Four Instructional Coaching Must-Haves

Instructional coaching is a popular topic among ASCD SmartBrief readers. Last week's most-clicked ASCD SmartBrief story answers the question, Which conditions favor successful implementation of instructional coaching?

Edutopia's Elena Aguilar, herself an instructional coach, responded with "Four Conditions Essential for Instructional Coaching to Work":  

• School culture oriented toward growth and improvement.
• Established time and structures for collaboration.
• Close partnership with the principal.
• Opportunities to learn while coaching.

Although these may not always be ideal, they should exist to some degree, if instructional coaching is to thrive at the school.

What conditions have supported you as a coach?

Giving Students Relevant Work

Across a K–12 career, students generate an awful lot of schoolwork. How much of it is meaningful—that is,for building up content knowledge and honing critical-thinking and practical skills for a lifetime? We welcome articles about schoolwork from a variety of subject areas that gives students rich learning experiences to help them deepen their knowledge, make meaningful connections, and provide opportunities to learn valuable life skills. What can project-based learning, experiential learning and internships, or collaboration bring to schoolwork? What roles do student research and writing play in meaningful learning?

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600 to 1,000-word essays on the theme "Giving Students Relevant Work." Guidelines for submissions are here. Please send us your submissions by June 13, 2011.

Don't Just Do Something (1959)

"Don't just do something; stand there!" implores Nebraskan educator Galen Saylor, turning an old adage on its head. In the October 1959 issue of Educational Leadership, this university chairman asks school administrators to reflect on the fundamental goals of education and to make considered decisions before rushing to make changes in curriculum and school policy.

Read the article: Don't Just Do Something (PDF)

Saylor begins by emphasizing the importance of clearly defining the goals of education. Underscoring the value of establishing clear outcomes, he notes that many classroom teachers simply go through the motions without a well-defined sense of purpose, guided by the latest educational trend, or worse, by no real plan at all.

Galen acknowledges the real need for change in the late 1950s educational landscape, but he insists that reform efforts be animated by unambiguous and ambitious goals. He notes, "No report, no handbook of requirement for graduation, no curriculum guide, no plan for the education of gifted children, no state department regulation has merit or validity except as it helps us better attain goals for schools."

Over 50 years later, have we come any closer to defining the purpose of education? Do accountability efforts like the common core bring us nearer to Galen's vision, or do they merely set a standard without tackling questions of purpose and outcome? Are we just doing something? Or are we really "standing there"?

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 the right.

In Case You Missed It

The latest from ASCD:

• Bob Marzano shares ideas for structuring teacher-led PD.
• Dweck yourself before you wreck yourself! DI is all about moving from a fixed to a growth mindset.
• Get the latest on streaming sessions and coverage of ASCD's Summer Conference, held in Boston, June 30-July 3.
• Why a teacher who cares may be the most important thing.
• Three compelling examples of why every teacher is an English teacher. 
• Have your best year yet and prepare with ASCD's Summer Boot Camp -- a professional learning series of free webinars by education experts.
• Thirty educators from around the globe are putting lessons learned at ASCD's Annual Conference into action. Follow their journey in ASCD Express.
• Robyn Jackson guides you on How to Motivate Reluctant Learners.

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

Cure for the Cameron Diaz

I swear I have a sense of humor, but so close on the heels of states stripping teacher rights and benefits, trailers for Bad Teacher—the Cameron Diaz comeback vehicle and extension of the Bad Santa brand—make me cringe. ("I became a teacher for all the right reasons: summers off, no accountability.")

No worries: a few education documentaries are making the rounds this summer, offering a more thoughtful take on education (though Bad Teacher's portrayal of high-stakes test pressure is not totally off-base). 

Here's a preview:

American Teacher / USA, 2011 (Director: Vanessa Roth)— hrough vignettes following several teachers in varying circumstances, viewers learn the societal cost of low teacher salary, support, and status in the United States. (Read a previous post on this film.)

The Bully Project / USA, 2011 (Director: Lee Hirsch)—A sensitive examination of an urgent crisis in American society, this film follows five children and their families over the course of one school year as their lives are affected in different ways by bullying.

The Learning / USA/Philippines, 2010 (Director: Ramona Diaz)—Follow a year in the life of four teachers from the Philippines recruited to work in Baltimore City Schools. Drawn to America by hopes of a better life, find out how realities of urban American schools match these teachers' expectations and compares to their teaching experiences in the Philippines.

Our School / Romania/Switzerland/USA, 2011 (Director: Mona Nicoara, Miruna Coco-Cozma)—Shot over the course of four years, this film follows the attempt to integrate isolated rural Roma children into the mainstream school system of Romania. Focusing on seven-year-old Alin, 12-year-old Beni, and 16-year-old Dana, this film takes an unflinching look at the challenges of a longstanding tradition of prejudice.

The Bully Project, The Learning, and Our School are all showing at this year's Silverdocs festival, June 20-26, in Silver Spring, Md. American Teacher screened this week in D.C. and New York, with future dates to be announced here.

What Does It Mean to Be an American Teacher?

American Teacher, the new documentary from the Teacher Salary Project, opens with several people telling the camera what they love about being teachers, and a quote from Arne Duncan that puts these testimonials under the macro-scope:

"Without effective teachers, we don't have a democracy," says Duncan.

Given the huge demand for talented teachers and passionate testimonials from practitioners, what could go wrong? Through storytelling and sobering statistics, American Teacher explores the mismatch between the value of effective teachers and the United States's history of disinvestment in teacher salary, support, and status.

On average, teachers work longer hours (the film cites 50–65-hour work weeks), for less pay (14 percent less than people in other professions that require similar levels of education), and with little on-site support (examples of chaotic working conditions, teachers spending planning periods cleaning their classrooms, and spending thousands of dollars on basic classroom materials).

There's a clear correlation between effective education and the economic health of a nation. Eric Hanushek tells us that every student taught by a teacher in the top 15 percent of effectiveness has an extra lifetime earning of $20,000. Multiply that by 20 kids in a class, and you get the picture. (Research from McKinsey and Co. also bolsters this argument.)

There are benefits to attracting and retaining effective teachers, and then there's what's actually happening in the United States, as illustrated by the film's subjects:

• Teacher, football coach, and forklift operator Erik Benner is underpaid, overextended, and in foreclosure. (62 percent of teachers have a second job, teachers are priced out of housing markets in 32 cities.)
• Rhena Jasey is highly qualified but cheaply valued. (Harvard and Columbia grad, starting salary $41,900.)
• Jonathan Dearman represents the double-edged loss of teachers of color and men. (Only 25 percent of teachers are men and 15 percent of teachers are black or Latino, while 35 percent of students are black or Latino.)
• Oh and those testimonials at the beginning of the film? Turns out, those are all ex-teachers, too. (Teacher turnover costs $7.34 billion dollars annually.)

At its core, American Teacher is about teachers who love what they're doing and are good at it, but cannot sustain teaching as a career because, as Equity Project founder Zeke Vanderhoek says, "Teachers have no control over the amount of stress and responsibility in their jobs proportional to their pay." (Vanderhoek uses public funds to pay all of his teachers starting salaries of $125,000.)

What will it take to repair the collateral damage associated with low teacher salaries?

"People think teaching is about liking kids or getting summers off—they don't understand the intellectual rigor involved in teaching students in a way that they'll understand," says 2007 New York Teacher of the Year Marguerite Rizzo."The number one reason teachers leave is lack of leader support," adds Sabrina Laine of the American Institutes for Research.

American Teacher screened this Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to a packed auditorium of local teachers and national policy advisors (including former teachers Brad Jupp, Jason Kamras, and DOE Secretary Arne Duncan). Filmmakers hope for wider theatrical release in Fall 2011—and the chance to set the record straight about an often-squandered national resource.

Race to the Bronze

The final FY11 budget deal included $700 million for an extension of the U.S. Department of Education's signature reform activity, the Race to the Top program. But new details released today suggest that this race is less one-to-the-top than a consolation prize to two-time losers.

For starters, that $700 million will be split: $200 million to the original Race to the Top program and $500 million for a new, Congress-backed, Early Learning Challenge Race to the Top (there's that name again) to transform select state early childhood education systems.

With a much smaller pot of money, the Race to the Top "competition" will be limited to the nine states that were close contenders in the original two rounds but just not good enough. Previous awards that ranged from $400 million to $700 million for larger states will now be limited to between $10 million and $50 million—even less than the amount won by earlier small-state winners Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C. ($75 million each).

The nine eligible states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and South Carolina. South Carolina has already announced that it won't apply again. It's unclear if others will follow suit, but it's worth noting that Arizona, California, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all have new state superintendents since applying for Race to the Top last summer. (California and Pennsylvania also have new governors.) It will be very interesting to see what New Jersey Governor Chris Christie does. His state famously lost out in the second round of competition after a clerical error in their application cost them five points.

Politics aside, realistically, how much of these ambitious, Race to the Top–worthy reform plans can be accomplished with such a smaller amount of money, particularly in big states like California and Pennsylvania?

What happens if most of these states take a pass? And what of Florida, where it was reported today that 42 percent of its stimulus money has gone unspent, including a large portion "targeted to public schools, mainly through the $700 million Race to the Top grant Florida won last year to pay for education reforms, chiefly developing evaluation systems and providing merit-pay increases for teachers."

The Obama administration has requested $900 million for another round of funding for the Race to the Top program, but this latest news suggests that interest is waning among states, and it's less of a budget priority even within the Department of Education.

So why even bother with another round of the K–12 Race to the Top? The money is now chump change, the leadership—and therefore the buy-in—among the eligible states has changed considerably since last year, and the whole thing just reminds everyone that these states were deemed not educationally advanced enough not once, but twice and possibly even a third time. Why not devote the whole $700 million to spurring reforms in early learning?

The Department of Education might still be cheering in the stands, but these runners left the track months ago.

Differentiate Without Lowering Expectations

My experience has been uplifting students from failure to consistent success at an inner-city high school. A key factor that I attribute to the students' success is the independent exit price—a 15- to 20-minute assignment that asks students to perform the objective with high accuracy before leaving the classroom. You may be asking:

How do you deal with advanced students who need challenge and low-skilled students who are not ready to tackle the exit price?

Here is how I differentiate the exit price:

1. Every day I teach to a base skill or what I call "baby objective" that builds off what the majority of students already know and can actually master in one period. The objective should be rigorous but not overwhelm the majority.

2. My exit price includes a mix of problems: high, middle, and lower level. I put high-level problems so that advanced students feel challenged and the other students know they have something to shoot for. If a student shows mastery at a basic level by doing 70–80 percent of the exit price correctly, then they get an A, and everyone leaves happy. If the student can do all of the problems, including the harder ones, he gets an A+ and 50 extra points. I have high expectations and push kids to do their best.

If the student cannot show mastery at even a basic level, two scenarios usually happen:

What's Not Working in School Leadership

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. Canter was a 2010 ASCD OYEA honoree.

I've spent a great deal of time discussing what works in school leadership. As I near the end of my internship, however, I find it helpful to talk about what DOESN'T work in school leadership.

For the sake of discussion, I have created a small list of things that can severely inhibit the roles of principals and assistant principals, per my experiences.

#1: Don't nurture power struggles within the building.

Too many times, a behavior referral comes across my desk that is really about a teacher wanting to show "who's boss." Some of the behaviors written up include things like sneezing too loudly and popping gum (I always wonder, why not just ask the student to spit out the gum?). And, when this particular student wasn't suspended, the teacher brought me another referral and said, "I'm bringing you another one because nothing was done to him and I want something done."

This is the ultimate power struggle. When teachers don't have a list of interventions they have tried, I am rare to intervene. The teacher must show at minimum that some phone calls have been made, e-mails sent, and detentions (even lunch detentions) were served before I'll handle the issue, unless it is a major issue disrupting the right of other students to learn.

#2: Don't allow "drive-bys."

This is what I call it when a teacher drops off a student in my office. Instead, students must work with a buddy across the hall or somewhere else, and the teacher must ensure that the child has work. Oftentimes, teachers are too quick to remove a student. This helps them rethink that and conveys that I'm not just the discipline depot, where problems get passed off. My role is to work with teachers, students, and parents to solve problems.

#3: Don't forget to hold leaders accountable.

All leadership teams need weekly meetings where progress, calendars, and other objectives are discussed. This helps each team member be personally accountable for pulling his or her own weight. Also, impromptu one-on-ones with the principal help grow accountability on both sides.

#4: Don't take it personally.

So, the student punched a locker. He didn't punch me! I know this sounds facetious, but sometimes we take a student's constant disruptions as personal attacks, when they are not. The good news is that if we depersonalize the action, we can depersonalize the consequences and make them more objectively fitting.

#5: Don't forget to have fun.

Enough said.

What other suggestions do you have for the list?

Announcing ASCD's Newest Online Membership Categories

In today's fast-paced world, ASCD believes that educators increasingly value member benefits that can be received quickly, can be read in any location, and are environmentally friendly.

As a result, ASCD is proud to announce two new membership categories designed to serve individuals who prefer to receive their benefits online. Called Premium Online and Select Online, they provide the same great benefits current Premium and Select members receive. The key difference is Premium Online and Select Online members enjoy their benefits completely online, including books.

Online members can download the same complimentary member books that our "classic" Premium and Select members receive as soon as they become available. These online books are delivered in PDF format and provide the flexibility to be read on a variety of e-readers as well as a computer—perfect for educators on the go.

Online members are informed of their benefits each month in ASCD Delivers, our new monthly e-newsletter, which provides a direct link to each benefit. 

ASCD's new Premium Online and Select Online memberships build on the association's tradition of providing member benefits that are trusted and respected throughout the education field. Click the links above to learn more about Premium Online and Select Online memberships, or call the ASCD Service Center at 1-800-933-ASCD (2327) and press 1.

Is Math Stress Silencing the Next Newton?

Math anxiety is more than disliking the subject, last week's most-clicked ASCD SmartBrief article informs; it's a chemical response in the brain that diverts processing and working memory capacity away from solving for x and toward coping with math stress.  

New research from the Mangels Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory and Attention at Baruch College at the City University of New York shows that not only did students tested in math under stressful circumstances perform lower than students in non-stressful situations, but math stress also wreaked particular havoc on the performance of students who identified as math enthusiasts.

Big Idea #1: Having students take tests in stressful environments compromises the diagnostic ability of these tests, says performance anxiety expert Sian Beilock.

Students can be predisposed to math anxiety if they struggle with foundational concepts and also if teachers or parents exhibit math anxiety or promote gender stereotypes about math ability.

Checking for understanding of math processes and encouraging students to discuss, participate, and even make mistakes in math class are steps toward diffusing math anxiety.

Big Idea #2: Attitudes about who can do math stick with students.

This article talks about students internalizing gender biases about math ability—but what if you're the only black or Latino student in your upper-level math class? How do students of color get messages about who can do math, and how can schools provide a counter-narrative?

"Why Aren't More Minorities Taking Advanced Mathematics?," from the November 2007 issue of Eduacational Leadership, discusses reducing minority isolation in high-level math classes and dismantling myths about who can do math at your school.

Even more than discouraging the next Isaac Newton, math anxiety—borne of high-stakes environments or biases about ability—could be keeping out the next Euphemia Lofton Haynes.

In Case You Missed It

Here are some recent hightlights from ASCD:

• Check out Robyn Jackson's recent webinar on planning rigorous instruction.
• What does student achievement look like?
• Good leaders have emotional intelligence—a "Lesson from Lincoln."
• Robert Marzano on focused feedback and practice, or teacher self-rating.
• Walter McKenzie discusses what is required to earn the title of "professional."
• How are teacher evaluations and teaching and learning standards aligned?  

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

The More Juneau . . . The Less NCLB

While the Kansas State Board of Education politely asked Education Secretary Arne Duncan for a waiver from NCLB's 2013–14 deadline of 100 percent student proficiency, Montana State Superintendent Denise Juneau has gone ahead and just told Duncan that the state won't be raising its target proficiency rates for measuring AYP. Next year, Montana schools are supposed to increase the percentage of students proficient in reading at every grade from 83 to 92 percent and the percentage of students proficient in math at every grade from 68 to 84 percent. 

In a remarkable letter to the education secretary that has somehow escaped widespread attention, Juneau says the state is "reeling" from the "split in priorities" of the existing NCLB accountability requirements and the department's emphasis on student growth, added data collection, and the resulting uncertain path to continuous improvement. She also complains that increasing the proficiency targets will add to the number of schools needing improvement, and Montana simply doesn't have the capacity to serve them. Besides, she adds, ESEA requirements are "outdated" and "the unrealistic 100 percent goal undermines the work and morale of students and educators and the public’s confidence in schools." 

And for a state superintendent who just last week recommended that state board of education adopt the common core standards, the letter (which predates this recommendation) presumes that adoption is a foregone conclusion. Montana is (already!) a governing state in the Smarter Balanced testing consortium, and Juneau notes in her letter that "as we shift to college and career readiness goals, [and] implement new common core standards . . . we need some alleviation of the strict across-the-board, one-size-fits-all, absolute bar of 100 percent proficiency on state assessments."

We wrote earlier this week about Duncan's denial of Kansas's waiver request and noted that Duncan's rationale suggested that he might be amenable to providing such flexibility after it becomes clear Congress is unable to reauthorize ESEA this year. It will be very interesting—and telling—how he handles this provocative state action. Three weeks after the letter was written, it would seem Duncan would prefer to do nothing at all.

Do you think Juneau's actions will set a trend for other state leaders to follow?

First ESEA Bill Eliminates 43 Ed Programs

Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA), chairman of the K–12 education subcommittee, recently introduced the first in a series of House bills to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Anyone expecting to learn whether Congress will eliminate No Child Left Behind's 2013–14 proficiency deadline or set requirements for evaluating teachers will be sorely disappointed. Instead of tackling educators' deep-rooted concerns with NCLB, Hunter's bill eliminates 43 education programs in a bid to reduce federal education funding and weed out duplicative and ineffective efforts.

Eliminating more than half of ESEA's education programs may seem excessive, but many of the targeted programs were already defunded in the FY11 spending bill. Others were eliminated or consolidated in President Obama's FY12 budget request. And still others were never funded at all. In short, the bill saves $1.13 billion compared to FY10 education funding, but only $413 million compared to the final FY11 education funding.

The House Education Committee's bill summary provides justification for each program elimination. Meanwhile, ASCD's official response to the bill notes that the eliminated programs disproportionately affect a whole child approach to education.

Here’s a full list of the 43 programs proposed for elimination:

When Teaching to the Test Works

Teaching to the test is not wrong if the test allows students to demonstrate learning. I train my students to ace big tests by demonstrating daily mastery, much like football teams practice and scrimmage for the big game. Here's why it works:

1. My tests measure learning through a combination of multiple-choice and short essay questions. Short essay questions ask students to explain their thinking so that I can assess what they really know and what I need to reteach.
2. I only test what students know. The test is a reflection of the exit price assignments. And since I make sure students succeed on the exit price assignments, they are naturally prepared to do well on the test. If I have not made sure students can actually do a certain concept, I have no business putting that concept on a test. There is no pride in giving tests that many students fail!
3. I frequently expose students to test-question models and language in the exit price. It is not fair to teach content in English and then give a test in Chinese. If students get lost in a maze of unfamiliar or distracting terminology, they may fail and test results will not accurately tell me what students learned.
4. I make sure the test matters to students. Motivation is the most overlooked aspect in education. If students do not care about the test, they will not try their best and I will fail to accurately assess learning. My tests are 70 percent of the grade, and I create hype so that students know that the tests affect their grades. Students who get a C or below must retake the test and can improve their score by one letter grade. Students must go through each missed problem with me after school until they convince me that they understand the concepts.

Having a purposeful goal and teaching to that goal is not a bad thing—athletic teams do it all the time. The CREATE instructional model asks teachers to have an objective, such as a project or test, where students can showcase their learning and then inspire and train students using exit price assignments to succeed in reaching that goal.

Standardized tests are far from perfect, but they are a major gateway to colleges and other opportunities. As much as possible, let us have projects or tests that are accurate demonstrations of learning. Furthermore, if an effective test is the big game, then teach to the test! We want students to have the best chance to showcase their skills and win!

Post submitted by 2011 California Teacher of the Year and ASCD author (Create Success! Unlocking the Potential of Urban Students) Kadhir Rajagopal. Listen to a chat with Rajagopal here.

More Learning Time Without More Money?

Lengthen the school day! Shorten the summer break! Keep U.S. students in school longer to make them more competitive with their international counterparts! To realistic educators, enthusiastic calls for expanded learning time may seem like pie in the sky. In tight fiscal times when schools are scrambling just to maintain current programs and staffing, how can we possibly afford to expand instructional time?

More learning time doesn't necessarily require more resources--just flexible use of the resources we have, according to Ben Lummis, Vice President of the National Center on Time and Learning. In a May 12 webinar sponsored by Schools Moving Up, Lummis described how some schools are using creative staffing, flexible scheduling, community partners, and technology to expand learning time without adding cost or asking teachers to work a longer day. Some examples:

• Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary School in Palo Alto, California, incorporates a 100-minute learning lab into each school day. Students engaged in computer-based math and reading lessons, supervised by paraprofessionals. Teachers use data from the students' online assessments to individualize classroom instruction.
• A.C. Whelan Elementary School in Revere, Massachusetts, employs a coach from the nonprofit group Playworks to teach six periods of physical education each day. By partnering with this community organization, the school increased students' PE time and freed up teachers' time for collaboration and individual student support. 

Lummis stipulated that expanding learning time is a complex and complicated endeavor, and the best approach will vary from school to school. But it is possible, even with limited resources. And it's an investment that has the potential to yield big dividends in terms of student learning.

Do you agree that extending the school day or year should be a priority for schools?  Has your school found innovative ways to do so?

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

Duncan Denies Waiver, But Kansas May Catch Rebound

The Kansas State Board of Education's long-shot bid seeking a waiver of NCLB's 2013–14 deadline for all students to be proficient in reading and math has been denied by the U.S. Department of Education.

The news is neither surprising nor discouraging to those interested in similar flexibility. It's just not the right time. "Not now . . . but let's talk later," federal officials seem to be whispering to states.

To be sure, the denial is consistent with Secretary Duncan's oft-stated position that it is premature to be issuing NCLB waivers—particularly from the sine qua non of the federal education law—while ESEA reauthorization is pending in Congress (dim as those prospects may be). But the implied message seems to be that once ESEA reauthorization is no longer a legislative possibility this Congress, then Duncan is prepared to reauthorize portions of the law through regulatory changes (or at least this is the hope of common core supporters). It is also why I believe that Duncan has been saying 82 percent of U.S. schools could miss AYP this year—to establish a justification for AYP waivers as we approach 2013–14.  

And it's not just the message that was communicated to Kansas, but how it was conveyed: in a phone call by a deputy assistant secretary. Indeed, the news was officially announced by a Kansas Department of Education press release, not by Duncan's office. The federal department appears to have gone out of its way to downplay the denial; a sharp contrast to how former education secretary Margaret Spellings might have touted her tough-love approach with states and the law.

Maybe next year, Kansas.

Making the Public School Curriculum Public Property (1953)

Are public schools public enough? Education professor Harold C. Hand argued, in the January 1953 issue of Educational Leadership, that they are not and presented a case study of action research that involved community members in evaluating and updating curriculum.

• Read the article: Making the Public School Curriculum Public Property (PDF)

Noting that attacks on public schools are on the increase (sound familiar?), Hand makes the convincing argument that giving people a sense of ownership in schools will improve their opinion of them. Or, as he colorfully puts it:

Until our public schools are thus converted into truly public institutions, we members of the teaching profession can expect to see them progressively weakened—to the accompaniment of a continuing and ever-increasing stream of uncomfortably hot lead in the seat of our collective pants.

Hand describes a measured approach to public involvement that includes three inventories, which took place or were planned to take place in Illinois high schools around the time of publication. Dubbed "local action research projects," they included such surveys as "What Do You Think of Our School's Mathematics Program?"

Hand ends the article with confidence that this process will improve matters, but without any evidence of results. With the common core state standards looming, an enterprising researcher might do well to dig deeper and see what lessons today's educators and policymakers can take from this experiment.

Preparing Students for a STEM-Filled World

The pace of technological change has never been faster, or possibly more disruptive, in history than it is now. The students of today will be the leaders and innovators of tomorrow, but how well are schools preparing them for a future that pivots on science, technology, engineering, and math—the so-called STEM subjects?

This issue of ASCD Express welcomes stories of innovative schools and classrooms where STEM subjects are given due attention. Whether in elementary or secondary levels, articles can focus on problems such as student engagement, addressing misconceptions, implementing developmentally appropriate curricula, and encouraging minorities in STEM studies.

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600 to 1,000-word essays on the theme "Preparing Students for a STEM-Filled World." Guidelines for submissions are here. Please send us your submissions by May 30, 2011.

Questions to Consider Before Becoming an Instructional Coach

Oakland, Calif., school improvement coach Elena Aguilar asks would-be instructional coaches to consider several questions before making the career move to coaching:

• Do you love working with adults?
• Do you know how to intrinsically motivate adults?
• Are you well-versed in how adults learn?
• Can you structure what may be loosely defined roles and responsibilities?

In October 2011, Educational Leadership will focus an entire issue on "Coaching: The New Leadership Skill." Meanwhile, you can check out these hits from the EL archives:

• "How Teachers Learn" (February 2009) 
• "Revisiting Teacher Learning" (June 2009 online issue), including "Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers"

 What advice would you give to those considering a career in instructional coaching?