As I thoughtfully prepare for my next blog, I read many newspaper and some research articles that relate to my current thinking. Whenever I read, I try to connect what I read to my ongoing belief about what is necessary for improving academic achievement. Those who have read my previous blog entries know my mantra by now. I feel strongly that schools can only improve academic achievement if we look at schools as systems and if we try to correct the barriers that exist to student achievement by reviewing our current system.
Having been working very closely with several urban schools as a consultant since early February, I am able to better see where the needs for change are in most of our schools. I remember clearly telling one of our recent past superintendents, and his instructional superintendent that I would support anything that they chose to place in the school to improve academic achievement, but I also know that if we don’t make other changes in our school, this new great idea will not make a difference. I still feel the same way.
Interestingly, this morning while reading Smart Briefs by ASCD, two articles were summarized from two big city newspapers. They were timely and seemed worth commenting on at this time as we all try to figure out how to raise graduation rates, lower drop out rates, increase the number of students prepared and interested in post-secondary educational opportunities, and provide our nation and economy with students ready to enter the world of work successfully.
Miami-Dade County instituted a program several years ago with the hope of raising the achievement level of students in their lowest performing schools. The Miami Herald reported the following: “A $100 million investment in Miami-Dade County's lowest performing public schools failed to boost student achievement, according to the school district's final report on the program.
The School Improvement Zone was a three-year push at 39 elementary, middle and senior high schools throughout the county. Students participated in a specialized reading program and had a longer school day than students at other schools. They also had a longer school year.” As thoughtful educators, this research provides us with a wealth of conversational possibilities. Why might such a major effort, targeted at specific schools with lots of financial resources provided, not lead to better outcomes for the students in this School Improvement Zone?
A second article from the Baltimore Sun was included in the same ASCD Smart Brief today. It describes the fact that Maryland school districts are lowering the number of students who will not graduate in this the first year where a high school exit exam must be passed prior to students qualifying for graduation. Students not passing the exit exam twice after receiving required intervention support have the opportunity of completing bridging projects in lieu of passing the test. Some Maryland teachers are reporting that students who have completed the projects are actually scoring well enough afterward to pass the exit exam. A sample of one algebra bridging project can be viewed on the Maryland Department of Education web site.
By comparing the two articles, it appears that we have two different ways of helping students to raise their academic achievement levels. In Maryland they are finding early success, while in Miami the long term effort seems to not have been so successful. What can we learn from the two models?
The first thing that jumps out in my mind is that resources by themselves do not make a difference. There must be other systemic changes in a school for students to make marked improvement. Longer hours and expensive programs by themselves are not the answer. So, what might be the answer? Can Maryland’s experience teach us anything about the teaching and learning process? What can we conclude from the Miami experience as described?
Before answering these questions, I am going to stop my blog here for people to think about and perhaps share their thoughts together. My next blog will get into more of my in depth thoughts about the teaching and learning process. I would highly recommend that if you haven’t read, or read it a long time ago, the February 2008 Educational Leadership magazine on Teaching Students to Think, that you review it for your own learning. It is very interesting and provides us with a lot to discuss.
I hope to have my next blog on this topic completed and posted by the end of next week.
Showing posts with label Secondary Educational Reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Secondary Educational Reform. Show all posts
Monday, May 18, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Sixth Grade Data Influenced My Secondary Education Belief for Helping to Fix Our Schools
I have received several e-mails from colleagues asking me for the follow up to my last blog on fixing our secondary schools based on the data provided to me from the research and evaluation branch of our district. If you have not yet read the previous blog, I would suggest that you do so as I think that it will make more clear what I will be sharing here.
The research comparison of middle school and elementary school sixth graders was quite telling. As I stated in my previous blog, it would be easy to conclude that we should make our secondary schools more like our elementary schools, where a single teacher has the major responsibility for educating our students. This would be a simple conclusion for a complex problem. I supervised a school that was established to be a K-8 school, and I found the same secondary educational issues still in place in that model for the secondary students. So, first learning (stated repeatedly in past blogs) is that the structure that we create is not the solution to our achievement problems. The structure may support what we have found to be the missing pieces for our students. If we don't create a common vision, a common agreement on the instructional practices, strategies and procedures that we will use; and agree to build the necessary long term relationships (personalization) with our kids and their content, the structure will provide us with little change.
It was clear to me after visiting many elementary classrooms that a single teacher class leads to the teacher having real ownership for the education of their students. This is often not the case in our secondary schools. How can we recreate that sense of ownership without developing single teacher classes for our secondary students? The obvious, but not easy answer, is to create small groups of teachers who work with the same group of students over time. This model has been in place and shown success in my former district. We had magnet programs, academies, and schools-within-schools models. They do exactly what is described here. They provide a close approximation in a secondary model to the elementary school structure, where kids know their teachers over an extended time, and their teachers know their students well also. The problem that I see is that magnet schools, charters, public small schools, and other models in place around the country have met the needs of a small population of our students. Most of our secondary kids still are attending schools that look and act like comprehensive high schools. If the small school model is good for some kids, why isn't it good for all kids? If a comprehensive high school can produce the ownership necessary for outstanding student achievement, then that model is fine. Unfortunately, for much of the nation the comprehensive high school model has not met the needs of many students.
The second finding relates to instructional practice, procedures, and strategies. It was apparent that in a single teacher setting, the teacher has much control of the time allocated to each content area, the ability to make connections between content areas, and the freedom to create a good understanding of the instructional needs of each child to help them succeed. The teacher knows that sometime in the near future, the success or failure of the students, academically, will be placed on their doorstep. It is in the teacher's best interest to figure out how to help each child succeed at the greatest level possible. Of course this teacher only has 20 to 33 students in their classroom.
So, how could this model look similar but different in a secondary setting? First, we again look at a smaller setting where not only the students have the same teachers over time, but the teachers share the same peer group over time as well. The relationships between teacher peers can be incredibly powerful. I supervised a school that we moved into four small learning communities. After the first year, the trust I saw between SLC teacher members became very strong, with a SLC leader who had a strong instructional vision. These teachers visited each other regularly and had developed enough trust to allow for constructive criticism during their professional development time in a small group setting. It led to many teachers developing a similar instructional philosophy, providing students with common instructional strategies, practices, and classroom rules. Students did not see each teacher as being so independent of all other teachers. The teacher collaboration led to a very healthy work environment for both the adults and the students.
Instructional practices in the elementary school looked different than those in most secondary schools. The students were much more engaged in their work. They often had to be engaged because the teacher worked with small groups of students and the other students had to work independently for sometime. Also, time was not as much of a constant in elementary school as it is in secondary school. I often use the following phrase when speaking to secondary educators about bell schedule issues: "Do we want time to be the constant and learning the variable, or would we prefer that time were the variable and learning be the constant?" We know that in most secondary schools, time is the driver of our master schedule, our lesson planning, and our daily routines. We also know that not all students can learn in "the same way on the same day". (A quote that I have borrowed from Gary Soto, the former principal of Southridge MS in Fontana, a great educational reformer and leader). So, this led me to think through how we do more hands on and engaging work in our secondary schools, and how do we get away as much as possible from the secondary use of time, and try to create something that will help more students achieve? I need to include a comment that can be discussed in the future about the critical importance of intervention programs. Intervention is part of the change that must occur in our secondary schools. Frequently, I see intervention as being tutoring, and I do not believe that a tutoring program addresses the specific needs of students who require intervention support.
The final critical learning that I took from this study came when the R and E people took the study a year further and followed all sixth graders into seventh grade. A very interesting outcome arose. I always discussed this issue, but did not have much information to back up what I said until the results came out. The sixth graders from the elementary school, who outperformed the sixth graders in the middle school, had bigger academic dips in their achievement data in seventh grade than their middle school peers. This finding allowed me to conclude that transitions are extremely important to all students, and must be addressed to try and make every transition as smooth as possible.
These three findings on top of my research and personal experiences led me to where I am today in my beliefs about secondary redesign. Those in outline form look as follows:
1. We need to have a common vision agreed to by the entire school community.
2. We need to create an instructional plan that addresses the instructional needs of our students in an engaging way. We need to find a way where all students do not have to learn on the same schedule, but all must be held to learn the same materials.
3. We need to connect the adults in our schools to our students and parents. We also must connect our students to their content.
4. We must develop school structures that support our vision, our instructional plan, and our personalization plan.
5. We must consider all points of transition for our students. These points are not only from one school to the next, but from grade level to grade level, and program to program (ie. EL to regular education, and others)
Schools are systems, and systems can't be fixed by making changes to one part of the system without considering all parts of the system together. My conclusion is that we have to look carefully at many models that exist around our nation that have worked for educating large numbers of students. We can't hope that what we are doing is the right thing, we have to be sure that what we are doing is well thought out, researched based, and owned by everyone in the school community.
I would enjoy hearing from you if you have found success that could be shared with those who read this blog. As I have said a number of times, we all learn best through conversations around a common topic. If we care about kids, getting them educated is certainly a good topic for a public discussion.
The research comparison of middle school and elementary school sixth graders was quite telling. As I stated in my previous blog, it would be easy to conclude that we should make our secondary schools more like our elementary schools, where a single teacher has the major responsibility for educating our students. This would be a simple conclusion for a complex problem. I supervised a school that was established to be a K-8 school, and I found the same secondary educational issues still in place in that model for the secondary students. So, first learning (stated repeatedly in past blogs) is that the structure that we create is not the solution to our achievement problems. The structure may support what we have found to be the missing pieces for our students. If we don't create a common vision, a common agreement on the instructional practices, strategies and procedures that we will use; and agree to build the necessary long term relationships (personalization) with our kids and their content, the structure will provide us with little change.
It was clear to me after visiting many elementary classrooms that a single teacher class leads to the teacher having real ownership for the education of their students. This is often not the case in our secondary schools. How can we recreate that sense of ownership without developing single teacher classes for our secondary students? The obvious, but not easy answer, is to create small groups of teachers who work with the same group of students over time. This model has been in place and shown success in my former district. We had magnet programs, academies, and schools-within-schools models. They do exactly what is described here. They provide a close approximation in a secondary model to the elementary school structure, where kids know their teachers over an extended time, and their teachers know their students well also. The problem that I see is that magnet schools, charters, public small schools, and other models in place around the country have met the needs of a small population of our students. Most of our secondary kids still are attending schools that look and act like comprehensive high schools. If the small school model is good for some kids, why isn't it good for all kids? If a comprehensive high school can produce the ownership necessary for outstanding student achievement, then that model is fine. Unfortunately, for much of the nation the comprehensive high school model has not met the needs of many students.
The second finding relates to instructional practice, procedures, and strategies. It was apparent that in a single teacher setting, the teacher has much control of the time allocated to each content area, the ability to make connections between content areas, and the freedom to create a good understanding of the instructional needs of each child to help them succeed. The teacher knows that sometime in the near future, the success or failure of the students, academically, will be placed on their doorstep. It is in the teacher's best interest to figure out how to help each child succeed at the greatest level possible. Of course this teacher only has 20 to 33 students in their classroom.
So, how could this model look similar but different in a secondary setting? First, we again look at a smaller setting where not only the students have the same teachers over time, but the teachers share the same peer group over time as well. The relationships between teacher peers can be incredibly powerful. I supervised a school that we moved into four small learning communities. After the first year, the trust I saw between SLC teacher members became very strong, with a SLC leader who had a strong instructional vision. These teachers visited each other regularly and had developed enough trust to allow for constructive criticism during their professional development time in a small group setting. It led to many teachers developing a similar instructional philosophy, providing students with common instructional strategies, practices, and classroom rules. Students did not see each teacher as being so independent of all other teachers. The teacher collaboration led to a very healthy work environment for both the adults and the students.
Instructional practices in the elementary school looked different than those in most secondary schools. The students were much more engaged in their work. They often had to be engaged because the teacher worked with small groups of students and the other students had to work independently for sometime. Also, time was not as much of a constant in elementary school as it is in secondary school. I often use the following phrase when speaking to secondary educators about bell schedule issues: "Do we want time to be the constant and learning the variable, or would we prefer that time were the variable and learning be the constant?" We know that in most secondary schools, time is the driver of our master schedule, our lesson planning, and our daily routines. We also know that not all students can learn in "the same way on the same day". (A quote that I have borrowed from Gary Soto, the former principal of Southridge MS in Fontana, a great educational reformer and leader). So, this led me to think through how we do more hands on and engaging work in our secondary schools, and how do we get away as much as possible from the secondary use of time, and try to create something that will help more students achieve? I need to include a comment that can be discussed in the future about the critical importance of intervention programs. Intervention is part of the change that must occur in our secondary schools. Frequently, I see intervention as being tutoring, and I do not believe that a tutoring program addresses the specific needs of students who require intervention support.
The final critical learning that I took from this study came when the R and E people took the study a year further and followed all sixth graders into seventh grade. A very interesting outcome arose. I always discussed this issue, but did not have much information to back up what I said until the results came out. The sixth graders from the elementary school, who outperformed the sixth graders in the middle school, had bigger academic dips in their achievement data in seventh grade than their middle school peers. This finding allowed me to conclude that transitions are extremely important to all students, and must be addressed to try and make every transition as smooth as possible.
These three findings on top of my research and personal experiences led me to where I am today in my beliefs about secondary redesign. Those in outline form look as follows:
1. We need to have a common vision agreed to by the entire school community.
2. We need to create an instructional plan that addresses the instructional needs of our students in an engaging way. We need to find a way where all students do not have to learn on the same schedule, but all must be held to learn the same materials.
3. We need to connect the adults in our schools to our students and parents. We also must connect our students to their content.
4. We must develop school structures that support our vision, our instructional plan, and our personalization plan.
5. We must consider all points of transition for our students. These points are not only from one school to the next, but from grade level to grade level, and program to program (ie. EL to regular education, and others)
Schools are systems, and systems can't be fixed by making changes to one part of the system without considering all parts of the system together. My conclusion is that we have to look carefully at many models that exist around our nation that have worked for educating large numbers of students. We can't hope that what we are doing is the right thing, we have to be sure that what we are doing is well thought out, researched based, and owned by everyone in the school community.
I would enjoy hearing from you if you have found success that could be shared with those who read this blog. As I have said a number of times, we all learn best through conversations around a common topic. If we care about kids, getting them educated is certainly a good topic for a public discussion.
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