A couple years ago, I was scratching away at a cello (after a 25-year layoff), and my teacher was working with me on improvisation.  So, I was intrigued by reporter/keyboardist Greg Toppo's USA Today piece earlier this week on a study of the brain scans of musicians. I was particularly struck by this: "...when musicians improvise, they're using the same part of the brain that responds to a simple request: Tell me about yourself." It provides an insight into the minds of musicians and, no doubt, will add to the mystique of jazz music.  There aren't huge implications for music instruction here, though it is a reminder that improvisation, which helps teach music theory, could be a greater part of music instruction in the schools.

Another recent article, Jim Holt's write-up in the New Yorker of recent brain research on number sense, actually could do more to inform early-years math instruction, though maybe not right away.  The article suggests that, because some math activities are taking place in the verbal parts of our brain, a person's native language can affect math abilities. Specifically, native speakers of some languages might have superior number sense if the language handles numbers in a simple (one-syllable, please) and logical (not like French, where the word for 99 is equivalent to 4 x 20 + 19). An excuse for poor knowledge of math in some countries?  Hardly. But it's an interesting finding.

An amazing (to me) aside in the article, if I'm reading it correctly, is that 1/4 of adults get 7 X 8 wrong.  Time to bust bust out the flash cards, old folks.

P.S. Kudos to USA Today editors for letting a beat reporter and sometimes keyboardist Greg Toppo write about something other than schools from time to time.

P.P.S I recently read a good book along these lines, This is Your Brain on Music.

(Photo by Flickr user riaskiff used under a Creative Commons license.)

Posted by John at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a former Catholic school teacher, the holiday season, while hectic, was focused on the Big Event--Christmas.  Not so for public school teachers who, depending on the student population, are expected to cover an increasing number of religious holidays at this time of year--it ain't just about adding Dreidle, Dreidle, Dreidle to the Christmas concert. When I was living in Princeton, NJ, the music teacher at our local elementary school simply gave up and started doing a Winter Concert with bland songs about cold weather that left most parents I knew, who attended Princeton Theological Seminary and were from the Heartland or the South, feeling flummoxed about the culture shift.

Teaching about religion is a tricky business, particularly if the teacher doesn't know very much about religions other than her own.  This teaching guide from Freedom Forum can help teachers navigate these choppy waters. Oh, and I meant this Diwali, not this one.

Posted by Michele at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ed Week has an interesting piece on how instances of genocide throughout history are being covered more in our nation's classrooms. It's obviously a tough topic, whether you are discussing the Holocaust, Darfur or the Armenian genocide.  Teacher Ronald Levitsky explains:

You don’t want to horrify them, but you do want to reach their maturity level, and they can handle the concepts and the affect . . . That’s how you reach them—the affect.

I found this to be true when I taught eigth grade social studies.  I used the film Europa, Europa, which really resonated with my students, in part because the protagonist is an adolescent boy.

I would also recommend another movie about the Holocaust for more mature students, probably high school aged: Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. The main character is a college student, and I think teenagers would identify with her idealism and sense of purpose.  The film holds no surprises, but the quiet manner in which events unfold made a huge impression on me, someone who is far from her own college days.  Presenting young people who are heroic, even if they meet terrible ends, is important and probably is not done enough in this cynical age.

Posted by Michele at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Time for a break from the the Miller-McKeon madness. I have been playing catch-up since I returned from maternity leave a couple of weeks ago, and I just noticed that the Summer 2007 American Educator features a piece on the value of poetry in the classroom by blogger Anne Marie Whittaker, whose online persona is The Educational Tour Marm. I originally found her post through the Carnival of Education at The Education Wonks, and I was so impressed by it that I passed it on to the editors of American Educator, who saw fit to publish it this past summer. Drawing attention to her blog is probably one of the nicest things to come out of NCLBlog.

Posted by Michele at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've written before (here and here and probably elsewhere) about bubble kids, those students whose past academic performance suggests they might be within striking distance of reaching the "proficiency" cutoff score for the NCLB/state tests.  The concern is that other students -- both high-performers and extremely low performers -- will be ignored because NCLB pressures the school to focus on the bubble kids. 

And a new (to me) Ed Week blog, written by David Hoff, has news of a bubble-kid finding in a just-released report on Chicago's schools.  Hoff writes, "This study puts (sic) lends credence to common critiques of that law (sic) encourages teachers to focus on the so-called bubble kids--the ones that are close to reaching proficiency."

It also calls to mind a critique* of a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, which found, based on data from 13 states, that achievement had risen faster since enactment of NCLB.  But CEP's finding of rising achievement was based in part on before-and-after data for states that reported only the percentage of students reaching proficiency: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Virginia and Wyoming.  So, if those states took the bubble approach, redistributing resources to bubble kids while ignoring high- and low-performers, it's not really fair to see overall student achievement rose.  There's simply no data in the CEP report that shows overall achievement rising in these states.

There is average test score data for 7 other states.  Of those, just 2 have consistent increases since 2002, 3 have increases that would disappear if just one score for one grade had gone the other way, 1 has a decrease that would disappear if one went the other way, and 1 has consistent decreases.
 
So, editorials and op-eds and Bush administration officials are claiming a national trend based on reliable data from just 7 states, only two of which -- Kansas and Kentucky -- show consistent gains.

*Thanks to my sharp-eyed colleague Dan (not pictured above) for digging into Table 10 and letting me know that CEP relied on something other than average test scores for many of the 13 states.

Posted by John at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Julie at School of Blog has a great post about homophobia and gay bashing in our classrooms.  It shows up not just in language, but in how kids physically relate to each other and to images that they might see in class.  I taught in a tech school where about 90 percent of the students were boys.  Homophobia was a constant issue, in the halls, in the cafeterias and in the lunch rooms.  My kids got racism, and they got anti-Semitism--which also popped up once in while.  But trying to teach them that homophobia and their treatment of those who they suspected of being gay was wrong was really a tough thing to do. Tim Hardaway tough. 

Oddly, it worked better in the context of my very small special ed classes, but not at all well in the larger, regular classroom setting. For those students in whom homophobia was most deeply ingrained, the fact that I even took the issue on in the classroom caused me to lose some of my teaching capital (i.e. my credibility, my authority, however you want to term it).  It affected my ability to keep the class moving through the curriculum--and this was pre-NCLB.  I do wonder the extent to which narrowing of the curriculum is also leading to narrower minds or harder hearts.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Matt 

It was disturbing enough to hear that Apple Computers CEO Steve Jobs lashed out at public school teachers a few days ago, calling them “what's wrong with our schools.”  But it was also disappointing to read this:

During the panel discussion Friday, Jobs also lobbied for a textbook-free future . . . Textbooks could be replaced with a free, always-updated online information resource, somewhat like the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia. “I think we’d get some of the best minds in the country contributing,” Jobs said.

Most teachers are supportive of using online resources when and where appropriate, but if Wikipedia is what Jobs has in mind, we should all think twice.  Wikipedia is a nonprofit, open-source, online encyclopedia, and it is written and edited by thousands of volunteers who aren’t paid for their work.

Relying on volunteers, as Wikipedia does, means that the information it presents is vulnerable to pranksters and others who might deliberately or unintentionally submit inaccurate or misleading information. In 2005, Norway’s prime minister discovered that his Wikipedia biography contained a number of libelous statements.  A former MTV video-jockey admitted that he edited a Wikipedia entry to inflate his own role in the early days of podcasting.

Even U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner--who says he enjoys surfing Wikipedia’s site--has said that he wouldn’t rely on what Wikipedia had to say “in a critical issue.”  Posner was reminded of Wikipedia’s shortcomings when he recently learned that the online encyclopedia erroneously listed conservative commentator Ann Coulter as his former clerk.

There are many wonderful things about open-source technology, but--as Jobs should know--an open-source, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit increases the potential for inaccurate or self-serving information to be accepted as fact or valid history.

Jobs said “some of the best minds in the country” would contribute to the free Wikipedia-like site he envisioned, and their contributions might address concerns about the quality and accuracy of text.  But how would Jobs (or anyone else) be able to offer such a service for free?  I can’t imagine scholars researching and writing thousands of pages of text for this kind of site unless they are paid.

This is only one example that reminds us of why Americans must exercise caution when a high-powered, well-connected person who has little or no experience with public schools starts dispensing his advice.

Posted by Guest at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Someone may have blogged on this resource before (sorry if it was you Russo!), but I think it deserves a post.  The National Archives has put together lesson plans using primary documents from these time periods:

• Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s)
• Expansion and Reform (1801-1868)
• Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
• The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)
• The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930)
• The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
• Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s)
• Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

Each era includes links to primary documents, teaching activities and document analysis worksheets.  And, for those history and social studies teachers who like to include labor history in the curriculum, check out the photographs of Lewis Hine documenting the history of child labor in the United States.

Posted by Michele at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a great article today about using research-based reading programs to improve student achievement across a district. It profiles one effort by Allegheny County, PA called Power4Kids, where districts trained teachers to provide small-group reading instruction based on four reading curricula.  This initiative was led by reading researcher Joseph Torgeson.*

The results? Students receiving research-based reading instruction did better than those in the control group.  District officials expressed some disappointment that the reading gap did not entirely close, but I think that was probably an unrealistic expectation on their part. As Paul Worthington, from the remedial reading program Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes  comments on raising the performance of subpar readers, "It will mean the bloody hardest, most painful changes in the way we're doing business in school systems that you can imagine."  (He must be a Brit.) But, as with most things that are hard, it is worth it. 

Here's hoping that during the next NCLB reauthorization, we can focus school and district interventions on instruction, not school management, as a means to renarrow the achievement gap.

* For more on Torgeson, see this 2004 American Educator article.

Posted by Michele at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our friends at Free Exchange on Campus have found another state legislature considering an intelligent design bill.  This time, like last time, lawmakers may not know what they're voting on. 

Regarding New Mexico's Senate Bill 371, jhm writes that the bill is written in such a way that "students could 'reach their own conclusions' and write 'because the Bible says so' as an answer on a New Mexico biology test, and they could not be 'penalized in any way.'"

Religious values should be respected, and religion can be discussed in public schools.  (How can you learn about history without considering the impact of religious beliefs and institutions?)  But intelligent design, a discredited notion that lacks scientific merit, deserves no respect and has no place in our schools.

Posted by John at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Over at Unfogged, Becks raises the question of the diorama as class assignment. She writes, "I think in all of the childhood homework exercises, the diorama must have been the worst time-expended-to-complete-assignment to knowledge-learned ratio" and concludes "They should be banned.”  She also seems to think that inequality in access to craft material is an issue to be examined. (Wasn’t Susan Neumann going to do a follow-up to her very cool work on access to print looking at this?).

Without doing a speck of empirical research, I’m going to tell her that no one does dioramas anymore. And that it is all because of No Child Left Behind.

As usual, the more than 100 comments from Unfogged readers are generally well worth a cruise.

• "I built two intersecting barrel vaulted corridors out of sugar cubes and icing in eighth grade to illustrate how the vaults intersected. Another kid stepped on it before it got graded."

• "I (my mother) did a diorama of La Guardia Airport. I gave up at midnight, I have no idea when or if she ever got to sleep that night. I learned nothing beyond a reiteration that she loved me. That's always good to know."

• "I guess my concern with the drawing/crafting assignments is that they tend to require neither significant craft/drawing skills nor substantial information or analysis. So kids spend a lot of time doing something where standards are low or unclear--and those projects eat up a LOT of time, or at least they do in every classroom where I've seen them."

• "…a big part of the reason I hate dioramas is that they seem to be the school trying to fool itself into thinking that its curriculum actually has some real redeeming merits, some real attempt at providing some genuine intellectual stimulation as opposed to a bunch of meaningless rote learning."

I never gave my kids a diorama assignment. Which probably explains why Winona Ryder went to Springfield Elementary instead.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Reading Rockets, a multimedia educational initiative from WETA, the public TV and radio station in the DC area, has launched two new blogs focused on, what else, reading instruction.  Sound it Out is written by Joanne Meier, a researcher, writer and teacher.  Her blog will focus on best practices in reading.  Page by Page is written by Maria Salvadore, a children's literature expert who will focus on the best ways to use children's books.  Welcome to the edublogoshere!

Posted by Michele at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We welcome back Donna Chiera, President of the Perth Amboy Federation/AFT, to our blog.

The one educational topic that is sure to stir up emotions is how best to educate English language learners (ELLs), as highlighted in this Education Week article, NJ Bucks Tide of Reading for English Language Learners.

I’m from Perth Amboy, NJ, a PreK-Adult School district with over 80% of our 10,000+ students being of Latino decent (first, second or third generation).  We are also one of the 30 poorest districts in our state.  Our district must meet the standards of NCLB and follow the Abbott regulations put forth by the NJ State Supreme Court.  Like many urban districts around the country, teaching here can be very challenging.

Being a veteran New Jersey teacher, I can tell you that when it comes to education, our state department of education doesn’t always get it right, but this time, I believe they did.  If people take the time to read the article, it discusses our bilingual and ESL programs as being a research-based, blended approach with variations in implementation depending on the needs of the students. As a union president, I can tell you that the union advocates applying the same principals to language arts, math and all other academic areas which are part of our curriculum. 

When discussing bilingual education, most people are under the impression students are in the program for life and that it slows down English acquisition.  However, as the article states, most “traditional” bilingual programs are developed to transition the student from instruction in another langauge to instruction in English within a three year period. Students who are placed in these programs are students who enter school with little or no English ability. Some of these students come from countries where education is optional or ends at the conclusion of the primary grades.  The earlier a student enters the bilingual program, the quicker the transition to English, and the more successful the student will be later in his educational career.  To exit the program, most school systems require testing and input from teachers and parents.

Bilingual programs also help prevent school systems from appropriately referring students with limited language skills into special education program.  If a student is not having academic success in their native language, it’s a clear signal that there is a learning problem rather than a language problem.  How many ELLs are sitting in special education programs because they couldn’t demonstrate the ability to read or comprehend English materials? 

Today, many of the traditional bilingual programs have been replaced by ESL instruction designed to support, not replace, academic instruction in English by developing vocabulary, sentence structure, decoding skills and grammar.  Some programs are pull-out, but many are taught in a team teaching situation.  In our district, ESL teachers are a valuable resource in our 90 minute teaching block, working not only with our ELL students, but applying differentiated strategies to help our non-ELL, at-risk students. 

As educators, we complain that the general public doesn’t understand and expects all students to learn at the same pace, using the same programs.  How many times do we say, “One size doesn’t fit all”? To its credit, the New Jersey department of education listened to teachers' voices and implemented sound educational principles, practices and philosophy. I, for one, applaud them for “bucking the tide” and doing what needs to be done so all students in New Jersey, including our ELLs, can strive to meet not only our core content curriculum standards, but the standards for success in our global society. 

Posted by Guest at 11:04 AM | Permalink

If you happen to come to our nation's capital before May 14, be sure to check out this exhibit at the Anacostia Museum, Banding Together: School Band as Instruments of Opportunity. The exhibit chronicles the history of instrumental music in DC Public Schools, from the 1880's to the present, through photographs, instruments and recordings.  (My son loved the video of the marching bands.)  The museum has also made teacher resources related to the exhibit available here.

The subtext of the exhibit is the discouraging decline in support for music education in DC Public Schools since the mid to late 1990's.  In 2005, forty percent of schools did not have a music teacher, something that Superintendent Clifford Janey wants to rectify as part of his strategic plan.  Kudos to Community Help in Music Education (CHIME) for collaborating with the museum on this exhibit.

P.S. The other museum exhibit, Two Hundred Years of Black Paper Dolls, is also worth a look, and it has a kids area for reading books and dressing dolls with magnetic clothing.

Posted by Michele at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Several things jumped out at me from this Christian Science Monitor article about parents juggling work and afterschool activities for their children (something I don't look forward to doing).  Most interesting was the explanation for why attendance at afterschool programs declines during the adolescence:

Parental concern is greater when children are older - from grades 6 through 12 - because this age group is more likely to be unsupervised. "Researchers find that teenagers don't like to go to after-school programs," says Ms. Sabattini.

Supervised programs for teens often do not even exist, says Celsi, a single parent. Those that do exist, she finds, often serve at-risk children. "At some point my kids became aware of that and wouldn't go. They were perceived as at-risk kids, poor kids."

Perhaps the low participation of students in afterschool supplemental services programs--at least at the middle school level and above--is tied to their perception that these programs are for "poor kids?"  These programs are targeted at the lowest-achieving, low-income students, so their perceptions are on target. We sometimes forget how children become more sensitive to the stigma of poverty as they enter adolescence.

Posted by Michele at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scott Emerick at Teaching Matters Most has a series of posts (see here, here and here) about how a group of smart elementary school principals have worked with staff to develop school schedules that provide much-needed planning time for teachers.  One of the ways they accomplish this is by providing a duty-free lunch. It seems like a pretty basic concept, but many teachers do not have lunch as a free period, especially those in states without collective bargaining. Happily, it is something that can be negotiated between the union and the district so that teachers are not forced to rely on the benevolence of individual principals to get the planning time they need.

Posted by Michele at 06:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Posted by Beth 

It appears that some school districts in NY may be in trouble for not providing the mandated allotment of P.E. instruction*. Districts are protesting that it is not their fault, that they have too much to do, resulting in a squeezing of subjects like P.E. If not on P.E., how are the districts spending their time, you ask?

Well, if the schools in central NY are anything like the schools in Texas or NYC, time is going to test preparation. In Texas, 87 percent of teachers report that test preparation results in a significant loss of instructional time. In NYC, 52% of teachers report that test drilling took up five hours or more per week, the equivalent of a full school day for elementary school students.

*They are doing something called "structured recess," though. I shudder to think what that is.

Posted by Guest at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hey, IG, where's the rest of the Reading First reports? 

On September 22, the Inspector General (IG) at the U.S. Department of Education (ED) reported that ED officials administering the Reading First program broke rules regarding conflicts of interest and steered federal dollars to certain textbook publishers.  The report was supposed to be the "first in a series" of IG reports on Reading First, according to the NY Times ($) and other sources, but we haven't seen hide nor hair of other reports.

So when might the next report arrive?  How about a Friday (of course) during the holiday season?  The first report came out on Sept. 22, Rosh Hashanah.  And next Friday, the 15th, is the first day of Hanukah.  But if you really want to bury a bad-news report, nothing beats December 22nd, the Friday right before Christmas.  Even I, obsessed with the goings-on at ED, won't be checking the IG's Web page on that day. 

Note to KIPP lovers and haters:  If you're poking around on the IG's Web page and see a recently released IG report on KIPP (pdf), don't get too excited.  It mentions thousands of dollars spent on alcohol and a conference in Cancun but concludes that KIPP generally did a good job of handling federal funds.

Posted by John at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One of the things I loved to do when teaching 19th and 20th century history was use photos from the period in my lessons.  They helped the kids focus, and they could often deliver context and nuance much more efficiently than words alone.  So I was thrilled to see this diary over at Daily Kos.  It has examples of some of the first kodachrome photography - done in 1939. 

The diary pulls images from the Charles W. Cushman Photographic Collection at the University of Indiana.  It also uses photos by Samuel Gottscho and from the Farm Security Administration archive from the American Memory project of the Library of Congress. Its worth a look.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here is a topic I have often wondered about--should teachers display student work with mistakes in their classrooms? Two teachers from O. Perry Walker Charter High School in New Orleans take on the debate in this month's American Teacher.

Posted by Michele at 07:45 AM | Permalink

One way teachers can improve the reading comprehension skills of their students is by teaching reciprocal reading, which includes four strategies: asking questions about the text; summarizing parts of the text; clarifying words and sentences; and predicting what might occur next.  Observing such practice allows teachers to see how it is done in the classroom.  Reading Rockets, a multi-media educational initiative sponsored by WETA (the PBS affiliate in DC), has posted a three-minute video clip of a Seattle teacher demonstrating reciprocal teaching with commentary from reading expert Louisa Moats.  To view other Reading Rockets video clips on everything from print awareness to invented spelling, click here.

Posted by Michele at 06:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In his review of episode eight of The Wire, Craig Jerald at The Quick and the Ed writes that "American teachers themselves have a much shallower grasp of math concepts than Chinese teachers, despite spending many more years in school to become a teacher" and cites the research of Deborah Ball and others.  However, in the American Educator article referenced by Jerald, Ball identifies the real problem, that "the mathematical knowledge of most adult Americans is as weak, and often weaker" than that of teachers.  Writes Ball,

We are simply failing to reach reasonable standards of mathematical proficiency with most of our students, and those students become the next generation of adults, some of them teachers.  This is a big problem, and a challenge to our desire to improve.

Ball believes that to improve mathematical proficiency, we must identify and bolster the "mathematical knowledge for teaching" which is not merely content knowledge, but "specialized knowledge for teaching mathematics" that is independent from "common content knowledge--the basic skills that a mathematically literate adult would possess."  Jerald's post glosses over what Ball means by mathematical knowledge.

Ball is also quick to point out why identifying the "mathematical knowledge for teaching" matters; early evidence suggests that improving teachers' knowledge will enhance student achievement.  The AFT-affiliated Shanker Institute is supporting Ball in this work.  And readers may also want to look at another American Educator article by Richard Askey, which discusses Liping Ma's work, a researcher who is also mentioned in Jerald's post. 

Posted by Michele at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm guessing that most readers are familiar with the Montessori approach to education, and many also probably know of SimCity, the city-building computer game.  But do readers also know the following, "SimCity comes right out of Montessori--if you give people this model for building cities, they will abstract from it principles of urban design." So sayeth SimCity creator Will Wright, "the god of God games" in a recent New Yorker($) article by John Seabrook.  The article discusses other influences behind Spore, Wright's much-anticipated Darwinian-style game, including Drake's equation and The Powers of Ten.

Posted by Michele at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The votes are in!  Over 10,000 school children voted for the best new children's and young adult's books through Children's Choices, a joint project of the International Reading Association and the Children's Book Council (Hat Tip: The Essential Blog).  The book selections are grouped by reading level: beginning readers (ages 5-7), young readers (ages 8-10) and advanced readers (ages 11-13).

I look forward to reading my son Sleep Tight Little Bear when he is a little older (Goodnight Moon and The Going to Bed Book are getting a bit old).

Posted by Michele at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For someone who writes for a blog, I am a bit of a Luddite.  I have already confessed to not having HBO, and I don't have an IPod.  (I do get XM radio though--that counts for something, right?) So I always find it a bit trippy to read futuristic predictions of how technology will transform teaching and learning.  Writing at the DIY Media Weblog, Howard Rheingold recaps USC Annenberg Center fellow Todd Richmond's recent seminar on open educational resources.  Richmond believes the technology that changed the music industry will have a similar impact on education, and that the "detonator of change" will be "digital learning objects that go viral."  (Hat tip: Change Agency) It's pretty heady stuff, but an interesting read.  Oh, and "optimizing the delta" is Richmond's terminology for getting learners and teachers to use open educational resources.

Posted by Michele at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The October Phi Delta Kappan($) includes an article on NCLB's supplemental educational services (SES) program.  Gail Sunderman writes that the law includes "no requirements to coordinate supplemental services with the classroom curriculum or for providers to communicate with classroom teachers."  

While it is certainly true that, in practice, information is rarely shared with teachers, and services are not coordinated with classroom instruction, both are supposed to happen according to the law.  Districts are required to include in their agreements with SES providers a description of "how the student's parents and the student's teacher or teachers will be regularly informed of the student's progress."  And, in order to be added to the state-approved list, SES providers must:

Ensure that instruction provided and content used by the provider are consistent with the instruction provided and content used by the local educational agency and State, and are aligned with State student academic achievement standards.

The safeguards are built into statutory language--the problem is that they are not being enforced.

Posted by Michele at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As the parent of a boy who is obsessed with cars and trucks, the debate over whether there are real differences between how boys and girls learn and perform in school is starting to pique my interest.  The "Ask the Cognitive Scientist" feature of the most recent American Educator addresses one aspect of this debate, whether schools are more accommodating to the girl brain than the boy brain (scroll down to Popular Myth 2 to read).

Posted by Michele at 08:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Beth 

Here’s a very cool social studies/civics/geography/math/language arts unit for high school students entitled The Minimum Wage and the Youth Vote.

Created by Youth Voices and the Columbus Annenberg Civic Education Model, it focuses on a ballot initiative in Ohio that would increase the minimum wage.

If you’re not in Ohio, it’s got lessons on poverty, civic participation, and civic involvement. If you’re in Ohio, be sure to check out a poetry slam ("the Rage for the Wage") or a media event associated with this project. And if you’re anywhere, voting day is four weeks from today!

Posted by Guest at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Ed 

I’ve been looking at the latest release of Jack Abramoff emails, as seen on Laura Rozen’s blog. I’m struck by the fact that the people involved in that scandal seemed to be aware of the extra-legal role they were taking. The same could be said for the Reading First scandal. From the OIG report’s emails (bold added by me):

"What we’ve done – again, extra-legally, really – is push all the characteristics that we originally had in Exemplary and moved them into Meets, because we want all of those (a, b, …g) characteristics to define ALL RF classrooms, not just the star RF classrooms."

"I’d like not to say ‘this must include early intervention and reading remediation materials’ which I think could be read as ‘reading recovery’ [a reading program]. even if it says this in the law, i’d like it taken out."

"OGC could likely have concerns with the overall, near-unrelenting aggressiveness of this application…the law does not really require what we are quite literally requiring in our (aggressive) application."

I do agree with Mike Petrilli that a lone staffer shouldn't be made into a fall guy here. And I have sympathy for anyone trying to push Direct Instruction, because it really is research-based. But Petrilli goes wrong when he mounts the "You want the truth, you can’t hand the truth" defense that the scandal shows "everything that's wrong with government today--not the alleged improprieties, but a twisted government culture that prioritizes ‘proper procedures’ over actual results…"

The U. S. Department of Education, from fake news reports to the Armstrong Williams payola, has shown that they can’t handle being given a wink and a nod on following the rules. And across the federal government, from Jack Abramoff to the stovepiping of intelligence, it seems to me the people with the real power are doing anything but prioritizing "proper procedures." As a nation, we’re paying a pretty high price as a result.

Posted by Guest at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Check out The Gadfly's spin on the Reading First scandal, a composition by Mike Petrilli titled "Requiem for Chris Doherty."

Posted by Michele at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Ed 

Elena Dillon has a good post up about plagiarism up at the Quick and the Ed. In high school I mostly taught learning disabled and emotionally disturbed kids whose IEPs didn’t take them towards term papers. But when I made the switch from special education I taught one regents program in social studies and had a chance to assign term papers to my kids. I was thrilled.

Oh, did they hate it. Getting them to go to the library was a difficult, difficult feat. More than one of my kids tried to sit down with me and the grade book to calculate whether they could afford to take the 10 percent hit that would come from not turning the paper in. About a third of them took that route, some telling me that they were fine with their grade going from 85 to 75 etc. Others dared me to dock them. Many of the papers I did get were of the "I read this book and enjoyed it very much. I would recommend it to anyone who likes books" variety. This assignment was perhaps the nadir of my high school teaching career, but there wasn’t a lot of plagiarism going on.

When I taught college at NYU, however, I was shocked by how much plagiarism I saw. In fact, I invented an assignment early in the semester for each of my courses that was designed to catch plagiarists. It involved a review essay using a handful of sources at the library. It was worth five points of the total grade. When I assigned the essay, I included a talk about plagiarism. But each time, I still was able to sit down in the library with the source materials and find a fair bit of plagiarism. Some of it was faulty citation, but you’d be surprised how much out right transcription there was. I’d give zeros to the worst offenders, make a huge deal of it in class and hope that I’d deterred the rest when it was time to do the real research paper. It had an effect.

What strikes me is that my high school kids were essentially more honest and willing to take the consequences for their actions than many of my college kids. My kids in this regents class did their homework, participated in discussion and were generally a joy to be around (really), but a lot of them simply thought they had better things to do in May than this assignment. That has some bad consequences (such as failing to get a deeper understanding of Imperialism and developing analytical skills), but strangely, I think there’s some virtue there too when compared to the plagiarists.

I laughed out loud when I read the article Dillon discusses about the Virginia high schoolers who cited intellectual property as a reason not to put their work in a plagiarism data base. I’m guessing the kids I taught at Aviation would have cited their deeply held belief that it’s a sin to help drop a dime on someone who is just trying to look out for themselves.

Posted by Guest at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Ed

Given that John is on leave, I'm going to take it upon myself to reprise some Harry and Louise style blogging regarding Michele's post on the Reading First scandal. I'm pretty stunned by the email printed in the Inspector General's report. I fully expected that the Department would take on districts that tried to use whole language only approaches, and I would support them in that regard. But I didn’t realize that there were attempts to stack the deck in favor of Direct Instruction, perhaps even at the expense of Success for All. This is a great example of how what is essentially a social science controversy can degenerate into a very harmful and cliquish bit of politics. I think the real question is a barely PG-13 version of one that Daniel Davies asked some year back (thanks to Brad DeLong for workplace edit).

Reading First has always seemed to me to be among the very best parts of the Bush administration's reforms (along with the general concept of disaggregation of data). And it is one where the administration put its money where its mouth is, at least early on. Now a program with a very strong record, Direct Instruction, is going to be tarred for a long time because of shenanigans that have to do with cronyism and valence politics --my phonics is bigger than yours. And the question that too many people will be left with is did ED officials politically stack panels because the research consensus against whole language isn't really strong? This is a problem we didn’t need to have.

A final question, when Direct Instruction bigwig Owen Engelmann says Reading First "hasn't helped us out much at all" is he spinning? Is his chunk of the DI world unrelated to the sale of SRA/McGraw Hill DI materials? Or is it evidence that panel stacking didn’t work as well as it should have? In other words, did ED even implement the cronyism wrong?

Posted by Guest at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Update: D-Ed Reckoning clarifies that Slavin was not criticizing Direct Instruction, but rather the inclusion of other reading programs that are not research-based.

So, it looks like Bob Slavin was right--according to the Inspector General's report, officials running the Reading First program did play favorites, to the detriment of research-based reading programs like Success for All.  The biggest losers in this political catastrophe?--the students who may have been deprived of exposure to high-quality reading programs.

Scott Elliot at Get on the Bus has a similar take here.

Posted by Michele at 09:24 PM | Permalink

Today's Jay Matthews piece in the WaPo talks about the "course-label inflation" phenomenon, where courses are mislabeled to sound like the student work is more challenging than it really is.  However, it's not until three-quarters of the way through the article that some sort of explanation is provided as to why course-label inflation happens.  Michael Goldstein, founder of Boston's MATCH Charter Public School, explains that principals assign course labels that are inappropriate--despite teachers' protestations--because "it helps out on [the students] college transcripts."  The article would have benefited from a more in-depth look at why principals act in this fashion--are they feeling pressured by parents?  The superintendent?  And, while the article's sidebar provides some great intervention strategies to ensure that students receive the type of instruction needed so that they are ready for higher level courses in high school, its hard to see how these intervention strategies would prevent principals from continuing to mislabel classes for some students, especially if the reasons are political.

Posted by Michele at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had a different take than The Chalkboard on the NY Times magazine article about healthier school lunches. (He takes a cheap shot at the NEA-surprise.)  What stood out to me was this paragraph about a Florida program designed to make school lunches more nutritious:

Also in the spring, Hollar decided not to send new materials to many of the teachers who had received the original educational packets--things like curriculum suggestions, posters for the students to color.  Too many were never used, she learned, and when she sent a questionnaire to the staff asking why, she was told that "they did not have time, did not want to take on additional teaching requirements, needed to focus on ensuring their kids passed the mandated state test," she says.

Now hold onto your hat at The Chalboard, I am not going to use this passage to blame NCLB for preventing teachers from talking about nutrition in their classrooms.  What I do think this passage shows is how you can't just mail a box of materials to teachers and say "integrate them into your curriculum."  It takes some training or professional development to make that happen.

Posted by Michele at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I thought "Neil's Deal," the headline on an editorial in today's Houston Chronicle, might be about Neil Young, who seems to have finally convinced CS&N that he's the heart and soul of the band.  So, I clicked on the headline (thanks, Jimmy K.). No such luck.  The editorial was about Neil Bush, whose company, Ignite Learning, has sold $200,000 of computer software and equipment to Houston's schools.

Here's how the Chronicle describes the products of Bush's company, Ignite Learning:

"....learning programs tailored for children with short attention spans. Its reliance on jingles, cartoons and other snippets seems more likely to reinforce that limitation than to nourish intellect and learning."

Hey, wouldn't it be great if the U.S. Department of Education took a look at the effectiveness of educational software products so districts could make informed decisions about whether products like Brother Neil's are a good buy?  Oh, wait -- they already did that for 15 products (not including Neil's).  But they're not going to tell us the results. 

So, Houston doesn't know whether Neil Bush's product is good, but they paid good money for it. Oh, well, same thing happened to me when I spent $8.98 on Trans.  I hope things work out better for Houston's $200,000 investment with the other Neil.

Posted by John at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ed Week reports on a new study that shows schools implementing Reading First spend more time on reading instruction than Title I schools not participating in the program.  How much longer?  Looks like the reading block in "mature" Reading First schools is about 15 minutes longer than at other Title I schools, which adds up to a significant chunk of time over the course of the school year.  Here's hoping that Reading First encourages teachers to work in some content during the reading block, E.D. Hirsch argues here.

The Ed Week story also includes criticism from Success for All (SFA) founder Bob Slavin, who claims the department has discouraged districts from using SFA.  If this is true, it would be disappointing news, as SFA was one of only two comprehensive elementary school reform programs that demonstrated real success in a 2005 AIR review.

Posted by Michele at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Of the three resolutions passed at AFT convention related to educational issues, the resolution on English language learners (ELLs) represents the biggest change to prior AFT policy.  The predominant thinking within the AFT--a la Shanker--has been that while bilingual education is helpful, a quick transition to mastery of English is really best for students.  The new resolution states that, "school systems often place ELLs into English-only instruction before they are ready" and that "research on language acquisition supports native language literacy instruction as a helpful support for school language acquisition."  The resolution also seeks to draw attention to the gap in academic performance between ELLs and native English speakers.

The resolution includes several recommendations for how to improve the teaching and learning conditions for ELLs, some of which ask the AFT to:

• Call on schools of education to incorporate courses and experiences that prepare teachers to meet the instructional needs of ELLs.
• Support the implementation of research-based instructional models for ELLs such as dual immersion, ESL and other programs that include:

a school culture of high expectations for all students;

prescreening and ongoing assessment programs that determine students’ levels of English language proficiency separate from students’ content knowledge and that have the appropriate tools to distinguish between lack of linguistic abilities in English and learning disabilities;

reading instruction that emphasizes phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary-building and comprehension activities connected to meaningful literacy and writing instruction;

frequent teacher-led, structured opportunities for ELLs to discuss topics that are directly relevant to their lives and for them to interact in the classroom with native English speakers; and

native language instruction, where appropriate, to facilitate English language acquisition and content knowledge, delivered by teachers who are certified in the requisite content area(s) and paraprofessionals who work under the direct supervision of a teacher.

Posted by Michele at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Since the release of Prisoners of Time in 1994 (nice ECS reprint here), policy talk seems to have shifted from "protecting instructional time" to "increasing instructional time", at least for some students.  More time was the subject this recent paper from the Center for American Progress, and it makes an appearance in the 100 Percent Solution. And, as anyone who doesn't live under an edu-rock knows, a longer school day/year is part of the KIPP model.

The fomer classroom teacher in me says, sure, some kids need more time to master material.  And, having volunteered in afterschool programs from the Bronx to East Austin, I think the quality of "out-of-school time" (as the vernacular goes) is highly variable in nature.  So, maybe more is better.

But, what if the quality of existing instruction is really what needs to improve?  What if what we really need is more time on task?  My colleagues at the AFT who do professional development tell me that getting teachers to understand the importance of time on task is critical to good teaching practice and to student academic success.  Much of the research on this topic is dated--like the work of Jane Stallings and John Carroll--but it's good stuff, and perhaps needs to be revisited by the policy community before everyone gets on the "more is better" bandwagon.

As a friend and colleague recently remarked to me, perhaps in our lifetime we will finally move away from playing around with issues like school structure and time and actually focus in on curriculum and instruction--what happens between the teacher and the student.

Posted by Michele at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just came across a fascinating old book called Mistakes in Teaching, written by James L. Hughes and published E. L. Kellogg & Co. in 1887.  It includes sections on Mistakes in Aim (e.g., "To make knowedge the chief aim even in intellectual education"), Mistakes in School Management ("To sit much while teaching"), Mistakes in Method ("To use long words"), and Mistakes in Moral Training ("To tempt pupils by the self-reporting system").

Here's one, filed under Mistakes in Discipline, that ought to raise a few eyebrows among teachers and students:

It is a Mistake to Whip Pupils in a merely Formal Manner.--Some teachers hold that the discrace of receiving punishment constitutes its chief restraining power. This is a grievous error....Whip rarely but severely. Whip only for serious or repeated offences, but let the whipping be of such a character that it will not need to be repeated often.

Maybe it's just me, but that phrase, "of such a character that it will not need to be repeated often," seems to suggest a level of whipping that borders on sadism.

Posted by John at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I wrote about this New York Times article which, in part, described the lack of research-based reading instruction taking place in DC classrooms.  The AFT has first-hand experience in working to improve the quality of beginning reading instruction in DC. From 1999-2003, the AFT/OERI National Reading Project provided union-developed professional development on research-based reading instruction for K-2 teachers in three schools in three districts--Cleveland, New Orleans and Washington, D.C.  What did we discover in doing this training?

• The majority of teachers had never received training on research-based beginning reading instruction, either through teacher preparation or professional development.
• Teachers also lacked exposure to effective classroom management techniques.
• On-site reading coaches made a tremendous difference in helping teachers implement the strategies learned through the professional development offered by AFT.
• In schools where teachers implemented the research-based strategies, student achievement improved.

To the first point, it is perhaps unsurprising but appalling nonetheless how little exposure teachers in these urban school districts had to effective reading instruction.  Again, Early Reading First and Reading First of NCLB will help to make inroads, but teacher preparation programs need a serious reworking for the necessary change to occur.

Posted by Michele at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I predict that the edublogosphere will light up with posts about Brent Staples' New York Times article on the connection between special education costs and a "school system's failure to teach struggling readers effectively." While the article highlights the desperate need for effective reading instruction, I would quibble with Staples' assertion that the information on which instructional strategies work has been available for "50 years."  Um, have you heard of the "reading wars?" 

I would argue that it was not until the National Reading Panel laid out the components of effective reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and reading comprehension) that some consensus emerged on reading instruction.  And, it wasn't until Reading First and Early Reading First of NCLB were established that this research actually got pushed into the classroom.

It will take more than these federally-funded reading programs to really change reading instruction in our classrooms.  As documented by NCTQ, teacher preparation institutions must radically restructure how they prepare teacher candidates to teach reading--and they will probably have to be forced to do so.  More on this later.

Posted by Michele at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think I am getting a little more clarity on what Response to Intervention (RtI) means and the impact it will have on the general education classroom.  As I