The Treasure Hunter

Today’s post examines the world of non-fiction writing and finds it broader and deeper than the creators of the CCSS.  I’d like to know what readers think.

One of the things that the Common Core Standards propose for student reading is an increase in non-fiction texts throughout the grades. Although I approve of the focus on non-fiction, which has long been ignored in many school curricula, I think it is a mistake to specify certain percentages at different grade levels and focus on a narrow range of appropriate texts for middle and high school students. At those levels everything recommended by the Standards is either a historical document, a piece written by a famous person, or information about a past scientific discovery or a natural event. At the elementary level all the books recommended are also informational but are more varied in their topics and writing styles. Still, they do not include much about the real life experiences young children may have, such as bullying or living in poverty. In my opinion the range of nonfiction at all levels should be much broader than recommended.

In the real world a reader can find a large range of non-fiction documents, some of it giving us valuable information not otherwise available; some intended to persuade us, and some just meant to be entertaining. But since all these types are common reading for educated adults, I see no reason why they should not be offered to young people too. Most important, in my view are newspaper and magazines informational articles and opinion pieces. This type of non-fiction writing opens student’s minds to the places, people and events beyond their experience, and to opinions very different from their own. It also offers content not available in school textbooks: sports news, political cartoons, comics, word puzzles, and descriptions of what life is like in other parts of the world.

Another very important form of non-fiction is instructional material that ranges from food recipes to driving directions and how-to manuals that accompany new pieces of machinery. All of these demand careful reading, and the last one mentioned is often poorly written. Since none of us is free to dismiss any of them as irrelevant, why shouldn’t students learn how to read them early on?

Still another type of significant non-fiction is warnings that vary from street signs to the supplemental messages that come with prescription drugs. Although warnings vary from easy to understand to ambiguous, we all need to become familiar with the range within this genre. It is not too early for young children to be informed about such signs in public places and warning on containers around the house.

I think it is also appropriate to include business letters in the non-fiction category. By middle school it is time for students to think about receiving them and, maybe, writing them. Sometimes these letters are a form of advertising, but other times they tell of opportunities  students may be ready to explore. In that case teenagers may  wish to respond to such letters or to initiate their own. They need a classroom  introduction to the correct formats to use and the necessary information to provide in a business letter so that they can write appropriately when the time comes.

Finally, let me include advertisements in the non-fiction category even though many of them are at least partly fictitious. From the time that children begin to read they are confronted daily by messages advertising alluring products. Although they may not be ready to doubt such assertions as “You will love this toy,”they should learn early that all advertisements exaggerate in some way. That’s what they must do to capture your attention. Besides, it is always fun for kids to write advertisements for the school store or an up-coming school event.

Readers familiar with my work know that I have been a strong critic of the Common Core Standards ever since their inception. But since they are not going away any time soon, I think it is necessary for school administrators and teachers to tighten and stretch their mandates whenever necessary. The needs and capabilities of our students should always come before the edicts of the decision makers who think and live outside the world of young people’s learning and living.

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As I promised, today’s post is about dealing with the problems of class size that pervade many elementary schools, especially small ones. The story I tell is about the two schools where I was principal. Both had problems with uneven class sizes, but we solved them and some other important problems by making one big change.

Most of the time an elementary or middle school built to house 300 or more students can deal with having different numbers of students at each grade level. When a large number of students are enrolled in a particular grade, the school just divides them into manageable groups and places them in two or three separate classrooms. However, in a school designed for 200 or fewer students, dealing with a grade level group that is unexpectedly large is a major problem. In a small school there is only one classroom and one teacher for each grade, and there is no extra room or enough money to add more. What is ordinarily done in such a situation is to cram too many students into one classroom with a single teacher. And as long as the number of students in that particular group stays the same or grows larger, overcrowding will continue for them throughout the grades.

In both the small elementary schools where I was principal, there were uneven size classes when I came. In really large classrooms neither the students nor their teachers were getting a fair shake; but we just lived with it. The best I could do was to assign a full time aide to such classrooms. However, after a few years at my first school, my staff and I figured out a solution that promised us not only more reasonable class sizes, but also better situations for all students and teachers. We created mixed-grade classrooms at every grade but kindergarten, which was only a half-day program back then.

With such a structure we were not only able to control class sizes but also to place students where they could function best and to give each teacher a partner with whom to plan and work out problems. To assist teachers I made sure that those who taught the same grades had the same planning periods five days a week.

You may think that such a situation meant that a teacher had to teach two grades separately every day, but that was not the case. Teachers created flexible ability groups for reading and math and taught other subjects to their classes as a whole. Contrary to what you might expect, we found that there was a lot of student compatibility within a two-grade range. Most students, if asked, could not tell you which grade a fellow student was officially in.

But there were also other benefits. If there were kids in the same grade that did not get along with each other, we could place them in separate classrooms. We could also avoid holding back students who had not progressed well the previous year by grouping them appropriately in their new classroom and providing extra help. Sometimes it was better to have a child with the same teacher as last year, and at other times better to give that child a new teacher. We had a choice.

At my second school, which was even smaller than the first, I introduced the same idea to teachers early on and they bought into it. They even took on the role of explaining the new plan to parents. We adopted it, and it worked very well for the 12 years I was there. One year, by a stroke of good luck we got enough funding to hire an extra teacher and to create two K-1 classes. The benefits for kindergarteners were amazing. Usually, we had a number of young children who came to school without much in the way of social skills or an understanding of how to behave in a school environment. But when they were mixed with first graders who knew the ropes, they quickly learned what they were expected to do when in school.

First graders also benefitted from the structuring. In the afternoons when the kindergarteners had gone home for the day, classess were small enough for each student to get a lot of teacher attention in reading, writing, and math. They all made good progress.

My experience with mixed grade classrooms ended with my retirement in 2000. Although I am well aware that schooling has changed significantly since then, putting a major emphasis on testing and year by year student progress, I am still a firm believer that the basic premise of teaching is to accept each student where he is and move him or her as far as they can go. My hope, and that of many teachers I know, is that the “experts” and policymakers will soon learn that important lesson.

I wrote today’s post a couple of years ago for Valerie Strauss’ column in the Washington Post. What I did not include in that essay was how we solved the problem of uneven classroom sizes in the schools where I was principal. At all grades we changed our structure from single-grade classrooms to mixed-grade classrooms. Not only did that change work out very well for keeping class sizes reasonable, it also provided other importat benefits for students and teachers. In my next post I will write about what we did and how it worked to improve school life for everyone.

At a time when tight state budgets are pushing schools to increase classroom sizes at all levels, some of the most powerful voices in educational policymaking are telling us that size doesn’t matter. Unless, maybe, large classes improve student learning. According to statements by former Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Bill Gates, for example, great teachers do just fine with oversize classes. So why not give as many students as possible a seat in their classrooms?

Most of the research done in the last 30 years argues against that notion, showing that small classes, especially in the primary grades, boost student achievement and that the benefits last through later grades.

It’s clear, however, that large class advocates don’t care much for research. Their opinions are based on false analogies to their experience in fields other than education, unreliable data, and personal anecdotes.

To make matters worse school districts themselves are putting out misleading data. In their reports, often widely publicized, it looks like ordinary classrooms have only 19, or even 15 students, when in fact there are 30 or more live kids in many of them. The disparity between reports and reality arises from using averages that include special education teachers, counselors, and literacy coaches who work with small numbers of students or even one student at a time. But that fact is rarely made clear to the public.

Personal anecdotes also add to the misunderstanding of the effects of class size on students.  Many of us judge today’s education through comparisons to our own experience.  It’s not unusual for a successful middle-ager to say,“There were 40 kids in my 8th grade class, and we all turned out fine.”

But is that true? There were also 40 kids in my 8^th grade class in the beginning. But in the middle of the year two 17-year-old boys left to join the U.S. Navy. (Both had been held back two or three times during the elementary grades.) About five more of my classmates hung in there till the end of that school year, but never showed up in high school with the rest of us.

Class size mattered then, and it matters now. For teachers, just managing the physical maneuvers within a large class is challenging. How do you make sure that all kindergarteners’ shoes are tied and their coats buttoned up before they go outside to a wintry playground? How do you read and comment on the written work of all students every week?  How do you apportion the 25 workstations in a high school chemistry lab among 35 students?

Only after the physical problems are taken care of can teachers begin to deal with the challenges of facilitating school learning. In the real world, children and adolescents encounter new information and skills all the time, but they have the freedom to reject, postpone, or learn things at their own pace. Schools allow no such choices: Here it is; learn it now; prove you know it tomorrow. And it is the teacher’s responsibility to make all that happen for every one of them.

Good teachers accept their role and carry it out by moving around the classroom while students work, stopping frequently to check, give help, or just encourage them. They also design lessons to accommodate the range of student competence within their classes, hold small group review and re-teaching sessions, meet with individuals who still don’t “get it”, communicate with parents, and reflect on how each day’s lesson went in order to make things go more smoothly tomorrow.

Doing all these things means multi-tasking during class time and putting in several hours of planning and paperwork outside the school day. With experience and smart thinking, good teachers can manage all their responsibilities with classes up to 25. But past that number things get harder and harder. And there is a breaking point, maybe at 30 or 35, certainly at 40.

If we really want all the excellent teachers that policymakers, politicians, and pundits are calling for, we have to be willing to provide the school supports that are necessary. One of those supports is reasonable class sizes that allow teachers to do their job to the best of their ability, keep their sanity, and have a life.

Today’s post is a recent article from the Boston Globe, written by Michael Levenson and sent to me by Nancy Belkov, an outstanding educator and a faithful reader of this blog.  Although I was  pleased to read about this school’s efforts to involve parents in their children’s education, I would have been more pleased if they were also included in school decision making. In my opinion informing parents about their children’s education is not enough; they should also be partners in making decisions about what their education should be.

WASHINGTON — At Beers Elementary School, the PTA hosts a daddy-daughter dance, a fish fry, and an art auction to raise money.

But this school’s efforts to involve parents start even before the first day of classes, when teachers visit parents at home and build a rapport by asking about their hopes and dreams for their children.

Then, three times a year, teachers host group meetings with parents to explain precisely what their children will learn over the next several months and hand out educational games and activities that reinforce those lessons at home. Throughout the year, teachers e-mail and text parents tidbits of good news — when their child finishes a book or project — so they don’t hear from school only when their children misbehave.

The program is part of a radical shift in the way some schools are thinking about parent involvement. Rather than encourage parents to attend bake sales and spaghetti dinners — which have long been the domain of middle-class families and have no direct link to academic achievement — these schools are effectively training parents of all backgrounds to become informed and confident tutors at home.

Boston, which also struggles to get parents more involved in its schools, has focused more on encouraging mothers and fathers to become active in shaping school policy and also offers free classes in child development, advocacy, and parenting skills.

In Washington, the effort was spurred by a growing body of evidence showing that when teachers and parents trust one another and work together, students tend to earn higher grades and test scores, have fewer absences, and exhibit better social skills.

To build that kind of collaboration, however, schools like Beers, which is predominantly African-American and low-income, must break down deep-seated layers of mistrust between parents and teachers and administrators. That begins with shattering the assumption that parents who don’t attend school functions like PTA meetings simply don’t care about their children’s education.

“Our public school system is one that has not been a welcoming place for decades and decades and decades to people living in poverty, people of color, and people who don’t ‘speak teacher,’ so we start with an assumption that parents love their children and want what’s best for their children,” said Vincent Baxter, deputy chief of family engagement in the Washington public schools.

Rather than wait for parents to show up to a traditional parent-teacher conference, focused solely on a 15-minute review of the child’s report card, “It is our role to take three steps forward to start a relationship,” Baxter said.

The team approach, which has been adopted by 23 Washington elementary schools, is beginning to draw national notice. A study of the program by Johns Hopkins University found that students whose parents participated had 24 percent fewer absences and were more likely to read at or above grade level.

In another study of 71 high-poverty schools by the US Department of Education, students made 40 to 50 percent greater gains in math and reading between the third and fifth grades when their teachers met with their parents face to face, gave the parents materials to use at home, and called them routinely.

Parents at Beers say they’re not surprised by the findings.

They say they now know how to help their children learn, without resorting to yelling at them to do their homework. No longer do they have to ask the eternal question: what did you do in school today? They already know.

“It teaches you exactly what you need to know to help your child,” said Dorothy Jackson, a grandmother who attended one of the recent meetings to review the first-grade curriculum at Beers. “It’s hands-on, and includes the parents a lot more.”

And she said her granddaughter, 6-year-old Shayla Garcia, enjoys practicing her reading and math skills at home.

“She has the family doing the games,” Jackson said. “She includes everybody.”

Emily McNally, a first-grade teacher at Beers, said the meetings work because they show parents exactly what their children need to learn to improve their math and reading scores over the next several months.

It “gives us a chance to say, this is what this looks like in practice,” McNally said. “This is what your child can actually do, and this is a sample of what we want them to be able to do the next time we come back and meet. So I think it makes expectations a lot clearer for parents.”

On a recent Wednesday night, 17 parents sat in their children’s first-grade classroom, hunched over child-size tables. Each parent received a folder with the child’s tests scores, as well as three Ziploc bags with math and reading games that the teachers had designed. Sodas and cookies were passed around.

McNally broke the ice by asking the parents to make animal noises and then to tell another parent what their favorite memory was from school, what their child does that makes them smile, and what area they want their child to improve in during the rest of first grade.

“Make your animal noise, and have that conversation,” McNally said. “We’ll talk for two minutes.”

After the mooing and talking had subsided, McNally projected a slide that showed how the class as a whole had progressed on its test scores since the beginning of the year. She thanked the parents for helping their children improve.

Then she and another first-grade teacher, Karen Faulk, explained the upcoming lessons and the games designed to reinforce them. One game involved cutting up and reciting Shel Silverstein poems, to help children learn to read with expression and follow punctuation.

Another was designed to help children practice word problems in math and a third challenged them to find the main point of a story — not just that it was about “frogs,” for example.

“Ask them to explain more about what they read,” McNally told the parents. “It’s not just the topic, but what did you learn here? What was the most important topic?”

Keisha Smith said she was eager to play the game with her daughter, Kiri, 7.

“It gives you questions and things I would have never thought of doing,” she said. “I’m going to really need to be on top of her to push her and ask her, ‘Well, what about those frogs?’”

While not exactly “Good News” about public education, today’s post, written by Jeff Bryant, is a clear and comprehensive summary of “Hope for the Future.”  When I read it on a Salon website, I felt better; I think you will, too.

P.S. I left in the keys to Bryant’s sources by marking them in blue.

2015 will forever be remembered as the year the political establishment was shaken by the populist-driven presidential candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. But it should also be remembered as the year another established order was forever altered by change, dissent, and revelations of its corruption.

For years, an out-of-touch establishment has dominated education policy too. A well-funded elite has labeled public education as generally a failed enterprise and insisted that only a regime of standardized testing and charter schools can make schools and educators more “accountable.” Politicians and pundits across the political spectrum have adopted this narrative of “reform” and now easily slip into the rhetoric that supports it without hesitation.

But in 2013 a grassroots rebellion growing out of inner city neighborhoods from Newark to Chicago and suburban boroughs from Long Island to Denver began to counter the education aristocracy and tell an alternative tale about schools.

The education counter narrative is that public schools are not as much the perpetrators of failure as they are victims of resource deprivation, inequity in the system, and undermining forces driven by corruption and greed. In other words, it wasn’t schools that need to be made more accountable; it was the failed leadership of those in the business and government establishment that needed more accountability.

The uprising has been steadily growing into an Education Spring unifying diverse factions across the nation in efforts to reverse education policy mandates and bolster public schools instead of punishing them and closing them down.

2015 became the year the uprising reached a level where it forever transformed the hegemonic control the reformers have had on education policy.

Most prominently, No Child Left Behind, the federal law that’s been driving education policy since 2001, was replaced with a new law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, that reverses many of the edicts of NCLB or leaves them up in the air for states and courts to decide.

Organizations and individuals connected to wealthy donors to the Democratic Party were appalled, but the truth is out, and skepticism about education policy prescriptions touted as necessary “reforms” to the system has now left the fringe and become mainstream.

The bigger, more important story emerging from 2015 is that the American public is increasingly at odds with a reform movement that seeks to remake schools into an image promoted by wealthy private foundations, influential think tanks, and well-financed political operations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The evidence against the education establishment’s case piled up as the year rolled out, and the narrative of public education policy will never be the same.

Blows To The Testocracy

Take the issue of standardized testing. The idea that school improvement should be about enforcing uniform measures of test score outcomes across the nation had a particularly bad year in 2015.

As Seattle classroom teacher and public school activist Jesse Hagopian explains in an article for the National Education Association, standardized tests became the focal point of widespread scorn and dissent.

Over 620,000 public school students around the U.S. refused to take standardized exams. Also, numerous states ended high school graduation tests, and dozens of universities and colleges reduced or eliminated test requirements for their admissions process.

The backlash to standardized testing prompted changes in federal policy as well, including the revision of NCLB. As Hagopian writes, “ESSA deposes one of the cruelest aspects of the test-and-punish policy under NCLB: the so-called ‘Adequate Yearly Progress’ annual test score improvement requirement that labeled nearly every American school failing.”

Also, as Hagopian notes, President Obama, acknowledging the growing resistance to testing, “announced in October that ‘unnecessary testing’ is ‘consuming too much instructional time.’ This announcement came as a surprise given Obama’s support for policies like Race to the Top that contributed to the proliferation of high-stakes testing. The reversal of rhetoric was a result of the mass opt-out movement and will surely embolden authentic-assessment activists in the coming year.”

“Pressure from parents, students, teachers, school officials, and community leaders began turning the tide against standardized exam overuse and misuse during the 2014-2015 school year,” declares a report from the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest.org).

FairTest’s report highlights “assessment reform victories” in numerous states where officials suspended or significantly revised testing policies and created “alternative systems of assessment and accountability” that “deemphasize standardized tests.”

Think Progress, the action center of the left-leaning Beltway think tank, the Center for American Progress, reports on the overturn of the testocracy too in its review of “these education protests got results in 2015.”

Noting the growing opt-out movement in Colorado, New Jersey, Indiana, Michigan, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Wisconsin, the Think Progress writer highlights New York in particular, “where 20 percent of students opted out of tests in 2015. The number of New York students opting out quadrupled from [2014].”

Of course, in states and districts where test-based teacher evaluations are already established in the policy landscape, teachers will likely feel the effects of these systems for some time. So the fight over teacher evaluations will go state by state in the years ahead.

But as new reports continue to call these flawed and unfair evaluations into question, there will be more examples of these systems being overturned.

Using test scores to evaluate teachers – one of the pillars of the reform movement – is not the only policy idea going out of favor. Using the scores to evaluate the viability of local schools is running into more opposition as well

This core philosophy makes infinite sense to folks with backgrounds in law, business management, finance, or economics but tends to rub educators and parents the wrong way because of its failure to acknowledge teaching and learning are primarily relationship-driven endeavors and not technical pursuits.

To teachers, it makes about as much sense to base their actions exclusively on a data set or a marketing principle as it would be for husbands and wives to conduct their marriages on that basis or for parents to raise their children that way. Sure, knowing some objective “things” about how students are doing is important, but there’s way more important stuff to attend to.

And parents will grow ever more skeptical of the false promise of “school choice” because it doesn’t deliver what they really want: the guarantee of good neighborhood schools that are free and equitable to all children.

But too few reformers get this. Instead, what we can expect in 2016 is the current education establishment to use the considerable financial resources at its disposal to mount yet more marketing and public relations efforts, while the pushback from grassroots public education advocates will grow even stronger, and political leaders will be increasingly pressured to decide where they stand.