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May 23, 2013

Parent Trigger Laws are likely to fire blanks

If turning around a persistently low-performing school were easy, we would not have persistently low-performing schools.  In truth, schools that languish at the academic bottom are more often an ongoing source of frustration for the hard-working teachers, parents and students who attend them and the districts that manage them.  Yet new laws that give parents the power to take charge of their failing neighborhood school seem to suggest that climbing out of this hole is as simple as swapping the old model out for a new one.  It’s not.

So-called Parent Trigger Laws have been enacted in seven states and are being considered in at least a dozen more.  The laws grant parents the authority to force a school takeover providing the school is low-performing and a majority of parents agree to the takeover in writing. The laws enjoy wide appeal. According to the most recent Kappan/Gallup poll (2012), 70 percent of the general public and 76 percent of public school parents favor “allowing parents to petition to remove the leadership and staff at failing schools.”

Look, I’m a big supporter of efforts to strengthen parents’ voices in public education, especially among those who feel powerless. I know that change works best when all families, not just a vocal few, are meaningful partners alongside their schools and district leadership.

The authors of Parent Trigger Laws will say their intent is to empower parents. But, as with so many things, good intentions alone do not translate into good actions. There are two big problems with the laws. One, they supercede rather than facilitate school district-parent partnerships, even though collaboration is key to investing the school community in student success.  Then having put parents in charge, the laws give them inadequate tools that are not up to the task of effecting change.

While state laws vary, they all specify a limited number of strategies that parents must choose from in order to reform their low-performing school once they pull the trigger. Each of the seven states with current laws includes turning the school over to a charter operator as one option. Other states also have options for vouchers, school closure, replacing the staff and/or the principal. Only Ohio offers parents more than three options.

If you’re feeling déjà vu, you’re not alone. These “reform” strategies are embedded in NCLB, Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (SIG).  A major difference is that these federal policies also have a provision that offers a little more wiggle room so those on the ground are better able to craft improvement plans specific to their unique situations. The “transformation” model still requires schools to replace the principal. But once that’s done, they have multiple options for developing a reform plan more tailored to local needs that includes such things as professional development, rigorous curriculum, new schedules, and many others.  Not surprisingly, the transformation model is the one most often pursued by turnaround schools, including a full three-quarters of SIG recipients.

Parent Trigger Laws don’t have any flexibility. And this is what we know about the options parents are given: they are far from proven strategies. The best you can say is that the evidence is mixed.

For example, we know that about only one in five charter schools outperforms its traditional counterpart. Newer research shows that schools managed by established Charter Management Organizations have a slightly better track record than independently run charters, but still not significantly different from traditional schools.

Closing a school or replacing the staff aren’t surefire solutions either. Plus many communities either don’t have other schools to send students to or enough qualified candidates to recruit as replacements.

New leadership is the one exception that shows promise as a strategy, but again, only if the situation warrants a change. Principals are second only to teachers in their impact on student learning. Good leaders set the tone for the school and can create supportive environments for teachers and students alike. But note that even experienced principals may take as long as three to five years to become effective in their new role.

Clearly, we can’t tolerate sending children to failing schools. But we also need to recognize that turning around such a school can be hard, messy and will likely look different in different places.  Parents are an important part of this work, including demanding action when it’s called for. But it also takes teachers, supportive administrators, engaged leadership and yes, resources. Parent Trigger Laws can pretend that a petition and pre-fab solutions are enough. But they are no replacement for good communication; a well-researched, customized plan; a relentless focus on improvement; and strong collaboration between schools, districts and parents.

This entry also appeared in the Huffington Post.

Filed under: Charter Schools,CPE,Parents,Principals,Public education — Tags: , , , — Patte Barth @ 8:53 am




May 3, 2013

Exciting possibilities: Coursera and professional development courses

Coursera, an organization currently facilitating free online access to courses taught by college professors, has announced it will be dipping its toes into the professional development arena.  I have to admit that when I read this headline, I was thrilled.  For teachers to have free, online access to courses offered by experts on education research and teaching methods is a step in the right direction.

First, these courses could allow schools to have resources for teachers to improve their skills that are differentiated for the specific content teachers teach.  Because hiring consultants is expensive, districts often rely on generic workshops that they offer to all teachers.  I’ve sat through my fair share of these: classroom management, assessment, alignment.  However, research shows that teachers aren’t interested in generic professional development, and it doesn’t have an impact on teacher practice or student achievement.  On the other hand, professional development that is tailored to the content one teaches, specifically exploring the elements of the course students struggle with, has been shown to make a real difference in teachers’ practice and students’ learning.  With free online courses, teachers could focus on courses tailored to their content area.

Furthermore, each teacher brings his or her own unique set of strengths and weakness to the profession.  Teaching is a job that demands a lengthy list of skills which are both emotional and cognitive.  Just as some students have more natural talents in certain areas than others, the same is true with teachers.  When I co-taught a class with another teacher, I got to see this full force.  My co-teacher managed the emotional needs of a class flawlessly, while my own strengths were in lesson planning.  Working together, we got to improve our areas of weakness.  Having online courses which are free for teachers allows teachers to think about what areas they need to improve on, taking courses focused on those areas instead of sitting through PD sessions not tailored to their area of need.  Just like we urge teachers to differentiate for students, recognizing that not all students are the same, access to online PD taught by experts allows for differentiation for teachers.

Second, it could save districts lots of professional development money that they can spend more wisely.  There’s a decent amount of evidence to show that districts spend a substantial amount of money on professional development, anywhere from 2 to 7% of their total budget.  Unfortunately, most of that spending is going towards one-shot, generic workshops.  Consultants are expensive, certainly one reason that districts can only afford to have whole-school, generic sessions instead of content-specific sessions.  Nonetheless, by spending copious amounts of money on consultants and staff for workshops, districts often don’t build in professional development support as teachers aim to implement those new skills into the classroom.  The reason that’s problematic is that research studies consistently show that teachers struggle immensely with new skills during implementation of those skills in the classroom, and that without support at this stage, teachers are likely to get frustrated and simply abandon the new skill altogether.  Of course, this makes sense.  Learning how to write is easier than actually writing; learning how to ride a bike is easier than actually riding a bike. Implementation is challenging.  Therefore, schools need to develop support during the implementation stage.   When schools do this, through individual instructional coaches who observe and conference with teachers or through time for collaboration, teachers improve their teaching and students learn more.

However, having teachers meet with coaches or collaborate with colleagues takes time, and teacher time is exceptionally expensive.  School districts either have to buy this time in a teacher’s contract, pay substitutes to cover classes, or hire more staff to reduce teaching loads.  Despite that fact, research on professional development shows that opening up this time and having teachers supported during implementation of new skills is exceptionally important.  In an analysis of over 1,300 studies of professional development programs, researchers found that programs that were less than 14 hours had no impact on student achievement .   But if schools were able to cut down on some of their consultant costs by having teachers participate in free, open Coursera courses, schools might be able to buy more teacher time for deep learning experiences such as coaching or collaboration.

Of course, in all discussions about the role of online courses, it’s important to note that they can never stand alone as one’s only exposure to learning, something that’s been validated repeatedly .  However, there’s good reason to think these courses could be a nice addition to a school’s professional development tool kit.  –Allison Gulamhussein

Filed under: CPE,instruction,online learning,teachers — Tags: , — Allison @ 10:06 am




May 2, 2013

CPE’s new report examines the strategies behind the “turnaround”

The Center for Public Education is excited to announce the release of a new report, “Which Way Up: What research says about school turnaround strategies.” The title is a play on the plethora of strategies aimed at improving the lowest performing schools in the country.

This is a worthy goal, perhaps the important mission of public schools: to ensure all students receive a world-class education. But challenges abound and some schools, for a variety of reasons, fail to deliver on the promise, giving rise to a wave of reform models known simply as the turnaround. The problem is that many of these efforts have relied on strategies that have produced mixed results, if any at all. We called upon education researcher and writer team Eileen M. O’Brien and Charles J. Dervarics to take a closer look at the research and here’s what they found.

Although individual states and cities have attempted to address chronically low-achieving schools over the years, the US Department of Education’s School Improvement Grant (SIG) program is the largest undertaking in the school turnaround arena. A relic of the No Child Left Behind Act, it received a significant funding boost (some $3.5 billion) in 2009, thanks to the federal stimulus bill known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Like Race to the Top, the department made SIG into a competitive grant program and required grant seekers to choose among four different intervention models to secure the funds:

  • The school closure model, in which the low-performing school is closed and students move to a higher achieving school.
  • The restart model, in which the school becomes a charter or is taken over by an education management organization.
  • The transformation model, in which the school replaces the principal, provides enhanced professional development to staff, launches a teacher evaluation system, increases learning time, and creates new support services for students.
  • The turnaround model, which includes many of the same elements as the transformation model with the additional requirement that teachers must reapply for their jobs. A turnaround school must replace at least 50 percent of the staff and grant the new principal greater autonomy to pursue reforms.

First-year data on SIG award recipients show some positive gains, particularly at the elementary level and in reading. But one year’s worth of data is hardly a trend and the achievement data was not broken down by reform model, which would’ve provided greater insight into what strategies seem to be the most effective.

Previous research on some of these strategies has been a little more enlightening. For instance, research is pretty clear about the impact of school closures on student achievement: better performing schools produce gains, lower-performing ones don’t. The research on charter schools, a hallmark of the restart model, is also fairly definitive:  charter schools, on average, perform no better or worse than their traditional school counterpart.

Evidence on the transformation model, which is far and away the most popular model among SIG recipients, is mixed and confounded by the great latitude schools are given in implementation—good for schools but hard for researchers who are, of course, interested in identifying and evaluating effectiveness.

Even more worrisome than the large-scale federal push toward strategies that are either untested or have shown mixed results on reversing chronically low achieving schools is the adoption of some of these strategies— school closure, conversion to charter, replacement of majority of staff— into parent trigger laws.

While we can’t and shouldn’t lessen our focus on helping the country’s lowest-achieving schools deliver on public education’s promise to all students, we should be mindful and methodical about what it is we’re investing in to get them there.

Filed under: CPE,Data — Tags: , , , , — NDillon @ 9:27 am




April 26, 2013

The common core: truths, untruths and ambiguities

Educators in 46 states and DC are deep in the process of implementing new “common core” standards into their classrooms. But an emerging anti-core backlash may render their efforts moot in several states.

For readers who may not know, the common core state standards are intended to define the knowledge and skills in English language arts (ELA) and math that high school graduates will need for success in college and 21st century jobs. The standards were drafted by associations representing the nation’s governors and state education chiefs through a process involving experts and stakeholders and included a two-part public review. They have been endorsed by business leaders , teachers unions  and a bipartisan array of policymakers including President Obama and Jeb Bush. Within two years of their finalization, they were voluntarily adopted by all but four states.

Despite their high-profile supporters, not everyone is feeling the common core love and a handful of early adopting states are experiencing second thoughts. Some critics, like Samuel Goldman writing in the American Conservative, challenge the whole idea of national academic standards, voluntary or otherwise, as an erosion of federalism. Others, like education historian Diane Ravitch, question the wisdom of widespread investment in “untested” standards, especially when attached to real consequences for students, teachers and schools.

These are legitimate debates for us to have. Indeed, something this central to public education demands it. School districts also have real worries about meeting the timeline — the standards are due to be tested in 2014-15 — and getting all of the necessary pieces in place so students will be ready.  Make no mistake. This is a huge undertaking involving every moving part of the education system.

Still others challenge whether the new common core standards are worthwhile targets for students. Unfortunately, this backlash is being fueled by some critics’ misreading of the standards, some unknowns, and more than a few whoppers.

What follows is my attempt to clarify what is true, untrue and ambiguous regarding some of the claims made about the standards themselves so we can focus on the conversation that we need to have about their appropriate role in a national education agenda:

  • Not true: “The common core standards are dumbed down.”  My first reaction to this charge is that whoever believes this has not looked at current standards in many states.  The conservative-leaning Fordham Foundation did just that. Comparing all state standards to the common core, the authors determined that the core are “clearly superior” to 39 states’ math standards and to 37 states in ELA. Three states had “superior” ELA standards to the core. Everything else was about the same.
  • Not true with a caveat: “Classic literature will be crowded out.” A classic misreading of the ELA standards prompted by a common core recommendation that reading at the high school level should be 30 percent literary and 70 percent informational. On the surface that looks like a dramatic shift. But only if one assumes that all of the reading would happen in the English classroom. In fact, a distinguishing characteristic of the common core — one I applaud — is that the ELA standards define specific benchmarks for reading and writing in Social Studies, Science and technical subjects. There’s a good reason for this: American students perform well internationally when it comes to reading literature, but their performance falls when reading for information. But this also means that teachers of those other subjects should be responsible for those particular standards. And that’s the caveat: English teachers have every right to complain if they have to shoulder the full reading burden. At the same time, their colleagues in other subjects were not prepared to teach reading and writing in their subject area and will require some coaching and support.

As to the claim that great literary works will be de-emphasized or not taught at all , I refer readers to the recommended reading in the common core: Shakespeare, Twain, Longfellow, Ovid, Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, Yeats, Neruda … you get the idea.

  • True. “The common core does not require cursive writing.” Not true. “Schools cannot teach cursive writing.” This one is just silly, and I suspect it was a slow news day when this rumor got started. Just because something is not specifically addressed in the standards does not mean it is prohibited from being taught.
  • Not true: “8th graders will no longer be able to take Algebra 1.”  See “cursive writing.” Nothing precludes districts from offering Algebra 1 to 8th graders. The core authors even provide a way to organize a “compacted” middle school math program for students who are ready for high-level math in 8th grade.
  • True: “The common core are internationally benchmarked.” William H. Schmidt, the nation’s foremost expert in international math performance, found that the common core-math standards are comparable to the highest-achieving nations. He further found that “most states have a long way to go” to equal them.
  • The jury is still out. “The common core will make every graduate college and career-ready.” Twenty years of research shows that all young people need a high school experience that prepares them for both post-secondary education and good jobs. The common core standards seem to provide a good map for getting there. Whether or not we succeed, however, depends on whether schools can retool effectively, especially given the short deadline and tight budgets. It will require new curriculum and instructional materials; more robust assessments and technology to support them; professional development for teachers and administrators. It will not just involve school districts, but state departments of education, higher education and early education, too. It demands considerable resources to carry out.

Lastly, success will require good communication with parents, teachers and the wider community. Schools will need their support to make change happen, something they’re not likely to get if the information the public gets is wrong.

This article first appeared in the Huffington Post.

 

Filed under: 21st century education,CPE,International Comparisons,national standards,Public education — Tags: , — Patte Barth @ 4:21 pm




April 23, 2013

The Common Core: Too Much, Too Fast?

The short answer: no and maybe.

Now to the long answer.

As a new teacher, one of the first concepts you learn is “scaffolding.”  Like the scaffolds beside a building, scaffolding in teaching is about building a supportive structure piece by piece so a student can get somewhere he or she couldn’t get by themselves.  A teacher might model with a “think aloud” of how to read for tone or teach symbolism with an easy text as a scaffold for analyzing symbolism in a more difficult text.  However, with a scaffold, a teacher doesn’t let the student off the hook, settling on an easier task the student can easily accomplish.  The student also isn’t just thrown into the deep end, urged to master a complex skill with no support.  The student is supported until he or she achieves a challenging goal independently. 

It struck me that just like teachers have to scaffold for students, we might think about scaffolding districts’ implementation of the Common Core and the bevy of high stakes tests that accompany the new standards. Just this month, students in New York City public schools took their first round of Common Core aligned exams, and the results were not pretty .  Teachers, parents, students, and principals reported the test elicited a number of responses, from humorous, to ludicrous, to heartbreaking:     

  • A child waking up from a nightmare where he was murmuring about bubbling in an exam
  • Weekend and after school test prep classes
  • Teachers teaching students yoga to help students relax during testing
  • Pep rallies to encourage students before exams
  • Rampant student stress and anxiety
  • Students crying at the end of the exams

In response, many have begun to question adoption of the Common Core, period.  Several parents have even decided to opt their children out of testing all together.  To some degree, one can certainly understand their frustration. 

Common Core implementation (which is soon to be met in many places with rigorous exams aligned with the more rigorous standards which are tied to high-stakes decisions like a teacher’s employment) is coming at an exceptionally fast pace.  Right before the start of the 2010-2011 school year, many states decided to adopt the Common Core.  However, after adoption, states had to coordinate their own roll out of the standards, and districts likewise had to process and design approaches to the new standards.  In the midst of all of this, classroom teachers had to learn a new curriculum and rewrite their own curriculums, learning and mastering new ways to teach in response to the Core. For teachers in New York, (assuming the most generous timeline where time for realigning the curriculum was given to teachers immediately upon state adoption) teachers would have had a maximum of two years before being held to high stakes tests aligned to the Core.  For anyone whose ever written the curriculum for a course within the time constraints of a public school teacher’s job, you know this is not enough.

In fact, that’s exactly the argument that’s been coming out of New York.  New York Times journalist, Kyle Spencer characterized the rapid pace of adoption in New York:

The standards are so new that many New York schools have yet to fully adopt new curriculums—including reading material, lesson plans, and exercises—to match.  And the textbook industry had not completely caught up either. State and city officials have urged teachers over the last year to begin working in some elements of new curriculums, and have offered lesson plans and tutorials on official Web sites.  But they acknowledge that scores will most likely fall from last year’s levels.

There’s a frenetic, sink or swim approach to implementing these reforms, and in that rush, policy makers are risking losing the Core altogether as backlash builds.

However, while the frustration of parents, students, and school faculty is valid, the answer is not to completely get rid of the Common Core.  The Common Core is a step forward in making schools locations of critical thought.  Consider some of the criticism of the Common Core coming from the New York area.  After taking a Common Core aligned test, a sixth grade student noted that, “When they ask, ‘What’s the main idea?’ and you have to put it in your own words, it’s a lot harder.”  Another student felt like she didn’t have enough time to fully complete her written essay on the exam.  Both of these tasks ask students to do things that we as a society want citizens to do, read something, comprehend it, and then respond with one’s own ideas.  After all, isn’t this the heart of a democracy—being able to understand ideas and express your own? Of course, this would certainly be less difficult for students if they weren’t asked to write, and instead only had to fill in multiple choice bubbles based on easier readings.  However, is reverting back to these easier tasks really the answer?   

Though getting rid of the Common Core isn’t the answer, districts and teachers (just like students learning new, complex concepts) do need scaffolds to transform classroom instruction to align with the Common Core.  Modeling a skilled teacher, policy makers could and should give teachers and schools support and time as they learn to raise instruction to the level of rigor the Core demands, delaying implementation or offering the tests first as low-stakes assessments so teachers can learn from them.  After all, a teacher doesn’t merely tell a student, “balance this chemical equation or else.”  The teacher also doesn’t let the student simply not balance the equation, but instead a great teacher gives supports and time for the student as he or she learns to balance the equations independently.

In our debates about the Common Core, let’s parse through what part of the policy we really disagree with.  Is asking our students to think, read, and write more the problem, or is it the rapid, breakneck speed by which the Core has been implemented?  I think for many of us it’s the latter rather than the former.  The good news is that thoughtful policy makers can craft solutions to create scaffolds for Common Core implementation, such as making the first two years of testing low stakes instead of high stakes, giving teachers more time to work collaboratively to rewrite the school’s curriculum, or lowering the percentage of teacher evaluations based on test scores as teachers get to know the standards more.  Hopefully what we won’t do, though, is throw the baby out with the bathwater by getting rid of the Common Core altogether.  -Allison Gulamhussein

Filed under: CPE,instruction,national standards,standards,teachers,Testing — Allison @ 2:14 pm




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