Learning from Another Gates Failure: It’s Not Just the Money—It’s What You Accomplish With It

How to Spend Your ESEA Title IV Money Wisely

[CLICK HERE for the Full Version of this Blog]

   With all of the new research, new curricula, new software, and new “ways to do things”—most educators do not have the time to effectively evaluate what is real (evidence-based, successful, and applicable) and what is illusion (marketed, ineffectively researched, and invalid).  Indeed, they do not have the time to objectively determine what approaches are scientifically sound, and then what sound approaches can be appropriately applied to their settings, situations, and students.

   Today, I want to talk about how money is used in education.

   And my ultimate message is:  It is not how much money we have. . . It’s how we use it, what we use it on, and what we accomplish with it. . . relative to students’ academic and social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes.

   And even though educators often tell me that they do not have enough money to fund what they need (and, I understand), I want to remind us all that even when we had (have) plenty of funds, our outcomes were (are) not impressive.

   Examples?  Look at the student-focused outcomes when districts received their millions of dollars of Reading First funds in the mid-2000s. . . when they received their millions of dollars of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds in 2009. . . and when they received their millions of dollars of School Improvement Grant (SIG) funds thereafter.

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Today’s Reminder:  It’s Not About the Money

  

   Last week, an evaluation of the Gates Foundation published the results of its $212 million multi-year effort to improve the effectiveness of teachers while increasing student achievement in three large school districts (Memphis, TN; Pittsburgh, PA; Tampa, FL) and one charter school consortium in California.  With the required district investments, the total cost of the initiative was $575 million.

   The bottom line?  The evaluation, conducted by the RAND Corporation and the American Institutes for Research (AIR), found that student graduation rates, the achievement of students in general, and the achievement of low-income and minority students specifically were largely unaffected.

   These poor results fall on the heels of the Gate Foundation’s mid-2000’s “Small Schools initiative” that similarly did not impact student achievement or graduation rates.

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   So what have we learned from this and other large-sum (but, from my perspective, largely naïve) educational initiatives?

   Beyond the fact that “It’s not about the money,” we have learned that:

·       Change requires a multi-tiered science-to-practice blueprint that is anchored in organizational and systems, social and group, cognitive and learning, developmental and ecological, and normal and abnormal psychology.

·       You can’t focus on just one facet in the educational equation. . . student achievement is impacted by a multi-tiered understanding of effective and targeted curriculum and instruction as interfaced with the individual and groups needs of struggling students.

·       Change occurs through professional development that focuses on teacher skills and sustained implementation, and that effective and ongoing mentoring and coaching is required, along with supervision, evaluation, feedback, and administrative action (the latter, if needed).

   And so, have schools learned “their evidence-based lessons?”

   In many cases. . . apparently not.

   Not if we look at the significant number of schools that continue to use approaches that are either invalid (e.g., mindfulness), or that do not substantially contribute to student achievement (e.g., growth mindset approaches).

   Not if we look at districts and schools (“If it’s free, it’s for me”) who have implemented the PBIS Framework pitched by the federally-funded Positive Behavioral Support and Interventions (PBIS) National TA Center . . . without reading (or understanding, or attending to) the U.S. Department of Education-commissioned study that completely questions its impact and utility.

   And, not if we look at districts and schools adopting the heavily-marketed, but research-thin (if not nonexistent), restorative justice approaches.

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The Next Funding Opportunity:  ESEA’s Title IV

   This year’s Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants (Title IV of The Elementary and Secondary Education Act—ESEA) received a huge increase from Congress this past year—from $400 million during the 2017-18 school year, to $1.1 billion for the 2018-19 school year.  

   Providing districts with a great deal of discretion relative to targeting specific areas, Title IV funds can be used across a wide range of programs to make students safer, healthier, and more well-rounded, or to enhance the role of technology in learning.

   This Blog message goes on to discuss:

·       What ESEA says Title IV funds can be used for

·       How the Title IV funds need to be distributed across the program areas described immediately above

·       How districts are planning to use their Title IV funds, according to two recent national surveys

   In the latter area, it appears that some districts, once again, will invest their money, professional development time, student support services, and focus and attention on programs (like PBIS, and non-evidence-based SEL or bullying approaches) that will not be as successful as other evidence-based practices that have been integrated into field-tested and well-documented science-to-practice implementation blueprints.

[CLICK HERE for the Full Version of this Blog]

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   Finally, this Blog suggests that educators, who are now making plans for their Title IV funds, consider Project ACHIEVE as an evidence-based and field-tested alternative in the Title IV areas of: (a) school safety positive school climate, (b) PBIS and social-emotional learning, (c) bullying and violence protection, and (d) student engagement and trauma-informed classroom

   Project ACHIEVE is listed on (since 2001) on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services’ (SAMHSA) National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices.  It was the ESEA School Improvement model, as well as the PBIS and MTSS models, for the Arkansas Department of Education for 13 years under its State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG).  And, it has been implemented in schools in every state in the nation for over 35 years.

   Educators wanting to learn more about Project ACHIEVE can view one or more of the free national webinars that were delivered during the past school year:

·       A Guide to Strategic Planning, Shared Leadership, and Student Success  [Creative Leadership Solutions; with Dr. Doug Reeves]

·       Fixing MTSS: The Keys to Successful Multi-Tiered Academic and Behavioral Interventions [Creative Leadership Solutions; with Dr. Doug Reeves]

·       Planning Your Multi-Tiered (MTSS) Services for Next Year by Analyzing Your Current Students' Needs Today [Creative Leadership Solutions; with Dr. Doug Reeves]

·       Building Academic and Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Progress for All Students  [PresenceLearning]

·       SEL: Critical Steps to Implementing a Comprehensive School-Wide Evidence-Based Program [Illuminate Education; with Dr. Chris Balow]

·       Decreasing Disproportionate Discipline Referrals through a Behavioral Accountability System that Work [Creative Leadership Solutions; with Dr. Doug Reeves]

·       Conducting Quarterly Student Achievement Review (Q-STAR) Meetings: An Early Identification & ESSA Progress Monitoring Approach [Illuminate Education; with Dr. Chris Balow]

[CLICK HERE to view these Webinars on-line]

    What do you think?

Best,

Howie

 

Making Mountains Out of Molehills: Mindfulness and Growth Mindsets

Critical Research Questions the Impact of Both

[CLICK HERE for the Full Version of this Blog]

Dear Colleagues,

   One of my biggest professional frustrations is when districts and schools say that they do not have time for professional development or “new programs” . . . and then they invest time, money, and staff development on popular “band-wagon” programs or strategies that have no, minimal, or potentially negative effects on student or staff outcomes.

   Such is the case with professional development and school training programs that invest (lose?) instructional time on increasing students’ Mindfulness and Growth Mindsets, respectively. 

   Indeed, while the research in the former area is questionable at best, the Growth Mindset research is largely sound—but it does/has not translated into functional or practical approaches that change consistently students’ behavior or academic outcomes.

   Previously, I have discussed the (NOT) quality of the Mindfulness “research,” and addressed its “motherhood and apple pie” marketing, testimonials, and misplaced popularity.  In this Blog, I review this research, and then discuss a new meta-analytic study on Growth Mindset that every educator needs to understand.

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Where Have We Been on Mindfulness?

   During the past few years, I have devoted at least four Blogs to the Mindfulness “movement.”

   In my February 13, 2016 Blog, I critically reviewed four research articles on Mindfulness that were published in 2013.

   And then, starting at the beginning of November 2017, we published a three-part Blog Series focusing on the implicit goal of most Mindfulness programs or approaches:

To help students to be more aware and in control of

their emotions, thoughts, and behavior.

   During this Series, we analyzed the research and practice of Mindfulness, concluding that—from an objective, data-based perspective—the approach does not deliver on this stated goal.

   In order to focus educators’ attention on the best, research-based processes that DO meet this goal, we discussed how cognitive-behavioral strategies and interventions have over 35 years of research supporting their social, emotional, and behavioral efficacy with children, adolescents, and adults.

   We then mused:

   What would happen—relative to the goals above—if schools invested the same time, training, and attention to cognitive-behavioral strategies, with their longstanding record of student success. . . instead of a passing fad that educators will recall in the future with a deep breath and a roll of their collective eyes?

   The research from these four previous Blogs is summarized in this current Blog so that educators who are using Mindfulness approaches in their schools can rethink their “return on investment.” 

   For educators considering these approaches, the recommendation is self-evident.

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Growth Mindsets:  Introduction and Context

   Dr. Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset (Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, 2006) is based on her long-standing and well-established research at Stanford University that investigates how students’ cognitive self-beliefs and attributions affect their motivation and achievement.

   At its core, her research asserts that students tend to achieve better when they have a “mindset” where they regard their intelligence and achievement not as fixed traits (that they either have or do not have), but as attributes that can be improved through effort.

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   A new study analyzing the cumulative effect size from over 229 research studies investigating the impact of Growth Mindsets was just published (April 1, 2018) in the Psychological Science Association Journal.

   Reviewed in this Blog message, the study reported a “very tiny” meta-analytic effect size (0.08) across these studies involving over 365,000 students.  Additional analyses correlating mindset interventions with students’ academic achievement found that age, and the length and type of intervention were not significant factors.  In addition, very small effect sizes were found for students who had failed a class, or were at-risk of dropping out. 

   In an interview after the publication of the study, one of its authors talked about how:

(M)edia bias plays a role in how people perceive the effects of certain teaching strategies. She cited instances where reporters contacted her to write about her research, only to retract when they learned that the findings were not what they expected. From her perspective, research showing small or null effects do not garner as much attention, in the form of citations or media mentions, the same way more grandiose outcomes do. This might be what happened with growth mindset studies.

“Studies that are especially exciting or shows especially large effect often are the ones that are cited over and over again, so even if you’re just reading the published literature you tend to get a sense that these effects perhaps are very large,” says Macnamara. “Aggregating synthesized data gets you a very different picture.”

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Summary and Recommendations

   For districts, schools, and administrators thinking about implementing a Mindfulness or Growth Mindset program, please think twice.

   For districts, schools, and administrators who have already committed to and/or are implementing a Mindfulness or Growth Mindset program, we understand the potential frustration and cognitive dissonance of being told that the research simply does not support these approaches.

   We cannot change the research.

   We can only suggest that if you are going to (eventually) have to discard an unsuccessful program . . . or if the “positive” results that you are getting are not real, data-based, or objectively determined. . . you might as well “bite the bullet” now.

   Why would you go through another school year (i.e., 2018-2019) doing something that will not work, and that will need to be changed?

   The Blog discusses the research in more detail, and suggests “alternative” evidence-based and field-tested solutions that can be implemented in a short period of time. . . with a much higher return.

   Please read the entire Blog [CLICK HERE].

   What do you think? 

Best,

Howie