards also seems wrong.

In fact, as Thomas Guskey and Lee Ann Jung write in "Grading Exceptional Learners," when students receive inflated grades based on material that is not appropriate to their skill level, they actually lose motivation (Ring & Reetz, 2000).

How can educators create fair and meaningful grades for students with disabilities, those receiving intensive intervention in an RTI model, or even students struggling because they are English language learners?

At ASCD's Teaching and Learning Conference, Gusky and Jung demonstrate a five-step model (PDF) for grading and reporting achievement of struggling students, including determining appropriate expectations, necessary adaptations or modifications, criteria on which to base grades, and how to communicate expectations and the meaning of grades to parents and students.

The 2010 ASCD Teaching and Learning conference session "Fair and Meaningful Grades for Students with Disabilities" will be presented Friday, October 29, 2010. Recordings of this presentation will be available for purchase after the event.

Turning Skeptics into Torchbearers

U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."

What can leaders do to pull skeptics on board? How can leaders turn the unmotivated into the willing, help the unable to grow, and educate the unaware? What can leaders do to help create a culture of growth in classrooms and schools? To what kind of leader and leadership style do you respond?

Post submitted by ASCD Annual Conference Scholars facilitators Jen Morrison and Tom Hoerr. Check out the ASCD Scholars Web page to learn more about this dynamic group of leaders and meet the 2011 class.

In Case You Missed It

Here's a quick round-up of what happened at ASCD this week:

• ASCD's Fall Conference is right around the corner! Make sure to keep up with all things conference-related by following us on Twitter (#ascdfc) and reading Conference Daily. 
• Want to learn what's new in the education field? Join the Free Webinar Series group to find out when new webinars are being offered and submit the questions you want answered to presenters beforehand.
• Robyn Jackson blogs about the mistakes she made when she was first starting out teaching. Read about how she learned from these experiences and what she did to correct her ways.
• Author Judy Willis discusses how important it is to create a joyful learning environment to stimulate students' brains. She says that allowing students to be creative and learn in a way that is interesting to them, they have a much better chance of enjoying the subjects they are being taught.

Add your own highlights in the comments, and check this spot for our regular weekly digest of ASCD activities.

 

Head Start: Intervention for What? (1971)

As the United States inches ever closer to universal prekindergarten, it's interesting to look back to a time when kindergarten evolved from luxury to standard, and the first comprehensive efforts at providing prekindergarten to at-risk children were born.

In the October 1971 issue (PDF) of Educational Leadership, Jenny W. Klein, a senior education specialist at the Department of Education's Project Head Start, gives us some perspective on the history of early childhood interventions in the United States, beginning with the first publicly supported kindergarten in the country in 1870.

Read the article: Head Start: Intervention for What? (PDF)

Over the next several decades, kindergartens were largely "an intervention program geared to the special needs of the impoverished children of European immigrants needing socialization and linguistic training," until they became established as the universal norm we have today.

It is from this context that Klein describes the birth of Project Head Start, which aims to support children under the age of 5 with comprehensive interventions inclusive of physical, emotional, and educational needs. Interestingly, although pointing to data that show some effect from Head Start and other similar early interventions, she also describes the difficulty in gauging whether the interventions have been truly effective: "Since Head Start is not solely an educational program, but rather a comprehensive child development project, evaluation should be geared to the total program, not just the intelligence changes." She laments that assessments that truly evaluate progress beyond academics are not available.

As we expand early childhood programs across the country—and as similar wraparound strategies are implemented in K–12 sites such as the Harlem Children's Zone—are we better able to evaluate the true success of such programs? And will broader analyses beyond academic results hold sway among policymakers and the public? This history lesson shows such issues are nothing new.

In "My Back Pages," we look at important issues through the historical lens of the Educational Leadership archives. ASCD members can access EL issues from 1943 to the present by signing in at www.ascd.org.

A Digital Nation Divided: Multitasking, Media-Saturation, & Finding Focus

Post submitted by John Forbes, Dean of Curriculum and Instruction at the Center for Advanced Research and Instruction, and ASCD Emerging Leader Class of 2010.
 
I sympathize with our students. In the classroom, they are asked to sit, listen, and focus on a singular topic. The world outside the classroom, however, is a rush of stimulation: IPods, cell phones, video games, and social networking crowd our students' space.
 
I work at a school where technology is embraced (www.cart.org). We have 1-to-1 computing and attempt to be as digital as possible. Still, we have huge amounts of tension among our staff regarding the use of personal technology (i.e. iPods, cell phones, etc.) in our classrooms. On one hand, students come to us with a digital understanding and a level of access to information that we can use to enhance learning. On the other, we often find it necessary to silence all the distractions to focus on a single learning objective.
 
We have a very supportive and professional environment. However, staff development surrounding student use of technology brings out the most heated discussions. Last Spring we used PBS's Frontline special "Digital_Nation" as a jumping off point for discussion. We quickly realized that strong and differing opinions exist among our staff. We were a bit at a loss of where to go next in terms of transforming our classrooms into ones that embrace 21st century learning.
 
Marc Prensky's digital native / digital immigrants work also informs our staff discussions. He asks educators how we can help students move toward a concept called digital wisdom. We are struggling with this concept. We aren't there yet. 

Where do you stand as an educator?

• Should we transform classrooms to embrace the multitasking technology-rich world, or create environments where students must focus on a singular task?
• What strategies have you seen which use multitasking as a benefit to student learning? Or what strategies have you seen which help students block out distraction?
• Have you ever witnessed a teacher help students compare whether multitasking or singular focus was more helpful to learning?

Navigating the Mid-Season Trade

Formerly a teacher, now an administrator-in-training, Chris Canter blogs about his yearlong assistant principal internship at Fulton County Public Schools in Atlanta, Ga.

The past two weeks have been extremely exciting. Thank you, everyone, for your tips on building relationships with students while serving in an administrative capacity. I am more focused on maintaining a presence in the hallways, in the cafeteria, at bus duty, and at school events. I am finding my efforts rewarding; students seem thrilled to see me, and I am having many positive conversations with students in the hallways. This sense of community is extremely important, not just for modeling for teacher-leaders, but for my own sanity and personal job satisfaction as well.

I also have been mentoring a student throughout the past month, as part of a performance-based project for my leadership certification classes. I am noticing a great deal of progress in this student's behavior. Teachers report that he disrupts class less often, remains more engaged, and is raising his academic performance. Once a week, we have lunch together and discuss how his week has gone, what choices he has made, and how he could make different choices if needed. The student has few role models at home, and seems to value our time together. I also notice that I do not see him in my office for discipline issues at all.

Now, chapter two begins: In a few days, I leave Mimosa Elementary School and head to my assigned middle school. Teachers and staff here have been extremely kind at the news of my departure, already planned as part of my internship experience. Most have expressed their desire for me to stay and have shared with me that I am now a part of Mimosa and that it feels unnatural for me to leave. What a compliment for colleagues to make such statements, especially when we have only known each other for 12 short weeks.

I have to admit, I am a bit scared of "starting over." I am joining an already established staff that doesn't know me and has started its year. I want to be effective, but I also realize that in order to accomplish that, I must cultivate positive relationships with the middle school faculty.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this: What would be some best-practice approaches to my transition into a new environment and new staff?

Livestreaming Conference Sessions Next Week

Once again, we'll be livestreaming a select number of sessions from our upcoming 2010 Teaching and Learning Conference in Chicago. Details on our livestream schedule, when and where to view, and other ways to participate are below.

(Please note that all times are central time.)

Pedro Noguera—"A Bolder Approach to Reform: Understanding and Responding to the Achievement Gap" (Opening General Session)
Friday, October 29
8:15–9:30 a.m.

Harvey Silver—"The Strategic Teacher" Interactive Session
Friday, October 29
1:30–3:30 p.m.

• Silver's livestream will be viewable on the Strategic Teacher group page on ASCD EDge.
• Anyone can view the stream, but to participate in the discussion (e.g., ask questions, add comments, reply to comments), you must log in to ASCD EDge (registration is free). You can submit questions in advance of the presentation.
• Online participants can download workshop materials from the Strategic Teacher group on the right side of the page under "Shared Group Documents & Resources." 

Baruti Kafele—"Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life"
Saturday, October 30
8:30–11:30 a.m. 
 
Richard Rothstein—"A Broader Approach to Accountability" (Closing General Session)
Sunday, October 31
11:00 a.m.–12 noon

The Noguera, Kafele, and Rothstein sessions can be viewed on the livestream home page. Having trouble viewing the stream? Tweet us at @ASCD_Inservice or send your questions to website@ascd.org.

Learn more about these sessions from their descriptions, and get more out of your 2010 Teaching and Learning Conference experience by checking updates on the Conference Daily site, following our conference-related tweets at #ascdfc, and joining the Fall Conference group on ASCD EDge.

In the Huddle with Principal of the Year Lucy Beckham

"As a principal, I have to have other people around me capable of being principals. . . . My job is to train and raise future principals."

2010 MetLife/NASSP National High School Principal of the Year Lucy Beckham leads Wando High, the largest high school in South Carolina. At ASCD's Teaching & Learning Conference in Chicago next week, Beckham will share how her school orchestrates curriculum, collaboration, and connections to support 3,300 students.

Smaller learning communities and teacher leadership are key to Wando's success. In this video, Beckham discusses some elements of her leadership role at Wando:

 

Lucy Beckham presents her 2010 ASCD Conference on Teaching and Learning session, "Curriculum, Collaboration, and Connections," Friday, October 29. Recordings of this presentation will be available for purchase after the event.

Economic Integration a Bigger Factor than Added Resources, Report Says

Economically segregated schools are rarely as good as diverse ones at educating low-income students, and a report released last Friday (as noted in Washington Post's Higher Education blog) lends fresh evidence to this contention.

In a seven-year study (Housing Policy is School Policy) tracking 858 elementary students across Montgomery County, Md., "the children in the lower-poverty schools performed 8 percentage points higher on standardized math tests than their peers attending the higher-poverty schools—even though the county had targeted them with extra resources," the Post reports.

Who you go to school with matters, and EdWeek previously hit this note in an article on the growing number of districts factoring poverty into their student assignment plans. At the most cynical level, if economic integration matters more than added resources, surely deficit-strapped states will give these policies further consideration?

In an excellent EdWeek commentary, Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Century Foundation (who issued the Housing Policy is School Policy report), goes beyond brass tacks and considers how such policies might not only reshape segregated schools but also change the fabric of our nation:

One interesting question raised by the study is to what extent students benefited from living in more-advantaged neighborhoods, compared with attending more-advantaged schools. Schwartz finds that roughly two-thirds of the benefit comes from the school, and one-third from the neighborhood. This suggests that there may be considerable value in programs that integrate at the school level alone, though greater benefits clearly accrue from integration at both the neighborhood and school levels.

But  . . . it's an election year, so let's be real. Kahlenberg points out that economic integration already saw no love from Race to the Top. Plus, vouchers as a way to give low-income students a chance to attend middle-class schools are contentious. Economic integration is harder to accomplish in districts with high concentrations of poverty. Higher-income families could opt out of a more integrated system, heading to private or charter schools.

Beyond political will, what other challenges does economic integration face? How economically diverse is your school?

Kindergarten On Repeat, Is There a Better Way?

Last year, ASCD Outstanding Young Educator Deirdra Grode grappled with the nuances of when to retain or not retain struggling students. The answer, she conlcluded, lies in giving students options for learning beyond traditional school structures.

Last week's most-clicked ASCD Smartbrief news item raises the topic in terms of Indianapolis kindergartners, 8.4 percent of whom repeated the grade this year. Does retaining students in kindergarten convey benefits or put students on course to dropping out?, this Indy Star article asks.

At the individual level, the answer comes in shades of gray. For some students, kindergarten retention makes sense and is early enough in children's school careers that they're able to escape stigma. For other children, kindergarten failure is not an across-the-board failure. Experts say these students should be promoted but pulled out for targeted instruction in challenge areas. A more radical solution would be letting students advance at their own pace until age 7 or 8.

At the system level, the costs and risks associated with failure are high. In Indianapolis, better access to high-quality preschool programs could curb their kindergarten retention rate by 50 percent (in two-year programs). These efforts also pay for themselves. "Just in terms of teacher costs, re-educating nearly 300 IPS kindergartners takes roughly $700,000," the article notes.