Tag Archives: accountability

No Blinders on US History Curriculum

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US history or US histories, that is the question.  Is my story your story?  Is there a single story?  Can there be multiple stories woven into a broader telling of a national history?  What role do blinders play in our history?  What should we teach our children?  Who says?

What do we know about US history?

The course title reads United States History.   I taught this course and supervised its instruction.  Our classic US History textbooks told our national story beginning with European exploration and colonization, revolution and establishment of a constitutional republic, westward expansion, civil war, industrialization, world wars, civil rights, and, depending on publication date, some contemporary stories.  All supplemental materials used to teach our history to children supported this chronicle of our American pride and spirit.  US history was Eurocentric and comfortably fit the concepts of our 20th century nationalism. 

We taught and students learned what Winston Churchill meant when he said, “History is written by the victors”.  Our history curriculum in school has been the story of how English-speaking people spread across the middle of North America and established a government, economic system, and society to sustain the victor’s heritage.  The victors place the blinders.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/history-is-written-by-the-victors-quote-origin.html

My family lineage parallels traditional US history.  We immigrated from Holland, intermarried with English colonists and fought in the Revolutionary War.  As the settled frontier moved west, so did we.  In 1849 a great-grandfather joined the California Gold Rush and returned to Wisconsin with enough riches to buy land and establish a growing family on multiple farms.  By 1900 we were college-educated and mobile.  We worked in FDR’s federal agriculture department and fought in WW2.  We thrived as the Silent and Greatest Generations and Baby-Boomers.  We are middle-class America personified and we find our story told and explained in a US History text.

But our story does not mirror that of almost 50% of Americans today.  Many of the children I taught and learned from cannot find their family story in a US History text.  “I do not see myself or my family represented in US History” is a complaint that educators knew existed for decades and only recently have begun to address.  After all, we say to children, “This is the history of our country”, the first thing children do is to look for faces, names, and stories that are like their own.  As soon as we ask children to find themselves in our national history we recognize multiple stories within our history.

As examples, our history text tells that enslaved African labor created the southern plantation culture and economy.  The Civil War was fought to free the slaves and resulted in amendments to the Constitution.  Reconstruction brought Jim Crow laws and segregation in the south.  Martin Luther King led the civil rights movement and was assassinated.  Jackie Robinson was the first Black player in Major League Baseball and Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods each transformed their respective sports.  And Barack Obama was our first Black President.

For a century the only mention of American Indians in our texts was Pocahontas, Squanto, Sacajawea, and Sitting Bull.  Pocahontas saved John Smith and married and introduced tobacco to London.  Squanto taught the Pilgrims to use fish as fertilizer and sat at the first Thanksgiving.  Sacajawea guided Lewis and Clarke’s expedition over the Rocky Mountains.  Sitting Bull led the Sioux in the Battle of Little Big Horn and the death of Custer. 

The story of Hispanic people in the text is one of losses.  The Alamo and Mexican War of 1846-48 led to the annexation of Texas and all the territory between the Louisiana Purchase and the Pacific.  (A student needed to visualize the states formed by the Purchase to understand this.)  Simon Bolivar was the George Washington of South America.

Asians get equal short shrift.  Chinese workers built the Central Pacific railroad from California to Promontory Point, Utah, to join with the Union Pacific and form our first transcontinental railroad.  And Japanese Americans were interred during WW2. 

A traditional US History text fit the political-cultural realities of our pre-civil rights eras.  That text conformed to the victors theory.  Times changed.  This is a woke story but a reality story.  The Declaration of Independence acknowledged certain unalienable rights held by all (men according to the Founding Fathers).  Stories of how Americans came to share their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness cannot be blindered in their telling.

Historical versions

If you don’t like what is showing on your media screen, change providers.  If it is television, change channels.  If it is a history text, change texts.  Even among the victors there are different tellings of the same stories.  Depending on your state, the adopted US History text is selected according to the telling that appeals to state legislators who make the ultimate decisions regarding school text adoptions.  In the textbook market, California and Texas spend the most money on state adoptions.  US History in these two states reflects how they want US History to be taught to their school children.  These are state-approved blinders, and they contradict the rights of all Americans to understand their stories.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/12/us/texas-vs-california-history-textbooks.html

How does the story of our history fit our nation today?

We are no longer white/European.  Our population mass is shifting from white/non-Hispanic to a reflection of the melting pot our nation was destined to become.  So says the plaque at the foot of the Statue of Liberty written by Emma Lazarus, daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants.

“As of 2019, the current distribution of the U.S. population by race and ethnicity is:

  • White/non-Hispanic: 60.1%
  • Hispanic: 18.5%
  • Black: 12.2%
  • Asian: 5.6%
  • Multiple Races: 2.8%
  • American Indian/Alaska Native: .7%
  • Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander: .2%”
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-u-s-population-by-race/

Within the next decade White/non-Hispanic people will no longer be the majority race/ethnicity.  The aggregated majority will be people of color.

More importantly, all in our census are citizens of the United States.  In the collective, we are Americans.  This is true of the census of our people but not of the US History of our people.  Our history curriculum does not tell the stories of our American people.

Cognitive Dissonance

What do we do when we know disparate things to be true?  Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance.  We experience discomfort and angst when confronted with dissonance.  In this case, our textual history does not accurately reflect our real histories or our histories does not tell the story we want to be told.

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-cognitive-dissonance-2795012

Dissonance can cause us to

  • learn more about conflicting ideas in order to resolve a best understanding.
  • affirm our version of a story and attack anyone who holds a conflicting version.
  • create new versions that further strengthen our ideas and attack any other version.

And this is where we are today.  These three actions are taking place in and around our classrooms as adherents deal with their own and our societal dissonance. 

Some use the attack strategy claiming that any story other than the mainstreamed story written by the victors is unAmerican.  They make the issue partisan and divisive.  Texts and materials that do not support the victor story are suppressed and removed from school.  Blinders abound.

Some use the revision and new version strategies.  They cite the Founding Fathers wanting decisions today to be based on the ideas and constraints of the 1700s.  The Fathers truly were a narrow slice of the census of their time – wealthy, landed, Christian, white, and male.  Or they rewrite history to give the victors a moralistic superiority over the vanquished.  Our history is a natural selection and progression process.  More blinders.

And some understood one of the concepts they were taught in their school’s US History class.  The United States is a melting pot of peoples.  There is no dominant story to support one group of citizens over the interests of others.  To be understood and celebrated, the good, bad, and the ugly, history cannot have blinders.

The Big Duh!

The motto of the United States has been and is today e pluribus unum.  It is Latin meaning “out of many, one”.  US History taught to children today needs to be the truthful telling of the many stories that represent all the people who make up our one nation.  The melting pot is only getting larger and more complex.  Any child who does not hear and learn from the many stories is condemned to a severe dissonance problem.  A nation that does not learn from its history is condemned to repeat it.  We are smarter than that.

The Hard Work Is The Right Work

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Being responsible for the education of children is not easy.  The speed, complexity, and complications of 21st century life is making this responsibility more and more difficult as every day we hear of a school controversy and crisis somewhere.  A board meeting in Timbuktu easily becomes headlines on national nightly news given how a social media post can explode sensationally.  And what is done in Timbuktu becomes a burning issue at a local meeting where most people cannot spell Timbuktu.  Being responsible requires leaders to understand the essential issues of their place and time, to sort the here and now from the Timbuktu, and not be afraid to tackle the hard stuff – the right work – of educating children.

Why is this thus?

There are several givens whenever we gather to talk about our local schools.  Our Constitution ensures our right to speak freely.  Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Laws ensure that school board meetings are open to public attendance with an opportunity for the public to speak to the school board.  And because almost everyone in the community attended a school of some sort, many people speak to their school board with the expertise of their personal school experience.  In summary, we are free to express our opinions about school and the school board is obligated to listen.  These are good things.

From the moment we labeled it public education, people felt compelled to express their opinion about how children should be educated.  Any adult who has or can biologically create a child feels authorized to explain how children should be raised and educated.  Today they express themselves standing at the lectern in front of the school board and from the screens of their computers, IPads, and smartphones while sitting at home.  This guaranteed exchange of “you speak, and we listen” is now part of posted school board agendas.  This is a healthy thing.

All board agenda items are not of the same importance.  The annual and daily operations of a district school require boards to consider, discuss, and approve items of routine business investigated and proposed by administrators.  These are the usual business of the board that once approved in the committee process need only a cursory airing in public and a vote.  It is true to say that many boards of education live on a steady diet of usual business agenda and shy away from controversy.  That said, the usual business is easy stuff and the controversial is the hard.  The hard points a board to the right work it must do.

Lastly, there is nothing inherently wrong with controversy; controversy being a voicing of oppositional points of view.  Good leadership understands that important educational issues will raise differing points of view and it is the work of the board to resolve conflicting points of view for the prosperity of the schools.  Best leadership does not shy away from controversy but tackles it honestly.

What should we know about this thusness?

Controversies abound!

The pandemic gave most school boards a rude awakening to the hard stuff.  As experienced ad nauseam, no school boards were educated or trained to deal with either pandemic education or the controversies of how schools should behave during a pandemic.  Few boards, if any, escaped this public crisis and the argument of battling points of view.   In fact, seated board members resigned, did not run for re-election, and were recalled by their electorate because of pandemic controversies.  The board table was not for the faint of heart when spittle and spite flew from impassioned parents and residents who knew best about public health and public education in an emergency.

Concurrent to the pandemic, other controversies brewed and erupted in school board rooms.  Events of police violence went national.  BLK begat an introspection of systemic racism that begat renewed white nationalism that begat a legislative rewriting of US history that could not be taught in public schools.  Speakers, despite historical fact, are making CRT their argument and the board room their arena.

Quietly then loudly gender identity and the evolving status of children claiming non-conforming gender expression forced the public, like tug-of-rope teams, to dig in their heels regarding who can use which bathrooms and locker rooms in schools.  Parents care more about this issue than their children.  The parent who cries “Protect my daughter!”, claims the media headline while distorting issues of discrimination and fairness. 

There are quiet controversies afoot.  As federal pandemic relief monies expire, school districts everywhere face financial crisis.  Usual school funding is not adequate to sustain the technologies and school staffing wrought by the pandemic.  While inflation diminishes family spending, school boards are proposing increases in local school taxes.  The controversies of cuts to school programs and school closing will clog the school board agenda for years to come.

A second quiet controversy is teacher shortage.  Teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities are dying for lack of enrollment.  As baby boomer teachers retire school boards are hard put to find qualified replacement teachers.  The controversy is this – state legislation is lowering the standards for a teaching license, persons who are not fully prepared to teach children to high standards of learning are being hired to assure a teacher in every classroom, student academic achievement is diving, and someone is to blame.  Hello, school board member!

What is a board to do?

Do these three things to succeed.

  • Grab each controversy by both ears, look it in the face, and deal with it.  Ignoring a controversy builds anger in the partisans and they will damn you for your lack of action.  Pussyfooting around a controversy allows it to grow constituent bases who demand action.  If you cannot provide the action, constituents will find someone who can.  Deal with it!
  • Know that school governance is not a democracy; it is representative government and only board members vote on school decisions.  As provided in law, the public has the right to speak with the school board and the board is obligated to listen.  Do not take anything said personally, even from the most spittle mouthed.  Do not take anything said as expert opinion or fact.  At the end of the meeting everyone else goes home and only board members vote on how the district will respond to a controversy.  Discuss and decide; that is what school boards do.
  • The board speaks for the education of all children in the district not for the happiness of parents, residents, and dissidents.  Self-interest, though denied, is the primary motive of every person who addresses the board – this is fact.  A board member’s only self-interest is the best education for ALL children, with ALL in capital letters.  A parent speaks for her child and her child’s peers.  A teacher for her grade level or those in her class.  A coach for her team.  The business manager for the budget.  Board members must consider ALL children, not just some, while ensuring that each child is provided an equal and equitable education and school experience.  This is the rub.  How to advance the cause of all while protecting the rights of the one.

Being responsible for the education of children is not easy.  If it were, anyone could do it and we don’t want just anyone to be responsible for the education of ALL children.  We want board members who can look inside the issues they confront to find humane, high ground, child-centered resolutions for tough questions.  I would like to think that if one of the two women claiming the child in the Bible’s Solomon “the wise” story had not said to spare the child and thus created a true claim as mother, Solomon would not have cleaved the child in two but adopted it as his own.  Board members consider ALL children your own and be willing take the forsaken child to your home.  This is your school board standard.

When it comes to study skills, “You are on your own, kid.”

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Because teaching children how to study is not in our curriculum and teachers are not taught how to teach studying skills in their teacher preparation programs.  Inconceivable, you might think, but true.  As a result, the random ability of a child to self-develop personal study skills becomes a highly reliable predictor of academic success in high school.  And it is a random ability.

Check it out.  Ask any group of high school students to explain their study habits.

You may find a child who enjoys virtual photographic memory.  This child reads or sees something one time and on test day recalls that initial intake with astounding reliability.  This child, though an outlier and rare, obscures our concepts of studying.  We cannot generalize about their uniqueness.

Most students will report they reread pages of their textbook and review their notes of what the teacher said in class.  A second “most” will report they do a reread and review one or two nights before a scheduled test.  Usually, they cram!

A few will say they reread text material and “rewrote their notes”.

One or two will say they “reread the text and their notes, identified key words and ideas, made flash cards of these and tested themselves on their flash cards until they memorized this information”.  They add, “I start several days before the test”.  When asked, “Who told you to study like this?”, none will say “My teacher”.  This is metacognitive studying.  Sadly, we do not teach children how to do this.  You will not find it in any publishing guide or in a baccalaureate teacher prep curriculum.

Want to hazard a guess as to which children get high grades and which children do not?

What do we know?

The slope of responsibility for independent study starts as a flat line in the primary grades, approaches 45 degrees in the intermediate grades and then goes vertical in the secondary grades.  The degree of responsibility for independent study is not met with explicit instruction teaching children how to study.  We literally tell children what to study and then say “go study” thinking effective study techniques are in each child’s genetic map. 

Observations of K-4 classrooms show teachers telling children what to know, practicing what to know, and reteaching when children are not successful in initial knowing with good regularity.  This good practice has not changed much over time.  Parents will remember their teachers using the chalkboard to write out new words, ideas, and arithmetic strategies.  Children today see their teachers doing the same on smart interactive screens.  The “write it, say it, explain it” pedagogy works well in the primary grades for teaching all subjects.  The amount of information or skills being taught/learned is controlled by the teacher who uses repetition as drill and practice to drive home daily learning.  Teacher guided repetition works well until the batch of new information increases in volume or the degree of complexity increases in middle school.  There is little independent homework in the primary grades; mostly children do projects at home and bring them to class to show.

Intermediate teachers traditionally tell their students “The amount of homework you will be assigned in middle school is significantly more than we are doing.  Be ready!”.  Fair warning, but children need more than just a warning.

The following describes what middle school students are told to do to be successful in their homework and independent study.  I hear these “keys to doing homework” repeated annually in middle school classrooms.

  • Establish a study area at home.
  • Communicate with the teacher.
  • Keep assignments organized.
  • Avoid procrastination.
  • Take notes in class.
  • Highlight key concepts in the reading materials.
  • Prepare your book-bag before going to bed.

https://www.kumon.com/resources/7-important-study-habits-for-school/

Why is this the state of study skills?

These hints are like telling children that brushing their teeth daily promotes dental health.  Once told, no one checks on their brushing practices.  Likewise, once we provide the above hints for homework success.

The real culprit lies with teacher preparation.  A review of our state’s college and university teacher preparation curricula shows not a single course unit devoted to teaching children how to study.  Our required curricula assure licensed teachers possess content knowledge, pedagogical skills, understanding of human relations, and informed dispositions about the diverse students they teach, but there is not one mention of how to teach student study skills.  In essence, teachers are prepared to teach children what to know but not how to learn it.

Helpful but not complete practices

Some schools insert a unit in study skills in the middle school curriculum.  The dominant study skill taught is note taking and the predominant technique for taking notes is the Cornell system.

The Cornell Note Taking System

However, study skills and note taking, once taught are seldom if ever checked afterward.  We treat the initial instruction of study skills like a vaccine, once given then forever safe from the fate of poor study habits.  Nothing is further from the truth.  One month after the Cornell system is taught to children, I do not observe any teacher explicitly checking each child’s note taking.  There is no follow-up and that is on us as teachers and principals.

A second practice that has merit is providing students with a study guide.  Teachers who do this hand each student a preview of what will be tested.  A study guide looks like an outline of the teacher’s teaching notes.  For some students, the study guide helps them to check the validity of their note taking.  Notes should reflect the guide.  Study guides are great, but they also revert to the issue of how to study.  A student who just reads and rereads the study guide is only a tad better off than a student who reads and rereads the text and personal notes.  They achieve familiarity with the material, not a usable understanding of it.  There is no metacognitive practice is giving a study guide without teaching how to use it.

What do we need – to teach all children a metacognitive study strategy and hold children accountable for using it.  The following is one example.

There are several strategies for moving a student from familiarity with information to a usable understanding.  Part of these strategies are organizational, and part is repetitive memorization and practice.  The following strategy can be applied to every subject, all academic content, and all skills.  It is time tested.  It is a discipline for successful metacognitive learning.

  1. Teach all children to:
    • Read the text material to identify new key vocabulary and ideas, cause and effect relationships, questions that are posed and conclusions that are stated.
    • Use a note taking system to listen to a teacher’s lesson noting key vocabulary, new ideas and skills, and how the teacher displays those skills (math strategies).
    • Reread the text material for familiarity with it – “I know what it is about”.
    • Make flash cards of the key vocabulary and ideas, cause and effect relationships, steps in a problem-solving strategy, and conclusions the text or teacher make in the lessons. Key words on one side of the note card and definition on the other.
    • Either partner with a parent or classmate using flash cards. “Show me the word and I will define it. Check me. If I am wrong, tell me the correction.” Children should repeat this until they can respond correctly to each flash card prompt.
  2. Prior to a math or science test, teach all children to:
    • Do the problems in the textbook or on teacher assignment sheets again, as if they are a new assignment. Do the entire problem. Show all the work, as if you are explaining it to the teacher.
    • Repeat the scientific process related to recent lessons. What is the hypothesis, what is the evidence, what is the conclusion? Flash card this material.
  3. DO THIS! Commit class time to personally checking each child’s study materials.
    • Check their note cards for accuracy in identifying key vocabulary and ideas, relationships, and questions/conclusions.
    • Check their reworking of math and science problems.
    • Tell each child what is right and what is wrong in their study materials.
  4. DO THIS! Commit class time for children to practice their flash cards and to rework math and science problems. Observe them studying and reinforce/correct their study strategy.
  5. DO THIS consistently for several units and them randomly during the remainder of the school year.

The Big Duh!

There should be no mysteries in the education of a child.  Our goal is for all children to be successful and to do that we must give them the tools, the strategies, and our help in perfecting those.  Success in school should not be left to the random insights of a child into how to study.  Our success as teachers should be when every child demonstrates strong study skills, and every child achieves high grades.  We are not successful otherwise.

Nurture the talent and unload the untalented

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A most heartbreaking moment for a principal rises when a parent asks “Is Mr. Jones a good teacher?  I want to know because my Susie needs a very good teacher”.  With no place to run or hide, a principal knows Mr. Jones is not among the best teachers in the school.  I’ve been there and I plead guilty to prevarication.  Prevarication is a long and uncommon word to describe how we answer such a question and it hurts to use it.  The angst deepens because we know Susie and she really does need our most talented teachers.  So, the principal prevaricates and speaks to Mr. Smith’s middling strengths with enough enthusiasm that Susie’s mom nods her thanks. 

But we know the truth.  Not all teachers are created equally.  A school faculty has all-star, backbone, and assignment filler teachers.  Schools bask in the excellence of the all-stars, work the heck out of the backbones, and carefully use the roles of the fillers. 

I will not go into depth to describe the attributes of each category of teachers.  Instead, please consider a continuum of high to low on three professional traits:  empathy and care for all children, engagement in the art and science of teaching, and enlightened classroom performance. 

Empathy for all childrenHighSometimeLow
Engaged in the art and science of teachingHighSometimeLow
Enlightened classroom performanceHighSometimeLow

Personalize this by considering all the teachers in your personal history – your elementary, middle level, secondary and even post-high school instructors.  How does your memory distribute your teachers on these three traits?  The fact that you remember some more clearly than others, probably the all-stars and sadly the fillers are most memorable, states the case.  All schools have all-star, backbone, and filler teachers.

Principals and personnel directors have work to do

Let the all-stars produce strong learning outcomes.  Principals and all-star teachers collaborate to cause the most talented instruction to interact with the most students.  Unless there is an ego problem, all-stars don’t need direction.   We exploit their talent for enlightened teaching, instructional leadership, and curricular planning.  Incidentally, it is true that some all-stars shun leadership and curricular opportunities; they just want to teach.  So be it and thank you.  We use their luster to add to the reputation of the school.  The bottom line is we do what it takes to sustain an all-star’s happiness and satisfaction and reap the rewards of their exemplary work.  This is not “babying”; it is respectful recognition and appreciation.  We give all-stars as many opportunities to work with our Susies as we can while understanding that children of all abilities want and should be in an all-star’s classroom. 

Grow backbone teachers, the heart of the faculty, in their instructional and curricular skills.  Principals coordinate with and coach their backbone teachers through meaningful professional development.  Respectful relations are essential with backbone teachers, because they do so many things well and deserve constant reinforcing commendations.  They also have large potential for growth and  Improvement of their teacher talents.  We coordinate their pursuit of masters degrees, national board certification, professional workshops, and leadership of district initiatives.  Coordination is required because, backbone teachers fill so many roles in the school, they face potential burn out.  We weave backbone teachers into the decision making and program development of the school so that the strength of our faculty is invested in the school’s ongoing work. 

Our administrative work is to cause all children to be nurtured as learners and to learn from their lessons by gathering the best faculty of teachers we can.  Given annual changes in the faculty, the availability of highly talented and talented teachers makes a huge difference in student success and satisfaction.

Principals play general manager with the fillers – grow or go.  We are careful with fillers’ instructional assignments.   Lackluster teaching can impede the overall teaching enterprise as well as stunt student progress.  We are thankful that many fillers are first to accept necessary ancillary assignments such as taking tickets at athletic events, selling in a concession stand, and supervising field trips.  They do this to demonstrate their value to the faculty.  Principals, however, look more clinically at their empathy and care for all children, the art and science of their teaching, and their achievement of student learning resulting from their teacher performance.  Fillers have demonstrated deficits in these three key traits.

Fillers do not go unnoticed.  The majority of parent and student complaints about school are associated with filler teachers.  Principals observe what critics say about filler teachers.  Too many worksheets.  Too much sit time.  Incomplete lessons that don’t bring student learning to closure.  Impersonal student relationships.  Lectures or non-directed student projects.  Too much lag time in class periods waiting for the bell to ring. 

School is a dynamic organism, and its faculty changes every year.  Teachers go and teachers come.  Ironically, this is the natural sequence that allows principals to upgrade their faculty by hiring an all-star or backbone when a filler leaves.  Another force in the dynamics happens when principals take purposeful action to cause a filler teacher to become a backbone teacher or to leave the faculty.  Principals construct and diligently supervise tactical plans for a filler’s professional improvement.  As a general manager, end their employment to create the opportunity to employ an all-star or backbone teacher. 

We have urgency in our work

Susie and every child in school deserves a talented teacher all the time.  Principals place Susies with as many all-star and backbone teachers as possible.   However, some grade level and course assignments will be with a filler teacher.  Some refer this to an “unluck of the draw”.  But there should not be luck or unluck in Susie’s teacher assignments.  If she isn’t getting quality instruction, she is falling further behind because of her starting points.

A principal’s work with a filler teacher is “pull up your socks” time for both.  For teachers, pulling up the socks means finding ways to improve their empathy and care for all children, increasing and sharpening their teaching skills, and delivering complete lessons that lead to measurable student learning.  For principals, pulling up the socks means either improving a filler’s work to the backbone level or ending the filler’s employment in the school.  In most schools, this is a two-year work effort because of the time and documentation required to terminate a teacher’s employment.

Truth be told, executing a grow or go plan for a filler teacher takes persistence and often the many other issues of schooling allow the filler teacher to slide into yet another contract year.  After a time, a status quo emerges, and the filler reaches 10+ years on the faculty and a grow or go process becomes harder to enact.

The final truth is this for principals:  moving a filler teacher off the faculty roster makes room for an all-star or a backbone teacher to join the roster.  Terminating employment is a business-like process that seems counter to everything else we do in school, but it is necessary work.  Its effects on instruction and schooling for children can be a revelation.  So, pull up your socks to ensure all the Susies in your school a talented teacher who is empathetic and caring, is a skilled instructor using an array of the arts and sciences of teaching, and who moves Susie’s learning needle in a positive direction.

How Do We Measure a Rounded Education When the School Report Does Not?

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“Ya, buts…” abound in October whenever the WI State Report Cards for school are published.  When the criteria for school success are limited to achievement and sub-group growth in reading and math with weighting for cohort promotion and graduation every educator and parent who believes that schooling is broader and richer than two subjects should groan their “Ya, but”.  The groaning does not change the report card or the perception of which schools outperform others, but it gives voice to different ways to measure our children’s educational experience by looking at a whole education.

The classic retort against the narrow focus on reading and math involves children with passion for the arts.  The Report Card takes no notice of achievements in our schools attained by children in art studios or music halls.  In the No Child Left Behind era, we boonswoggled art and music teachers with how they contributed to a school’s report card achievement by collateral instruction in reading and math practices in their non-ELA and math classes.  Boonswoggle is the appropriate word.

That retort was echoed by teachers of science and social studies, business and technology, second languages and physical education and health.  And, what of Driver Education, the one course in high school that had immediate impact on the well-being of everyone in the school community?  These educators and their teaching does not matter in the School Report Card.  Student achievement in reading and math is all that is measured.

School districts post their mission statements on their websites.  Most speak to the district’s goals in teaching all children to be well-rounded, educated graduates ready to contribute to the community in their adult life.  Something like that.  Our local mission prioritizes the Four As – academics, activities, arts, and athletics.  I have not read a mission statement yet that purports to educate children only in reading and math, yet those are the two academic subjects by which we rate our school effectiveness.

What does matter and what ought to be measured?  What are the values expressed in a local, public education?  We fill our athletic grandstands and gymnasiums with parents and resident fans who put great store and value in the success of their school’s athletes.  Children in athletic programs spend as much, if not more, daily time practicing and playing in season as they do in reading and math instruction in their classrooms, yet their gains in athleticism, self-esteem, team play, and commitment to and achievement goals are not measured and reported.

If we want a description of educational growth, we should measure and report how a child handed a trumpet in 7th grade learns and improves and perfects her play through band class whole group and individual instruction.  Growth from “I can’t make a sound” to “hitting the high notes and harmonizing” is worth our measurement and reporting as an educational outcome.   Or, we should report how a student who frowns in math class is lit up in tech classes when learning the skills of an electrician.  This is the child who will be your “go to repairman” when he graduates.  The educational achievements of these students are school-based, school-caused, and school-ignored.

In the past two decades, educators were tasked with teaching “soft skills” to all children.  These were thought to be essential 20th Century skills.  Collaboration, cooperation, and team work.  Listening and questioning.  Problem-solving.  Soft skills were differentiated from the harder skill sets of academics, like reading and math.  Quite rightly, soft skills assist our children in many of their non-curricular school activities, like DECADES, Destination Imagination, Debate, and Forensics.  The economic driver of our local school community is small business, yet DECA and our Business Education program are invisible in our measure of school achievement.

A high-quality, well-rounded education results from a broad cadre of teachers, coaches, advisors, counselors, administrators, custodians, food service, and drivers interacting with children every school day.  Such an education takes place in schools were children and adults feel safe and cared for by each other and by a community that wants its children to be wholly-educated. 

Teachers and administrators do not get to choose the metrics used in the State Report Card.  Governments that need single indicators for comparative purposes make that decision.  Hence, the comparison of nations by the OECD using reading and math achievements.  The USA ranks in the middle of the pack.  Hence, the comparison of states and school districts within states based upon two academic measures.  The need to rank and differentiate is more essential than the want to understand and illuminate.  If only life were that simple. 

The quality of an educated school graduate ready to be a law abiding, contributing and productive citizen as an adult will not be predetermined by reading and math achievements alone.  Let’s talk about the well-rounded, wholly educated adults we want our children to become.  We are so much more successful than we give ourselves credit for.