In Case You Missed It

Here are some recent updates from ASCD:

• The May issue of Education Update looks at how teachers improve through personal and professional learning, teaching in Finland, and increasing student engagement and achievement through peer tutoring.
• Can multiculturalism and standardization coexist? The latest issue of ASCD Express revisits multicultural education.
• If teacher tenure does not work, what can replace it effectively?
• Elliot Seif offers some recommendations for adapting NCLB for the 21st century.
• Help call on Congress to rewrite NCLB to give each student the opportunity to receive a world-class education.
• Want to engage Latino parents as homework supports? Here's how.
• Charisma: Lincoln had it—how can school leaders use it?

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

For the Love of Learning

"Teachers who blame students for being bored is the equivalent to yelling at the hammer after you strike your own thumb," declares Joe Bower, the man behind the convention-bucking blog For the Love of Learning.

At the heart of Bower's writing is a desire to rethink some of our most commonly held assumptions about teaching and learning in an effort to become more effective educators. Posts like "Blaming the Kids" challenge teachers to look inward at their own classroom practices, while "The Suits" explores the importance of experienced-based leadership and the problems with over-reliance on data.

A proponent of abolishing grading and rethinking homework, Bower nicely organizes his posts into handy tables of contents so that readers can quickly access his many posts on these controversial topics. If you're in the market for a thought-provoking read from a clearly devoted educator, this blog is worth the visit.

Cultural Pluralism (1975)

Should America be a melting pot where people from diverse backgrounds shed their differences in favor of a common national identity or a mosaic that celebrates rich and varied subcultures? In the December 1975 issue of Educational Leadership, education professor Harry S. Broudy explores competing notions of cultural pluralism and suggests ways to resolve the tension between assimilation and diversity.

• Read the article: Cultural Pluralism: New Wine in Old Bottles (PDF)

Broudy begins by tracing the history of pluralism, noting that prior to the 1960s, the concept tended to emphasize how diversity could exist within a unified national experience. He also notes that the array of cultural customs that immigrants brought to this country were "to be respected (not derided or denigrated) and on occasions celebrated with folk song, costume, and ritual; but they were not expected to become autonomous cultures to be set over against the common culture."

Broudy contrasts this notion of pluralism to the one that began to emerge in the mid-1960s with the advent of the civil rights movement. Although the "common culture" of past decades was "predominantly white, Protestant, and Anglo-Saxon," new voices from the black, Hispanic, and Indian communities now strove to be heard.

Against an often-antagonistic backdrop fueled by discrimination and inequality, Broudy notes that this new vintage of pluralism demands that cultural and linguistic differences be brought to light in the classroom. Advocates of this approach call for bilingual schooling and demand that teachers encourage ethnic pride as a means of developing positive self-esteem. It is an approach that underscores and celebrates difference.

Broudy notes that the struggle is determining "how much diversity is compatible with the existence of a viable society." He argues that by going too far with the view that all cultures are separate, mainstream culture and minorities alike will miss out on experiencing the intellectual and artistic achievements of each other. Possibly more important, he notes, we might miss out on what unites us as humans if we consider ourselves "separate but equal."

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

Myth of Bell-to-Bell Instruction Vs. "Golden Rule of 15 Minutes"

Many teachers have been told to teach from bell to bell. Unfortunately, some teachers believe this means they must stand and deliver in front of the board for 50 minutes. Big mistake! In traditional urban schools, it is hard to keep students' attention for even 5 minutes without them taking out their phone or simply daydreaming while acting like they are paying attention.

I teach urban high school students with a history of failure, helping them succeed in mathematics, as well as closing achievement gaps across content areas. I credit my success to the CREATE instructional model—a style of teaching that is strongly against bell-to-bell teaching. In fact, I'm never up in front of the board "teaching" the class for more than 15 minutes at a time. Let me explain:

A typical class starts with a 10-minute warm-up exercise where students refresh what they learned the previous day. Then comes the "golden 15 minutes of teaching," which I call "interactive teach-back." During the interactive teach-back, I explain a concept through the context of a problem or scenario. Then I have different students immediately explain or teach-back what I taught by helping me with similar problems. Making students explain a theory by doing problems or through the context of a scenario is a way of checking for students' understanding, because students have to apply the theory to a novel situation.

During teach-back, I break objectives into smaller steps and concepts, do 10-second mini-lectures on a "baby" concept in the context of a problem, then immediately put up several problems on that baby concept and fire questions at several different students, asking them to teach the class to apply what I taught by doing the problems. (A variation of this approach grabbed headlines in a recent, popular NYT story on reforming math instruction.)

Finding the Answers Embedded in Our Own Work

The ASCD Annual Conference offers many things, but for me it is the opportunity to visit with educators from all over the world. In one of these interactions, the conversation revolved around a line from Mike Schmoker's new book Focus. On page 17, Schmoker writes,

"It is critical that schools learn the lesson that 'best practice' in effective organizations is rarely new practice. On the contrary, the most effective actions are 'well-known practices,' with the extra dimension that they (are) reinforced and carried out reliably."

For me, discussing this passage with colleagues provoked an "Aha!" moment: Perhaps we should look at the simplicity of doing what works well and do it with consistency, reinforcement, and diligence.

How many of us continue to look for the magic bullet to raise student learning and assessment scores? How many of us spend thousands of dollars on programs, technology, or professional development that occur over a very short time period with little follow-up or follow-through?

Maybe Schmoker's idea of doing what works and doing it well is the magic bullet we need. Have we really looked at instruction to find what works and what does not? Have we consulted the literature to see which strategies are supported by research as being effective? Are we consistent with communicating expectations for the implementation of research-based, effective, instructional strategies? Do we effectively monitor the use of the identified strategies and hold everyone accountable for implementation? Do we celebrate the classrooms that model what is expected?

Perhaps something as simple and cost-effective as making the changes needed to answer these questions in the affirmative is the place to start.

Post submitted by teacher and 2011 ASCD Annual Conference Scholar Nancy Cech.

Deliver Us from Math Class Hierarchies

In a typical math classroom, ability spreads across a range, from Olympic mathlete, to nonstarters. But what if instead of multiplying differences in background knowledge, quickness, confidence, and focus, math instruction minimized these differences?

John Mighton, author of The Myth of Ability, says his curriculum, Jump Math, can do this, and he backs his claim with the success of several schools using the curriculum in England and Canada. Mighton credits the curriculum's success to breaking down math processes into tiny steps and giving students extensive practice and scaffolding to work through the steps. His approach mirrors that of 2011 California Teacher of the Year and ASCD author, Kadhir Rajagopal. (We'll get into Rajagopal's CREATE model for math success in a later post.) 

Jump Math is a minor player among curriculum giants, but it's demonstrating that with the right cognitive supports, any child can do high levels of math. Every kid succeeding in math can be a powerful tool for social justice, not only in the achievement gaps closed, but also in fostering collaboration.

Mighton told the New York Times, "When you have all the kids in a class succeeding in a subject, you see that they're competing against the problem, not one another."

Math can save us, but first we've got to save math.

In Case You Missed It

 Here's some new stuff happening around ASCD:

• One week from today! The ASCD EDge Social Networking Group presents two professional development (PD) events online Friday April 29, 2011, for all members of the group--join for free today!
• Listen to the Whole Child Podcast on how to help middle schoolers shape their identies and stay healthy.
• In Wanted: New Digi-RUBRICS, Heidi Hayes Jacobs talks about the importance of developing rubrics for blogs, podcasts, and other web/digital platforms.
• Pathways to Learning on the DI Journey, by Glenda Horner, discusses the importance of using PD to allow teachers to make differentiated instruction “their own” and not just copying and pasting.
• Can Failure Be Part of the Learning Experience in School?   
• Evidence of Learning follows an iPad experiment at a Chinese middle school. 
• Just Because We Can asks whether some technology integration is frivolous.

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

Make Your Students "Now" Ready

The term "career and college ready," or any other variation, is thrown around all the time in K-12 education with good intentions. We all want students to leave our classrooms with passion for learning, prepared for their job or their next step in education. However, you can't simply rely on these ideas to engage your students.

One of the pitfalls to avoid with career and college readiness is just what the term can imply: "This will matter when you go to college." Why do we default to the response that this material will help you later? For some kids, career and college has never been an option and seems well out of their realm of possibilities. Simply using it as a talking point will not break through to them. In fact, it may even create a barrier. A student could view this as a lack of understanding of their world and where they come from.

This is not to say you should never use future-oriented language. I have seen some amazing schools where the culture is "You WILL go to college," but again, this is in the whole school's culture, not simply a phrase that is used to try and get students engaged in the work. I think this culture of excellence needs to be paired with a culture on authenticity and relevancy in the present moment. As Chris Lehmann asked in a recent TED talk, "Why can't what students do matter now?"

I agree. We can do better. We can show kids, through authentic and relevant tasks based in the present, that their work is important NOW. You can make students "now" ready. You can make the teaching and learning matter to them now, honoring them as crucial to creating and innovating in the current world around them.

Instead of having students investigate world religions in a traditional research paper or presentation, have them work in teams to debunk current myths, stereotypes, or misunderstandings for the local community through a variety of products and presentations. Instead of just interactive labs about the human body's structures and systems, have students investigate current health care technologies or practices and suggest innovations and improvements in treatment. Instead of having them create a blueprint of detailed measurements and angles, have them engage in a design challenge to create a new outdoor school structure that will meet all teachers' and students' needs at the school (Ed. Note: see the work of 2011 Outstanding Young Educator Brad Kuntz). 

Notice that in all these examples they will still learn significant content, but for an authentic purpose in the present. Making students "now" ready creates a culture of present and future excellence. Engaging students in critical thinking, rigorous work, and authentic learning today will convey the skills and content for success tomorrow.

Post submitted by Andrew K. Miller, an educator and consultant for the Buck Institute for Education, which specializes in project-based learning for the 21st century. Connect with Miller on Twitter (@betamiller) or by e-mail at andrew@andrewkmiller.com.

How Do We Fix the Blame Game?

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. Chris was a 2010 ASCD OYEA honoree.

We've heard all of the excuses before. Students can't succeed because they don't want to, their parents aren't doing their jobs, we don't have enough resources, and the list goes on and on.

During my brief stint as a leadership intern in four different schools, I have noticed one common trend: there is little continuity between the schoolhouse and the home. In today's society, teachers (and schools) have more duties than ever. There is an increase in single parenthood, meaning working and absentee parents are on the rise. Poverty is rampant and drugs and crime are affecting even the high schoolers I see every day. Our issue is not one of test scores; it is one of culture and society.

What we need is a generation of parents who support one another in parenting and schools systems that do the same. Not only should we ensure that schools make the community part of its culture, but we should also ensure that the school is made part of the community. We need a symbiotic relationship, rather than serving as a warehouse for children until late afternoon.

It's very easy to say this with mere words, but how do we make it happen? What are some methods we can use to infuse our community (especially in low-income areas) into our school? How do we get families in the doors and partnering with faculty to ensure their children's success? How do we assess the needs of the community and help meet those, if possible?

Why Social Studies Matters

Recent state wrangling over social studies standards, divisive as that may be, offers some indication that educators and the society at large recognize the importance social studies, which includes history, geography, and civics, among other fields. Amid cries of "whose history" and scoring political points that standards debates provoke is the recognition that students—future voters and leaders—are influenced by how they understand past and present societies, the workings of government, and cultures worldwide.

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600 to 1,000-word essays on the theme "Why Social Studies Matters." Guidelines for submissions are here. Please send us your submissions by May 2, 2011.

We welcome articles that show how schools and classrooms are giving social studies its rightful place in well-rounded education. How are students being prepared for understanding and living in a pluralistic society founded on democratic principles? How are newcomers assimilating the ideals of America? What do students learn so that they better understand other countries and the interplay of cultures and economics? What innovations help bring real-world learning into the social studies classroom?

What Did You Take With You?

With ASCD's 2011 Annual Conference a few weeks behind us, what's stuck with you?

In keynote sessions, we explored broad themes like making change when change is difficult, getting in touch with your creative and imaginative self, and reigniting your passion for meaningful work. Breakout sessions were ideally opportunities to explore these ideas in more nuanced, strategic ways.

What's one thing that you learned, or that intrigued you most, at Annual Conference? What face-to-face connections did you make with other educators, and how will you carry those with you?

Post submitted by ASCD Annual Conference Scholar cofacilitator and New City School Head of School Tom Hoerr.

Early Reading Proficiency Closes Achievement Gaps

Last year the Annie E. Casey Foundation issued the report Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters. A new report sponsored by the foundation looks at the likelihood of graduation by different reading-skill levels and poverty experiences.

Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation, by Hunter College professor Donald J. Hernandez, found that low reading skills are an even stronger predictor of failure to graduate than spending at least one year in poverty.

"In fact, 89 percent of students in poverty who did read on level by 3rd grade graduated on time, statistically no different from the students who never experienced poverty but did struggle with reading early on," according to an EdWeek blog on the report.

In the blog post, reporter Sarah Sparks noted that because 3rd grade is the first accountability point under NCLB, it's hard to say conclusively whether reading gaps actually emerge in earlier grades.

In Case You Missed It

Here's what's new at ASCD this week:

•  Mark your calendar for Robyn Jackson's webinar on How to Plan Rigorous Instruction (05/1211, 3:00 p.m. EST)
• Browse the new ASCD book, Task Rotation: Strategies for Differentiating Activities and Assessments by Learning Style: A Strategic Teacher PLC Guide, by Harvey F. Silver, Joyce W. Jackson and Daniel R. Moirao 
• Steven Weber posts about what he has learned from observing classroom teaching and learning.
• The latest issue of ASCD Express features articles on supporting students during transition years; the April 2011 Educational Leadership also focuses on the same topic.
• Do some of the things we say contradict the mission of our schools? Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But Words…  
• What do we get out of continuing to "play chicken" with policy? 
• Five Questions for Curriculum Developers
• What teachers can do now to begin integrating Common Core standards in a creative way.
• Timed to the 150^th anniversary of the start of the Civil War (April 12), Harvey Alvy discusses the importance of Lincoln's early leadership. 
• How to welcome a "blended learning" environment.

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

Is Success the Only Option at Your School?

Consider a school district whose student population is 60 percent English language learners, where 40 percent of children live in poverty, and where the average education level among community residents is 5th grade.

What does this district have in common with a wealthy suburban district that sends a large percentage of its graduates to Ivy League universities? Chances are that neither district can honestly say, "We're enabling every one of our students to reach his or her full potential."

Until a school district can make that statement, it can't call itself successful, said Tom Rooney, assistant superintendent of Lindsay (Calif.) Unified School District, at an American Youth Policy Forum on April 11. Located in Tulare County, Calif., Lindsay USD fits the profile of the first district described above.

Several years ago, the district launched an effort to develop performance-based (also known as competency-based) curriculum and instruction. In this approach, learners move forward at their own speeds as they demonstrate that they've mastered essential knowledge and skills.

For more information about competency-based education, see the Re-Inventing Schools Coalition website or the report When Success Is the Only Option: Designing Competency-Based Pathways for Next Generation Learning.

After a pilot program in 9th grade produced impressive achievement gains, Lindsay expanded its program to students in grades 7–10 and is set to implement it in grades K–11 next year. The challenges, both logistical and philosophical, are great—but as Rooney asked, in these demanding times, can we afford to do less?

Post submitted by Educational Leadership Associate Editor Deborah Perkins-Gough.

Change—and the Junior High (1965)

In the 1960s, when educators sought to revamp the junior high school concept by replacing it with a middle school model that was designed for children in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, they closely analyzed several important issues related to adolescent education and development. In an editorial in the December 1965 issue of Educational Leadership, Gordon F. Vars, then director of the Junior High School Project at Cornell University, offers a glimpse into the debate.

• Read the article: Change—and the Junior High (PDF)

Vars also discusses the various arguments around expanding junior high to as early as 5th grade and as late as 9th—and the fears such change engendered in educators and society.

While establishing grades 7 and 8 as junior high has led, in the view of many, to "more challenging subject matter" and "enriched student-activities programs," it has also led, says Vars, to young children's mimicking of the behaviors of high school students.

"Placing seventh and eighth graders in a junior high that is a mere carbon copy of an institution designed for older students has often resulted in social activities that are 'too much, too soon.' Little fifth and sixth graders must not be callously abandoned to such a fate, argue those who fear that the middle school may represent yet another intrusion of secondary education patterns into the elementary school year," says Vars.

Educators looking to understand the middle grades debate should not miss this snapshot of the complicated issue.

American Times

I hope you're sitting down. One of the hottest new education blogs is (1) hosted on the Forbes website and (2) written by a self-professed "leftwing civil societarian." The new American Times blog is the work of E. D. Kain, a frequent contributor to the prominent progressive blog Balloon Juice and editor-in-chief of the blog The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

It's a measure of Kain's significance that the blog's debut quickly netted a feature on Alexander Russo's This Week in Education. There, Kain shares his education background (former substitute teacher, "education hobbyist") and his goals for the blog (making "the education discussion more accessible to non-edu-wonks").

So far he's shedding light on a variety of topics, such as analyzing poll results regarding the popularity of teachers, pulling apart the different metrics we use to assess the effect of class size on kids, and sharing a discussion about the "false choices" of education reform. I'll be watching my RSS reader to see where he takes the conversation next.

What Do Students Know About Positive Digital Footprints?

Students are taught that their digital footprints are a breadcrumb trail for bullies and sexual predators and not "potential tools for learning, finding like-minded peers, and building reputations as thoughtful contributors to meaningful digital conversations," says Bill Ferriter in his April 2011 Digitally Speaking column, "Positive Digital Footprints."

Scare tactics have a poor track record for affecting student behavior, and worse they don't teach students nuanced approaches to Internet safety or how to develop their own digital literacy.

Ferriter recommends

1) A tiered-approach to Internet safety that provides basic guidance for all students and more targeted instruction for students likely to be at-risk online.

2) Stuctured opportunities for students to do good work online, whether it's sharing their learning about the world or promoting civic service in their community.

Students who know how to be safe online but also see the Internet as a forum for learning and doing good are less likely to engage in risky behaviors and more likely to establish positive digital footprints that accurately reflect their core values, Ferriter concludes.

Does your school teach students how their digital footprints can quickly connect them to the individuals, ideas, and opportunities that they care most about?

What Does It Mean to 'Teach the Taboo'?

The challenging work of teaching pivots on our ability to see the world as it is, without blinders or limits, and simultaneously to see our students as three-dimensional creatures—each a work-in-progress making his or her twisty way through a propulsive, uncertain history-in-the-making.

As they enter our classrooms, we must reach out and recognize our students as full human beings with hopes and dreams, aspirations, skills, and capacities; with minds and hearts and spirits; with embodied experiences, histories, and stories to tell of a past and a possible future; with families, neighborhoods, cultural surrounds, and language communities all interacting, dynamic, and entangled. And with a couple of basic questions: who am I in the world (or who in the world am I)? What are my choices, and what are my chances?

This is the knotty, complicated challenge of teaching, and it's the intellectual and ethical heart of teaching the taboo: it demands sustained focus, intelligent judgment, and fearless inquiry and investigation. It calls forth within us an open heart and an inquiring mind, and it reminds us that every one of our judgments is necessarily contingent, every view partial, and each conclusion tentative. It requires that we refuse to simply pass on the received wisdom and dogma of the day, but rather that we develop along with our students dispositions of patience, curiosity, imagination, respect, wonder, awe, and more than a small dose of humility.

FY11 Cuts, Cold Comfort, and the FY12 Battle Ahead

Politically, the final budget deal that closes the books on the seven-months-past-late FY11 budget is a undeniable triumph for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who masterfully played "good cop" to his Tea Party caucus's "bad cop" in negotiations with the White House and Senate Democrats. The overall reduction in FY11 spending is $38.8 billion, which is well more than half of the $61 billion House Republicans had originally sought and far north of the Obama administration's $20 billion opening gambit and later $33 billion counteroffer.

In addition, Boehner was able to extend the Washington, D.C., schools voucher program that is anathema to congressional Democrats for five years and eliminate the cap on the number of students who can participate. In exchange (in what has now become a recurring theme), the White House secured funding for its prized Race to the Top program ($700 million), Investing in Innovation (i3) program ($150 million), and Promise Neighborhoods (+$20 million). The maximum Pell Grant award remains static at $5,550. 

This budget confirms the elimination of several education programs whose funding had been stripped as part of cuts leading up to this final budget deal. Many of these programs would've gotten the axe under the newly imposed congressional ban on earmarks. All told, here's where education felt the pain from this new budget (Note: These figures do not include a 0.2 percent across-the-board cut to all domestic programs):

How to Dodge the 4th Grade Bermuda Triangle

What contributes to the slump in student achievement around 4th grade, and how can it be avoided? That's the topic of the April 2011 "Research Says" column. According to research and education theorists, factors include:

• Shifting from learning to read, characterized by relatively easy reading passages, to reading to learn, which often features unfamiliar words and topics: Students still sounding out words will have diminished capacity to absorb meaning from these new terms. In general, lack of background knowledge can impede content-specific reading.
• Widening vocabulary gaps: Around this age, differences between the vocabulary exposure of students from low- and higher-income families start to deepen. For students with less exposure to new words, reading is more challenging, less enjoyable, and therefore less frequent, compounding vocabulary deficits.
• Shift from adult influence to peer influence: Students become more concerned with fitting in with peers and less likely to seek support from adults.

What helps mitigate these effects?

Strong, ongoing literacy supports and direct vocabulary instruction are baseline efforts but need to be combined with regular opportunities for wide reading, positive school cultures where peers influence one another to do well in school, and direct content-specific knowledge-building.

Waiting until 4th grade to start these efforts in earnest is often too late.