Category Archives: Blog

Highjacking School Board Governance

Posted on by
Reply

When I became a classroom teacher in 1970 my principal and I came to three essential understandings.  The school district would provide me with an approved curriculum of subject content and academic skills for my grade levels of students.  I would provide the teaching and learning strategies to cause the children in my classes to learn their grade level curricula.  The principal would evaluate my teaching performance through an objective and subjective assessment of student engagement and achievement in learning the assigned curriculum.  For five decades these three understandings guided my work as a teacher, principal, superintendent, and school board member.  I believe these three understandings are critical for the educational success of teaching and learning:  the school board decides the curricula, the teacher decides the teaching, the administration supervises teaching and learning.

School Boards Decide Curricula

I cherish the pedagogic freedom of a teacher to use the best teaching strategies to cause students to learn.  This is not a license to teach whatever and however.   According to Wisconsin Statute 118.01(1), school boards will decide the curriculum, course requirements, and instruction consistent with the statutory goals and expectations for educating children in the school district.  Teachers in public education do not have total academic freedom.  That’s okay.  Using the language of our state statutes, my school district in consultation with district faculty, content area specialists, and administrators, selected the best curricula for our children to learn.

The role of public educators is not to teach one standardized and sanitized version of anything but to teach children how to think critically, objectively, and dynamically.  Educators teach children to go beyond who, what, when and where and to ask deeper questions of why and so what and how did this affect people.  Children are taught to base their conclusions upon a foundation of facts, as best as they are able to develop these at their state of learning.  Educators scaffold student learning over years so that children create more complete and complex understandings of what they learn.

To direct and support scaffolded learning, school boards are required to annually review and adopt the curricular standards that guide student learning.   Adoption is posted on a board agenda and  made in a regular meeting of the school board.  Critical thinking skills are embedded in all adopted curricula.  

Pedagogical Specialists Decide Instruction

A teacher’s academic freedoms lay in how the teacher meets the group and individual learning needs of the children in their classes by designing teaching that causes all children to learn.  Classroom teachers, as pedagogical specialists, decide how the curricula will be taught.  Teachers are trained professionally to consider the nature of what is to be learned and the best teaching/learning strategies.  Different content and skills and dispositions about learning require different teaching and this teaching may differ within a content or skill lesson depending upon the needs and abilities of learners.  A teacher chops the curriculum into bites that can  be taught and learned successfully and uses the art and science of teaching to teach each bite.  The “how to teach” decision is the teachers.

These two decisions – what curriculum will be taught and how the curriculum will be taught – are tied together by administrative evaluation of teaching and learning.  Administrators exercise quality control decisions.  These decisions are based on statute and proven practice over time.

New Demands on Decision Makers

Bob Dylan sang “… the times, they are a-changing…”.  His words presage a challenge in public education today regarding who decides what is taught and how it will be taught.  The issue of these challenges is monumental, because these decisions affect not only the education of children today but how education shapes the future thinking and behavior of the adults these children will become.  Who decides these things is important.  Will the decisions be based upon statutory authority or upon the challenges of the moment?

Many school districts around the country are embattled in a public argument by non-educators wanting to determine curricula, the teaching of curricula, and the ways in which schools treat different categories of children.  A polarization of people based upon a laundry list of issues – a person’s success in realizing or not realizing the American Dream, identification with partisan leaders, cultural identity, empowerment as a member of the traditional majority, a preferred version of history, support of pac-funding, and fear of others unlike oneself – is causing an historical challenge to teaching and learning.  A focal point of the confrontation is the determination of what stories of events, facts, and interpretations of the human experience will be taught in school classrooms and how will children of differing characteristics be treated in school.

I observe in the news that school board meetings are disrupted by local residents demanding the teaching of preferred and selective curriculum.  Board meetings are unraveling in chaotic bouts of audience yelling and disorder.  By the challengers’ design, the business of the school district is stopped because boards cannot conduct their posted agenda.  If the Board wants to conduct its business, the Board must acquiesce to the demands of the disrupters.  Board members are physically confronted at board meetings and in the community.  

Demands are made of school boards that only preferred versions of history are taught, that literature reflects only mainstream writing, white authors and their points of view, and that the diverse and rich heritage of our nation be narrowed to exclude the stories of and by anyone who is not like these curriculum challengers.  I read of school boards abandoning their approved policies of diversity, equality, and equity in the face of these demands.  

Statutory Processes for Disagreements

In our republican form of representative government, we elect members from the constituency to serve as decision-makers.  Our constitutional design is to create a control of government at the closest local level – state, legislative district, county and town, and school district.  Lay, not professional, officials are elected and serve terms of office that are regularly open for re-election.  The ballot is intended as the electorates’ opportunity to choose leaders based upon their pre-election statements and history.  A qualified person in disagreement with local decisions can run for office in the next calendared election.  The loss of an election is an intended consequence when the electorate does not agree with an official’s decisions.

A second intended process for change is for those in disagreement to participate in the agendized discussions of government.  For example, attend a school board meeting, volunteer to serve on district committees, and engage with the school board and administration.  Regular meetings of the school board are not public meetings where those in attendance vote on matters.  Regular meetings are open to the public with agendized opportunities for persons to speak directly to the board.  Committee participation requires more “roll up your sleeves and get involved in the details” work.  In most districts with board members, faculty and staff, and parents involved in committee work, committees are where different ideas are freely discussed and reasoned recommendations are formulated for Board consideration. 

Thirdly, the ballot provides the electorate an opportunity to remove an elected official.  Article 13, Section 12 of the WI Constitution describes the process for recalling an official one year after being elected.  No reasons for a recall are required to be given, according to the Constitution.  Members of the community in disagreement with the decisions of elected officials have a clear pathway to change their elected decision makers through recall.  Wisconsin is 2nd in the nation in filing petitions for recalling local school board members (CA is 1st).  Recall is an intended consequence when the electorate does not agree with an official’s decisions.  This is a clear statement of who decides and how decisions are made.

The recall process, though distracting, does not disrupt the proper and regular business of a school board.  It is intended to cause a change in who decides and potentially what is decided.  In the mean time, timely decisions of the school board, such as approving budgets, procuring school supplies and approving payment of bills, hiring and employing school personnel, legislating policy, and approving school calendars, go on.

Contrary to statutory change, disruption and chaos are intended to make the confrontation of loud voices the new “who decides” what is taught and how it is taught for school district decisions.  Already I observe school board presidents ending board meetings without completing a posted agenda because of a hostile take over the board room.  I read of agendas being changed to avoid items of controversy.  I read that boards are limiting or eliminating opportunities for their community to speak at board business meetings.  Board members report being threatened at their meetings, their places of business, and at home by those in disagreement with them.  Each of these reactions is counter to the statutory duties of a school board but deemed necessary at the time.

Although Thomas Jefferson wrote, “A little rebellion now and then can be a good thing”, he did not advocate an abandonment of majority rule, representative government, or approval of mob rule.  Making a clear and cogent argument is one thing; closing down the meeting where arguments are to be presented is quite different.

Is This The New Normal of School Governance: Children Pay Attention To This

The consequence of disrupting the business of a school board is not just a change of decisions.  The unintended/intended outcomes assure that the next crucial and controversial decision of the district will not be decided by the board but by the presence of loud and disruptive voices  It is probable that any group adopting these strategies will be able to force the elected representatives of school government to accommodate their demands if the board is to conduct its required business.  

At the end of the day, adults in the community must remember that our children are watching.  What and how we teach them in the school house matters a great deal to their continuing education.  What and how adults behave in the business of the school house matters a great deal to how these children will behave as citizens of the future.  An unintended consequence of disruptive and chaotic behavior is to teach that our children that disruptive behavior is an accepted norm.

“Soft” Proficiency of a Pandemic Graduate

Posted on by
Reply

A graduate of the Class of 21 sporting a 3.7 gpa, including As and Bs in four AP courses, was told by his university advisor that his placement test scores were so low that he is required to complete high school geometry and writing courses before he can enroll in a university math or English course.  His high school counselor had spoken of college credit being awarded for his AP course completions – no credit was awarded.  Is this an anomaly or an academic injury of the pandemic?  What was the balance of academic rigor, grading, and proficiency when students were bouncing between remote and in-person instruction?  Is a pandemic graduate “softly” prepared for life after high school?

There are no immediate, incontrovertible answers.  Several may apply.  An answer is that this high school graduate did not achieve enduring content knowledge or skills resulting from his curricular instruction during his K-12 education.  His gpa may reflect the aggregate of his formative test scores and not the level of his summative learning.  A lower level of resilient knowledge and skill can accrue from surface-level learning.

An answer is that this graduate is not a good test taker and/or did not understand the importance of college placement tests.  Some students perform better on daily schoolwork and formative assessments than they perform on “on demand” test dates.  ACT and college placement tests are not like usual in-course tests or even semester exams in high school.  They are high stakes tests resulting in scores that affect a student’s post-test options.  For this reason alone, many take and re-take ACT exams.

An answer is that the learning in the recent junior and senior years has produced a “softer”, less rigorous graduate than in years past.  Three semesters of remote teaching and learning allowed juniors and seniors to “skate” through courses.  In some instances, online course testing was open book because there was no way for the instructor to do otherwise.  Homework was collected but because many students lacked consistent tech connections leading to missing submissions, daily accountability for learning was hit and miss.  My conversation with the 3.7 gpa grad confirmed that accountability, even in AP courses, was diminished.  He did the minimum and it was minimal.

A “soft”proficiency provides a student with credit for accomplishment without the requisite evidence of content or skill achievement. 

We are seeing a parallel softness in grade advancement in elementary and middle school.  Predictably, academic assessments in September showed more children below the 50th percentile and more below the 25th than in past years.  Pandemic teaching and learning did not produce pre-pandemic results.  However, these children advanced a grade level in the PK-12 ladder just as seniors graduated in June 2021.  Credit for accomplishment of the school year was granted.

Not all was lost for a graduating senior.  My 3.7 gpa friend is much more prepared for college than friends in prior graduating classes.  His junior and senior courses gave him real experience with schooling in a college-like time frame.  He did not rise and go to school every day.  He was online and connected only when scheduled.  He was responsible for submitting assignments on his own – perhaps a downfall in his case.  He was personally accountable for his learning.  Other friends told me stories of their junior and senior years being college-like in the absence of daily class period structure, face-to-face contact with teachers, and being personally responsible for submitting assignments.  Almost every conversation contained the double-edged realization: “Freedom from class periods is great!  My schoolwork is not a rigorous and my work on my assignments is not as complete as it used to be”.  In essence, a pandemic education gave them strong insight into college education, for better or worse.

My advice to my 3.7 gpa friend is in a golfer’s analogy.  “Play the ball where it lies.  There are no mulligans.”  Your end game is a degree in engineering.  The “lie” you find yourself in is very playable, just longer and slightly off course from your goal.  Your goal is very achievable.  You learned many of the challenges of a college education in high school.  Use all your skills and experiences now to achieve your college goals.  Be a post-pandemic college graduate and engineer.

Shifting from Extra-ordinary Connecting with Children to Extra-ordinary Instruction of Children

Posted on by
Reply

The front line of school workers will be among the quiet and unheralded heroes of 2020-21, a year of extra-ordinary schoolwork.  Their ranks include teachers who connected with at-home learners using everything from high tech virtual classrooms to low tech US mail exchange of school work, food service personnel who assured each child at home of a daily school meal(s), and school secretaries who were  the “first face” in every school, parent, and child interaction.  The pictures of bus drivers cloaked in plastic drove home the point that if a bus driver is ill the entire bus route may be left at home.  Extra-ordinary work done by extra-ordinary school staff.

The need for extra-ordinary schoolwork continues.   While we feared ill health in 20-21, we indeed suffered ill learning that school year in the learning that prepares all children for their next years of learning.  Call it lost learning or missed learning, there are curricular content and skill gaps that must be remedied while at the same time assuring completion of the 21-2 curricula of content and skills.  This requires extra-ordinary teaching skills and strategies.

Why?  Is there an urgency that compels us to make all children whole in their K-12 learning?  You bet there is.  To generalize the urgency, the compassionate memory of the world at large will not give children in school today a pass or a “that’s okay” on their lack of educational proficiency just because these children lost out on their usual instruction and learning in 2019-20 and 2020-21 and perhaps 2021-22.  The world of post-high school education and work expects children to be ready and if not, the world will penalize them.  If our children are not prepared, they will lose out.

The extra-ordinary skills and strategies we need in 21-22 are:

  • evaluation,
  • diagnosis of needs,
  • prescriptive instruction, and
  • specific assessment of implicit learning on a student-by-student basis. 

Evaluation is our collective understanding of each child’s current education proficiency levels in each of their grade level curricular studies.  This is both objective and subjective evaluation.  Not only is this an evaluation of how well a second grader reads, writes, and solves math problems, but an analysis of the content they learned at grade level – social studies, literature, science.  It includes their skills and understandings in art, music, and technology.  Without this evaluation, there will be substantive holes in student learning.  A child who did not receive direct and implicit instruction in fractions in fourth grade in the second semester of 2020 had trouble with remote math instruction in 20-21 and will have continuing trouble in 21-22.  Algebra will be a complete mystery.  The lost or inadequate instruction of those time periods must be made whole.  We need to know what was lost or inadequate in each child’s education.

The diagnosis of needs is our school-wide strategy for how to make all children whole.  The diagnosis must be school-wide and encompass the totality of a child’s curriculum.  Part of the diagnosis is identifying when and how in 21-22 or 22-23 a child receives missed or inadequate teaching in the scaffolding of curricular instruction.  Diagnosis strengthens time and effort in the “next” instruction.  Or, diagnosis determines that certain skills and content must be learned now, right now, because next learning requires a level of student proficiency.  School-wide diagnosis assures that core academics did not crowd out special subjects, like art, music, second language, and technology.  Diagnosis also generates a plan to be shared with parents so that school and home have a collaborative understanding of how a child’s education will survive the pandemic.

Prescription is a teacher’s function.  Only a classroom teacher can determine the instruction needed by each child to make them whole in their grade level proficiencies and the instruction that can be grouped or that must be individualized.  And most importantly, only a teacher provides the implicit instructional needs of our most challenged learners.  In 21-22 most school children, not just those with special education requirements, need a personalized education plan.  For some, their personalized plan may be very brief, for example, language mechanics, the reciprocal nature of ratios, and applying proper pressure to a mound of clay on a pottery wheel.  A plan must address all the child’s curricula.  Another child’s personalized plan may be more extensive, including proper pronunciation of specific phonemes, increasing sight word vocabulary, subject-predicate agreement, long division, chronology of major events in US history, sight reading music notes, and proportionality in an art drawing.  Every child requires a plan for us to make their pandemic education whole.

Instruction cannot be the same old-same old.  Whole group instruction will be less effective in meeting the myriad of student plans and individualized or small group instruction will be more effective.  Instructional aides and assistants helping in classrooms can give children the personal comment, correction, and reinforcement needed to fulfill their personal plans.  The prescriptive work required is more than a teacher alone can or should handle.  Strategies for co-teaching and sharing aides and assistants across classrooms will bring the most effective hands-on instruction to more children.  Strategies for grouping and regrouping children according to the needs of their personal plans are required.  The curricular calendar will not linear; it will be multi-layered and reflexive.

Only through re-assessments will we know when a child has filled in missing or lost learning of content and skills.  Check testing and spot-testing will be a common event each week.  Usual formative and summative assessments will be used to assure learning of the planned 21-22 curricula, but those will not include the elements of instruction from the 19-20 and 20-21 school years.  The calendar will be dotted with specific assessment of the implicit instruction in every student’s personal learning plan.

Extra-ordinary is by definition unusual.  “Extra” connotes more or something uniquely different in quantity and quality.  During the 21-22 school year, children require uniquely different amounts and kinds of instruction to bring the education of all children to the achievement levels the future will require of them.  Extra is what it will take to prevent these children from being known for their lifetime as pandemic school children.

Improving Reading is like “Trouble With The Curve” – Current Players Are Not Prepared To Do It

Posted on by
Reply

Educators statewide should applaud parents, educators, and legislators in Wisconsin who are advancing AB 446.  The proposed legislation will strongly improve the state mandates for assessment of reading readiness and reading proficiency for all our youngest learners.  The current mandates are weak and ineffective; AB 446 is robust in its requirements.  Proponents of the legislation are impassioned for these changes.  As expected, there is opposition to doing what is right.  Legislators claim the bill to be an unfunded mandate ignoring the current state funding given to districts for this very purpose.  Political opposition for opposition’s sake.

Parallel to AB 446 we need the President of our University of Wisconsin System to acknowledge and remedy the companion problem causing children to fail as proficient readers.  Educator preparation programs in Wisconsin do not teach prospective teachers to teach reading.  I overuse the term “teach” on purpose.  Reading is not a natural skill set; it is learned.  Proficiency in reading is yet more difficult; it must be taught.  Teachers must be taught to teach children to be proficient readers. 

Take note:  A person who can read proficiently is not prepared to teach a child to be a proficient reader.  The set of reading skills we want all children to learn and use is complex and compound.  There is a clear and distinct science underlying proficient reading.  Many children obtain these complex and compound skills through a combination of untargeted instruction and the opportunity to read.  However, more than 50% of children in Wisconsin do not.  Data support this statement.  A majority of children in Wisconsin are not proficient readers and are not prepared to be critical readers for the decades of their future lives.

Why is this?

For lovers of the “the game”, Clint Eastwood’s Trouble With The Curve (2012) highlighted the difficulty of finding baseball players with requisite talent for playing in the big leagues.  A power hitter can feast on fastballs, but throw him a curve and he will walk slowly to the bench.  The game requires talented players who can hit the irregular pitch.

Children need teachers who are prepared to teach all children to be proficient readers because they are trained to hit the curves of children who present challenges in their mastery of reading skills.  Our current teacher preparation programs do not do this.  Our colleges of education must strengthen teacher preparation with requirements in –

  • Phonemic awareness
  • Decoding skills
  • Word sight recognition

combined with

  • Background knowledge
  • Vocabulary development
  • Knowledge and use of language structures
  • Skills of verbal reasoning
  • ELA literacy

Check the transcript of a graduate of a WI-system college of education and look for this preparation.  It is not there.

For AB 446 to be effective, it must be paired with improved teacher skills in the teaching of proficient reading.  As with the legislation, this needed improvement bangs against the status quo and proponents of the status quo oppose changes in our teacher preparation programs.  Such institutional thinking and behavior is arcane and archaic.  This is why the action of the President of the UW-System is required.  He can mandate change. 

If we are to hit the curve of reading proficiency challenges and use the assessment data handed us by AB 446, we need players/teachers who are prepared and do not have trouble with the curve.

Veteran Professional Teachers Don’t Grow On Trees

Posted on by
Reply

I am of an age when most of my teacher friends are veterans of several decades in their classrooms.  They are veterans in the sense that their real-life teaching careers span years of daily teaching and working with children in school classrooms.  I like them for their commitment to the time and place of classroom teaching.  Teaching is their calling; more than their job.  Among those veterans also are teachers who are consummate professionals.  Not only have they worked their decades, but they also grew professionally in their understanding and skillfulness as teachers.  They are seasoned and constantly improved teachers.  This is no accident but the result of their commitment to be better teachers over time.  I like them for their time, but I love them for their commitment to the art and science of being a better teacher.  These teachers do not grow on trees.

Better with age applies to somethings but not all.  Sometimes aging is just what it is and things grow old.  Food suppliers label perishables with “Best to use by” dates because food spoils, milk sours, and tastes go flat.  We often hear a person say that something is aging like good wine.  It is interesting that aging without use may improve its value, but once opened for consumption and not enjoyed in its time wine can lose its taste and go bad.  Aging alone is not improvement.

A constant consideration of how teaching causes children to learn and consistent improvement of the relationship between teaching and learning are true measures of veteran professionals.  They enter the profession with a beginner’s tool box of teaching skills.  Year after year they use and test their teaching abilities.  It is perfect and safe to say that the best teaching skills are complex and compound.  One lesson prepares children to learn while another provides foundational instruction.  A next lesson secures initial learning and the one that follows builds more content and skill.  A subsequent lesson is a quick check to substantiate that each child is learning the right things and the following lesson reinforces what has been learned.  Each lesson in turn exercises acquired and refined teaching strategies.  While all of these are described in literature and taught in educator preparation programs, it is only when a teacher uses them in the classroom year after year that they become the tools of a veteran professional.  Veteran professionals grow their complex and compound teaching skills carefully, with use, and over time.

The use of teaching skills is not mechanical and automatic.  Children are a constantly moving target and causing one child to learn does not always equate to causing another child to learn or a whole class to learn.  Each child is her own mystery and veteran teachers mull over options for teaching to find the right instruction that will cause each “mystery” to learn.  They consider and apply complex and compound teaching skills to what each child needs to learn successfully.  Children present themselves as hard and soft targets for teaching.  The hard target is their capacity in learning a school curriculum – prescribed content, skills, and collaborative and collegial relationships.  The soft target is the social-emotional personality of a child that affects her readiness and capacity to engage in learning.   Veteran professionals constantly look at the two-faced nature of children as learners.

This focus is a distinguishing trait.  Where less skillful teachers teach a lesson to the class, veteran professionals teach lessons within lessons to each child in a class.

To do this, veteran professionals have made data their friend and informant.  They don’t wait until the end of a school year or a quarter or even until the end of a unit of instruction to study data resulting from their teaching.  They look at it constantly.  Formative data is collected and analyzed daily.  Formative data directs tomorrow’s teaching.  Summative data is collected in chunks over time and provides a holistic assessment of how well a child or all children are learning an annual or a grade band’s curriculum.  Veteran professionals also look at the emotional data on the faces of each child.  Is this child engaged and learning?  Is this child being properly challenged with my instruction?  Is this child engaging with classmates?  What is happening in the life of this child that affects how she is in my classroom?  What do these data tell me I need to do next?  Veteran professionals have unofficial degrees in child psychology and sociology that are exercised every day in their teaching.

Veteran professional teachers are the motors that run our schools and advance the education of our children.  This was never more apparent than in the early days of the pandemic.  Panic was widespread when school campuses closed, teachers taught from home, and children were at-home learners.  No teacher preparation readied us for this.  Without fail, veteran professionals paused, grabbed the available technologies, and displayed a “we can do this” attitude to challenges that were changing daily.  They adapted, adopted, adjusted, and taught their children.  It is foolish to say that remote teaching and learning achieved the results possible with in-person teaching and learning.  It is praiseworthy to say that professional veterans led the charge in connecting with remote children, providing daily instruction that kept children learning every day of the school year, and made proverbial lemonade from the lemons the pandemic dealt them.

Professional veteran teachers do not grow on trees.  They rise out of the recently hired teachers and announce themselves with their attitudes and actions.  School leaders who know that all teachers are not created equally see these young stars immediately.  They have an air of humility tinged with a pride of work connected to the knowledge they can do even better.  They possess and demonstrate an innate capacity to teach that goes far beyond what they learned in college classes and student teaching.  Other teachers recognize them, also. 

These young professionals are drawn to each other in their formative years and school leaders observe that they form their own cadres of peers – they know who they are, no labeling is necessary.  If allowed, these teacher partnerships become the backbone of professional strength in a school.  On many issues, the best school leaders support their developing young professionals and get out of their way.

In summary, every school has its veteran teachers, those who have been on staff for years.  Veteran teachers give schools continuity.  There is a significant difference though between a veteran who has taught the same lessons year after year and a professional veteran who has grown her teaching skills year after year.  It returns us to the characterization of aging.  Veteran teachers who do the same things year after year – they age and add a number to their years of experience.  Their school remains, like them, the same over time.  Professional veterans who constantly grow their skills, behaviors and push for constant improvement cause their school to be, like them, a constantly improving school over time. 

Each conversation with these professional veteran teacher friends reminds me of the school treasures they are.