RtI Finding Its Way

Interview with ERC Response-to-Intervention Consultant Jeff Cohen

ERC’s Craig Levis: There are many different approaches to helping school districts develop and implement tiered intervention systems. What distinguishes the work you are doing with districts from other consultants in the field?

Jeff Cohen: There are two critical factors that distinguish our approach from many other organizations supporting the work on Response to Intervention (RtI). First, we facilitate a comprehensive self-assessment at the building and district levels. Our involvement in this process sets the tone for a collaborative and supportive relationship and ensures that we capture all of the essential elements of RtI that may already exist within the district.  An accurate awareness of strengths and needs is paramount to building a sustainable tiered intervention system.

Secondly, we develop a shared understanding by involving as many stakeholders as possible in the development and implementation phases.  Many organizations offer canned programs in this domain if they do it at all, but this work is generally too complex for that kind of approach. Our experience shows us the more involved teachers and administrators are in the decision making process, the more committed they are in its successful implementation.  We have designed six interactive training modules that will provide all of the background knowledge and information necessary for districts to fully implement RtI, but these modules are modified and facilitated to meet the unique needs of every district.  I like to role up my sleeves and work with the staff through each step of the development.”

Craig: Once the self assessment is completed, what are the next steps for a district?

Jeff: We present the results of the self-assessment to a district leadership team and facilitate a dialogue session on mapping out what the scope of the work will look like based on building and district needs.  As we identify the steps in the action plan, we also identify who will be involved.  We ask each building to commit an RtI team to the process.  Each RtI team must have one representative on a district RtI team.  We work hard to build capacity and  it is through these teams we begin to create enduring change.

This model has been effective in large urban districts (I facilitated for several years in Boston Public Schools and across Massachusetts) as well as suburban and small rural communities.  The personalization and distributive leadership characteristics of our model increase buy-in and staff resolve. We collectively become part of the solution.  I sometimes spend a lot of time talking about the relationships that have to exist for change to happen and perhaps less on the specifics of RtI, initially. But this is where I feel most districts go awry.  So much is being put upon school boards, administrators, and teachers in the form of mandates and initiatives.  Even though RtI isn’t necessarily a new concept, it is a new and very substantial challenge for most districts.  The stakes are high, and with dwindling resources, the uncertainty of change, or simply being asked to do more with less, can be paralyzing to the school transformation process.  Only by developing strong collegial relationships and a common conceptual framework for why the change is needed can we persevere. This is something that ERC takes very seriously and does well.

Craig: Can you describe what the scope of work might look like in a district?

Jeff: “Recently I worked with a district that was celebrating their successes in RtI at the elementary level but was just beginning the raising awareness stage at the middle and high schools.  After the self-assessment was completed, I met with a leadership team from each level.  The elementary team felt very good about having clear consistent protocols and an effective problem-solving process in each building.  One area of need they identified was the availability of interventions at tiers two and three, and the fact that they were not consistent across elementary schools.  A second concern was the lack of a consistent process of analyzing and recording student performance data to be used for special education learning disability identification (LDID).  One of my roles was to facilitate the elementary level team in creating a system to share resources and interventions, including professional development on specific interventions. Teachers are not always used to challenging conversations about values and practices. They don’t have as much time together as in past years and some have lost a part of that skill, so we support getting back to deep conversation with expert facilitation.

In that district we also spent time looking at what protocols other districts were using for the LDID process.  We developed a series of forms based on state guidance and had the forms approved for use by the district attorney.

At the secondary level, I facilitated whole school professional development using our activity-based training modules, to develop a shared understanding of RtI.  Using Principles of Adult Learning, I lead the faculty through exercises that connect the essential elements of RtI to current practices and beliefs in their school.  Universal Design for Learning (CAST.org), Differentiated Instruction (Tomlinson), Understanding by Design (Wiggins and McTighe) are crucial components to the pre-requisite of a comprehensive intervention system: a core curriculum that meets the needs of most learners. Faculty and administrators need to walk away believing that RtI is a win-win strategy.  What teacher wouldn’t want to be able to identify a solution for every student when it comes to academic or behavioral challenges? How much failure does a student need to experience before he/she can find success? Presenting RtI in these terms, I have found that once there is a common understanding, most faculty want to be part of the solution.

Craig: I can sense your passion for students and teachers in your responses. I started by asking you what sets ERC apart when it comes to facilitating the development or improvement of a sustainable RtI system in a district. It is apparent that your ability to establish trusting relationships with all stakeholders is crucial to your success.  What are the outcomes that districts can expect from your work with them on RtI?

Jeff: It is important for districts to have an accurate assessment of what they do well and where they need improvement before a tired intervention system can be implemented. You need to know your precise starting point to develop an effective action plan. Once we identify the strengths and needs, I will work with the buildings and districts in building internal capacity in designing, developing and implementing a problem-solving approach to RtI.  This includes shared responsibilities, data driven decision making, and the Learning Disabilities Identification process.   The district will have clear protocols and resources for tiered behavioral and academic interventions as well as a consistent process that is seamless between grade levels and buildings.  Because it is driven by district personnel, it is more likely to be sustainable.  We continue to provide ongoing consultation as needed once the system is in place.  In our model, a district no longer needing my support speaks volumes about our success!

Math for the 21st Century

THE MATH EDUCATION WE SHOULD BE PROVIDING

Just in case you missed it in the NY Times in late summer, David Mumford and Sol Garfunkel have sounded the latest call for a dramatic re-envisioning of secondary math education in America’s public schools. A similar movement in the mid and late 1990’s was quashed by the testing movement and math “purists”, but hopefully, as testing continues to lose its luster and energy, and  widespread alarm continues to grow about the state of our math education, Mumford and Garfunkel have taken up the torch. No computational slouches in their respective careers, Garfunkel is the executive director of the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications and Mumford an emeritus professor of advanced mathematics at Brown.

The nation’s on-going anxiety about math can be traced to the poor performance of American students on various international tests. All this worry, however, is based on the assumption that there is a single established body of mathematical skills that everyone needs to know to be prepared for 21st-century careers. That assumption is wrong, say Mumford and Garfunkel. Different sets of math skills are necessary for different career paths, yet American math education has failed to change to reflect that reality.

Today, most American high school students pass through a sequence of algebra, geometry, more algebra, and pre-calculus. Some make it to calculus. This pathway has now been adopted by the Common Core State Standards in more than 40 states, not to the authors liking. Such a highly abstract curriculum, say Mumford and Garfunkel, is simply not the best way to prepare the vast majority of high school students for productive work and civic lives. How often do most adults need to solve a quadratic equation, or need to know what constitutes a “group of transformations” or “complex numbers”? Professional mathematicians, physicists and engineers do need to know such things, but most citizens the authors argue would be better served by studying how mortgages are priced, how computers are programmed, and or how the statistical results of a medical trial are to be understood.

A math curriculum focused on real-life problems would still expose students to the abstract tools of mathematics, in particular the manipulation of unknown quantities. But there is a world of difference between teaching “pure” math, with no context, and teaching relevant problems that will lead students to appreciate how a mathematical formula models and clarifies real-world situations.

Imagine replacing the sequence of algebra, geometry and calculus with a sequence of finance, data and basic engineering. In the finance course, students would learn the exponential function, use formulas in spreadsheets and study the budgets of people, companies and governments. In the data course, students would gather their own data sets and learn how, in fields as diverse as sports and medicine, larger samples give better estimates of averages. In the basic engineering course, students would learn the workings of engines, sound waves, TV signals and computers. Science and math were originally discovered together, and they are best learned together now.

Traditionalists will object that the standard curriculum teaches valuable abstract reasoning, even if the specific skills acquired are not immediately useful in later life. This reminds one of the last generation’s traditionalists who argued that studying Latin helped students develop linguistic skills. Garfunkel and Mumford write that studying applied math, like learning living world languages, provides both useable knowledge and abstract skills.

In math, they pose, what we need is “quantitative literacy,” the ability to make quantitative connections whenever life requires (as when we are confronted with conflicting medical test results but need to decide whether to undergo a further procedure) and “mathematical modeling,” the ability to move between everyday problems and mathematical formulations (as when we decide whether it is better to buy or lease a new car).

Parents, state education boards and (reluctant) colleges deserve a choice, now,  say Mumford and Garfunkel. The traditional high school math sequence seems less and less the best and certainly not the only road to mathematical competence. The authors believe that the best way for the United States to compete globally is to strive for universal quantitative literacy: teaching topics that make sense to all students and can be used by them throughout their lives. It was through real-life applications that mathematics emerged in the past, has flourished for centuries and connects to our culture now.

(NY Times, Aug. 24, 2011)

ERC Keynote at NEASC

ERC Co-Founder Keynotes NEASC Showcase

ERC Co-Founder Dr. Larry Myatt was invited to present the Keynote remarks at the Fall High School Showcase of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in October. Dr. Myatt who is currently working on projects in more than 20 schools in a dozen school districts chose to focus on the distractions and detours that, in his words, “have prevented high schools from fulfilling the promise of an unprecedented spate of new knowledge in critical fields –human development, cognition and neuroscience, inquiry-based teaching, organizational development, the link between resilience and achievement, to name a few”.

Dr. Myatt also expressed that a number of factors including the lack of imagination, declining professional standards, poor accountability thinking and an undue focus on the minutiae of standards and testing have detained efforts to improve our schools.  But, he posed,  as educators realize the lack of progress and the loss of what was once a monopoly, and reunite around student-centered learning and professional community, we are in a position to take three steps that have the potential to transform our schools –defining rigor, recreating our schools as learning organizations and taking control of the renewal agenda.

The NEASC event was held in Westford MA and was attended by three hundred educators, representing teams from across New England.

New Leader Support

Helping New Leaders Survive and Thrive:
Why it’s Critical for School Districts to Re-Think Support and Mentoring

by Wayne Ogden

“In the midst of a massive demographic exodus in school leadership, new candidates for leadership who care about leading, want to lead, and feel able to lead in current circumstances are as rare as mosquitoes in the snow.”
-A. Hargreaves, 2002

In the decade since Professor Hargreaves penned this description, one could say that the recruitment and retention of new school leaders has almost become “mission impossible.” Many large districts report turning over as many as one third of their administrative hires within five years. Although some graduate schools of education have demonstrated considerable success at teaching future leaders much about educational and leadership theory, few of our nation’s school principals credit their graduate programs with actually teaching them how to do well at the job.

Most principals readily admit that they learned the most about that role through on-the-job training. In a report from the Education Alliance at Brown University the authors observed, ‘the fact is, principals have traditionally been thrown into their jobs without a lifejacket, and they are expected to sink or swim. Unfortunately, far too many principals in the early years of their career go directly to the bottom.”

In her 2004 article in the AASA Journal, Suzette Lovely described the dilemma of rookie principals as follows,

“Prospective leaders are expected to conquer the motorway without any behind-the-wheel experience. The dilemma can be framed this way: In the university you spend extended periods of time reflecting about a problem and posing solutions. In the principalship, problem resolution is expected yesterday. In a university class, you might read a case study on searching a school locker for drugs and debate with classmates whether the search should be conducted. As a principal, you hear about possible drugs in a locker 10 minutes before dismissal and you need to act quickly. Principals manage complex organizations with unpredictable demands. No matter how ready candidates think they are, it is always a shock to their system when they finally get buckled into the driver's seat.”

In an effort to counter decreasing numbers of principal candidates at a time when the job is becoming ever more complex, school districts are turning to mentoring or coaching programs to provide both a lifeline and a structured induction period for educational leaders starting out in new principal positions.

So, how can mentoring and/or coaching programs designed to counter new principal’s limited readiness? To begin with, mentoring and coaching programs are actually designed quite differently.

Mentoring programs typically assign a currently working, experienced principal from inside the new principal’s school district. This senior, “expert” colleague is usually a volunteer and may or may not receive a stipend for her/his work. Such programs are most often informal, involve little or no training of the mentor and depend to a large degree on the notion of mentoring on one’s spare time to share or learn tricks of the trade. And often these mentor/mentee matches are more matters of convenience, regardless of the pair’s styles, listening and advising skills, and personality characteristics that can make or break this kind of relationship.

In the real world of school leadership mentors rarely have the luxury of time to give generously to their protégés. More often than not, mentors find themselves needing to react to the many new and unexpected situations in which new principals find themselves on a day-to-day basis. Demands of the work for both partners doom many of these relationships from the outset.

In some circumstances, superintendents declare themselves as mentors to their new building leaders and many school boards expect that from their highly compensated district leader. Yet, two things suggest that superintendents will have the same limited success as colleague mentors do. First, superintendents, even in the smallest school districts, rarely have adequate time to sit attentively with their principals. Managing their boards, the budget, the political context, the media, state departments of education, parent groups, and the union leave superintendents little time to nurture beginning administrators. And, even in the unlikely situation where the district leader can make time, there is an inherent conflict between the role of confidential mentor and “the boss”, who evaluates the principal’s performance and often performs that work in a political domain where issues of power and perception undermine genuine critical friendship. How can we expect an inexperienced principal to candidly share their weaknesses, needs, confusions and challenges with the person who will write their summative evaluation?

In-district mentoring for beginning school leaders may be better than nothing, but dedicated, confidential coaching provided by a skilled coach from outside the school district has proven to have a far better likelihood of helping a new principal to survive and thrive in the challenging and hectic world of leading a school.

A coaching relationship typically has several different characteristics. Again, coaches should come from outside of the school district to provide both experience and perspective. The coach should be expected to provide ongoing, structured, support that must be confidential, nurturing, and rooted in “best practice.” Collaboration between the new principal and coach should be based not only on the coach’s knowledge and past experiences, but also in readings, case studies and text-based discussions rich in connoisseurial insights. As the Brown study suggests, “What (principals) value most from their coaches is the opportunity for reflective conversations, emotional and moral support, and the affirmation that they are doing a good job.” When possible, expert coaches will supplement their one-to-one work with new principals by convening role-alike groups for small groups of new principals often sharing experiences and frustrations in their jobs. These peer relationships frequently provide enduring support networks long after the coach as moved on.

Coaching programs generally come with a higher cost than do in-district, quasi-volunteer mentoring programs that we commonly see. However, as principal candidates become scarcer driving up the costs of searches, the length of principal contracts and the salaries that they are paid, the relative costs of true coaching programs seem small. In addition, dedicated coaching programs seem better matched to a new generation of school leaders and the challenging conditions they encounter in their work.

Second Wind

Fall River Transformation School Gets “Second Wind”

 What do struggling students in an Indiana high school, violent convicts in Georgia, and anxious test-takers have in common? The answer is: the practical benefits of meditation, exercise,  and self-expression, and they all  came together in late February at the Doran Transformation K-8 School, part of Fall Rivers educational  “Innovation Zone”.

The Doran School, struggling with achievement for the past few years and with a 50% new staff in place, is in the throes of implementing its redesign plan, and according to Maria Pontes, Principal, improving student readiness to learn is a big factor. So much so, that with help from ERC founder Larry Myatt, the school has created an expanded “Wellness Team” that is developing a whole new menu of care coordination for students and staff. Part of their February professional development was to learn “Second Wind”* techniques from Jeffrey Cohen. Cohen brought and demonstrated a repertoire of classroom strategies that help teachers to mentally and physically engage students, and increase their powers of concentration and focus.

Neuroscientists, psychologists and counselors and school practitioners are benefitting from new studies that mark distinct benefits of old and new techniques involving neural blood flow. Schools are concluding that letting go of exercise and the arts to focus on testing strategies has had a negative effect on student’s readiness to learn, and therefore limiting their achievement.

Remember our three examples from the top of this article? Three dozen struggling students come to their mid-western school each day an hour early for high-intensity exercise workouts that have raised their self-esteem, grades, and behaviors. The novel approach has taken root to the extent that other clubs and elective gym classes are appearing in the school and visitors are coming to explore the methods and approaches. In Georgia, an experiment with a correctional institute’s most violent offenders, using yoga and meditation, has proven to be a huge asset to prison conduct as well to inmate’s personal habits and behaviors. And a study of nervous, typically under-achieving test-takers has shown that a combination of meditation, visualization and writing, conducted just before starting a test, has lowered test anxiety and substantially improved scores.

Ms. Pontes described the Doran “Second Wind” session, at which every faculty member participated voluntarily and enthusiastically, as “awesome” and something she feels many of her teachers will adopt and will want more training from Cohen. Practices based on Second Wind have been a fixture in some of Boston’s high-performing Pilot Schools, where they help students extend concentration and turn on their preferred methods for increased performance.

The Doran’s efforts have been of note to Carol Nagle, who heads Fall River’s Family Services Association and also serves on Superintendent Meg Mayo-Brown’s 2020 Scenario Development Team. She has become an enthusiastic supporter of the school’s efforts, hosting a Wellness Team retreat and making skilled professionals from her organizational available to the school’s student support staff and students. If this new Doran Wellness model proves to be as effective as early signs indicate, the school district expects to codify the practices and design features and adopt it in other schools.

For more information on the benefits of Second Wind download the flyer

More LA Charters

Charter firms to operate seven more L.A. Unified schools

In a heated, mid-March Los Angeles school board meeting, major charter school organizations won the right Tuesday to operate at seven of thirteen schools under a policy that allows bidders inside and outside the Los Angeles Unified School District to take control of start-up or academically struggling campuses. Charter schools got most of what they wanted by the end of a 5 and 1/2-hour meeting in which the Board of Education divided up or relinquished ten new campuses, including seven new high schools and three low-performing schools with an enrollment of 20,000 students  next year.

District officials were lobbied to support more charter schools than last year, when groups of district teachers, often working with administrators, prevailed on most plans. This year, the recommendations of L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines included more charters, but a board majority went even further to relinquish control of district schools to outside organizations.  California charter schools are publicly funded and independently run.

Cortines had pressed for low-achieving Clay Middle School to be split between a team from the existing school and Green Dot Public Schools, a highly-regarded charter organization. He spoke in favor of exploring the potential to demonstrate how a charter and a district operation could collaborate. Board President Monica Garcia, however, pushed to have the entire school turned over to Green Dot. Garcia, the close ally of L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, was joined by the mayor's other allies in approving the full handover. Villaraigosa has spoken frequently of schools being put under the control of groups with "proven track records".

The board also overruled Cortines by giving a new Echo Park elementary school to the Camino Nuevo charter group. He had favored a local coalition of teachers and neighborhood residents because, he said, the charter's emphasis on Spanish language instruction in the early grades was not the right choice for all the students attending that school.

The board did uphold Cortines' recommendation to give a new West San Fernando Valley high school to a district administrator-and-teacher-led  group. That school will includes a performing arts academy.

Some Board members questioned whether the district could afford such an arts magnet program amid an ongoing budget crisis and the potential layoffs of thousands of teachers.

Altogether, seven of eleven charter school proposals prevailed including Synergy, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, PUC and Aspire — all well-established charter organizations. There were not charter bids for every campus. Another winner was MLA Partner Schools, a non-profit that will manage Muir Middle School, where all employees will be required to re-interview for their jobs. Cortines recommended against MLA because of what he characterized as the group's mixed record at two high schools already under its control, but MLA, which isn't a charter, operates schools under the union contract and has faced less opposition from charter-school opponents and leaders of the teachers union.  (Los Angeles Times)

Teacher Prep Lacking

American Teacher Preparation Out-of-Step with High-Performing Nations

The first ever International Summit on Teaching, convened in March New York City, showing perhaps more clearly than ever that the United States has been pursuing an approach to teaching contrary to that pursued by the highest-achieving nations. It was the first time that government officials and union leaders from 16 nations met together to exchange experiences and pursue consensus about how to create a well-prepared and accountable teaching profession. Linda Darling-Hammond  of  Stanford University,  founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future,  and former president of the American Educational Research Association, Darling-Hammond , reporting from the Summit, writes in the Washington Post that the growing de-professionalization of teaching in America was recognized as out of step with the strategies pursued by the world’s educational leaders.

In stark contrast to America’s approach to improving teacher quality, still mired in merit pay debates, officials from countries like Singapore and Finland described how they have built a high-performing teaching profession by enabling all teachers to enter high-quality preparation programs, generally at the masters’ degree level, and receiving a salary as they train. There they learn research-based teaching strategies and practice with experts in lab schools connected to their universities. They enter a well-paid profession (earning as much as beginning doctors in several countries), are supported by mentor teachers, and have 15 or more hours a week to work and learn together. Engaging in shared planning, action research, lesson study, and observations in each other’s classrooms goes a long way in removing feelings of isolation and frustration so often expressed by beginning teachers. And they work in schools that are equitably funded and well-resourced with the latest technology and materials.

Darling-Hammond, who also serves as a convener for the Forum for Education and Democracy, compared such approaches with American states’ willingness to lower standards rather than raise salaries for the teachers in poor districts, and the growing number of recruits who enter the profession with inadequate prior training, learning on-the-job with the uneven, or no mentoring. A third of U.S. beginning teachers leave within the first five years, and those with the least training leave at more than twice the rate of those who are well-prepared. Teacher preparation at the university level in the U.S. rarely includes the development of cultural competence, collaborative teaching and planning, and action research

For the full article, go to:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/darling-hammond-us-vs-highest-achieving-nations-in-education/2011/03/22/ABkNeaCB_blog.html

Questions on Testing

National Research Council Study Reaffirms Limits of Testing,
Adds to Concerns Raised by Prior Study

The first major independent study of D.C. school reform has concluded that rising standardized test scores are of limited value in determining whether students are actually learning more, as reported last month by the Washington Post. The study from the National Research Council states that "Looking at test scores should be only a first step -- not an endpoint -- in considering questions about student achievement, or even more broadly, about student learning." The report is the first in a series of evaluations required by the 2007 law that placed the D.C. public schools under mayoral control. The report recognizes that the city has made "a good faith effort" to implement the Public Education Reform Amendment Act, but notes that determining the impact on student achievement will take further study.  Researchers did conclude that the school department must develop a more sophisticated capacity to track individual students who move from traditional public schools to charter schools, or in some cases drop out of the system entirely. "In the meantime, naive aggregate comparison of test scores among race-ethnic groups in the District should be interpreted critically and cautiously," the study said.
See the report: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13114

The NRC reports has further deepened concerned among educators who began to ring alarm bells concerning a government study released in November 2009 which found that problematic educational practices were occurring more frequently in high-poverty and high-minority schools across the country. That report, by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), was requested to examine teaching practices related to the No Child Left Behind education law and, in particular, techniques being used to prepare students to meet state standards and raise scores on state standardized tests.

One legislator expressed that the GAO report, “ reaffirms my concern that the No Child Left Behind Law’s one-size-fits-all approach and heavy focus on high-stakes testing is causing problems in schools, particularly schools that serve our most disadvantaged students.  The study found that problematic teaching practices like teaching to the test and spending more time on test preparation are happening more frequently in high-poverty and high-minority schools, many of which already have less access to high-quality teachers and resources than more affluent schools.” Two key reforms were suggested by the legislative panel who reviewed the results of that GAO study: supporting the development of higher quality tests and ensuring students and schools are measured by more than test scores, but neither has been enacted.

Read the GAO report highlights at http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d1018high.pdf

Oregon Small Schools

Oregon Small Schools Initiative

Nearly a decade ago, the small schools movement in Oregon was limited to small rural high schools and a sprinkling of charter and magnet schools that had sprung up across the state. Never in Oregon’s history had there been a statewide effort to intentionally create small high schools whose focus was meeting the needs of all of their students.

The Oregon Small Schools Initiative—the largest investment in high school reform in the state’s history—has produced a cohort of 34 small schools that is closing the achievement gap between minority and low-income students and their majority peers and changing the lives of the more than 25,000 students and 500 staff who have participated in this work.

In the past seven years the Oregon Small Schools Initiative has made an indelible mark on the landscape of education. An analysis by ECONorthwest revealed that student achievement levels are notably improved, often dramatically and especially so for historically disadvantaged students. ECONorthwest also concluded that the small schools model does not necessarily require a significantly greater investment per student than would a traditional high school serving the same students.

Read the full report: http://www.e3smallschools.org/

New Teacher Training

NCATE Report on Teacher Preparation: Developmental sciences critical to student achievement

Teacher-education programs must include the basics of developmental science in their training programs, according to a report released recently by a panel convened by the National Council for Accreditation of Teachers Education (NCATE). The panel, co-chaired by Dr. James P. Comer, found that too few teachers enter the profession with a firm grasp of the importance of developmental sciences on student learning. “Teachers cannot improve learning if they don’t know how to help address the social, emotional, and cognitive needs of children and adolescents,” said Dr. Comer, founder of the Yale Child Study Center School Development Program, which implements developmental science interventions, including the well-known Comer School Development Program.

Dr. Comer told a news conference in Washington, D.C., that students attending underperforming schools were very often not born into networks that provide the attachments, bonding and linguistic skills critical for learning. But when teachers and administrators address developmental needs, academic achievement often increases, he said.  “Most teachers and administrators are not prepared, no fault of their own, to create environments in schools that compensate for underdevelopment,” Dr. Comer said.

A meta-analysis of 213 school programs, for example, found that programs such as the Comer School Development Program led, on average, to an 11 percentile-point gain in student achievement. The study, by J.A. Durlak, appears in the January 2011 issue of Child Development. The report by NCATE, the professional accrediting organization for schools, colleges, and departments of education, also says little effort has been made to ground school reform in the developmental sciences, which include cognitive science, neuroscience, and the science of child and adolescent development. The report calls on states and the federal government to enact policy changes to address problem – and to do so quickly. “Developmental science is not ‘fluff’ that can be considered optional or an add-on to what schools do or how educators are prepared,” said panel co-chair Dr. Robert Pianta, a prominent psychologist who is the dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia he says. “If we don’t act now to integrate development sciences knowledge into preparation programs, we may lose another generation of learners.”

The report, The Road Less Traveled: How the Developmental Sciences Can Prepare Educators to Improve Student Achievement: Policy Recommendations, was prepared by a multi-disciplinary panel of experts, including some of the nation’s most prominent educators, psychologists, and authorities on young people from related disciplines. Highlights of the findings included:

• Educator-preparation programs fall short of providing adequate training in the developmental sciences, including cognitive science and the science of child and adolescent development.
• Programs need to do a better job of integrating the behavioral sciences with best practices in classrooms and communities.
• Policymakers must take into account the importance of child and adolescent development as they design new ways to assess student and teacher performance. Developmental science is a crucial factor in low-performing schools, where students often need of developmental supports to improve achievement.

Alan Dichter Memoire

The Question

There’s nothing quite like the right question…

Looking back, I can honestly say it was the most powerful question I ever heard asked in a staff meeting; the distilled essence of a probing question.  It took about five years of very hard work to answer it and, in the process, teaching and learning at our school were transformed. Let me tell you about it.

Download Satellite 
Academy HS document (.doc)

It was 1991 and “Graduation by Exhibition” was something that many high schools in the Coalition of Essential Schools were tackling.  The staff of our small New York City high school was diligently working on clarifying their expectations for graduation exhibition portfolios.  We’d been at it months. The sheets of newsprint were saved and re-posted at each meeting --“What do we want students to know and be able to do when they graduate, and how will they demonstrate it?”  A fine question, but not THE question. That would come later.

The lists got longer and longer with every session, of course. There were just so many worthy things that couldn’t possibly be left out. One could feel very proud of the group’s work – they basically had it all up there.  Of course no one, not for one minute, actually thought that any student could really know and would be able to do it all well by the time they graduated– it was a wish list and everyone knew it.  Many of the items had been talked about, off and on, for years and nothing much was ever really done about them. I remember asking if the list was “what students needed to know and be able to do in order to graduate” or was a list of “wouldn’t it be nice if…”

But editing the list continued to be difficult, because everything was worthy, despite the fact that everyone could see the totality of skills and content was quite unrealistic.  And we had had no discussion at all about what and how we might need to teach in order to get to many of the things on the “wish” list.  Our discussions so easily and quickly went from energizing to deflating.  What were we really doing here?

And then came THE question. No one actually remembers who asked it, but everyone remembered hearing it:  “Maybe instead of asking ourselves ‘what do students need to know and be able to do in order to graduate,’ we should first ask ourselves, ‘What do students need to know and be able to do to succeed in this school?’”…. A collective pause… “What do students need to know and be able to do to succeed in this school?”… Hmm…  “And let’s assume for a minute that we will have to teach them to do these things (which we can’t assume they already know how to do).” Another pause.  “And let’s also assume we want them to collect and organize evidence from our classes.  Wouldn’t it be worthy to identify a few things we can agree that students need to know and be able to do to succeed in our classes, and then go about teaching them and having them collect evidence?  The students would learn worthy things. We’d learn a great deal also wouldn’t we?  Isn’t that what we should be doing after all?”  Hmm…

The conversation began to accelerate. Energy began to flow again. What do students need to know and be able to do to succeed in this school?  Revise their work!  Yes, indeed.  Do we teach that? Or do we simply ask for it, and the kids who can already do it succeed and those who can’t? Well, we ask them again nicely and give them more time.  And if we intend for it to be more than just making it neat and correcting their spelling, we also need to be clear about exactly what we want, and we need to give them feedback connected clearly to those expectations.  And students will need to know those expectations explicitly. Who could argue against that?  So, what if the ability to revise your work in connection to commonly understood expectations based on various forms of feedback was something we thought our students need to be able to do to succeed in this school?  Well, that means… now we have to teach them to do it and we have to provide the kind of assignments that allow them to produce the evidence we want to see.  It was a classic form of “Understanding by Design”.

You could see the wheels turning.  Oh, my!  So many things will need to change in my class:  fewer essays, if multiple drafts are expected; the students will need to actually be able to use any rubric we devise; my feedback needs to be more precise.  And if we want peer feedback on first drafts, there’s even much more to do.  But I have my own way of doing things and my favorite assignments which the students like, but which may not actually produce much evidence of anything. Hmm…

It became clear that agreeing about what we wanted students to know and be able to do to succeed in our school was in many ways more daunting than agreeing on a list of graduation expectations.  It was all about defining our priorities in teaching, and it forced a discussion which demanded a pedagogical coherence across the school far more powerful than anyone could have predicted.

Over the five subsequent years, the list of “know and be able to do to succeed in the school” grew modestly but thoughtfully.  We didn’t add anything until we felt we had made sufficient progress on what was already on the table – until we were assured that we could teach students to do it and they could in turn produce the evidence --taking notes (a fascinating discussion, since all agreed it had to be more than copying off the board); “close” reading (strategies for  accessing and making meaning of various texts); working intensely in groups; discussion & presentation; independent work; and eventually, numeracy across the curriculum.

In particular, I remember one conversation that happened about two years into the endeavor.  The staff had kept writing samples from a large group of students when they entered the school, and had also collected additional samples from the same students about a year and half later.  And, let me also say that this was a great staff – smart, committed, everything you could possible want.  The room was silent as they looked at the work.  Finally Susan spoke, “I think no one in this room actually thought our students could do this well.  We only thought we had high standards.  We really didn’t.  We had no idea what our students could do if we worked together.”

And we had really just begun.  I learned a great deal about the dynamics of staff setting, and then achieving, high expectations for students.  It’s not just an intellectual exercise. I’ve come to believe that it may have more to do with just how much individual teachers believe in themselves.  It wasn’t until the (very talented) staff got beyond doing great individually and began to work in an interdependent fashion that they were able to actualize some of the more ambitious goals.  Being in each other’s classroom became routine and it became necessary. Our faculty named the approach “Learning to Learn”, a name that meant something powerful to us and which eventually came to permeate every aspect of the school.  The challenge of figuring out the graduation requirements by exhibition ultimately became easier as we found that these simple constructs made it easier for teachers to collaborate in order to help students develop authentic evidence of learning.

Over time the things that had absorbed big chunks of meeting time (planning events, prioritizing this or that, programming and operational decisions, etc.) began to fade away and were handled “off-line.”  The really important work – the work that HAD to be done together—took their place: collaborative problem solving, examining student work, committee work on revising rubrics, learning literacy strategies, etc.  Time was precious and could not be wasted.  Creative scheduling ensured that teams of teachers had planning periods at a common time and staff grew skilled in using their time effectively.

It took those five years before we felt that we finally had a reasonable answer to The Question, and the assurance that it led to authentic students learning.  And in the process we all became better educators than we probably ever imagined we might become.

So, go ahead and try it.  Ask yourselves what your students need to know and be able to do to succeed in your school.  Be prepared for some very difficult conversations.  If you are able to stick with it, things will never quite be the same again.

Alan Dichter

2010

Alan Dichter was Principal of   Satellite Academy in New York, a long-time  CES member school, followed by positions as Director of New School Development, Director of the Executive Leadership Academy, Deputy Superintendent for New Schools and  Leadership Development. He has  also served as Co-Director of National School Reform Faculty at New York  University.  He retired from the NY DOE in 2006.

Ventures at Fenway HS

CNN’s recent feature on Fenway High School’s award-winning Ventures Program prompted us to track down its Director, Amy Carrier. We wanted to know how this program continues to engage Boston’s diverse professional community in setting real-world standards for Fenway students. Amy was interviewed by Craig Levis, ERC associate.

CL- Amy, I understand that you and Fenway Ventures were recently featured on CNN. First of all, congratulations, and secondly, why do you surmise they were interested in covering something like Ventures?

AC- Thanks for asking me to comment.  I think the producers of Chalk Talk, the program that featured my interview, are looking for examples of what’s new and different, programs that are really “working” in our public schools.  The Ventures program is an example of a best practice in education that has been shown to make a difference in preparing students for success in a 21st century workplace.

CL- How would you describe the Ventures program at Fenway, how long has it been in the school, and why do you think it has been successful with and for students?

AC- Fenway was forward-thinking in this arena when it began a version of the program over a dozen years ago.  Students partnered with external organizations to do business planning and have a real-world example of how their creative thinking could make a difference to an existing institution.  Since that time, the program has grown and changed – responding and flexing to the trends of an ever-changing business world.  Today, 120 students each year are required to take the course in eleventh and twelfth grades where they learn entrepreneurship, write business plans, explore careers, practice professionalism skills and learn financial literacy lessons ranging from savings and interest to car loans and insurance.

I’ve seen the far-reaching success as my students become more confident presenters in exhibitions in school and as they develop the kind of savvy it takes to communicate with local professionals about their own areas of career interest when they interview for their six-week internships - the capstone of the program.  I’ve also seen the long-term impact of this curriculum as my students graduate, move on to college and report back that a professor was impressed with how much they were able to contribute to a business course, or how their ability to organize their goals and communicate with business people sealed the deal on a highly competitive co-op or a coveted job in the university president’s office.

CL- What have you learned from and about the expectations of the people and institutions that host Fenway students in interns?

AC- First, let me say that year after year, internship supervisors and mentors that come into the classroom and report over and over just how impressed they are with Fenway’s students who are poised, confident and professional, surprising and exciting these folks all at once.  I host a great event in May, the culmination of all 70 Fenway graduating senior internships.  Our workplace mentors go on stage to speak about their experiences, and they talk about their pleasant surprise with the skill level of Fenway’s interns and about a level of maturity and responsibility that often exceeds that of their college interns!  The mentors who work so closely with Fenway’s students express that students must be prepared to think on their feet, have the confidence to speak up and take charge – all necessities in a fast-paced work environment.

Of course, there are challenges, but because Fenway’s students enter their internships with a year of preparation in our Ventures classrooms, those challenges are more easily addressed and provide another “teachable moment” for a student who deserves to learn an important lesson while still being supported, and better prepared for the world of work – not once he’s out in the world with no one to guide him, or worse, without the care and concern of a teacher or mentor who wants him to learn and grow.

CL- What are the important things a Fenway student learns in the course of his/her Ventures sequence?

AC- There are so many important experiences.  The financial literacy lessons provide a foundation from which a young person can start out in life with knowledge of just how smart choices or mistakes will impact the future.  The constant practice of “SBE” – standard business English and etiquette-- in the classroom, along with practice in stand-up presentations, allows students to feel comfortable entering and “fitting into” the work environment.  Beyond these, the time spent exploring, trying on (through job shadows and interviews) and thinking about potential careers is a very important step in preparing our students for successful futures.  We simply can’t expect our young people to figure these things out by trial and error once they have graduated from high school.  In the end, no matter what path my students choose, they have built a foundation of skills and practice that graduates them into the competitive 21st century world of work having a least considered, observed and reflected upon just what that means.

CL- How has the Ventures program evolved since you’ve been involved with it? And have you heard from other sites interested in Ventures?

AC- I have heard from other schools, teachers and even politicians who want this kind of program in their own schools.  Every adult I’ve ever described the program to says – without fail – that they wish they had this program when they were in high school (and I’m one of those adults!).  Most people see it as a no-brainer and then they want to figure out how to make it happen.

And in terms of how the program has evolved since I’ve been at Fenway – let me start by saying that one of the things I love most about directing and teaching the Ventures program is the flexibility I have with curriculum and the topics I cover in class.  The world, the economy, workplace trends – they all change so rapidly that the curriculum must adapt to meet those changes.  Every year there are new hot-button issues.  In 2006, I talked about Enron but today, my students wouldn’t know what Enron was.  Unfortunately, there is no shortage of examples in our society that become teaching moments for students.  Last year, I taught about the foreclosure crisis which affected students sitting in my classroom.  This year, I used the example of a Kim Kardashian credit card which has consumer advocate groups up in arms.  Students get excited when they hear terms or stories that are familiar – it makes the curriculum engaging.  When I teach entrepreneurship, I empower the students to identify and solve a problem or need that they see in their lives and then write a business plan around it.  The ownership they take of their own ideas is something no one can take away.  When the idea is their own – when the topic of a lesson on interest rates reminds them of a television jingle or gets them to tune in because their neighbor’s home is boarded up due to foreclosure – kids want to learn.  I just love that I get to teach what kids are already thinking about and then empower them to make a difference themselves.

CL- Final question, Amy, what would you say to other schools, perhaps not as innovative or high-performing as Fenway right now, about how they might benefit or learn from including a program like Ventures?

AC- There is no question in my mind that including a program or class like Ventures will benefit every single student who takes it.  I don’t necessarily believe that everyone who works in a school would even tie this kind of learning to innovation or performance.  Certainly there are priorities that must be set and goals that must be achieved in our public schools – but at a very basic level, we all know that we are trying to graduate better citizens.  When we think about our students as citizens of our own society, we cannot avoid thinking about the basic skills that you and I must have – as citizens in a society – to be responsible and successful.  If an educator has even considered teaching anything that I teach in the Ventures program – or, I would argue, if they have even read this far in our interview, I would say that they have what it takes to make a small change now – and maybe a larger change later – to include some of all of this kind of curriculum.  I think it’s our responsibility to our students and while it’s not a walk in the park, it is just the right thing to do.  At Fenway, we teach our students how to do the right thing.  I think that providing all students with the experience of an internship in a local business, teaching all students how to speak for themselves, perform well at an interview, avoid mistakes that will damage their credit and basically become citizens who don’t fall through the cracks, well, *that* is the right thing to do.

Forum ESEA proposal

As leaders and individuals with decades of experience in improving public education at all levels, the Conveners of The Forum for Education and Democracy have viewed the debates over the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as offering the opportunity to finally get it right.  The Forum asserts that, after a decade of tinkering around the edges and avoiding the hard questions, the “No Child Left Behind” version of ESEA did little to improve schools. In fact, they posit, our schools look much like they did when the act was passed – and many think that the attempts to implement NCLB have hindered school improvement efforts going on prior to its passage.

Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way.
– Ted Sizer

Read the report: http://www.forumforeducation.org/files/u48/FED_Short_Paper_on_ESEA.pdf

Wayne Ogden Interview

Schools principals and administrators have seldom felt more pressure to improve teaching and learning than in our current environment. Wayne Ogden, former superintendent and principal, is widely known and esteemed for his work on the mentoring of new leaders and his skills and commitment to the practice of instructional leadership. He was interviewed for this edition by Dr. Larry Myatt.

LM- Wayne, “The Skillful Leader”, which you co-authored more than a decade ago, remains an incredibly popular and useful tool for school leaders. Can you say why you think that is the case?

WO-  Larry, my co-authors I have been surprised and pleased that The Skillful Leader: Confronting Mediocre Teaching has remained relevant and helpful. I believe that its success and staying power comes because school principals find it immediately useful in their supervisory efforts by providing a clear focus --to provide students with better instruction.  Interestingly, we predicted that mediocre instruction would persist unless supervisors and teachers jointly understand and pay rapt attention to the connection between their efforts and student learning.  Only in the last few years has this topic actually made it onto the national radar, driven in large part by the “all-kids agenda” and the ossification of so much of the school model.

LM- What’s new in terms of the context of instructional practice? What dilemmas or challenges should we be paying attention to?

WO-  What’s new in some contexts is the challenge of linking our traditional supervisory practices to the demands that student performance data be included in the comprehensive performance appraisal of our teachers and principals. Policy makers, school board members, and school reform advocates all seem to be demanding accountability measures that recognize the direct connection between teacher performance and student learning. But, I do not know that anyone has figured out yet how to understand and manage the many complexities of the process.

LM- So, what are the implications for talent recognition, development, retention, etc.? And can we find time to do those things seriously, including deep mentoring, with the current distractions, budget constraints, and fewer staff?

WO- The implications are huge and made enormously more difficult by our struggling economy. While I’ll happily leave the economic dilemma to the folks in Washington, DC, I do have some thoughts about reshaping how aspiring teachers and principals come through the training and talent pipeline. And, while I do think it will require some open minds as well as open wallets to accomplish some of what I suggest, I don’t think this is rocket science. The folks who long ago decided how best to train our nation’s physicians and plumbers concluded that disciplined academic study needed to be combined with extensive supervised apprenticeship experiences in order to produce capable beginning physicians and plumbers who could successfully “hit the ground running” in their professions. Yet, despite all the other changes in public school education, we continue to think we can prepare the majority of our beginning teachers by grafting on an undergraduate degree a three-month student teaching experience much of which is spent merely watching.

And on the leadership side, a high percentage of aspiring principals can now get their administrative license by adding on some graduate school credits and an administrative apprenticeship that is even shorter and less intense than that of our student teachers. This type of teacher and administrator preparation has never been adequate, and in today’s complex world of public education it is virtually useless.

Aspiring teachers and administrators both need year-long, supervised apprenticeships in places that combine the status and prestige of our nation’s best teaching hospitals. Master teachers and principals must closely monitor and critique the work of these aspiring educators. Learning how to become a great teacher or principal is not part- time work. It should be highly focused--the only thing these aspiring educators are doing-- while they learn their craft. Then, in their first year on the job with our children, they need to be mentored and coached the way we hope that our beginning heart surgeon or master plumber was trained and coached!

Yes, this will be expensive and a much bigger commitment than it ever has been before. Aspiring teachers and principals will need to commit to longer and more costly training. School districts will need to create mentoring and coaching positions to help nurture and perfect their new hires. Universities will have to put the same type of commitment and resources into training our teachers and principals as their importance requires. Most of their training programs will need to be totally redesigned. Our states will have to figure out ways to compensate teachers and principals at levels that reflect the length and cost of their preparation.

LM- Wayne, thanks so much for your thoughts here. To conclude, will you comment on where you do and/or don’t see value added in some of the things we’re doing in leadership development, especially in the principal training and licensure arena, and district-based programs?

WO- Over the last few years, most State Departments of Education have tried to make it easier for people to become teachers and principals. Provisional educator licenses have been granted to adults who have a college degree and can pass some kind of state exam. These teacher and principal licensure requirements generally include no serious apprenticeship or formal training in teaching or in leading. That is simply nuts! At the same time, in an effort to meet the needs for training more new teachers and administrators, to replace the retiring baby boomers, State DOE’s have approved what I call “licensure light” programs that thrive on quick and simple training regimens that meet the barest minimum of the skills and knowledge necessary to be competent teachers and principals.

In-district leadership programs continue to appear and disappear as they have for three decades.  They use a master set of recognizable readings and exercises but, as you and I have repeatedly seen in our work together, without excellent facilitation, outside provocation and critical friendship, and a willingness to challenge in-district orthodoxy, norms, and “coziness”, these programs routinely fall short of generating outstanding leaders.

Thanks for inviting me to comment and I look forward to being part of ERC initiative to restore faith in front-line educators to lead the change in our schools!