jsgarrett

Recently, a teacher in my school shared with me a topic that is being discussed in her master’s cohort.  The topic is regarding SOL Standards and reporting categories.  What is so alarming is the inequity in our State’s educational standards and it is centered around race this time.  Currently, Richmond City Public Schools and their school board members are addressing this issue with DOE and I look forward to hearing more about it as this plays out. 

If our “hurdles” are not set high are we truly clearing them?  – J Garrett

The news story was provided by a peer in her cohort group and the statistics were provided by their professor Dr. Schneider.  Thank you to all that contributed.

The Virginia Department of Education’s goal is for 69 percent of white students to pass this year’s SOL test compared to only 51 percent of black students

http://www.nbc12.com/story/21723946/school-board-member-threatens-to-ban-sol-testing  

 There are a few things I would like to offer to you in thinking about this story and issue. I also think this story is extremely relevant to our achievement gap discussion next week. I do not have time right now to pull up the links, articles, and reports but please follow up with me on anything I share here and I will be more than happy to provide you with primary and secondary sources from my archives.

The SOL s can be considered as a part of a longer history of how schooling in the U.S. tends not to serve poor/working class children and non-white children well.  I mean this as a historical and national trend. Many scholars believe we are in the process of formalizing a two-tiered system in the U.S. regarding the quality of schooling. Alternative certification for teachers plays a part in this but is beyond the scope of this email.

Race in the U.S. has tended to eclipse issues of class for over 100 years. Race as we commonly know it today in the U.S. evolved with the plantation system. Prior to that (about 1700’s) the lower and working classes in the U.S. were diverse and intermarried, worked and lived together (Irish, Italian, Native American, and African or Caribbean) without social sanction. White English Protestant descendants in the U.S. did not consider themselves ‘white’ and the same as Irish, German, Italian, Eastern European or any other ‘white’ group. White identity did not fully emerge in the U.S. until after WWI.  When cheap labor was needed for the plantations AND it was desired to assimilate Eastern and Western Europeans we begin to see two things: Whiteness began to emerge in the U.S. along with Blackness and groups such as the Irish (who originally sympathized greatly with the plight of African-Americans due to Irish Catholic experiences with the English) begin to articulate racist views which increased Irish assimilation and opportunity in American White Protestant society.

Race and poverty intersect strongly in the U.S. Many scholars wonder why the SOL categories are not socioeconomic (as in some other industrialized nations). Race may be more comfortable in the U.S. than to consider issues of economic inequity and there are political reasons for this – historically our Industrial Barons (Industrial Revolution) benefited from marginalizing issues of income inequity, class, and workers rights by focusing on racial divisions.

Our poor and working class families have felt the brunt of the Educational reforms since 1997:

In urban areas where we have concentrated and segregated poverty corporate reforms have privatized public schooling. New Orleans, Chicago, D.C., Philadelphia, Detroit, St. Louis… these are cities that have lost hundreds of public schools (without local community consent) that have been turned over to for-profit charters and Educational Management Organizations. These entities go by very different rules than public schools.  In some cases states are annexing districts - for example Michigan and Louisiana - (through mayor-control or state school boards) and vending education services out to the lowest bidder.  We are seeing an ‘urban renewal’ of schooling. Rural areas are not immune to these policies – poor urban areas are just more vulnerable to education reform and policy.

Lower SOL scores mean lower property value (look on-line to buy a house) this has resulted in a de facto redlining that further devalues poor and working class neighborhoods. This has been made worse by the state wavier that identifies the lowest 5 and 10% of VA schools. We also deal with funding inequity – since about 47% of our funding comes from property values. Regardless, over the past 20 years our communities across the nation have become less economically diverse meaning that affluence and poverty has become concentrated and segregated in our towns and cities.

Our schools have been resegregating at a rapid rate* – partly due to the fact that NCLB had HARDER sanctions for Title one schools that did not make AYP – discouraging schools to be economically diverse (which also means racially diverse because class and race intersect). Along with this for-profit charter schools have been intensifying resegregation in many areas. NCLB had the unintended consequence of putting public schools in the position to protect specific ‘testing populations’ because they feared a loss of funding.  

NCLB mandated the use of private vendors for remediation and tutoring in poor performing schools (did not make AYP). In many cases the students who most needed face-to-face teacher-led instruction and help received web-based modules and on-line learning with lab assistants.

Our poorest schools (especially urban) have the highest student mobility, highest teacher turn-over, most TFA teachers (cheap labor, 5-weeks of training), and the highest utilization of long-term substitutes.

jsgarrett

Without failure you can never appreciate success.  The most successful inventors of our time failed and failed often.  It is during times of failure that true leaders reflect and grow from it.  Attached is an inspirational video by Honda on failure leading to success.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJAq6drKKzE

jsgarrett

Recently, I interviewed with a neighboring locality for a central office position.  Throughout the interview I was able to use a lot of the verbage that we have discussed and have grown more accustom to using during our 711 and 713 classes.   This scholarly sense overcame me during the 45 minute long interview as I continued to use words that we have discussed with a feeling of comfort.  On my way home that afternoon I reflected back over the last two years and the professional growth was very apparent.  I would like to thank my professors and classmates for all the conversations that we have had that has helped me reach that point in my professional life.

jsgarrett

Creating Classrooms We Need: 8 Ways Into Inquiry Learning

March 11, 2013 | 10:54 AM | By Tina Barseghian

Flickr: Scratchpost

If kids can access information from sources other than school, and if school is no longer the only place where information lives, what, then happens to the role of this institution?

“Our whole reason for showing up for school has changed, but infrastructure has stayed behind,” said Diana Laufenberg, who taught history at the progressive public school Science Leadership Academy for many years. Laufenberg provided some insight into how she guided students to find their own learning paths at school, and enumerated some of these ideas at SXSWEdu last week.

1.   BE FLEXIBLE.
The less educators try to control what kids learn, the more students’ voices will be heard and, eventually, their ability to drive their own learning. But that requires a flexible mindset on the part of the teacher. “That’s a scary proposition for teachers,” Laufenberg said. “‘What do you mean I’m going to have 60 kids doing 60 different projects,’ teachers might say. But that’s exactly the way for kids to do interesting, high-end work that they’re invested in.”

Laufenberg recalled a group of tenacious students who continued to ask permission to focus their video project on the subject of drugs, despite her repeated objections. She finally relented — with the caveat that they not resort to cliches. In turn, the students turned in one of the best video projects she’d ever seen: a well-produced, polished video about Americans’ dependence on pharmaceutical drugs that was dense with facts backed up by students’ research. “And I almost killed this project,” she said. “There are vastly creative minds that are capable of doing intensely wonderful things with their learning but often we don’t let that live and breathe. Thankfully I got out of their way and let them do the work they were capable of.”

2.   FOSTER INQUIRY BY SCAFFOLDING CURIOSITY.
Teachers always come up to Laufenberg wanting to learn more about her progressive pedagogy — and they invariably ask, “But when do you just tell them things? Don’t you have to just tell them sometimes?”

Laufenberg’s answer: Get them curious enough in the subject to do research on their own.
“Kids don’t come to class just burning to know about the War of 1812,” she said. “And you just saying they have to know the facts is not good enough. But here’s your chance to bring them along as a person and get them to learn about it.”

For example, in exploring the subject of American identity with her history students, Laufenberg asked them to come up with words that convey to them the abstract idea of America, or what it means to be American. Many of her students came up with the words “greedy” and “ignorant” — a trend she saw echoed throughout many of her classes during her years teaching at SLA. “I got a clear vision of where my students were,” she said.

She asked her students to find images that epitomized America, then asked them to talk about their ideas with their peers, studying data about immigration, taking the American citizenship test themselves (most received an average score of 3, across the board regardless of age), so they could understand the processes and become personally invested in the subject.

“Rather than saying, ‘We’re going to study immigration,’ I took them through a process where they become interested in it themselves,” she said.

3.  DESIGN ARCHITECTURE FOR PARTICIPATION.
“There are so many ways that kids can be active in their learning, beyond the standard call-and-respond business,” Laufenberg said. It may be hard to do with 140 students, but if you consider all the available tools at your disposal, ideas can start to take shape.

Example: Laufenberg asked her students to watch President Obama’s State of the Union address and respond to what they watched and heard. She gave her students the option to either post comments on Twitter (fully public), Facebook (semi-public), Moodle (walled garden) or for low-tech participants, play Bingo with key words the students anticipated they might hear.

RELATED:

• Why Inquiry Learning is Worth the Trouble
• How to Fuel Students’ Learning Through Their Interests
• How Can Teachers Prepare Kids for a Connected World?

 Though some goofed around a bit with comments (“Our school is so cool, we’re tweeting the State of the Union”), at the end of the speech, students had posted a total of 438 tweets and 18 pages of Moodle chat. (Interestingly, no one went on Facebook, though she had set up a separate conversation on the school’s Facebook page.)

Laufenberg was not surprised with the high quality of responses she saw from her students. “Does Obama have the power to reform and adjust how the other branches work?” one student tweeted. “He’s not touching on Iran issue… not a good sign,” another posted. “High school dropout laws, rebuilding jobs in our country, and more equipment in schools… me gusta,” wrote yet another.

“I could have them face off against any pundit the next day,” she said. “They understood it. None of it went over their head — they were making meaning of it. They were offering their own opinions, participating in the conversation.”

Laufenberg used every tool she had at her disposal as a framework for her students to build their learning around.

4. TEACHERS TEACH KIDS, NOT SUBJECTS.
As most teachers know, when students recognize that teachers are personally invested in their success, they do better, and that affirmation of students’ disposition can help students achieve more. “You can’t ask kids to take risks if they don’t trust that you care about them,” Laufenberg said.

5. PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING.
During the weeks and months that led up to the election, Laufenberg’s students got into the neighborhoods and brought back stories from voters at the polls. Though they didn’t always feel comfortable asking strangers questions, they went ahead with their assignments anyway. “If none of it is ever real to them, if it’s only in books, it lacks interest,” she said. “They want to do real stuff, but we are perpetually underestimating what kids can do.”

6. EMBRACE FAILURE.
Laufenberg made a point of defining the difference between “blameworthy” and “praiseworthy” failure. Blameworthy failure is when the student just decided not to participate in a project. But praiseworthy failure is quite different: kids take risks and experiments knowing that they might not get it right the first time.

“No one talks about cancer research as blameworthy failure,” she said. “We don’t expect a five-year-old to be able to shoot free-throws immediately. It’s a process, and we value it in other things, but not when it comes to school. Kids are not coming in as perfect little products or machines — they’re human beings in the process of becoming.”

In the engineering industry, for example, there are “failure festivals” and “failure reports” during which engineers discuss the processes they’ve tried that didn’t work. “We need to have kids do that with their own learning,” she said. “Be self-aware enough to do something with that information.”

7. DON’T BE BORING.
“I always told my kids, if I got boring, they should let me know, and if they got boring, I’d let them know,” Laufenberg said. But here’s the twist: kids may actually choose boring because it’s easier, it’s known, it’s quantifiable. “They know what they need to do to get a good score,” she said. When it’s not boring, when the answer is not predictable, that’s when kids are actually challenged more.

8. FOSTER JOY.
For a government history teacher, this last directive has been a tall order. But Laufenberg made a point of trying to create a space where her students were valued, where creativity was paramount, and their voices were allowed to shine through.

“It’s incredibly taxing work, but one of the most exciting and meaningful ways to create transformative spaces,” she said.

Above all, what she wants to instill in her students is a sense of self-sufficiency.

“If by the end of the year, they still need me, I haven’t done my job,” she said. “I’m not coming with them to college. They have to be self-driven, independent thinkers.”

Watch Laufenberg’s fascinating TED Talk “How to Learn? From Mistakes.”

jsgarrett

Over the past couple of weeks I have heard from teachers about the concern for students  regarding them completing their homework assignments.  Here is an interesting article that I found today.  Definitely gives you some food for thought as well as for those of us who have elementary age children and the battle we face nightly.

Homework or Not? That is the (Research) Question.

Weighing the conflicting evidence.

By:

Alison DeNisco

District Administration, March 2013

A Florida Virtual School student spends part of his day online for school work, at school or home, anywhere there is an internet connection. The term “homework” becomes obsolete.

Also in this article

The Equity Issue

Tutoring and Homework

Woe unto the administrator who ventures forth into the homework wars.

Scale it back, and parents will be at your door complaining about a lack of academic rigor. Dial it up, and you’ll get an earful from other parents about interference with after-school activities and family time.

If you’re looking to bolster your particular position with research results, you’re in luck, because there are studies that back the more-is-better approach and others that support the less-is-better tack.

“Homework has been a hot topic for a number of years now because it affects so many people,” says Robert H. Tai, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education who has researched the topic and conducted a 2012 study, “When Is Homework Worth the Time?” After studying transcripts and data for more than 18,000 sophomore students nationwide, he found no significant relationship between time spent on homework and grades, but did find a positive relationship between homework and performance on standardized tests. “Homework should act as a place where students practice the skills they’ve learned in class,” Tai says. “It shouldn’t be a situation where students spend many hours every night poring over something [new].”

In Favor of Homework

A 2004 national survey conducted by the University of Michigan found that the amount of time spent on homework had risen 51 percent since 1981. Most of this increase was found among younger students, with daily homework for 6- to 8-year-olds increasing, on average, from about 8 minutes in 1981 to 22 minutes in 2003.

There is a positive relationship between the amount of homework students do and their achievement outcomes, according to a 2006 study by Harris Cooper, director of Duke University’s Program in Education, which analyzed and combined the results of dozens of homework studies. The studies found that students who had homework performed better on class tests compared to those who did not. Twelve studies linking the amount of homework to achievement and controlling for other factors, such as socioeconomic status, also found a positive link. Of 35 studies that simply correlated homework and achievement, with no attempt to control for student differences, about 77 percent also found a positive link between time on homework and achievement.

However, says Cooper, there was one group in the study for which homework was not correlated with achievement: elementary school students. For these children, the report states that “the average correlation between time spent on homework and achievement … hovered around zero,” or no relationship. This may be because younger students have less-developed study habits and are less able to tune out distractions at home, Cooper says.

The Case for Less

Other research has yielded other interpretations about the usefulness of homework. The authors of “Reforming Homework: Practices, Learning and Policies” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) evaluated homework research and concluded that it does not significantly impact achievement— and can even be detrimental. One study from Penn State that analyzed data from the late 1990s found that, in countries with high homework demands, student performance on the international test of achievement known as Trends in Mathematics and Science Study was poorer than those with less rigorous after-school assignments. The authors, both professors at Australian universities, do not call for a homework ban, but they do recommend less homework, as well as homework assignments of a higher quality, rather than large amounts of drill and practice work.

Further, Tai and colleagues’ study, “When Is Homework Worth the Time?” also found that sophomores who spent more time on after-school assignments did not fare any better or worse with grades, but did perform better on standardized tests. “Based on our research, it appears that the most effective use of homework may be to help students sharpen their skills with things that they already know how to do, rather than trying to use homework as an extension of class time,” Tai says. Issues often arise when students and parents do not understand the aim of the homework assignments, Tai adds, and it is imperative for teachers to make the purpose clear.

A 2011 study in the Journal of Advanced Academics found that it was the sense of self-effcacy students felt while completing homework assignments, and the availability of resources (such as a quiet place to work and access to a computer) that led to increased mathematics achievement on an international exam. And students who spent more time on homework performed worse on the exam, the researchers found. “Although this was a surprising finding, a lack of understanding of a subject can lead to ineffcient and disproportionate effort, as well as diminished motivation,” the study states. The researchers add, “This observation fits the notion that students who have low mathematics scores and spend more time on mathematics homework do it precisely because of low self-effcacy and fewer support resources.”

International Debate

In 2012, Finland and South Korea came in at numbers 1 and 2, respectively, on the Global Index of Cognitive Skills and Education Attainment, which ranks countries based on international test scores, literacy, and graduation rates (the United States was ranked at number 17). Though their students occupy the top spots globally, these two nations approach homework and learning in radically different ways.

Finland follows a European educational model, characterized by short school days and few homework assignments. South Korea, like many East Asian countries, in contrast, has long school days followed by tutoring sessions and a focus on rote learning assignments. “It is hard to find two education systems more different,” says the rankings report “The Learning Curve: Lessons in Country Performance in Education.” The report adds, “Closer examination, though, shows that both countries develop high-quality teachers, value accountability and have a moral mission that underlies education efforts.”

France, ranked at number 25, is considering a different approach: last fall, the French government proposed doing away with homework in elementary and junior high school altogether, arguing that it puts poorer students and those with difficult home situations at a disadvantage. “Education is priority,” French President Francois Hollande said in an October speech at Paris’s Sorbonne University. “An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home.”

Nontraditional Models

Now, the very concept of homework is being disrupted by the advent of the flipped classroom, which involves a teacher’s presentation being delivered outside of class, via a video that students view at home, while class time is used for active problem solving by students (which would traditionally be considered ‘homework’) and one-to-one or small group tutoring with the teacher, says Kari Arfstrom, executive director of the Flipped Learning Network, a national clearinghouse on the method.

Clintondale High School in the Clintondale (Mich.) Community School District uses flipped learning, which helped students make strides in homework. The district has 75 percent of its students receiving free or reduced-price lunch. And three years ago, the school began transitioning to a flipped model to try to engage a struggling student population. “Homework completion rates were around 30 percent, and kids were struggling when we asked them to practice at home,” says Principal Greg Green. “We decided to look at reversing it, and doing homework in school.”

Today, Clintondale students complete miniature lessons at home, which could involve watching a presentation, reading, or reviewing information, Green says, but most of the work, such as writing essays and performing math problem sets, is done in class. Students will have a half an hour of work per night on average, Green says, often watching two or three videos that are five to seven minutes long each.

The results have been positive: The school’s average student failure rate dropped from around 35 percent to under 10 percent since implementing the flipped model, Green says, and state test scores increased in every subject. Attendance went up about 4 percent, now hovering around 94 percent, and the graduation rate increased from 80 to 90 percent. “It’s been quite an evolution here,” Green says, in large part because “teachers are there to offer effective feedback and clarify when students may be struggling. Research tells us we should have kids engaged in rigorous content, have access to technology, and give immediate feedback, and this allows us to give it to them.”

How Much Is Enough?

According to a parent guide released by the National PTA and the National Education Association, most educators agree that for K2 students, homework is more effective when it does not exceed 10-20 minutes daily; for students in grades 3-6, 30-60 minutes a day is adequate; and in junior and senior high, the amount of homework will vary by subject, with many district policies stating that high school students should expect about 30 minutes of homework per course. 

Harris Cooper of Duke University concludes, in an op-ed piece distributed by the Duke University Offce of Communications:

—Practice assignments improve scores on class tests at all grade levels

—A little amount of homework may help elementary school students build study habits

—Homework for junior high students appears to reach the point of diminishing returns after about 90 minutes per night

—For high school students, homework is effective until between 90 minutes and 2-1/2 hours of homework a night, after which returns diminish.

It remains diffcult to show causation between increased homework and higher achievement, due to influencing factors such as teacher effectiveness and class participation, researchers say. Most agree that homework should be purposeful, and that more does not translate to better.

“Busy work turns students off from learning,” says Lynn Fontana, chief academic offcer of Sylvan Learning, a national tutoring chain that provides homework help for pre-K12 students. “If they can see the connection between what they’re doing as homework and what they need to know [for class], they are much more willing to do the homework.”

Alison DeNisco is staff writer.

21st-century learning

curriculum