Showing papers in "Phi Delta Kappan in 2002"

Assessment Crisis: The Absence Of Assessment FOR Learning

Abstract: A real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes but of seeing through new eyes. - Marcel Proust IF WE ARE finally to connect assessment to school improvement in meaningful ways, we must come to see assessment through new eyes. Our failure to find a potent connection has resulted in a deep and intensifying crisis in assessment in American education. Few elected officials are aware of this crisis, and almost no school officials know how to address it. Our current assessment systems are harming huge numbers of students for reasons that few understand. And that harm arises directly from our failure to balance our use of standardized tests and classroom assessments in the service of school improvement. When it comes to assessment, we have been trying to find answers to the wrong questions. Politicians routinely ask, How can we use assessment as the basis for doling out rewards and punishments to increase teacher and student effort? They want to know how we can intensify the intimidation associated with annual testing so as to force greater achievement. How we answer these questions will certainly affect schools. But that impact will not always be positive. Moreover, politicians who ask such questions typically look past a far more important pair of prior questions: How can we use assessment to help all our students want to learn? How can we help them feel able to learn? Without answers to these questions, there will be no school improvement. I explain why below. School administrators in federal, state, and local education agencies contribute to our increasingly damaging assessment crisis when they merely bow to politicians' beliefs and focus unwaveringly on the question of how to make our test scores go up. To be sure, accountability for student learning is important. I am not opposed to high-stakes testing to verify school quality -- as long as the tests are of sound quality.1 However, our concern for test scores must be preceded by a consideration of more fundamental questions: Are our current approaches to assessment improving student learning? Might other approaches to assessment have a greater impact? Can we design state and district assessment systems that have the effect of helping our students want to learn and feel able to learn? Furthermore, the measurement community, of which I am a member, also has missed an essential point. For decades, our priorities have manifested the belief that our job is to discover ever more sophisticated and efficient ways of generating valid and reliable test scores. Again, to be sure, accurate scores are essential. But there remains an unasked prior question: How can we maximize the positive impact of our scores on learners? Put another way, How can we be sure that our assessment instruments, procedures, and scores serve to help learners want to learn and feel able to learn? We are a nation obsessed with the belief that the path to school improvement is paved with better, more frequent, and more intense standardized testing. The problem is that such tests, ostensibly developed to "leave no student behind," are in fact causing major segments of our student population to be left behind because the tests cause many to give up in hopelessness -- just the opposite effect from that which politicians intended. Student achievement suffers because these once-a-year tests are incapable of providing teachers with the moment-to-moment and day-to- day information about student achievement that they need to make crucial instructional decisions. Teachers must rely on classroom assessment to do this. The problem is that teachers are unable to gather or effectively use dependable information on student achievement each day because of the drain of resources for excessive standardized testing. There are no resources left to train teachers to create and conduct appropriate classroom assessments. …

Place-Based Education: Learning To Be Where We Are.

Abstract: One of the primary strengths of place-based education is that it can adapt to the unique characteristics of particular places, and in this way it can help overcome the disjuncture between school and children's lives that is found in too many classrooms, Mr. Smith points out. LAST SUMMER I spent a morning with eight or nine high school students who were members of an Upward Bound program based at Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Oregon. The students were working in the Neawanna Estuary in Seaside, about 22 miles to the south. The efforts of students before them had contributed much of the data used in a successfully funded urban renewal grant proposal aimed at transforming a set of abandoned mill ponds into a park and nature center. The job of the Upward Bound students for the preceding few weeks had been to tag and then locate with global positioning technology woody debris that makes good salmon habitat. Students from Seaside schools were mapping habitat for birds and other wildlife in a similar fashion. All this information would be channeled to the groups responsible for determining how this land could best be developed to support its wildlife populations and to provide local residents and tourists with a deeper understanding of what it takes to preserve and restore healthy ecosystems. The morning was overcast and cool enough to warrant care as we clambered into and out of the canoes to do our work. Wet clothes would not dry quickly under this cloud cover. Another challenge was not losing our knee-length rubber Wellingtons to the deep mud along the river's banks. The debris was everywhere, and the three-person teams in each canoe divided up different stretches of the river to map. Pulling up next to a log that stretched down into the water, one person would nail into the wood a bar code affixed to a plastic rectangle cut from a food container. A second person would determine our precise coordinates. The third -- with dry hands -- would record bar code, coordinates, and a brief description of the debris on a data sheet. Then we would paddle on to the next log or collection of branches. The work was not glamorous, and all of us were mud-speckled by the time we broke for lunch. Still, the students agreed that it beat sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture. They enjoyed being outdoors and working with teachers who acted more like partners than supervisors. They liked the fun of negotiating riffles and being on the water together. It pleased them to be doing something that was clearly useful, and seeing their data transformed into maps was impressive. One young woman observed that she had recently watched a TV show about Japanese education and learned that students there were much more skilled in mathematics because they are given so many opportunities to apply their school learning to real-life situations. She believed that her work in the Neawanna was similar to this and that there was no reason these experiences could not be made available to more students. My morning with these young people provides an example of an educational approach that is being encountered in a growing number of American schools. Called place-based education, its aim is to ground learning in local phenomena and students' lived experience. Although most human learning once occurred within the context of specific locales, the invention and proliferation of schools changed this. In schools, especially after the early elementary grades, teachers direct children's attention away from their own circumstances and ways of knowing and toward knowledge from other places that has been developed by strangers they most likely will never meet. Learning becomes something gained through reading texts, listening to lectures, or viewing videos rather than through experiencing full-bodied encounters with the world. Although educators are often quick to say that schools are as much the "real world" as any place else, there is truth to the judgment that what happens in classrooms is qualitatively different from what happens elsewhere. …

What I've Learned about Effective Reading Instruction: From a Decade of Studying Exemplary Elementary Classroom Teachers

Abstract: The District Role in Instructional Improvement Phi Delta Kappan September 2001 83: 78-84, What I've Learned about Effective Reading Instruction: From a Decade of Studying Exemplary Elementary Classroom Teachers Phi Delta Kappan. What I've learned about effective reading instruction from a decade of studying exemplary elementary teachers. Phi Beta Kappan, 83(10), 740-747. Burkins, J., & Croft, M. (2010). Preventing misguided reading: New strategies for guided reading teachers. Davies, A. (2007). Making classroom assessment work (2nd ed.).

Why are Experienced Teachers Leaving the Profession

Abstract: Conditions that undermine the power and effectiveness of our public school system need to be identified and promptly rectified, the authors warn. This includes, above all, creating a work environment that will continue to draw the bright, committed new teachers we need - and will keep them enthusiastic, energetic, and productive throughout their careers. But our track record over the past 40 years isn't very promising. Too many will quit permanently because they are fed up. Their ambition and self-respect will take them into business or other professions. . . . They leave behind an increasing proportion of tired time-servers. - Life, 16 November 1962 BY THE FALL of 2000, it had been about a year since we'd started noticing that our master's degree students - conscientious elementary and secondary school teachers - were complaining with increasing bitterness about a changing work environment in the public schools. "The love I had for my work is gone," we were hearing them say. "I never used to feel this way, but now it's hard to drag myself to school each day." Week after week the topic would come up in classes: for many teachers, teaching seemed to be losing its joy and satisfaction. And these were not beginners we were hearing from, either. More often than not, these were experienced educators, working to deepen their professional knowledge and skills by completing advanced degrees. The substantial literature on teacher attrition has consistently shown a bimodal curve: most of those who leave teaching in any given year are either disillusioned beginners with just two or three years in the classroom or 30-year veterans who are ready to retire. Historically, those least likely to leave have been those in the middle.1 But our troubled students are strong, knowledgeable, and skillful men and women with high levels of commitment to their work and from five to 10 years of successful teaching experience. They are doing what they want to be doing - working to help young people learn - and they are good at what they do. Natural optimists, as educators usually are, they are not chronic complainers. Why, then, are they so unhappy? We decided to see if we could find any evidence that the growing discontent and increasing attrition among experienced California teachers could be attributed to the test mania that now pervades the state. Chapman University, where we were both then working, produces more credentialed teachers each year than any other university in California. It wasn't difficult to assemble a database of all those who had completed a teaching credential in the five years between 1990-91 and 1994-95 - that is, those who had presumably been teaching from six to 10 years when we mailed out our questionnaire in the spring of 2001. There were 4,534 names and addresses on that list; we selected 900 at random for the survey. While we were waiting for the questionnaires to be returned, one of us happened upon a copy of Life magazine in a local antique shop. It was dated 16 November 1962, and the eye-catching caption on the cover read "How we drive teachers to quit." Indeed! What an interesting coincidence. How did the country drive its teachers to quit 40 years ago? The author, Richard Meryman, had conducted interviews with many ex-teachers from across the country and had also spoken with some highly visible education leaders of the time - e.g., John Fischer of Teachers College, Columbia University; Francis Keppel of Harvard University; and Sterling McMurrin, U.S. commissioner of education early in the Kennedy Administration. But it was the teachers' comments and criticisms that interested us the most. We found some similarities - and some key differences. The world was different 40 years ago, and it can't be assumed that this is just another cycle of a perennial problem. Even so, it is striking how many complaints from 1962 sound remarkably contemporary. …

Expanding the Conception of Giftedness To Include Co-Cognitive Traits and To Promote Social Capital.

Abstract: After repeatedly observing the little boy crying on the school bus, Melanie, a fifth grade student, took a seat next to him and struck up a conversation. “You don’t understand,” said Tony, a first grader whose face was practically hidden behind the thickest eyeglasses Melanie had ever seen. “You see these glasses? I’m partially sighted. The kids trip me and make fun of me; I have special books for my subjects, but there are no books in the library that I can read.” Later that day Melanie approached her enrichment teacher and asked if she could make Tony her “Type III” Project for the year. Over the next several days, Melanie and the enrichment teacher drew up a plan that began with some “friendly persuasion” for the boys that were harassing Tony. A few of the school’s bigger, well-respected boys and girls escorted him from the school bus and sat with him in the lunchroom. Melanie then asked Tony a series of questions from an instrument called the Interest-A-Lyzer to determine what some of his reading interests might be. She recruited a number of the school’s best writers to work on large print "big books” that dealt with Tony’s interests in sports and adventure stories. She also recruited the school’s best artists to illustrate the books, and served as the editor and production manager for the series. As the project progressed over the next several months, a remarkable change took place in Tony’s attitude toward school. He became a local celebrity, and other students even signed out books from Tony’s special section of the library. Melanie’s creative idea and her task commitment resulted in the development of profound empathy and sensitivity to human concerns and the application of her talents to an unselfish cause. When questioned about her work, Melanie explained simply, “It didn’t change the world, but it changed the world of one little boy.”

School-to-Work: Making a Difference in Education:

Abstract: THE SCHOOL-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) was passed in 1994 after more than a decade of discussion and debate about the country's system for preparing young people for work. This discussion was particularly focused on the role of secondary schools. The STWOA built on a variety of educational strategies that were already being used, but by providing funding through high-profile national legislation, the act accelerated those activities, tried to give them greater unity and coherence, and provided a focal point around which to organize discussion of and experimentation with these educational innovations. However, the authors of the STWOA had not intended to create a permanent separate "program." Rather their goal was to generate activities that could then be incorporated into the normal functioning of the education system. As a result, the funding was scheduled to expire in 2001. We have now passed that funding endpoint, and educators and policy makers must look back over the experience of the last several years to decide what lessons have been learned from the social and educational experiment represented by the STWOA. In what ways, if any, can this approach improve schools, educational outcomes, and the country's system for preparing young people for work? Which aspects have been most successful and why? What should educators, policy makers, and organizations such as foundations do now? Our goal is to contribute to the discussion by gathering together and summarizing the research that has been carried out in the last several years to evaluate the effectiveness of the school-to-work educational strategy. Although the federal legislation has expired, the flow of research findings relating to school-to-work is, if anything, accelerating. Educational innovations take some time to organize and implement, so programs started in the mid-1990s may not have reached full operational levels until the late 1990s, and then there is a lag between implementation and the publication of research findings. Moreover, perhaps the most interesting and useful research tracks program participants over time, which creates an even greater lag between implementation and publication. Therefore, the last two years have seen a flourishing of research results, and some important evaluation projects are still ongoing. Our conclusion is that the research so far has found generally positive results: the school-to-work strategy does benefit students, teachers, and employers. Although critics of this educational approach feared that it would weaken academic achievement and divert students to low- skilled jobs, truncating their opportunities for college and further study, the growing body of evaluation work -- even at the most rigorous and definitive levels -- has turned up almost no evidence that such fears were justified. Background In the 1980s, several trends led to an extensive national discussion of education reform and work force development. The 1983 report A Nation At Risk claimed that profound weaknesses in the education system were undermining U.S. productivity and competitiveness. Researchers were documenting and analyzing the changing nature of work and changing skill requirements. Increasingly, young people without some postsecondary education could not expect to earn enough money to support a family. America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages! pointed out that many young adults were spending their early years in the work force moving from one low-wage, dead-end job to another.1 At the same time, developments in research on learning and pedagogy emphasized the effectiveness of "learning in context." Cognitive psychologists argued that students learn most effectively if they are taught skills in the context in which they will use those skills. Advocates of constructivism argued for a pedagogical approach in which students are more active learners, guided by their teacher in such a way that they "construct" their own knowledge. …

A Practical Guide to Translating Lesson Study for a U.S. Setting

Abstract: The authors describe a process for creating deep and grounded reflection about the complex activities of teaching that can then be shared and discussed with other members of the profession LESSON study (jugyoukenkyuu) is a Japanese professional development process that enables teachers to systematically examine their practice in order to become more effective instructors In recent years, researchers have argued that lesson study is a promising approach for improving teaching in the US, and, as a result, today we can document a widespread growth of lesson study efforts in American schools1 However, since there are limited descriptions of how to actually translate the basics of lesson study for a US context, we wrote this article to provide US educators with concrete ideas for structuring, organizing, and implementing lesson study in their schools2 A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE LESSON STUDY PROCESS Before we share our recommendations, we would like to outline the main features of lesson study that we refer to throughout this article3 Lesson study can bring together teachers from one school or from various schools Teachers begin the lesson study process by identifying an overarching goal that they would all like to achieve with their students Then, by working collaboratively on a small number of "study lessons," the teachers examine how to tailor their teaching in ways that will help achieve the group's selected goal Working on these study lessons involves several steps, the first of which is for the teachers to jointly plan a lesson and draw up a detailed lesson plan for it The next step is for one of the teachers in the group to teach the lesson in a classroom while the others observe Next, group members come together to discuss their observations of the lesson and to reflect on what it taught them about the goal they set out to explore Often, the group will choose to revise the lesson plan and have another group member reteach the lesson in another classroom, while the group members again observe A debriefing meeting in which observations and insights are discussed once again follows this public demonstration lesson At the end of this process, the teachers produce a record of their lesson study work by writing a reflective report A group may also periodically hold an open house, where teachers can share their lesson study work with other teachers and with other school staffs by teaching study lessons and discussing them with the invited guests As you read our suggestions for successfully implementing and learning from lesson study, please keep in mind that the advice we provide here is meant to be more suggestive than prescriptive We do not believe that there can be a "one-size-fits-all" approach for integrating lesson study into the US educational landscape Instead, we encourage creative experimentation with lesson study that allows teachers to engage in high- quality learning experiences With that first piece of advice in mind, here are our suggestions for conducting lesson study ADVICE FOR SETTING UP LESSON STUDY 1 Select an overarching goal to focus and direct lesson study work A key step in setting up your lesson study group is to choose a specific goal you want to explore through your work on the lessons This goal will focus and direct your work by providing you with a research question for your group to answer For example, if you select as your group's goal "to develop students who are critical thinkers," you can plan all your lessons with an eye to answering the question: "How does one create and teach lessons that encourage students to think critically?" A lesson study group might select an overarching goal the way that many Japanese teachers do They begin by identifying the gaps that they see between the kinds of children they want to nurture and the kinds of students that are actually growing up in their school …

The 34th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes toward the Public Schools.

Abstract: The 1998 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools includes a special focus on public funding for private and church-related schools. Along with the traditional trend questions in this area, new questions were asked regarding vouchers and tuition tax credits. The public continues to oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense, with 44% in favor and 50% opposed. However, the public favors (51% to 45%) allowing parents to send their school-age children to any public, private, or church-related school if the government pays all or part of the tuition. Two new questions were asked about vouchers, government-issued notes that parents can use to pay all or part of the tuition at a private or church-related school. Regarding a voucher that would pay all of the tuition, 48% of respondents are in favor, and 46% are opposed. When the question states that only part of the tuition would be paid, the proportion of respondents in favor rises to 52%, while the proportion who are opposed drops to 41%. Two questions were asked regarding the obligations that should be assumed by private or church-related schools that accept government tuition payments. In response to the first question, 75% of respondents say that schools accepting such payments should be accountable to the state in the same way the public schools are accountable. In the second question, 70% say that nonpublic schools accepting public funds should be required to accept students from a wider range of backgrounds and academic ability than is now generally the case. New questions were also asked about tuition tax credits, which would allow parents who send their children to private or church-related schools to recover all or part of the tuition paid. When the question mentions recovery of all tuition paid, 56% favor such credits. and 42% are opposed. When the question limits the credit to part of the tuition paid, 66% favor the credits, and 30% are opposed. What do the results of this series of questions tell us? The public is deeply divided over the issue of funds going directly to private or church-related schools. Responses split almost evenly when the question implies that the public would pay all of the costs. The opposition seems to lessen when public schools are listed as a part of the choice option and when the funding provided pays only part of the cost. Tax credits for parents who send their children to private or church-related schools are supported by the public, but that support is greater if the credit covers only part of the tuition. Moreover, funding for private or church-related schools is conditioned on the willingness of those schools to be accountable in the same way the public schools are accountable. The findings appear to guarantee that the issue of public funding for church-related schools will be a battleground for the foreseeable future. The public's willingness to consider aid to private and church-related schools in various forms will certainly encourage those who want to see such aid provided. By the same token, the public's seeming unwillingness to provide all of the tuition involved in such programs reinforces the belief of opponents of such aid that the \"haves\" will be the ones who can take advantage of such programs and that the \"have-nots\" will be the ones left behind. The battle would seem to be joined along those lines. With this in mind, the 1998 poll repeated an earlier question in which public school parents were asked what they would do if given the option of sending their oldest child to any public, private, or church-related school, with the tuition paid by the government. Fifty-one percent of respondents indicate that they would choose their present public school. Another 6% would choose a different public school, bringing to 57% the number of families that would remain in the public school system. …

School Change and Inclusive Schools: Lessons Learned from Practice

Abstract: The authors discuss 10 lessons that they hope will help professionals create inclusive schools in which more children fit naturally into classrooms and differences are viewed as an ordinary part of the school day. THIRTEEN years ago, a local director of special education asked us to work with teachers and administrators to achieve the goal of closing at least half of the separate special education classes in the elementary schools in his district. As part of this endeavor, we were to help these educators develop programs to support students with disabilities in general education classrooms. Thirteen years later, this work is still not complete. Evaluations have indicated that the inclusive programs in this school district work well.1 Students with disabilities are making at least as much progress as, if not more than, they did in separate special education classes. Students who are not labeled with disabilities also continue to make good academic progress. Teachers, administrators, and parents have pointed out many social benefits that have resulted from these inclusive programs.2 These programs have widespread support from teachers, administrators, parents, school board members, and other stakeholders. Ultimately, more than 75% of the separate classes closed - only two remain open for full-time placements. These two classes provide intensive support for students with the most challenging behaviors, and students in these classes are included with peers in general education classrooms whenever that is possible. This article describes 10 of the most important lessons we learned as we worked with professionals and other stakeholders in these schools to develop inclusive programs. These lessons have helped us to better understand why and how some schools in the district changed their practices and became more inclusive, while other schools made few changes. Equally important, the lessons now provide us with a framework for making an educated guess regarding whether a school is prepared to undertake the changes that are necessary to develop a successful inclusive school program. Lesson 1. Change must be supported from both the top and the bottom. Change may be initiated by anyone in a setting - a teacher or group of teachers, a principal or central office administrator, a parent. However, to be successful, change must ultimately be supported by the administration (top-down support) as well as by the teachers who must implement the change (bottom-up support). Administrative support (especially from the building principal) for developing and implementing inclusive schools is important for a number of reasons, for administrators must set an atmosphere in a school that is conducive to change and must provide teachers with a range of substantive supports. For example, as inclusive schools are being developed and implemented, principals work with teachers to: * promote the need for changes with the building staff; * provide support for program development and implementation, including time for planning changes and for staff development; * ensure that teachers are in control of changes; * ensure that the faculty members own and support changes; * ensure that the inclusive school is tailored to the needs of the local setting; * encourage risk-taking among teachers and assure them that they will be given support in the event that certain aspects of the inclusive school do not initially succeed; and * encourage ongoing evaluation and improvement of the inclusive school. Developing and implementing inclusive school programs is one of the most complex undertakings in schools today. The support of teachers is crucial. Research on teachers' perspectives on inclusion3 raises a number of issues that must be addressed to assuage teachers' fears (and ensure their support) regarding the development and implementation of inclusive school programs: Who will be included? …

Techno-Promoter Dreams, Student Realities.

Abstract: To understand more clearly how recent infusions of technology into the schools have affected students, the authors undertook a yearlong investigation into technology use at two San Francisco Bay Area high schools. They share their findings here and measure them against the dreams of the techno-promoters. AN 18-YEAR-OLD senior with long brown hair and a thoughtful, engaging manner, Jason Swift does not fit the prominent cultural stereotype of the bespectacled, socially awkward "techno geek." Nonetheless, Flatland High School's tech coordinator, teachers, and other students all rely on his substantial technical and computer expertise, almost entirely self-taught, to help solve various computer problems. Mr. Marsh, the Computer Information Technology (CIT) teacher, and Mr. Colburn, the technology coordinator, immediately mention Jason's name when asked about technologically proficient students. A classmate says, "If there is a PC problem, Jason can fix it." Renowned as the most potent member of the "tech gods," a self-named group of students vital to Flatland's technology efforts, Jason notes, without any undue gloating, that most people turn to him when there is a network, hardware, or software problem in the school.1 On a typical day, although Jason's academic subject teachers rarely employ computers for instruction, he does use computers in two of his classes. In his second-period CIT class, Jason checks his e-mail and surfs the Net at the beginning of class. Then he and his classmates move to another room to disassemble and rehabilitate old computers that local businesses have donated to Flatland. Eventually, many of these reconditioned computers will be used in the school. Mr. Marsh, the instructor/entrepreneur behind the operation, typically employs Jason as an assistant teacher who aids less able students and also as a repair expert who fixes staff machines. Jason reports that twice this year Mr. Marsh has sent him to fix a guidance counselor's computer. Today, Jason is helping individual students test their reassembled computers. In his sixth-period Cisco Networking Academy (CNA) class, Jason and his classmates sit individually at 25 high-end computers secured through a district grant. While some students chat with their neighbors or surf the Web, many students read text, listen to audio through headphones, or watch graphic simulations presented in an online curriculum prepared and hosted by Cisco Systems, the world's leading manufacturer of networking products. The overriding course objective is to prepare students to earn Certified Network Technician status. The instructor, Mr. Colburn, is the technology coordinator. He works with individual students or pauses to engage in an extended dialogue with an observer. On other days in this class, students have wired the room's network, listened to short lectures in which Colburn brought them up to speed on new technologies, taken multiple-choice tests online, or completed "labs" in which groups configure and troubleshoot routers, devices that determine how information flows over a network. However, Jason notes that most days the class uses the online curriculum. Though he sometimes finds it "hard on my eyes," he likes it because "you can go at your own speed, and a book doesn't have sound and animation."2 When asked if he is learning a lot in this class, Jason shrugs his shoulders and says "yeah." In certain respects, Jason's computer knowledge eclipses that of Mr. Colburn, especially when it comes to solving PC hardware or software problems. Jason comments, "If it is something that I can't deal with, then I do usually talk with [Colburn] or someone that I know knows stuff. But most of the time . . . either he doesn't have time to deal with it, or he doesn't know what is going on with it, so they have me fix it." Mr. Colburn agrees, noting, "Jason often does things that nobody on the staff could accomplish." Jason's substantial technical skill has helped him land a position as Mr. …

A Special Section on Personalized Instruction Accountability Shovedown: Resisting the Standards Movement in Early Childhood Education:

Abstract: Mr. Hatch sees the proliferation of standards for early childhood settings as "accountability shovedown" that threatens the integrity of early childhood professionals and the quality of educational experiences for young children. DURING THE 1980s, early childhood educators waged a battle to resist attempts to require more and more of young children at younger and younger ages. This movement to push expectations from the primary grades down into kindergarten and preschool programs was characterized as "curriculum shovedown" by the mainstream early childhood educators, who argued that young children were not developmentally ready for the academic emphasis of such an approach. David Elkind, an articulate spokesperson for the early childhood community, argued that young children were being "miseducated" in settings where they were experiencing stress from academic pressure for no apparent benefit. In The Hurried Child and Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk, Elkind provided powerful indictments of curriculum shovedown and related attempts to make children grow up faster.1 My view is that the standards movement - so pervasive across educational settings today - is threatening children in early childhood in the same ways as the curriculum shovedown movement did in the 1980s. The point of attack has changed from curriculum to outcomes, but the consequences for young children may be the same. Standards for such federal programs as Head Start are already in place, and the discourse in many states and across the early childhood field assumes the inevitability of standards.2 After all, who could be against standards? Who would have the nerve to say that standards are not important? Who would try to build an argument toward the conclusion that standards are somehow bad? Not I, certainly. I am all for standards in early childhood education, unless they fail to pass muster in the 10 areas discussed below. 1. Pressure on children. I support standards for early childhood programs - except when the implementation of those standards puts children as young as 3 and 4 at risk of feeling pressured in the classroom environment. Elkind noted that young children experience significant and sometimes debilitating stress when they are expected to perform at academic levels for which they are not ready. Further, he argued that waiting until they are ready puts children at no real academic disadvantage in the long run.3 It is axiomatic in early childhood that children develop at different rates. Some young children will be ready to meet the challenges of the new expectations associated with the standards movement; many will not. Holding all children to the same standard guarantees that some will face failure. And just setting up a situation in which failure is possible creates stress for even the most capable child, who might be wondering if he or she is achieving "high enough or fast enough."4 Getting children to do more sooner sounds like a logical way to cure the ills of education. But ask someone who has comforted a child who cries because she cannot distinguish between a 3 and a 5 or who has coaxed a child to keep trying when he refuses to demonstrate (once again) his inability to match the letters with the sounds. Those who know young children understand that putting them under stress is an unacceptable by-product of accountability efforts designed to achieve dubious educational advantages. 2. Pressure on teachers. I see standards as vitally important in early childhood education - unless they are used in ways that put pressure on teachers to abandon their mission of teaching young children in favor of teaching a core set of competencies. The pressure to accelerate achievement gets translated to teachers as "Do a better job of getting your kids up to the standards - or else." If meeting the standards is what is valued in the school where they teach and if student performance provides the basis for how they are evaluated, teachers will feel pressured to meet the standards and to raise student performance. …

Looking Back over a Decade of Whole-School Reform: The Experience of New American Schools

Abstract: Federal and state policy makers need to think critically about their current stance of simultaneously promoting high-stakes testing, comprehensive school reforms that center on innovative curriculum and instructional strategies, and the adoption of multiple additional reforms, the authors warn. WHEN THE New American Schools (NAS) launched its efforts on behalf of whole-school reform in 1991, at least part of the motivation was that the piecemeal approach to school reform had produced little change in the nation's test scores. A private, nonprofit organization, NAS was charged with helping schools and districts raise significantly the achievement of large numbers of students by implementing whole-school reforms and by taking advantage of the assistance offered by the design teams. The core premise of NAS was that all high-quality schools possess a unifying design that allows all staff members to perform to the best of their abilities and that integrates research-based practices into a coherent and mutually reinforcing set of effective approaches to teaching and learning for the entire school. The best way to ensure that lower- performing schools adopted successful designs was to fund design teams to develop "break the mold" school designs that could be readily adopted by communities around the nation. After developing the design, teams would go on to implement their designs in schools across the country. This adoption would lead to the fulfillment of NAS's primary goal of improving the performance of large numbers of students. This whole-school approach to educational improvement was a dramatically different way of initiating and disseminating large-scale changes. It was a unique combination of 1) private-sector involvement, using a venture capitalist approach; 2) the choice of whole-school designs as a vehicle for reform; and 3) the ambitious goal of scaling up across the country. Moreover, the experimental approach adopted by NAS required careful development and demonstration of designs prior to moving to the scale-up efforts. Thus it had a phased approach including: * competition and selection phases (1992); * a development phase of one year (1992-93); * a demonstration phase of two years (1993-95); and * a scale-up phase of three years (1995-98). This approach to educational improvement offered an unprecedented opportunity to study and understand a unique attempt at school reform from its beginnings to its completion. RAND's Role NAS approached RAND to provide analytic support to its school reform efforts. This support took many forms, but it was primarily intended to document and analyze the conditions under which NAS made progress toward its goals of widespread use and implementation of the designs and improved student performance associated with that use. The support included the following analytic tasks: * to document the efforts of NAS to assess its contributions to education reform; * to describe the designs and analyze changes in them over time; * to assess the level of implementation in design-based schools during the demonstration and scale-up phases; * to identify factors that impede or encourage implementation in the demonstration and scale-up phases; and * to measure whether adopting the designs resulted in the outcomes desired by NAS and its partnering districts in the scale-up phase. These tasks were conducted over the first seven years of the NAS initiative, from the demonstration phase through the scale-up phase. The results have been documented in a series of RAND reports. Over these years, RAND's program of studies has included: * a longitudinal sample of more than 100 NAS schools that began implementation early in the scale-up phase, including data on implementation and performance from principals, teachers, and districts; * case studies in 40 schools to analyze implementation and the role that districts play in impeding or enabling comprehensive school reform; * a description of how designs have evolved from the initial proposal stage to implementation "at scale" in schools across the nation; * analyses in one urban school district of how designs promote changes in classroom instruction, in teaching and learning, and in individual-level student achievement scores; * an analysis of performance differences in high-implementing NAS sites; and * ongoing discussions with NAS staff and design team leaders. …

Small Classes in American Schools: Research, Practice, and Politics.

Abstract: Mr. Finn provides a brief overview of the current status of class-size reduction programs in the U.S., summarizes the research base that has moved districts and states to seek class-size reduction, and calls attention to the misapplication of the research in some contexts. He also discusses questions about smaller classes that remain unanswered and describes current research into the long-term consequences of small classes and efforts to explain why they are effective. IN RECENT YEARS, more than half of the states, countless districts, and the federal government have sponsored class-size reduction (CSR) programs. In California alone 28,000 new teachers were hired in the first three years of the statewide CSR initiative. Meanwhile, as part of its effort to reduce class sizes, the U.S. Department of Education has paid the salaries of 29,000 new teachers, mainly in poor urban school districts. Nationwide, it is impossible to count the number of new teachers hired and the number of classes that have been reduced in size. But these numbers are certainly large. Why is it that, after years of research and debate but little action, class sizes are finally being reduced in the elementary grades across the U.S.? There are a number of reasons, including the following: * Everybody likes the idea of small classes -- teachers, parents, policy makers, legislators, and even the courts1 understand the importance of small classes for teaching and learning; * High-quality research has demonstrated the benefits of small classes in the early grades -- especially for students at risk; * Until very recently education had risen to the top of state and national agendas; and * The economy was healthy, so we had ample resources to direct toward school improvement. But much has changed in recent months, making the future of smaller classes in the elementary grades less clear. The White House education plan, "No Child Left Behind," earmarked the federal reduced-class-size initiative as one of two programs to be eliminated. The recent instability in the economy may have left states and districts less able to hire additional teachers. And the events of September 11 refocused our national attention in a way that may well give lower priority to education issues. It remains to be seen if small class sizes have become sufficiently important and sufficiently institutionalized that they will continue to be part of our basic educational plans. In this article I provide a brief overview of the current status of class-size reduction programs in the U.S.; the overview is brief because the situation is changing even as I write. I also summarize the research base that has moved districts and states to seek class-size reduction and call attention to the misapplication of the research in some contexts. Finally, I discuss questions about smaller classes that remain unanswered and describe current research into the long-term consequences of small classes and efforts to explain why small classes are effective. My basic premise is that small classes in the elementary grades are not the solution to the problems of American schools; they are not the "silver bullet." Instead, small classes provide an essential opportunity for instruction to be more effective and for students to become optimally involved in the learning process. The most important question yet to be answered is "How can educators take best advantage of small class sizes to maximize learning outcomes?" The Research Base Prior to the 1980s, dozens of studies were conducted on the relationship between class size and pupil performance. Many of these suffered from methodological flaws, including small samples, poor research designs, and inadequate treatment of the data. Not one was a large-scale randomized experiment. However, reviews of this research found consistencies and supported some tentative conclusions: * Reduced class size (below 20 pupils) can be expected to produce a modest increase in academic achievement. …

When Improvement Programs Collide

Abstract: Efforts to implement and integrate various improvement efforts face a paradox, Mr. Hatch argues. Although many improvement initiatives can provide some of the inspiration, resources, and expertise that can help build schools' capacity to change, implementing those initiatives can bring new demands, requirements, and costs that schools do not always have the capacity to meet. THE CENTURY that began with "the one best system"1 is ending with concerns about whether there is any "system" at all. Teachers and schools today are besieged by a host of often-competing demands and responsibilities. While many new practices, policies, and reform efforts may make sense in their own right, teachers and schools are frequently left to try to integrate and coordinate these varied initiatives when they have neither the resources nor the time to do their work well in the first place. Unfortunately, the cumulative demands and resulting fragmentation and incoherence can undermine the capacity of schools to make the very improvements so many desire. Among the responses to this problem have been initiatives to encourage schools to take advantage of the services and resources offered by organizations promoting "whole-school" reform programs or changes in the teaching of particular subjects such as English, mathematics, or science. Specifically, in 1998 Congress created the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) program, in which $145 million was earmarked for schools that sought to work with one or more improvement programs or to create their own strategy for "comprehensive" reform. Many of the improvement programs mentioned in the CSRD legislation and guidance -- such as Success for All/Roots and Wings, Accelerated Schools, High Schools That Work, and the Modern Red Schoolhouse -- can point to affiliated schools that have made substantial improvements in operations and student performance. Furthermore, it is clear that these kinds of improvement programs can provide a variety of useful resources and services and can serve to motivate and inspire some staff members, students, and parents.2 But it remains unclear whether efforts to increase the number of schools working with improvement programs will lead to more effective reforms on a larger scale and the kind of school-level coherence and capacity for increased student learning that so many desire. Too often, programs are simply added to the many initiatives already in place instead of being integrated into a focused effort.3 In the process, rather than contribute to substantial improvements, the adoption of these programs may further sap the strength and spirit of schools and their communities. Today, many schools may be trying to juggle the demands of implementing several improvement programs at the same time. For example, in a 1998- 99 survey of the principals of schools in one district in the San Francisco Bay Area (with 77% responding), more than half of the respondents (52%) reported that they were involved with three or more programs or partnerships that were created by nationally known or local groups and organizations; 15% reported that they were involved with six or more different programs or partnerships. Surveys in three comparison districts in California and Texas showed that, of the responding schools in all districts, 63% were engaged in three or more improvement programs, and 27% were engaged in six or more. In one district, 18% of schools were working with nine or more different programs simultaneously. The programs and partnerships with which schools were involved included whole-school reform programs, such as Success for All, the Coalition of Essential Schools, and AVID (Advancement via Individual Determination), and programs such as Reading Recovery and Connected Mathematics that focus on improving student performance in specific subjects. In the Bay Area district alluded to above, locally developed programs included the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC), which provided funds, technical assistance, and network participation to schools that passed through a portfolio application procedure; Joint Venture Silicon Valley (JVSV), which offered funds and resources to schools interested in coordinating their curricula and assessments with other schools in their feeder pattern; and a local university that offered professional development school partnerships. …

It's Time to Start the Slow School Movement:

Abstract: The "slow food" movement began as a protest against the global proliferation of McDonald's restaurants. Mr. Holt calls for a similar backlash against today's "hamburger" approach toward education, which emphasizes uniformity, predictability, and measurability of processes and results. WHEN THE YOUNG Cole Porter left his elementary school in Indiana for a prep school on the East Coast, his mother gave his age as 12, although he was in fact two years older. She had always encouraged his musical gifts and evidently decided that two more years at home, practicing the piano and entertaining passengers on the passing riverboats, was a better way of fostering his songwriting abilities.1 We should all be grateful for her foresight. In today's school climate, Kate Porter's deception appears both unlikely and unwise. The pressure to proceed from one targeted standard to another as fast as possible, to absorb and demonstrate specified knowledge with conveyor-belt precision, is an irresistible fact of school life. Parents are encouraged to focus on achievement, not self- realization. A present-day Porter would soon be labeled a nerdy slow learner if he flunked the math test and preferred the keyboard to a baseball bat. It's curious that, in an age when the right of adults to shape their own lifestyle is taken for granted, the right of children to an education that will help them make something of themselves is more circumscribed than ever. This curriculum straitjacket is the price exacted for believing that education is about assessed performance on specified content. The march toward ruthless conformity began in the 1970s, as the Cold Warriors blamed schools for the supposed deficiencies in American technology. It gained momentum in the 1980s, when, as Arthur Levine has noted, the generation born after World War II became young urban professionals, and "the education of their children became the baby boomers' and the nation's preoccupation."2 The 1983 Reagan-era report A Nation at Risk set the agenda for all that has followed. Influenced on the one hand by the idea that education is an atomistic, science-like activity, and on the other by the output-led simplicities of supply-side economics, schools in America have been in the grip of some form of standards- based reform for nearly 20 years. The current Administration of George W. Bush has pushed through the idea of universal standards-based tests to be given each year in grades 3 through 8, a requirement that undermines the independence of the states and is widely thought to be unworkable. History may show, as is so often the case, that this ultimate adornment to the edifice of standards may mark the very moment when its foundations begin to crumble. The 33rd Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll shows a rising trend in favor of school-based assessment and of public schooling in general.3 The results of state testing in English and mathematics, far from offering new insights, merely confirm that the chief determinants of performance are parental income and the level of school resources -- in short, the affluence of the neighborhood. Conservative columnist George Will puts it more brutally: "The crucial predictor of a school's performance is the quality of the children's families."4 But this is not a law of nature: it reflects the tendencies of tests to reflect culturally embedded concepts of student "quality" and of school funding systems to offer least to those who need most. To excel in high-stakes tests, even schools in sleek suburbs are prepared to distort their curriculum, as Billie Stanton observes in a revealing report on the effects of standards-led reform in Colorado: "Even parents in an affluent Boulder neighborhood . . . are questioning whether private school may not be preferable, since watching their fourth-graders return home dazed and drained from being drilled again and again in how to write a 'power paragraph. …

Promoting Responsible Accountability in Schools and Education

Abstract: Mr. Sirotnik envisions the day when neither his high school friend Helen nor any of our nation's young people would be punished on the basis of a test-driven system that is ill suited to their abilities and ambitions and to the broader purposes of public schooling in our multicultural and democratic society. LATELY, I've been thinking about my friend Helen. We went through junior and senior high school and college together. She was a good student in all but one subject, mathematics. In fact, she was brilliant in English, but she was absolutely stymied when it came to mathematics. Helen would have liked to be better at math, but it really didn't bother her that she wasn't. Somehow she made it through the basic math classes in high school without flunking out and was admitted to and graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in English and a secondary teaching credential. Helen is now one of the most successful and honored English teachers in Los Angeles. She loves teaching, and, after more than 30 years, she still has no plans to retire. She has raised two children; aside from a few traffic tickets, she has never violated any laws; she votes in elections (and takes them seriously); she doesn't use illegal drugs; she contributes time and money to social causes; and she looks after her aging parents. There's much more I could say about my friend Helen. But it's instructive to note that if she were to be a high school student preparing to graduate in the state of Washington in 2008, she wouldn't be able to. No matter how many times she took it, Helen would never have passed the mathematics test, which is part of the "certificate of mastery" that will be required for graduation. Would she have dropped out of high school, knowing she would never graduate? Would she have gone on to complete a GED at a local community college? Could she ever have become an English teacher? And could she have made an important difference in the educational lives of some 9,000 young people over a 30-year career? Don't mistake my point in sharing Helen's story. It is not about gender or about one subject being more or less important than another. Helen might have been a whiz in mathematics instead of English, or I could have reminisced about my friend Hal instead. I share Helen's story because I care deeply about the well-being of each and every young person in today's and tomorrow's public schools. And because of this concern, I have serious reservations about the punitive nature of traditional accountability practices, particularly as these practices have been playing out in the current high-stakes policy environment.1 For example, high-stakes accountability testing has exacerbated the already problematic dropout rates of marginalized students.2 Evidence is emerging about teacher demoralization and attrition as a result of frustration with the overemphasis on mandated testing for high-stakes accountability purposes.3 And movements, some court-based, are already occurring in several states to counter the fallout from high-stakes testing and accountability practices.4 The acronym suggested by the title of this article is no accident. I wish to share here what might serve as a foundation for PRAISE, not punishment -- a foundation for rethinking substantially what it means to think and act responsibly when it comes to calling our schools, school systems, educators, and students to account. My colleagues and I are currently trying to "think out of the box" regarding what ought to constitute appropriate accountability practices.5 We are trying to counter the prevailing rhetoric of high-stakes accountability and to promote, instead, a new rhetoric of educational responsibility. We are asking for more caring and for justifiable educational practices that serve the interests of all children and their families. At the same time we are calling for finding creative and useful ways to demonstrate publicly who students are, what they know, what they care about and are able to do, and what they can become. …

Babes in the Woods: The Wanderings of the National Reading Panel:

Abstract: From the choice of participants to serve on the National Reading Panel to the hasty release of an uncorrected, undeliberated, and unapproved subcommittee report, the procedure used by the NRP was flawed, Ms. Yatvin - a member of the panel - charges. Now government agencies at all levels are using the "science" of the NRP report to support their calls for changes in school instruction and teacher education. WHEN THEY heard that I had been appointed to the National Reading Panel (NRP), my friends predicted, "They'll eat you alive." But it was never like that. When we panelists began our journey to discover what "research says about the best methods for teaching children to read," we were all searchers after truth, each knowledgeable and respected in his or her professional domain and each dedicated to working together toward our joint goal. Along the trail, pressured by isolation, time limits, lack of support, and the political aims of others, we lost our way - and our integrity.1 To begin with, Congress, which had commissioned our journey, was naive to believe that a panel of 15 people, all employed full time elsewhere and working without a support staff, could in six months' time sift through a mountain of research studies and draw from them conclusions about the best ways of teaching reading. And the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), designated as our guide and provisioner on the journey, was irresponsible both in advising Congress that the task could be done in that way and in selecting the wrong combination of people to do it. In late 1997 Congress passed legislation authorizing the "Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), in consultation with the Secretary of Education," to select the members of the panel from more than 300 nominations by individuals and organizations involved in reading education. The bill specified that the panel was to be made up of "15 individuals, who are not officers or employees of the Federal Government and include leading scientists in reading research, representatives of colleges of education, reading teachers, education administrators, and parents." NICHD stretched that definition to its limits by appointing 12 university professors. Eight of them were reading researchers, two were administrators without backgrounds in reading or teacher education, one was a teacher educator, and one was a medical doctor. Other categories were represented by one parent, one elementary school principal, and one middle school language arts teacher.2 There was no reading teacher in the sense I believe Congress intended. When, shortly after the initial panel meeting, one of the university researchers resigned, I suggested that it made sense to replace him with a primary-level teacher of reading. A month later, at our second meeting, the panel chair announced that, "after considerable discussion, we concluded that at this stage in the game we might just as well not replace him."3 The panel was not told who the "we" were. And since the work of the panel had scarcely begun, the explanation offered was scarcely credible. Why wouldn't NICHD officials want someone on the panel who actually taught young children how to read? The appointment of the medical doctor was also troubling. Although, technically, she was a reading researcher who worked in the controversial area of brain activity in reading, she had no knowledge or experience in reading instruction. What really made her an inappropriate choice, however, was her close professional association with NICHD. In a videotape later produced under the direction of NICHD, this doctor appears five times, hailing the breakthrough accomplishments of the panel, while other members who were far more involved in the panel's research appear once or not at all. At the first meeting of the panel in April 1998, another troubling fact about NICHD's appointments became apparent. …

The Death of Science?: What We Risk in Our Rush toward Standardized Testing and the Three R'S

Abstract: The authors raise an important question: Will standardized testing -- or, more accurately, the politicization of the "standards" movement -- snuff out the promise of inquiry-based methods for American science education? FROM THE post-Sputnik panic of the 1960s to the landmark Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) of 1997, America's lackluster performance in science education has served as a catalyst for education reform. For more than 30 years, teachers, administrators, researchers, and corporate leaders concerned about the future of science instruction in America have contributed to significant improvements in science curricula and instructional methodology. Today, a model of science education exists that is founded on successful practice and validated by profound achievement gains. It has begun to attract the attention of school systems nationwide. Referred to in varying forms as "inquiry" or "inquiry-based" science, this approach is increasingly associated with a growing network of science resource centers operating as part of or in tandem with school systems. Ironically, even as inquiry methods and science resource centers stand poised to reinvigorate K-12 science education in America, the national movement emphasizing reading, writing, and mathematics instruction, as measured by high-stakes standardized tests, threatens to suppress the effort to make truly revolutionary progress in science education. Teachers and school administrators across the U.S. are facing enormous pressure to improve test scores in the basic skills areas. Consequently, they have been forced to reduce -- or in some cases eliminate -- the amount of class time devoted to science instruction. Such measures will have a devastating long-term impact on science education in America and, subsequently, on the medical, corporate, academic, and industrial sectors that rely on well-educated American science students. How many of our scientists, researchers, graduate students, and entrepreneurs first found their interest in science sparked by experiences in school? These very experiences are now jeopardized by the "standards" push in many states. With politicians, education critics, and the news media calling for basic skills accountability and with their attention fixated on improved standardized test scores, our nation's scientific future is at risk. Science Education That Works More than 35 years ago, Highline School District in Seattle began to experiment with a new way to teach science in elementary school. Rather than have students passively observe while teachers talked about science -- still the way science is taught in more than 80% of America's K-8 schools1 -- this new system enabled the students themselves to perform ready-to-use science experiments from prepackaged kits. Students learned science by doing science, not by reading about science in textbooks or by watching their teachers conduct demonstrations. In the Highline science program, students began to explore and discover collaboratively, rather than just absorb and memorize in the isolation of their desks and texts. Students were allowed to learn over time -- preparing questions, designing experiments, organizing data, and developing conclusions as "real" scientists do -- rather than race through the "mile-wide/inch-deep" material covered in their textbooks. At this early date, the kit-based inquiry science movement was born. The inquiry approach was founded on the premise that children learn actively, not passively. Students are introduced to science methods and use them to engage in hands-on, "minds-on" activities that inspire them to discover scientific knowledge rather than being told answers by the teacher or textbook. In the inquiry model, teachers serve as guides and lead students through the experiments. Using the inquiry method, "science content is covered in greater depth compared to a superficial traditional textbook approach. …

Division in the Ranks: Standardized Testing Draws Lines between New and Veteran Teachers.

Abstract: In the end, Ms. Winkler found that variation in teachers' attitudes toward the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) test depended primarily on their own accrued time in the profession. Experienced teachers saw the test in terms of losses, while inexperienced teachers saw the test in terms of gains. IT IS HARD to believe that it's been three years since I taught English in an inner-city high school in Norfolk. I remember well the run-down 1950s-era building; its worn stairs, temperamental radiators, and dim hallways made for a less-than-stellar work environment. Its lack of air conditioning primed those of us who taught there for steamy afternoons and for students crankier than the crank-roll windows we wrestled with each morning. But it wasn't the building or the sweaty teenagers that hastened my return to grad school; it was the way in which the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) test was implemented at my school. Allow me to issue a quick caveat. Though my experience with standards and standardized testing echoes the research of high-stakes testing opponents,1 I do not intend to reiterate the litany of complaints that they have documented so well already. My reason for conducting the study reported here and for writing this article certainly springs from my own desire to vent frustration over the perennial search for the pot of golden test scores at the end of the rote-recall rainbow. However, I must face one fact: not all teachers felt the threat to teaching freedom as I once did. In fact, many teachers welcomed the introduction into their classrooms of a highly structured, objective, and prescriptive test. It is this difference in teacher attitudes I wish to explore here. Initially, I interviewed and observed three Virginia teachers with at least nine years of experience. But after each made remarks like, "But Ms. Jones across the hall doesn't feel that way," I began to notice that the difference between the interviewed teacher and Ms. Jones was in years of experience. I decided to add three new teachers to my sample (those with less than two years of experience). Thus I spent roughly a year with six teachers, who taught at five different schools and represented the elementary, middle, and high school levels. In the end, it appeared that variation in the teachers' attitudes had less to do with how individual schools implemented the SOL test (what I thought would emerge as the key factor) than with a teacher's accrued time in the profession. In short, I found that new and veteran teachers' beliefs about the Virginia SOL test differed with regard to two areas: one having to do with broad losses and gains and one having to do with a teacher's sense of efficacy. Losses and Gains In a nutshell, experienced teachers saw the SOL test in terms of losses, while inexperienced teachers saw the test in terms of gains. The losses could be categorized into issues of power and professionalism for the veterans, and the gains could be categorized into issues of collaboration and pedagogical freedom for the new teachers. Both experienced teachers and inexperienced teachers saw the losses or gains as related to a philosophical construct. Experienced teachers often expressed frustration and indignation when talking about the SOL test. These emotions were rooted in the feeling that teachers had lost power as a result of the implementation of the test. On both the basic and superficial levels, this loss of power manifested itself in increased paperwork. The teachers talked of having to put the SOL numbers in their plans, on the board, on tests, and in handouts. One teacher said that the members of her department had to post a listing of their grade's SOL objectives on the classroom door and write in the date that each benchmark had been covered. That way, the department head could walk by and see at a glance which teachers had covered which SOL numbers and when -- essentially ensuring that teachers were pacing themselves in accordance with the curriculum guide. …

The 10th School Revisited: Are School/Family/Community Partnerships on the Reform Agenda Now?:

Abstract: Mr. Davies makes a series of recommendations that add up to a plea for changing the culture of schools so that partnership is a way of life that offers benefits to all who are engaged and becomes a tradition rather than a funded project. Visit 10 schools randomly in the United States and you will discover in nine of them that most teachers and administrators still hold parents at arm's length. You will see many of the tried-and-true forms of parent involvement - an open house in the fall, two or three short parent conferences a year, parents attending student performances and sports events, some teachers calling parents when a child is misbehaving, an annual multicultural fair, a parent association that raises money, and a business partner that donates equipment. But you'll observe few if any parents or community representatives actively involved in the school's efforts to make changes in curriculum, teaching, student rules, homework policies, or scheduling. I WROTE those words in 1996 in an Education Week commentary. I went on to assert that the 10th school would be different - and better. My comments were widely circulated by the Institute for Responsive Education and provoked considerable reaction. It is time to revisit my 10th school claim and ask what has happened in the intervening years. Because of the rapid advance of the high standards/accountability/testing movement (49 states have new standards, 48 have testing programs geared to higher standards, and many states are threatening to take over failing schools), I expected that there would be substantial action toward involving families and the community in schools. I also expected that the growing national concern - expressed by politicians, business leaders, and educators - about the huge, widening gaps in achievement between white and African American and Latino children would prod more districts, schools, and parent and community organizations to recognize that schools can't close these gaps alone. I thought that more parties would act on the fact that substantial engagement of home and community is likely to increase the chances of success of any reform effort. If rational planning didn't produce action, I thought that desperation might spur new strategies. Have these expectations been realized? The answer is yes and no. Some things have changed. Now it seems that everybody talks about, studies, and advocates parent and family involvement. The "whole village" idea is widely embraced, and "partnership" has become a mantra. There is hardly a politician, educational leader, organization, or conference that doesn't highlight in some way families, parent involvement, and partnership. They are now the equivalent of "motherhood and apple pie." This surge of interest in and acceptance of the ideas of parent involvement and partnership is gratifying. But practices in most schools have hardly caught up with the flourishing rhetoric. I still stand behind my 10th school assertion, and some of my colleagues in the parent advocacy world would say that I am much too generous with this assessment. There has certainly been an increase in business involvement in many places, and more local education foundations are providing outside financial help. Some districts and schools have increased parent or community involvement, but this effort is still too often seen as a side show, not directly linked to school reform aimed at increasing student achievement and closing gaps in student performance. There are some scattered developments focused on involving parents in closing the achievement gaps that seem promising. For example, seven urban principals are cited in the Heritage Foundation's No Excuses report as setting high standards in low-income schools. Nearly all of them "work actively with parents to make the home a center of learning" and to make the school "a force for stability in an impoverished community."1 Other positive examples include the expanded family centers in the schools in Rochester, New York; a small family literacy project in Boston; and work by action teams in some of the schools in Joyce Epstein's School, Family, and Community Partnerships Network. …

Partnering Full-Service Community Schools: Creating New Institutions:

Abstract: Community agencies can become partners with schools to help overcome barriers to learning, Ms. Dryfoos notes. Many people see the school site as the potential hub of education and services in the community. Parents want their children to be in safe places after school, and they welcome the personal assistance with child rearing that they can get in school-based family and health centers. Thus community schools offer an excellent alternative to traditional schools for students, families, teachers, and service providers. FULL-SERVICE community schools are proliferating in many different forms. Schoolpeople, child advocates, youth workers, and university faculty members are putting their heads together and coming up with designs for new types of school/community institutions that directly address the problems in contemporary life that create barriers to learning. The operating principles are simple. Children cannot learn unless their basic needs are met; support services for children and families will have little impact unless cognitive development is taken care of. Programs that incorporate high-quality education and support services are arising independently from various endeavors at the local, state, and national levels. They are known by many names: Beacons, Bridges to Success, Caring Communities, University-Assisted Schools, Communities in School, COZI (Comer/Zigler), Schools That Never Close, or just plain Community Schools. No two are exactly alike, but all share many similar characteristics. The sum of these efforts is impressive. We do not know exactly how many full-service community schools have been developed, but surely the number is well over a thousand. What is most remarkable about these initiatives is that they seem to fall outside the domain of school reform and are rarely referenced in the school reform literature. Yet community schools are committed to school transformations that lead to improved academic achievement along with other goals related to youth development and family and community well-being. This should not be taken to mean that educators are not interested. Indeed, the recently formed Coalition for Community Schools includes all the major national educational organizations among its 170 partners.1 Nevertheless, I believe that many Kappan readers might be unfamiliar with these developments. Therefore, I will summarize what is going on, why it is happening now, what difference it is making, what has been the experience with replication and sustainability to date, and what to expect in the future. Definition What is a full-service community school? The Coalition for Community Schools labored long and hard to come up with a satisfactory definition. The vision the group arrived at includes a number of features. A community school, operating in a public school building, is open to students, families, and the community before, during, and after school, seven days a week, all year long. It is jointly operated and financed through a partnership between the school system and one or more community agencies. Families, young people, principals, teachers, youth workers, neighborhood residents, college faculty members, college students, and businesspeople all work together to design and implement a plan for transforming the school into a child-centered institution. Oriented toward the community, a community school encourages student learning through community service and service learning. A before- and after-school learning component encourages students to build on their classroom experiences, to expand their horizons, to explore their cultural heritage, to engage in sports and recreation, and just to have fun. A family support center helps families with child rearing, employment, housing, and other services. Medical, dental, and mental health services are also available on site. A full-time community school coordinator, working alongside the school principal, oversees the delivery of an array of support services provided by local agency partners and participates on the school management team. …

Computerized Gradebooks and the Myth of Objectivity

Abstract: I F YOU ASK middle school or high school teachers today how they determine their students’ grades, the first thing most of them will do is open a computerized grading program. They’ll show you the vast array of data they keep on each student and explain how they weigh the different pieces of information. At the end of the marking period, they combine these various measures and, with the help of the computer, calculate a summary score to the one-hundred-thousandth of a decimal point. The computer then converts this summary score into the letter grade that is printed on a report card and sent home to parents. Many teachers will also go on to describe the fairness and objectivity of this process, pointing out how the mathematical precision of the computer makes it easy for them to explain and to defend their grading policies to students, to parents, and to administrators. A SPECIAL SECTION ON ASSESSMENT

Kudzu, Rabbits, and School Reform

Abstract: We, the people, appear to understand that the linchpin of each American's necessary apprenticeship in democracy is a qualified, caring, competent classroom teacher, Mr. Goodlad points out. The role of Presidents and governors is to cheer us on, not to mislead us with the mythology of school reform. RECENTLY, colleagues and I were more than a little startled by a letter to the editor of one of our local newspapers. It had been wryly captioned "Civic Spirit," and it read as follows: Our son recently finished 90 hours of community service. The crime to fit this punishment? He just happens to be a graduating senior. We believe community service is a wonderful way for drunk drivers, juvenile delinquents - any member of society who has cost the community pain, money, etc. - to pay back a little of what they owe. Is it appropriate for productive, high-achieving high school students to be required to do more "punishment" than the average teenage burglar? In our opinion, any teenager who stays out of trouble is contributing to their community. Presumably, the couple writing this letter assumed that they had performed their civic duty by bringing a high-achieving student into the world. Their son, in turn, had taken care of his community responsibilities through academic achievement. I am reminded of a quite different letter to a newspaper editor reporting the behavior of an aging woman at an open meeting of a state's budget committee. Exasperated by the repeated cuts in allocations for schools, she stood up and spoke out in protest. The committee's chairman interrupted her. "You are a schoolteacher, I assume." "No, I am not," she replied. "Then you must have a daughter or son who is." "No, I do not." "Surely, grandchildren in school?" "I have no children," she replied, "but I have to live with everyone else's children." THE HARD AND TOUGH AND THE SOFT AND TENDER These two letters illustrate a long-standing tension regarding the purposes of our schools. At the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, William James referred to the "hard and tough" and the "soft and tender" as the warp and woof in the fabric of American social and political ideology. He saw the need for balancing the two. But they have tended to be out of balance, with one rising and the other falling in cycles of two to three decades, with schooling following several years behind. The rhetoric of school purpose has been relatively stable, however. The dozen or so goals that surface again and again in commissioned reports and district guidelines for schools have consistently embraced personal, social, vocational, and academic attributes. In 1987 Mortimer Adler wove the rhetorical fabric this way: "Preparation for duties of citizenship is one of three objectives for any sound system of public schooling in our society. Preparation for earning a living is another, and the third is preparation for discharging everyone's moral obligation to lead a good life and make as much of one's self as possible."1 Poll after poll and study after study have revealed that we want all three. Nonetheless, reform era after reform era - each politically driven - puts policy and practice out of balance. Adults with quite ordinary academic records invent the past in exhorting schools to be hard and tough, as schools supposedly were for them. "Educating the whole child" is frequently viewed as the dangerous notion of woolly-headed progressive educators. Indeed, it is not so much the substance of reform cycles but more the side effects that do harm. Whether soft and tender or hard and tough, school reforms fade and die, frequently from their own excesses. But their side effects live on as "eduviruses" that add cost to the system and create roadblocks to the serious redesign and sustained improvement we need. …

Standardization versus Standards.

Abstract: In the name of objectivity and science -two worthy ideas --the testing enterprise has led teachers and parents to distrust their own ability to see and observe their own children, Ms. Meier points out. What we need are assessments -with low or high stakes -that place authority in the hands of people who actually know the students and that make sure that the community, the family, and the student have ways to challenge such judgments.

Something is Missing from Teacher Education: Attention to Two Genders:

Abstract: Assumptions about gender roles continue to limit children's aspirations and achievements. If we are to overcome those limitations, Ms. Sanders argues, gender equity must become a standard part of the curriculum of preservice teacher education. EDUCATORS may have noticed the recent disputes between Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys, and such advocates of gender equity as David Sadker and Carol Gilligan about whether boys or girls are being more shortchanged in the classroom. If it achieves nothing else, the debate should remind us that we need to talk about the educational well-being of both sexes, not either one separately. For example, here is a sampling of what's going on in our schools today that affects both girls and boys: * There were more than nine boys for every girl who took the highest- level Advanced Placement test in computer science last year.1 * Eighty-five percent of eighth- through 11th-grade girls report having been sexually harassed at school; for boys, the figure was 76%.2 * All but one of the fatal school shootings reported in recent years were committed by boys -- in fact, by white boys.3 * The average 11th-grade boy writes at the same level as the average eighth-grade girl, and boys read worse than girls at all grade levels. Moreover, these data have been unchanged for the past 30 years.4 In addition, there are still plenty of gross imbalances among adult men and women: * Women make up 18% of the U.S. Senate and 13% of the U.S. House of Representatives. * According to a recent study by Catalyst, women fill just 11% of the seats on the boards of Fortune 500 companies. Fourteen percent of the companies have no female board members at all.5 * More than 93% of inmates in our prisons and jails are men.6 * The life expectancy of men is 73 years, as opposed to 79 years for women.7 Where do these peculiar imbalances come from? Let me answer with a few more questions. Why is it considered masculine to be violent and aggressive? Why is it considered feminine to be nurturant and intuitive? Why are art, languages, and music considered feminine subjects in school, while math, science, and technology are considered masculine subjects? How many of our assumptions about gender are truly essential? All these imbalances -- dilemmas, problems, tragedies, limitations, injustices -- have a developmental history that starts with notions of femininity and masculinity learned by everyone, beginning with the pink and blue receiving blankets still used in hospitals today. In other words, these assumptions concern gender (what we learn about the proper ways for the sexes to behave) not sex (what we're born with). So, for example, it is correct to speak of gender roles and of single-sex education. Moreover, it is increasingly apparent that our traditional gender roles have not served us all that well. While it is obvious that men and women and boys and girls have gender roles, properly understood, gender equity is a human issue, not a women's issue. Given the reality evident in the facts I've cited above, we might assume that teacher educators would be preparing their preservice education students to teach equitably in their classrooms. Certainly, we would reason, because awareness of gender issues has been on a front burner in society for three decades, gender equity must be a hot topic in the preparation of teachers. But if we made these assumptions, we would be wrong. In response to several decades of societal concern about inequities facing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, multicultural education has become a thriving component of teacher education nationwide. Gender equity, however, is in the earliest stages of consideration. Several studies carried out in the 1990s confirm that gender equity is in its infancy in teacher education. …

The Effective Schools Process: Alive and Well:

Abstract: The Effective Schools Process is a tried and true process of school change that can create schools in which all children make progress and are ready for study at the next grade level, Ms. Taylor maintains. IN THE MAY 2001 issue of the Kappan and in the March 2001 issue of School Administrator, articles written by M. Donald Thomas and William Bainbridge presented five "fallacies" and so-called facts that the authors felt reflected the status of the Effective Schools movement today. The material that appeared in these articles was originally written as a brief for the plaintiffs in the case Abbeville vs. State of South Carolina. The plaintiffs sued the state for equitable funding of schools in South Carolina, particularly exceptionally underfunded schools in low-income districts that served large numbers of minority and disadvantaged children. The case went to the state supreme court, which held that the remedy was to be handled by the South Carolina legislature. The court ruled that this legislation must be in place by June 2002. Thomas and Bainbridge wrote the brief as consultants acquainted with comprehensive school reform processes, especially the school improvement process begun decades ago that became the Effective Schools movement, in which Thomas had played an important part. Thomas was ombudsman in South Carolina during the tenure of Gov. Richard Riley, who oversaw, with his wife, Anne Riley, the first statewide implementation of Effective Schools reforms. Gov. Riley, of course, went on to become secretary of education in the Clinton Administration. These two articles constitute arguments in favor of the type of comprehensive school reform that the early Effective Schools movement intended to achieve. The authors did not check with the National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development - now called the National Alliance for Effective Schools (NAES) - and thus their brief was decidedly dated. Indeed, the so-called fallacies they attribute to the present movement never existed in the conceptual evolution of the Effective Schools Process. This article and the two that follow - by Judy March and by Janet Chrispeels - address the current status of the Effective Schools Process and the Effective Schools Research and offer some examples from the field. The National Alliance for Effective Schools and those who have developed the Effective Schools Process and conducted decades of Effective Schools Research have never subscribed to the "five fallacies" that Thomas and Bainbridge list. The extensive body of work that has descended directly from the research of Ronald Edmonds, Wilbur Brookover, Larry Lezotte, John Frederickson, George Weber, Matthew Miles, Daniel Levine and Eugene Eubanks, and many others is now referred to as Effective Schools Research and is the applied research currently used by trainers and consultants who are members of the NAES. The NAES, now headquartered at the Gevirtz School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, is the successor to the National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development, which was affiliated with Phi Delta Kappa in Bloomington, Indiana. Why the upper-case designations? When the National Center was founded in 1986, its purpose was to disseminate and maintain the consistency of the Effective Schools Process, a school improvement process that was evolving from the collective experiences of educators nationwide who were using the correlates of Effective Schools as organizational and programmatic dimensions of their strategy for school improvement. In truth, the center was formed in an attempt to keep to a minimum the contradictions and misrepresentations of the process, such as those Bainbridge and Thomas mentioned. In general, the National Center was successful in achieving this goal. School reform programs and processes that were advocated and advanced by the chief trainers and consultants of the center - known as the Cadre of Fellows - were held consistent through the 1980s. …

School Reform and Professional Development

Abstract: WORK SMARTER, and hurry up about it. Stripped down to the essentials, this seems to be the standards-based reform message being delivered to teachers around the country -- no matter how long they have been teaching and no matter what they teach. However, many teachers find the message hollow. They believe that working smarter, in today's terms, means knowing how to improve students' standardized test scores and nothing more. If all the activity attending change in education dissolves into a morass of upping test scores, then students, teachers, and the whole education establishment will be victims of not very smart responses to the reforms. There is plenty of evidence around that, when teachers know their content and know how to teach it at high levels to all students, "teaching to the test" fades into the background of everyday instruction and learning. How much proof do teachers need? In studying the implementation of problem-solving instruction in California's schools, David Cohen and others found that teachers who took part with their peers in consistent, high-quality learning that was focused on content and on the pedagogy that relates to that content improved their students' achievement considerably on state tests. Teachers who focused on process-type professional development, such as cooperative learning, did not have similar results. In Pittsburgh, students of teachers who taught from high standards and under conditions in which the curriculum, assessment, and professional development opportunities all aligned with one another outperformed students in schools where this kind of alignment had not taken place. Black students in the high- implementation schools did better on tests than white students in low- implementation schools. In Chicago, students in even the most disadvantaged schools scored better on standardized tests of basic skills and produced higher- quality intellectual work if they had experienced high-quality instruction. Teachers who used interactive instruction (lots of different strategies) consistently saw their students make achievement gains that were above the Chicago average on state tests and on nationally normed tests. Students of teachers who clung to didactic instruction made below-average gains. Underlying such results are the kinds of opportunities that enable teachers to learn themselves. Stephanie Hirsh, deputy executive director of the National Staff Development Council (NSDC), estimates that only 10% of what teachers learn in traditional professional development activities is ever used in the classroom. Yet traditional forms of professional development persist. Teachers are usually subjected to the one-shot workshop, the district-developed catalogue of disconnected classes, or the unstructured "professional development day." The mantra of the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as "No Child Left Behind," is "scientifically based research." That phrase is scattered more than 200 times throughout the legislation, and, while it can be confusing and sometimes contradictory, its intent is to give substance to the initiatives funded by the federal government. The new legislation comes at a time when what constitutes high-quality professional development is well documented. For example, NSDC has just published its revised standards for K-12 professional development. They are based on research and on input from more than a dozen professional organizations. What distinguishes these standards from other pronouncements is that they assume that all the work will be focused on improving student learning. According to the standards, to ensure that students make progress, the learning environment in professional development for teachers must address the context (organization of the professional development), the process (the "how"), and the content (the "what"). …

About That Teacher Shortage.

Abstract: AN ARTICLE by Barbara Benham Tye and Lisa O'Brien in the September Kappan was characterized by the editors as being about "the teacher shortage." Many articles and commentaries have discussed a current or looming teacher shortage brought on by the confluence of growing student numbers, aging teachers, and teachers fleeing high-stakes testing. According to Linda Darling-Hammond in Solving the Dilemmas of Teacher Supply, Demand, and Standards (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 2000), the various factors have created "the largest growth in the demand for teachers in America's history." In fact, there does not appear to be a systemwide teacher shortage. A paper by National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) economist William Hussar, titled "Predicting the Need for Newly Hired Teachers in the United States to 2008-2009," does in fact posit that some two million teachers will be needed during this period. This figure has led to a perception of shortage because many observers, including the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, have interpreted "newly hired" as "first-time hires." In fact, Hussar explicitly mentions that new hires include people returning to teaching after some period of absence, and his paper assumes that supply will meet demand. A recent study by Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania apparently accepts the existence of a shortage but posits a different principal reason for its existence: preretirement teacher turnover. Ingersoll writes in the fall 2001 issue of the American Educational Research Journal that research has concentrated on teachers who leave the field altogether and has largely overlooked those who move to different schools and different districts. Using three different cycles of the Schools and Staffing Survey, Ingersoll concludes that the largest source of turnover is teachers who leave for another school or leave the profession entirely, not those who retire. Ingersoll finds overall teacher turnover somewhat higher than that for all employees: 13.2% annually for teachers versus 11% for all jobs. Public school teachers do not leave as frequently as private school teachers do: 12.4% of public school teachers leave versus 18.9% for those in private schools. Small private schools are particularly vulnerable, with an annual turnover rate of 22.8%. Within the public schools, teachers exit low-poverty schools at a rate of 10.5% a year, while they leave high-poverty schools at a rate of 15.2%. Urban schools lose a higher percentage of teachers (14%) than suburban schools (13%), while rural schools have the lowest turnover rate (11.2%). Not all losses to a given school are losses to the profession, however. For all schools, only 6% of teachers leave the profession, while 7.2% move to a different school or district. Of those who leave, 27% retire, while 45% report personal reasons for leaving. Twelve percent leave because of a school staffing action, and 24% leave to find another occupation. (The numbers do not add to 100% for a variety of reasons.) Among teachers who left because they were dissatisfied, 45% said poor salary was an issue. Thirty-eight percent cited low student motivation, while 30% mentioned student discipline, and another 30% mentioned inadequate administrative support. Low student motivation drove the most teachers from large urban schools (50%), while poor salary was a close second (46%). Poor salary was cited by about three-fourths of those who moved from small private schools to other schools or who left the profession. For all teachers who moved from one school to another, poor salary and inadequate administrative support were the principal causes. Ingersoll concludes that programs to recruit more teachers are not likely to solve the problems districts have in finding teachers. "Rather than increase the quantity of teacher supply, an alternative solution to school staffing problems is to decrease demand by decreasing turnover," he writes. …