support this

In the Times:

In just five months, the Obama administration has freed schools in more than half the nation from central provisions of the No Child Left Behind education law, raising the question of whether the decade-old federal program has been essentially nullified.

On Friday, the Department of Education plans to announce that it has granted waivers releasing two more states, Washington and Wisconsin, from some of the most onerous conditions of the signature Bush-era legislation. With this latest round, 26 states are now relieved from meeting the lofty — and controversial — goal of making all students proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. Additional waivers are pending in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

“The more waivers there are, the less there really is a law, right?” said Andy Porter, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

[snip]

In exchange for the education waivers, schools and districts must promise to set new targets aimed at preparing students for colleges and careers. They must also tether evaluations of teachers and schools in part to student achievement on standardized tests. The use of tests to judge teacher effectiveness is a departure from No Child Left Behind, which used test scores to rate schools and districts.

[snip]

Instead of labeling all struggling schools as failing, the waivers direct states to focus most attention on the bottom 5 percent of low-performing schools. “With the waiver we can focus on those schools that really need a lot of help,” said June Atkinson, North Carolina’s state superintendent of public schools.

[snip]

The waivers also free up about $2 billion in annual federal funding that No Child Left Behind required low-performing schools to use either to transfer students to other schools or for tutoring services.

Maria Campanario, interim principal at Rafael Hernández School, a dual-language kindergarten-to-Grade 8 school in Roxbury, a Boston neighborhood, that has missed its federal targets four years running, said parents were often confused by the offer to transfer to another school.

“I have parents who come in who are English-language learners, and they would say: ‘What does this mean, we can go to another school? You don’t want us to be here?’ ” she said. “They would say, ‘But we like the school and think it’s fine.’ ”

Ms. Campanario said she welcomed the discretion to use the funding for “professional development that is going to support the whole school.”

“If you give me that money,” she said, “ I will put it to excellent use.”

‘No Child’ Law Whittled Down by White House By MOTOKO RICH
Published: July 6, 2012

More professional development.

I'm sure that will work.

By the way, when did 'support' become the all-purpose word for what schools do. I hear 'support' constantly in the edu-world these days. Hear it and read it. Struggling students need support, struggling teachers need support, struggling schools need support. Everyone needs support, and everyone else seems to be getting and/or providing support. It's all about support!

Anonymous on Professional Learning Communities in Utah

Anonymous left this comment:

Several schools in our school district (Washington County Utah) have started doing this kind of assessment and intervention with individual students. They've had such amazing results that the school district is passing a resolution today requiring all schools and teachers to participate. They call them Professional Learning Communities or PLC's.

From today's newspaper:

"The resolution in support of PLCs would require each educator in the district to participate in the PLC activities, part of a collaborative effort to achieve better results from students by continuously analyzing performance and intervening where necessary with individual students."
School board ponders new background checks
David DeMille • ddemille@thespectrum.com • Published: March 07. 2011 10:29AM

I am a huge fan of "Professional Learning Communities," which I think should probably be seen as an indigenous, American form of Japanese lesson study.

Richard DuFour invented "professional learning communities" at Adlai Stevenson High School in the 1980s, and the school has seen continuous improvement in student achievement since that time. Here's his website: allthingsplc.

The great charter schools use a variant of Richard DuFour's approach, too. Paul Bambrick-Santoyo cites DuFour in his book Driven by Data: A Practical Guide to Improve Instruction which is essentially the companion volume to Doug Lemov's Teaching Like a Champion.

onward and upward, part 3

also in the new Harvard Education Letter:

Other experts working to train teachers onlinoe agree. "One of the hallmarks of online learning is that it changes the onus of learning from the teacher to the student," obseves Dr. Lynne Meeks, who runs Alabama's portion of eLearning for Educators, a federally funded multistate ODP [sic] project.
Like Teacher, Like Student
by Dave Saltman
Harvard Education Letter
January | February 2011
p. 4

Federally funded, you say.

I'm pretty sure I don't want to pay for a multistate ODP project.

Or OPD, as the case may be.^*

Heck, I don't even want to pay for a curriculum department for my own school district.

Also, I vote for the "onus of learning" remaining with the teacher, thank you very much.

Of course, I don't have a vote.


^* OPD = online professional development

Dan Dempsey on professional development

here

I'm going to msmi

I've finally got my reservations made!

msmi2010

I hope some of you can come -- I'd love to put faces to names after all this time.

exo attends a professional development presentation

We recently had a PD which was called "Differentiated Use of Textbook". The presenter, former elementary school teacher from PA, started withe following: "The textbooks are boring, they contain too much dry information and too littl pictures and connections to technology".

Mind you, she presented to a high school teachers. Especially in math and science, it's common among us to be annoyed with extremely heavy textbooks with TOO MANY pictures and TOO LITTLE of information so we rarely request that kids carry textbooks to class relying on lectures and for homeworks they use online versions.

Now, this whole differentiated textbook talk can be summarized a s following: sorry, kids can't read. So let's group them together and do this activity, and that activity, and this one activity so they will not need a textbook at all! And everyone will feel better, because stronger kids can go and research more online! And weaker kids can be assigned points for participation!

Grrr........

Temple Grandin would say this is an example of "the bad gets normal."

Allison on professional development

The example of differentiated instruction grading given in the talk I saw was stuff like "draw the floorplan for a house" with points for decorating, which equaled the same number of points you could get by calculating the area of the rooms.

In another example, you gave a sheet of 15 problems, assigning a variety of points to each, and told them "do enough problems to get 20 points." There were, say, 10 1 point problems, 4 2 points, 3 5 points, 2 10s, 1 20.

The top example is exactly the kind of thing I worry about with tiered homework in differentiated instruction classrooms.

What do you think of the second?

Again, what worries me is hidden tracking inside a classroom, where the bottom kids simply carry on doing the easiest problems year after year without ever advancing to more difficult work.

instructional coaches & class size

from anonymous:

In my district out here in California we are cutting K-2 class size reduction (back up to 30 from 20), middle and high school counselors, and numerous other supports. We are however, KEEPING our 3.5 "literacy coaches" in our small district of 3 elementary schools, 1 middle and 1 high school.

Part of the argument is that coaches support new teachers. Problem is we are laying off all the new teachers. These lit coaches actually represent a hidden administrative cost, as it's the admins who want them. They are de facto assistant principals for principals who have next-to-no curriculum expertise. We've had coach positions for 12 years now... yet we are still seen as needing continuous prof. development. Unlike puberty, one never gets to the end of one's (professional) development.

Ironically, our current coach is less experienced than most of the staff at our school. The coaching thing has become a sacred cow that should have dried up long ago.

217

So... the state of Wisconsin mentioned "professional development" 217 times in its Race to the Top application and still didn't make the final 16.

Good.


update: uh-oh

from Fred Hess:

New York's 908-page application included some choice phrases. It promises, "An intense focus on curriculum and meaningful professional development based on student performance; data-drive instruction where teams develop individual student action plans based on data from formative and interim assessments; differentiated professional development and coaching based on data" (page 6).

It also declares that it will create "clear, content-rich, sequenced, spiraled, detailed curricular frameworks" (yes, five adjectives) for new assessments (page 10).

And, impressive for the sheer amount of jargon that could be wedged into a single sentence, New York's app promises "to support differentiated professional development closely linked to student growth data, identify coaches and mentors using effectiveness ratings closely tied to student growth data, and build data-driven feedback loops between professional development, coaching/mentoring activities, and teacher effectiveness" (page 144).

Spiraled frameworks, differentiated professional development, and coaching ----

Whoa.

I have to move.

Possibly to Wisconsin.

Or Guam.

Basically, any place not in danger of winning Race to the Top.

stop the madness

here is redkudu, writing on the Core Knowledge blog:

I am thankful some attention is being focused on the unreasonable expectations placed on teachers: that there is some acknowledgment that it cannot ALL be done. This is especially true when you look at what teachers should be able to expect – that because a student is in a certain grade they have passed certain benchmarks which are designated by the state to assure us the students have the minimum skills necessary to accomplish grade-level work. Unfortunately, this is often not the case.

As a high school teacher, I’ve been expected to conduct Socratic Seminars, but never trained in how to do so. I found and purchased a book on such, read up, developed a lesson plan, and presented it. I received poor marks on an evaluation for that, because the method I’d read and produced was not the same method (a modified version) that the school preferred.

Ditto Marzano’s 9, by which we are formally evaluated at my new school. No training, no available materials (his books) in case I want to read up on them. Ditto small group learning, the student portfolio, PBL’s, and a whole host of other programs brought in via 20 minute PowerPoint at staff training without any supporting texts or ongoing training. And I should be able to demonstrate these methods and techniques in a classroom with learning disparities ranging from semi-literate to college level in 90 minutes on Mondays, 70 minutes on Wednesdays, and 45 minutes on Fridays. (Actually, our school has 9 different schedules, which also impact Tuesdays and Thursdays, early release Wednesdays, pep rally days, testing days, Homeroom days (once a 6 weeks – I’m expected to provide a meal for 25 students to enhance our “bonding”), actual homerooms (once a day), and other events.) Band-aids for gaping wounds and all that. I’d love to have a classroom in which levels were as simple as below expected, at expected, and above expected. I’d like to able to say the only thing I do in the summers is relax.

means of transmission

EDUCATION trends have three means of transmission, all invisible to the public: the sale of textbooks and other instructional materials, teaching in schools of education, and teacher-training seminars conducted during the paid noninstructional days that are provided in teachers' contracts. As superintendent in California, [Bill] Honig realized that he couldn't directly affect what was taught in schools of education, because they are independent of the state board of education, and so if he wanted to have any real influence over what went on in public-school classrooms, the best means at hand were textbooks and seminars. He moved aggressively to put his people in charge both of setting up California's eight annual "staff development" days for teachers and of writing state subject-matter "frameworks," which form the basis for textbook orders.

The Reading Wars by Nicholas Lemann

Atlantic Monthly November 1997

Thus was born the California Subject Matter Project. Ed headed the History Social Science Project; Phil Daro, currently a member of the mathematics Work Group for the Common Core national standards effort, was in charge of the Mathematics Project.

The Subject Matter Projects gave teachers professional development in the form of seminars taught by disciplinary specialists. History teachers took seminars given by history professors, not consultants. Ed says today that, at the time, he had no idea how radical Honig's concept was.

Me, neither.

I love the internet

Tex sent me a comment that appeared on the Journal News web site today:

what a load of crap- Look to Ed House in any district in Westchester and you will see the real pork. District after district has Superintendent and as't Superintendents making $150,000 to $350,000 per year. They then have the nerve to bring in outside experts to train the teachers in program after program that do not work. In fact they are pre-packaged frfom the last guru that was going to save public education. Go to any district and ask to see how many are hired to teacher instruction
4/9/2009 7:29:15 AM

Then there's this.

Westchester districts now pay about $10.8 million, an increase of 18 percent since 2004-5, for the superintendents who oversee the education of 122,000 students.

cranberry on professional development

When I hear, "improving teacher quality," I don't think, "why, more teacher development courses are the way to go!" I think, prune the deadwood, and hire people who can spell, write, think, and have a thorough knowledge of their subject areas. Union contracts don't allow this, of course.

Doctors and lawyers are subject to stringent licensing standards, much more demanding than teacher licensing exams. In order to be accepted to medical school and law schools, candidates must score acceptably on the LMAT or GMAT exams. After their strenuous professional schools, they must either pass the bar exam, or the medical board exams.

As a consequence of professional misconduct, doctors can have their license revoked, and lawyers can be disbarred. This happens upon the basis of duly investigated complaints, on the authority of independent boards.

Measures such as the medical and legal professions have chosen to live under would go a long way towards "improving teacher quality."

By the way, for both doctors and lawyers, the required professional development happens on their own time. Due to the structure of professional partnerships, every day spent in training is a day they're not making money.

more horselaughs in Singapore

It’s odd, really, when a parent questions the merits of a planned early dismissal or a community member derides a teacher professional development day. Rarely have I heard an open-heart surgery patient complain about the time doctors spend at conferences and professional development programs.

Another teacher professional development day? Lose another day of class time? Can we afford this?
by Peter J. Negroni

visual learning

foldables
why lawyers burn out
Independent George re: foldables
your tax dollars at work part 2
my busy day
not your father's formative assessment
remembering key concepts in math with foldables
south of the border
Steve H and palisadesk on foldables
homeschooling convention: no foldables

you may have to hit refresh a couple of times to load these pages:
21st century skills in Singapore
the master plan
horselaughs are heard in Singapore
more horselaughs in Singapore

writing to learn

Remember this photo?





caption:

WRITING TO LEARN: Brenda Mitchell, left, and Elizabeth Cooke show their notebooks during a science-writing workshop for teachers in Oakland, Calif.

source:
Writing to Learn
Education Week
Published in Print: August 27, 2008
page 1

I can't read.

Comments regarding the "witty" banter by the AZ Channel 12 reporters on this post:

concerned ct parent said:
I am so done with the "I was so terrible in math," comment I could scream.

Tex said:
How stupid was that Saxon math comment?? Sheesh!

And, her co-anchor joined the gleeful group of adults who proudly claim, “I was the worst math student on the planet”.

I am so with you (as my 13 yr-old would say).

When training teachers in Singapore Math, I always spend 20-30 minutes talking about math anxiety, which begins with a completely blank powerpoint slide with the words:

I can't read

in 120 pt font or so. We discuss how this makes them feel, and most are pretty uncomfortable. Then we talk about how people would never admit something like this to their friends, yet think about how many times we've been out to dinner or having coffee with people that say "I just can't do math" or "I am so bad at math". And everyone chuckles...tee hee, it's sooo funny.

Why aren't these people embarrassed? Why is this socially acceptable? What are you going to do about this in your school?

It's a great professional development starter, I can tell you!

Rafe Esquith at Mindless Math Mutterings

it's always worse than you think

A teacher pal in the Midwest tells me that the single worst thing about her district (where she's happy & has taught for many years) is the chronic implementing of new programs without aforethought.

Every five years the district implements new stuff. Without fail. (Last summer they bought Lucy Calkins, but then didn't use the curriculum; they also piloted TERC, but decided against it - whew.)

Administrators come in, implement stuff, and move on to better jobs where they implement more stuff.

It's the same everywhere, it seems. If I remember correctly, and I think I do, the material sent out to parents last year, introducing our new middle school principal, said he'd implemented character education in his school in Albany.

And that was it, pretty much.

He implemented character education in an urban school attended by disadvantaged kids. So, apparently on the strength of that accomplishment, he was hired to implement stuff here.^*

Of course, what do I know? If you listen to the New York Times, character education is what disadvantaged kids need.

.............................

The fact that the star teachers in our schools -- and most schools are going to have a star or two -- have to sit around listening to professional developers instead of creating and providing the professional development themselves and being paid to do it really cheeses me off, and always has.

.............................


churning the curriculum

Paul Hill, an education researcher at the University of Washington, sees parallels between education practices and medicine as practiced in the Colonial period. "There was not a lot of science behind medicine then," says Hill. "It was swept by fads." Each patient's suffering was thought of as unique, a special case. There was no broad research that demanded standardized responses to standard ills. Each patient was in need of individualized care. Ever hear one of your child's teachers use that word? We provide individualized instruction. Each class is unique. "Physicians used to say the same thing," says Hill. "There was a natural tendency to think of everything as much too unique to want to generalize your practice."

But while medicine has moved into an era of standardized practice driven by medical research, education remains in the era of leeches and bleeding. Where was the research that demanded teachers drop phonics, teach in "open" classrooms or try "new" math? Where, for example, was the research that led so many elementary school teachers to tinker with "heterogeneous grouping," where children of mixed abilities were put into groups with the hope that the faster learners would tow along the slower learners? Like so many educational fads, it sounded like a good idea, but it rarely worked in crowded classrooms lacking the talented aides who could pull it off.

At Harvard, former teacher Tom Loveless teaches a subject on this very topic: "Controversies in Education Reform." The syllabus, which consists entirely of required readings on school failures, resembles an indictment of a Mafia chief. Loveless has a personal feel for the problem that dates back to his nine years of teaching in Sacramento public schools. "This is an industry with tremendous turnover at school sites," says Loveless. "Half the principals change schools every six or seven years and superintendents even more frequently. I went through three or four principals, all of them saying: "I have some new ideas and we're going to change things." In come the big changes, out goes the principal within a few years, in come more big changes. "Nobody would stay in one place long enough to be responsible for outcome," says Loveless. "By the time everyone figures out what they're doing doesn't work the principal is gone and you're off to a new approach."

source: Neglected Evidence

The beauty of this system is that taxpayers get to pay for all this stuff. If you're a taxpayer and a parent, you get to pay for the tutors and the time-off-work to (try to) fix the problems, too.


^* Middle school model in our case. Our middle school is apparently destined to become exemplary no matter what the parents think.

E-mail to the powers that be

This morning, I sent this e-mail to the Supt., Dir of Curriculum, and all of the Board of Ed members.

As part of the Board's review of professional development and curriculum this evening, I was wondering if you would consider focusing at least one full day of professional development next year to the needs of gifted learners in our schools?

Since the demise of [our] well-regarded gifted learning program four years ago, which directly served about 100 students in grades K-8, very little has been implemented to ensure that every child's learning needs are being met.

Add to this the disturbing conclusion of a 2005 study that found 68% of Connecticut teachers hold erroneous beliefs about the characteristics of gifted students. Moreover, a disturbingly small percentage of teachers in Connecticut believe that they have received adequate pre-service and in-service professional development to teach a differentiated curriculum to gifted students in the regular classroom. I've attached a short synopsis of current research that supports these conclusions.

Even when teachers are given some training in differentiation and curriculum modification, they are reluctant to implement these practices in their classroom, according to a 2003 study. In fact, the study found that teachers are unwilling to eliminate previously mastered curriculum material for fear that student achievement on State tests could drop. This, despite research that shows high ability learners show no decline in achievement test scores even when 40-50% of the curriculum is eliminated in at least one subject area.

The 2003 Minnesota study recommends that teachers receive not only professional development targeted to gifted learners, but also follow-up support so that they can actually make improvements in their classroom instruction. Stephanie Hirsch, Deputy Executive Director of the National Staff Development Council stated, "Training without follow up is malpractice."

I urge you to consider a more aggressive teacher training and support program to better meet the needs of gifted learners. We are fortunate to be quite close to the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, located at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. We need only take better advantage of the resources located close to home to improve the quality of education for our most able students.

I don't hold out a lot of hope on this one. But it's probably good just to keep things from falling to far off the radar screen. Here's a link to the research synopsis that was attached to the e-mail.