Category Archives: Blog

No Will In USA To Be An International Leader In Student Achievement

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The United States should be a leader on the international scoreboard of student achievement. Instead of dying in the doldrums of mediocrity on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, 37th in math, 18th in science, and 13th in reading (2018 scores), students in the US could be in the top three on each test. Except, there is not a will in the United States to be better than we are. Where there is no will, there is no way.

PISA has been given to 15-year old students in 72 nations every three years since 2000. The rankings compare the mean scores of students in math, science and reading. There is no cumulative score of the three tests to create a national score. Instead, acclaim is given to the nations that cluster at the top of each test. In 2018, the top three nations on each test were China, Singapore, and Macao in that order.

Why is the United States so far down the PISA rosters? Consider the last time you heard your governor or legislative leaders proclaim, “Our state will become a top performer on the PISA tests and rank with the best in the world”. Or, your Senator or Congressman make the same proclamation. Or, the President. Consider the last time your legislature and state department of instruction proclaimed, “We are increasing our mandates in reading, math and science and decreasing mandates in all other subjects to cause our 15-year old students to be world leaders in academic achievement”. These are ways that can cause a change in PISA standings. However, without a will to change these ways will not be found.

Student achievement on an international level is not a national priority in the United States.

On the other hand, education in China, Singapore and Macao, among other nations, is treated as an international competition they can win. High performance on the PISA tests is a national priority. Their leaders proclaim it and their teachers and students are pressed to achieve it.

Old adages pertain when it comes to priorities.

“If you try to be everything to everyone, you’ll be nothing to no one” – McClain. Public education is not hurting for priorities, in fact it has too many priorities. Ask any administrator what their priorities are and he or she will first respond by asking who you are and what your interest is. Everyone who asks represents someone or something that is a priority for the asker. Or, what day is it and what time is it? Priorities are a merry-go-round for school leaders changing on the moment. With so things in our schools proclaimed as priorities, no priority is really achieved. All get their moment of attention.

“Put your money where your mouth is” – Everyone. Education competes with every other governmental program for funding at the federal and state levels. Trends in funding show that dollars for education are relatively soft. Legislators balance annual budgets by giving to or taking from education depending upon sums available. The public knows and accepts with little remonstration that government funding for education is political and subject to annual swings. Educational funding currently is not a tool for increasing the USA’s ranking on PISA.

“Action expresses priorities” – Gandhi. The lack of any action to cause a different result expresses the fact that student performance on international testing is not a priority in the United States. Complaining and bemoaning the United States’ rankings are not actions – they are tokens of a national inaction.

And, therein lies the conundrum. Critics of public education in the United States rightfully express dissatisfaction with this nation’s standing on international assessments like PISA. Yet, there is no will in the United States to take the actions necessary to cause our students to improve their performances. Our results are compatible with the nation’s priorities. Low priorities continue to beget low results.

When Everything Is An Equal Priority, Nothing Is A Priority

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We are the authors of our own slide into mediocrity. We want all our children in all their school programs to be successful – perhaps, equally successful. To make this happen, we give every program all the funding, staffing, supplies and equipment, time and commitment requested to assure that the school board and administration are 100% supportive of everything our students do. Our unwritten mantra is “We will not hold back a dollar if that dollar is the difference between a student having or not having the educational experience he or she wants.” We are providers of educational experience. To paraphrase an older Ford Motors motto, “We will Provide” became our Job #1. We suborned Ford’s statement “Quality is job #1” and, as a result, lost our quality and like any statistic knows it will, we drifted toward the averageness of public education.

Marshall Field, founder of the Chicago department of the same name, created a store-customer ethos based upon this statement. “Give the Lady what she wants.” A happy customer is a return customer. Our school board and administration again paraphrased. “Give students and parents what they want.” Do not argue or cause a school board meeting riot, again.

Our unswerving commitment to providing blinded us to our looking at the qualitative results of the provision. We provided. Voila! Everyone should be happy. The outcomes, however, are not what we expected and we are no longer happy.

Once known around our state as schools of educational excellence, we slipped toward an average benchmarked by an increasing of children whose annual learning achievement is categorized as basic or below basic. Like too many schools in our state, the majority of our children now are not proficient in reading and math. If you prefer reference to grade level – more than half of our children are below grade level in reading and math. We no longer are the top performing schools in our county. Parent conversation about open enrolling to other schools increased, and were those schools not 40 to 65 miles further away for self-transporting parents, more families would have migrated.

Interestingly, all was not totally lost. Our AP-level children continued to take AP courses and AP exams and their success maintained some school reputational luster. But, 90% of the school district’s children are not enrolled in AP classes. And, although the school’s One Act performers have been to the state competition fourteen years in a row with a boatload of honors, most school programs struggle to reach a .500 season.

Our dilemma is this. When everything is of equal importance and requires undebated organizational support, the importance of everything makes nothing important. The graph of priorities is a flat line at the top of the page. When everyone understands that no programs will ever be diminished or eliminated, the discerning edge of organizational scrutiny and evaluation evaporates. And, the overwhelmingness of everything being important flattens teacher, coach, director and advisor efforts to make a difference.

We lost our ethos, that essential, positive spirit within our school that is our unifying focus. “Provision is Job #1” is not a rallying cry.

The loss of school ethos is debilitating. Years ago, the school board’s charge to school leadership was “We provide a private school education in a public school setting.” The hallmark of our private school education was excellence in academics surrounded by extensive arts, activities and athletic opportunities for all all children. That charge was qualitative. A private school education meant that high quality teaching would cause all children to demonstrate high quality learning. Because funding was available, funding would be used judiciously to support high quality teaching, directing, advising, and coaching. And, because we are small schools, we were expected to monitor and adjust annually to ensure we always were pointed toward quality achievements.

The core of our charge was academic success supported by success in the arts, activities and athletics. Our ethos was that quality teaching caused quality learning. Job #1 was academic success.

We need to reclaim our ethos.

Without Assessment, Teaching Is A Guessing Game

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Do you step on the bathroom scale in the morning? How about in the evening, also? Do you glance at your reflection in the mirror? More than once each day? Do you check your rear view and side mirrors while driving? Do you look through the window to check the weather before venturing outdoors? How about the temperature of water in your shower? I do. We do these and many other rituals because we want and we need to know and the information we obtain is knowledge for our daily living. Information guides what we think about our “now” and informs what we need to do “next”. Information tell us to stop doing things are not working for our benefit and to start doing things that will. The option of not knowing makes life a guessing game.

Assessment is what I am talking about. Assessment is a part of life. We all do it, consciously and unconsciously, because we want information that we think is important to our living. A good working definition of the word assessment is this – assessment is evaluating or considering the nature, quality, or ability of someone or something that is of interest to you and to others. I believe, as educators, we should start at the end of this definition first. We assess because we are interested – I add, because we care. And then look at assessment as evaluating or considering the nature, quality or ability of our interest in teaching and learning.

Interest and care are huge words in the world of education. Parents enroll their children in our schools to be taught and to be cared for and to grow annually on their path toward college and career readiness. From their perspective, parents expect educators to be engaged in a decade-plus, nine-month-a-year, work-day long continuing education and care of their children. School becomes the major factor in a child’s life from age 4 to 18. In response, there is ample evidence that teachers demonstrate many of the characteristics of caregivers to their students as teachers are called not only to teach but to affect each child’s social, emotional, mental, nutritional, and physical health. Interest in and care for children in school abounds.

Why we assess. The intellectual education of children is not guess work. If teaching and learning were so happenstance as guess work, we would follow the guidance of Rousseau. We would turn all children lose in the proverbial innocence of a natural world and see what happens. To the contrary, schools adopt programs and curricula and design experiences for the education of children. Educators are constantly interested in both sides of this work –how well are the school programs, curricula and experiences causing their planned outcomes, and, how well is each child learning. Though it sounds like a bumper sticker – educators work at the education of children.

Most of our daily, adult, personal assessments are made subjectively. We don’t need exact data for safety, comfort, preference and casual decisions. We read and we listen. We look and we observe. We feel and we smell and we taste. We make estimations and approximations based upon the information we glean from our world. Detail usually does not matter, if our perception is close enough to what we expect.

Other decisions require more critical and exact information. We like meat grilled to a medium rare and know about what medium rare looks like on the exterior of the meat, but sticking a meat thermometer into the meat ensures that 120 -130 degree flavor we seek. Adding a half tsp or a whole tsp of baking powder to cookies makes a difference. We need to know if a guest in our home has a food allergy and the nature of that allergy. Pre-information guides us when downloading a movie – there is a difference between X, R, M and PG. Each of these is an assessment we make about the nature or quality of things in our world that matter to us. In these instances, the details in the information matter.

Our student learning committee learned to ask a significant question when talking about school curricula, programs and how well our children do. How do we know this? If the conversation does not include a qualitative and/or quantitative statement based upon fact, the committee knows it is hearing opinion and the committee needs to ask different and deeper questions. How we know is as important as what we know when we are talking about the education of children.

Teaching and learning are the application of cause and effect. These are not random or accidental. They are not unplanned. We teach in order to cause children to learn a vast amount information and ideas, to learn and improve a wide variety of skills, to find value in what they are able to do, and to understand how others see and value them as learning children. Teaching is a purposeful act with a beginning and an ending and knowing what the ending acts and looks like is essential. If not, children would be reading Dick and Jane books K through 12. Good teaching knows when the next teaching is required. And, that is why we ask “how do we know this?” How do we know that a child has learned and is ready for our next teaching? Just as importantly, how do we know that a child has not learned or not learned well enough and we must teach again and differently?

I understand those who chant “too much time is wasted on assessment and schools over test.” We must be certain in our management of teaching and learning that we assess properly and frequently enough to inform teaching and learning. Knowing is accrued in many ways. Proper assessment is as non-invasive as listening and watching. A teacher listening to a first grader read aloud will know as much about that child’s immediate reading abilities as any test could provide. An Algebra teacher watching a child think through and write out the steps of math problem has instant information about what a child knows and does not know well enough. A band director listening to horn players in solo or ensemble knows that these students have learned or need further instruction. We do not need large scale testing to know everything we need to know. We assess constantly everyday because we care that all children are successful learners.

I, on the other hand, worry we do not assess enough or well enough. I am not writing about testing, though testing is an important form of assessment. I repeat that proper assessment is a powerful “I care about you and your learning statement”. I observe that we diminish listening to children as they grow older. Elementary teachers listen to children read aloud. They listen to children explain their thinking aloud. Elementary teacher teach in close proximity to children as they learn. Close listening, watching and proximity are important to the monitoring and adjusting of teaching to cause student learning of knowledge, skills and dispositions. As children get older, teachers allow “space” to develop. We believe that children are embarrassed when they are required to read aloud or to explain aloud their reasoning and thinking to problem solutions. They, older children, want the product or their answer to speak for itself. “Why do I have to show my work or tell you how I found that answer if it is right?”, they complain. And, teachers give into the argument. Teaching and learning in high school classes operates with too much space between teacher and student. Without the intimacy of listening and watching and knowing, we rely upon tests to know, because know we must. We too often fail in the area of informal assessment of high school children.

In a better educational setting, all assessment would be personal and direct between teacher and child. “Tell me, show me, help me to know what you have learned and how well you have learned it.” Listening and watching are as important to knowing about the education of a senior in high school as it is a child in Kindergarten. However, time is not on our side. One-to-one assessment in a class of 25 secondary students engaged in complex and complicated learning requires too much time. Hence, whole group testing is the way we know about the quality of what large groups of children have learned.

Assessment frequency and exactitude increases when educators need incremental information. Our committee is deeply engaged in improving student phonemic coding and decoding skills within phonics-based reading instruction. Knowing which children have these skills and which do not and the degree of their skills attainment requires frequent observational and tested information. The better the assessed information, the better the instructional response to each child’s needs. Frequency and exact measures work to the benefit of children.

An unpublicized part of the assessment/testing scenario is knowing when to stop testing or to stop using a test that provides less than the required information. We are phasing out our current universal screener for EC – 3rd grade children and replacing it with an assessment that is more definitive in specific reading skills. At the same time, we are questioning the need for end of the year assessments because the intervening summer months causes this information to be out of date in informing us about beginning of the school year instruction. Instead, September and January assessment places assessment information directly in front of newly informed instruction. Frequent, exacting and wiser assessment a constant pursuit for educators.

For those who remain skeptical about school assessments, I encourage you to continue asking questions and to focus your inquiry on “How is this assessment improving my child’s immediate and future education?”. If teachers cannot provide a solid and satisfactory answer, we are not doing our job of knowing and we deserve your criticism. That is my assessment.

Professionalism Is As Professionals Do

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School conversation, the serious flavor, between teachers and administrators and school board members often leads to the topic of treating people as professionals. Whether the talk is about teaching and learning, school policies and practices, salaries and benefits, or inclusion in decision-making, the idea of “treat me as a professional” becomes a filter for sifting ideas. I listen for it. Someone in the conversation ultimately invokes the word “professional” like a trump card in a game of bridge and others in the group are immediately tarnished with “unprofessional”. Some years past, the phrase was “I’m for our kids”. Whoever said it first took the high ground and all others were in the dirt. “Whoa”, I say. Professional treatment is a 360-degree proposition. To be treated professionally requires all to act professionally.

To paraphrase Forest Gump, “Professionalism is as professionalism does”. The only high ground is an idea or practice that is best practice and that is illuminated by professional study, consideration and action. To mix the metaphors – professionalism is the tide that raises all boats. It is not an ethereal that we blindly tip our caps to. Professionalism is in our actions, our words, our work and our expectations. It is in our commitment to the constant improvement of teaching and learning and to those engaged in this work. Yes, Forest, professionalism is what professionals do.

In the early 70s professionalism was more of a lower-case word. College graduates prepared for the profession of teacher anticipating a career of causing children to learn. However, at that time, college graduates entering their first classroom were employees in an employer-dominated era. Where allowed, strikes and work stoppages and no salary or benefit improvements were tools too often used by educational professionals against other educational professionals. In 1970 my first days as a teacher were spent “on strike” and I have not forgotten the sense of waste as the education of children was held hostage to professionalism.

I do not want to overgeneralize negatively about our history, because there also were many wonderful achievements accomplished through professional collegiality. However, when push came to shove and it did, differences arose that separated us into two or more camps of professionals. The tide raised only some boats while other boats were left tied to docks of status quo.

In my observation, professionalism is not a thermometer that we check daily or occasionally. Being professional is not fluctuating weather in the schoolhouse. It is not related to good or better or improved treatments of employees by employers, or conversely, to the attitudes of the supervised to their supervisor. Professionalism does not live when employee salaries are increased or benefits are expanded and it does not die when monies for salary and benefit enhancement are not available. Professionalism is not factored by class sizes or supply budgets. Professionalism is the doing, the process of talking and creating understanding and the constant commitment to educating children that binds educators as a profession.

I look for four tell tale signs of professionalism.

  •  Listening. Professionals take the time to personally listen to each other. The sense of hearing provides each of us with the greatest amount of information about our world and surroundings every day. We hear things unconsciously, because that is how the sense of hearing works. Listening is different. It is intentional and focused and conveys connection. I am listening to you tells me what you want me to know. Given, a lot of our conversations are inane. Yet, when one person actively listens to another, listening conveys the value of communication and shared communication is essential for professionalism to thrive.
  •  Continuing education. This is not graduate degrees for all, but it is education beyond formal education or initial training for all. Professionals intellectually consider the what, why and wherefore of their work. They conscientiously try to become more informed, better skilled and more expert in their field of work. Schools help by supporting job-related continuing education and training for all employees. Professionals take this one step further by being personally vested in their own improvement.
  •  Appreciation. There is nothing more rewarding in the schoolhouse than to be recognized and appreciated. No person in the school in any role is on the fast track to fame and fortune. Few in the schoolhouse receive much recognition for their work inside the school outside of the schoolhouse. That is why in-school appreciation is essential to its professionalism. The first step of appreciation is knowing each other’s name. When employees pass each day like ships in the night, there is no appreciation. Being recognized by name is such a small thing with such a big reward. The second step is a thank you, now and again. Thank you for the work you do; your work and you are recognized and valued. If you don’t understand this try it. Appreciation begets smiles and smiles join people together.
  •  Commitment. Professionals are not day jobbers. They are invested in the meaningfulness of their work over time. They personally evaluate the quality of their work and strive to keep their performance, no matter what the job, at the highest level they can. I have observed superintendents and board members work as hard to wordsmith a policy or proposal as the building and grounds supervisor and cleaners work to keep school restrooms clean and sanitary. Their commonality is their intrinsic desire to “do good work” that converts every employee into a school professional.

Think about your workplace. Are you listened to and do you actively listen to others? Are you personally and is your school equally engaged in your learning to be an expert in your work? Do you know that you and your work are appreciated and do you appreciate those you work with and their work? Are you collegially committed to making your school the best it can be? If you have four answers of yes, Forest Gump’s words apply to you in a most positive way.

“Just Go Do” Goes Nowhere

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Our common mythologies tell us that men will not ask for directions. Men would rather drive and get lost or fail at assembling a new purchase than display the unmanly plight of seeking help. “I can do this” is a real man’s mantra. However, to paraphrase Louis Pasteur, “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” Whether it is man, woman or child, understanding the directions and gaining the skills for how to get from here to there, literally or hypothetically, is the best preparation for success. Without preparation and direction, we tend to go nowhere. Note: the following is not a diatribe about men, but a story concerning all of us.

In recent school discussions of student reading performances over the past five years, we realized that these outcomes were far below our students’ capacity to perform and our school’s expectations for all children. Disaggregation of statewide and local assessment scores showed about 15% of children performing at advanced levels of reading and 30% at proficient levels. These data matched state and national reading trends. Yet, we were chronically looking at the larger pool of 45% of children who were in the basic category reading performance. What kept these children from being proficient readers. We had a problem.

There were other indicators, such as poor spelling and confusion with the structures of grammar and syntax that consistently showed up in the daily work of our basic readers. We observed stumbling with reading fluency, especially with new, technical vocabulary. Our in-house screener showed these children making progress in their reading skills, however they did it make enough progress to become proficient on any assessments. Our assessments led us to questions and direct observation of children led us semi-conclusions. Too many of our children were weak in demonstrating phonological awareness, abilities to decode new words and had limited sight word recognition. Our advanced and proficient readers learned these skills, either from our instruction or parental assistance or through their own intuitive processes. But, for 55% of our children, we were at Point A, an unacceptable level of reading performance. We needed to get these children to Point B, student proficiency in reading built upon stronger student phonological and orthographic understanding and skills.

The Board’s Student Learning Committee, led by a Board member and comprised of teachers, parents, and administrators, began to study the nature of phonology. Parent members were vested in the issue; most were parents of children with reading challenges. Generally, the problem did not arise from a lack of reading interest at home or parental support of school. It did not arise from intellectual disorders. And, it did not arise from ambivalence. Parents and teachers and administrators were concerned with the stalled improvement in reading performance and wanted solutions.

Several of our children of interest displayed characteristics of dyslexia and their instruction was guided by an IEP. By looking at these children intensely, the committee began to understand that our teaching and learning model had several significant gaps. The committee met with representatives of Lindamood-Bell to understand that vendor’s approach to diagnostic and intense, clinical reading instruction. In addition, teachers trained in Orton-Gillingham and Wilson Reading explained how their preparation told them to address the needs of children with dyslexia and coding/decoding problems. A consultant from the International Dyslexia Association explained what reading is like for a child who can’t code and decode. She helped the committee to understand best practices in reading instruction for these children. The committee concluded that improvement in each student’s phonologic and orthographic skills was necessary to cause every student to be a proficient reader.

To get from Point A to Point B, we needed to change and improve our teaching-learning model. We could not say to our K-6 teachers, “just do it” – somehow make the necessary changes in your teaching to cause different results. Pasteur’s model told us that we needed to prepare for success if we wanted to be successful. Our starting point was to discern the current level of teacher preparation for phonics-based reading instruction. We found that our results were consistent with our preparation. Due to no fault of any teacher, most of our faculty had completed only a unit or two of instruction in phonics in a single course as part of their baccalaureate preparation. That was the extent of their academic preparation. Through self-designed continuing education, some had developed their own understanding of phonics-based reading and were achieving some success with some children. As a whole, we were not Pasteur-prepared for success.

It took half his life for Pasteur to be Pasteur. After six months of study, we still are not prepared, but we know how to be prepared. We know what our teaching-learning models lacks and we have a plan to provide each teacher with the directions and skills needed to move our children to Point A to Point B. We also know that our plan for success preparation takes time to achieve. This summer, each K-6 teacher, reading specialist and special education working with K-6 children will receive training in the Orton-Gillingham methodologies for intensive and sequential phonics-based instruction of word formation. These teachers will receive additional training the following summer. We will prepare each teacher to “go do”.

Our new designs says that all children will receive grade level instruction in our core reading program that is embedded with phonological and orthographic training AND each child who demonstrates phonological weakness will receive developmentally-appropriate OG instructional intervention. Our superintendent proposed a strategy of curriculum compacting that will provide more time each day for children needing deeper interventions of clinical and intensive instruction. Through district-provided preparation, all K-6 teachers will be able to teach a stronger phonics-based reading program, diagnose a child’s weaknesses in phonological understanding and skills, and give direct instruction to remediate the weakness. This approach to district-provided professional development is a change for our district. This PD is mandated and required for all current K-6, elementary special ed teachers and reading specialists. It is performance-based. We will be able to associate student achievement in phonics-based reading with a teacher(s) prepared for phonics-based reading instruction. It is prospective – all new-to-the-district K-6 teachers will receive OG training in future years.

Most importantly, this approach to professional development sets the stage for future analysis of student academic performances. When the district identifies a teaching-learning problem in the future and our educational outcomes are adjusted, an immediate question will be “How well are we prepared to ‘go do’?”. We will be Pasteur-like in our preparation for success.