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Reading Wars Redux – A Good Fight

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We are a contentious lot – people in general, that is.  It is not that people like to fight, I hope, but that they will rise to the occasion.  There are many arguments in the realm of public education and the pandemic fueled these and bred even more.  I write this morning about one that has history, many bouts, and still rages. It is a good and worthy engagement in public education measured by the distance between the opposing forces and the significant differences in outcomes should one side prevail.  This is the Reading Wars Saga Redux.

A reader may snub this this post believing that the Reading Wars are old news, a story that is put to rest.  But, it is not.  Three key points make the Reading Wars more than relevant today.  They are:

  • In the absence of daily in-person reading instruction during the pandemic, we need the most effective and efficient reading strategy to cause all children to be proficient readers.  This is more that compensatory, because children in K-3 who missed 30 months of direct reading instruction are in danger of a lifetime of ineffective language acquisition skills and reading behavior.
  • Public education sermonizes the need for all children to be well-educated, yet categorizes a percentage of children as learning challenged.  The achievement gap between non-categorized and categorized children is clearly demonstrated in their reading proficiency.  A strategy that will cause categorized children to acquire language and read and write with equivalency to non-categorized children compels us to consider that strategy for all children.
  • The status quo in the Reading Wars is not based upon the merits of an argument but upon the politics of state legislation.  Once again, money plus lobbying causes legislation and policy decisions not the righteousness of an argument.

Two sides stand in opposition regarding the teaching of reading, the Reading Wars Saga redux in Wisconsin, and it is important for any person concerned with educating children to understand the battle line.  I use the singular battle line, because I find the arguments boil down to a single question.  Shall educators use the understandings and instructional strategies of the Science of Reading (SoR) to teach reading and language acquisition to children or not?  There is not an argument for other strategies for the teaching of reading.  Those strategies are an amalgamation of ideas and approaches for the teaching of reading, usually encompassed as whole language or blended reading.  No, the issue is whether we will use the phonics-based strategies of SoR.  It is the same argument of the 1980s and 1990s Reading Wars grown up, because we know much more about reading and language acquisition today than we knew in the last century. 

I point to the Institute for Multi-Sensory Education (IMSE) for an example of SoR.  This document summarizes the approaches of SoR that are pertinent to the argument.  There are many others – I picked this.

What is the Science of Reading?

At the heart of SoR are a child’s abilities to encode sounds into words and decode words into sounds and from these abilities acquire vocabulary, learn to spell, learn to read complex and complicated text, and to write with fluency.  Children who cannot encode and decode reading and language are exiled to a life of frustration and low achievement in a world that requires literacy.

When I ask someone who opposes SoR why they do so, two statements invariably are heard.  Phonics-based instruction requires drilling in the sounds and spellings of phonemes and morphemes and some children are put off by this repetition.  They are bored.  And, some children can learn to read naturally – just let them read and guide their reading as it grows.  Schools have adopted complete reading programs based upon not boring children and the belief that with minimal foundational skills and maximal reading opportunities children will become successful readers.

Is that it?  Yep, that is the long and short of an argument.

On the other hand, SoR speaks of foundational encoding and decoding skills for all children, especially those who have learning challenges or whose early home life does not present much reading encouragement or whose natural abilities satisfy primary grade reading material but struggle with more complex vocabulary and language in the secondary grades. 

In simple terms, SoR teaches children phonemic awareness of sound-letter correlations, to use phonetic patterns to understand and use regular and irregular words, to read and pronounce words with fluency, to build complex and technical vocabulary based upon phonetic patterns, and the comprehend the meaning of words and word families.  This is a structured approach that is individualized to a child’s learning needs.

Therein lies a compelling difference in the argument about reading instruction.  Shall we leave success to each child’s native abilities and opportunities presented at home and school when then are young or shall we instruct every child with the skills to read and understand language for a lifetime? 

In the 1990s the forces in Wisconsin for blended and whole language moved the state legislature to adopt language favoring non-phonics-based reading instruction.  A simple phrase in the WI Stat 18.19 says that teacher preparation shall include phonics-based reading, but that a course is phonics-based reading is not required.  Over the past 30 years teachers in our state’s teacher prep programs have received such nominal instruction in phonics-based reading that when asked to describe encoding and decoding skills, phonemic awareness, and linguistics, most cannot.  Elementary teachers today are illiterate regarding the SoR.  Sadly, legislation and lobbying efforts against SoR stymy teacher education.

Educational data, especially data that is disaggregated, describes a flattening of reading achievement in Wisconsin over the past fifteen years.  Whole language and blended reading instruction cause some children to succeed as readers, but less than half of all children can achieve proficiency in reading or language assessments on state assessments.  And, children with learning disabilities invariably achieve at a basic or minimal level.  When we disaggregate the data, we find that children with dyslexia not only do not achieve, they decline in achievement over time and educationally “die” in frustration.  Our systems are not working for all children.

This is a good fight in the non-combative and non-life-threatening struggles of the public education Wisconsin provides to all enrolled children.  Shall all children learn to read?  All children not just those who can read without explicit instruction.  Shall state legislation and teacher preparation programs be reformed to endorse SoR or will they continue with a status quo of minimal and selective achievement?  It is fight for the future of our children.

Assure There Will Be No Yada Yada in September

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Gut-check time.  A gut-check is a moment of reflection, introspection, clarity, and commitment.  This September, when schools return to as close to normal as they have been in 18 months, when the need for a remote education has been eased by vaccination, and school activity levels rise nearly to pre-pandemic engagement, we, public schools, need to do a gut-check of our priorities.  After becoming what we are not, closed and diminished campuses for child education, what is it that we want to be in the new normal?

Try these small checks.

  • Re-examine your school mission statement and educational objectives.  Mission and objectives are designed as the philosophic base for your school’s educational programming.  Read the entire statement beginning to end.  I did and I heard Elaine from Seinfeld muttering “Yada, yada, yada” in my ears.  Thinking maybe it was just my district’s document, I read the position statements of other regional districts and Elaine was in my ears again and again. 

What safely worded drivel!  We “encourage” and “ provide opportunity for” generalized educational achievements that prepare our students and graduates for a world we only think we apprehend.  Or, for the world we, as current adult school leaders, live in today.  We “enhance” and “aspire” and “hope” children will be these things.  And, then we shoot for average, state or national statistics, that we know from the beginning of our hopes are below par.  Weak verbs leading to weak outcomes. Drivel now and when we wrote it.

Is this the best we can be in our time of renewal?  Is this best we can do?

  • Reread your curriculum guides.  To what extent are the outcomes of each instructional unit compelling and a demonstration of significant learning growth?  Or, are they statements of things done, time spent, a check list checked off?

Children in remote education engaged in too much non-compelling curricula, especially when instruction included lengthy screen time, and expectations were set at the “just get it done” level of performance.  Such was education in a pandemic.

I observed flashes of strong teaching and learning from individual teachers using highly interactive, daily connection with remote children in the 20-21 school year.  There were “All Star” teachers working in a completely foreign school environment who caused their children to learn.  However, there were many more examples of classrooms where minimum was all that was given and all that was required.

That can not be the case in September.  Compelling engagement and strong demonstration of learning must describe our new requirements not just expectations.  If we, and there is no reason to, continue with pandemic-level teaching and learning in September, apathetic and lethargic student engagement in remote education will be our new normal. 

  • Realign your programming.  Remote education caused schools to prioritize reading, mathematics and academic book subjects and to minimize or eliminate instruction that required hands-on and one-to-one interaction, such as art, music, foreign language, and technical education. 

Prior to September, rebuild your capacity for total programming.  Daily instruction in the total curricular program must be visible in the school schedules made public in July and August.  Equity must be apparent, not a valued and devalued set of programs.  Don’t wait until September. 

Totality of programming includes the arts, athletics, and student activities.  While classes may begin in late August or early September, fall sports, theater, and marching and pep band begin weeks before.  Get in front of all 21-22 programming with new, inclusive, high requirement statements of learning and performance outcomes. 

This is not an attempt at a “best we can be or do” question.  It is a “we must be better” imperative.  If we cannot be compelling and strong in our requirements, COVID will have caused another pandemic fatality – public education.

Every organization must do its own gut-check as it emerges from the Time of COVID.  Some organizations will not survive the pandemic.  Schools will.  Our gut-check must be a matter of conscience.  We will not be guilt-driven but conscience-compelled to be better than we were in the pandemic but also better than were pre-pandemic.

The purpose of gut-checking is not an organizational selfie.  Gut-checks clarify what was and define what must be.  It is time to be better!

School Board Work Is A Wonderful Responsibility

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To each person duly elected to the local school board, I say “Welcome.  Today you will begin to see, listen to, and think about school in an entirely new dimension.  Engage with fellow board members in a thoughtful discussion of how your board will meet its responsibilities to educate all children.  Then, get to know your school from the inside out.  We have a lot to learn and talk about.” 

An introduction to the school board was not always like this.

A few years back a newly elected school board member was chastised by the board president for visiting school classrooms and talking with teachers.  He was told, “Follow the chain of command.  Board members speak with the superintendent.  The superintendent speaks with principals and other administrators.  Principals and other administrators speak with teachers and other employees.  Don’t violate this chain for command”.  A conversation with the executive director of the state’s school board association confirmed this absurdity.  “Follow the chain of command”, he advised, “it exists for a purpose.”

And, they also should have said, “Take a firm grip on your rubber stamp, because the limiting funnel of information allowed through such a command structure will require little to no discussion by board members.  One voice.  One interpretation of information.  No discussion necessary.”

How absurd and how wrong! 

A quick review of state statutes describing the duties of a school board member disabused this new board member of what the president and executive director said.  The statutes contain no such limitations on the scope of a board member’s interaction with the district’s schools.    Our statutes tell us that our duties, among others, include these:

120.12 School board duties. The school board of a common or union high school district shall:

(1) MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOL DISTRICT. Subject to the authority vested in the annual meeting and to the authority and possession specifically given to other school district officers, have the possession, care, control and management of the property and affairs of the school district, except for property of the school district used for public library purposes under s. 43.52.

(2) GENERAL SUPERVISION. Visit and examine the schools of the school district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/120.pdf

Any board policies or regulations restricting a board member’s interactions are not founded in statute and are propagated only to protect an antiquated concept of the status quo.  The only valid admonition is a board member must refrain from discussion that might compromise the board member’s future role should the board meet in a judicial hearing.  For example, don’t engage in discussion of a specific employee’s work performance or a specific student’s discipline record.  A Board may fulfill its statutory role in hearing a case related to employee termination or student expulsion and the prior discussions of these by a board member may compromise the board member’s capacity to be objectively neutral. 

Better rules to follow are – “Treat everyone, adult and child, with integrity and respect.  Be informed.  Be a voice for the future of all children.  You are a legislator not an administrator.”

  • Integrity and respect are gold standards for boardsmanship.  Each person you speak with requires these two qualities from you.  No matter the person’s role in school – parent, student, teacher, custodian, administrator, community taxpayer – that person has a legitimate claim to your attention.  You are that person’s representative on the school board.  The integrity and respect you demonstrate sets the role model standard for the school district.  If integrity and respect are not present at the school board, how can you expect them be present anywhere else in the school?
  • Integrity and respect are demonstrated by listening rather than talking.  You want to understand their perspective not overlay your own.  You can do that at the board table.  Integrity is demonstrated by sharing the multiple perspectives you have heard.  Integrity is making fact-based decisions and holding to a decision as long as the facts support a decision.  And, when the facts do not support a decision, adjusting the decision to reflect new facts. 
  • Board members need first-hand information.  The old chain of command assured that most information was second- and third-hand.  Create your information base by proactively visiting classrooms to observe instruction, the use of curricular materials, and student and teacher interaction.  I call this “perching”.  You are not in a classroom to interact or participate, but to see and listen and feel.  However, if the teacher invites your participation, do not hesitate.  Enjoy the moment.

Engage in hearty discussions about employment policies, responsibilities and expectations, and practices.  Gain firsthand information about the school environment from an employee and student perspective.  See teachers, aides, district and school office staff, kitchen and food service, custodians and maintenance staff, bus drivers, and coaches, directors and advisors doing their work. 

Then, with respect and integrity, share your information appropriately at the board table. 

https://www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorArticle.aspx?id=13914
  • Your real constituency is the children of the school.  You may be elected from a precinct or supported in your election by voters who favor certain programs or want specific changes and improvements in the school district.  However, your focus should always be on the quality education of all children, emphasis on all.  When the board is called upon to vote on a matter, your vote is powerful.  Of all the voices speaking to the matter, when the votes are tallied, only board voices/votes are counted.  Make your vote stand for the highest quality of programming your schools can provide to all children.
  • You are a legislator not an administrator.  Board members work with policies stemming from the mission and goals of the school district.  Affirm policies that are creating desired school district outcomes and amend or delete policies that are not.  When in the school, watch, listen and feel – don’t direct.  You have no authority to tell anyone what to do.  That is a role of school administration and supervision. 

Leadership Longevity Is Tenuous

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(This article was first posted in 2015. It remains germane to day.)

Leaders, who are not self-employed, live in a fragile world of employment security made increasingly more tenuous with each passing year. Making a career as a leader is a role to which many aspire but few will achieve longevity. Their reality is that leadership is the art of swimming in deep water while carrying the weight of their decisions. The sign on the leader’s office door says, “No lifeguards on duty.”

In The Anguish of Leadership (2000), Jerry Patterson describes a leader as a person always swimming in deep water. At the beginning of his tenure, a leader swims quite well. He enjoys the honeymoon of employment when his employers and most employees wish him well and their support gives him buoyancy. Also, his pockets are empty. He has no experiential record, good or bad, in this employment.

I paraphrase Abraham Lincoln with “You can be successful with all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot be successful with all the people all the time.” Every time a leader is unsuccessful, a rock is placed in the leader’s pocket. Events that are hugely unsuccessful load in larger and heavier rocks. And, rocks in the pockets make it increasingly more difficult to swim in deep water. On the positive side, rocks may be taken out of his pockets by professional successes. Interestingly, there is no correspondence between the rocks taken out for a success and rocks placed in for a failure; the rocks of failure are heavier and more numerous than the rocks of success.

Adding a second paraphrase, this from John Wayne in Big Jake, “ … my fault, your fault, nobody’s fault, I am going to hold you responsible.” Patterson believes that a leader’s professional well-being is affected by the successes and failures of everyone in the business for whom he is responsible. When a subordinate is unsuccessful, rocks may be placed in that person’s pockets but always some rocks will be placed in the leader’s pockets. When President Truman placed his famous “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his White House desk, he also was saying “This is my rock pile – all grievances, disagreements, and disenchantments with my leadership go here.”

Eventually, Patterson writes, the total weight of the rocks in his pocket will pull almost every leader under the water. Or, the constant burden of swimming with heavy rocks in his pocket wears down the leader and he succumbs. Few leaders escape significant drowning as they work through their careers. Some leaders will re-emerge in a similar leadership position in a different organization and many may enact a resurrection several times over the length of their career, but almost all will drown once.

Head coaches for professional sports teams are a case in point. As the person leading a professional team, the coach is ultimately responsible for the success of the team as expressed in the team’s win and loss record. Wins are good and losses are “rocks”. Too few wins and too many losses creates a heavy pocket of rocks. On Monday, December 29, the day after the final game of the 2014 National Football League season, four head coaches and two general managers were fired. Each had accumulated too many rocks in their pockets. 2014 is not unique. The average tenure of a head coach in the NFL is 2.39 years. The average tenure in the National Hockey League is 3.0 years, 3.03 in the National Basketball Association and 3.8 years for Major League Baseball head coaches. Leaders drown in the deep water of professional sports every year and sometimes at mid-season.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-02-29/managers-coaches-tenure/53376918/1

Public education is no different. The keeping of wins and losses is not as dramatic in education as it is in sports, but school leaders are handed rocks just as often as head coaches. The average tenure of a school district superintendent is 5.5 years. The rocks for urban, super-large districts are heavier. Their average tenure is 3.3 years. Approximately 15% of all superintendents professionally drown each year.

http://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=740

Superintendents are hired and drown in the shadow of the Lincoln paraphrasing. Few are fired due to a criminal act or professional malpractice. These do happen, but they are rare. The great majority of drownings are the result of a general loss of confidence in the superintendent. A loss of confidence may occur with major stakeholders in the school district, such as parent groups or special interest groups. These groups control large piles of rocks. Local religious and business leaders have their own stockpile of rocks. Students, the most important group of people in a school district, also control rocks albeit smaller rocks. And, of course, the confidence of the Board of Education is essential. When the Board loses confidence in the superintendent a professional drowning is soon to follow.

A superintendent making important decisions for a school district will inextricably offend some rock holders even with the best of decisions. It is a fact of life for a leader. Creating smaller class sizes is a good thing for students, teachers and most parents, but it stirs the rocks of taxpayers who object to increased costs. Cutting costs is a good thing for taxpayers, but diminishing the resources for schools and classrooms stirs the rocks of the teacher’s union and PTAs. Allowing school events on Wednesday evenings wins the admiration of sports and fine arts fans who enjoy more games and concerts, but it raises the rock throwing ire of church leaders who lose time for religious education generally held on that night of the week. No matter, rocks find their way into the pockets of every school leader and even the best eventually sink lower and lower into Jerry Patterson’s deep end of the pool.

So, knowing the reality of a leader’s professional world, those who aspire to be leaders, those who are still above water in the deep end of the leadership pool, and those who employ leaders should honor Robert Herrick’s verse to The Virgins. Leaders must lead as well as they are able to and for as long as they are able to remain above water because no leader survives the eventual weight of the rocks in his pockets.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles to-day

Tomorrow will be dying.

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/virgins-make-much-time

Change And Institutionalization Are Inevitable

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A constant tension exists in every organization for persons who see a need for change.  How can I cause necessary change in the window of time that change requires before I become institutionalized and part of the status quo?  Change takes time.  Time creates status quo.  Ugh!

What do we know?

Change is a constant.  It happens all the time and everywhere in our world.  The more we think things are staying the same, the more naïve we are about our world.  What seems to be staying the same actually is in a slower motion compared to other things that are changing more rapidly. 

Change is a dynamic of motion, sometimes slow and evolutionary and sometimes immediate and revolutionary.  Yet, everything is in motion relative to its momentary position.

Change can be a pendulum swinging over a more normal status.  They direction of swing is not just back and forth, but also elliptical.  We feel the change when the pendulum swings beyond the center or area of normalcy one way or the other and we feel normal when it swings back toward and over the center.

Though revolutionary change can be quick in terms of time, quick change can cause unanticipated consequences.  Some the of the unanticipated outcomes may be less desirable than the pre-revolutionary status.  Revolutionary change can have a life of its own.

Though evolutionary change can be slow and inevitable, it experiences an inertial resistance of the status quo that limits its full potential for change.  Evolutionary change is a series of compromises.

Yesterday’s change is today’s institution.  Every significant and successful change redefines the institution until the institution looks like the change.  Institutionalization is as inevitable as the motion of change.

What more do we know?

Planned change is a bumpy road.  Planned change experiences immediate opposition from the status quo.  Stalwarts of the status quo and doomsayers oppose change that upsets their normal.  Often the opposition to change is so strong that it not only defeats change, but moves the institution backwards.  If that resistance can be overcome, there is a brief acceptance lull.  This feels like “wait and see”.  The second bump in the change effort is the learning curve.  Planned change requires new behaviors, new attitudes and dispositions, and new skill sets.  Sometimes, new people.  It takes time for new behaviors, dispositions, and skills to be learned and new learning always experiences unsuccessful initial learning and a need for second-instruction.  More ugh!  This is all uphill work against the inertia of the past.  Once “new” is learned, there is trial and error time.  This is a series of less severe bumps.  Working with the newness will expose its problems and “See, I told you so” from recalcitrants.  Objective and subjective data is required to demonstrate that what is new is better than what was old.  Eventually, the “working it out” brings back some of the old to be mixed in with the new resulting a hybrid that is mostly new.  Voila!  Change.

How does this play out?

Consider the evolutionary change in the automotive industry from gas-powered to battery-powered motors.  This change may seem revolutionary, but it has been in the making for decades.  With a step back, one can observe initial opposition, a break through in technology, a wait and see, slow learning of new attitudes about cars, changing skill sets within the industry, compromising with hybrids, a second break out with more commitment, and, voila! – change in the industry.

Planned change with its calendar of initial presentation, resistance, learning curve, adaptation, and institutionalization takes approximately seven to eight years start to finish.  Changing things is easier.  Changing people and their behaviors is harder and takes a lot of time, energy, and constancy.

The status quo counts on change agents losing energy because of the opposition of time and the entrenched past.  Time is not on the side of planned change.  In order to overcome the opposition of time, change agents must engineer micro-changes.  A series of changes, each one a significant change in itself, but just a link in the chain of change, allows change efforts to surpass the usual clock of seven to eight years.

Institutionalization of change agents carries its own clock.  Every person in an institutionalized organization slowly becomes institutionalized.  That process is inevitable.  A rule of thumb is that within five years of accepting an employment assignment the employee is routinized into the status quo of that assignment.  Once institutionalized, change agents are part of the normal and defenders of the usual.  They have been neutralized.

A second rule of thumb is that within five years the institution will weed out revolutionary change agent personnel.  The objective of an institution is stability, predictability, and minimal change.  This definition explains why so many of our social institutions are in trouble.  Life is changing faster and institutional change is slow; they can’t evolve fast enough to be viable servants of their stated missions. 

What does this mean for education?

Change in public education is constantly happening in an evolutionary way.  The world around public education historically exerted a drag effect that moved the institution to change across time.  Slowly and sometimes defiantly.

Integration of schools.  Title IX and girls sports.  Mainstreaming of children with special needs.  EL learners.  School choice, charters, and public support of private schools.  The schools of 2021 are not the schools of 2011, 2001, or 1991.  With hindsight, we can observe the change phenomenon of demand, opposition, acceptance, learning curve, compromising, and creation of a new order within education. 

Schools feel the shift of Republican or Democratic administrations.  Consider how Leave No Child Behind affected teaching and learning and the power of statewide testing.  NCLB was a change or suffer event that slowly was resolved by the recalcitrance of those being asked to change and the anticipated pendulum swing back toward the status quo.  Although NCLB seemed revolutionary, its story was foretold in conservative fiscal policy and perception of public education’s lack of accountability for academic outcomes.  Too much money and too few results.  The concerns have not gone away, only the popular use of NCLB as its title.

Ironically, the more institutional public education acts in opposition to change demands, the more it attracts demands for faster change.  This has been observed in school district policies during the pandemic.  Schools were never just about teaching and learning.  Schools are the nation’s largest day care operators and when schools closed their doors as a pandemic protocol, business, government, and working families became demonstrably oppositional to school policies focused on the safest way to protect children and teachers in a school.  The need for day care was greater than child and teacher health.  Millions of families left public education and may not return when schools are open to in-person teaching and learning.  The institution of public education will be changed by the pandemic in ways we yet do not know.  That story is still playing out. 

The Big Duh!

If you want to be a change agent, understand the dynamics of change theory.  Understand the nature and machinations of the status quo and that institutions are based defined by their status quo.  Understand the calendar for change activity and the calendar of institutionalization.  Understand that revolutionary change brings unanticipated outcomes, hello pandemic.  Understand that planned change and micro-changing can modify our world, hello Tesla.

Above all else, understand that your world is changing and there is nothing you can do about this fact other than understand and work within its phenomenon.  Or, become a revolutionary and look out!