How to Unleash Your Creativity: Scientific American
May 29, 2008
This is a pretty good article on Problem Solving and Creativity. I believe that the biggest problem with the American education system right now is that with all of the emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing, like No Child Left Behind (NCLB,) creativity and problem solving skills have been tossed out the window. America used to pride itself on it’s problem solving skills. Now, it is a dying art, which I believe is evidenced by our current set of government officials from the local level, all the way to the White House.
Link – How to Unleash Your Creativity: Scientific American
…In a discussion with Scientific American Mind executive editor Mariette DiChristina, three noted experts on creativity, each with a very different perspective and background, reveal powerful ways to unleash your creative self.
John Houtz is a psychologist and professor at Fordham University. His most recent book is The Educational Psychology of Creativity (Hamptom Press, 2002).
Julia Cameron is an award-winning poet, playwright and filmmaker. Her book The Artist’s Way (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2002) has sold more than three million copies worldwide. Her latest book is The Writing Diet.
Robert Epstein is a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego. Contributing editors for Scientific American Mind and former editor in chief of Psychology Today, Epstein has written several books on creativity, including The Big Book of Creativity Games (McGraw-Hill, 2000)….
Teach the First Amendment and Constitution Day
January 28, 2008
LINK – Teach the First Amendment and Constitution Day
Unfortunately, civics education and history education are falling behind in America’s schools. It is not because the educators do not want to teach education, it is because the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) high stakes debacle put together by politicians completely leaves history and civics education out.
Dropout Solutions That Work
Belfield and Levin spend much of their chapter calculating which of the five methods was most cost effective. First Things First won that race, with benefits 3.54 times greater than its cost. Next in line were the Chicago Parent-Child Centers (benefits 3.09 times greater than costs), the teacher salary increase (2.55) , the Perry Preschool Program (2.31) and the class size reduction (1.46).
Dropout Solutions That Work – The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Consequences of Inadequate Education
January 17, 2008
This is an excellent article from Jay Mathews of the Washington Post. It points to what I try and say on this web site, and that is that there is a cost to everything. There is the surface cost, the cost that people see directly hitting their pocketbooks, but there is also another cost. It is a cost that most people never see, because they never had the money to begin with . Mathews pulled this work from “The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Consequences of Inadequate Education.”
Dropout Solutions That Work
I am starting this column with a chart, something journalists are never supposed to do. I found it on page 179 of a new book with one of those titles, “The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Consequences of Inadequate Education,” that scholars consider necessary but discourages readers. I beg you to stay with me, because this particular chart is surprising and important (I have changed the formatslightly to make it easier to absorb).
Table 9-1. Interventions that Demonstrably Raise the High School Graduation Rate
(Intervention — Extra high school graduates if intervention is given to 100 students)
¿ 1. Perry Preschool Program (1.8 years of a center-based program for 2.5 hours per weekday, child-teacher ratio of 5:1; home visits; group meetings of parents.) 19 extra graduates.
¿ 2. First Things First (Comprehensive school reform based on small learning communities with dedicated teachers, family advocates and instructional improvement efforts.) 16 extra graduates.
¿ 3. Chicago Child-Parent Center program (Center-based preschool program: parental involvement, outreach and health/nutrition services. Based in public schools.) 11 extra graduates.
¿ 4. Project STAR: class size reduction (4 years of schooling in grades K-3 with class size reduced from 25 to 15.) 11 extra graduates.
¿ 5. Teacher salary increase (10 percent increase, K-12) 5 extra graduates.
It is clear that the American economy is changing. At one point in American history, you could make a good living by showing up to work every day, punching the clock, and working hard. Every year in America, that way of life becomes less and less of a reality. There are plenty of people happy and willing to do these things that simply can not find work.
The fact that this is happening at an ever-increasing rate, should have every American, wealthy, poor, and everything in between, very concerned.
Our very quality of life and overall economic stability relies on the fact that in America, if you are willing to do those three things mentioned above, you can make a decent and respectable living. For the majority of Americans, this is still the case, but as the segment of Americans in poverty increases, the drain on the middle and upper-classes in the form of less productivity, especially in the area of capital goods, less money in the bank, reduced spending for consumer products, increased crime, etc. this truth becomes a decreasing reality.
The answer to this problem is complicated, but I think that a good answer lies in some of the basics. First of all, we have to admit it is a reality. The “first step” in fixing a problem is admitting that you have a problem to begin with. After that, I believe you have to look at the average American’s emphasis on public education, followed closely by economic policy.
For some reason, The Powers That Be came to the conclusion that the best way to improve education is to increase the level of high stakes testing. It really makes little to no sense.
Public education, and resources for public education must become a higher priority for Americans. Without it, at some point, America as we know it may cease to exist…
Blue-Collar Jobs Disappear, Taking Families’ Way of Life Along – New York Times
Throughout the state, the percentage of families living below the poverty line — just over $20,000 for a family of four last year — rose slightly from 14 percent in 2005 to 16 percent in 2007, one study found. But equally striking is the rise in younger working families struggling above that line. The numbers are more dismal in the southeastern Appalachian part of the state, where 32 percent of families lived below the poverty line in 2007, according to the study, and 56 percent lived with incomes less than $40,000 for a family of four.
U.S. Dominance in Science at Risk, Report Says – New York Times
January 17, 2008
This is not especially surprising, considering the fact that NCLB (No Child Left Behind) did not begin to test science until 2007. However, as I mentioned here, the science instruction required for scoring well on high stakes testing and the kind of science instruction (project based learning) that actually contributes to our children understanding and learning science are two different things…
LINK – U.S. Dominance in Science at Risk, Report Says – New York Times
Over all, it said, surveys of science and mathematics education are both “disappointing and encouraging.” Fourth- and eighth-grade students in all ethnic groups showed improvement in math, the report said, but progress in science is far less robust. And knowledge gaps persist between demographic groups, with European- and Asian-Americans scoring higher than students from other groups.Many Americans remain ignorant about much of science, the board said; for example, many are unable to answer correctly when asked if the Earth moves around the Sun (it does). But they are not noticeably more ignorant than people in other developed countries except on two subjects: evolution and the Big Bang. Although these ideas are organizing principles underlying modern biology and physics, many Americans do not accept them.
US Teens Confident In Their Inventiveness; Hands-on, Project-based Learning Needed – Submitted by Tom Diehl
January 16, 2008
“Here’s an article that hits both the environmental issues and the need for project based learning, of which (Mehlville Superintendent) Terry Noble, again, is a proponent.” – Tom Diehl
LINK – US Teens Confident In Their Inventiveness; Hands-on, Project-based Learning Needed
ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2008) — American teens are confident they can invent solutions to some of the world’s pressing challenges, such as protecting and restoring the natural environment, but more than half feel unprepared for careers in technology and engineering, the Lemelson-MIT Invention Index has found this year. The Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, which gauges Americans’ attitudes toward invention and innovation, also found there is an important need for more project-based learning in high schools….
…”Generally speaking, there’s not enough ‘learning by doing’ taking place in today’s high schools, and our survey found that students recognize this.”…
The reason why the above is true is because of federal mandates like No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Instead of diverting energy from public education with counter-productive ideas like school choice and vouchers, we need to focus our resources on how we can make the already incredible American public education system into something our children can be proud of as adults. Project based learning is just one of the many programs we can implement to eventually realize this goal.
Political stabs aside, there is some interesting information in this column. Click the link below to read it in it’s entirety.
AlterNet: Why Have the Children Been Left Behind?
A child’s education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
The debate in Congress over whether to reauthorize No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is underway.
What’s with these politically-calculated, brand-name, PR-speak, Orwellian euphemisms? Clear Skies Act. Operation Enduring Freedom. USAPatriot Act. No Child Left Behind. Who, other than Hal Lindsey fans, would want a child to be left behind?! What unenlightened creature, harboring “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” in the words of the President, would be opposed to legislation that promotes “academic excellence?”
Public education has never been better, reform would be waste of economic resources and tax dollars.
January 1, 2008
Over the last 20 years, public education has been unfairly attacked. Regressive politicians say there is a problem with public education, without providing any supporting evidence. When they are faced with the facts, they just smile and look the other way. I contend that public education has never been better, and only continues to improve. The American public education system has been an experiment in democracy, shaped in theory by the one and only Thomas Jefferson, that continues to reap rewards and benefits towards the quality of life for the every day American.
Can it get better? Sure. Accountability and performance are paramount. But to say that public education needs to be outright reformed is nothing more than silly, regressive, cave-man rhetoric.
Unlike my “world is flat and the Earth is the center of the Universe” friends, I will actually provide you some evidence to back up my contention.
Your Questions Answered – question on state of public education in past answered – Letter to the Editor | American Demographics | Find Articles at BNET.com
According to the latest edition of the digest, released in February 2002, there were 46.5 million students enrolled in the nations public and private elementary and secondary schools as of the 1998-1999 school year the latest complete year for which data is available, or 91 percent of those between the ages of 5 and 17 – the highest percent of any year on record. A half century earlier 1949-1950, the number of enrolled pupils was just 25.1 million, or 83 percent of all young people. The data reveals that the student-to-teacher ratio today is markedly lower than it was “back then.” In 1949, there were 26.1 students per instructional staff member which, in addition to teachers, includes principals, supervisors, librarians, etc.; by the fall of 1998, there were 12.6 students per staff member.
Standardized Testing Part II – No Child Left Behind – NCLB
December 20, 2007
The following is the excerpt from the posted earlier on Standardized Testing and No Child Left Behind – NCLB – that most closely aligns with my sentiments on the issue…
Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest:
The No Child Left Behind law has had one clear accomplishment: it has given a black eye to education policies based on the overuse of standardized testing.
NCLB’s testing mandates have flooded American classrooms with millions of additional tests. At the same time, the rate of learning improvement has actually slowed, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
A mounting pile of surveys and reports document the negative consequences of testing overuse and abuse, as well as growing public opposition to the test-and-punish approach. For more evidence, just listen to the roars of approval when any of the presidential candidates criticizes the law. No wonder more than 140 national education, civil rights, religious, disability, parenting, and civic groups have called for its comprehensive overhaul.
Having long tracked the misuse and abuse of such tests, FairTest predicted a range of negative consequences from NCLB. Most have now been documented by independent researchers. The problems are compounded by high school graduation tests, and by pressure to score high on college admissions exams.
High-stakes testing has narrowed and dumbed down curricula; eliminated time spent on untested subjects like social studies, art, and even recess; turned classrooms into little more than test preparation centers; reduced high school graduation rates; and driven good teachers from the profession. Those are all reasons why FairTest and other experts advocate a sharp reduction in public school standardized testing and a halt to exit exams.
One-size-fits-all testing schemes make even less sense for colleges and universities. How could one exam ever accurately assess the learning of students majoring in subjects as diverse as art history, biomedical engineering, and political science?
As such, the politicians blindly mandating such exams are the ones outside the mainstream, not assessment reformers like us. Indeed, the testing industry’s own standards state that no single exam should be used as the sole or primary criterion to make high-stakes educational decisions such as promotion, retention, graduation, college admission, or scholarship awards.
There are better ways to assess student learning. Classroom-based information, such as grades, provides richer evidence of performance. High school grade point average is a better predictor of college success than either the SAT or the ACT.
The nation does need better assessments and more training for educators to get the most out of them. FairTest has long promoted high-quality, classroom-based assessments that can be used to improve student learning and teaching. We also support the more than 760 colleges that do not require admissions test scores for many or all of their applicants.
High quality assessment is an educational necessity. But high-stakes standardized tests harm educational quality and promote inequity.
What Should Be Done About Standardized Tests? A Freakonomics Quorum – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog
December 20, 2007
This is a great discussion of standardized testing by some of the leading minds in education. No matter what you think of high-stakes standardized testing and No Child Left Behind (NCLB,) this is a must read.
What Should Be Done About Standardized Tests? A Freakonomics Quorum – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog
Personally, I used to love taking standardized tests. To me, they represented the big ballgame that you spent all season preparing for, practicing for; they were easily my strongest incentive for paying attention during the school year. I realize, however, that this may not be a common view. Tests have increasingly come to be seen as a ritualized burden that encourages rote learning at the expense of good thinking.
So what should be done? We gathered a group of testing afficionados — W. James Popham, Robert Zemsky, Thomas Toch, Monty Neill, and Gaston Caperton — and put to them the following questions:
Should there be less standardized testing in the current school system, or more? Should all schools, including colleges, institute exit exams?
The Problem with Merit Pay for Classroom Teachers – The Real Truth, The Whole Truth
December 20, 2007
Ah. The cons of merit pay for classroom teachers. I have posted a link to this article before, but I thought that a complete posting might help people who like to make informed decisions, as opposed to those who like to oversimplify issues for their gimmicky platforms. For anyone interested in a discussion of Merit Pay, please read on below, pick out a specific you disagree with, and let us go from there.
By Dave Riegel
The Problem with Merit Pay
I was surprised to hear that Barack Obama was sticking his big toe into the merit pay waters at the NEA convention and again at the most recent Democratic presidential debate. While Obama has not to my knowledge advocated “merit pay” by name or outlined a specific proposal, his apparent openness to the concept has excited advocates of pay for perfomance who are anxious to see a major figure on the left like Obama defy the prevailing Democratic wisdom and counter the NEA’s opposition to the concept.
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Marc Lampkin of the Strong American Schools campaign, nobly promoting the idea that education should be at the heart of the presidential discussion, took the NEA to task for suggesting that none of the Democratic candidates in Iowa for ABC’s debate supported the concept of pay for performance. However, the candidate Lampkin points to — Obama — was rather circumspect in his support. In saying that pay shouldn’t be tied to “standardized tests that don’t take into account whether children are prepared before they get to school or not,” Obama is trying to have it both ways, giving the appearance of supporting some vague pay for performance standard, but also insisting it not be tied to test scores. There’s the rub: a pay system not tied to test scores isn’t really a merit pay system at all.
Other kinds of financial incentives, such as paying teachers extra to work in high poverty districts or scarce fields like math or science, can’t really be considered “merit pay” systems in the common parlance. Those are incentives to attract people to certain districts or fields. Pay for performance means an adherence to some type of evaluative standard, whether it be test scores or supervisors’ evaluations (which are bound to be tied to test scores). And that’s the problem.
The use of test scores for evaluation of teachers is fraught with difficulties that should be obvious to any outside observer. First among them, you can’t pick your students upon whom your salary might depend. Those in favor of merit pay often use the private sector as a comparison point, saying essentially that most people are paid by how hard they work or how many cases they win or how much they sell. And all that’s true. But a salesman isn’t forced to spend his time on customers who clearly don’t want to buy his products. Lawyers don’t typically take cases they can’t win. But the logic of paying teachers based on performance is similar to saying to a car salesman, “here are 30 adults chosen at random. Your salary depends on being able to sell all of them cars — a standard car, at that — regardless of their needs, desires, or ability to pay.” Or to tell a lawyer, “you must win the next 30 cases that walk through your door, using limited resources, regardless of the merit of their suits, or the expense required to prosecute their cases.”
Teachers don’t get to choose who walks in their doors, like the hapless lawyer or car salesman in the examples above. It’s the luck of the draw. Teachers (good ones) certainly believe all children can learn, and want them to. But success in terms of test scores depends on many factors, mostly too obvious to mention, outside the teachers’ control. Not the least among these, and perhaps less obvious to outside observers, is the support of fellow practitioners. In many cases, a child’s learning requires the support of others besides just the classroom teacher. It depends on an administrator who can effectively create an climate for learning in the school. It may depend on reading specialists who can help students comprehend their textbooks. It may depend on intervention specialists who help devise strategies for learning disabled students to make more effective gains. It even depends on successful foundations provided by teachers in previous grade levels. How do merit pay advocates propose to disaggregate the work of a classroom teacher from the support staff around her? For that matter, how would art, music, physical education or special education teachers be judged under a pay for performance system? Would we need to implement standardized tests in those areas?
I could go on and on about practical and logistical difficulties associated with merit pay. But the strongest arguments against it are philosophical. At a time when many progressives are questioning the effectiveness of high stakes testing mandated by NCLB, should we really be talking about entrenching that drill and test regime taking over education today by connecting it to teacher compensation? The real debate today should be about whether the schools created under they tyranny of NCLB are the kinds of schools we want to have. Do we really want high stakes tests driving our definition of education? And driving our definition of quality teaching?
I am always suspicious of merit pay arguments because they seem to insinuate that a teacher’s effort is dependent upon his or her level of compensation. Instead of rewarding teachers for maximizing student achievement — as most would insist they are trying to do anyway — the right approach would be to reward activities that help teachers become better trained and more competent. For example, most local salary structures reward teachers for attaining a higher level of education — teachers who earn a Master’s degree earn more than teachers with similar experience who do not. Likewise many states offer annual stipends to teachers who achieve National Board Certification, a rigorous process which requires teachers to demonstrate and reflect upon their classroom practices. These sorts of rewards make sense to teachers: they understand the connection between professional development and effective instruction.
I find that merit pay advocates also hope that a compensation structure will do that job of evaluating teachers that should properly be done by effective building administrators. We shouldn’t simply withhold monetary rewards from teachers who are ineffective: we should help them improve or evaluate them out of the profession. The canard that teachers’ unions protect bad teachers from dismissal is not true: bad administrators protect bad teachers from dismissal or non-renewal. But teacher evaluation is more complicated than simply looking at test scores. It requires careful examination of specific teacher behaviors in the classroom, of how a teacher relates to students, and his or her command of the subject matter they are teaching. This cannot be judged simply by looking at test scores, which may be high in some cases in spite of uninspiring instruction: it requires an effective and highly skilled administrator who knows what she is looking for when she observes a teacher interacting with her students, and who is skilled at helping teachers improve. In short, pay for performance provides an easy way out when quality supervision of instruction is what should really be taking place.
Finally, the discussion of merit pay in the context of a presidential campaign continues a disturbing trend of increasing federal involvement in local decision making. Teacher salary structures and evaluation practices are negotiated locally between a board of education and a bargaining unit under the broad general guidelines of state law. If Denver teachers agree to a merit-based system, then good for them. They’ve decided in agreement with their board on a system that makes sense for them and their community. These kinds of contractual decisions are and should remain local, not the subject of federal intervention. An important reason why the NEA objects to merit pay proposals is precisely this — that it takes away control from a local bargaining unit to decide their own fate. If Barack Obama truly believes that education proposals need the support of teachers, then those proposals should continue to be locally decided, not a subject of debate in a national election, unless it is clear that the debate is purely philosophical, and not bearing on any public policy he would enact as president. The federal government certainly has in important role in education. It establishes policies and guidelines that protect the education of handicapped children, for example, and provides funding to support that education. The federal government supports research in education and provides grants to support high poverty schools. But dictating the terms of local teaching contracts should not be a function of federal policy.
The debate about merit pay isn’t the debate we need to be having right now. With the demands for charters and vouchers from the right, and the ongoing problems facing education in high poverty districts, the very existence of public education is being threatened. We need to be talking about why public education still matters, and what it should look like in the 21st century. Gimmicks like pay for performance are only getting us off track.
Zero’s Aren’t Permitted (ZAP Program)
December 20, 2007
Our very own Dr. Christa Warner of Wohlwend Elementary was published recently in the professional journal ASQ – American Society for Quality. I have pasted what I believe to be the best part of the article below, in bold, followed by the entire article:
The ZAP Method
At our school, we developed a program that resulted in 94% fewer failing grades. The program was called “Zeros aren’t permitted” (ZAP). This program was difficult for some teachers to accept at first, because they had been practicing a “no late work” policy for a long time. But some teachers believed the policy was not teaching the students the meaning of responsibility.
As we held discussions, teachers began to understand that the ZAP program was teaching responsibility more than their previous method had. We discussed the fact that in real life, teachers aren’t able to choose whether to do certain tasks, such as report cards or evaluations. We simply cannot call the superintendent and inform him or her that we will take a zero on our evaluations that were to be turned in on a specific date. We also discussed the amount of time we spent in grade level meetings talking about the same concern day after day, year after year, and how the old way didn’t seem to be working.
Under ZAP, when students didn’t turn their homework in, the teacher would send their names and the assignment to the cafeteria. When the students came to lunch, we would have them work on the assignments while they ate. The student could leave the cafeteria when the assignment was finished. Faculty would check it to make sure it was of quality. If the student didn’t finish during the lunch period, we called the student’s parents, and the student stayed after school to complete it. We explained to the parent and the student that the skill was so crucial for them to learn, we simply couldn’t allow them to fail.
Visible Results
When we first initiated the ZAP program, about 30 students per grade level were involved. However, once the students understood the program wasn’t going away, the number of students who were “zapped” dropped to about eight per grade level. Not only did the students became more responsible, their grades and achievement levels increased as well.
Classrooms throughout the United States are changing, and educators must be prepared. Students who are considered at-risk for factors such as socioeconomic status, limited English speaking ability, race or geographic location deserve a quality education.
Students who do not complete high school are at a disadvantage and will, over their lifetime, earn an average of $200,000 less than students who graduate high school and, $800,000 less than those who graduated college.10 With 50% of the prison population consisting of individuals who didn’t complete high school, it is no longer just a school issue, but also a societal one.
Effective Schools Can Overcome At-Risk Factors
By Christa Warner, principal, Wohlwend Elementary School
Many schools across the nation have mission and vision statements displayed in their buildings. The majority of these include a belief that all students can be academically successful and productive members of society. However, it is imperative for each teacher to truly believe this philosophy and for the school culture to support it.
It is easy for teachers to believe that only the students who pay for lunch, speak fluent English and live in a home with two parents can make academic gains. However, schools must believe that every one of their students is a worthy human being and able to learn, regardless of any at-risk factors that could potentially cause him or her to drop out of school.
Reaching the Students
With half of prison populations consisting of individuals who did not complete high school, we must do everything we can to reach and teach all students. Many students who are considered at-risk are academically successful. However, some students are not, and they are considered a contributing factor to 50% of beginning teachers leaving the profession within five years.1
Until the late 1990s, it was believed that economic status and innate ability determined a student’s achievement. After 35 years of research was compiled and studied, we know this is not true. Three main factors affect student achievement: school, teacher and home.
The decisions made by teachers have a greater impact on student achievement than decisions made at the school level.2 Effective teachers are responsive to students’ needs in the classroom. They clearly understand what the students must learn, how the students should be assessed and which instructional strategies they should implement.3
Effective schools provide interventions and programs for at-risk students so they have an opportunity to experience the same academic success as students without at-risk factors.4 The staff share a common vision and belief that all of their students can achieve. Therefore, the staff collaboratively works toward this goal and does whatever it takes to ensure academic success. Effective teachers implement a variety of instructional strategies to meet the different needs of their students. They need to know the content material and instructional strategies to be confident in their ability to teach.5
Changes in Student Population
In an ABC News recently report, “One in 10 Schools Are ‘Dropout Factories,’” the author describes demographic changes throughout the country and the impact it has on the dropout rate. The report explains that high schools with high dropout rates have a large percentage of minority students, and their challenges go beyond academics. Many of these students live in poverty and are in need of additional aid, such as social services.6
Schools all over the United States have changed dramatically over the past three decades. Thirty years ago, students of color made up 22% of the school population. In 2002, the number increased to 39%. Demographers project students who were once the minority will become the majority in the next 30 years. By mid-century, no single race or ethnic group is expected to make up a significant majority of the U.S. population. In 1985, there were 1.5 million students who spoke English as another language. In 1995, this increased to 3.2 million, and the number continues to grow.
As schools’ demographics have changed, the range of students’ abilities has increased.7 These demographic changes, which are also described in the ABC News report, are at-risk factors for dropping out of school. However, this doesn’t mean more students will drop out of school in the future. Research indicates that effective schools can overcome at-risk factors and produce students with high academic achievement.
One reason students drop out of school is their lack of success, both academically and behaviorally. When they are able to connect with their teacher or another adult in the school, students are more likely to succeed academically and behaviorally by accepting the rules, procedures and disciplinary actions.8
Student motivation has also been linked to academic achievement. Students who seek success and enjoy challenges and new tasks are motivated to do well in school. However, the student who typically experiences failure is less likely to try new things and will give up easily if a task becomes difficult.
Effective teachers are supposed to set high expectations in their classrooms and have challenging curriculums. This can become a difficult task with students who are at-risk and have experienced failure frequently. The teacher must challenge these students while not setting unattainable goals that give them excuses to procrastinate or fail.9
To support students who are at-risk, teachers must frequently provide them feedback on their academic progress and engaging tasks that are perceived by the students as skills related to their lives. Students must be taught how to set attainable goals, the dynamics of motivation and skills to develop their self-worth.
We need to teach students to develop a high level of motivation. Students need to understand what the essential outcomes are for the class and have opportunities to monitor their own progress.
As the students take tests, they need to meet with their teacher and set goals for specific time periods. The goals should focus on specific skills and be attainable. A graphic organizer, such as a chart, allows students to visually understand their progress. As the students reach their goals and move forward, it is important for the teacher, student and parent to recognize the achievement and celebrate.
We also need to educate our teachers and have them analyze practices. There must be a climate and belief that failure is not an option. If a student doesn’t complete his or her homework, he or she cannot simply take a zero. This strategy is easy for an at-risk student to use because failure is not new to them.
The ZAP Method
At our school, we developed a program that resulted in 94% fewer failing grades. The program was called “Zeros aren’t permitted” (ZAP). This program was difficult for some teachers to accept at first, because they had been practicing a “no late work” policy for a long time. But some teachers believed the policy was not teaching the students the meaning of responsibility.
As we held discussions, teachers began to understand that the ZAP program was teaching responsibility more than their previous method had. We discussed the fact that in real life, teachers aren’t able to choose whether to do certain tasks, such as report cards or evaluations. We simply cannot call the superintendent and inform him or her that we will take a zero on our evaluations that were to be turned in on a specific date. We also discussed the amount of time we spent in grade level meetings talking about the same concern day after day, year after year, and how the old way didn’t seem to be working.
Under ZAP, when students didn’t turn their homework in, the teacher would send their names and the assignment to the cafeteria. When the students came to lunch, we would have them work on the assignments while they ate. The student could leave the cafeteria when the assignment was finished. Faculty would check it to make sure it was of quality. If the student didn’t finish during the lunch period, we called the student’s parents, and the student stayed after school to complete it. We explained to the parent and the student that the skill was so crucial for them to learn, we simply couldn’t allow them to fail.
Visible Results
When we first initiated the ZAP program, about 30 students per grade level were involved. However, once the students understood the program wasn’t going away, the number of students who were “zapped” dropped to about eight per grade level. Not only did the students became more responsible, their grades and achievement levels increased as well.
Classrooms throughout the United States are changing, and educators must be prepared. Students who are considered at-risk for factors such as socioeconomic status, limited English speaking ability, race or geographic location deserve a quality education.
Students who do not complete high school are at a disadvantage and will, over their lifetime, earn an average of $200,000 less than students who graduate high school and, $800,000 less than those who graduated college.10 With 50% of the prison population consisting of individuals who didn’t complete high school, it is no longer just a school issue, but also a societal one.
References
1. Joel A. Colbert and Diana E. Wolf, “Surviving in Urban Schools,” Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 43(b), 1992, pp. 193-99.
2. Robert J. Marzano, What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action, Assn. for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), 2003.
3. Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe, Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design, ASCD, 2006.
4. Robert J. Marzano, What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action, ASCD, 2003.
5. Linda Darling-Hammond and John Bransford, Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do, Jossey-Bass, 2005.
6. Nancy Zuckerbrod, ”One in 10 Schools are ‘Dropout Factories.’’“ www.abcnews.go.com, Nov. 1, 2007.
7. Linda Darling-Hammond and John Bransford, Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do, Jossey-Bass, 2005.
8. Robert J. Marzano, What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action, ASCD, 2003.
9. Ibid.
10. Paul E. Bartman, “One-third of a Nation: Rising Dropout Rates and Declining Opportunities,” Educational Testing Services policy information report, 2005.
Christa Warner, is principal of Wohlwend Elementary School, St. Louis. Visit the school’s website for more information.
The December 13th Board Meeting Was Incredibly Rewarding
December 14, 2007
As most readers of this blog know, school board members do not get paid to serve on the board. However, that does not mean serving on the Mehlville Board of education is not rewarding. This has never been truer for me than it was last night. It was a long meeting, and it was probably a boring meeting for those who were not participating, but the actions that we took have far-reaching, positive implications.
According to school board policy BBA, “It is the purpose and the role of the Board of Education to exercise general supervision over the schools of the district, and to ensure that the schools are maintained as provided by the state statutes, the rules and regulations of the Missouri State Board of Education and/or the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the policies, rules and regulations of the school district. In addition, the Board is accountable to the electorate, and shall be responsive to the educational needs and the imposed financial constraints of the district.”
The reason that I point this out is because the board of education fulfilled every one of those duties last night. In particular, we took many actions that will directly influence the classroom in a positive and progressive manner. As I have said many times in the past, what makes the American public education so grand is that it takes all comers, and by nature, truly strives not to leave a single child behind.
The meeting started with the recognition of a wide range of student successes from academics to sports by inviting the students to the meeting for acknowledgement from the board. We then implemented another option for children struggling in school with discipline matters, providing them an option to maintain the possibility of receiving credit without having to attend SCOPE. We implemented a weighted grades system to help more of our students achieve academic greatness with their Advanced Placement and Dual-Credit courses. We also implemented a new, out-of-the-box counseling system called the Teachers Assistance Program, which will help every student at Mehlville High School with career and college planning throughout his or her four years at Mehlville while also receiving a full elective credit for his or her work. We discussed a possible virtual learning system for students that would benefit from that, further upgrading the St. John’s building with air conditioning in the gym, and a re-working of the Comprehensive School Improvement Program, as required by the State of Missouri.
The entire range of students was touched in one way or another. Many unique students’ needs were addressed.
Then, to top it all off, the state mandated, required, external audit came before the board of education for approval. Once again, as has been the case in the past, Mehlville has proven its fiduciary prowess as it comes to internal accounting procedures and financial oversight of taxpayer dollars.
So, to sum it up, Mehlville only continues to get better. Not only are we tight, but fiscally sound as a school district, we are also doing more and more with the limited funds that we do have. The only way all of this is even possible is because we have an amazing staff who are motivated to work extra hard. I believe they are extra motivated to work extra hard because the administration and the school board and the staff have all worked together to create an environment/culture to operate in that naturally breeds creativity and effort.
Public education in South County is alive and well.
Harry Charms Students Into Success – Newser
November 23, 2007
Here is one fun way to raise test scores…
Harry Charms Students Into Success – Newser
Harry Charms Students Into Success
Posted Nov 22, 07 5:42 AM CST in World, Culture & Society Editor’s Choice
Harry Charms Students Into Success
Source: KRT Photos
(newser) – The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry it is not, but a suburban Nottingham school is using Harry Potter’s magic to get results. Primary students chose JK Rowling’s enchanted novels as their curriculum theme, a system school officials launched to raise lagging test scores. Subjects are laced with riffs on the books, and activities plunge students into Harry’s supernatural world. • The theme system, which has also embraced chocolate and the Titanic, worked: The school languished in the lowest quarter of English schools but has surged into the upper echelon, Time says. Officials branded the school “outstanding,” noting its success with students with learning disabilities and behavioral problems. “It’s made school a lot easier and better,” gushed one 10-year-old Hermione-in-training.
Obama mentions one key statistic in this article that I cite all of the time. However, he is coming in about $3 higher than me. Maybe he is adjusting for inflation. According to the education foundation funded by Warren Buffett, for every dollar spent on Early Childhood education, you save $7 (or $10 according to Obama) on future tax expenditures, like reduced welfare rolls, and prison populations.
Los Angeles Times: Obama calls for $18-billion boost in education spending
Obama calls for $18-billion boost in education spending
By Michael Finnegan
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
11:31 AM PST, November 20, 2007
Manchester, N.H. — Barack Obama proposed an $18-billion increase in federal education programs today, accusing Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards of shortchanging public schools.
The Illinois senator outlined a broad agenda to expand early childhood education, reduce high school dropout rates and improve substandard schools in impoverished areas.
Sketching a bleak portrait of the nation’s school system, Obama lamented the millions of students who read below grade level, get too little math and science instruction and wind up unprepared for college.
The Human Odyssey: 15 Reasons Why Standardized Tests Are Worthless
November 13, 2007
The Human Odyssey: 15 Reasons Why Standardized Tests Are Worthless
15 Reasons Why Standardized Tests Are Worthless
Test_happyIt seems that everybody is talking about test results these days. The No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB) requires schools to make “adequate yearly progress” on standardized tests in reading and math (next year in science as well). Local newspapers regularly post the standardized test scores of area schools. Property values are sometimes tied to these test results. Parents are doubtful of any innovations in schooling that do not in some way boost test scores. But folks, the truth of the matter is that standardized tests are worthless, utterly worthless! Here are 15 reasons why:
A Condemnation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) from The Death and Life of American Imagination | The Rake
November 12, 2007
The Death and Life of American Imagination | The Rake
Government leaders in education are joining the chorus, too. “American education’s single-minded focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (‘STEM’ subjects) is admirable but misguided,” wrote two former assistant U.S. secretaries of education in the August 12 issue of The Wall Street Journal Online. What makes America competitive in a shrinking global economy, they claimed, is “our people’s creativity, versatility, imagination, restlessness, energy, ambition, and problem-solving prowess.” As they summed it up, true success—economic, civic, cultural, domestic, military—depends on a broadly educated populace with “flowers and leaves as well as stems.”
Click here to read on…
Dan Brown: Presidential Candidates on Education: The Democrats – The Huffington Post
Most funding for public education in America comes from states, but the overarching legislation and guidance for how to allocate those funds comes from the federal government. Currently, this influence is embodied in the stultifying mandates, impossible accountability goals, and all-important high-stakes standardized testing of the No Child Left Behind Act. Strong guidance from the executive branch and legislative branches of the federal government is necessary to bring about the school and community reforms needed to begin to pull America public schools out of the uninspired quagmire that they are in. Our next president must address this dire American need.
Click here for the Democratic presidential candidate’s views on education….
Presidential Candidates on Education: The Republicans – Politics on The Huffington Post
November 11, 2007
Dan Brown: Presidential Candidates on Education: The Republicans – Politics on The Huffington Post
The future of public education is a major national issue.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is, if nothing else, a hugely controversial piece of sweeping legislation. The National Education Association, the nation’s largest union, containing about 3.2 million members, states on their website: “NEA strongly supports the stated goals of the law — to raise student learning, close achievement gaps, and ensure that every child is taught by a highly qualified teacher. But, simply put, the law is not working.”
If the 3.2 million people who spend their working lives trying to implement a law say that that law is not working, perhaps the lawmakers should listen.
Click here to read the rest of the Republican candidate’s views on education…
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – Football Style
November 11, 2007
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND—The Football Version
1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the
championship.If a team does not win the championship, they will be on
probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held
accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their
footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the
championship.
2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same
time even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to
practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in
football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or
disabilities of themselves or their parents.
ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!
3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without
instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their
instructional time with the athletes who aren’t interested in football, have
limited athletic ability or whose parents don’t like football.
4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in
the 4th, 8th, and 11th game. It will create a New Age of Sports where every
school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will
reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets
left behind.
If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for
vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes
and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football
players.
Capital – WSJ.com – The 1.3 Trillion Dollar Swing to The Wealthy
November 2, 2007
To put the following in simple terms, over the last 30 years, the middle-class has slowly started to disappear. The reason why this is relevant is because it will become an experiment in “compounding interest,” so to say. You see, the more people we have falling in to poverty, and in to the lower classes, the more poor children we will be attempting to educate. Which, or course, leads to a larger drain on American society (it cost at least 70% more to educate children in poverty than those above the poverty line), which leads to a lower standard of living for everyone. If we are to maintain our current standard of living, and if we are to improve the standard of living for our children, we need to make sure the middle class is strong and vibrant, and we need to be very sure that we are doing everything in our power to help impoverished children escape from the cycle of poverty of which they are otherwise sentenced. This, of course, leads to more crime, more welfare, more unemployment, a weaker economy, etc.
I am not advocating for a “free ride” for the poor, but I am advocating for some creative and critical thinking as it relates to saving and strengthening our current standard of living as citizens of the United States of America. This is only possible by changing the way we educate our children to compete and survive in this globalized economy, as well as provide the resources necessary to get it done the most effective and cost-efficient manner possible.
I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that high stakes testing like No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is not going to accomplish that. It does nothing but tell us what we already know, and that is what the socio-economic status of our communities are. No Child Left Behind is a complete waste of taxpayer money and economic resources. It is time to use our collective heads and do something intelligent about our educational systems…all of them.
Capital – WSJ.com
The gap between women’s wages and men’s is narrowing, but the gap between economic winners and losers of either gender is widening. And the patterns of inequality among women are more similar to than different from the patterns among men: Earnings at the very top are growing much faster those at than at the middle or the bottom. Everything else is detail.
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers puts it sharply. If the distribution of income in the U.S. today were the same as it was in 1979, and the U.S. had enjoyed the same growth, the bottom 80% would have about $670 billion more, or about $8,000 per family a year. The top 1% would have about $670 billion less, or about $500,000 a family.
Click here to read the entire article, and get the data…
In bold below…
Psychology Research: Differences in Family Language Learning – Dr. Todd Risley
Family Effects:
David Boulton: Last night I talked with George Farkus and he made it really clear that from a sociological research point of view they’ve known for many, many years now, although they haven’t been able to get it across very widely, that eighty percent of the variation in public school performance result from family effects not school effects.
Dr. Todd Risley: Yes, absolutely.
David Boulton: It has less to do with the school. Which ties pretty closely into the .81 you mentioned earlier.
Dr. Todd Risley: Yes. Right.
Click here to read the rest of this long, but fascinating interview…
The following article is from Edutopia.org. Many of the examples used of project based testing, as well as other methods of student assessment are used widely in charter school environments. As you probably know, high stakes testing is required of public schools to meet No Child Left Behind (NCLB). My contention is that this testing is incomplete and only represents a small portion of what the individual children taking the test have actually learned as it relates to what they can apply to the real world.
The point is, if politicians really want to know how schools are doing, they should write laws that are actually relevant to education. As the test are currently written, they only tell us what we already know, and that is what the socio-economic status of our communities are. (For more on that, click here.)
Assessment for Understanding
But tests aren’t the only way to gauge a student’s knowledge and abilities, just as reciting formulas and memorizing the periodic table is not the only way to learn chemistry. Throughout the country, many educators are going beyond traditional tests and using performance assessments in their K-12 classrooms to gauge what students know and can do. They’re designing projects that require students to apply what they’re learning to real-world tasks, like designing a school building or improving the water quality in a nearby pond. And they’re giving students the experience, as assessment expert Grant Wiggins says, “of being tested the way historians, mathematicians, museum curators, scientists, and journalists are actually tested in the work place.”
Click here to read on…
