Tag: public schools

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Pass or Fail: Preparing Teachers for At-Risk Students

pass or fail

In this multi-part series, I provide a dissection of the phenomenon of retention and social promotion. Also, I describe the many different methods that would improve student instruction in classrooms and eliminate the need for retention and social promotion if combined effectively.

While reading this series, periodically ask yourself this question: Why are educators, parents and the American public complicit in a practice that does demonstrable harm to children and the competitive future of the country?

In classrooms with traditionally at-risk students – like minority, English-language learners and those from low socio-economic brackets – teachers can feel overwhelmed at the amount of work it takes to adequately teach students who have less advantages than others.

Preparing teachers to meet the needs of a diverse student base is absolutely necessary to student success long-term.

In an article targeting the importance of experiences and training on effective teaching to meet the needs of diverse learners, Edwards, Carr, and Siegel outline a specific component of an ongoing project to explore differentiated instruction (DI) as an approach for meeting the academic and related needs diverse learners in schools.

The 3 Dimensions (3D) of Diversity for Inclusion, as the project was known, emerged as a result of a September 2001 faculty meeting of the Department of Teaching and Learning at Southeastern Louisiana University. In the meeting, it came to light that the results from the prior academic year’s annual student teacher exit survey indicated teacher candidates wanted more intensive preparation to be able to work more effectively with diverse learners in schools.

A core problem within the teaching profession, as these findings suggest, is that few professionals have the knowledge, skills, or even basic training to determine the best pedagogical practices for many typical classroom scenarios. In fact, the survey conducted by Edwards et al. concentrated initially on ascertaining how regularly teachers were using specific strategies or techniques to plan for and accommodate individual differences in the classroom.

When interviewers asked about how often candidates’ strategies related to diversity, inclusion, differentiated instruction, accommodations, and modifications in the classroom, most indicated that they rarely employed instructional strategies to differentiate instruction, use tiered assessments, differentiate lessons using major concepts and generalizations, or use instructional materials to promote diversity. Rather, the focus was on using teaching materials rather than standard texts, allowing for a relatively wide range of product alternatives, including oral, visual, musical, and spatial; using cooperative and flexible grouping strategies, and varying questions based on student readiness, interest, and learning styles.

While these strategies go some way toward supporting students with atypical needs, the lack of focus on instructional strategies to differentiate instruction supports the idea that most teachers do not go far enough in their instructional approach. That is, they do not use instructional strategies to specifically and thus effectively target students with diverse needs. Their cut-and-paste, plug-the-hole solution is to use a range of learning materials to try to make up the difference. The transference of actual knowledge and skills to students falls by the wayside.

More than this, it appears that most teachers do not have an adequate range of experience before undertaking a formal teaching position. Edwards et al. touch on this issue at some length in their study. Indeed, they cite the educational and training background of survey respondents. The majority was female, Caucasian, and university-educated via a traditional undergraduate program. Most had no prior teaching experience, and only 40 percent of respondents said they had any kind of specific teacher training.

This tells us that teachers simply aren’t getting enough training before they enter classrooms and certainly not enough support when they are there. Further, diverse student bodies do not identify with the people influencing their educations, which is certainly not the fault of the teachers, but should be a wake-up call to all educators to recruit a more diverse teacher population that better reflects the students sitting at the desks.

 

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Pass or Fail: Don’t Dumb Down Learning

pass or fail

In this multi-part series, I provide a dissection of the phenomenon of retention and social promotion. Also, I describe the many different methods that would improve student instruction in classrooms and eliminate the need for retention and social promotion if combined effectively.

While reading this series, periodically ask yourself this question: Why are educators, parents and the American public complicit in a practice that does demonstrable harm to children and the competitive future of the country?

When I talk about getting every kid from one grade to the next on schedule, I’m not talking about making anything easier for kids. If anything, our standards should continue to rise as our pedagogy improves.

So how do educators combine high standards with ensuring student achievement?

Establishing viable educational standards must include the development of a solid, valuable curriculum. One study that assessed students in Chicago classrooms showed an average of one-year learning gain when students were routinely given challenging assignments compared to those in Chicago classrooms where the intellectual quality of the assignments was low. For the same group, test results were also higher than national norms among those who received challenging assignments.

The intellectually stimulating assignments also appeared to lead to children posting learning gains 20 percent greater than the national average. Where assignments were less challenging in Chicago classrooms, students gained 25 percent less than the national average in reading and 22 percent less in mathematics.

Considering this example, the development of consistent standards should also involve the development of consistently challenging standards so that children of all abilities are encouraged to learn and inspired to learn.

The report by the Northern Central Regional Educational Laboratory also emphasizes that skilled teachers are crucial to intensifying learning; that these teachers were, in the Chicago classrooms studied, providing authentic instruction and meaningful assignments while holding high expectations for all students.

As a strategy, the provision of challenging assignments to students also helped to adopt habits of disciplined study, and to elicit higher-order thinking skills and their connection to the “real world.” Successful teachers allowed substantial time for discussion and idea sharing among students. Teachers also employed several learning models to create “active learning” and an “active learning environment.”

The environment helped to support a shift in the relationship among teachers, students, and knowledge. The active environments required collaboration and communication and encouraged more analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of information than traditional classrooms. One of the key effects was that students were forced to take ownership of their learning. It encouraged students to develop their learning and develop strategies for learning.

These approaches should be incorporated into an educational policy as well. Indeed, based on the identified benefits, it should be standard for schools to work to design instruction within “active environments,” emphasizing depth of learning rather than breadth of learning.

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Pass or Fail: Does our Education System Set Kids Up to Fail?

In this multi-part series, I provide a dissection of the phenomenon of retention and social promotion. Also, I describe the many different methods that would improve student instruction in classrooms and eliminate the need for retention and social promotion if combined effectively.

While reading this series, periodically ask yourself this question: Why are educators, parents and the American public complicit in a practice that does demonstrable harm to children and the competitive future of the country?

What if I told you that all retention issues in American K-12 schools are a failure of the system, not the individual children?

A week before the end of eighth grade, Ted Hamm’s mother was informed that her son was going to be held back. She didn’t have any inkling that this was a possibility; according to her, Ted had always performed well in the classroom. “I mean he was always an A and B student,” she commented. “I knew his reading level was low, but not what [the teacher] claimed it was.” However, low standardized testing scores and low grades in the key areas of reading and math combined, keep Ted from advancing. According to Ms. Hamm, the effect on Ted was immediate.

“Before being retained, he socialized with his friends like normal,” she said. “After Ted was retained, he didn’t want to go to school. He was very withdrawn.”

The problems grew more serious. Ted became depressed and isolated. He stopped hanging out with other students at school and stopped inviting friends to his house. Eventually, Ms. Hamm had him transferred to another school. “I was hurt,” she said. “I felt like he would feel that he failed. Failed, you know, like he was not smart enough and like he would be laughed at.”

Ms. Hamm’s intervention and active involvement in her son’s education were eventually successful. Ted Hamm thrived in the new school and managed to get on the honor roll.

Ted Hamm was lucky. His mother was involved and willing to intervene to try to bolster his chances of success. Many other students are not so fortunate. In fact, in United States urban school settings, the retention rate is estimated to be almost 50 percent. The costs of retention are astronomical: around $20 billion each year, and the rewards are dubious.

Public educators, students, and parents alike find retention and social promotion policies bewildering. Educators often have a difficult time understanding when and how to employ the policies, and like Ted Hamm and his mother, students and parents are often confounded by the strategies. The prospect of retention sends many students into a panic or depression, and their parents are often at a loss as to how to respond.

As a public service, America’s education system sets high standards for itself. However, the nature of those standards and where retention and social promotion fit in are contentious subjects, and the issues remain unresolved.

The public education system in America has received attention from many reformers throughout history. Many have worked hard to improve the effectiveness of the system, but we’ve still not achieved much that’s conclusively better. In fact, there’s been moderate success at best, and the research we have is full of holes. Reformers have found, developing an effective public education system is not without pitfalls. The biggest challenges center on vague statements of purpose, insubstantial models for classroom management and teaching, faulty assessment objectives and methods, and difficulties identifying procedures that offer optimal support to all students.

Although retention and social promotion are often implemented at the expense of the students involved, they’ve been a consistent trend in public education practice for quite some time. At the present juncture, most stakeholders have accepted the need to end these particular policies. They are keen to see these strategies replaced with well-thought-out, thoroughly researched strategies that will reduce the chaos and stress. The question now becomes how do we replace our current system? Do you think altering the current pass/fail structure in public schools is even remotely possible?

The existing education system almost always emerges as the biggest single obstacle to educational reform, which is both ironic and frustrating. Yet, it did not become a barrier by happenstance: the current American educational system has been designed from the ground up to support retention and social promotion policies. What most educators come back to is the question of whether a one-size-fits-all graded approach can ever be suitable for all students. The issue is complicated and has support on both sides of the coin, but recent research has exposed the problems of this uniform method.

At various points in the history of American public education, we’ve seen different facets of the “graded” system accentuated. Some would argue that the focus of the public education system has always been more on social issues and goals than on the students. Others claim that students from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to not receive adequate support in school and thus get caught up in the retention versus social promotion problem more easily than students who come from privileged backgrounds.

In fact, social parameters like family income, ethnic background, and even family structure appear to have a sizable impact on the risk or likelihood of retention or social promotion in schools. It’s fairly easy to demonstrate that students from low-income households and students with other disadvantaged backgrounds tend to be the ones most dramatically impacted by grade retention or social promotion. Not surprisingly, they also tend to be the students for whom the question “to retain or not retain?” is particularly relevant.

At the same time, the social issues and goals of the public education system have always tried to target opportunities to those children who come from affluent families. The wealthier the school district, the better the resources available to educate students. The better the resources available, the more likely it is that affluent families will support the neighborhood and make a home there, contributing their wealth and committing long-term.

Certain critics have suggested that the American education system was founded in an age when education was still considered to be relatively restricted, with only academically talented individuals having the chance to move much beyond the basic levels. Are the original goals of the American public education system still relevant to modern times?

Many educators and other stakeholders wonder what the goal of public education ought to be in today’s world. What type of education do our children need in this day and age? More importantly, how should the public education system go about achieving said goals?

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Pass or Fail: The Evolution of American Public Schools in the 20th Century

evolution of public schools

In this multi-part series, I provide a dissection of the phenomenon of retention and social promotion. Also, I describe the many different methods that would improve student instruction in classrooms and eliminate the need for retention and social promotion if combined effectively.

While reading this series, periodically ask yourself this question: Why are educators, parents and the American public complicit in a practice that does demonstrable harm to children and the competitive future of the country?

How did we go from one-room schoolhouses to hyper-segmented classrooms?

In the 19th century, one-room schools were the norm. Some evidence does support the view of one-room schools as effectively collaborative and cooperative, with children learning both moral and academic lessons. However, there were also immense issues. One of the biggest, of course, was that racially segregated schools existed in many states.

Horace Mann was an education pioneer who tested his methods in his home state of Massachusetts, where intermediate schools emerged as early as 1838. These intermediate schools offered segregated instruction and a differentiated curriculum to children who education authorities or teachers deemed unsuitable for the regular classroom. Student characteristics such as age, cultural or linguistic background, and socioeconomic status served to separate children from the common, or regular, learning environment. Intellectual and behavioral abnormality would later be used as a basis for segregation as well.

A serious dichotomy would also emerge in education in the 20th century in secondary schools with the sometimes-conflicting goals to instill classical academic skills as well as offer a broader range of practical life skills.

Pressing for a broad but rigorous curriculum, including comprehensive coverage of fundamental academic skills, but also the study of Latin, Greek, English, modern languages, mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, and social studies. In contrast to this, it was also proposed that there should be a dilution of academic learning to provide more of a focus on life-skills, such as how to achieve wholesome relations between men and women, as well as forms of vocational training. Both approaches to public education are still apparent in contemporary classrooms as the debate between intellectual and practical learning is ongoing.

The problem of the age-graded classroom was another challenge the American education system faced in the 20th century. Despite Mann’s enthusiasm for the heterogeneous one-room school, the potential to classify children by any number of characteristics made the shift to eight age-grade classrooms in elementary schools much more plausible and practical. Quincy School, the first school with graded classrooms, opened in Boston in 1848. Although the class size was still relatively large by today’s standards (classrooms could hold up to fifty-six students), students were classified by age and each group was headed by a separate teacher.

A uniform course of study followed, and just as children from rural one-room schools had to pass an exam to enter high school, children’s promotion to the next grade, at all levels of the elementary school, now depended on their examination performance.

Uniform course of study meant that children in each age-grade learned specific items in each subject area. It was part of a move to standardization: organizing what the children learned, when they learned, and how they learned. Written achievement tests served to determine whether the children had learned enough to be promoted to the next grade, and proved integral to this new vision for schools.

The eight-grade school structure emerged in urban settings and decentralized one-room school units were eventually consolidated. The graded classroom system contrasted with the ungraded in some key respects, however, and the transition was not always smooth. For example, children who missed days in the graded classrooms now experienced a distinct disadvantage regarding learning the required material. Absences were also judged to be disruptive to the learning of all children in the classroom, with teachers having to interrupt the pace of learning for the rest of the class to help a child catch up on learning material he or she had missed.

More often than not, teachers moved forward, while the truant child struggled to learn material for which he or she lacked the foundational knowledge. As most parents will appreciate, though, absences during the year are inevitable. Schools have always served as breeding grounds for illness, which can set a child back for several days at a time. Even a couple of days’ absence during the year can become problematic. And what about those students who are ahead of the game with their learning? With their advancements, they can be just as disruptive to the operations of such a standardized classroom.

Just as parents and teachers were grappling with disruptive absences, they were forced to face the challenges of testing as well. Teachers adhered closely to the textbook material, and that material would appear at the end of year promotion exams. Teachers also came to perceive student test performances as a reflection of their effectiveness. In some instances, teachers would attempt to isolate or remove children (by encouraging them to drop out or having them suspended) if they believed they would not do well on exams.

Suddenly, test results began to take center stage, above the importance of a child’s academic success. This is where the retention and social promotion discussion takes a dark turn for many students — one we’ll explore more in forthcoming posts from this series.

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Pass or Fail: The History of Social Promotion in the American Education System

social promotion in schools

In this multi-part series, I provide a dissection of the phenomenon of retention and social promotion. Also, I describe the many different methods that would improve student instruction in classrooms and eliminate the need for retention and social promotion if combined effectively.

While reading this series, periodically ask yourself this question: Why are educators, parents and the American public complicit in a practice that does demonstrable harm to children and the competitive future of the country?

Where did social promotion start? Why did the practice begin and should it even be applicable to education today?

Social promotion has been attributed to Progressives who were interested in the social and emotional development of children. Others have proposed that there were multiple reasons for the concept of social promotion at its inception in the late 19th century and its continued consideration into the 20th and 21st centuries. Failing children from certain families, based on status and position, was not popular.

Parents with influence and those who were angry, or who in other ways could make life difficult for educators, demonstrated the potential to pressure school personnel into passing their children in the latter part of the 1800s. Other reasons for promoting children who had not passed the required exams were more practical. School leaders often needed the space, particularly in the lower grades, for the increased numbers of students entering school. Having children repeat grades was also costly. By 1922, some Progressives were becoming concerned about the use of tests to sort students into categories and as a means to address the retention problem.

John Dewey entered the education scene in the midst of conflicting ideas. A brilliant student, Dewey entered the University of Vermont at age fifteen, graduating near the top of his class. At University, he was drawn to philosophy and went on to earn his doctorate in the field. Over time, he became a leading voice of progressive educational reform.

Dewey and other Progressives of the same era reacted to possible solutions for the outrageously high failure rate devised by school leaders and reformers who were invested in the science of education. Many districts adopted ability groups and semiannual promotion schedules as a remedy for the elevated retention rates, although the success of these initiatives was not particularly effective.

Ability groups allowed for the separation of children into high, average, and low achieving classes. In the case of the latter, standards were lowered so that rather than being retained, low achieving students could be passed on to the next graded level with a lower demand placed upon them. Their knowledge and skill levels for the next grade level were often dubious at best, but certainly not parallel to that of the average and high achieving students who experienced the same promotion.

School leaders engaged in the systematic use of intelligence tests to determine the placement of children into high, medium, or low ability groups. The children then went into classrooms, based on ability. School leaders were convinced that this was a democratic way to proceed with schooling, and each child would be able to work up to his or her capability level. The curriculum and instruction would be adapted, too: customized to fit the child’s ability level and allow for flexible promotion. The use of tests to determine innate ability would also aid educators with vocational guidance, provide an avenue for identifying unusually capable, and help diagnose learning problems.

The classrooms came under attack, with critics particularly decrying the folly of relying on a single test to track a child’s time while in school. There was also concern about using one test to set the trajectory for a vocation beyond school. Those who believed in the science of education would not relent on these points, but reliance on tests for classroom placement continued anyway.

Eventually, promotion led to the separation of children by social class, with many children living in poverty receiving placements in the low classrooms. Studies began to emerge that labeled children from various racial and ethnic groups as innately deficient, based on their performance on intelligence tests.

School leaders believed they had found a solution to issues that threatened to disrupt the age-grade schooling process. The ability to promote children unable to pass exams geared toward “normal” children, would alleviate the horrendous failure rate and the costly and disruptive crowding of students at the lower grades. No one considered the long-term implications of this strategy, however, and educators simply grouped the “abnormal” students together in an informal way. They were allowed to move through the school system with a consistently substandard education offered to them, without an active effort to teach materials in such a way as might engage these students. We now recognize that many of those students were atypical learners who had behavioral or cognitive needs.

This is how social promotion first came to fruition. It is more of a solution to logistical issues, and less about doing what was necessarily in the best interest of the child.

Do you think social promotion is a helpful or harmful practice in modern education?

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The Watchdog of LAUSD

Commentary from Stuart Goldurs

A friend called me this.

Actually, there are a few of us who blog to share the truth about Los Angeles Unified School District and public education. There are Facebook groups who advocate for the positions that we take.

Who are our readers? They are teachers, friends, and family. They already share our thoughts and our beliefs about LAUSD and public education.

I began to write six years ago to tell the truth about LAUSD. I expanded my coverage to write about public education nationwide.

There are thousands of people out there who agree with everything that we write. There are also tens of thousands who are uninformed about what is going on, so they just accept the changes at their schools. Many of the uninformed get their information from the newspapers, T.V., and radio stations—ignorers of the truth, supporters of the status quo, and defenders of the establishment.

We voted for the school board members to represent our interests and beliefs and to look out for our children. Instead, they represent the interests of the Superintendent who represents the interests of his billionaire masters.

There are always so many issues, so many controversies. Just recently, iPads versus school repairs; MiSIS; the closed school libraries; decreasing the teaching time of itinerant orchestra teachers; LAUSD going eight years without a raise and having to take furlough days which are a pay cut; teachers sitting in teacher jails for months without knowing why they are incarcerated, when the real reasons are their seniority, their top of the pay scale salaries, and the fact that they are close to retirement and retirement benefits.

LAUSD may look like it’s ripe for bankruptcy (the state won’t bail it out), while the superintendent and his associates are preparing for corporate positions with their benefactors. The school board members will continue to search for higher elective offices.

While LAUSD burns, they better themselves.

Meanwhile, the billionaires will swoop down and acquire the school land, sending the students to for profit charter schools, thus benefiting the investors in two ways.

The media, the local politicians, and the civic leaders will stand there with their arms spread wide to indicate their innocence and the fact that they didn’t know and that they couldn’t do anything as the sky was falling on LAUSD.

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Stuart has been a Los Angeles elementary teacher for 35 years. He started writing to make people aware of the district waste, large bureaucracy, and other major issues of the time. He expanded his writing to include public education nationally with particular focus on the excesses of testing, Common Core, and the so called reformers. He writes both prose and poetry and occasionally take an old rock song and changes the lyrics to fit schools or testing. His Twitter handle is @LaIndianFan.

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Why "anti-tech" teachers irk me

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Lisa Mims

The conversation went something like this:

Teacher: Do you know he suggested using Tagxedo at Reading Night?
Me: What a wonderful idea!
Teacher: I don’t see why they want to use technology. (said with disdain)
Me: Why not? The kids and parents would have a good time.
Teacher: What if it doesn’t work? What if it doesn’t print? Then what are we supposed to do?
Me: What do you mean doesn’t work? It’s really easy to use.
And the conversation continued...

“Technology” is not something you can pick up or put down, it’s not a solid object. That is what frustrates me so much about people who are “anti-tech”. It makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs every time someone says to me, “See, I used the Smartboard today, I used technology.”

Or, after typing an entire paragraph on a web page, it’s deleted, and the person yells, “See, that’s why I don’t use technology!”

Technology is not a subject!!!  It is a tool that is not going away. It’s not something extra that you add to a lesson, it’s just part of your lesson. You know, the way you use the textbook. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the question, “What if it doesn’t work?” So does that mean that we shouldn’t use it? What isn’t going to work? The Internet? The computers? Tagxedo?

Yes, there is a chance any one of those things might not work, but there is a greater chance they might. And what an experience that would be for those who use it! It reminds me of when my principal, who asked us to think outside of the box after a tech conference, asked me to put my Sliderocket presentation on a flash drive because the “Internet” might not work that day.The “Internet” worked just fine.

When I was thinking of a way for my kids to creatively describe themselves, I chose Tagxedo as a way to do that. While planning my lesson, I did not begin with, “How can I use Tagxedo today?” When I want to connect with students in another state or country, I use Wallwisher, Edmodo, Twitter, etc… because it’s a way to connect beside pen and paper.  When I want my students to share their thoughts simultaneously about the novel I am reading aloud, “Today’s Meet” is a wonderful tool. And, I don’t only use the Smartboard during observations, just to prove that I am using “technology”, because that’s what “they” want to see.

All the wonderful things I do with my class is not done to “show off”. It’s because it engages my students and makes teaching enjoyable. And yes, I do have a life. There are so many great ideas I get from so many different people in my PLN, so there’s no need to spend every waking hour trying to find them on my own.

We have to let go of this fear of the unknown , the fear of change. We have to remember that we should be lifelong learners, and not be scared to share our knowledge, even in a way that might not be comfortable for us!

This post originally appeared on Diary of a Public School Teacher, and was republished with permission.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

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Diary of a Public School Teacher is a blog where Lisa Mims shares her  thoughts about any aspect of the teaching profession. She is a DEN (Discovery Education Network) STAR Educator! She loves writing and I has contributed posts to Free Technology for Teachers, Edudemic, TeachHub, GoAnimate, Edutopia, etc.