Why Effective
Practice Needs to Dictate Good Policy (Rather than the Other Way Around)
Dear Colleague,
There are
times in education where we get so focused on the individual trees in our
forest, that we are unable to get out of the forest itself.
That is,
we sometimes get so singularly focused on a topic, area, or academic discipline
that we miss the related issues that are concurrently in play.
And so, it
was heartening to read my local newspaper a few weeks ago about a report
published by two advocacy groups analyzing our state’s recent data on school
attendance (or, more accurately, chronic absenteeism) and its relationship to
literacy and student achievement.
_ _ _ _ _
Focusing
on kindergarten through Grade 3 students across the state (Arkansas) during the
2014-2015 school year, the report’s major findings included:
* Chronic absence is a significant
problem: More than 12% of kindergarten through 3rd
graders missed 18 or more days of school (10% of the school year)
* Chronic absence starts early: Kindergarteners were
significantly more likely to be chronically absent than students in third grade
(16% vs. 10%).
* Chronic absence is worse among certain
schools: 25% of the state’s chronically absent students were attending
just 52 (10%) of the state’s schools.
* Chronic absence is worse among third
graders who are economically disadvantaged or have special needs: These combined
groups accounted for more than 30% of the state’s chronically absent 3rd
graders.
* Hispanic students are the least likely
to be chronically absent: Only 9% of the state’s
chronically absent 3rd graders were Hispanic, compared to 12% of
white and 14% of African-American 3rd graders.
* Chronically absent 3rd graders
are less likely to read on grade level: Only 20% of 3rd graders who were chronically
absent were reading on grade level.
_ _ _ _ _
Parenthetically, it is critical to note that the new Elementary and
Secondary Education Act requires every state, district, and school to report
its annual chronic absenteeism rates (including both excused and unexcused
absences).
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Relating
these Results to Recent National Reports
The results from this state-specific report summarized above are
comparable to similar national reports.
But some additional processes need to be considered when
discussing students’ reading success, and why so many of our students are not learning
how to read.
These processes include:
Reading Instruction, Retention Decisions, Remedial Practices,
Response-to-Intervention, and Chronic Absences.
Critically, these processes have been investigated in a number of recent
national reports.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Report 1: Reading Instruction. In May 2015, the
International Literacy Association released its Preliminary Report on
Teacher Preparation for Literacy Instruction.
Gathering
information on the literacy requirements for teacher certification or licensure
by state departments of education across the country, the Report concluded that
many newly-certified elementary teachers are unprepared to teach reading.
Indeed,
the Report noted that (a) up to 34 states have no specific professional
teaching standards in reading for elementary teachers; (b) up to 24 states have
no literacy or reading course requirements; (c) many states have no practicum
or internship requirements for literacy practice and supervision; and (d) many
states do not require a test to assess competency in reading instruction for
teacher-licensure candidates.
Implications. If elementary school teachers (especially) are
untrained in critical literacy instruction, progress monitoring, and
intervention processes when they enter the field, why would we expect
them to deliver effective instruction from Day 1 of their teaching careers?
Moreover, how
many “Instructional Casualties”
result from this gap? That is,
students who are not learning how to successfully read in a timely way
due to poor, ineffective, or the absence of good instruction?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Report 2: Retention Research, Results, and Unintended
Effects. Unfortunately, the educational
process of teaching students to read has become confounded by potentially
harmful policies that require (by state law) or recommend (by at least one
national “advocacy” group) that students be retained at the end of 3rd
grade if they are not reading “at grade level.”
This is problematic because of:
* The absence of any empirical research validating the importance of 3rd
grade as the “pivotal year” for reading mastery or grade-level retention
* The research on the effectiveness—and the unintended consequences—of grade
retention
* The absence of diagnostic assessment and strategic intervention before
and during most retention years
* The inappropriate use of retention as an “intervention” in and of
itself
Reinforcing the points above:
While I understand that most reading curricula (supported by state and
national standards) shift their focus during the 3rd grade year from
“learning to read” to “reading to learn,” why has the end of 3rd
grade has become the focal point for retention policies and decisions?
Recognizing that many students from poverty enter school thousands of
receptive and expressive vocabulary words behind, and that all students learn
academic skills at different rates, what if we moved the decision point—when
students should have mastered their decoding and basic fluency skills—to the
end of 4th grade?
If we did this, we would (a) give “struggling” students (and teachers)
more time and opportunity to master (and teach) essential literacy skills; (b)
allow needed interventions (e.g., to close the vocabulary or readiness gaps) to
work more completely; and (c) decrease or eliminate the “failure” messages
received—implicitly or explicitly—by students who are not producing
“grade-level” results.
This recommendation is not meant to delay critical educational decisions
for students who are not making grade-level progress in reading. In fact, it is meant to introduce a more
situationally- and developmentally-sound perspective to teaching in this area,
and to allow instruction and early intervention to succeed.
Moreover, implicit in this recommendation is the importance of providing
enriched instruction to advanced or “above grade level” students who have
exceeded or mastered their current (3rd grade) literacy skills.
_ _ _ _ _
Beyond this, and unfortunately, most schools use grade retention as
its own discreet intervention. That
is, (a) regardless of where the student is functioning, and (b) rather than
diagnostically analyzing and then strategically addressing the student’s
specific literacy weaknesses or deficiencies, many schools (c) simply let the
student begin the retention year at the beginning of that year’s
curriculum.
That is, if a retained student finishes his or her 3rd grade
year reading at the 2.3 grade level, s/he still begins the repeated 3rd
grade year—with all of his/her peers—being taught reading at the beginning of 3rd
grade level.
With all the talk about (and the challenges with) differentiation, many
schools are differentiating instruction in name, but not in function.
_ _ _ _ _
The Research on Grade Retention. Past research has shown few, if
any, long-term student benefits due to grade retention, and some important
unintended, negative outcomes have been reported.
Among
the typical results:
* Retention
is academically not helpful at all grades, including kindergarten
*
Retention occurs more often when students change schools while transitioning
into Grade 1, Middle School, and High School
* While
there may be an initial achievement “bump,” these initial positive effects tend
to diminish over time
* Most
schools do not provide specific, additional interventions during the retention
year
* Some
decision-making teams use data selectively to support their preferences for or
against retention
* A single
retention almost doubles a student’s potential for eventually dropping out of
school, while two retentions almost guarantee this
* There is
a negative correlation between retention and race, gender, SES, and school
outcomes
_ _ _ _ _
Beyond
this, John Hattie has conducted over 800 meta-analyses involving 50,000 studies
and more than 200 million students over the past 15 years. Focusing on factors that influence students’
achievement, he has determined that grade retention ranks 136 of the 138
factors that he has investigated.
According
to Hattie: “The overall effects from retention are among the lowest of all
educational interventions. It can be
vividly noted that retention is overwhelmingly disastrous. The effects of retention, based on 861
studies was -0.15—a decline in achievement of .15 standard deviations on
achievement tests when a child is retained.”
_ _ _ _ _
Relative
to unintended effects, a recent Duke study (February, 2014) documented an
interdependent “ripple effect” where the middle schools in North Carolina
that had more students who had previously been retained had more students who
were suspended, had substance abuse problems, and engaged in more fights and
classroom disruptions.
Involving
more than 79,000 students in these NC middle schools, this study looked not
only at the students who had been retained, but how their presence in a school
influenced their classmates.
More
specifically, if 20% of the 7th graders in a middle school were
older than their peers, the probability that other students in the
school would commit an infraction or be suspended increased by 200%- -
controlling for SES and parents’ level of education. While these discipline increases occurred for
all student subgroups, they were more pronounced among white students and girls
of all races.
The Duke
study particularly noted North Carolina’s Read to Achieve policy whereby
3rd grade students not reading at grade level by the end of third
grade are retained if interventions and summer reading camp experiences have
not brought them up to a 4th grade readiness level.
While the
Duke study does not say that these students should not be retained, it does
note that the widespread practice of retaining students can have negative
effects on student behavior and school climate later on at the middle school
level.
_ _ _ _ _
Implications. I am personally not against grade
retention. But when it occurs, it
should be:
*
Recommended using a data-based, functional assessment process where. . .
* Specific
strategic instructional or intervention approaches—in the student’s area(s) of
weakness—are planfully integrated into the retention year and process. . .
where
* Students
continue to receive instruction at their skill or instructional level in
their areas of grade-level or above strength (so that they can continue to
progress in these areas). . . and
* Where
all of the instructional and intervention strategies and approaches are
progressively evaluated on their ability to help the student learn, master, and
apply targeted skills.
Moreover,
as noted above: Retention is NOT an intervention.
While another
year with a student at the same grade level presents an opportunity for the
student to receive the right instructional or intervention approaches to help
him or her succeed. . . if that year will not substantially benefit the
student, then (regardless of policy) it should not be required.
Critically,
we cannot predict the potential benefits of a retention year until we fully
understand the underlying reasons that explain a student’s lack of academic
progress.
For more
and previous thoughts on these topics:
[CLICK HERE for past Blog on Grade Retention is NOT an
Intervention: How WE Fail
Students when THEY are Failing in School]
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Report 3: Remedial Practices and Response-to-Intervention. Two additional areas that are directly
related to students’ literacy proficiency involve what schools do when they are
not learning and mastering. Effectively addressing these areas (remedial
practices and response-to-intervention) is critical—especially given an
important report that suggests that current practices need to be rethought.
In November 2015, a report commissioned by
the U.S. Department of Education and completed by the National Center for
Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Evaluation of Response to
Intervention Practices for Elementary School Reading, was published.
This Report described the largest federal
investigation of its kind—a differential evaluation of the effects of
response-to-intervention approaches on the literacy progress of approximately
24,000 first through third grade students in 13 states. Critically, the study statistically compared
146 schools, that had been implementing key elements from the U.S. Department
of Education’s Response-to-Intervention (RtI) framework in literacy for at
least three years, with 100 randomly-selected comparison schools that were not
implementing RtI in the same 13 states.
More specifically, the study compared the
literacy progress of 1st through 3rd grade students
during the 2011 to 2012 school year primarily using individually-administered
norm-referenced tests and their state’s high-stakes proficiency test.
The students in the 146 “RtI Schools”
qualified for RtI Tier II interventions, and the students in the 100
“Comparison Schools” barely made or just missed the cut-offs for Tier II
intervention—all based on a Fall screening test (the DIBELS or AIMS were
clearly the most-used screeners).
The Results? Based on Fall to Winter interventions and
assessments:
* The 1st graders receiving Tier
II interventions performed 11% lower on the reading assessments than the
comparison students who barely missed qualifying for the Tier II intervention
approaches.
* The 2nd and 3rd
graders receiving Tier II interventions experienced no significant reading
benefits- - although they did not lose ground.
* At Grade 1, only four of the 119 schools
studied found data-based benefits for their Tier II students, while 15 schools
had negative effects for their Tier II students. [100 schools showed no benefits for all of
the staff and student time—and resources—expended.]
* At Grade 1, 86% of students who began in
Tier I remained in Tier I; 50% of the students who began in Tier II remained
there; and 65% of the students in Tier III remained. Across the Grade 1 student sample, 13% of the
students moved to a more intensive Tier, and 14% moved to a less
intensive Tier. [The percentages of
students moving were smaller in Grade 2 and Grade 3.]
* Students already receiving special
education services or who were “old for grade” (probably due to delayed entrances
or retentions) had particularly poor results when they received Tier II
interventions.
* For all students, the reading results did
not significantly differ for students from different income levels, racial
groups, or native languages.
_ _ _ _
_
Among the assessment and intervention
results from the Study:
* 79% of the schools for the Grade 1
students, 75% of the schools for Grade 2, and 80% of the schools for Grade 3 used
only ONE screening test when placing their students in Tier II interventions
in the Fall.
* Between 31% (Grade 3) and 38% (Grade 1) of
the students in the study were placed into Tier II or III interventions using
no other information but the screening test.
* The “interventions” tracked by the RtI
Report were simply small-group instruction or one-on-one tutoring.
While the schools were surveyed on the focus
of the interventions (e.g., phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency,
or reading comprehension), the Report did not identify or track the specific skill-based
interventions received by the students.
* Finally, for the Below Grade Level
students in intervention groups, 37% of them in Grade 1, 28% in Grade 2, and
22% in Grade 3 received their interventions from paraprofessionals- - not
certified teachers or reading or other specialists.
_ _ _ _
_
Implications. Significantly, the new Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA) does not mention
response-to-intervention anywhere in the law, and it only references
multi-tiered systems of support five times (always in lower case
terms, and never using the U.S. Department of Education’s MTSS acronym).
With its focus on having states and
districts develop their own effective instruction and intervention programs,
the law—in essence—is telling districts and schools to abandon past ineffective
practices and to design new effective ones.
This makes good sense as the federal
government’s past RtI framework (as demonstrated in the above study) always
had many critical flaws—flaws that violated numerous psychometric and
psychoeducation principles of sound practice.
These flaws:
* Delayed services to students,
* Resulted in the wrong interventions being
implemented, and
* Added to, increased, or made some
students’ academic problems more resistant to change.
These issues have been discussed in a
previous Blog and an extensive Technical Assistance paper:
[CLICK HERE for Blog: Your
State’s Guide to RtI: Some Statutes Just
Don’t Make Sense (What your Department of Education isn’t Sharing about its
Multi-tiered/Response-to-Intervention Procedures]
[CLICK HERE for TA Paper: National Concerns about RtI and PBIS: A Review of Policy and Practice
Recommendations Not Based on Research or Effective Practice]
The “bottom line” is that we can and must
do better.
_ _ _ _
_
Report 4: Chronic Absenteeism—Coming Full Circle. On June 7th of this year, the U.S. Department of
Education’s Office for Civil Rights released a report, A First Look: Key Highlights on Equity and Opportunity
Gaps in Our Nation’s Public Schools.
This Report, which provides a national
context for the state data discussed at the beginning of this Blog, summarizes the
2013-2014 school-year survey results from virtually every school district in
the country (involving over 50 million students)—reporting on a host of issues:
school discipline, restraints and seclusions, early learning, college and
career readiness, education in juvenile justice facilities, teacher and
staffing equity, and . . . chronic student absences.
In the latter area, the First Look
report defined a chronically absent student as one missing 15 or more
school days during the school year.
The Report cited the following national data from the 2013-2014 school
year:
* Nationwide, more than 6.5 million
students – or 13% of all students – were chronically absent. 19% of all high school students, 12% of
middle school students, and 10% of elementary school students were chronically
absent.
* In nearly 500 school districts, at least
30% of their students missed at least three weeks of school.
* More than 3 million high school
students – or 18% of all high school students – were chronically absent.
* 20% or more of American Indian or Alaska
Native (26%), Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (25%), black (22%),
multiracial (21%), and Latino (20%) high school students were chronically
absent.
* High school students with disabilities
served by IDEA were 1.3 times as likely to be chronically absent as high school
students without disabilities.
* 20% of all English learner high school
students were chronically absent.
_ _ _ _
_
At the elementary school level, the
following data were reported:
* More than 3.5 million elementary school
students – or 11% of all elementary school students – were chronically
absent.
* American Indian or Alaska Native and
Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander elementary school students were twice
as likely to be chronically absent as white elementary school students.
* Black elementary school students were 1.4
times as likely to be chronically absent as white elementary school students.
* Elementary school students with
disabilities served by IDEA are 1.5 times as likely to be chronically absent as
elementary school students without disabilities.
_ _ _ _
_
Implications. Critically, among the most-concerning
long-term effects of chronic student absences are (a) poor academic progress—especially
in reading, and (b) the high potential for dropping out of high school.
Thus, if we can determine and successfully
change the underlying reasons why these students are absent, schools may
then find effective ways to help these students to academically “catch up” and
recalibrate their school success.
This topic was extensively explored in a
recent Blog:
[CLICK HERE for Blog message: How
to Improve your Chronically Absent Students’ Attendance. . . During the
Summer Break]
_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _
Summary
While this discussion began (and ended) with
the effects of chronic absenteeism on elementary students’ proficiency in
literacy, the theme throughout was:
Students’
literacy success, as well as their literacy gaps or “failures,” occur due to
many interdependent direct and indirect in-school and out-of-school variables
and circumstances.
From a policy perspective, it is
short-sighted to focus on an individual variable, or a single
circumstance. Instead, we need to look
at the many effective multi-tiered services, supports, strategies, and
practices that help students to succeed in reading, and craft our policies
accordingly.
In other words, we need more specific,
bottom-up approaches here, than global, top-down proclamations.
And, among the approaches that we need to
focus on are:
* Getting kids to school (i.e., decreasing
chronic and other absences) ready and motivated to learn
* Preparing and certifying our teachers as
effective, scientifically-based reading instructors
* Tracking and monitoring our students’
skill mastery and reading proficiency
* Providing instructional or intervention
services and supports— based on diagnostic assessments and at needed levels of
intensity—to struggling students
In doing this, we need to also review,
re-evaluate, and reject policies (e.g., retention), procedures (e.g.,
response-to-intervention), and other practices that are not working—or that are
producing unintended negative effects.
Admittedly, this is all very messy at times. But, it is all very necessary at all times.
_ _ _ _
_
I hope that your district and schools have
looked at the opportunities—embedded in the new Elementary and Secondary
Education Act—to rethink and redesign our educational practices. . . in
reading, math, behavior, school climate, and student engagement. There is much to do before the entire law is
implemented (July 1, 2017), and the stakes are high. We must do better.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts
and comments. Know that I spend over 150
days per year partnering with schools and districts—helping them to build
effective, sustainable, multi-tiered approaches that positively impact
students’ academic and social, emotional, behavioral skills and outcomes.
As such, these Blog messages are not
hypothetical to me. . . they are based on experience and a focus on real
schools, challenged staff, and struggling students.
Feel free to contact me at any time, and
remember to look at my website (www.projectachieve.net) for
the many free resources that are available there.
Let me know how I can help you further. Feel free to forward this Blog link to your
colleagues.
Best,
Howie
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