crumtheteacher

Great Start

2011-10-20T18:13:00.002-05:00

I want to share some of the awesome things that we have done in the Concord School District so far this year.

Summer training of Mentors for 9th grade students--the students were incredible and were so excited to do the work.
Success of the mentor program. 1. We didn't do anything like this previously. 2. Everyone involved is talking about the increase in connection to the school and the increase in academic motivation.
Algebra Assessment--incredible results from the high school. They were able to give the assessment, score it, and turn it around in less than a week. This is what we want to do with implementing Driven by Data.
9th grade success program--we have id'd students who are struggling earlier than ever before and we are taking action to help them earn credit in their classes.

I'm excited!!!!!!!!!!

Founding Fathers

2011-08-05T16:25:00.001-05:00

9th Grade Mentor Program--Note 1

2011-05-20T17:47:00.007-05:00

Ninth Grade Mentor Program Initial Planning Meeting

This week I met with our one of our Assistant Principals Andy Carlson. And one of our great student leaders Elliott Tannenbaum. Our mission was to replicate the work of Nathan Frank an assistant principal at a similarly composed high school in Pennsylvania. His school is 5 years into a ninth grade mentor program and they are seeing positive results. Most notably they have increased the number of students earning 5 credits in their first year of high school from 35% to 65%.

Our high school is an excellent high school that regularly places students in Ivy League colleges and has provided an educational base for all of Concord's residents. As Jim Collins says, however, it is important for every good to great organization to confront the brutal facts of their reality. We have an epidemic of 9th grade failure. The number of students failing at least one class during their first year in high school has remained constant at above 20% for years.

The meeting this week was the first official planning meeting to begin our mentor program. Andy reflected on the success of a similar program for all students at his high school where they had big brothers and big sisters. I expressed my hope that this would be a positive experience for both mentors and mentees. I want students to be proud to be part of the program and I want them to have some fun even though much of the work will be hard. Elliott was excited about the possibilities but a little worried about the scope of the program and whether we would be able to pull it all off in time.

We resolved to split up the work.

Andy said he would work on a plan to communicate with guidance counselors and ask them what students might be good candidates for the mentor role. We all agreed that the students did not need to all be all star students or members of NHS, Key Club, etc. If they wanted to be part of the group and could commit to the commitment then we wanted them.
Elliott agreed to work on a letter that would go out to students asking them to be part of the group.
I agreed to work on a plan of expectations for the group members. I also will plan a calendar for the timelines that we need to meet.

In general we have a couple other planning pieces that we are working on. They are:

Before the end of the school year create a meet and greet for mentors and future 9th grade students.
Plan a the summer 1/2 day conference for the mentors. This will be on Friday August 12th.
Plan a month by month theme schedule for the mentors and mentees to focus on.

All three of us are quite excited by the challenges that are ahead of us.

John Adams

2011-05-15T19:25:00.003-05:00

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

Some Interesting Links

2011-04-01T17:03:00.004-05:00

A few links that I have enjoyed this week.

This is about the effects of mainstreaming for low achieving students. The author's conclusions are that whole class instruction is not necessarily a negative for low achieving students.

The second is an account of school turnaround in Hartford, CT. The reviewer says this to wrap up her not entirely glowing account of the reform...

“It is not clear,” Pappano concludes, “whether Hartford Public High School is actually being turned around.” The book ends with descriptions of which academies will be abandoned, which are in the works. Would it not be more productive to convert the energy being spent on academies to ensuring that all students receive, at long last, a content-rich curriculum with a pervasive emphasis on reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning? In this respect, Hartford’s story is indeed America’s story.

With the recent onslaught against public education going on I did some looking into research on the positive effects of education on the populace. The College Board has published these statistics on the effect of education for various groups. They are from 2004 but they certainly show the positive effects of education.

An Essay I wrote for Plymouth State

2011-03-13T14:06:00.001-05:00

PSU Statement of Purpose Essay

Tom Crumrine

13 March 2011

Early Years in Teaching

My mother always joked with me that I retired first. For four years after college I wandered a bit. I lived in five states and had 17 different odd jobs. I was a logger and a bookseller. I worked at LL Bean and I spliced fiber optic cable for MCI (remember MCI?). For a time I even worked at a plasma bank as a phlebotomist. When I turned 25 my mom sent me a Time magazine with a title something like When We Were 25. It showcased people like Bill Gates telling stories of how awesome they were when they were my age. While a bit heavy handed I got the point. Angry at first, I soon realized that my mom was right. Ever since I decided not to go to medical school in my senior year of college I had been adrift in what I wanted to do. I worked through the summer at my existing dead end job and applied to Bowling Green State University for the teacher certification program. I was going home to live in my parents’ basement and commute to school.

In all honesty I can’t tell you that at age 25 I knew that teaching would become the sole purpose of my life. Even at 28 or 29 it might not have been what I wanted to be remembered for. But as I developed as a teacher and as I met inspiring educators along the way I realized that I wanted teaching to not just be my job but my way of life. Teaching for me is my profession and my hobby and my favorite thing to do. When I’m walking with my daughter in the woods I tell her stories about evolution and ecology. At the doctor’s office the other day I explained to her that the little gold fish in the tank were members of osteichtheys—the bony fish. She’s only 2 and a ½ but I’m pretty sure it is sinking in.

I have been fortunate in my educational journey to be inspired by many great educators. In my first year at Concord High School my mentor Lise Bofinger was an incredible guide. She didn’t teach me how to make handouts or how to turn the book into notes for students. She taught me how to be a better teacher. Lise allowed me to sit in on her classes many times during my first school year. During these visits I learned from her that it is not the teacher’s job to answer all student questions. It is their job to help students discover the answer to questions on their own. Lise showed me how to teach as a coach rather than a lecturer. She also invited me to become a member of a formative assessment study group in 2003, long before the term had become such a buzz word. This group included mainly science teachers and from it I learned that even veteran teachers like Lise needed to continue to learn as they progressed in their careers. I was impressed during our meetings that Lise, a 20 year veteran, would often share mistakes she had made just a week ago. And she would offer them up to the group for criticism and analysis. It was Lise who encouraged me to take on the job as Assessment Coordinator.

Chris Demers, my first colleague as Assessment Coordinator helped me to see how powerful data can be. He showed me how to become an excellent presenter of data and he taught me what to include and what to leave out of a presentation. In our years together we worked to run data retreats that really focused on the data but that were fun too. We also worked diligently to do some of the hard data analysis behind the scenes so that we did not waste teacher time with crunching numbers. We helped them to focus on what to do with the results. Chris also taught me how to be a better listener. When you speak with him he always puts you at ease because you are certain that he is listening to you. He is not thinking about what to say next he is thinking about what you are saying and what he might ask you next. I continue to improve in this area but Chris’s example is what I strive for.

Finally, Christine Rath and Gene Connolly have given me incredible insights into what it takes to be an effective administrator. For the last seven years Mr. Connolly has been the principal where I teach and my frequent collaborator. We worked together on regaining accreditation for the high school (see resume and below) and have met weekly to discuss how to guide the school on its academic journey. Superintendent Chris Rath has taught me how to delegate and how to be the leader of a meeting without dictating what will happen in the meeting. Her skill with working with all stakeholders in a school community is incredible and I have learned much from her.

Future in Education

In the next 25-35 years I want to continue to teach young people and adults. I love teaching students in the K-12 realm but I also am passionate about leading professional development for educators. I am proud of my 10 years as a teacher and now I hope to do more with my own education so that I can work with more students and adults.

I have experienced success working with large groups of teachers to create positive change and I want to continue that work. I know that I need more academic qualifications to become a principal or a superintendent and I am committed to earning those in the near future.

At PSU I hope to research change leadership and effective administrative practices. In my work as Assessment Coordinator my main role has been in leading change. Clearly I want to work with a PSU faculty member and receive their guidance but my initial research thoughts fall into two categories. First would be a meta-analysis of the literature to look for what exemplary school leadership looks like in effective schools. Determining definitions for exemplary leadership and effective schools would be the first steps of my work. The second idea, following along the same lines, would be to conduct field research on what practices occur in effective schools. I would want to conduct interviews and observations but I would also want to make sure that that information can be collected in a way that it can be statistically analyzed and reported in a meaningful way. I would be particularly interested in schools where change leadership has been effective. Of course I realize that an actual research study would require me to narrow these questions considerably. These suggestions are meant to frame the areas where I hope to improve as an educational leader.

How did I get here?

My interest in this kind of research comes from my work as teacher but also from my work as Assessment Coordinator. In my first year as Assessment Coordinator my role was to lead the 150 member high school faculty through a process of designing and implementing a measurable mission. Our school was on probation from our accrediting body and we had exactly one year to come into alignment with their directives. The district leadership agreed with the suggestions of the accrediting body but the high school faculty needed some convincing. My strength in the role was that I had the ability to process the science and the research behind the change but I could also empathize with teachers who were not seeing the connection between what the research said and what was happening in the classroom. As a school we went through a year long process where we had ups and downs and fits and starts. But in the end we had 100% consensus that we had done the right thing. And after our accrediting body reviewed our work they re-instated us as a fully accredited high school.

I am also interested in further graduate studies because of my work with data. As Assessment Coordinator for our district I organize when tests will be given and make sure teachers have support and materials. I also do a great deal of professional development with teachers on what to do with the data. I feel that I am proficient in doing this work but I know that there is more that I need to know. Our district has moved from conducting a data meeting once a year to currently having data meetings as a district 3 or 4 times per year. But I know from examining research on schools that are really closing the achievement gap that the analysis of common assessment data needs to happen on a much more frequent basis.

My purpose is to focus on student learning. I love students. I love teaching. Everything that we do as educators needs to be in the service of student learning. I will bring a lot to PSU while I am there and I promise to do a lot when I leave. I would love the chance to learn more from you.

Rubric and Grading Issues

2011-02-05T22:03:00.003-05:00

A discussion that may help.

Hi Tom,

Here in the art department we are in the midst of a lovely process of attempting to revamp how we teach Color & Design. We are proudly marching forward in lockstep on new projects in which we are all doing more or less the same thing at the same time. Because this is CHS, I do need to mention a caveat out here - namely, that our part timer is not currently part of this since shared planning time is not possible. We do plan to bring her into the loving embrace of this process within a semester or two.

Why am I telling you this? Because I'm insecure and need constant reassurance, of course. No, that's really only part of the reason. As the process unfolds we are having to reach consensus on all sorts of issues, which is working out about as well as this whole peaceful transition in yonder Egypt.

The issue of the moment is trying to develop common rubrics. During yesterday's work time (which I sadly missed due to a meeting down in Manchester) the others arrived at a five point rubric. Like lots of other folks in the building (I suspect), they were unaware of the conversion norms that we have theoretically adopted as a school.

I love to crush the naive optimism of newer teachers as much as the next guy but before I do so in this case, I just want to make sure I'm clear on the parameters. Here are the specific issues:

This really is a sad state. Much of the good thinking and good change in education is ruined by the adherence to past ideas. An adherence that does not help students and as you indicate does not help new teachers.

1. Is it true that all 1-5 rubric scales should be converted according to the same conversion numbers throughout the school? I'm pretty sure about this but just wanted to confirm...

This was agreed upon last year. As you may recall some teachers were making the strict mathematical conversion of 4=80, 3=60, etc. and some were making other conversions. The idea of converting what is supposed to be a system that is helpful to and encourages learning is insane and useless but I guess necessary in high school. (You will have to add the commas :)

2. I just looked for that conversion on the assessment page but in my haste I did not see it. Can you send me the actual conversion numbers?

It is not on there because I am embarrassed to have it in such a public space. Here is what the administration agreed upon. I agree that it is imperative that students know what each grade means but I struggle with these conversions. But as a good soldier I use them. 5=100, 4=92, 3=80, 2=65, 1=50.

3. Does the conversion include halve-sies (e.g. 4.5)?

Technically it doesn't but I feel that half scores make the system easier to use for some teachers. It does not help the issue of being clear to students exactly what each grade means but it does help teachers with some flexibility.

4. If one has a rubric with let's say 4 criteria (Composition, Craftsmanship, Problem Solving, Use of Color...) is there a policy for how one deals with the differing scores for each criteria. In other words if a kid got a 4 on three of the criteria and a 1 on the fourth criterion, is there a normative practice of averaging, or perhaps eliminating the high and low, or is it a matter of personal autonomy for us to do as we see fit?

I believe in professional discretion in this area. I use many rubrics with 4 or 5 criteria and it is my job to determine the final score. Marzano and O'Connor codify this thinking in what they call a logic rule. For example: Almost all scores at 4 and no 2s or 1s. In my teaching I set this up before I grade an assignment and it seems to work fairly well. Clearly there is an important line between subjectivity and objectivity but I try to think of like minded people looking at the same evidence. I try to think about what Lyn Vinskus would think of the project, paper or assignment. Would she have major difficulties with the grade that I gave or would she say, "I might disagree slightly but I agree with your reasoning." I go for the later.

5. We are trying to incorporate an element of the reach goals into the rubric - probably under a separate section a la the CRTC (at least for the 'relate, excel, aspire' sections). Do we have a standard conversion as a school? Must we use the conversion of the CRTC or are we to make it up as we go?

There is no standard conversion so I would advise you to be leaders in this regard. I have been impressed by the Crimson Code statements but increasingly frustrated by students who do not live up to them. As I have tried to work with these goals, that are much more realistic and less ethereal than the sacred seven, I have been routinely disappointed. Students are not respectful, not on time, not helpful to other students. We are on the right track but we cannot do it individually we need to do it as a school.

6. 4 equals 92, as I recall. This seems low to me since I rarely go above a 4 (so to me a 96ish seems about right). To another member of my department, 4 seems high since, she argues, the kid is doing a little more than the minimum expected which would be a passing grade of 70. She thinks the 4 should be an 80. I know you hate this part because there is no good answer. I suppose that in a way it is easy since we have a policy. But my guess is that as that policy becomes better known, more people will be vocal in disliking it. Any thoughts on how to navigate these treacherous waters?

Frankly, the conversion to percent grades totally ruins the effect of assigning rubric scores. As you well know the idea of rubric scores is to divest percentage grading from education. The point is to tell students where they are in relation to a goal and then give them chances to attain that goal. Converting to percentages is much more useful when it comes to sorting students. Rubric scores are meant to be criterion referenced whereas percentage scores are most often norm referenced. The two systems do not go together and do not work well together at all.

My advice is to use the policy and then use .5 scores to help with individual score discrepancies.

I originally was a big supporter of rubric style grading. But given my experience over the last few years I would suggest the following grading change for high schools. Eliminate percentage grading. Adopt letter grading that has A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, and F. These are known to parents and would not create conversion controversy. What I would do for a school is very clearly define what each of the 12 levels meant. What exactly does a C+ mean? And ideally I would use the foundation that Marzano and Reeves have discussed. They advocate systems where students know that a given score means the same thing in every class.

I'll come find you soon and we can talk more about this.

Tom

Charter Thoughts

2011-01-29T18:31:00.002-05:00

The idea of starting a charter school is exciting. I have been in discussions lately about starting one in Concord and I wanted to brainstorm some ideas with all of you.

Very hard math--but make this math relate to real world endeavors. Focus on probabilty and statistics. Because probability and statistics are what people need in the real world.
7-10
No classrooms--instead a workspace with places for collaboration and places for quiet work.
60 % gifted, 40% struggling--These are not hard and fast but I want enough in each group that cliques will not form.
Students who understand that working together is not giving someone else your hard work. It is learning to work together in the same way that you will work together for the rest of your life.
Develop leaders.
Develop a love of learning and a connection with students.
Morning meeting of adults to discuss data related to student needs. Target students who are in difficulty that very day.
Director will visit with all students at least one time per week.
Director will observe each student for 10 minutes on a regular and rotating basis.
Everyone involved in the school will work on having and creating a growth mindset even in the face of daily setbacks.
Adults will support each other in weekly 1/2 hour de-breifing sessions. These are not sessions to complain--they are sessions to vent a bit and then work on solutions.
The school will be an incubator for ideas that everyone has had but has had no place to try.
There will be work samples throughout the building. The space will look like a museum.
Students AND adults will clean their workspaces at the end of the day.
The school will have a leadership council that will make major decisions about learning. This will be similar to the council at Souhegan high school. Teachers and students will be part of the council.
Students and teachers will understand and come to learn that failure is an essential part of learning. They will learn how to accept failure, make course corrections and do better the next time.
The school will likely be small enough that we will be able to regularly meet as an entire group. This would be like a corporate meeting. The director would speak about timely issues and a student would speak as well.
Summative assessments would be primarily student led conferences.
Appropriate and business use of technology would be encouraged. Texting, picture messaging, video, video editing by students.
There would be an online student paper that would be published weekly.
Writing, writing, writing, writing. Students will write 1000 words per day. It doesn't matter what but they will be writing every day. If they are having a meltdown and can't do anything then they will write about that. They will write about academics, they will write about their lives, they will write about whatever they need to write about to get to 1000 words per day at least.
Tele-presence room. 1 experience per week with someone from the outside world. A paleontologist from Montana one week,
Teachers students and director will eat together for lunch. (Think Phillps Andover where they all eat in the same space. Sometimes teachers eat with kids sometimes not, but they all eat in the same space.
Snack time and current events at would happen at a midpoint in the morning. This would be social, with no agenda and would be attended by all. Parents would supply snacks or student groups would make them. There would be announcements by students an other updates.
T-shirts, sweatshirts, polo shirts, bumper stickers, these things might seem silly but they matter.
Students would come up with the name for the school, the design logo, and so forth.
There would be an app for the school.

Having visitors would be essential to this school. In addition to local professionals I will draw upon successful friends to provide a constant lecture series that goes throughout the year.

Ted Lord--anesthesiologist
Ron Sandler--environmental ethicist
Chris Elliott--Owner Ohio Soil Recycling--a bioremediation firm
Justin Wells--OSR
Jim Gooch--Trust for Public Lands
Tucker Richmond--hedge fund manager
Scott Evans--CIO TIAA-CREFF
Val Scheutz--veterinary assisstant
Liz Hogheem--architect
John McLeod--architecht
Seth Webb--director of recreation for Killington VT
Becky Jones--nurse
John Crumrine--conservationist and dad
Chris Irwin--Engineer at Honda
Ryan Macaulay--Owner Epic Sports

Inspired by Gawande

2011-01-24T20:02:00.006-05:00

Saving Money in Education by Learning from Health Care[1]

As professional educators we have much to learn from our wealthier more established older professional siblings medicine and business. While business has taught us to more effectively use data in education, medicine has taught us more and is closer match as it shares a similar mission. Like medicine we seek to analyze individuals and plot the best course for them. And like medicine we do not accept the idea that some people just cannot make it. We try hard for all students.

Recently Atul Gawande published a piece in the New Yorker where he begins by talking about Jeffery Brenner. This is a quote from the Gawande's article about the first patient Brenner worked with.

The first person they found for him was a man in his mid-forties whom I’ll call Frank Hendricks. Hendricks had severe congestive heart failure, chronic asthma, uncontrolled diabetes, hypothyroidism, gout, and a history of smoking and alcohol abuse. He weighed five hundred and sixty pounds. In the previous three years, he had spent as much time in hospitals as out. When Brenner met him, he was in intensive care with a tracheotomy and a feeding tube, having developed septic shock from a gall bladder infection.

The traditional model, the one in effect now, for working with a patient like this is for them to occasionally have a 20-30 minute meeting with their doctor and then, when things go haywire they go to the ER. This had been the model for Hendriks and in recent years he had been spending more than half of every year in the hospital. He had no home, he couldn’t work and when he fell down he was so heavy that he had to call 911 to help him get up.

Brenner did some fairly simple things to help Hendricks. He began spending time with him and talking with him about his life. He learned about his interests and what his life had been like in healthier days. Brenner began to work with a small team that included a nurse practitioner and a health coach[2]. They met frequently to discuss Hendricks’s health. The nurse checked in with him at his home on a regular basis and if he missed an appointment someone came to talk with him immediately.

The success has been remarkable. Hendricks has lost weight, has stopped smoking, drinking and doing drugs and has lost more than 100 pounds. Active in his church before his bad health he has returned to that community. A line cook before he now makes healthy meals for himself. His medical problems remain but they are well managed and because of this if he has to go to the hospital he stays for a few days not a few months. The doctors do not have to rebuild him every time he comes in at the point of major crisis.

Of course this kind of care is not easy and it could not be done for everyone. That is the exact point. Not everyone needs this kind of care. Brenner has looked at medicine like a police chief looks at a neighborhood. Where are the areas that need the most attention? Where does the most crime occur? Brenner has looked at what he calls hot spots of care and has identified those patients. Now Brenner and his team have hundreds of these “worst of the worst” (his words) cases. They truly work as a team on their group of patients. Every day they begin with a meeting and they look at who has missed an appointment or who has a concerning medical test. Then they take action right away. Some patients are doing fine and need nothing, others need a visit from a health coach, others need to come in and see a doctor right away. Each patient receives appropriate and timely care when they need it.

Have I hit you over the head with it too obviously? Clearly this all applies to the Concord School District. I am not going to say that what we have done in attempting to educate all children is wrong. Far from it—examples of wonderful caring educators can be found throughout the district. What we have learned in recent years is that it is not the people, it is the system. I am sure that before Dr. Brenner, there were many wonderful people who worked with Mr. Hendricks to care for him and at points keep him alive. But they were working in a system that was built for most people. Most people only need a 20 minute office visit every once in a while. Just as most students do just fine in the model that has been the basic default educational model for decades.

What can we learn from the medical model that can help students learn?

[1] Inspired by Atul Gawande. All of the ideas are his. I just summarized them and morphed the process for Concord.

[2] Health coaches are an interesting part of Brenners approach. They are not necessarily connected with medicine. Often times they have not gone to college. One mentioned in Gawande’s article worked at Dunkin Donuts. Her experience in customer service is what made her a successful health coach. She was interested in helping people and that is all that was needed.

State Testing in the Land of NCLB

2010-07-23T06:52:00.004-05:00

I don't like the fact that state tests have risen to such prominence in our country. I don't think that NCLB testing is producing the problem solvers and critical thinkers that our country needs.

We have to do NECAP testing in NH though so I suggest the following testing approach.

Two testing days on consecutive days.
Students taking the test have no other classes on those days. These days would be similar to exam days. The NECAP test is now more important to the school than mid-year exams so that should give us the latitude to do this.
Testing begins at 9:30. Brain research tells us that this is a better time for 16 year old students than 7:45. Students are encouraged to sleep in and rest for testing. They are not to come early to school and they are not to go to their period 1 class.
No homework can be assigned to these students during the two day testing window. They should not be doing other school work during this time. Again it is a special time akin to exam week.
Administrators should clearly explain to all teachers why it is so important to make some changes to the NECAP testing conditions.
Students should be told why the testing conditions have changed. The NECAP exams have become incredibly important and the testing days are going to reflect that. They are being given the days to focus exclusively on NECAP testing. They should use the time to rest and prepare mentally for the tests.

Some students will abuse the different structure of the two day testing period. Teachers will have arguments about loss of class time and class work. But we need to make sure that the school community not only understands the importance of these tests but makes some changes to reflect that importance.

Brain Rules by John Medina

2010-07-23T06:15:00.004-05:00

Summary of Brain Rules by John Medina

Compiled by Tom Crumrine

Brain Rules compiles 12 research based facts that we know about the brain. Medina summarizes what we know for sure about how the brain works and puts it into a very accessible format.

For a very good interactive website that goes into much more detail go to:

This website takes into effect all of the brain rules and provides a great way to learn all of the brain rules with great visuals, audio and graphs. There is also a 55 minute podcast available through iTunes. Search for Brain Rules and it will come up as episode 37 of the Brain Science Podcast.

The only advantage of this quick summary is that you can scan it faster than going to the website. If you follow the brain rules you will realize that the way to learn the brain rules is to go through them deeply and slowly. But this summary is just meant to entice you. I hope it will make you want to learn more about how the brain works.

One final challenge. As you go through the 12 Brain Rules some of them may seem obvious. But do we see them implemented in our classrooms? Especially as the grades get higher? If we aren’t seeing them in the classroom—why is that the case?

Let’s get started:

My thoughts are in this font.

Thoughts from Brain Rules are in this font.

At some points I added some red for emphasis.

Here are the 12 Brain Rules.

Exercise boosts brain power.
The human brain evolved too.
Every brain is wired differently.
We don't pay attention to boring things.
Repeat to remember.
Remember to repeat.
Sleep well, think well.
Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
Stimulate more of the senses.
Vision trumps all other senses.
Male and female brains are different.
We are powerful and natural explorers.

Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.

The human brain evolved under conditions of almost constant motion. From this, one might predict that the optimal environment for processing information would include motion. That is exactly what one finds. Indeed, the best business meeting would have everyone walking at about 1.8 miles per hour.

Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too.

The brain is a survival organ. It is designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment and to do so in nearly constant motion (to keep you alive long enough to pass your genes on). We were not the strongest on the planet but we developed the strongest brains, the key to our survival.
The strongest brains survive, not the strongest bodies. Our ability to solve problems, learn from mistakes, and create alliances with other people helps us survive. We took over the world by learning to cooperate and forming teams with our neighbors.
Our ability to understand each other is our chief survival tool. Relationships helped us survive in the jungle and are critical to surviving at work and school today.
If someone does not feel safe with a teacher or boss, he or she may not perform as well. If a student feels misunderstood because the teacher cannot connect with the way the student learns, the student may become isolated.
There is no greater anti-brain environment than the classroom and cubicle.

Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.

What YOU do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like – it literally rewires it. We used to think there were just 7 categories of intelligence. But categories of intelligence may number more than 7 billion—roughly the population of the world.
No two people have the same brain, not even twins. Every student’s brain, every employee’s brain, every customer’s brain is wired differently.
You can either accede to it or ignore it. The current system of education ignores it by having grade structures based on age. Businesses such as Amazon are catching on to mass customization (the Amazon homepage and the products you see are tailored to your recent purchases).
Regions of the brain develop at different rates in different people. The brains of school children are just as unevenly developed as their bodies. Our school system ignores the fact that every brain is wired differently. We wrongly assume every brain is the same.
Most of us have a “Jennifer Aniston” neuron (a neuron lurking in your head that is stimulated only when Jennifer Aniston is in the room).

Rule #4: We don't pay attention to boring things.

What we pay attention to is profoundly influenced by memory. Our previous experience predicts where we should pay attention. Culture matters too. Whether in school or in business, these differences can greatly effect how an audience perceives a given presentation.
We pay attention to things like emotions, threats and sex. Regardless of who you are, the brain pays a great deal of attention to these questions: Can I eat it? Will it eat me? Can I mate with it? Will it mate with me? Have I seen it before?
The brain is not capable of multi-tasking. We can talk and breathe, but when it comes to higher level tasks, we just can’t do it.
Driving while talking on a cell phone is like driving drunk. The brain is a sequential processor and large fractions of a second are consumed every time the brain switches tasks. This is why cell-phone talkers are a half-second slower to hit the brakes and get in more wrecks.
Workplaces and schools actually encourage this type of multi-tasking. Walk into any office and you’ll see people sending e-mail, answering their phones, Instant Messaging, and on MySpace—all at the same time. Research shows your error rate goes up 50% and it takes you twice as long to do things.
When you’re always online you’re always distracted. So the always online organization is the always unproductive organization.

Rule 4 is probably the most applicable to the educational setting and what we can do to improve it.

The 10 minute rule is really important to be aware of but it DOES not mean that you cannot lecture. What it means is that you need to have something emotional or interesting every 10 minutes. When I give notes on diseases caused by insects I give straightforward notes but also tell the story of my friend Mia who died in Kenya from malaria. This kind of thing brings student attention back because it connects with issues the brain was designed to handle—in this case a threat.
Given the 10 minute rule it might follow that lecturing all class every class is not the way to go.
The other important part of rule 4 is about multi-tasking. The research says that the brain cannot do this. Students often argue that they can check on texts and still pay attention to you—no they can’t.
This is also important for adults in the CSD community. If everyone can give their full attention and focus to meetings I argue that they could be faster and more effective. If everyone at the meeting is using their phone or calculator and not participating in the meeting—that is a problem.

Rule #5: Repeat to remember.

The human brain can only hold about seven pieces of information for less than 30 seconds! Which means, your brain can only handle a 7-digit phone number. If you want to extend the 30 seconds to a few minutes or even an hour or two, you will need to consistently re-expose yourself to the information. Memories are so volatile that you have to repeat to remember.
Improve your memory by elaborately encoding it during its initial moments. Many of us have trouble remembering names. If at a party you need help remembering Mary, it helps to repeat internally more information about her. “Mary is wearing a blue dress and my favorite color is blue.” It may seem counterintuitive at first but study after study shows it improves your memory.
Brain Rules in the classroom. In partnership with the University of Washington and Seattle Pacific University, Medina tested this Brain Rule in real classrooms of 3rd graders. They were asked to repeat their multiplication tables in the afternoons. The classrooms in the study did significantly better than the classrooms that did not have the repetition. If brain scientists get together with teachers and do research, we may be able to eliminate need for homework since learning would take place at school, instead of the home.

Rule 5 indicates the power of practice. Medina believes that sufficient practice during the school day could eliminate the need for homework. But before we spark a homework debate…the point is that students have to do over and over that which we want them to know.

Rule #6: Remember to repeat.

It takes years to consolidate a memory. Not minutes, hours, or days but years. What you learn in first grade is not completely formed until your sophomore year in high school.
Medina’s dream school is one that repeats what was learned, not at home, but during the school day, 90-120 minutes after the initial learning occurred. Our schools are currently designed so that most real learning has to occur at home.
How do you remember better? Repeated exposure to information / in specifically timed intervals / provides the most powerful way to fix memory into the brain.
Forgetting allows us to prioritize events. But if you want to remember, remember to repeat.

Rule 6 shows the need to cycle back at points in the day. Elementary is well designed to do this. In MS and HS it is more difficult but it can be done. The point is that to form lasting memories we have to follow up on the original learning. Also as seen below if you miss the beginning material you have trouble catching up. We all know this is true but what are we changing to make sure that students succeed?

Rule #7: Sleep well, think well.

When we’re asleep, the brain is not resting at all. It is almost unbelievably active! It’s possible that the reason we need to sleep is so that we can learn.
Sleep must be important because we spend 1/3 of our lives doing it! Loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.
We still don’t know how much we need! It changes with age, gender, pregnancy, puberty, and so much more.
Napping is normal. Ever feel tired in the afternoon? That’s because your brain really wants to take a nap. There's a battle raging in your head between two armies. Each army is made of legions of brain cells and biochemicals –- one desperately trying to keep you awake, the other desperately trying to force you to sleep. Around 3 p.m., 12 hours after the midpoint of your sleep, all your brain wants to do is nap.
Taking a nap might make you more productive. In one study, a 26-minute nap improved NASA pilots’ performance by 34 percent.
Don’t schedule important meetings at 3 p.m. It just doesn’t make sense.

Rule #8: Stressed brains don't learn the same way.

Your brain is built to deal with stress that lasts about 30 seconds. The brain is not designed for long term stress when you feel like you have no control. The saber-toothed tiger ate you or you ran away but it was all over in less than a minute. If you have a bad boss, the saber-toothed tiger can be at your door for years, and you begin to deregulate. If you are in a bad marriage, the saber-toothed tiger can be in your bed for years, and the same thing occurs. You can actually watch the brain shrink.
Stress damages virtually every kind of cognition that exists. It damages memory and executive function. It can hurt your motor skills. When you are stressed out over a long period of time it disrupts your immune response. You get sicker more often. It disrupts your ability to sleep. You get depressed.
The emotional stability of the home is the single greatest predictor of academic success. If you want your kid to get into Harvard, go home and love your spouse.
You have one brain. The same brain you have at home is the same brain you have at work or school. The stress you are experiencing at home will affect your performance at work, and vice versa.

Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses.

Our senses work together so it is important to stimulate them! Your head crackles with the perceptions of the whole world, sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, energetic as a frat party.
Smell is unusually effective at evoking memory. If you're tested on the details of a movie while the smell of popcorn is wafted into the air, you'll remember 10-50% more.
Smell is really important to business. When you walk into Starbucks, the first thing you smell is coffee. They have done a number of things over the years to make sure that’s the case.
The learning link. Those in multisensory environments always do better than those in unisensory environments. They have more recall with better resolution that lasts longer, evident even 20 years later.

Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.

We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you'll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you'll remember 65%.
Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time.
Why is vision such a big deal to us? Perhaps because it's how we've always apprehended major threats, food supplies and reproductive opportunity.
Toss your PowerPoint presentations. It’s text-based (nearly 40 words per slide), with six hierarchical levels of chapters and subheads—all words. Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images. Burn your current PowerPoint presentations and make new ones.

Rule #11: Male and female brains are different.

What’s different? Mental health professionals have known for years about sex-based differences in the type and severity of psychiatric disorders. Males are more severely afflicted by schizophrenia than females. By more than 2 to 1, women are more likely to get depressed than men, a figure that shows up just after puberty and remains stable for the next 50 years. Males exhibit more antisocial behavior. Females have more anxiety. Most alcoholics and drug addicts are male. Most anorexics are female.
Men and women handle acute stress differently. When researcher Larry Cahill showed them slasher films, men fired up the amygdale in their brain’s right hemisphere, which is responsible for the gist of an event. Their left was comparatively silent. Women lit up their left amygdale, the one responsible for details. Having a team that simultaneously understood the gist and details of a given stressful situation helped us conquer the world.
Men and women process certain emotions differently. Emotions are useful. They make the brain pay attention. These differences are a product of complex interactions between nature and nurture.

Rule 12--We are powerful natural explorers.

The desire to explore never leaves us despite the classrooms and cubicles we are stuffed into. Babies are the model of how we learn—not by passive reaction to the environment but by active testing through observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion. Babies methodically do experiments on objects, for example, to see what they will do.
Google takes to heart the power of exploration. For 20 percent of their time, employees may go where their mind asks them to go. The proof is in the bottom line: fully 50 percent of new products, including Gmail and Google News, came from “20 percent time.”

2010-04-28T15:41:00.004-05:00

Bullying on the bus, the governor's race in Alabama, and Arizona immigration law. These have been tumbling around in my mind all week and I think I have finally been able to pull some thoughts together to say something lucid.

This thought process began on Sunday morning when I woke up early and turned on my DVR recording of SNL. It was a legendarily bad broadcast until Weekend Edition with Seth Meyers. He began by talking about the new Arizona law that required people to show their papers when asked. He riffed for a bit about how the main place you hear, "Show me your papers," is in WWII movies. I read a bit more about the law in some non-comedy news sources and came to the conclusion that the law seems a bit over the top to me. That said it is fair for people to debate what should be done about illegal immigration in our country.

Next I heard about Tim James and his advertisement to become governor of Alabama. He states that in Alabama they speak English so that they should only offer the state driver's license test in English. "If you want to live here, learn it. We're only giving that test in English if I'm governor."

Bringing it home to education and to Concord I have had conversations recently about bullying on school buses in Concord. School officials and bus officials are aware of the issues and are diligently working on all issues. The worry is that a racial/immigrant wrinkle is being added to bus bullying.

My concern is that the with the hot rhetoric that often happens in the news that this could spill over in a negative way to our students who are English language learners. Immigration is going to be coming up big in the news and the burgeoning ELL population in Concord could be an easy attack point for frustrated people. Many of these students have spent years in refugee camps only to finally find solace and comfort here in Concord. It would be terrible for them to again become victims.

I am confident that this will not become a major problem but the strength of the Concord School District is that we do an excellent job of preventing possible problems. I will be incredibly happy if this never becomes a problem. But I also want to make sure that we are aware of the possibility and that we work to keep all of our kids happy and safe.

2010-02-24T20:15:00.001-05:00

Instructional Rounds in Education

Elizabeth City, Richard Elmore, Sarah Fiarman and Lee Teital

Summary by Tom Crumrine

The opening of the book:

“Pierce Middle School is stuck. Despite the best efforts of its leadership and teaching staff, Pierce’s results on the statewide test have leveled off, or slightly declined, after two years of more or less steady improvement. Pierce’s staff feels the urgency of the situation. There is no question about their commitment to improved student learning. they feel they are working at the limit of their current knowledge and skill. The school district’s leadership is equally concerned, since they were relying on Pierce to serve as a model for their system-wide improvement strategy. Now it’s not clear what they will do. Maybe it’s just a temporary glitch in the test scores. But maybe it’s something more fundamental. Pierce’s leadership team and the district leadership team huddle in a conference room at the central office trying to figure out what to do next.”

Quotes from Introduction

What are rounds?

Repeatedly, district and school practitioners tell us that one of the greatest barriers to school improvement is the lack of an agreed-upon definition of what high-quality instruction looks like.

The rounds process is and explicit practice that is designed to bring discussions of instruction directly into the process of school improvement. By practice we mean something quite specific. We mean a set of protocols and processes for observing, analyzing, discussing, and understanding instruction that can be used improve student learning at scale.

They talk further about the idea that this comes from the idea of rounds in medicine. Rounds where everyone learns.

Unfortunately, the practice of walkthroughs has become corrupted in many ways by confounding it with the supervision and evaluation of teachers.

This kind of practice is both antithetical to the purposes of instructional rounds and profoundly anti-professional.

The idea behind instructional rounds is that everyone involved is working on their practice, everyone is obliged to be knowledgeable about the common task of instructional improvement, and everyone’s practice should be subject to scrutiny, critique and improvement.

Chapter 1

First Principle: Increases in student learning occur only as a consequence of improvement in the level of content, teachers’ knowledge and skill, and student engagement. (24)

Second Principle: If you change any single element of the instructional core, you have to change the other two to affect student learning. (25)

Third Principle: If you can’t see it in the core, it’s not there. (27)

Does it really happen? It needs to be imbedded in the reality of the school. Presentations don’t do it. Looking at what is actually happen is what needs to be done.

Fourth Principle: The task predicts performance. (30)

It isn’t the curriculum. If students practice memorizing they get good at memorizing. If students practice analysis they get good at analysis. If a player practices free-throws they get good at free throws.

Fifth Principle: The real accountability system is in the tasks that students are asked to do. (31)

This is not that hard to do. We just don’t do it enough. The example that worked fairly well is the work of Feb. 2009 where the high school looked at what kinds of exams they give at mid-year time. Sure there are lots of constraints that go into giving mid-year exams but in general the tests asked more low level questions than high level question. (Following the seventh principle that will come later let’s not jump to an evaluation of this. Let’s talk about what we would like to see in mid-year exams and go from there.) This type of process can be repeated if we decide to make time to do it.

Sixth Principle: We learn to do the work by doing the work, not by telling other people to do the work, not by having done the work at some time in the past, and not by hiring experts who can act as proxies for our knowledge about how to do the work. (33)

There is a lot to learn from outside research. My friend cardiologist Ben Lowenstein regularly reads journal articles after his kids have gone to bed. But he also goes to conferences where he sees people performing best practice work and every single day—every single day—his decisions are examined and questioned by his fellow cardiologists, by nurses, etc. This last part is the cultural part that does not exist in education.

Seventh Principle: Description before analysis, analysis before prediction, prediction before evaluation. (34 and 35)

Their seventh principle outlines a common them in rounds discussions. Do not jump right from observation to evaluation. The community needs to come up with what they even want to observe when they do their rounds. After observation lots of conversation needs to happen about what the group would like to be seeing.

Alignment and Frequency of Assessment of Competency Understanding

2010-02-21T07:01:00.008-05:00

Competencies at their basis come down to a goal, an assessment and a plan to get to the goal. A lot of work has been done in recent years on the first step--establishing the goal. Different groups will be ready at different times but the logical next step is to examine assessments. If your group is ready to examine assessments these are 2 simple activities that could help.

Inspired by the work of Larry Ainsworth.

If you look at the link above and scroll to page 70 and 71 you will see two activities that check common assessments for alignment to Power Standards (our word is competencies and I will use it from here forward) and for frequency of assessment of competencies.

Activity 1 Alignment
This is a check for whether or not current assessments align to the competencies. Teachers could bring some assessments and go through this activity. I would suggest that the groups would be small and used to working with one another. This is not a "gotcha" activity. The idea is to see where we are now and what we might want to do to improve.

How many of our assessment items align to the competencies? Which ones?
How many of our assessment items do not align to the competencies? Which ones?
Do our assessment items directly match the "unwrapped" concepts and skills of the competencies?
Do our assessment items math the level of rigor required by particular "unwrapped" competency skills, such as evaluate or analyze?
Do our assessment items use the same terms that appear in the standards as opposed to more student-friendly wording (i.e., identify rather than label)?
Do our assessment items align with or resemble the formatting of our district and state assessments so the such formats will be familiar to students?
What does this tell us? Are our assessment items matched to our intended instructional purposes (the targeted competencies)?
What do we need to do next in this regard? Which items do we keep? Which items do we need to replace or modify so that they do align with our competencies?

Activity 2 Frequency
Again teachers could look at the assessments that they currently give and go through these questions.

How many of our assessment items match each competency?
Are certain competencies underrepresented? Which ones?
Are certain competencies overrepresented? Which ones?
Are we trying to address too many competencies in this one assessment?
What does this tell us? Do we need to redistribute our assessment items so that the appropriate number of competencies are more equally represented?
What do we need to do next in this regard? Which items do we keep as they are? Which items do we need to replace or modify so that there is a better balance between the actual number of items and each of the targeted competencies?

Trying to Put it All Together--Again

2010-02-21T06:28:00.004-05:00

4:45 am brainstorming about District in Need of Improvement

The keys remain for me:

Focus. We need a laser like focus on student learning.
Coordination of the focus. Individuals currently do a pretty good job at focus. The district does an OK job. This needs to change to the district doing an excellent job.
The Extra Department. Currently we have Special Education for students with 504 plans or IEP. What about an Department of Extra Services. This would be a fully functioning and organized department just like Special Education but it would be for students that need extra help but are not in Special Education or English Language Learning.
Eliminate the grades concept from our thinking at the high school. Make high school about completing the requirements not about progressing through grade 9, 10, 11, 12. Make being a 5th year OK--this will be right for some students.
Hire "right match" people. Make sure new hires know what they are getting into. Lots of sharing, lots of collaboration, lots of openness. Very little of the closed classroom door environment.
Leadership. Allow principals to spend some time each day focused on learning.
More teacher leaders. In order for principals to spend more time on learning everyone will have to do a little bit more.
Duties at HS--First and second year teachers do not have duties. Their duty is to visit other classrooms and watch what veteran teachers do.

Just some ideas--no permanent suggestions.

Duncan 4

2009-12-27T21:34:00.001-05:00

Duncan 4

FOR RELEASE:
June 22, 2009


	More Resources


	Press release

The secretary introduced his speech with an overview of his Listening and Learning Tour and a summary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He occasionally deviated from this prepared text.

Today, I want to focus on the challenge of turning around our chronically low-achieving schools. These schools have failed to make progress year after year.

In some of these schools, the leadership has been replaced, but it hasn't made a difference. Many good teachers have left them and too few good teachers have replaced them. And many dedicated parents and ambitious students have also left and found other options.

The social and physical conditions around some of these schools are horrific.

They're often unsafe, underfunded, poorly run, crumbling, and challenged in so many ways that the situation can feel hopeless.

That is, until you meet the kids, talk to them, and listen to their dreams of the future. I went to Detroit where two out of three students drop out. However, the seniors I met are all going to college. They know what they want to be and they don't want to waste a minute.

I went to a high school on an Indian reservation in Montana where 80 percent of the adults are unemployed. They could name just one student from their school who had completed college in the past six years.

I talked to the ninth-graders and they begged to be challenged. They think everyone's given up on them. No one expects them to succeed. Yet, despite bleak conditions, they still believe in the redeeming power of education.

There are approximately 5,000 schools in this chronically underperforming category, roughly 5 percent of the total. About half are in big cities, maybe a third are in rural areas, and the rest are in suburbs and medium–sized towns. This is a national problem— urban, rural, and suburban.

I won't play the blame game, but I also won't make excuses for failure. I am much more interested in finding ways to fix these schools than in analyzing who's at fault.

States and districts have a legal obligation to hold administrators and teachers accountable, demand change and, where necessary, compel it. They have a moral obligation to do the right thing for those children—no matter how painful and unpleasant.

Yet, few districts in America have risen to the challenge. Too many administrators are unwilling to close failing schools and create better options for these children. There are some exceptions: Hartford, Pittsburgh, Denver, New York, Oakland, and D.C.

In a few isolated cases, failing schools were taken over by charter organizations, such as Green Dot in L.A. and Mastery Charters in Philadelphia. Some of these turnarounds are showing real promise.

Finally, in a number of cities and states—Alabama, Tennessee, New York, Chicago, Miami, and Baltimore—affiliates of the NEA (National Education Association) and AFT (American Federation of Teachers) have taken over failing schools

I closed about 60 schools in Chicago, some for low enrollment and some explicitly because they were failing academically. We reopened about a dozen of these schools with new leadership and staff. Some are run by the district, and some are run by the Academy for Urban School Leadership, a non–profit partner. All of them use union teachers.

Today, these schools are doing much better. Our first two turnarounds—Dodge and Williams—have more than tripled the percentage of kids meeting standards in five years.

Sherman Elementary saw a five-point jump in the percentage of students meeting standards in the first year. Harvard reduced absences by five days per student in the first year. And Orr High School saw a 15-point jump in attendance in its first year.

Turnarounds aren't easy. It requires you to build trust with parents. The way it plays in the media can polarize people. Some adults are still protesting me back in Chicago for closing schools, but it was the right thing to do.

The parents in these turnaround schools now talk about their kids “looking forward to school for the first time,” coming home and “talking about their teachers.” They say it's “a totally different atmosphere” even though it's the same schools with the same kids and the same socioeconomic conditions.

It gives you hope that anything is possible with enough effort and determination and the right people. That's what we need in schools all over America. The fact is there are still way too many schools that don't pass the “would we send our own kids there?” test.

And some of them, by the way, are charter schools. The charter movement is one of the most profound changes in American education, bringing new options to underserved communities and introducing competition and innovation into the education system.

All across America we see great charter schools, from Noble Street in Chicago to IDEA Academy in Texas, Inner–City Education Foundation and Partnerships to Uplift Communities in Los Angeles and Friendship Public Charter Schools in D.C.

What I like most about our best charters is that they think differently.

There are approximately 5,000 schools in this chronically underperforming category, roughly 5 percent of the total. About half are in big cities, maybe a third are in rural areas, and the rest are in suburbs and medium-sized towns. This is a national problem—urban, rural, and suburban.

The Denver School of Science and Technology serves grades six to 12 . They take the sixth–graders on college visits. Those children spend years choosing a college— instead of months—and 100 percent of their graduates go on to four–year colleges and universities.

North Lawndale College Prep is in one of Chicago's most violent neighborhoods, yet they cut security staff and hired social workers instead. That extra personalization is one reason that more than 90 percent of their graduates are going to college.

I was just at the North Star Academy Charter School in Newark (N.J.), where they have reversed the achievement gap. Their kids are outperforming others in the state and every single graduate was accepted into a four-year college. These results speak for themselves.

So, I'm a big supporter of these successful charter schools and so is the president. That's why one of our top priorities is a $52 million increase in charter school funding in the 2010 budget. We also want to change the law and allow federally funded charters to replicate.

But the CREDO (Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University) report last week was a wake–up call, even if you dispute some of its conclusions. The charter movement is putting itself at risk by allowing too many second–rate and thirdrate schools to exist. Your goal should be quality, not quantity. Charter authorizers need to do a better job of holding schools accountable—and the charter schools need to support them—loudly and sincerely.

I applaud the work that the Alliance is doing with the National Association of Charter School Authorizers to strengthen academic and operational quality. We need that, and we also need to be willing to hold lowperforming charters accountable.

I closed three charter schools in Chicago and turned away more than 100 proposals because they were not strong enough. There should be a high bar for charter approval, and in exchange for real and meaningful autonomy there must be absolute accountability.

In some states—and the CREDO report singles out Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas—accountability is minimal. That's unacceptable, and instead of hearing it from me or from CREDO, the education community should hear it from you. Just as the American Bar Association polices the legal community and the AMA (American Medical Association) does the same for the medical profession, you must get more serious about accountability.

I want to salute the California Charter Schools Association, which recently announced an accountability proposal that links charter renewal to student achievement and growth. We should watch this closely and see if it can become a model for other states.

We also need to work together to help people better understand charters. Many people equate charters with privatization and part of the problem is that charter schools overtly separate themselves from the surrounding district. This is why opponents often say that charters take money away from public schools, but that's misleading. Charters are public schools, serving our kids with our money. Instead of standing apart, charters should be partnering with districts, sharing lessons, and sharing credit. Charters are supposed to be laboratories of innovation that we can all learn from.

And charters are not inherently anti-union. Albert Shanker, the legendary head of the American Federation of Teachers, was an early advocate. Many charters today are unionized. What distinguishes great charters is not the absence of a labor agreement, but the presence of an education strategy built around common-sense ideas: More time on task, aligned curricula, high parent involvement, great teacher support, and strong leadership.

All of these qualities exist in good traditional schools as well. We know what success looks like. I see it the moment I enter a school. It's clean, orderly, the staff is positive and welcoming, and the kids and the classroom are the focus. I see award-winning school work on the walls. I see discipline and enthusiasm in the children. I see parents engaged and teachers collaborating on instruction.

The hard part is to replicate those conditions everywhere, and you need to challenge yourselves and challenge each other to turn one success into a hundred and a hundred into 200.

At the same time, when you see charter schools that are not measuring up don't defend them or make excuses for them. Admit that the adults in that building, for whatever reason, just can't get it right and something has to change.

Children have only one chance for an education. You're giving them that chance. That's an enormous duty and I am grateful for every one of you who willingly took on that responsibility. I'm especially grateful to those of you who are succeeding.

But I came here today to ask you to do even more. We need everyone who cares about public education to take on the toughest assignment of all and get in the business of turning around our lowest–performing schools. That includes states, districts, nonprofits, forprofits, universities, unions, and charter organizations.

I know your typical approach is to start new schools with a few grades and ramp up over time. I respect that approach. It's a smart, successful strategy and we don't want you to stop. The president and I have expended a great deal of political capital urging states to lift charter caps and allow more charters to open—and states are responding. Illinois raised its cap and Tennessee came back into session to pass a charter expansion proposal.

But over the coming years, America needs to find 5,000 high–energy, hero principals to take over these struggling schools—and they will need a quarter of a million great teachers who are willing to do the toughest work in public education. We will find them in the union ranks and the charter community, the business world and the nonprofit sectors. We won't find them overnight. I don't expect a thousand to show up next fall. We can start with one or two hundred in the fall of 2010, and steadily build until we are doing 1,000 per year.

We have great charter networks like Aspire, KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools. You're steadily getting to scale. Today, I am challenging you to adapt your educational model to turning around our lowest–performing schools. I need you to go outside your comfort zones and go to underserved rural communities and small cities. We are asking states and districts to think very differently about how they do business. Your knowledge and experience can help shape their thinking.

Just as the American Bar Association polices the legal community and the AMA (American Medical Association) does the same for the medical profession, you must get more serious about accountability.

We have a lot of money to support this work. Aside from the $5 billion in the Race to the Top and Invest in What Works and Innovation funds, we have $3.5 billion in Title I school improvement grants. We're seeking another billion and a half in 2010. That's $5 billion specifically targeting turnarounds, providing hundreds of thousands of dollars above normal funding levels for every turnaround school. And with the support of Congress, we will have even more money in subsequent years to support this work.

Leading foundations and the national education unions are both interested in turnarounds. Nonprofits like New School Venture Fund, Teach for America, the New Teacher Project and New Leaders for New Schools will also play a role. In the coming months, we will develop an application process that spells out exactly what we mean by turnarounds—but let me paint a rough picture for you.

At a minimum, for a turnaround to succeed you have to change the school culture. In most cases, simply replacing the principal is not enough. We want transformation, not tinkering.

We have four basic models in mind. Some will work better in big cities while others are more suited to smaller communities. And we're still working this through, so we welcome your ideas.

The first option is based on what we did in Chicago. We awarded planning grants in the fall so new principals and lead teachers could develop and adapt curriculum to better meet the needs of the students. During the spring, they begin recruiting teachers and they take over the school in June.

Under this model, the children stay and the staff leaves. Teachers can reapply for their jobs and some get rehired, but most go elsewhere. A few leave the profession, which is not all bad. Not everyone is cut out for teaching. Like every profession, people burn out. In our view, at least half of the staff and the leadership should be completely new if you really want a culture change, and that may very well be a requirement of the grants.

Our second option also involves replacing the staff and leadership and turning it over to a charter or for-profit management organization. As I mentioned, Green Dot, Mastery Charters and AUSL are doing this, but we need more of you to get in the game. I know this is tough work, but there is an upside. You start with a school full of kids so there is no student recruiting and you also get a building, which has been a big obstacle for many charter operators.

Obviously, you need to build a full staff more quickly, but that can be done. I am confident that many charter operators will figure this out and succeed brilliantly. I also recognize that you won't always succeed. I accept that, but what I won't accept is a nation that turns its back on millions of children in failing schools while successful models are flourishing in the next community or the next town.

Our third turnaround model keeps most of the existing staff but changes the culture in the following ways. Again, we are open to input on this, but at a minimum:

They must establish a rigorous performance evaluation system along with more support, training, and mentoring.
They must change and strengthen the curriculum and instructional program.
They must increase learning time for kids during afternoons, weekends, and in the summer, and provide more time for teachers to collaborate, plan, and strategize.
And principals and leadership teams must be given more flexibility around budgeting, staffing, and calendar.

They must use everything we know about how to create a successful school culture—but do it all at once—with enough resources to get the job done. This approach makes more sense in smaller communities where there isn't a ready supply of new teachers and leaders, and where the current staff won't have other job options. This model also gives unions an opportunity to take responsibility for fixing schools without replacing staff. We are beginning a conversation with the unions about flexibility with respect to our most underperforming schools. I expect they'll meet us more than halfway because they share our concern. They understand that no one can accept failure.

But we should also be crystal clear: This model cannot be a dodge to avoid difficult but necessary choices. This cannot be the easy way out. It has to work and show results—quickly—in real and measurable ways in terms of attendance, parent involvement, and student achievement.

All of these models assume a year or more of planning. We should be starting today to build teams that will take over schools in the fall of 2010. Schools and districts can use Title I funds right now to start the planning process.

The last of our four turnaround models is simply to close underperforming schools and reenroll the students in better schools. This may seem like surrender, but in some cases it's the only responsible thing to do. It instantly improves the learning conditions for those kids and brings a failing school to a swift and thorough conclusion.

Now let me also make something very clear: Closing underperforming schools is a state and local responsibility. It's up to state and district superintendents and the political leadership. If they won't make these choices, I can't force them to do it. My job is to support the work—provide funding, help define success, and drive the public consensus toward the desired outcome. But the people who run our schools, and the parents who depend on them, must demand change if they want it to happen.

I came to Washington because I believe in education. I know that change is possible. I know we have the talent and the ideas to succeed. The only question is whether we have the courage to do what's right for kids. We've seen what happens when caution trumps courage. Nothing changes and kids lose. But we've also seen the opposite—where bold leaders have fought the status quo.

And this only works with the full support of the community—the faith-based, the political, the social service agencies, the police, the boys and girls club—and all of the other institutions that serve children and families. A principal can't do this alone.

We've seen traditional public schools where creative and dedicated educators built strong teams, boosted parental involvement, and raised student achievement. We've seen it in charter schools where gutsy entrepreneurs abandoned lucrative careers, staked a claim in struggling communities, and now are producing miracles.

There is no shortage of courage in this room. You wouldn't be here if you weren't risk-takers. So I'm asking you once again to put your reputations on the line and take on this challenge. I'm asking for your help because I believe in you. I'm asking because I am hopeful. I'm asking, above all, because our children need you and America needs you.

We may never have an opportunity like this again—this president, this Congress, $100 billion, and a broad and growing consensus around the importance of education. So this is our time and this is our moment. This is our chance to transform the one thing in society with the power to transform lives. The path to success has never been clearer.

The education reform movement is not a table where we all sit around and talk. It's a train that is leaving the station, gaining speed, momentum and direction. It is time for everyone everywhere to get on board. Thank you.

Duncan 3

2009-12-27T21:33:00.000-05:00

Arne Duncan 2

2009-12-27T21:32:00.000-05:00

Talk 1 from Arne Duncan

2009-12-27T21:30:00.001-05:00

Talk 1 from Arne Duncan.

FOR RELEASE:
June 14, 2009

I am continually struck by the profound wisdom underlying the American political experiment. The genius of our system is that much of the power to shape our future has, wisely, been distributed to the states instead of being confined to Washington.

Our best ideas have always come from state and local governments, which are the real hothouses of innovation in America.

On so many issues—energy efficiency, mass transit, public safety, housing and economic development–it's the states that are often leading the way, sometimes with federal help and sometimes without.

Nowhere is this truer than in the field of education, where dedicated practitioners in schools and districts and states are constantly finding new and better ways to educate our children and prepare them for the world.

When I was running Chicago's schools I knew that the federal government's role was to support our work—not to direct it or micro–emanage it but to encourage, reward, and support the innovation and progress that were being made at the state and local levels.

Now that I am in Washington, it's even clearer to me that education reform starts locally—in classrooms, schools, districts, and states—and my job is to help you succeed.

The call for higher standards is a perfect example.

It started with governors like Jim Hunt and Roy Romer, who are both here tonight, as well as Richard Riley and Lamar Alexander, both of whom have been very helpful to me in these first few months.

So I am thrilled to be among the true education reformers who understand the stakes, want to see change, and are determined to lift American education to a new level.

I'd like to start by saluting Jim Hunt and Roy Romer for their vision and courage on the issue of education reform. They challenged all of us to make education more than a political talking point or an empty slogan.

Governor Hunt called for common national standards when it wasn't politically popular. His institute has done important work with the National Research Council that shows that there is the political will to accomplish this task today.

Likewise, Roy Romer led the call for higher standards as a governor and as a superintendent. Throughout the 2008 election, he kept this issue in the national dialogue, and we wouldn't have 46 states and three territories agreeing to adopt high common standards if it weren't for his hard work.

Again I want to thank you both for showing leadership on an issue that is critically important to our future.

Let me start by talking about the unique, historic, and powerful opportunity we have to transform public education.

We have a perfect storm for reform. We have:

The Obama effect;
Leadership on the Hill and in the unions;
Proven strategies for success; and
The Recovery Act providing $100 billion.

Let me give you an update on state fiscal stabilization:

As of last week, 31 states had received $24 billion in stabilization funds and $11 billion more in Title I and IDEA funds.
Several more states have their applications in and are close to being approved.
We are urging governors to get their applications in by July 1.
We promise to turn around applications quickly. This is currently taking about 10 calendar days.

We are working as fast as we can because we understand that states are hurting in the current economy. We know that you are struggling to balance budgets, and we appreciate that you are working hard to protect schoolchildren.

I also appreciate that the primary focus of the Recovery Act is to save and create jobs, and we're deeply grateful that states across America are helping save hundreds of thousands of teaching and other education–related jobs.

But if all we do is save jobs, we will miss this opportunity, which is why we are also using this recovery money to drive reform in four core areas. I'd like to talk about them.

It starts with robust data systems that track student achievement and teacher effectiveness, which I discussed in a speech to academic researchers last week.

We need to do a much better job of tracking students from pre–K through college. Teachers need this data to better target instruction to students. Principals need to know which teachers are producing the biggest gains and which may need more help.

We also need to track teachers back to their colleges of education so we can challenge teacher training programs to raise the bar.

This is where reform will play out. It will filter up from classrooms and schools, districts and localities, but then it will arrive on your desks. And when it does, I urge you to remember that the truest measure of a society's worth is whether it offers all of our children the opportunity to go where they want to go, do what they want to do, and fulfill their dreams.This is the promise of education. This is the American promise.

There's a lot of money available in the Recovery Act to help improve our data systems and I want to work with you to put the very best technology at the service of educators.

The second area of reform is teacher and principal quality, which I will discuss in a speech to the NEA (National Education Association) in July, but let me touch on it briefly.

Nothing is more important than getting great teachers into our classrooms and great principals into our schools. And there are millions of hard–working, dedicated teachers in schools all across America.

But there are many schools where the teaching staff has declined either because of poor leadership or simply professional burnout. And there are also some new teachers who simply don't belong in the classroom. That's not unique to teaching. It's true in every field.

But we can't allow that to continue, and we need to work with our education leadership to address this. We need to look much harder at recruiting, training, and supporting our teachers and principals.

We also have to fix our method of evaluating teachers, which is basically broken.

A recent report by the New Teacher Project shows that 99 percent of teachers are all rated the same, and most teacher rating systems don't factor in student achievement.

Some states actually have laws creating a firewall between teacher evaluation and student achievement. This isn't fair to kids or to teachers. Worse yet, it's not honest.

How can you possibly talk about teacher quality without factoring in student achievement?

We also need to have an open mind on issues like alternative certification and incentive and performance pay.

I understand that teachers are concerned about the fairness of performance pay. I share those concerns, but I am confident that if we sit down with the unions—instead of forcing it on them—we can find ways to reward excellence in the classroom.

The third area of reform is turning around our lowestperforming schools, which I will discuss at greater length in a speech to charter advocates next week.

Last year, there were about 5,000 schools in “restructuring” under NCLB (the No Child Left Behind Act). These schools have failed to make adequate yearly progress for at least five years in a row.

The children in these schools can't wait for incremental reform. They need radical change right now–new leadership, new staff, and a whole new educational approach.

We need to build more capacity to turn around these 5,000 schools. Everyone needs to get in the game: charters, unions, districts, states, nonprofits.

This is very hard work and very few people do it, but we have a moral obligation to save those kids.

States and districts need to step up and have the political courage to close failing schools and let others try. We have $3.5 billion in Title I school improvement funds to support this work and another $1.5 billion in the 2010 budget.

We need leaders with the courage to do the right thing and we need educators with the energy and determination to take on the toughest challenges in public education.

That's why our administration is pushing so hard to lift charter caps. We want new educational options for those communities. We want innovation to flourish, and where charters are doing well there should not be barriers to growth.

Where they are not doing well, however, they should be held accountable. Many of you have great charter schools in your states. I have visited some of them.

But many of you have charter schools in your states that, frankly, are not getting the job done. If they are failing, they should close and the children should have another option.

I opened more than 70 charter schools in Chicago. I closed down three for academic failure and mismanagement. Every state needs to look hard at the quality of their charter schools.

I also think that we need to break through the dynamic that positions charters against unions.

Albert Shanker, the legendary union leader, was an early advocate of charters. The AFT (American Federation of Teachers) represents something like 70 charters and the NEA (National Education Association) represents another 40.

So we should stop fighting over charter caps and unite behind charter accountability.

The fourth and final area of reform called for in the Recovery Act is around higher standards and assessments.

We think that every state should set internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in the workforce and college.

World-class standards are the foundation on which you will build your reforms.

Some state leaders have been telling us that for decades. I mentioned governors Hunt and Romer earlier. There have been many others.

Governor Barnes of Georgia and Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin led a bipartisan commission on changing NCLB. Fixing our patchwork of 50 [sets of] state standards was a key part of their proposal.

Many other governors have been actively involved with Achieve over the years.

I want to thank Governor Pawlenty (Minn.) for taking a leadership role at Achieve right now, and also thank governors Granholm (Mich.), Carcieri (R.I.), Rendell (Pa.), Bredesen (Tenn.), Heineman (Neb.), and Patrick (Mass.).

Gene Wilhoit has made national standards his top priority as the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. Thanks to his organization and the NGA (National Governors Association). Your hard work and leadership are paying off.

As I said before, 46 states and three territories have now committed to creating common internationally benchmarked college–and career–ready standards. And you deserve a big, big hand for that.

Creating common standards hasn't always been popular. Right now, though, there's a growing consensus that this is the right thing to do.

The list of supporters for this effort is long: The National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the Council of the Great City Schools, and business leaders. From what I've heard on our listening tour, teachers in the classroom are supporting you as well.

Just last month, the U.S. Department of Education started asking for comments on policy issues through the Web site. Our first question was about raising standards.

The first response came from a woman named Michelle Wilson, who identified herself as a library media specialist.

She wrote: “I believe one of our country's weakest points in education is that the level of standards differs for every state.”

Education is a state and local issue. You pay 90 percent of the tab, and our job is to support leaders like you.

Another woman wrote, “If all states followed the same standards then there would be less inequity for our students.”

I agree with them both. With higher standards that are common across states we can share best practices and collaborate on curricula.

We can learn together about how to improve teacher preparation and development so that far more teachers can help students master challenging standards.

This can accelerate all of your reform work.

It is especially important that this has started at the state level because some people will raise concerns that common standards across states will lead to federal over–reaching.

I am very sensitive to that issue. As I said before, I was a local educator before I came to Washington.

Education is a state and local issue. You pay 90 percent of the tab, and our job is to support leaders like you.

So let's be clear: this effort is being led by governors and chief state schools officers. This is your work and this is your agenda.

Federal law does not mandate national standards. It empowers states to decide what kids need to learn and how to measure it.

But common sense also tells you that kids in big cities like Newark and San Francisco, or small towns like Tarboro, North Carolina, are no different from each other.

Standards shouldn't change once you cross the Mississippi River or the Rocky Mountains. Kids competing for the same jobs should meet the same standards.

So while this effort is being led at the state level, as it should be, it is absolutely a national challenge, which we must meet together or we will compromise our future.

The president called on us to produce more college graduates than any other country in the world. We cannot reach that goal without your leadership and the commitment of educators all across America.

You've taken the first step. Your stated goals are “higher, clearer, and fewer” standards, and I absolutely support your goals. The standards must be tied to the end point of making sure students are ready to succeed in college or in the workplace.

For too long, we've been lying to kids. We tell them they're doing fine, give them good grades, and tell them they're proficient on state tests that aren't challenging.

Then they get to college and they're put into remedial classes. Or they go into the workforce and find out that they don't have the skills they need to succeed.

We need standards that will get them ready for the day after they graduate. That means they must be rigorous.

Today, our standards are too low and the results on international tests show it. Worse yet, we see the signals in the international economy as more and more engineers, doctors, and science and math Ph.D.s come from abroad.

You must resist the temptation to make these standards too easy. Our children deserve to graduate from high school prepared for college and the jobs of the future.

Your standards must be rigorous and they also must be tightly focused on the most important things students need to know.

Right now, standards are too broad, covering 35 to 40 topics per subject in each grade as opposed to 15 or 20 standards in many high–performing countries.

Teachers scramble to cover everything—a little of this, a little of that, and not enough of what's really important.

They can't dig deeper on a challenging subject that excites their students. And students can't master material when they are racing through it.

We must limit standards to the essential knowledge and skills our kids need so teachers can focus in depth on the most important things their kids should know.

And once these standards have been created—and reviewed by professionals in every state—I encourage you to adopt them.

That's when everyone will know that you are serious. That's when your leadership will be tested because people will push back.

The fact is higher standards will make some of your states look bad in the short term because fewer students will be meeting them.

So I will work with you to ensure that your states will not be penalized for doing the right thing.

And in reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, the administration will work with you and with Congress to change the law so that it rewards states for raising standards instead of encouraging states to lower them.

I always give NCLBcredit for exposing the achievement gap, but the central flaw in the law is that it was too loose about the goals and too tight about how to get there.

As states come together around higher common standards, I want to flip it and be tighter about the goals but more flexible in how you can meet them.

I trust states and districts to find the way, and I don't trust Washington to tell you how to do it. You have the ideas, the leadership, and the ability. I'm here to support you.

And then our next step is to work together to find a better way to measure success, and that brings me to the real point of this speech, which is the assessments.

Once new standards are set and adopted you need to create new tests that measure whether students are meeting those standards. Tonight I am announcing that the Obama administration will help pay for the costs of developing those tests.

As you know, we have $5 billion in competitive grant funding under the Recovery Act to help advance these four reforms.

Congress carved out $650 million for the Invest in What Works and Innovation fund, which is for districts and nonprofits that are pushing reform.

The administration will dedicate up to $350 million of the remaining funds to help develop new assessments.

We haven't worked out all the details yet, but, in the coming months, we will develop an application process that supports this effort.

We need tests that measure whether students are mastering complex materials and can apply their knowledge in ways that show that they are ready for college and careers.

We need tests that go beyond multiple choice, and we know that these kinds of tests are expensive to develop. It will cost way too much if each state is doing this on its own.

Collaboration makes it possible for this to happen quickly and affordably.

Now, again, some people may claim that a commonly created test is a threat to state control, but let's remember who is in charge. You are. You will create these tests. You will drive the process. You will call the shots.

We just want tests that are aligned with your rigorous standards and accurately reflect what is happening in classrooms so that teachers, parents, and students can trust the results.

And we also encourage you to work together to develop benchmarked tests so that teachers can understand how their students are doing during the school year and can target instruction accordingly.

This is a growth area for the testing industry, which may worry some that assessments used across multiple states will be bad for business even if it's the right thing for kids.

However, it's not my job to worry about their business. My job is to worry about kids, and I know that our kids not only need to be challenged but they want to be challenged.

Everywhere I go—a Montana Indian reservation, a high school in Detroit, or a middle school in West Virginia—the kids are telling us, “Challenge me, push me, make me work and I will do it.”

And that means that higher standards will require more rigorous teaching and curricula, and that's why the other three reforms are so important to our overall strategy.

But it all starts with you: Raising the bar, raising expectations, and raising our sights.

Before I finish, I want to talk about the Race to the Top fund. I explained that the Recovery Act provides $5 billion in discretionary funding.

After the set–asides for the Invest in What Works and Innovation fund and the money for the new assessments, we will have $4 billion for states to drive education reform.

This is your opportunity to be bold and creative, to think big and push hard on the kind of reforms that we know will create fundamental change.

But this money will go only to states that are absolutely pushing reform in real and measurable ways—states where great educators are turning around our worst schools, meeting the highest standards, and producing career– and college–ready graduates.

We will ask tough questions around these four reform areas. We will ask you to show us how you will build a coherent strategy around these four reforms to produce a world–class education system—not just for some kids but for all kids.

States can also collaborate with each other or apply on their own.

In addition to evaluating your Race to the Top proposals, we will consider how your other Recovery Act dollars are being invested because that's also an opportunity to drive reform.

The draft application will go public in late July and be final by early fall. We will award grants in two rounds, the first one early next year and the second one in September 2010.

States that lose the first time have a chance to win in the second round. But we must see real and meaningful change. You must eliminate barriers to innovation and create the best possible conditions for success.

We have invited education stakeholders across the spectrum to get involved and we encourage you to work with your districts, with educators, with nonprofits, and with labor unions, to put together the very best applications possible.

We have talked to leading foundations and they are eager to support your work, so I urge you to reach out to them and draw on their expertise and resources.

There has never been this much money on the table and there may never be again. And there has never been a greater need.

With 30 percent of our kids dropping out of high school and millions of those in college struggling to achieve, we are falling dangerously behind other countries.

Improving education is not just a moral obligation of society. It's not just an economic imperative. It's the civil rights issue of our generation—the only sure path out of poverty and the only way to achieve the vision of equality spelled out by our founders.

As we look to the years ahead, we will continue to look to the governors and state education chiefs for leadership and innovation.

We will continue to find more ways to support your work on behalf of children. We will continue to do everything in our power to fulfill your collective vision of great schools producing great citizens, great thinkers, and great doers.

Today, perhaps for the first time, we have enough money to really make a difference. We have proven strategies for success in schools all across America.

The only question is whether we have the political courage, the will to make the tough choices that are right for kids.

At the end of the day, this comes down to leadership, partly in Washington but mostly in state capitals all across America.

This is where reform will play out. It will filter up from classrooms and schools, districts and localities, but then it will arrive on your desks.

And when it does, I urge you to remember that the truest measure of a society's worth is whether it offers all of our children the opportunity to go where they want to go, do what they want to do, and fulfill their dreams.

This is the promise of education.

This is my promise. This is your promise. This is the American promise.

Thank you.

U.S. Department of Education
Arne Duncan
Secretary

Competencies Thought

2009-12-19T22:07:00.001-05:00

I have recently been listening to the podcast, What you missed in High School, from How Stuff Works.

The podcasts are each about 15-20 minutes long and they are fascinating. One detailed exactly how Blackbeard worked. How he grew up, came to fame and eventually died. Another talked about the childhood of Queen Elizabeth--the daughter of Henry the VIII. One of the very best was the story of Gettysburg. They detailed in under 1/2 an hour how the South won that battle. And they were able to describe complex battle conditions in audio, without the help of maps or visuals.

Students should absolutely know the details in these podcasts. The should wallow in the details and become lost in the amazingness of history. But along with these details they should understand the context. This is where competencies come in. The details about Blackbeard are incredible and the fight that eventually leads to his death is incredible. BUT students need to also understand the context of why all of this was happening. The fact that Blackbeard was an outgrowth of the privateer system in England and how the ending of that system lead to an explosion of pirates.

Many have argued that there are no details to be learned in a competnecy based system. That is not the case. The fact is that the same details can be learned but we must explain to students the context in which they fit.

Bullying

2009-08-05T13:46:00.003-05:00

Interesting program on NPR's Here and Now program today. Click to get the link.

The program on bullying began with the story of Karl a sixth grader who killed himself after a year of relentless bullying. They interviewed his mother and she was clearly a very strong woman who took the road of not only forgiving the bullies but dedicating the rest of her life to not only helping the victims but to helping the bullies.

The reason here and now focused on bullying today was because the American Pediatric Association just came out with a new report on bullying. Doctors are encouraged to ask about the school environment--not only in the classroom, but in the lunch room, hallways, etc. The later tend to be the places that bullying actual occurs according to the study.

I haven't studied bullies too much because it doesn't come up too often in in my teaching. Although it does happen and this story will help me be more vigilant in looking for it. I had a particularly nasty case this year where a student regularly made fun of a student with Asperger's syndrome.

The big take away for me is how schools have worked to solve bullying. There are 3 participants in a bullying situation. The victim, the bully and the bystander. Schools that have conquered bullying focus on getting the bystanders as a group to create a culture in the school where the bullies are seen as the outcasts.

Challenges 1 and 2

2009-07-30T06:14:00.000-05:00

Help!! I need lesson plans for the first week of school and have no clue what the curriculum is or how to create a lesson plan that supports the district philosophy. Where do I go? Who do I see?

Well to begin I would venture to say that the district philosophy is to ensure that students know what the big picture is and what they need to do to understand the material. A lesson plan that supports this philosophy would have students engaged in a variety of instructional methods. Some direct instruction, some hands on, some individual, some in groups. The teacher would frequently check if the instruction was working and take corrective actions when necessary. Remember what Chris Demers said—we need to teach more like art teachers and coaches—with corrective action coming immediately not delayed till a test.

To find what the curriculum is teachers, even veteran teachers, should consult the teachers in the building who have gone before them. Lesson planning alone should be avoided. There is someone in your building who has taught chemistry before and someone who has taught second grade for 25 years. My mentor didn’t tell me what to do but she did provide every single activity that she had used the previous year. That meant that I began my teaching with activities that were created after 16 years of teaching experience. Why would we want to do it any other way? She sat with me and explained how she had used each one and made suggestions for how I might use them. She provided samples of the notes she had given and let me know about possible pitfalls I might encounter. When I had difficulty I went to her and said—this didn’t work…what did I do wrong. And I would go into her room and watch her teach something that I had never taught before. I hope this is how it will work for you.

I’ve noticed that after lunch, my students are dozing off in class… What can I do to keep them engaged?

My high school students do this because they often consume lunches consisting of ketchup packets and energy drinks loaded with sugar. I’m not kidding by the way, I can’t tell you how many boys come in and tell me that they were in a ketchup packet eating contest at lunch. This inevitably leads to a crash at some point.

Research on high school students tells us that we should never go more that 20 minutes on one activity. Even in AP Biology where we think the kids might be able to take longer—go for 20 minutes only. At the younger grades the time goes down accordingly. This approach also makes sure that you are varying your teaching style and approach during the class or day.

Rick Wormeli, a leading speaker and writer on assessment and instruction, cites research showing that tiredness is often caused by dehydration. Seems silly but it is really important to allow water breaks often during class. At the high school level if I see a sleeping or nodding student I make them get up and go get a drink. The walk wakes them up and it alerts me that I may have gone on too long with my talking.

Finally, don’t be offended by a child who is nodding off—unless they do it all the time. Use it as a sign that tells you—if this kid can’t even stay awake then I bet the other kids aren’t super engaged either. Use it as a critique of yourself and say, “Why aren’t the kids engaged with what we are doing right now?” You can use simple techniques like popsicle sticks to make sure everyone is listening. Write down every student’s name on a popsicle stick and pull them out of a can when asking questions. Dylan Wiliam has shown that this simple approach can increase engagement from a handful of students to nearly everyone in the class.

Arne Duncan on Ed. Reform

2009-07-29T13:57:00.004-05:00

I was reading through Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's speeches on education reform. I got tenure after two years and didn't have to do too much to earn it so I read the one on tenure and unions first. This caught my eye.

I linked to all of the speeches below. The over riding theme is that we have to face out tough problems and to do that we are going to have to make some changes. Duncan squarely keeps the focus on children and that is definitely where it needs to be.

Take a read for yourself and let me know what you think.

adopt rigorous standards that prepare students for success in college and the workforce at the 2009 Governors Education Symposium
recruit and retain effective teachers, especially in classrooms where they’re needed most, at the National Education Association annual conference
build data systems to track student achievement and teacher effectiveness at the annual conference of ED’s Institute of Education Sciences
turn around low-performing schools at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Conference.

Collaboration and Communication

2009-07-29T13:13:00.003-05:00

This is a section from the “synthesis” paper I have been working on. It is a first draft and I would love comments and suggestions.

Collaboration and Communication
When we had our first child my wife was in labor for 12 hours. During the 10 hours of that that we were in the hospital we must have seen 15 or 20 people. There was one wonderful nurse, Heather, who was assigned to work with my wife and I. But there were also other key people involved in the birth. Dr. Heidi, our obstetrician was there, of course and there were many other nurses and specialists.

If we compare the day to education Heather the nurse was like the classroom teacher and Dr. Heidi was the principal. The other nurses were like other teachers in the building. The people who drew blood were the specialists. The main difference in how they worked and how a school works is how they worked together. When Dr. Heidi would come in Heather wasn’t scared—she was excited. She would ask questions and make sure that she was doing all that she could for my wife and I. In turn, Dr. Heidi didn’t shout demands or give orders, she conferred with Heather and made suggestions about what might work in given situations. When my wife requested an epidural Heather, Dr. Heidi my wife and I all talked about the positives and negatives. They even suggested an alternative that we tried first. It wound up not working but we were glad we had tried everything before going to the drugs. (Once we went to the drugs my wife was quite happy.)

When our baby was born Heather stayed with us until the next nurse came on. Before leaving to go home she talked at great length with the new nurse and told her everything about us and our baby. The baby was five weeks early but was otherwise fine, vital signs, etc. Only then did she leave us. Since the baby was five weeks early a special nurse was called in. This nurse took a look at our child and concluded that our baby didn’t need extra help so she didn’t need to stay.

The analogies to education are obvious but the key thing we can learn from the medical profession is how they communicate profusely and how they collaborate with the interest of the patient foremost in their minds. As teachers when we collaborate (if we collaborate) it too often becomes a game of who is the better teacher. This thinking needs to go away. The vast majority of teachers are good, just in different ways. We need to lean on the strengths of other teachers to improve in the areas where they are a little stronger.

A few years ago someone told me how much work they had to do over the summer because they were teaching a new course. I asked them if anyone else in the department had ever taught it. They replied that about 6 other teachers had taught the course. It was clear from the rest of our conversation that the teacher wasn’t going to get much help from the other teachers on planning the course. Why? Imagine two dentists working in adjacent rooms. One knows a new tooth whitening technique, the other does not. Would the first dentist tell the second dentist to read about the technique to figure it out themselves? Of course not. So why do we have to behave this way in education.

Someone once told me that a new teacher was hired who had previously taught in Japan. She was told to come up with a lesson plan for a particular unit and said she couldn’t do it. When asked why she explained that she had never planned a lesson by herself—they just don’t do it that way in Japan. Doctors and nurses have learned that their collective knowledge is much more useful when there is a great deal of sharing and communicating. As teachers we need to work in the same way.

Learning

2009-07-29T12:32:00.003-05:00

I have been musing about a post on learning--that the focus of education needs to be on learning. It keeps getting longer but the basic pieces are:

Learning must be the focus of everything that everyone does.
Hiring must be driven by a need to get the right people on the bus.
Leaders must ensure that the focus of the school is learning
Teachers must ensure that they are focusing on the most important learnings every day.
Collaboration--teaching should not be an individual activity. Teaching should be an activity that is done collectively similar to how medical professionals work as a team to make you better.
Special education is one tool to help students but there must be other tools that are equally robust to help students.

I've been trying to make it post length but it keeps getting longer. I'm thinking that the six things listed above might be a sort of synthesis for what schools and districts need to do to improve.

Harlem Children's Zone

2009-07-28T16:16:00.006-05:00

On the Talk of the Nation today the program focused on "What Works." This whole week they have been focusing on seemingly "intractable" problems that have been solved in certain places.

Their guest today was CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone, Geoffrey Canada. I heard about Canada sometime last summer and I have a ton of respect for his dedication to poor students in Harlem.

Earlier this year Paul Tough put out a book called "Whatever It Takes," that chronicles Canada's nearly 20 years of working with the Harlem Children's Zone. I recommend it but if all you have is 1/2 an hour consider downloading the talk of the nation program from today. It will be 1/2 an hour well spent.

Some big points about the Harlem Children's Zone and Canada:

They do everything at once--it isn't just about being poor. They have partnerships with hospitals, obesity clinics, diabetes clinics, drug and alcohol treatment places, block watchtes, etc. They knew the research and the science and they just did it all at once.
The first kids to go through the program are currently in 5th grade. They began the program before they were even born. There is currently no gap between their achievement and the achievement of their peers.
A second group who were behind in grade 6 are now in college. There is no gap for math and a slight gap for English Language Arts.
Baby College is for 0-3 education. There is nothing special about this. Canada himself explains that 0-3 eduction has been done for decades--in the middle class. He is just taking what works there and educating poor parents about the methods.
Why is 0-3 important. By age three, with no intervention, children who are poor know 800 fewer words than middle and upper class children. The gap continues from there.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has launched a plan to replicate the HCZ approach in 20 big cities. The funding is big upfront but if you can break the cycle of poverty--poor parents raising poor children who don't finish school and then raise more poor children--the payoff will be great in the end.

Canada uses himself as an example. He was the first person in his family to go to college. But for his kids it was obvious that they would go to college--and they have. For his grandkids there won't even be the slightest question of whether they will go on to college. Like middle class families all over the country--the choice of not going to college won't be a choice anymore.

So why am I so excited about a program that works in Harlem--where poverty rates were in the 90 percents? If Canada and his team can turn it around for thousands of students in Harlem then districts with smaller numbers of students who are poor certainly have something to learn from him.

Bow Data Day

2009-06-29T19:40:00.002-05:00

Just completed an awesome day of work with the Bow School District. We had about 25 people from the high school, middle school and elementary school looking at data all day.

They said they were in the novice category in terms of data but I found out early that they were being to hard on themselves. They asked great questions and showed the same kind of insight that I have seen with so many teachers with whom I have had the pleasure to work.

Highlights for me included the incredible dedication of the teachers and the hard work done.

As we move to our second day together we will focus on:

Are we asking the right questions?
Are the questions big enough?
Can we really get to conclusions? Or even inferences?
What is really going on?

Looking forward to it.

2009-06-19T18:59:00.002-05:00

Grading and Reporting at CHS

This got a little longer than I anticipated. The introduction explains some of my thinking and the research section on page two includes quotes and summaries from leading researchers on assessment and grading.

Introduction

This weekend I tried to think back to why I began doing 1-5 grading in the first place. It actually had nothing to do with percent grades. I knew from the outset that the conversion would cause problems. My purpose was to clearly communicate to students exactly where they were on a learning continuum.
I was convinced by Bob Marzano that 5-9 categories were about the most anyone could reliably use to judge students.
Rick Stiggins and Anne Davies convinced me that assessment should be FOR learning. That it should not communicate and end point but that it should let a student know where they are and what they can do to go to the next level.
Tom Guskey convinced me that I really couldn’t reliably sort students into the 101 categories available on the 0-100 scale. (And I certainly couldn’t sort them into the 1001 categories available on the 0.0-100 scale.)
Grant Wiggins made me reconsider averages. Why, he asked, would we give a student the average when they could do it at the end of a course?
Dylan Wiliam gave me the example of the driver’s license—no matter how many times you fail—we all get the same driver’s license once we finally pass.

So putting this all together I began to use a system where I scored each part of each assignment using the 1-5 scale. I stressed early and often that even if you had a 1 you were still a good person—we are all at the beginning at some point in our lives. I stopped giving zeros and gave incompletes. I would say to students that I couldn’t give them a score until I had that piece of work. I stopped talking about percent grades at all—the only thing I would talk about with students was 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.

It seemed to work. Conversations with students transitioned from being about their grade to being about what they can to improve their understanding of a specific topic. The only time it didn’t work was for any of the 8 reporting periods when I was limited to giving students only a 2 digit grade to summarize their performance. Which is where I was 4 years ago and where I am today…

So…

Here is an attempt to compile the thoughts of leading researchers on grading. First of all I think it is important to remember that all experts recommend a systematic approach to rethinking grading. They are all pretty similar so I will use the steps that Tom Guskey and Jane Bailey advise. (The first 5 would go in order. Six through 9 give information about steps 1-5.)

Purpose—what is the purpose of grades?
Define the impetus for change—why are we re-examining our grading and reporting system?
Exploring the history of grading and reporting—what is the history of grading?
Laying a foundation for change—what is the research that surrounds grading?
Building a Grading and Reporting System
Grading and Reporting Methods I: Letter grades, percentage grades, and other categorical grading
Grading and Reporting Methods II: Standards-based, pass/fail, mastery grading, and narratives
Grading and reporting for students with special needs
Special problems in grading and reporting

Marzano recommends the following order:

Phase 1—have a vanguard team of teachers experiment with competency based assessment and record keeping.
Phase 2—identify the competencies and the software that will be used.
Phase 3—implement the system in stages.

Research
Anne Davies
Dr. Davies does not mention grading scales in her works or presentations. She does strongly and continuously stress that a change in grading should be a change from “assessment of learning,” to “assessment FOR learning.” Her take is that assessment is changing from something that happens to students to something that is done to help students.

“Research shows that when students are involved in the learning process—learning to articulate what they have learned and what they still need to work on—achievement improves.”[1]

Ken O’Connor
“Impreciseness is the main point of those who argue for letter grades rather than percentage grades; they believe that dividing student achievement into a limited number of categories is all that we can ever hope to do with any pretense of real meaning. According to this argument, using a 101 point scale gives a false sense of precision and, therefore, detracts from the main purpose of grades—meaningful communication of student achievement.

This argument has a great deal of merit, especially for elementary and middle schools, where grades are not involved in high stakes decisions, except pass/fail. However, where grades are involved in high stakes decisions about students’ educational future—such as college entrance, graduate school acceptance, and employment opportunities, numbers may be preferable to letters because there are more scale points available.”[2]

O’Connor then illustrates an example of a student who gets all 89s and gets a B and one who gets all 90s gets an A. The 5 point scale of A-F would amplify differences between students that really aren’t that great. BUT O’Connor is not against a 5 point system. He goes on to say,

“If all the guidelines and principles described in chapters 1-8 [Nearly the entire book] are applied then letter grades based on teachers’ professional judgments using a detailed descriptive scale will produce the best grades. But if teachers crunch numbers to arrive at grades, especially in high school and college, then percentage grades are probably fairer, and therefore better, than letter grades.”[3]

Again, the second sentence here might seem to be a rejection of a 5 point system. But, go back and read the first sentence again. What O’Connor advocates throughout the book, and when he presents, is for teachers to use grades, professional judgment, conversations with students, and multiple measures to determine grades. He is the man who told me about the following simple way of explaining the 5 point scale.

5=Wow!
4=Great!
3=Got it!
2=Nearly there!
1=Oops!

O’Connor would look at the 2 students described above and using professional judgment determine whether all 89s should merit the designation of A.

Guskey
“Letter grades offer a brief description of students’ achievement and level of performance, along with some idea of the adequacy of that performance (Payne, 1974). Because most parents experienced letter grades during their school years, they also have a general sense of what letter grades mean. For this reason, parents often prefer letter grades to newer, less traditional reporting methods (Libit, 1999).

Despite their simplicity, however, letter grades also have their shortcomings. First and probably most important, their use requires the combination of lots of different forms of evidence into a single symbol (Stiggins, 2001). As described in Chapter Three, many teachers combine product, process, and progress evidence in a single grade. This makes the grade a confusing hodgepodge that’s impossible to interpret, rather than a meaningful summary of students’ achievement and performance (Brookhart, 1991; Cross and Frary, 1996).

Second, despite educators’ best efforts; many parents interpret letter grades in strictly norm-referenced terms. Probably because the letter grades they received as students reflected their standing in comparison to classmates, parents frequently assume the same is true for their children. To them, a C doesn’t represent achievement at the third level of a five point scale, similar to a middle level belt in a karate class. Instead, a C means “average” or “in the middle of the class.”

A third shortcoming of letter grades is that the cutoffs between grade categories are always arbitrary and difficult to justify. If the teacher decides that the scored for a grade of B will range from 80 to 89, for example, the student with a score of 80 will receive the same grade as the student with a score of 89, even though there is a nine-point difference in their scores. But the student with a score of 79—a one point difference—receives a grade of C. Why? Because the teacher set the cutoff for a B grade at 80. Although cutoffs are absolutely necessary in any multilevel grading method, where they are set is always arbitrary.

Finally, letter grades lack the richness of other, more detailed reporting methods, such as standards-based grading or narratives. Although they offer a brief description of adequacy of students’ achievement and performance, letter grades provide no information that can be used to identify students’ unique accomplishments, their particular learning strengths, or their specific areas of weakness.”[4]

Guskey goes on to say, “letter grades should always be based on clearly stated learning criteria, not on norm-referenced criteria.”

Guskey and Bailey
The seriousness of arguments over plus and minus grades contrasts sharply with the simplicity of the issue involved. Basically, the issue comes down to whether is is better to have a 5-category grade system (A, B, C, D, and F), or a 12 category system (A, A-, B+, B, B-, and so on0. But if more categories are better, one might ask, “Why stop at 12?” There’s nothing sacred or particularly special about using 12 categories. Instead, we might consider a scale similar to the one used to express grade point average: 0.0-4.0.”[5]

This would equal 41 categories if you stick to just tenths place. Or you could go on to percents and get to 101 categories. Or even more if you go to percents and decimals. 92.34 for example.

Guskey and Bailey go on to say, “Research on rating scales shows that increasing the number of rating categories from 4 to just 6 generally lowers both the reliability and validity of the measures (Chang, 1993, 1994). Other studies indicate that scaled of 5 to possibly 9 categories are about as many as any qualified judge can reliable distinguish (Hargis, 1990, p. 14). Moreover, as the number of potential grades or grade categories increases, especially beyond 5 or 6, the reliability of grade assignments decreases. This means that the chance of two equally competent judges looking at the same collection of evidence and coming up with exactly the same grade is drastically reduced.”

Guskey and Bailey’s Recommendation
“Although to our knowledge no research evidence to date confirms that more affirming grade-category labels reduce stigma attached to low grades, we remain optimistic that this may be true. Certainly the connotation of Novice or Beginning is far less negative than that of Failing….

At the more advanced grade levels, we also believe that it is much more advantageous to assign a grade of I or Incomplete to students’ work and expect additional effort than it is to assign a letter grade of F (see the discussion of “Grades as Punishments” in Chapter 3).”[6]

Marzano
Marzano first writes a book on grading theory and only reluctantly gets to conversions about 7/8s of the way in. From having seen him talk it is clear that in his mind converting scores to anything is of little use. But I have also seen him say that grades in their traditional sense will probably always be necessary in grades 10-12 at least.

In essence Marzano explains that giving a score for each of the measurement topics (competencies) in a class would be preferable. But if a “district or school…wishes to use the traditional A, B, C, D, and F grading protocol,” it would need “a translation, such as the following:

3.00-4.00=A
2.50-2.99=B
2.00-2.49=C
1.50-1.99=D
Below 1.50=F”[7]

“Summary and Conclusions
Various Techniques can be use for computing final scores for topics and translating these scores to grades. Computer software that is suited to the system described in this book has three characteristics. First, the software should allow teachers to easily enter multiple scores for an assessment. Second, it should provide for the most accurate estimate of a student’s final score for each topic. Third, it should provide graphs depicting student progress.”[8]

Stiggins
Rick Stiggins and Anne Davies go hand in hand when they talk about Assessment FOR Learning. He wrote the original paper where he began always writing the for in all caps. They both focus most of their work on the idea that assessment (to sit beside) should be something that helps a student learn. In terms of conversions Stiggins suggests a “Decision Rule.”

“[If} at least 50% of the ratings are 5s and the rest are 4s, the grade is an A, [if] at least 75% of the ratings are 4s or better and the other 25% are not lower than 3, then the grade is a B, and [if] 40% of the ratings are 3s or better and the other 60% are not lower than two then the [grade] is a C.”[9]

“What about the situation in which a student receives a B, but it’s a high B or a low B? Over the course of an entire year, the difference will not be significant in terms of mastery, and mastery is what grades are based on, not averages. This isn’t being dismissive, but the reality is that the difference in learning (mastery) between the high and low versions of one particular grade is not that much. In larger grading scales, for example, the difference between a B and a B+ is just a few points. How exact can we be when identifying a student’s true mastery of something? Does a 0.01 (1 percent) difference in a grade-point average really mean a discernable, significant difference in mastery? No. It’s splitting hairs.

There are some teachers who disagree with this. They claim that there are a large number of mastery points wrapped into each percentage point due to multiple and influential assessments over a long period of time, and that the difference of one percentage point can describe mastery or lack of mastery of a significant amount of material. If this is the case, then whittling grades down to their exact and relative values (offering 2.75s for example) may be necessary. Each time we are tempted to do this however, let’s remember how elusive declarative mastery is, as well as how subjective we are in the micro-moment of grading each product from each student, and how we make it even more subjective when we aggregate a variety of data for a summative grade. And let’s wonder whether having done this, even justifiably, will have any lasting impact ten years down the road.”[11]

“One caution: If we primarily use a 4-point scale, many students and their parents will equate the highest numerical value (4.0) [or 5 in our case] with an A,…They will wonder why we just don’t write A, B, C, D and F if that’s what they really are.”[12]

Thanks for reading—if you made it this far.

Tom Crumrine
[1] Research of Black and Wiliam 1998 and Stiggins 2001 reported in Conferencing and Reporting by Gregory, Cameron and Davies.
[2] How to Grade for Learning—Ken O’Connor. Page 200.
[3] How to Grade for Learning—Ken O’Connor. Page 200.
[4] How’s My Kid Doing?-Tom Guskey. Pages 45-46.
[5] Developing Grading and Reporting Systems for Student Learning. Tom Guskey and Jane Bailey. Page 70.
[6] Developing Grading and Reporting Systems for Student Learning. Tom Guskey and Jane Bailey. Page 77.
[7] Classroom Assessment and Grading that Work—Robert J. Marzano. Page 122.
[8] Classroom Assessment and Grading that Work—Robert J. Marzano. Page 124.
[9] Fair Isn’t Always Equal—Rick Wormeli. Page 154. Wormeli quotes Stiggins here.
[10] Fair Isn’t Always Equal—Rick Wormeli. Page 154.
[11] Fair Isn’t Always Equal—Rick Wormeli. Page 154-155.
[12] Fair Isn’t Always Equal—Rick Wormeli. Page 157.

Cell phones in class

2009-06-19T18:21:00.003-05:00

Mr. Crumrine’s Electronic Device Experiment
Semester Two
2008-2009 School Year
Chemistry and Its Applications and Anatomy and Physiology Classes

There has been much discussion this year about electronic devices and their place in the Concord High School community. While some would limit or outlaw electronic devices I come down firmly on the other side. Electronic devices are powerful tools that can connect us to each other and the work. The iPod touch, to highlight one, has thousands of educational applications. Some of them are as simple as the built in calculator while others provide students with interactive x-rays of the human body.

Electronic devices can be used improperly—by both students and adults. I become pretty upset when I am giving a presentation and see people tapping away on their email accounts. And I really don’t like it when someone is ostensibly talking to me but in reality looking at their BlackBerry the whole time. But both students and adults can use these powerful tools in responsible ways. When I was in high school teachers had to teach us that our graphing calculators were appropriate for use in certain ways. In math class—OK. Playing tetris in English—not OK. We can do the same kind of teaching with electronic devices.

During the second semester of this year my students and I came up with the following plan. We talked first about the value of electronic devices and then we talked about ways they could be used improperly.

Here is the plan:

Why would a student be allowed to use a cell phone/electronic device?

¨ Effective communication.
¨ Active self directed learner.

In order to be successful after high school students need to know how to use modern technological tools. These include cell phones and other pocket electronic devices.

The use of these tools however must be done in an appropriate way. Just as it would not be OK for an adult to text while a colleague is explaining something to them—it is not OK for a student to do the same.

What do we do?
• Use the calculator on your phone—OK at appropriate times.
• Use the agenda feature—OK at appropriate times.
• No texting at any time—because could disturb others outside of our class.

Please ask for permission to:
--use the calculator feature.
--use the agenda feature in the last 5 minutes of class.

In certain cases, with permission, you may be allowed to:
--play games—work must be done.
--listen to music—work must be done.
--use the internet—you must use it for something related to class.

Penalties
• First offense—teacher takes cell phone—student gets it at end of class.
• Second offense—teacher takes device—student gets it at end of school day.
• Third offense—teacher takes device and turns it in to administration.

I agree to this revised cell phone policy for our classroom only.

Print Name:_______________________

Sign Name:________________________

Reflections

The plan worked extremely well with the Anatomy and Physiology group.

I warned one student one time about improper use.
Nine or ten students had iPod touches (iPods touch?). Several of them used the anatomy flash card applications that are available for free or $0.99. One of them purchased a ten dollar application which was basically a digital textbook. They said they found it very helpful.
During our end of the year project several students used text messaging in an appropriate way to communicate with partners. An example is a group where 3 people were dissecting a cat and one person was in the library researching cat dissection.

The plan worked better than I expected with Chemistry and Its Applications
In a very cute and funny way students would always ask if they could use the calculator functions on their phones. I found this to be effective and it saved me money because I usually buy about 10 calculators per year with my own money.

A higher percentage of students in ChemApps had iPod touches when compared with Anatomy. But they did not take advantage of flash cards or other applications to my knowledge.
One notable exception was a student who had, on his own, downloaded a ten dollar spreadsheet application. We were doing a lab where the students had to take the temperature of a substance every 30 seconds. He asked if he could put the data in his phone. Not only did he input the data but he was able to quickly create a graph when he was done. While other students took about ten-15 minutes to create the graph he was able to immediately start answering the post lab questions. The most important part of this lab was not making but interpreting the graph so this was a plus.
There were several first offense violations during the semester (10) but students surrendered their phones for the period and I did not see repeat offenses except for the next bullet.
I encountered major issues with 2 students. They did not follow the cell phone policy at all even though they had signed the sheet. They would not surrender their phones when asked and used them pretty much whenever they wanted. I should have done a better job working with administration with these two students. I will say that these two students were the same ones who did not follow any of the other rules of our classroom. They walked out of class without asking, swore at me and other students, used racial slurs, and sometimes screamed. I don’t think any cell phone policy would cure them of their other ills.

Quick Conclusion:

I would be willing to work hard on a cell phone/electronic device policy that emphasizes proper use of these powerful tools. For our students these are the tools that they have used for communication since they first learned to communicate. Teaching proper use will not be easy but I would rather work on that than tell students they can never use the computer that is right there in their pocket.

2009-03-28T20:05:00.001-05:00

The Challenges of Mission Reform at Concord High School

Introduction[CSD1]
Since 2003 Concord High School[1] has been involved in the process of becoming a mission driven school. While framed by a new organization, their accrediting body NEASC, it is the same work that has been espoused by many organizations in recent decades. In researching this paper I found three binders in the shelves of the district office that were from the University of Dayton. They were published in 1991 and explained a complete plan to become a mission driven school. Many of the buzz words have changed but the basic process of examining a mission, and creating a plan for action that derives from that mission are the same.

So this summary of the work of Concord High School tells some of the recent history of the school and focuses on the problems that occur in bringing theory to practice. In this iteration of mission work our main guiding documents were the Understanding by Design documents specifically the recent book Schooling by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. The Concord School District has had a long history working with the Understanding by Design process and calls itself a UbD district. There are many branches of district teams that use UbD thinking to guide their work.

History
We have compiled the history of the last 5 years in a 73 page document but here are some highlights of the work done at Concord High School. In the years from 2003-2007 time was spent on building consensus. Malcom Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, might say that we were in that holding pattern waiting for the tipping point to tip. This time was spent in philosophical discussion mainly focused on building consensus for change. At Concord High School there was little impetus to change because it was already such a good high school. Low dropout rate, high student and teacher satisfaction, lots of students going to good colleges and happy parents in the town.

In the case of Concord High School the work from 2003-2007 came together with two other important factors to bring us to our tipping point--the point where philosophical discussions end and the creation of a product and a program begins. A plan had been developed to guide work during the 2007-2008 school year when school leaders were informed that the school was being placed on warning by their accrediting institution NEASC. This warning status meant that they had to reformulate the plan during the 2007 summer to be much more aggressive in its goals. In addition to the strong suggestions from the accrediting institution the State of New Hampshire also was requiring that all high schools create course competencies that needed to be implemented in the 2008-2009 school year. Neither of these were much of a surprise but it meant that the high school now had little choice in what it needed to do. The time for discussion was over. 2007-2008 would be a year of products.

In the summer of 2007 teachers, administrators and the superintendent met and designed the CHS Plan. This plan clearly outlines the flow from very big district goals down to individual courses. This plan is based on the district’s continued work with Understanding by Design and is an adaptation of graphics found in Schooling by Design and the UbD professional development workbook. The CHS Plan served as a road map for the work that was done at CHS this year.

2007-2008—A Busy Year
Teaching is somewhat like putting out a newspaper every day. News writers might hope for more time to edit a story and more time to do research but the fact is that the newspaper has to come out every day. Writers do their best job and then turn in what they have at the deadline. It is the same for teachers. A common request is more time to work on curriculum and school planning. But the fact is that there is never enough time and the students keep coming in that door. Teachers do everything they can to be ready but at 7:45 they have to go to work—they have hit their deadline. This need to both run the school and partake in two big school changes was a constant theme of the work during the year. Teachers and school leaders constantly had to remain mindful of what the theory in the books said and what was possible for someone who also had to teach 140 students.

To lead the process principal Gene Connolly formed a Steering Committee in the summer of 2007. This group would meet weekly all year and guide the process. They were a one year task force with 4 specific goals.
Define the goals of the mission and express them as graduation expectations.
Create rubrics to measure the graduation expectations.
Pilot the use of the graduation expectations for each student.
Create competencies for each course.

The work began by asking all teachers one question, “What do you want students to know and be able to do when they walk across the graduation stage?” From this list the steering committee was able to compile one list that was divided into two types of expectations. Those were the Habits of Mind that were derived from the existing district goals and the Graduation Expectations that delineated specific academic goals for graduates.

Examples:
Habit of Mind:
Graduation Expectation:

The design was that the Graduation Expectations would be measured for each individual student during many points in their high school career. And that the Habits of Mind would me measured not for individuals but for groups of students.

The main thrust of the 2007-2008 work was in making rubrics to measure the Graduation Expectations and in implementing the use of the Graduation Expectations in classes.

The most successful step that the steering committee took was in its use and organization of the one all day professional day that the district does have. On this day in early October the steering committee organized a professional day that was attended by 2/3 of the faculty. (Faculty that could not attend had made commitments long before the day was planned.) The day was organized to define the graduation expectations and create rubrics to measure them. The participants were organized in mixed groups according to teaching specialty and years of experience. Two groups were assigned to work on each expectation and rubric. The group on technology for example wrote a goal statement for technology and then created a rubric for it. This was a very successful professional development day and by the end of it the faculty had created the expectation statements and the rubrics that would be used for the remainder of the year. Many faculty members expressed the sentiment that it was one of the most powerful professional days that they had ever attended.

The steering committee collected these rubrics, edited them and then presented them to staff. The second expectation on critical thinking was presented to staff in October. And the remaining expectations on oral communication, listening, reading and technology were presented to the staff in December. At each presentation members of the steering committee explained how these rubrics fit into the CHS plan. They also provided real examples of how these expectations could be used successfully in class.

Challenges
Schooling by Design is a wonderful book that takes the thinking of the UbD books to a school reform program. CHS will continue to work with the program described in the book and has already planned a summer retreat to continue to work with Grant Wiggins on the implementation of the CHS Plan over the next few years. This year has also been a year of learning about what can and cannot work at our particular school. With 150 teachers, 2000 students and a deadline of March 1 to complete the work—challenges inevitably arise.

Impetus for Change:
CHS had been discussing the philosophical basis for change for 4 years. While this pace was too slow in our eyes and especially in the eyes of your accrediting body it is important to spend time at the beginning of the process determining what the issue is. Wiggins and McTighe describe this in their book but it can easily be glossed over or a phase that is rushed through. It truly is the foundation for success though. No one ever drives by a construction site and marvels at the beautiful foundation but it is the most important part to any building. This is the same for mission reform. The work done at the beginning, upon which all other work is based, is the most important and least glamorous of all the work that is done.

Product:
At some point philosophical discussions need to end and the creation of a product needs to begin. Once CHS did move from our overly long foundation period it was critically important to keep everyone focused on creating a product during the year. This meant sometimes cutting off interesting philosophical discussion to bring a meeting group back to the task of working on the product at hand. This was particularly difficult at the beginning of the year…

Continual Change and Improvement:
There might never be a final product. Culturally we can become used to working on something and creating a final product. A product that is “done.” Mission reform is not like that. At CHS we used the example of how teachers teach. Every teacher starts with a product in their first year and builds upon it in each successive year of their teaching. The first time I taught biology I taught a unit on reptiles because that was one of the chapters in the book. I found a National Geographic that was a 90 minute show on reptiles, 15 worksheets and a note set from a different book. In subsequent years I first improved this unit and then realized that I should really be teaching reptiles within the bigger context of adaptations. Each year the presentation and information improved. The same approach is needed in this work. The rubrics to measure the graduation expectations this year were not perfect. The rubric for critical thinking was so well written that most people—students and adults—had trouble understanding what it meant. So in the next year we will work on using everyone friendly language in the rubrics.

Big Goals:
We constantly asked teachers to think about what they wanted students to know when they walked across the graduation stage. By continually coming back to this we kept the focus on what they really wanted to have as goals. We often said that if they were working on something that did not feel like it should be a graduation expectation…

[1] I will personify Concord High School in this paper to avoid long awkward phrases like, “the faculty at Concord High School,” etc.

[CSD1]Chris—take a quick look at this. It is a very rough first go. I will edit the writing more in later drafts. I am mainly interested in your thoughts on 1) structure, 2) questions that you have as an outside reader. I welcome anything you have to say.

2009-02-20T22:01:00.002-05:00

Rethinking Midyear and Final Exams
by
Tom Crumrine

If high schools need to be better then high schools need to change. Here is one story…

Introduction
New Hampshire has recently begun a statewide initiative to implement competencies in all high schools. This competency movement means that course credit will no longer be determined by seat time but by the attainment of specific learning goals. This means a change in how high school happens and how high school works. This study explains one example of how high schools might work differently in the future.

At a recent conference I attended Doug Reeves presented the idea that exams might come earlier and then there would be time for students to work on what they have not yet learned. Here is what I tried:

Based on Reeves’s work I decided to try using my summative midyear in some kind of formative way. At Concord High School exams are given the last week of January. This year I gave my students their midyear the week before we left for the December Holidays. Over the break I scored the sections of the test. I gave them a score on each of the major topics that we had covered so far. This resulted, not in one grade, but in nine for the test.

When we returned from the holiday break we were left with 2 weeks of school before the official exam time. With the test results I had identified who needed more help and in which areas. The class was then able to self select into two major categories. First, those students who needed little to no help and second, those students who needed help in several of the categories.

In some ways I was most concerned about the first group of students. What would they do? How will I make sure that they are not bored? How will I make sure their time is not wasted? In the end I decided that the students who needed little to know help would study atoms and nuclear chemistry in greater depth. Specifically, the students were given an article on the radioactive poisoning of the Russian spy Alexander Litvenienko, an internet exploration on nuclear submarines and more in depth study of isotopes than we had previously undertaken. All of these activities tied in with the competencies of the glass but they were more in the good to know category than in the must know category.

With the second group of students I began to think of ways to work on what they must know. I had four ninety minute classes before the exam so I considered how I would use each one.

For the first I returned the exams to all of the students and asked them to look at the areas where they had needs. My focus always was on what they could do to improve their understanding NOT on what they could do to improve their grade.

For the second day I organized the room into six stations. Each station was dedicated to one or two of the competencies that students had to show that they understood. Using an approach advocated by Fred Jones, I had posters on each table that showed the step by step approach to the more involved problems like how to write electron configurations. On the other tables I had books and information that directed students to read and improve their knowledge.

On the third day, darn this isn’t meant to sound like Genesis, we had similar activities that were meant to increase student understanding in each area. For the next 3 days we worked on this

Mid Year Experiment

2009-02-13T20:55:00.004-05:00

Early Midyear Exams
Middle of the night draft
By Tom Crumrine

In November I attended a conference and Douglas Reeves suggested giving midyears early, providing corrective instruction and giving the midyear again. A sysnopsis is found here:

http://www.sabine.k12.la.us/online/leadershipacademy/high%20performance%2090%2090%2090%20and%20beyond.pdf

So, I decided to try the experiment myself…

Introduction
The idea was to give the midyear at an earlier point so I decided to go with the logical pre-Christmas pre-exam. I have always wondered why we give first semester exams after a 2 week holiday so I just gave them early.

Upon our return to class in January I did the following things:

Over the holidays I “graded” the exams by highlighting areas where students could add more information.

On the first day back I gave students the exams and asked them to provide more information in the highlighted areas.

When I got the test back I marked the scored versus the standards.

With the scores v. the standards I was able to develop a plan to educate groups of students.

In the two weeks after the holidays and before exams I provided corrective instruction

When it came time to take the exam I created a test that tested the same standards but with different questions. If students had already scored a 5 on a particular measurement topic they did not have to respond to the new question. So some students had to do all 9 questions and some had to do only 1. (All students completed a common part of the exam that assessed basic science skills—calculation of density, metric conversions, lab safety, etc.)

The Results
Figure 1: Items 1-9 are the measurement topics. The numbers at the bottom are the averages of all student scores. The test dates were exactly 1 month apart with a 2 week holiday break at the beginning of the month and four 90 minute classes of corrective instruction prior to exam week.

Reflection
Obviously I was excited about the graph and the fact that the average for all measurement topics went up. But there are both positives and concerns with this approach.

Concerns
We spent four 90 minute periods on the corrective part. I will argue later that this is not wasted time but we did not go on to new material.
The students who did well the first time around actually did go on to new material but they were self directed as I spent most of the time working with the students who needed more help. The students worked on an extension of the atomic structure unit where they investigated isotopes by looking at the poisoning death of Russian agent Alexandre Litvenienko. The students that were good at being active self directed learners told me that they enjoyed this project and they were glad that they got to do it. But those students that were not good at self directed learning did not get much out of this extension project.
I scored both tests. I tried very hard to eliminate any bias that would come from doing this by not looking at the December scores when scoring the January test and by creating specific rubrics for each question—but the fact remains…

Positives
The corrective instruction took some time but all student scores went up. The scores were based on understanding of the topic so the understanding of my students increased with the extra two weeks of instruction. The research backs up depth over breadth but as a teacher who learned science in a different era—the one of breadth over depth with the memorization of tons of factoids—it feels like I’m doing something wrong.
A couple of students asked if they could forgo the extra project and help other students. I granted this request and the results were great. Seeing one student teach another how to describe the model of the atom is the kind of scene that makes you nearly tear up.
Students loved the fact that each test was essentially customized to them. Once they got over the newness of the fact that they only had to answer certain questions they really liked the approach. This also was the “reward” for those students who did well the first time around.

Conclusion
While I have concerns the positives do outweigh them in my mind. In order for high school to change we must change some things about high school. This is one experiment that will be worth repeating.

homogeneity and class size

2008-11-27T08:41:00.004-05:00

I was speaking with a fellow educator the other day about class sizes and homogeneity. Some thoughts I shared with him....

Class size reduction is an area of thought close to my heart. From my summers working with smaller numbers I have seen that it can have a great effect on my ability to keep in touch with each individual student. Recent studies on the effect of class size reduction do seem to bear this out. In the table below you see the research of three groups[1]. They all compare the increase in learning (in months) to the cost. (It is difficult to measure cost for the second one—thus the ?.)

Interventions

Class size reduction from 30-20. 3 month increase in learning in a year at an estimated cost of $30,000.
Increase in teacher knowlege from 50th percentile to 94th percentile. 1.5 month increase in learning at a cost of ?.
Effective formative assessment. 6-9 months increase in learning per year at an estimated cost of $3000 per year.

Your second point about heterogeneity is one that interests me as well. I went to a school with all homogeneous classes so I don’t have the perspective of learning in a heterogeneous classroom. I do appreciate many aspects of homogeneity and think that combining it with reduced class sizes in specific classes might be the way to go. If 20% of students are failing English 9 then it would seem that one of the possible steps might be to take action by reducing class size to 20-22.

Later in the day I happened to be calling Grant Wiggins to set up a web conference and he talked about the idea whereby competencies might actually lead to “smart” homogeneity. He cautioned that he supports heterogeneity just maybe not in all cases. If I were to extrapolate his thinking I would say that at times homogeneity is the right thing to do and at times heterogeneity is the right thing to do. I know from many of his books and speeches that he is against mindless devotion to any one educational system. He always counsels that as professionals we must thoughtfully decide what is best for students.

My own view is that smart homogeneity is a good idea but one that cannot be done easily. It requires everyone to understand the subtle (all too subtle) differences between homogeneity and tracking. Poorly done homogeneity is more damaging to students than poorly done heterogeneity. That is too sweeping but I feel that there is some truth to it. I support the use of good formative assessment to teach a heterogeneous group in a one room school house style. With good formative assessment you find out who needs what and teach accordingly. Then in the next unit you find out who needs what and teach accordingly. The homogeneous groups within the class are fluid.

On Dec. 3rd I will talk about the third row of the table which is the area where we can take action right now. That said I greatly encourage a push in the community to educate other community member and the school board to the fact that education is an investment NOT an expense. States chose to get into the business of education long ago because they knew it was the right thing to do—even in tough economic times it is important to remember that the best path to future prosperity lies in educating the citizenry.

I had this quote from Dylan Wiliam in another piece I wrote but will add it here as a way of closing:

“If you achieve at a higher level, you live longer, are healthier, and earn more money…In addition, people who earn more money pay more taxes, are less likely to depend on Medicaid or welfare, and are less likely to be in prison. It has been calculated that if a student who drops out of high school would stay to graduate, the benefit to society would be $209,000 (Leve, Belfield, Muenning, & Rousse, 2007). This sum is made up of $139,000 in extra tax revenue, $40,500 savings in public health cost, $26,600 savings in law-enforcement and prison costs and $3000 in welfare savings. Eric Hanushek (2004), a leading economist of education in the United States, has calculated that if we could raise each student’s achievement by one standard deviation (equivalent to raising a student from the 50th to the 84th percentile), over 30 years, the economy would grow by and additional 10%, and just the additional taxes being paid by everyone would more than pay for the whole of K-12 education.”

1. [1] Jepsen and Rivkin (2002)
2. Hill Rowan and Ball (2005
3. Wiliam, Harrison and Black (2004)

Homework

2008-11-27T08:13:00.005-05:00

Prompted by reading the latest English Journal from November 2008 some thoughts on homework.

1. My students usually don't do it. The ones who I think "need" to do it are the ones who definitely don't do it.
2. The only clear effect I have seen is a negative effect on grades. This is from when I used to grade homework.
3. Now that I use a policy of "getting homework done" I have found that I still don't see the kids who need to do homework still don't do it.
4. When I gave students choices of penalties for not doing homework they still did not adhere to turning the homework in--my ultimate goal. In this case I gave them 3 choices 1) turn the homework in the next morning with no penalty, 2) I call home and then they turn the homework in, 3) stay after school and get the homework done. I had 3 of the 10 students stay after and 2 of the students turn it in the next day. This rate of 50% doing it in the end is the same as I have always found, no matter what penalty I use.

Interesting ideas from the articles:

Choice of homework. Offer students a choice of what they want to do. For example teach a lesson and during the last 10 minutes have them choose what homework they would like to do to prove that they understand the material. Using this approach my wife suggested some scaffolding where we would show examples of effective student work the next day. I plan to try this approach next week and will report on how it goes.
It isn't the homework but the right homework. It is really important to give the "right" homework so that it is effective for the stated goals. I have been thinking about this over the years but just as I have been more intentional about the right assessments I need to be more intentional about the right kinds of homework.

Responses to Assessment Conference

2008-11-08T20:05:00.001-05:00

Responses:

I loved reading those. The one that most hit home to me was 1-5 (or 1-7) grading/assessment system, rather than percentages. I just could not agree more that percentages alone mean absolutely nothing -- this is clearly a big thing that AP and IB get right.

I also think the emphasis on progress reports is huge --- while teaching, I found this to be the most draining (in terms of both energy and time) aspect of the job, but it's also the way to make the biggest difference. Reading your stuff really makes me long to be back in the classroom.

Another one:
Wow, I had the same thought as [the writer above] as I was reading (about wanting to be back in the classroom). I actually was afraid that he would walk into the office tomorrow and tell [his boss] he was done...

Really interesting stuff and I think the fact that you are posting these things (and I'm assuming making that available to other teachers) is absolutely an incredible way to communicate the stuff you took away from the conference to the staff. So much resonates.

I would definitely encourage you to not be shy about getting this in front of teachers. You know how busy people are. Send them the link 3 times or find some other way to do it. It is important.

Averaging and Zeroes

2008-11-08T14:02:00.002-05:00

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=dbd43d54b1307129474f

This is a clip of Dr. Douglas Reeves speaking to a Canadian audience about what he calls "toxic" grading practices. Reeves is the author of more than 25 books and countless articles on education.

In the clip Reeves talks about zeroes and averaging. We showed this clip to our high school faculty and there were wide ranging responses:

Students deserve the average because this helps differentiate the steady performing student from the student that does poorly all the time but well at the end.
Students are a sum of all of their performances so the average is the correct score for them.
Zeroes are an essential part of grading.
I want students to see zeroes and I want them to be calculated in the grade.

Here I want to clarify and expand upon some of what Dr. Reeves was getting at. First in the case of the average.

While in the clip he states provocatively that all averaging must go, what he and other researchers have been preaching for the past decade is to end a mindless devotion to the average as the only way of evaluating students. In fact the average might be the right score for a given student. I, along with Reeves and other researchers, am arguing that the average is not the best evaluation for all students.

It comes back as always to a conversation about standards. Is our goal to get them to the standard (in our parlance competency)? If we work hard as teachers and students work hard at learning and understanding and they make it to the standard what should the grade represent? Why should it be the average in this case? If everyone can meet the standard at the end but then we average scores it not only hurts students but it hurts us. The scores are a poor representation of how we operated as teachers. Grading is always a subjective process. As professionals we strive to minimize the subjectivity but we cannot eliminate it. As professionally trained practitioners we should allow ourselves to award students the score, the evaluation, that most appropriately matches their ability.

As far as zeroes I have posted on this many times but take one more example.

100-40=A
39-30=B
29-20=C
19-10=D
9-0=F

When you present this example people say that is ridiculous! But this system is as mathematically unsound as the system where the top four categories are 10 or 11 points and the last category is 59 points. So this is the first argument against zeroes--it is simply mathematically unsound.

The second argument is that it does not increase motivation. And has been shown by Dr. Reeves to have a role in whether struggling students stay in school or leave. Zeroes motivate only one type of student--good ones, ones like teachers used to be when they were in the classroom. The students that we worry about the most are not motivated to do work by receiving a zero. To the contrary they are encouraged to give up because when zeros mount the combination of their extra mathematical weight and the increase in a feeling of hopelessness cause students to shut down.

I feel strongly that zeroes should not be used and the average should not be used in all cases. That said, if a teacher still wants to use zeroes and averages as the only way to go I would ask them to continue that practice only after reflecting on exactly why they want to do it that way. As professionals we will always evaluate in different ways--the question is: Is the way you reach the evaluation of a student the best representation of what they can do?

Now What?

2008-11-02T06:37:00.005-05:00

OK--so I went to this great conference--see previous post from Nov. 1--now what do I do?

The conference on assessment either confirmed some ideas that I was trying to work on in my teaching or reminded me that there are things that I need to do better on.

Confirmed

Zeroes--Doug Reeves calls assigning zeroes toxic. I now have more confidence than ever to continue not assigning zeroes.
Averaging only--I will continue to look at progress and the most recent evidence to compute student scores. This is made more difficult by an electronic grade book that only averages but I will go back to paper if I have to.
Formative assessment--the most important thing to focus on.

Reminded

Assess means to "sit beside." I need to work on giving even more timely feedback to my students. I will work on making contact with each student at least once during a 90 minute period. During this contact I will try to really ascertain whether they are getting it or not.
Randomization. Student participation needs to be random. This lets kids know that they can be called on at any time so they stay more involved. I will finally buy the Popsicle sticks that I have been meaning to get, and put each students name on one of them. This is how I will draw their names randomly.
Hands down except to ask a question. No one can raise their hands. I will pull the Popsicle stick and call on them.
Pass on a question. I have always allowed students a pass. But I will change this policy so that my response will be, "OK, but I'll come back to you at the end." This means that they need to stay engaged and listening to the others because I will come back to them and say, "What did you think was the best answer of those three and why?"
Non-fiction writing. I knew that writing was important but I did not know of its profound effect on all subject areas. Thank you Doug Reeves for this one! Even in physics and math (and science) an increase in non-fiction writing about the subject increases student scores. I do a lot of non-fiction writing but I will improve upon what I do and make it more systematic. The first thing I am going to do is to have students write about the most important thing that they learned in our class during the first semester. They will post these on the wall outside of our room. We will do this on Monday. A second thing that I would like to work on is a blog of student work. This may begin as a paper newsletter but I hope I will be able to morph it into a publication at some point.
Graphing of student performance. I do a little of this now but I need to improve what I do and make it, again, more systematic. I will create a one page sheet for each competency and begin having students graph their performance.

School Wide

At the Beyond ABC conference in 2006 we were told that one thing that we should change immediately is progress reports. If they include a number they are not progress reports. Reports with a number are fine by the way--they just aren't progress reports. I will work harder than ever to finally make real progress reports a reality again at Concord High School. I have great respect for the progress report committee of last year (I have to my wife was on it) but their findings are in opposition to the research. I feel that we do not need to discuss this one. A leader should simply explain the following: 1. We give students an achievement report every day through our online system Parent Connect, 2. This means that we do not need to print off a special "paper" achievement report at a given time, 3. What we do need is an official day where teachers are encouraged to sit beside students and discuss progress. NOT the grade, but progress. How is the student doing in relation to meeting the competencies? How is the student doing in relation to the Habits of Mind?, 4. We value this progress conversation so much that we are setting aside 4 days per year and we want you to use these days to sit and converse with students about how they are doing.
101 point grading system. I will work to continue to educate teachers, students and parents about the fallacy of the reliability of the 101 point system. If the AP board thinks that 5 levels are OK then we don't need to continue to do 101.
1-5 scale. I will work to continue to educate people on the logic and the reduced subjectivity of the 1-5 scale.

I should have this all accomplished by the end of the week. Maybe 2 weeks.

2008-11-01T19:49:00.002-05:00

Ahead of the Curve Conference Report

Teaching is the most cognitively difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Compared to classroom teaching, running a university is easy.

-Dylan Wiliam—Interim President University of London, and author of more than 250 books and articles on education.

Last week I was honored to be sent to a conference called Ahead of the Curve. This conference brought together many of the best minds and greatest researchers in the field of education. The list: Tom Guskey, Bob Marzano, Anne Davies, Stephen White, Dylan Wiliam, Ken O’Connor and Rick Stiggins presented on a wide range of assessment issues. From nearly 20 hours of presentations and conversations with colleagues from around the country I have culled the top 13 things that I have learned or had reinforced for me as a result of this experience. All 13 are based on, not one or two studies but dozens and in cases hundreds of researched studies. The 13 items do not represent fringe ideas or controversial issues—they are as close as we get in this business to accepted ideas.

Top 13 (It is Halloween Weekend) and they are in no particular order
1. Whatever the test, the scores should mean the same thing.
2. Never rely on a single assessment to determine a student score.
3. Graphing results of student performance. Has a big effect size. Need to be doing this.
4. Explaining what stays and what does not is critical.
5. Standards were created in part to reject the bell curve. If we are doing standards we should not see a bell curve at the end.
6. Format doesn’t matter.
7. Impact of the Jills.
8. Feedback should be like PE and band and sports.
9. Dropout prevention.
10. The myth of the 101 point system.
11. Progress Reports.
12. Teachers work differently, students work harder.
13. Minute by minute corrections.

From Bob Marzano
1. Whatever the test, the scores should mean the same thing.
When a student takes a test in any area they should know that the score in one class means the same thing as a score in another class. This means that an A in one class should mean the same thing as an A in another class. Or for our world—we should agree that 3 means competent and 2 means nearly there no matter what the class. Even though I have been a leading advocate of a point system with fewer categories I would even settle for A, B, C, D and F as long as we refocused it to have a standards based meaning rather than a norm based meaning.

2. Never rely on a single assessment to determine a student score.
Statistics show that even the very best single classroom assessment cannot measure a student’s true ability accurately. It will give a score but fairly simple statistics show that the student’s true score (true ability) can be plus or minus 15 percentage points of that value. To combat this teachers need to base a student grade on many pieces of evidence.

3. Graphing results of student performance. Has a big effect size. Need to be doing this.
Students need to be creating graphs of their learning. The research shows that this has an incredible effect on student learning. So much so that Marzano said that if we aren’t doing it we should start immediately.

From Doug Reeves
4. Explaining what stays and what does not is critical.
It is crucial to explain to teachers, students and parents what will not change. For example in our current work—teacher autonomy will not change, it never will, it can’t. The competencies will be the same and the assessments will be common but how you teach the material will be up to you. This is an area I am going to improve upon as we move forward with our work together.

5. Standards were created in part to reject the bell curve. If we are doing standards we should not see a bell curve at the end.
Benjamin Bloom said, “There is nothing sacred about the normal curve. It is the distribution most appropriate to chance and random activity. Education is a purposeful activity, and we seek to have students learn what we have to teach. If we are effective in our instruction, the distribution of achievement should be very different from a normal curve. In fact we may even insist that our educational efforts have been unsuccessful to the extent that the distribution of achievement approximates the normal distribution.” I won’t pretend to think that I can better Bloom’s quote but I will add that it is from 1981.

6. Format doesn’t matter.
Doug Reeves actually did a study on this. He looked at plans that he deemed ugly and plans that he deemed pretty. (He is a great researcher so he did have parameters but this is about how he explained it.) Do not focus on creating a beautiful binder that sits on a shelf. Focus on the work and creating something that will work in class and with students. The simple competency template, for example, was just a guide—it works for some it does not for others—awesome. Some folks are using the traditional UbD template, others are coming up with something new—do what works for you within the bounds of goal, assessment, learning plan.

7. Impact of the Jills.
“Jill” is the awesome teacher in the classroom next door. More than any other person (like an assessment coordinator, for example) this teacher leader is the key person and the most influential person on practice. We need to go out and see the good things that other teachers are doing. In our district we are lucky to have many of these—find them and go see what they are doing. And aspire to become more of one yourself. Corollary to Impact of the Jills: We have learned from copious studies and the experience right in front of our faces that students need to learn by doing. Teachers need to learn by doing as well. Seeing what Jill is doing and then trying it out is good practice.

8. Feedback should be like PE and band and sports.
The goalie in a soccer game comes too far out of the net and the opposing team kicks the ball in a loop over his head for an easy score. In order to correct this, the coach makes a note with a red pen in an improvement journal and when the season is over lets the goalie know that he should only come that far out of the goal in certain situations. Sound right? NO. Give lots of accurate and useful feedback—feedback that students can use to correct what they are doing right now. Think about how much feedback an orchestra conductor or a PE teacher give while a lesson is going on. It isn’t always easy but we need to try to emulate these examples in other areas of teaching too.

9. Dropout prevention. Again these aren’t random suggestions they are research based statements from Doug Reeves. He said that these are the things that he would do immediately to combat dropouts.
Literacy—double time—everyone gets double the literacy time—reading is that statistically important
Time management assignment notebook—need to teach all students what they need to do organizationally to be successful.
Immediate intervention—before failure
Engagement—extracurricular policy
o 3-4 is the ideal—this is the range of extras that have a positive effect on learning.
o Need to work on kids who have zero
o Evidence says that if they are more engaged they have better attendance and
o Private schools are always in extracurriculars even when students are not doing well.
o There are consequences but the consequences are not removing them from extras.
Price of freedom is proficiency
Homework may not be about home
Outlaw zeroes--
Early final exam—do early final exams
o Give exam 2 weeks early. Those who are competent are done.
o Those who are not stay and work more.
o A district that did this went to 90% passing.
Credit recovery—ID reason for F and figure out what to do.

10. The myth of the 101 point system.
We have been fooling ourselves. With the advent of calculators and then computers and then computer grading programs teachers moved from A, B, C grading to percentage grading. While crunching numbers into an average does yield a percentage it clouds what the student actually knows and provides little information about what, specifically, needs to be done to improve. It is not a reliable measure. While one teacher may claim to be able to tell the difference, with her students, between a 71 and a 72, there is no way that separate teachers evaluating independently would ever come to this fine of a separation. Corollary myth—the public expects percentages (parents, colleges, students). In truth parents already clamor for and colleges love AP classes which in their end result award one of 5 categories. (The International Baccalaureate offers 7.) If a student takes a practice AP test and scores a 3 they know in very specific terms what they need to work on to move up to the 4 category. This type of conversation can happened with percentages—it is just not as easy. Why make communication harder for students?

From Ken O’Connor
11. Progress Reports.
A report with a grade is an achievement report not a progress report. At the high school Parent Connect now allows parents and students to see a daily achievement report. The need for us to print out one more at a specific point in time is now zero. The high school now has no official progress report and in light of competencies and the needs of students it would be good if one was reincorporated. Since the students now have constant access to their achievement level what is needed more than ever is a conversation about progress. Ok Sweta, you see that you have a C. Let’s talk about what that means and what we can do together to improve that grade over the next few weeks. Especially with competencies it might be appropriate to say, “A C is a perfect place to be right now—your progress thus far in the course is on target. We will of course work together to improve your understanding and thus your grade but right now you are progressing wonderfully.” Alternatively a conversation might happen this way, “Vesper, you have a C and at this point in the year that is evidence that you aren’t making sufficient progress. Let’s talk about what we can do together to improve your understanding.

From Anne Davies
12. Teachers work differently, students work harder.
The person who is tired and busy is the person who has done the learning. Teachers will continue to tire themselves outside of class but in class they should be the ones who are guiding not relearning the material they already know. Students should be stuck, confused and challenged—this is when they learn. One teacher that we heard about has a sign in their class that says, “Stuck? Good. It was worth coming in today.” There are many ways of doing this but the big idea is to put the onus on students to demonstrate what they can do.

From Dylan Wiliam
13. Minute by minute corrections.
There are many solutions that we as educators have tried. Most of those solutions have been superficial and easy to implement—the problem is they have not worked. Wiliam says that now is the time to get down to the difficult solutions. The number one effect on student learning is the teacher that they have. The number one strategy that affects learning is formative assessment. Formative assessment means assessing students on a minute by minute or second by second basis so that one can make changes in a nimble an effective way.

One more from Dylan Wiliam
Education is not an expense, it is an investment.
“If you achieve at a higher level, you live longer, are healthier, and earn more money…In addition, people who earn more money pay more taxes, are less likely to depend on Medicaid or welfare, and are less likely to be in prison. It has been calculated that if a student who dropes out of high school would stay to graduate, the benefit to society would be $209,000 (Leve, Belfield, Muenning, & Rousse, 2007). This sum is made up of $139,000 in extra tax revenue, $40,500 savings in public health cost, $26,600 savings in law-enforcement and prison costs and $3000 in welfare savings. Eric Hanushek (2004), a leading economist of education in the United States, has calculated that if we could raise each student’s achievement by one standard deviation (equivalent to raising a student from the 50th to the 84th percentile), over 30 years, the economy would grow by and additional 10%, and just the additional taxes being paid by everyone would more than pay for the whole of K-12 education.”

Want to learn more?

A little bit of everyone
Ahead of the Curve—edited by Doug Reeves—this book has a chapter written by each of the people I mentioned.

Bob Marzano
What Works in Schools
School Leadership that Works

Doug Reeves
Making Standards Work
The Learning Leader: How to Focus School Improvement for Better Results
Many articles online and in Educational Leadership

Tom Guskey
How’s My Kid Doing?
Designing Grading and Reporting Systems
Many articles available online and in Educational Leadership

Dylan Wiliam
Inside the Black Box—Phi Delta Kappan 1998 (Let me know and I’ll make you a copy.) This is the study that began the modern push for formative assessment.

Ken O’Connor
How to Grade for Learning

Anne Davies
Making Classroom Assessment Work

More on zeros

2008-10-05T18:27:00.003-05:00

After a post on not using zeros in grading a reader questioned:

Just wondering if you've made any inroads with the administration or other teachers on this topic--particularly with regard to the after school policy.

Nearly 3 years after bringing the research on zeros to teachers there has a been a very good response to the idea. I wouldn't say that there has been a halt to the use of zeros but teachers are more conscious of why they might still give them.

The biggest progress has been made in the area of grading behavior. Teachers have quickly understood that there can be a difference between grading behavior and grading achievement v. a standard. The idea of not grading behavior or at least making it a separate grade has gained a lot of traction.

As far as the idea of a unified policy on staying after school for not turning in work--there is little progress. We are working so much on the things that come before a grading policy that we can all agree on that we won't be at this point for a while.

McCain on Education

2008-09-28T16:50:00.005-05:00

John McCain believes American education must be worthy of the promise we make to our children and ourselves. He understands that we are a nation committed to equal opportunity, and there is no equal opportunity without equal access to excellent education.

From: http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/issues/19ce50b5-daa8-4795-b92d-92bd0d985bca.htm

Again as in the last post, everything in grey or black is from the site. The comments in green are mine.

No Child Left Behind has focused our attention on the realities of how students perform against a common standard. John McCain believes that we can no longer accept low standards for some students and high standards for others. In this age of honest reporting, we finally see what is happening to students who were previously invisible. While that is progress all its own, it compels us to seek and find solutions to the dismal facts before us.

I agree with this. As Collins says, "we must confront the brutal reality." I am more concerned by what the site goes on to say.

There is no shortage of federal programs targeted at early child care and preschool. State and federal funding for early childhood care and education programs is over $25 billion each year. The list of programs includes Head Start, Title I preschool programs, Early Head Start, Even Start, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, Early Reading First, the Social Services Block Grant, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. There is much to be achieved by leveraging and better coordinating these programs to increase availability of high quality programs. When used effectively this approach has had a tremendous impact on the wellbeing and educational outcomes of children.

Read--no more money for early childhood education. While coordination will absolutely improve these programs what is needed is a cultural change in the education of 0-3 year old children. It does not seem like this is what McCain is talking about.

State-level preschool and early care programs have created greater access for very young children whose families could not otherwise afford high quality programs. Several states such as Minnesota have launched new, high quality pre-K programs with a commitment to study their outcomes. Estimates are that 70-85 percent of children from low-income families have access to early care and/or preschool, and that nearly 90 percent of children younger than five with employed mothers are in a regular child care arrangement. However, due to complicated formulas and budgetary constraints, not every low-income child is getting access to high quality care and education on a consistent basis. Federal dollars can do far more to broaden access to high quality programs.

I agee with some parts of this but there are also some questionable ideas. Seventy - 85 % have access to early care? 1) If true it can't be the kind of educational early care that will affect learning, 2) 90% in regular child care--I have no doubt--but since their is no correlation with scores or achievement it can't be working.

The Big Future of Education

2008-09-28T15:45:00.003-05:00

“I don't want to send another generation of American children to failing schools. I don't want that future for my daughters. I don't want that future for your sons. I do not want that future for America.”
— Barack Obama, Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, Des Moines, Iowa, November 10, 2007

Some selections that I found interesting and related to the Concord School District. Everything in black or grey is from Obama's website. My comments, if any, are in green.

The whole K-12 plan is at:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/PreK-12EducationFactSheet.pdf

Zero to Five Plan: The Obama-Biden comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan will provide critical support to young children and their parents. Unlike other early childhood education plans, the Obama-Biden plan places key emphasis at early care and education for infants, which is essential for children to be ready to enter kindergarten. Obama and Biden will create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote state "zero to five" efforts and help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.

This agrees with earlier posts about the emphasis on early education. 0-5 is a critically important time and it will require a cultural shift to accomplish this goal. Geoffrey Canada says that we know how to educate young childern--it happens all the time in the suburbs. We just need to translate what middle and upper class parents have learned to the parents of poor children. Just as visiting nurses that come to all families just after a child is born, we need to provide information and education for all young children.

Reform No Child Left Behind: Obama and Biden will reform NCLB, which starts by funding the law. Obama and Biden believe teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests. He will improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure readiness for college and the workplace and improve student learning in a timely, individualized manner. Obama and Biden will also improve NCLB's accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.

This is further evidence that the illusion that NCLB will go away is just that an illusion. They are right that the initiative has the right goal but there will still be high stakes tests and they will still be incredibly important.

Make Math and Science Education a National Priority: Obama and Biden will recruit math and science degree graduates to the teaching profession and will support efforts to help these teachers learn from professionals in the field. They will also work to ensure that all children have access to a strong science curriculum at all grade levels.

Recruit, Prepare, Retain, and Reward America's Teachers

Recruit Teachers: Obama and Biden will create new Teacher Service Scholarships that will cover four years of undergraduate or two years of graduate teacher education, including high-quality alternative programs for mid-career recruits in exchange for teaching for at least four years in a high-need field or location.

Prepare Teachers: Obama and Biden will require all schools of education to be accredited. Obama and Biden will also create a voluntary national performance assessment so we can be sure that every new educator is trained and ready to walk into the classroom and start teaching effectively. Obama and Biden will also create Teacher Residency Programs that will supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to high-need schools.

Retain Teachers: To support our teachers, the Obama-Biden plan will expand mentoring programs that pair experienced teachers with new recruits. They will also provide incentives to give teachers paid common planning time so they can collaborate to share best practices.

Reward Teachers: Obama and Biden will promote new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them. Districts will be able to design programs that reward accomplished educators who serve as a mentor to new teachers with a salary increase. Districts can reward teachers who work in underserved places like rural areas and inner cities. And if teachers consistently excel in the classroom, that work can be valued and rewarded as well.

In Concord we are fortunate that we do this work well already. We need to continue to do this well and to continue our new tradition of sharing what veteran teachers know with younger teachers.

Whatever It Takes

2008-09-27T17:29:00.007-05:00

Whatever It Takes—the Story of Geoffrey Canada
Paraphrased by Tom Crumrine from the book of same name and from the most recent episode of This American Life

Geoffrey Canada had a son when he was in his teens and always thought he had been a good dad to him. It wasn’t until his forties when he had another son, this time while living in the suburbs rather than the inner city that he realized how much he had not done with the first one. Everyone in his neighborhood was so concerned with the brain development of their infants. They talked to them and read to them all the time and when they got older they received “time outs” for bad behavior rather than corporal punishment. At the time Canada was working with the young people of Harlem to help them with their educations. Not long after his realization he went to his board and told them that everything must change.

Canada realized that the biggest difference between middle and upper class children and poor children was what happened to them between the ages of 0-3. The result of his revelation eventually became Baby College. For nine Saturday mornings new parents come to ½ day meetings to learn how they can be better parents. They are not scolded and told what they are doing is wrong, they are shown the evidence and through experiential learning and conversation they are convinced that there is a better way. It goes without saying that this can be a touchy issue but the evidence for intervention like Baby College and the results from it are pretty clear.

Results:

Reading level was greater than the NYC average
Math level was greater than the NYC average
95% were on grade level

Pretty great progress and these are the students from year one of the program. The ones that were zero when the program began and who are 3rd graders now. Mr. Canada is hopeful that the students in subsequent years will do even better.

Class Rank and Why Not

2008-09-27T17:09:00.000-05:00

I think my role, aside from being a teacher at CHS, is serving as the chair of the committee that is in charge of ensuring that we are focused on the big goals that we have set as a school. Part of that role is, as a newspaper’s ombudsman might, to point out when stated goals and practice might be at odds with one another. It is someone else’s role, in case you are wondering, to determine how many parenthetical sentences is too many when beginning a piece.

A colleague came to me yesterday and asked me if I knew that class rank showed up when students logged in to Parent Connect. I did not. We went and looked at her son’s page and there it was as one of the five pieces of information that appear on the home screen. The colleague went on to tell me that her son and his friends were checking their rank many times per day to see if they could move it as high as possible. One parent even baked her child a pie when he rose to 45th.

At this point if you are thinking—this is not a big deal, it is just a harmless feature—let me try to explain why it is a big deal. In the goals that we have written we hope to teach students to write well, think critically and be well rounded, educated people. In our classes every day we are saying, “These are the competencies—everyone can attain these standards if you work towards them.” While it is unlikely, we are saying to students that they all have the opportunity to meet the competencies at a level 5—they all can get to the mountain top staying with the example I often use.

Class rank is directly at odds with this. In the classroom we are talking to them about a criterion-referenced system. “Students you can all meet the standards.” While in Parent Connect we are showing them where they are in a norm-referenced way. The class rank compares them, not to the standards or the competencies or the graduation expectations, but to each other. This is the very type of comparison that competencies are designed to work against.

In addition to that issue, displaying class rank as one of the five pieces of information most deserving to be on the login screen tacitly says to students—“We feel this is important.” It lets them know that this is something that we want them to look at every day. Why else would we put it so prominently on their home screens? And they are checking it every day or in some cases multiple times per day.

I bring this to your attention because it is something that we need to discuss immediately. Parent Connect is a great tool and students are making great use of it but does showing them class rank every time they log in really fit with the goals of our school?

One argument for keeping it is that students and parents like it. That may be true but students like iPods and cell phones and eating in class. We explain to them that those things are not good for their education and we forcefully stand behind those guidelines. We can do the same thing with class rank. We could say, “Yes, class rank is occasionally needed but it is not something we want you to look at every day. We want you to focus on meeting the competencies in each class and on meeting the graduation expectations and habits of mind.” The same conversation could be had with parents letting them know that class rank is still available it just is not something that students should be concerned with on a daily basis.[1]

Fitting more with our goals and deserving of much more conversation is a movement away from ranking altogether. I find it interesting that we already have such a system when it comes to the honor role. Anyone reaching a certain percentage can be on honor role. Theoretically everyone could be on honor role if they met the standards that we had set for them. And think how exciting it would be to track how the number of students on honor role keep increasing and increasing as we become better at teaching competencies.

Educational and grading expert Tom Guskey goes a step further. Why do you have to have just one valedictorian? What if we said that anyone meeting the prestigious place of maintaining a 98.5 or above for 4 years could be valedictorian. There are schools that do this while the students and parents remain content and colleges accept their method. Continuing the thought a Latin honors system would fit much better with the goals and the way we are trying to teach each student. Summa cum laude could be everyone over 95%, magna cum laude could be everyone over 90% and cum laude could be everyone over 85%. What this does is allow for any number of students to reach points that our community values. Since it is criterion referenced it also gives students more reassurance that they are not competing with each other—they are all working toward a goal of making it to the set standards.[2]

I hope that I have laid out clearly enough what I would do if it were my choice. But it is not my choice to make. I ask that you seriously consider at least these questions:

What is the purpose in having students look at class rank every day?
What is the purpose in terms of student morale?
How does it fit with our mission, graduation expectations and competencies?

Upon sober inspection I’m confident that you will come to the conclusion that there is a better way than class rank.

[1] Consider also the student who is ranked 326th but is trying very hard each day. What does the constant message that they are in the 300s do to their motivation to succeed?
[2] From Developing Grading and Reporting Systems for Student Learning by Tom Guskey and Jane Bailey, Corwin Press, 2001.

Jargon--why don't we say what we mean?

2008-03-04T20:18:00.004-05:00

4 March 2008

I was working today with some science teachers and they were working with some terms that had come from the state of NH. They were talking about GSEs, GLEs, and frameworks. Unless you are a NH educator I will assume that you do not know what these terms/abbreviations are.

Here are the terms decoded:
GSE means: standards for a range of grades (k-2 for example) (It stands for Grade Span Expectations)
GLE means: standards for a grade (It stands for Grade Level Expectations)
Frameworks means: standards.

There were very smart science teachers that did not know the meaning of any of the terms. When the terms were decoded for them they were able to continue the work.

My point is that there is no need to obfuscate what we are doing. We are talking about the big goals and the assessments for those goals. Especially at the early stages we need to keep the process accessible so all involved can participate. When it becomes necessary to introduce specific terms we will have them. But at the beginning we just want to bring everyone into the process so they can begin thinking about goals and assessments.

I do not understand why the trend in education has always been to create new terms new pieces of jargon every few years. I fear that it is all because people are trying to sell new books. The bottom line is that we should focus on plain language that allows everyone to participate in the discussion.

Consider a converation that I had with my friend who goes to Dartmouth Business School. He is a smart man who, before going to business school, taught 6th grade. When I talked with him I had a very good conversation about the goals related to entire schools and to courses. But we never used any of the coded terms that are so often seen in teacher only discussions. We were able to talk about what students need to know and what they should be able to do. We were able to talk about this in a very in depth way. And we never used any jargon in our conversations.

Of course when it actually does get to the level of teachers talking about designing curriculum there will be a need to use some terms and scaffolds. But there is no need to mask what the real conversation is about.

MSU Essay

2008-02-27T19:49:00.001-05:00

Master of Science in Science Education Essay
Tom Crumrine

After I graduated from college I unintentionally took four years off. During that time I had 17 different jobs as I moved around the country. I lived as close to home as my parent’s Ohio basement and as far from home as the docks of Portland, Maine and the hills of North Carolina. I was a concrete technician, a phlebotomist, a carpenter and for one day a worker in a Nissan auto parts plant. At the auto plant I was led to a bin of identical metal parts. They were all shaped like boomerangs and I was told to use a grinder to “sand” the inside of them. I did this for eight straight hours. The next day I returned and there was nowhere to park—I left. I had loved my experience at Denison University and I had loved studying biology there, but I was not sure what to do with it. Denison truly was a liberal arts experience and I enjoyed almost every class that I took. But they did not spend a lot of time instructing us on what we might actually do with our degrees.

So I wandered. During that time there were highs and lows. Looking back on that time it does not seem like such a bad idea. I have told friends that I would encourage my own future children to do the same as long as they cut it down to two years rather than four. When I turned 25 I broke my hand and had to quit my phlebotomy[1] job because it required injecting people with needles. Working at a plasma donation center had been hard enough, I did not want to go through the learning process again with my other hand. I moved home to Tiffin, Ohio and began a teacher certification program at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. I drove the 50 miles three days a week to attend classes. In the flattest farm country of Ohio this 50 mile trip only had one turn. I drove 18 miles on a perfectly straight road, passing corn and soybeans the whole way, turned left and drove the rest of the way right into Bowling Green. I always had to park far from campus near the hockey stadium but because of the table-like quality of the landscape I could see a mile all the way to the tall campus buildings.

Every day I walked that walk, every day hating it. I so remember the wind on that campus. It is flat from Bowling Green all the way west to about the Rocky Mountains so the wind has a chance to pick up and on the campus it was very constant. I have never enjoyed wind and it would cut into me every day as I walked to class. Wind has that way of finding its way to the spot where your shirt is just a bit un-tucked and it flies up your shirt chilling your whole body. The school and the campus were actually quite nice. I just hated the wind.

For some reason writing about the wind brings to mind one of the most interesting dating experiences of my life. It happened at Bowling Green and had something to do with wind, because it had something to do with tennis, which is a sport that is often affected by the wind. During the two years that I attended Bowling Green I had several classes with a woman named Karen. I do not at this point remember her last name but it also began with a K. She had a slightly out of date bob of dirty blond hair and we had had a lot of fun talking and working together. I have always been shy when it comes to asking girls out but I figured--what do I have to loose?[2] So I was walking with Karen one day after class and I asked her if she would like to go play tennis with me sometime. I knew from previous conversations that she played tennis so I thought this was a good start. It was clear that I was asking her on a date and she immediately blanched and told me that she had a boyfriend. I scrambled and apologized hoping that I had not embarrassed her. And then she did the strangest thing, she said that we could still play tennis if her boyfriend came along too. Dear reader, whether you are conversant with the rules of tennis or not I am sure that you realize that tennis is either a 2 person game or a 4 person game. I know that she was just trying to be nice but I have always remembered that as one of the peculiar rejections I have ever been a party to.

Wasn’t this essay supposed to be something about education? Let me get back to that. After working at mostly manual labor jobs for 4 years going back to school was easy. The professors lectured, you took notes; the professors gave homework, you did it. Maybe easy isn’t the right word but having what you had to do laid out for you certainly was easier than trying to make ends meet with an hourly salary. I had always done well in school but I had never thought that it would be easier than something else. Given the perspective of trying to make ends meet in the real world, taking classes again was simple. There were many experiences at Bowling Green that shaped my later thinking but one in particular has always stood out in my mind.

One of the unique classes there was Education in a Pluralistic Society. Entering the class I was not even sure what a pluralistic society was. I learned about pluralistic societies during the class but I also learned much more about what to teach and how to teach. One of my favorite lessons from the class was entitled, “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm.” In this lesson a guest lecturer challenged us to identify a mechanical device in a 20 questions type format. The device looked like a large bathroom plunger with metal at the end instead of rubber. Guesses ranged across the spectrum but none were correct. The guest then explained that the device was his washing machine. It was used before the days of electricity to plunge into tubs of clothing to mix them and wash them. He went on to explain that many people were awed by the fact that he still washed his clothes that way. In his family though, clothes washing was a family experience that they did together every Saturday morning. It was a needed chore but it was made into a fun family activity by doing it together. He went on to explain many other examples of different ways of thinking about the world. While I have continued to wash my clothes an electric washing machine I did take away his greater message that there are many ways of thinking about the world and the way that most people do it is not always the correct or the only way.

As I became a teacher this is one idea that has stuck with me. Not the idea of subversion but the idea that there are different ways to think about the world. Much of what I have done in teaching relates to opening the minds of students to new ways of thinking. I am most excited when I can help open up something that they did not know existed.

Working with biodiesel[3] has been one a way to practice this idea in my teaching. I have been making my own biodiesel since 2000 and have long been a proponent of at the very least taking a look at why we emit so much carbon and what that might be doing to our planet. In my chemistry classes we have changed a unit on organic chemistry into a unit on fuel. The same standards and goals are achieved but instead of some of the more mundane chemistry we focus on the real world application of chemistry into making fuels. Making and testing biodiesel is the final activity of the unit. As a class we obtain old deep fryer oil from a place like KFC and over a few days we turn that into a fuel. Then we actually put the fuel into an engine so the students can see it work. When I began doing this unit there were never any students who had heard of biodiesel. Now when we do it there are often some students that have not only heard of it but know its background and essentially how it is made.

In the ecology class that I teach I take students on field trips and try to show them unique ecosystems that were right in front of them all the time. I can show them a video about the Galapagos Islands or show them pictures of the interior of the Amazon but equally amazing ecosystems abound in their native New Hampshire. The best example of this is our trip to a bog at the beginning of the year. The students are all seniors and like all seniors have a feeling that they know it all and are ready for college. Smith bog, like all bogs, is a floating mass of peat on water. As the students walk on the surface it undulates like a water bed because it is literally a mass of peat moss floating on water. The bog has carnivorous plants and strange animals and the students always are in awe of what they find there. But this bog is just a few miles from the school and I have never had a student that had been there previously.

As those examples illustrate, passing along my excitement about the natural world to students is a big impetus for being a teacher. A final example where I have the chance to do this is a class called R.O.P.E. (Reaching Our Potential in Education). ROPE is an experiential education class where we take students on various trips where they learn by doing. There is a rock climbing trip, a 300 mile biking trip, fall camping trips and winter camping trips. My favorite is the winter camping trip. New Hampshire can have some harsh winters and leading a group of students on a 3 night winter camping trip has its challenges. Because the course is experiential education we teach the students everything they need to know about safe winter camping, cooking and hiking. But during the actual trip we allow them to “fail safely.” We would never let anything truly bad happen to anyone but if they make a poor winter shelter then they experience the consequences of that. One time a group of four forgot to bring their pot. As you might imagine it is difficult to cook without a pot. This group had to wait until other groups were finished cooking until they could cook their meals. Another time a group set up a tarp without a center ridgeline. It rained during the night and all the water collected in the center of the tarp making it sink down until it nearly touched their backs. They were safe just uncomfortable. They made a very good shelter on the second night.

These ROPE experiences are ones that many people in New Hampshire never have. I often tell the kids to be proud that they spent a weekend outside in the winter. I ask them to think about how many people in their entire lives have camped outside for a winter weekend. They have completed something that many life long New Hampshire residents have never done.

I remain excited about my own learning. The MSSE program is a very exciting part of formally continuing my education. I have taken 4 classes so far and have enjoyed them all. The camaraderie of the teachers that take the classes and the flexibility of instruction are a perfect fit for my busy life. I can imagine nothing better than logging in to the online library and researching microbiology at 5am on a Saturday morning. Coffee cup at my side I peruse the journals and continue educational journeys that I might never have begun without the guidance of MSU professors.

Montana State is a very important piece of my future in education. Over the years I have become interested not only in the education of students but in sharing what I have learned about teaching with other teachers. I have become particularly interested in the use of formative assessment in education. For the last 4 years I have been a member of a study group that meets weekly to discuss formative assessment. My first stab at sharing this work was to publish an article with my colleague Chris Demers on the work that the school has done with formative assessment. Another closely related area that I have been working with is grading reform. This work asks teachers to consider what they want to grade, how they grade and what they want grades to convey to students and parents. As a school district we have worked on making report cards easier to understand for parents and students. Both formative assessment and report cards come together because they are both about improved communication with students. Formative assessment helps both teacher and student understand where a student is and where they need to go. Informative report cards do the same thing and allow everyone involved to see what needs to be done.

I plan to use what I learn in the MSSE program to continue my own education, the education of my students and the education of other teachers. I saw in a recent article that when Korean and Japanese teachers retire they leave a legacy of documents about their teaching and learning. In contrast American teachers tend to leave nothing, taking all of their knowledge with them when they leave. I hope to be part of a new generation of teachers that gains knowledge over their teaching career yet spends equal energy in making sure that what they learn is passed on to less experienced teachers.

[1] A phlebotomist is a person who draws blood from people and then uses a machine to separate the blood and the plasma. The red blood cells are then returned to the patient and the plasma is used in medical research and other health fields. Phlebotomy attracts an interesting group of people because it can be done up to two times a week and it often offers a monetary inducement.
[2] A corollary to this whole tale and a subject for another essay is that guys who are always successful with women are constantly telling guys that aren’t, “What do you have to loose?” It is so unfair because it is easy to say that when women never turn you down.
[3] Biodiesel is a biofuel that has been frequently in the news in recent years. It is easily made by combining vegetable oil, methanol and a base. As its name implies it can be substituted directly for diesel fuel in any diesel engine. The simple chemistry of its construction makes it a natural choice for chemistry labs.

Competencies First? NO!

2008-02-02T20:10:00.000-05:00

Groundhog Day 2008

The other day someone asked me why we haven't done the competencies first this year. While a tempting suggestion, I'd like to try to explain why that easy path isn't also the best path.

The plan that we have laid out this year is:

District Goals
High School Goals (Graduation Expectations)
K-12 Curriculum Goals
Department Goals
Course Goals (Competencies)

And we have proceeded through this list from top to bottom. Always going back to the biggest of the goals before proceeding to the ones below.

It is tempting to want to start at the competency level and work the other direction, or to work from many directions at once. The reason that this is tempting is because the material and the ideas at the competency level is the material that is closest to the hearts of individual teachers. We are always going to be more comfortable talking about what we know--so it makes sense to begin with competencies-the big goals for our individual courses.

From my perspective as a chemistry teacher I know that it would be a lot easier for me to talk with intelligence about the goals of my class than to discuss the goals of the whole school, or even my department. I studied science for 6 years in college and graduate school so I am pretty sure that I know what needs to be taught in the class. So I could quite easily sit down and determine a plan of events that would cover the most important aspects of the field of chemistry.

While any teacher taking this approach would be likely to come up with a fine course of studies, it would also be likely that it would be different in some ways from another teachers. Those differences might be small, like a different lab to teach the same thing, or they might be big, one course preparing a student to take college courses in the subject, one course teaching students to gain jobs immediately in that subject. Beginning at the competency level causes this to happen.

If we spread to other courses, again with the bottom up example, we might find that the science department courses mainly teach students to go to college. They teach other things but are designed for college readiness. The math department might, at the same time, be teaching students for life skills in math--problem solving, everyday math, etc. They still prepare students for college but their main focus is on the everyday use of math. Well, this dichotomy leads to questions about the goal of the entire school and how those goals are set out. Without talking about the bigger goals of the school departments never can be quite sure of what their existing courses should be like and moreover, what new kinds of classes they should offer in the future.

In a small district with one high school it may be hard to imagine how this could be a problem. But imagine a district with 13 high schools like many in big cities. How does each high school know what departments they should have and what types of classes they should offer? How do they know if they should focus on science and technology or if they should be more traditional schools? Without some kind of overarching goal structure these many high schools would not know what kind of high school experience they should give.

Consider too the elementary schools in Concord. With 7 schools in many parts of the city they need to coordinate so students are receiving similar kinds of educations. Especially since they will all be joined together at the middle and high schools later in their careers. How could they know what to do without articulated district and school goals?

So the path that we have chosen for CHS this year is one where we look a the big goals of the district and of the school and then decide our other goals from that point. Once we know what the goals of the school are then we can decide how we will give our departments support to meet those goals. Once departments know their goals, stemming from the goals of the school, they can determine what types of courses they will have to meet those goals. They might also decide that they need to change existing courses or add new ones to meet the stated goals. Once course teachers know all of the goals they can use that information to determine what exactly goes into their course.

Choosing lesson plans first and then determining where they fit is something that young teachers often do. They are scrambling hard to just keep the kids in seats and they are literaly just trying to have something to do that day. As they progresss in their careers they begin to see where the lessons actually fit within bigger goals and they begin to implement them more purposefully. They begin to really use lessons to get to the point of the unit they are trying to teach. This is a hardscrable way to go through the first few years of teaching. And in Concord we have stopped making teachers do this. Rather than turn them loose in a room with a text book we tell them the units, and the goals and we tell them where the lessons should be used and why.

The point here is that building from competencies up is the blind and hardscrable way to do it. The purposeful way to go about building a high school is to consider the big goals first and then use the lessons that still fit. It is not a process of creating more lessons but a process of using existing lessons in a more purposeful way.

Conversation with Grant Wiggins

2008-01-13T19:34:00.000-05:00

11 January 2008

On Friday we had a videoconference with Grant Wiggins of Understanding by Design fame.

He was advising us on our work with the Graduation Expectations as the high school. This year we have worked with our mission statement and defined what the graduation expectations would be.

A couple of the things that Dr. Wiggins talked about that I thought were worthy to record:

1. We don't do a good enough job of explaining to kids the consequences of not being able to do our graduation expectations. Or even explaining why they need to do certain things.

2. Good getting better. Dr. Wiggins did an excellent job of describing why a good institution needs to always strive to get better. His example was the Red Sox. The Red Sox won the World Championship this year but they are still working to get better this off season. They are trying to acquire Johann Santanna and are trying to make sure their middle relief is better than it was last year. The same goes for a team like the NE Patriots. Suppose that they go 19-0. Will they return the same team next year? No. they will do whatever they can to make it all happen again.

All of the talk radio shows this week have been talking not about the Patriots possible victory but what might happen in terms of their dynasty. What makes a dynasty, etc. And the thing is, all of the teams that have won one Superbowl are not even in the conversation. We are talking about teams that have won many times in an era. Many times with the same crew.

Obviously we are not trying to develop a sports team at CHS but parts of the analogy does fit in some ways. We should not be happy with temporary acknowledgement of success, we should continue to endeavor to become better.

More on what a zero does to a grade

2007-12-17T18:56:00.004-05:00

December 2007

A friend emailed me a PowerPoint created by Rick Wormeli that included some interesting ways of thinking about assigning zeroes. I've been discussing it for more than a year now but I really liked these two new (to me) takes on it.

The first one he called Imagine the Reverse. What if you did for A's what is currently done for F's.

100-40=A
39-30=B
29-20=C
19-10=D
9-0=F

Just look at it--no one in the world would go for it. Because we know what it would do to students--especially high achieving students. If we sent home report cards where everyone had an A and there were just a few F's parents would be outraged. (This brings up another post issue related to the Bell curve and students being trained by us to want to be separated into groups--the winners and the losers if you will--but that isn't for today.)

Another way of thinking about it would be to compare rubric scores to a 100 point scale. (Also from Rick Wormeli via Doug Reeves.)

4=100
3=90
2=80
1=70
0=60

There may be some disagreement on how these are assigned but it seems that thoughtful educators could agree that it at least makes logical sense. What if we continue the transition down to zero.

-1=50
-2=40
-3=30
-4=20
-5=10
-6=0

Wormeli, who I assume was paraphrasing Reeves, argues why would a teacher want to assigning such a low score for a zero. Doesn't zero mean that one is 6 times worse than the 60?

Yet another argument for thinking about the assignment of a zero for a grade. If it can be defended I suppose it can still be used, it just seems that the case for zero is getting weaker and weaker. Especially if the zero is being used as a punishment. Not turning in homework is a behavior so should be punished with a behavioral penalty not a grade penalty. As I have said before I am not telling anyone how to grade. But no one should grade or calculate grades without thinking about how they are doing it and why. At the end of the day the teacher (the expert in the subject) should know that the grade is a accurate and fair reflection of what a student is able to do.

Bench Press

2007-12-01T16:05:00.000-05:00

3 December 2007

I was listening to the sports talk radio show Mike and Mike in the Morning the other day and one of the hosts Mike Golic said, "They don't do the bench press on the 50 yard line." He was making the point that the game of football is more than speed and strength. Those things are important and need to be trained for but doing only those things would miss out on the big picture. It is necessary to play together as a team to be successful with the ultimate goals of football teams.

I always find a way to relate everything I hear to work but I don't feel that it is too much of a stretch to see how this analogy works with the CHS work this year. It is a vast over simplification of the process that we are going through but it does help explain what we are trying to achieve. In my last post, "The Circle," I spoke of the path that we are following, 1) District Goals, 2) CHS Mission and Graduation Expectations, 3) Overarching Competencies, 4) Courses, and 5) Competencies. Each of these steps, from 1 to 5, act as filters for the next. Each filter needs to inform the step that comes after so that the main goals of the school will be fulfilled. (Fulfilled? Yeah, that's a little over the top by you get the point.)

To continue with the football analogy, consider an extreme example. What if all a team did was work out in the weight room? They could work out to the point that they were the strongest team in the league. This would help them and they may win a few games based just on strength. But they could probably be beaten quite easily by a moderately strong but cohesive and well coached team. The team that only worked out in the weight room would have missed the big goal in favor of focusing on one of the smaller aspects of football preparation.

When you have an ultimate goal it is also sometimes necessary to filter out some other goals and that is what we are doing this year at the high school. With our work on graduation expectations we are trying to always filter what we do by thinking about the graduate that will walk across the stage in June. What do they need and what would we like them to be able to do? This year in the NFL the New England Patriots may have to do some filtering as they near the end of their season. Their stated goal for this year, and every other year, is to win the Super Bowl. This year, though, they also have the chance to go undefeated. This has not been done since 1972 (or somewhere around there) and would be an amazing achievement. But going for the undefeated season might actually hurt New England's chances to win the Super Bowl. If an important player was hurt in chasing the undefeated season and was not available in the playoffs it might cost them their larger goal.

I remember a game in the 90s where the 49ers were 14 and 1 and going into their last game. They had a chance to win at one point but didn't push too hard, wound up loosing the game and ending the season with a 14-2 record. At the time I was young and didn't understand the big picture. I was confused as to why they had not put in all their best players to try and win their last game. After they won the Super Bowl that year I realized that they had been filtering their goals. 15-1 would have been nice but a total waste without a Super Bowl victory. They chose 14-2. They sacrificed one smaller goal to achieve another larger goal.

As we continue with our high school work this year there will be times when we have to do the same thing. We aren't trying to win a football game of course but we do have the ultimate goal of preparing that student that walks across our graduation stage. Just as a teacher would consider all of the little details of their course that they could teach--but don't because they miss the big goals. In biology teachers have decided in recent years to not focus so much on very minor details like alleles. (Do you know what alleles are? Don't worry about it, most likely you are still a highly functioning member of our society--and that is the whole point.) They looked long and hard at their course and decided to leave out (or de-emphasize) some details in favor of the big goal of having biologically literate students. Now as a school we are trying to work with doing the same thing. What are the big goals that we have and what are the smaller things that we can filter out so that they don't interfere with students meeting those goals?

These are not easy questions and this will not be easy work.

The Circle

2007-11-29T18:04:00.000-05:00

29 November 2007

I was looking at the CHS plan the other day. Here it is from top down. Each one is designed to inform the one below it.

District Goals
CHS Mission and Graduation Expectations
K-12 Curriculum Guides
Programs--The Departments at the School
Overarching Competencies--the ones that are specific to a subject area or department. Like graphing in science.
Courses
Course Competencies

As I looked at it for the hundredth time and compared it to books and planning guides and my notes from the past few years I began to think of it differently than I ever had before.

First, I began to realize that in this year of work CHS has literally gone from number 1. right down (or will go) to competencies. Because of the way the year has been organized and because of the pressure from our accrediting body this has been the way we have had to go about it. The thing is--we went about it exactly the right way. Why in the world would you start to think about course competencies before you had thought of the overarching competencies of a subject area? Wouldn't you want to know which competency type things were going to appear in every course? Well we have done the same thing with our whole school. We have identified what we want graduates to look like and are working on seeing how they get there.

Second, I came to see that in designing our process to go over many years what we really are doing is going through the steps from 1-7 and THEN going back to number 1 to revise from the top down again. We will use the data that we have collected this year to inform what we should do, how we should change things to make them better.

Each time I look at it it becomes more clear that we are doing the right thing. How many people believe that? I'm not sure--but I am confident that we are doing the right thing.

Anatomy Teaching Idea

2007-11-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

November 2007

Just thinking about a way to teach anatomy without dissecting cats.

The theme of the year is building an organism. Students can build any mammalian organism that they want. A whale, a cat, a monkey, etc. Clearly some organisms will be more difficult because the available literature will be limited. It will change the order of the course from exterior of organisms to the interior but the change will be a logical one.

Overarching themes:
--appreciation of the beauty and functionality of the living mammalian organism
--appreciation of life
--yes it is hard to show appreciation so students will need to demonstrate their change in thinking over the course of the year.

Rules about supplies
--teams of 2 or 3
--same money that would have been spent on cat $30 per student
--cannot spend more than that and must have receipts as part of the project

Units:
1. Bones and Joints
--Big Goal--The skeleton is the support and protection system for organisms.
--Learn bones and joints as units. For example bones of the arm, rib cage, leg, pelvic girdle, vertebrae--how they all fit together. Not in isoloation.
--Build skeleton of organism--4 class days (90s)
2. Circulatory and respiratory
--Big goal--circulatory system moves oxygen to needed parts of the body.
3. Digestion
--Big goal is break down of nutrients for use in the body.
--Build 2. and 3. as part of one building session--2 days (90s)
4. Muscles
--Big goal is movement and how it works in the body.
--Build musculature--4 days (90s)
--Zoo field trip or similar--looking at live organisms. It would be best if it could be a petting zoo or something where students could look close up at organisms.
5. Integumentary
--Big goal is the role of skin in protection
--build skin
6. Microscopic
--Big goal is what is happening at the microscopic level.
--immunity
--histology

Grading Continues to Evolve at CHS

2007-09-28T07:47:00.000-05:00

Questions

2007-09-15T12:48:00.000-05:00

Some questions that keep coming up....

1. How do I receive scores like 5,4,3,2,1 and get into college?
2. Where is the F?
3. We need to punish not turning work in, how do we do this in this system?
4. What does this mean in terms of GPA?
5. What does this mean in terms of graduating?
6. What does this mean in terms of passing a course?
7. Why do we need a new system?
8. How do I compare myself to other kids so I can ensure that I am on top? I want to go to a good college.

Achievement Categories

2007-09-15T11:59:00.000-05:00

A colleague asked me the other day for my explanation of the grading levels that I used last year.

I used the following achievement categories:

5=Wow!
4=Great!
3=Got it! (met the standard)
2=Nearly there!
1=Oops!
INC=not handed in.

What I wrote for last year:
Look for these categories on all progress reports that are given to you (the student.) They are much more important than the single grade that you will receive on a report card. These are indicators of how you are doing in relation to specific things that you need to know. If you see a score of a 2 it means that you are close but you need to do a little more work to reach at least the 3 level. If you score a 4 or a 5 it means that you are really putting it all together. Not only do you know the material but you can transfer it to new situations.

The point about using levels instead of traditional grades is to you and I can work together for you to improve. If you score a 1 on something at the beginning of the unit --THAT IS OK! This is just a signal that you and I will need to work together to improve what you know about that subject.

If you see an incomplete (INC) this means that you have not handed something in. I can't give you a grade on something if I can't see what you can actually do so if you have an incomplete you will need to get your work in. Once you hand in the work then I will be able to give you your score on that piece.

What didn't work?

2007-09-03T07:04:00.000-05:00

Following up the post on what did work here are some of the strategies that did not work or more likely need more time and more support to work.

Grade Recovery Days.
My plan was to have everyone who was not meeting the standards stay after on Monday afternoons. This is a great idea and supported by research. This is the idea of giving a behavioral penalty for a behavior rather than a grade penalty for a behavior. My students that needed the most help would not come to this afternoon day. I would try this in another year but I would make some changes. I would start from the very beginning of the year. If students did not come after school I would immediately call home on the first offense. After that I might start a line of email communication to keep parents updated on their student's progress.

Incompletes going on after the end of the quarter.
Students are so ingrained to think that the end of the quarter is the end that they would not do anything about incompletes on their report card. If they had previously received an incomplete in another class they knew from experience that eventually the incomplete would turn into a number grade. So all they had to do was wait and not think about it and it would go away. My fault with this was not being systematic enough about providing opportunities for them to fix the incomplete after the quarter had ended. If I had it to do over I would take the day right after the quarter ended and have students with incompletes work on finishing their work. With other students I would look back at the big areas where they might need help and tell them to focus on the cumulative semester exam. The next day we would move on to the next unit. Students who still had incompletes would have to come after school until their incomplete was taken care of. If they did not come or did poor work I would call home. This is not a great plan but it is what I would try next.

Integrade Pro (IGP).
IGP is a powerful grade-book program but it falls woefully short when one tries to use it with standards grading. The biggest downfall is that no matter how hard I tried to avoid it IGP is set up to, at the end, deliver one number for a student grade. What I wanted was many grades. Grades in relation to certain standards. Imagine a course on chemistry with 10 major standards for the year. Within each of those goals there might be 2 mini-standards. So at the end of the year a student report card would have 20-30 marks in relation to those standards. This report card would also contain a narrative section about the student. I imagine this to be one page front and back--growing the total report card from 1/2 a page for all classes to 1 page for each class. IGP cannot do this. Well it can do it but it can't do it easily and it can't do it in a way that is clear for students and parents to understand.

There are some other little ones but those were the big frustrations I had last year. Even with these I would absolutely continue down this road. A road to standards grading that tells me so much more about students than giving them just one number.