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Don’t Sweat NAEP Scores.  What Did We Expect?

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Life has recently given educators many things to worry over.  Pandemic!  School shootings!  Teacher shortages!  Low pay!  Chaotic school board meetings!  Book banning!  NAEP score decline!

I take the last one back.  As we indeed should worry about disease, bullets, teacherless classrooms, and surging radicalism, we should not sweat the reported decline in the National Assessment of Educational Performance scores.  The reason we should not sweat this is – what did we expect assessment scores to be after three semesters of emergency teaching and learning?  Improved? 

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported scores for 4th grade students declined 5 points in reading and 7 points in mathematics.  In terms of trend lines, NCES says these were the largest score declines since 1990 and the first ever score decline in mathematics.

I return to the question – what did we expect?  Actually, the scores represent what we expected, and these are not a calamity.

The decline in reading scores was expressed broadly across all demographics or within a point or two for differentiated groups.  Pick your target population – urban, suburban, rural; ethnicity; gender; wealthy or impoverished; English or non-English speaking – reading and math scores declined.  When schools went into emergency mode due to the pandemic, reading and math achievement amongst all children suffered.  What did we expect?

Interestingly, among higher performing students, those with constant access to computer or tablet, reliable Internet, consistent access to a quiet place to do school work, and consistency of an on-line teacher available top help them with assignments demonstrated less decline in reading and math.  Exactly what we would expect.

Correspondingly and without great surprise, students with low performance in reading and math prior to emergency education, especially children of color, demonstrated greater decline in reading and math.  Many of these children were at the opposite end of educational supports during the pandemic.  They had little to access to computers or tablets, unreliable or no Internet access, no quiet places, and were not connected with on-line teachers.  Exactly what we would expect.

NAEP measures only reading and math.  What of student learning in science and social studies?  What of achievements in art, music, and second language?  As a result of the pandemic, all areas of student learning suffered and expected overall achievement diminished.  Another expectation.  It sounds like educational disaster, but it is not.

What do we know?  First, these diminished student achievements are associated with emergency education and not with usual education.  I recall smashing my leg and spending 16 weeks in a cast and walking with crutches when I was fourteen.  Life, for a while, changed due to that emergency.  Once the cast came off, it took months before I regained strength and flexibility in my right leg.  I had to unlearn living with the emergency as well as living anew without it.  In emergencies, we compensate by doing things differently when we cannot do what we usually do.  Compensatory life is not the same.  When the emergency is over, we typically stop compensating and life returns to normal, although I am more duck-footed.

2019-20 through 2021-22 data were emergency-based data.  The casts we wore during that emergency are off.  We need to look at that data for what it is – emergency data – and not consider it as normal data.

Second, over time, all data resettles around its historic mean.  It will take renewed implicit teaching to cause children who limped through pandemic education to have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need; this learning will not happen without focused education.  But it will happen.  Students who in 21-22 were not solid in their reading and math will achieve improvements in 22-23 and 23-24 and their data will move back toward usual norms.  School bands that suffered developing instrumentation will find new players and students not ready for Spanish 3 will find growth in blended Spanish 2-3.  We know how to teach these children.

Third, our world is too attuned to reports of calamity, and what may not be calamitous gets reported as “disaster”.  Across the 14 years of 4K-12 public education, emergencies will rise, be faced, and we will trend toward normalcy.  The real calamity and disaster of the pandemic was the number of lives lost to death.  Those we cannot recover.  Everything else can be recouped.

Lessons learned.  Don’t sweat what you cannot affect.  The NAEP data is already in the books, and it reported the kind of data we were expecting.  We were in an emergency and now we are not.  Today, we pull up our socks and get at the 22-23 data.

Feedback: Recalibrating the superlative

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Say what you mean and mean what you say.  Words matter and the selection of words used as educational feedback to children matters greatly.  As teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors, we provide thousands of feedback words to children every day.  How calibrated are your words so that you are saying exactly what you should say?

I observe that feedback to children over time becomes gratuitous and conversational.  Listen to the feedback you hear around you.  We typically say what the listener expects and wants to hear and we say it without specific learning context.  We make our feedback pleasing, non-critical, and uninformative – easy feedback is easy to give.  As we launch the 22-23 school year, the words we choose as feedback should be recalibrated so that we are saying not only what we mean to say but what children need to hear as we to cause them to learn.

Apply the term “authentic” to the distribution of feedback.  But, know what authentic means.  Merriam-Webster tells us authentic means “being actually and exactly what is claimed”.  Authentic is a clear and precise razor to apply to feedback.  Sharpen your vocabulary so that your feedback to a child explicitly describes the learning the child demonstrates and provides the necessary description, praise/criticism, reinforcement/correction, self-building, and direction that the child needs to hear.

The bell-shaped curve of statistical distribution can be applied to giving feedback.  Picture the bell in your mind’s eye and apply it graphically to the student work and work effort you observe.  The greatest amount of work from children daily meets our general expectations; it is the great space under the dome of the bell, especially when we apply the rule of 80 – 80% of children should successfully learn 80% of what we teach through initial instruction 80% of the time.  Statistically, we expect 66% of student work to be in this zone – the rule of 80 expands this zone that we think of as statistically average.  The margins of difference under this dome on either side of the true mean are small enough that minimal corrections through adjusted teaching move children to improved performances of learning.    

Sadly, we have maligned the word average – no one wants to be labeled average – but authentically, average describes the quality of learning children show us when they actually and exactly learn what they were taught.  Average is “on the target”.  As a better descriptor, use “expected” instead of average.

“That is exactly and clearly what I expected you to do.  Good work” is the qualitative feedback that should describe 80% of student work in school under the rule of 80.  How often do we hear these words?  Not very.

Our contemporary world values esteem over productivity and has difficulty with the word good.  Inspirational speakers at educational conventions and conferences tell us that good is not good enough.  Jim Collins told us how to Get From Good to Great and good has never been good enough since.  “Great” and its synonyms became the new gold standard driving feedback.  If good is average, then we must strive to be better than good and feedback on what we are told to expect has never been the same.

Blink twice every time you hear these words in your school today: excellent, fantastic, outstanding, superb, tremendous, terrific, wonderful, exceptional, splendid, phenomenal.  These are both synonyms for great and the most frequently used words to describe student work.  That is a lot of blinking.  Is all that we claim to be great really great or is great how we now label what we expect?  This is not what we mean, I think.

Recalibration of feedback means

  • understanding what is expected and describe it in actual and exact terms.  Don’t inflate to deflate, just describe what you observe against what you expect.

“You sounded out and pronounced those words exactly as they are spelled.”

“Your practice is paying off – you played that piece exactly as the music is written.”

“Your use of color and shading are very good and show you are paying attention to our demonstrations.”

“The corners in the box you built are exactly 90 degrees to each other.  Good job.”

“You all are keeping pace with each other as we walk to the cafeteria.  Thank you.”

  • using comparatives to describe things that are more than you expected.  Comparatives work because they describe more than you expected but keep you clear of over-exaggeration.

”Your mathematical reasoning is getting better.  You went beyond the numbers and gave an example of how we use rectangular shaped fields in athletics.”

“You are improving in listening to spoken Spanish and hearing it as Spanish not translated English.”

“You show a growing understanding of the scope of the universe beyond the stars we see at night”.

  • using superlatives to describe things that are well beyond what is expected and are so exemplary that they are unusual in frequency.  Superlatives add -est to your descriptors.

”That was exceptional – the best I have seen in years.”

“Outstanding.  You performed that as well as a person who has been playing for many years.”

“Your explanation was superb – college-like in your understanding of the concepts and how they work.”

“Perfect.  I could not have done better myself.”

“You get the blue ribbon.  That is the best lab work I have seen in years.”

Keep the model of what you expect students to say, do, perform, behave, and be in mind as you give them your feedback.  Then make your feedback exactly and actually descriptive of what you see and hear and feel about their work.

Lastly, keep a second thought in mind.  Children know honesty and sincerity when they hear and read it.  Your smile and a nod of approval may be all the honestly and sincerity a child needs to understand that they are meeting your expectations.  And, that after all, is what most children in school want to do – meet the expectations of their teachers.

Deja Camaraderie

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I sat at a back table in our school cafeteria yesterday listening to chatter.  The tables were ringed by teachers and support staff and custodians and administrators having lunch and talking – together.    Round cafeteria tables with attached benches put everyone knee-to-knee facing into the table group.  Veteran teachers in their fourth decade of work in our school sat and ate with newbies – our first-year teachers.  The boisterous conversation sounded like the room was full of kids on a school day.  Nobody stood to shush the loudness; nobody was bothered.  This was great!

We are back.  Not just back for the start for a school year, but back in the regaining of a sense of school that evaded us for the past several years.  We are back to being a school.  These words do not dis our school and our recent work.  They recognize a change in our being a school.

I read stories about schooling and education daily.  Writers of school news this summer have focused on the many issues that trouble public education in 2022.  Reinforced by contacts around the state, we know there are too many schools without a teacher for every classroom.  Educators and parents worry about the mental health of children and, rightfully, about the wellness of school staff.  Words like burn out and fatigue abound even before the first lesson of the school year is taught.  Our school is not immune from these.  They will haunt us and our work for some time to come. 

On this Tuesday, the second day of teacher work before school starts next week, it did not appear that the “news” paints our work.  Strolling the hallways and looking in different classroom doors, I saw and heard high school English teachers talking with our tech director about “set ups”, a math teacher talking with a special education aide about students who will need assistance, and our counselor “checking with people”.  Grade level teachers in the elementary wing had children in school last week for a “smart start” for our youngest students, several school warm-up days, and they were talking about what they learned from those children.

A large group of new and veteran staff met in the gym for training in non-violent intervention.  This Friday all school employees will be trained in trauma sensitivity.  The schoolhouse feels like long ago college life in the days before classes started with everyone “moving in”.  There is an air of casual busy-ness, an informal professionalism, and a common focus. 

Covid stressed us beyond our fears for personal health.  It attacked every aspect of public education and how school treats with children, parents, and the community.  It also attacked personal and professional relationships inside the school.  In addressing many of these pandemic-related challenges, we exposed and surfaced organizational issues and tensions that troubled our school.  Things known but not talked about need airing out.  Without detailing the work, we are engaged in repairing these injuries.

At an after-school meeting of a school board committee yesterday, teachers, coaches, and a school parent sat with the superintendent, a principal and three board members to talk about campus issues – the softball field, gym scoreboards, and available space.  Each person contributed experience, perspective, needs, and possibilities.  They will recommend action to the board, money will be spent, and improvements achieved.  And, they will continue to meet because they have work to do. Collegiality prevails.

The all-staff lunch caused me to remember the best of before-school-starts experiences from years past and I saw that positiveness alive in our cafe.  A single aspect of positive-plus was that our school board members grilled the hamburgers and veggie burgers for the all-school lunch.  They smelled of charcoal smoke and charred meat when they joined the staff at the tables.  They were applauded.

We have a feeling of deja camaraderie and it is welcome.  We are back!

Carpe the First Day

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The first day of a new school year is a singular event.  After the first day, all days are school days.  The first day is different; it is show time for children and adults.  Carpe the first day.  Show time is a magical and essential moment.  Make the most of it.

All eyes are big on day one.  For some, the first big eye is when a child gets on the school bus.  For all others, the first big eye is walking in the schoolhouse doors.  On day one, children cross a threshold of bus and/or school and become students.  This labeling matters.  During the summer, they are their parents’ children and the community’s kids.  In school, they are your students.

For teachers, the big eye is when students walk into the classroom.  A teacher without students is a professional educator awaiting the moment to teach.  The instant students enter a classroom teachable time starts.  The same is true for all instructional support staff.  The moment they engage with students, summer is over, and the school year is afoot.  Carpe that first moment with genuine positivity toward each student and a voracious learning about them as a class.

For custodians, food service, secretaries, transportation personnel who have prepared for weeks and days for day one, the first day of school shifts all work from preparing to serving the school.  Floors are polished, snack and lunch menus are planned and published, school materials are ordered, delivered, sorted, and distributed, class lists are printed all in anticipation of day one.  When children become students, all of these and hundreds more tasks become actions repeated and maintained for a school year’s time.  Day one matters to everyone in the school.

Carpe the day, don’t squander it.  A smile and calling a student by name (pronounced correctly) as they cross thresholds tell a child “I see you.  Your success as a student in our school is important to me.  I am prepared for you.  We start right now!”  When we begin day one with the message “I see you and you are important”, we initiate a respecting of each other that pays dividends for months to come. 

The swell of a summer’s planning and preparation for principals does not peak on day one, but continues to a crescendo somewhere into September when the benefits of planning and preparation are observable facts in the work of the school.  Day one exemplifies the historic role of the school principal as the school’s principal teacher.  Carpe the day.  As a teacher greets students to a classroom, principals greet students to a school.  As teachers carpe day one to build respect for all in the classroom, the principal carpes day one to build a respectful schoolhouse.  When parents delivering their children to school see the principal “out front”, a principal reinforces the parent’s perception that this school is a good place for their children.

We know from recent polling that more than 80% of students look forward to the first day of school for social reasons – they will be with their old friends and will make new friends.  Carpe that by observing these very visible networks.  On day two you will know better about student grouping – who wants to be with whom and who needs to be integrated into the web of students.

We know from polling that more than 35% of students prize school for its athletics and activities.  On day one we assist student/athletes and student/actors and student/leaders and student/musicians to optimize immediate motivation opportunities to facilitate new learning.  The area of school that less than 25% of students look forward to is deskwork.  Carpe that low anticipation with highly engaging moments, glimpses, and previews of what they will learn in the next weeks.  Carpe all that you can learn about your students on day one and sew what you learn for reaping during the school year.

The first day of school comes but once a year.  It is a significant day for everyone in the school community.  Carpe the day and reap the benefits of your seizing all that day one is.  Day one is gone on day two.

Speak Less and Listen More

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The advice Aaron Burr gives to Alexander Hamilton in the musical Hamilton applies to the best practices in teaching.  Speak less and listen more.  If we recorded the audio only for one week in a school classroom, what would be the ratio of teacher speaking to listening?  On the other hand, don’t make such a recording.  The ratio of adult to child voices may be too embarrassing.

Instead, read and consider the following statements.  Don’t talk about what you are reading – read and listen to your own thoughts about each statement.

  • The algorithm of speaking and listening related to educational outcomes begins with an understanding that what a child says is much more important than what a teacher says.  Education is about children learning not adult’s telling what they know.
  • Listening to children allows us to know the quality and quantity of their learning and understanding.  Listen for both.
  • Listening to children informs us that a child may know and understand her learning much better than can be displayed in on demand testing.  Listening is your best formative and summative assessment.
  • Listening to children helps us to know what the child needs to learn next in order to have a more complete understanding of the lesson.  After listening, you can clarify, correct, redirect, expand, and extend a child’s understanding.  If you don’t listen, all you can do is tell them the same things you already told them.
  • Listening to children shows us how a child is processing new learning and integrating new with prior learning.  Listen to how a child thinks not just what a child tells you.
  • Listening leads to questions you ask the student that leads to more listening and to more questions.  Listening leads to causing students to learn.
  • Listening to children is one of the most respectful things adults can do.  It says, “you are important to me”.  Consider how many times a child passes through an entire school day without being heard.  What does silence tell a child about how we value her?
  • Listening is interactive.  The best teachers know when to listen and when to speak.  Listening before speaking assures that speech is focused and purposeful for the listening child.

If a teacher is consistently speaking too much and listening too little, advise the teacher to change professions and become a broadcaster.  That is what broadcasters do, not teachers.