When High School Students Have Significant Academic Gaps:

More Concerns and Common Sense Solutions “When State Policy Undermines Effective School Practice” (Letters to the Editor)

[CLICK HERE to read this Blog on the Project ACHIEVE Webpage]

Dear Colleagues,

Introduction

   For good or for bad, it is amazing to track the technological advances that many of us have experienced over our lifetimes.

   From telephones to smartphones. . . typewriters to computers. . . cars with stick shifts to cars that drive themselves. . . and now artificial intelligence that seems to think on its own.

   And then, there’s social media.

   In the “old days,” when you wrote an article, what followed—sometimes weeks later—were “Letters to the Editor.”

   Now, you have almost instantaneous “Posts”—with “Likes” or, at times, a barrage of disagreements or worse.

   Fortunately, for all my social media, I rarely get the latter. Instead, I often get many thoughtful comments that alert me to things I’ve either forgotten or not considered. These comments help push my thinking, and I grow as a practitioner and person.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Revisiting “When State Policy Undermines Effective School Practice”

   My last Blog. . .

When State Policy Undermines Effective School Practice: Too Much of Anything Often Results in Nothing (or Worse)

[CLICK HERE TO LINK]

. . . received a great many comments and social media posts. . . so much so that I have decided to use today’s Blog to respond to two of them.

   But as a recap:

The Blog began by analyzing and then describing solutions for a common high school instructional dilemma that has only been made worse by the pandemic:

 

“How to teach high school students who are two or more academic years behind in their foundational literacy, math, and writing skills.”

 

Knowing that these significant skill gaps are not easily closed through parallel tutoring or by remediating missing prerequisite skills within the same courses that depend on them, the Blog emphasized the need to provide these students with intensive intervention experiences before they take the courses that they are likely to fail.

 

Indeed, our reason went, if these students take core academic classes without this intensive intervention, a double-jeopardy exists:

 

They fail the core classes, and they never close the academic gaps that contributed to their failures.

 

But this creates a new dilemma because, by delaying their core courses, these students may take more than four years to graduate from high school.

 

This puts the high school at risk with its State Department of Education— especially when students’ four-year graduation rates are an ESEA State Report Card criterion of “effectiveness.”

 

The rest of the Blog revealed that almost 30% of our states still use this four-year graduation metric (typically established during the 1991-2015 No Child Left Behind years), and we shared the educational benefits for states that, instead, use four-, five- and six-year high school graduation rates when evaluating their high schools’ effectiveness.

 

We also suggested that high schools be allowed to qualitatively explain their high school graduation data so they could demonstrate, for example, that their “late” graduates had higher GPAs, took fewer remedial courses in college, or were more academically prepared to go into the workforce.

 

In the end, we suggested ways to rescind the anachronistic NCLB policies that still exist, and to nurture schools’ cultures of professionalism so that high school administrators don’t face the dilemma of doing the instructionally wrong things for students who are academically behind, in order to protect their schools from archaic, indefensible policies.

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Letter to the Editor #1

   From a LinkedIn post of our last Blog, I received the following comment:

I read the article with interest, and my view is that the complexities of the problem are enormous, and inadequately comprehended at various levels.

 

It is evident that many stakeholders are only recently acknowledging the need for remediation services. I believe it would be highly beneficial to involve higher education institutions as integral contributors to the overall solution in supporting these students.

 

I concur that the transition from high school to a 5th year in college is a pressing concern. However, if higher education was involved in the solution from the outset, this predicament could be mitigated.

 

Also, the scale of the issue spans from K-12, and I question whether it can be effectively addressed within the confines of each (i.e., K-5, Middle, and HS).

 

Instead, a cohesive approach must be adopted, where K-5 collaborates with Middle, Middle engages with HS, and High School partners with higher education, resulting in a comprehensive solution.

 

Otherwise, the critical "hand-offs" between these stages may falter, hindering the students' progress. The magnitude of the challenge demands a collaborative effort involving higher education entities, fostering a unified approach to uplift and empower our students effectively.

 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

My Response:

Dear Colleague,

 

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response to my Blog article. You brought up a number of critical points—ones that were considered when I wrote the original piece, but by-passed in the interest of time and space.

 

But, given your comments, let me expand on a few things.

 

First: You are absolutely correct about the necessary involvement of our universities and the broader teacher-training community. Having taught at two major universities for over 20 years, however, I know how anxious my colleagues got when others asked them to expand the curriculum.

 

Nonetheless, university Teacher Training programs really do need to go beyond teaching teachers how to effectively teach the Core Curriculum and handle classroom management. Well-trained teachers need to know how to diagnostically assess student learning gaps—including the determination of the root causes of those gap.

 

As well, these teachers need to know how to link the results of their root cause analyses to strategic interventions (that include, as needed, remediations of skill gaps, accommodations of the learning process and environment, and modifications of the curriculum) so that the gaps are closed and the student can proceed with his or her next level of learning.

 

Parenthetically, it is amazing that it took a Pandemic for education to really begin addressing this area. . . right now, in the context of accelerated learning.

_ _ _ _ _

 

But, you also really “nailed” it when you emphasized that many students’ gaps in high school were gaps that originated when they were in elementary or middle school. . . and that these gaps (a) were missed, (b) were not effectively addressed, and/or (c) were not well communicated to the “next school” when the students transitioned from elementary to middle, or middle to high school.

 

Indeed, schools do not do a good job of evaluating students progress at the end of each school year, and “tag teaming” the data up to the next year’s teacher or teaching team.

 

That’s why—over 30 years ago—we created the “Get-Go” process.

 

Briefly, the “Get-Go” Process is a student review process where every student in the school is briefly reviewed at the end of each school year by its current grade-level team, the Building-level Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) Team, the administration, and other selected support staff. At times, the process also includes the “next highest” grade-level team, respectively, who will receive a specific cohort of students the next school year. 

The goals of the Get-Go Process are to:

• Complete a final, summative evaluation of the academic, and social, emotional, and behavioral progress of every student—including their attendance, medical and home/living status (as relevant), and their multi-tiered intervention status (again, as relevant).

• A significant portion of these data are required by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act for every school’s annual report and Report Card.

• Use the information collected to help organize what classes and/or “home rooms” students will be assigned to for the next school year.

• This is often done to ensure that every (especially elementary and middle school) classroom has only three functional skills groups in it so that teachers can successfully differentiate instruction. This is also done so that all classroom teachers know the functional literacy, math, writing/language arts, and oral expression skill levels of all students—again, so that they can differentiate instruction, and in case they need to provide remediation, accommodations, or modifications.

• Identify and communicate the special needs (as identified during the process—see below) of specific students to the next year’s classroom teacher (or teaching team), as well as to the school’s administration and related services and support staff—so that the school is prepared to implement all necessary interventions starting on the first day of the new school year.

• To identify the resources and personnel needed to address the universal, strategic, and intensive needs of all students in a school prior to the end of the previous school year so that (a) needed resources are coordinated or purchased during the summer, and (b) appropriate staff can be deployed or hired.

To meet these goals, both the School Leadership and MTSS teams are formally trained, and the school prepares each year a Get-Go spreadsheet with relevant data on each student in the school imported from the District’s Data Management/Student Information System.

If you are interested in more specifics on this process, feel free to read my earlier July 25, 2020 Blog:

 

“Identifying Students with Back-to-School Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Needs: How to Screen Without Screening.”

 

[CLICK HERE TO LINK]

 

. . . or look up our Monograph, The Get-Go Process: Transferring Students’ Multi-Tiered Information and Data from One School Year to the Next

 

[CLICK HERE TO LINK]

 

Meanwhile, thanks so much for your interest and comments.

 

Best,

 

Howie

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Letter to the Editor #2

   From a post of our last Blog to the National Association of School Psychologists’ Community Forum, I received the following comment:

Hi Howie,

 

I read with great interest your blog regarding the harmful effects of an outdated NCLB policy: the 4-year cohort grad rate. I started out as a high school English teacher in 1998 and witnessed the changes you spoke about, including the shifting cutoff scores for state testing. It was lunacy.

 

I wanted to follow up with you regarding the increasingly popular movement of co-teaching at the high school level in which a special education teacher (in theory) teaches alongside a content area specialist in classes that are supposed to somehow address both the core curriculum and remediation. That gap may be as large as fourth grade skills in 9th and 10th grade level math, English, and science coursework. Students earn their HS credits in core areas “on time”, advance in the sequence, and their percentage of time in special education decreases because they are now technically in a general education class. I have found scant empirical evidence that this approach is effective for low achieving students, and the Murawski books our co-teaching staff were provided included mostly self-referential citations. For example, the author recommends that only 20% of the class is comprised of “at-risk” learners (i.e., 504, special ed, ELL, individuals retaking a class) but also states that a 30% threshold might be more pragmatic—with no evidence to support. Effectively, Special ed teachers are reallocated to the general education setting with little time for remediation and case management, with more time spent learning content mastery of grade level coursework.

 

I wonder if you have any research or opinions on the co-teaching movement and its effectiveness, which is a very expensive endeavor that has increased in use in my district over the last four years as a means to support graduation in a four-year timeline.

_ _ _ _ _

My Response:

Good morning,

 

Thanks for reading my Blog and for your e-mail.

 

Yes. I am well-aware of the co-teaching movement, but am not really an expert in it. When I worked for the Special Education Unit in the Arkansas Department of Education, we had a very successful state-wide co-teaching program (with Marilyn Friend as the lead consultant) for the 13 years I was there. It continues today.

 

As you know, there are a number of co-teaching models and configurations and—unlike the general education focus of my Blog— these models involve students with disabilities.

 

The "bottom line" for me, first, is that we should never do an "intervention" (broadly framing co-teaching as an instructional intervention) with a student with a disability (SWD) unless it will benefit them academically or otherwise.

 

Thus, I believe that the "co-teaching question" is one that should be asked at every IEP meeting. Indeed, if it will not benefit a specific student, then why do it?

 

Note that I have never seen an IEP team do ask this question, but I think it's actually a good idea.

_ _ _ _ _

 

Indeed, District Directors of Special Education typically make their own independent decision as to whether or not a school or their district will "do" co-teaching.

 

But, as in my original Blog, that brings us back to another State Department of Education policy issue. 

 

The U.S. Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has long interpreted the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) element of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 2004) to mean that "every SWD should be educated in a regular education classroom in the general education curriculum at least 80% of the time.”

 

In fact, this LRE criterion is one of the 17 annual Special Education Indicators that every district is evaluated on each year by its State Department of Education. This is because every state is evaluated on the same Indicators each year by OSEP.

 

And if a district is out-of-compliance on this (or other) Indicator(s), there are clear procedural and, eventually, financial penalties over time.

 

Significantly, this LRE percentage has existed since 2004, it is NOT research based, and NO state to my knowledge has EVER met the 80% criterion—largely because students in some of the 13 disability areas covered by IDEA simply cannot be successfully educated in a regular education classroom in the general education curriculum at least 80% of the time.

 

But this policy and its annual evaluation results in District Directors of Special Education trying, nonetheless, to do exactly this.

 

And what is their solution? Co-Teaching.

 

Indeed, many districts use co-teaching in all of their schools. But this is done not because it is the most effective way to teach all of their SWDs, but as a way to avoid getting in trouble with the LRE Indicator.

 

And this occurs even when everyone knows that Co-Teaching works best when the co-teaching general and special education teachers are (a) trained, coached, and supervised together; (b) develop and sustain good working relationships together; and (c) are both well-versed in the academic areas being taught, and in ways to differentiate, accommodate, and modify their instruction for the specific SWDs that they share.

 

And these characteristics do not just “magically” appear when two teachers are thrown—unaware—into a co-teaching relationship (which I have seen more often than not).

_ _ _ _ _

 

Anyways, to answer your question, I am not up-to-speed in this research area. I could Google it. . . but you might want to invest 30 minutes of your time to do this, because you know specifically what you are looking for.

 

OSEP has districts track what happens to SWDs for a few years after graduation, so that data might give some picture of co-teaching success at your local level. . . but that doesn’t necessarily validate co-teaching.

 

Has anyone in your district done an anonymous survey of your general education teachers, special education teachers, students (both with and without disabilities), and parents to evaluate their perceptions of co-teaching?  I think that would be interesting.

_ _ _ _ _ _

 

Just a few reflections on your e-mail. Let me know your thoughts (if you would like). . . and I hope some of these reflections are useful.

 

Best,

 

Howie

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Summary

   This Blog continued the discussion from our last Blog that asked:

“How do you teach high school students who are two or more academic years behind in their foundational literacy, math, and writing skills?”

   The discussion was prompted by two real “Letters to the Editor” that we responded to.

   The responses discussed the importance of addressing students’ significant academic gaps in high school by:

·    Encouraging university Teacher Training programs to teach their teachers how to diagnostically assess the root causes of students’ learning gaps, and then how to close the gaps through interventions linked to these causes;

·    Recognizing (and directly addressing the fact that) many students’ gaps in high school were gaps that originated when they were in elementary or middle school. . . and that these gaps (a) were missed, (b) were not effectively addressed, and/or (c) were not well communicated to the “next school” when the students transitioned from grade to grade; and

·    Expressing concerns when co-teaching is used especially when the students with the largest gaps are receiving special education services as students with disabilities.

_ _ _ _ _

   Thanks so much to those of you who read my bi-monthly Blog, think about the issues or recommendations that we share, discuss them with your colleagues, and (even then) share your comments and perspectives with me.

   This past week, I had a series of Zoom calls with colleagues from a number of my Grant sites who have teachers in this week for training, and students in next week for the beginning of the new school year.

   As you make your own transition from Summer to Semester One, know that I am always available for a free one-hour consultation conference call to help you and your colleagues move “to the next level of excellence” this new school year.

   Please feel free to reach out and let’s talk.

Best,

Howie

 

[CLICK HERE to read this Blog on the Project ACHIEVE Webpage]

When State Policy Undermines Effective School Practice: Too Much of Anything Often Results in Nothing (or Worse)

 [CLICK HERE to read this Blog on the Project ACHIEVE Webpage]

Dear Colleagues,

When High School Students Have Significant Academic Skill Gaps

   A few days ago—in a regularly-scheduled Zoom Professional Learning (PLC) session for an out-of-state District—the conversation shifted to a common (especially post-pandemic) high school dilemma:

“How do you teach high school students who are two or more academic years behind in their foundational literacy, math, and writing skills?”

   Knowing that large academic skill gaps are not easily remediated especially in junior and senior-level courses, I responded to the dilemma with one of my instructional principles:

When the gaps between the core instruction and the academic skill readiness of students are too large to remediate, you need to “Re-core the Core.”

   Indeed, educational research and practice have shown that when students lack basic, prerequisite literacy, math, and writing skills at the secondary level, they do not effectively learn new “grade-level” material—even with supplemental tutoring focused on remediating the skill gaps.

   In other words, “Core Instruction plus Remediation” approaches do not work.

   This is because (a) there is not enough out-of-class remedial time to close the already-large academic gaps; (b) the prerequisite skill gaps cannot be bridged during classroom lessons using scaffolded acceleration methods; and (c) these gaps still undermine the learning and mastery of the new, grade-level material.

   Thus, the skill gaps are never fully closed, and the student falls academically further and further behind.

   Parenthetically, the presence of students with significant prerequisite skill gaps also often presents an instructional “drag” for the students who have the prerequisite skills and are ready to learn. Especially at the high school level, this is disruptive to these students’ quality of their learning, and they may not attain their highest potential levels of continued academic proficiency.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The Instructional Solution for Skill-Gapped High School Students

   You need to “Re-core the Core.”

   In other words, the students with significant skill gaps need to be taken out of the core curricular courses in question, and scheduled into intervention courses—providing them the intensive remediation needed to close the prerequisite skill gaps as quickly as possible.

   [I can already feel some of your “But’s.”]

   I say this knowing that these students may not receive graduation-earning credit for the intervention courses, and—therefore—they may not graduate in the “traditional” four years of high school.

   But I also say this knowing that:

·     If students are missing significant prerequisite skills and they take a Core Curriculum course anyways, they are either likely to fail the course (thus, not earning graduation credit anyways), or they will barely pass the course, missing yet another critical set of skills that will be the prerequisite skills for the next course in the sequence; 

·     If they take the Intervention course(s) and close the prerequisite skill gaps, they will not only pass and benefit from the next Core Curriculum course, but they will eventually graduate from high school with the cumulative skills needed to proceed successfully into the college, career & technical education, or career option of their choice; and

·     The ultimate instructional goal of high school is not about GPAs and the number of courses taken, but about student opportunities to learn, master, and demonstrate their competence across targeted functional skills.

   This last statement emphasizes a competency-based approach to high school coursework, instruction, and grading—something that every state in the country now allows.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Softening the Blow: Looking at Some Related High School Facts

   Let’s look at some related facts. . . to hopefully soften the “shock” of my “Let’s Go Backwards to Go Forward” high school intervention course recommendation.

   First: Most high schools already use a competency-based approach to graduation. . . with their most-capable students (!).

   That is, many skilled high school students graduate after their junior year and go to college, or they take dual-enrollment high school/college courses as seniors.

   Conversely: Some students—for example, students with disabilities—may (by law) receive high school instruction and related services until they are 21-years-old.

   In addition, other non-disabled high school students take adult learning or career & technical education courses when they are 19, 20, or 21 years old until they successfully graduate from high school.

   Next: Too many high school students graduate from high school after four years only to spend their first year of college taking remedial courses (national statistics suggest that 25% or more of community college students require such courses).

   In essence, despite their high school diploma, the first year of college for these students is functionally their fifth year of high school.

   Finally: It is professionally irresponsible to graduate students from high school with the lowest GPA possible knowing that we have not fully prepared them for post-graduation success.

_ _ _ _ _

   So, once again. . . high school instruction and graduation should not be about time; it should be about proficiency.

   But. . . one of the high school principals attending my virtual PLC last week told me. . . it’s not that simple.

   With frustration in his voice, he told me, “But if we don’t graduate enough students in four years, then the State Department of Education 'dings’ us, and we lose our accreditation or go into school improvement status.”

   Hmmmmmmm.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The Ghost of “No Child Left Behind”

   While we know that high school graduation requirements differ across many states, the U.S. Department of Education—through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA/ESSER)— has now standardized the calculations so that the data can be compared from state to state.

   But ESEA/ESSER still lets individual states determine their own accountability criteria when identifying a “low performing high school” that requires “comprehensive support and improvement” (CSI). This includes how different states determine that high schools are not graduating high-enough percentages of students in a timely way.

   It is here, critically, where one “ghost” of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—the previous ESEA legislation that guided education between 2001 and 2015—still lurks.

   This is because almost 30% of our states still use NCLB’s four-year graduation metric to evaluate high schools relative to their need for systemic improvement.

   And yet, when NCLB became ESSA in 2015, some states did change the rigid four-year metric, establishing more flexible “tiered” models that recognized that some students need more time to graduation from high school. These states now evaluate districts on the percent of high school students— graduating from their 9^th-grade cohort—who graduate, for example, in four years versus five years versus six years.

   For example, in 2021, Alaska, Arkansas, and Ohio school districts receive points for students graduating from high school in both four years and five years, respectfully. Connecticut districts got points for students graduating in four years and six years, respectfully. And, Delaware and New Mexico districts got points for graduating students in four, five, or six years, respectfully.

[CLICK HERE for a State-by-State ESEA State Accountability Spreadsheet]

_ _ _ _ _

Tying this Blog Together

   Going back to the high school principal on my Zoom call, and his fear that putting students with significant skill gaps into intervention courses would extend their graduation to a fifth (or more) year. . . resulting in his school being “rated down” by the State Department of Education. . . here is the reality and the issue.

   He is right.

   As he is in a four-year high school graduation state, his high school might be rated down for too many fifth-year graduates. This might result, over time, in his high school being cited by the State Department of Education as a “low performing” school. And, the high school might then require “remediation.”

   But why is he and his staff of professional educators being put in a position of doing what is right for his students, when it may turn out wrong for this school?

   And the answer is: He shouldn’t !

   As someone who worked for a State Department of Education for thirteen years during the No Child Left Behind era, this situation is just one of many examples where restrictive and inflexible state educational policies undermined effective school- and student-centered practices.

   And the solution for THIS dilemma is ?

·        Every state in the country should move to a tiered, multi-year, punishment-free approach to track and quantify how many years it takes its students to graduate from high school; and 

·        Every school district in every state should have an opportunity to qualitatively and quantitatively explain why it took some students longer than four years to graduate.

   For example, if a high school had 25% of its students graduating in five years, and showed that their GPAs in the last two years of high school were in the top 50^th percentile of all graduating seniors, how could a State Department of Education say that this high school was low performing?

   Or, if a high school had 25% of its students graduating in five years, and showed that half of them went to college or community college and none of them needed to take remedial courses, how could a State Department of Education say that this high school was low performing?

   And, if a high school had 25% of its students graduating in five years, and showed that the other half went immediately into full employment with salaries above the poverty level—allowing them to live independently, how could a State Department of Education say that this high school was low performing?

_ _ _ _ _

   Bad education policies too often result in bad educational practices.

   And bad educational practices most often hurt students who are at-risk, underachieving, unsuccessful, and without the power to advocate for themselves.

   But in order to change bad educational policies, we also often need to understand the dynamics of how they came about. . . and recalibrate these dynamics.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Too Much of Anything Often Results in Nothing (or Worse)

   The fact of the matter is that many of the policies written into No Child Left Behind were based on a belief that school staff were either incompetent or unmotivated, and that punishment—or the threat of punishment—would change their behavior in the classroom or across a school.

   Said a different way: When NCLB was passed in 2001, the U.S. Congress and even our President (Bush) believed that educators were untrained, unsupervised, unmotivated, unprofessional, and uncaring relative to students’ academic outcomes.

   Indeed, according to NCLB, if a district or school did not attain a progressively increasing level of student academic proficiency, the principal could be fired, the school could be reconstituted, and the staff could be “on the street” looking for new jobs.

   And the result?

   NCLB did not markedly change students’ functional skill levels in literacy, math, and writing across the country.

   While the percent of students “passing” the State Proficiency Test appeared to go up annually in many states, one reason was the use of a “floating proficiency cut score” that different State Education Departments moved from year to year to show statistical increases that did not reflect students’ actual skill improvement. These fluctuations allowed some states to avoid NCLB federal sanctions.

   In the end, our schools were no better off because of NCLB. . . and, in fact, many of them were worse off.

   For example, at-risk, underachieving, and unsuccessful students did not close their academic skill gaps. Teacher and administrator motivation was strained. And school morale plummeted.

   Educational policy—driven by NCLB—was pushed to the extremes. And we were all worse for it.

_ _ _ _ _

   But educational policy during that time was not completely punitive in nature. During this same time, many states instituted bonus programs for their most successful teachers.

   Here, it was believed that these incentives would motivate large groups of teachers so that large groups of students would become more academically proficient so that large groups of schools would “move the needle” of continuous school improvement.

   Once again, it did not work.

   This policy bred within-school staff anxiety, jealousy, in-fighting, distrust, disengagement, and disputes.

   The teachers who received bonuses often were snubbed by their peers the next year. The teachers who “just missed” getting bonuses were frustrated or disheartened the next year. And the teachers who believed that they “did not have a chance” to get bonuses showed up, but simply rolled over in apathetic resignation.

   And who incurred the greatest losses? The at-risk, underachieving, and unsuccessful students.

   Teachers did not want to teach them because they would not show the academic proficiency improvements that would earn them a bonus.

   And so, these students often got the new, inexperienced, and/or least proficient teachers.

_ _ _ _ _

   All of these outcomes were predictable if policymakers had considered the individual, social, and group psychology of motivation and human performance.

   At this point, this same psychology needs to be discussed and applied so that NCLB’s legacy of bad policies can be rescinded, to be replaced by newer, scientifically “smarter” policies that will bring us the educational outcomes that we all want.

   Ultimately, these policies should lead to practices that:

   Ensure that teachers consistently teach (a) academic and (b) individual and group social, emotional, and behavioral information, content, and skills to students in effective, differentiated ways such that, in a developmentally-sensitive way, they learn, master, and are able to independently apply these (a) to real-world problems or situations, and eventually (b) to successful employment and community functioning.

   Critically, this is the same goal that we advocated in our four-part Blog Series—earlier this year—that focused on the “Four Pillars of Teacher Preparation and Proficiency.” The four pillars discussed were:

·       Teacher Hiring and Orientation

·       Teacher Induction and Tenure

·       Continuing Teacher Appointments and Coaching, and

·       Teacher Leadership and Advancement

[CLICK HERE to LINK to Part IV of this Series]:

“Ensuring that Post-Tenure Teachers Remain Actively Engaged as Collaborative Contributors in their Schools: Aligning the Seven Areas of Continuous School Improvement to Teacher Leadership and Advancement” (Part IV)

_ _ _ _ _

   The point here is that the actions and activities within these pillars help to create a climate and culture of professionalism in a school and district that minimizes the need for artificial incentives, consequences, and punishments.

   This professionalism eliminates the need for policies that undermine effective, common sense practice.

   And this will relieve administrators of having to choose—literally and figuratively—between (a) providing critical intervention opportunities to high school students with significant prerequisite skills gaps in literacy, math, and/or writing; and (b) potentially sacrificing their high school’s status as a truly effective school because of an archaic, poorly-conceived policy.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Summary

   This Blog began by analyzing and then describing solutions for a common high school instructional dilemma that has only been made worse by the pandemic:

“How do you teach high school students who are two or more academic years behind in their foundational literacy, math, and writing skills?”

   Knowing that large academic skill gaps are not easily remediated—especially in junior and senior-level courses, we responded an essential instructional principle:

When the gaps between the core instruction and the academic skill readiness of students are too large to remediate, you need to “Re-core the Core.”

   Indeed, educational research and practice have shown that when students lack basic, prerequisite literacy, math, and writing skills at the secondary level, they do not effectively learn new “grade-level” material—even with supplemental tutoring focused on remediating the skill gaps.

   If we keep these students in their “core” classes, we create a double-jeopardy outcome: They not only fail these classes, but they also never close the academic gaps that contribute to the failure.

   But if we hold these students out of these core courses and provide them the intervention courses that will close their skill gaps and help them pass the core courses in the future, a new dilemma results.

   This is the dilemma that, because it may take these students more than four years to graduate from high school, the high school make get lower school effectiveness ratings from its State Department of Education, and run the risk of being identified as a “low performing high school in need of comprehensive support and improvement.”

   The rest of the Blog discussed the fact that almost 30% of our states still use the four-year graduation metric that they established during the (1991 to 2015) No Child Left Behind years to evaluate high schools’ need for systemic improvement. We share the educational benefits for the states that now include five- and six-year high school graduation rates in their high school evaluation processes. And we discussed why and how these school policies came about, and what happens when bad school policies undermine effective student-centered practices.

   In the end, we recommend (a) reviewing and rescinding the archaic, ineffective NCLB policies that still exist; (b) nurturing schools’ climate and culture of professionalism through effective hiring, coaching, and tenuring practices; and (c) taking high school administrators out of situations where doing right by students turns out wrong for their schools.

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   As always, I appreciate everyone who reads this bi-monthly Blog and thinks about the issues or recommendations that we share. . . especially in the middle of your summer break.

   As we soon begin to re-engage to begin the new school year, know that there are many Project ACHIEVE resources to help you (see our Website Store: www.projectachieve.info/store), and that I am always available for a free one-hour consultation conference call to help you and your colleagues move “to the next level of excellence” relative to your students, school, or organization.

   Please feel free to reach out if you would like to begin this process with me.

Best,

Howie

 [CLICK HERE to read this Blog on the Project ACHIEVE Webpage]

Solving Student Crises in the Context of School Inequity: The Case for “Core-Plus District Funding” (Part I)

When Schools Struggle with Struggling Students:  “We Didn’t Start the Fire”

[CLICK HERE for the full Blog message]

Dear Colleagues,

Introduction

   The last three weeks have been a blur.  Just over three weeks ago, I landed in Singapore to keynote at an International Conference with over 1,000 delegates from around the world.

   At the end of last week, I began writing this Blog message as I was flying home after a consultation with a community high school district just south of Chicago.  I have been working with this district for the past year. 

   While we have been focusing especially on redesigning their multi-tiered system of supports, there have been many challenges.  Among them:

• The District receives ninth grade students each year from up to ten different feeder districts that it has no instructional control over.

• Many of the students are from working class homes where they are living in poverty, where community violence is omni-present, and where mental health and social service supports are lacking.

• Many of the students enter the District without the academic prerequisites to succeed in ninth grade, and the District is identifying some students as students with disabilities (receiving either 504 Plans or IEPs) for the first time because their feeder districts are not identifying them through Child Find.

• One high school in the District is in almost a daily state of crisis— dealing especially with students who make threats on social media, and who then come to school—forcing the school to expend administrative and related service time (with staff counselors, social workers, school psychologists) on threat assessments, ranging from potential mass shootings to individual and copy-cat suicides.

   The “good news” is that the District has leveraged federal, state, and other funds such that they have sufficient instructional, administrative, and related services (including counselors and social workers) personnel. 

   The “bad news” is that the multi-tiered system of supports in the District and its schools:

• Is not aligned, integrated, calibrated, or consistent;
• Is not grounded by a sound data-based problem-solving process; 
• Is geared more to testing students so that deficiencies, disabilities, and clinical conditions can be “described and diagnosed”—rather than to the functional assessment of students so that the root causes of their challenges can be determined and linked to the evidence-based strategies and interventions that will improve their academic and/or behavioral performance; and 
• Does not have staff with the expertise to implement the aforementioned strategies and interventions—even if they were accurately determined.

   A critical point in all of this is that, in my 35+ years of working across this country, what I am describing above is typical of most Districts.

   What may be atypical is that this District is devoting 15% of its annual IDEA funds (as allowed by law) to professional development and on-site consultation to help prevent general education students from needing more strategic or intensive services and supports at the “deeper” ends of its multi-tiered continuum.  It is also braiding this money with strategically-placed Title I and Title IV dollars so that its schools can literally get “the biggest bang for the buck.”

   Finally, this District is “going slow to go fast.”  They did not ask me to come in to “fix” or “upgrade” their multi-tiered system of supports. 

   We spent this first year (a) building relationships and listening to staff, administrators, students, and parents; (b) identifying District strengths and resources, weaknesses and limitations, opportunities and alignments, and barriers and threats; and (c) creating the underlying systems and the infrastructure for improvement and change.

   And I believe, as with other districts and schools that I have worked with in the past, that we are going to be successful. . . on behalf of the students, their families, and the community.

   But our success is tempered by “high and realistic” expectations.  We are not going to solve every problem, service every need, or save every student.

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We Didn’t Start the Fire, and We Don’t Have Enough Extinguishers

   I grew up with Billy Joel.  One of his most notable songs is, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” 

   The song’s lyrics include more than 100 rapid-fire citations of historical events, notable people, and memorable occasions between 1949, when Billy Joel was born, and 1989, when he turned 40.  Joel got the idea for the song when he was in a recording studio and met a friend of Sean Lennon who had just turned 21.  The friend remarked, "It's a terrible time to be 21," and Joel replied, "Yeah, I remember when I was 21.  I thought it was an awful time.  We had Vietnam, and drug problems, and civil rights problems, and everything seemed to be awful."

   The friend replied, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties, and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.” Joel responded, "Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War, or the Suez Canal Crisis?”

   Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song.

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   In this Blog, I am going to use “We Didn’t Start the Fire” metaphorically.

   First of all, as in the song, I am going to string together a number of research studies and policy papers to make some somewhat fatalistic educational (school, staff, and student) points.  And while I am linking these studies and papers to make my points—just as in the historical events that Billy Joel lists—some of these links are not causal.

   Second, as in the song, “good history” will be mixed in with “bad history.”  While it is important to learn from (and not just remember) history, some unfortunate events nonetheless reoccur. 

   To this point:  Schools do not have full control over all of the incoming or intervening student, family, community, or political events that impact them on a daily basis (and sometimes “set them on fire”).  Thus, schools cannot be held fully accountable for every student “failure”—especially when they are sometimes “playing with a 45-card deck.” 

   Said a different way:  Sometimes schools “didn’t start the fire”. . . nor do they have the capacity “to fully extinguish the fire.”

   Third, if a school is “on fire,” the goal is to minimize the impact of the crisis and to, hopefully, prevent the next one from occurring.

   But crisis prevention often requires the redistribution of existing resources and the allocation (sometimes, for a short time) of new resources.  For some, this sounds unfair—because many still hold the belief that a district’s resources need to be equally distributed across its schools.  For others, they are looking for any resources because the district is underfunded and/or under-resourced.

   This is all about equity.

   But, in the end, real equity occurs only when all of the schools in a district receive the same financial, personnel, and resource “core” needed for success, and the schools with more student challenges (e.g., more at-risk, underachieving, unresponsive, and unsuccessful students) receive the additional financial, personnel, and resource allocation plus that they need to be fully successful.

   This is what I call Core-Plus District Funding.

   This is the essence of how districts need to practice “equity,” so that all of their schools have a chance to be “excellent.”

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Outlining and Beginning to Travel this Blog’s Road Ahead

   Here are the threads that I tie together in this Blog:

[CLICK HERE for the full Blog message]

• Teachers’ relationships with their students are one of the strongest predictors of student engagement and learning.

• But fostering student engagement and learning is difficult when there is an ever-present inequity in schools that serve high numbers of students who are living in poverty.

• Many of these schools also serve some of the most challenging students in our country, and these schools are sometimes in a constant state of crisis.

• Because of the inequity, these students often do not receive the comprehensive multi-tiered services that they need, and the schools often do not successfully emerge from their persistent states of crisis.

• This then circles back to make it difficult for teachers to build strong, positive relationships with all of their students, thus impacting even more students’ educational opportunities and learning outcomes, and creating another “layer” of student challenges.

   These threads are discussed within the metaphorical stages of “starting a fire”... watching the fire grow to the point that it is out of control.

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The Tinder and Kindling

•  Teachers’ relationships with their students are one of the strongest predictors of student engagement and learning.

   A March 13, 2019 Education Week article [CLICK HERE], “Why Teacher-Student Relationships Matter,” reviewed a number of research studies which demonstrate that these classroom relationships have a significant effect on:

both short- and long-term improvements on practically every measure schools care about—higher student academic engagement, attendance, grades, fewer disruptive behaviors and suspensions, and lower school dropout rates. These effects were strong even after controlling for differences in students’ individual, family, and school backgrounds.

   Among numerous citations, the article referenced a forthcoming Bank Street College of Education longitudinal study investigating the impact of highly effective teachers on low-income students’ engagement and critical thinking—an outcome resulting from their ability to create classroom norms that established students’ feelings of safety and trust.

   The article also discussed a Review of Educational Research analysis of 46 studies (13 of them collecting longitudinal data) that reinforced the student outcomes described in the quote above.

   The bottom line is that relationships do matter.  [Hattie summarizes its meta-meta-analytic effect on student achievement at a strong 0.52.]  They involve teachers’ sensitivity to student gender, race, culture, socio-economic status, and academic skills and potential. . . and an understanding of how—for example—student trauma and student disability impact interpersonal relationships and academic engagement.

   But it is difficult to develop positive, consistent, and sustained relationships when teachers:

• Are new to the field,

• Have not received adequate training in classroom management,

• Do not have adequate resources and support,

• Have too many challenging students with different skill levels and varied social-emotional needs to teach at once, and

• Do not have experienced mentors who are available for multiple years. 

   And high-poverty schools possess most of these characteristics.

   This leads us to our next thread.

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Layering the Firewood

• Fostering student engagement and learning is difficult when there is an ever-present inequity in schools that serve high numbers of students who are living in poverty. 

   There are multiple levels of financial inequity that directly impact schools—and, especially, those serving high numbers of students living in poverty.  Some of these inequities originate at the state level relative to its funding formulas and how it distributes educational funds to all of its districts.  Other inequities occur at the district level relative to funds generated from local property taxes.

   For high-poverty schools, these inequities result in fewer resources than middle class or suburban schools, and they indirectly relate to staff recruitment, experience, and retention.  More specifically, schools with high number of students living in poverty typically are often (a) underfunded (especially relative to their students’ needs), and (b) staffed by less experienced teachers who, naturally, have more skill gaps, and who resign from the school more often and after fewer years in-rank.

   [The full Blog message describes two recent studies (from the Shanker Institute and EdBuild) that validate the scary inequities in school funding at the state and local levels—especially for high-poverty schools.

   The conclusion is that these funding inequities affect the resources and staffing of all high-poverty districts—but, even more so, in the concentrated non-white high-poverty districts. 

[CLICK HERE for the full Blog message]

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Sparks and Combustion

• Many of these (non-white high poverty) schools also serve some of the most challenging students in our country, and these schools are sometimes in a constant state of crisis. 

   The correlation between health, mental health, academic, and social, emotional, and behavioral challenges and students living in poverty has long been established.  Recently, this correlational effect has included the triangulation of poverty, stress, and trauma—including the impact of hunger and poor nutrition, parental incarceration and loss, abuse and neglect, and the exposure to violence and drugs.

[Specific article links are provided in the full Blog message.]

   These factors then circle back to negatively affect students’ school attendance and expectations, classroom engagement and motivation, academic readiness and proficiency, emotional self-control and prosocial interactions and, ultimately, high school graduation and readiness for the workforce. 

   At the extreme, many high-poverty schools are constantly dealing with high numbers of (a) truant and chronically-absent students; (b) students with significant, multi-year academic skill gaps; and (c) students who are physical or school safety threats, or who have mental health needs that transcend the school’s available services.  These students then impact the staff’s effectiveness and efficiency, the school’s climate and culture, and the educational process and its outcomes.

   These correlations are clearly seen when analyzing where schools are rated on their respective state department of education report card each year.  In general, the data consistently show that high-poverty schools tend to be the lowest rated schools in most individual states—a status that many superintendents consider “a crisis.”

[Data-based examples from the Arkansas Department of Education, and from a national study of over 1,500 NWEA MAP Growth schools are provided in the full Blog message.]

[CLICK HERE for the full Blog message]

   All of the information presented supports the conclusion that high-poverty schools have some of the most academically-challenging students in our country.  If these schools had the financial resources—the primary point of this Blog—they could more effectively address these students’ challenges.  But the financial inequities already discussed often allow initial academic gaps and problems to progressively magnify as students move from grade-to-grade. . . to the point where long-term solutions are replaced by short-term survival.

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The Fire Becomes an Inferno

• Because of the inequity, students with academic and/or social, emotional, or behavioral challenges often do not receive the comprehensive multi-tiered services that they need, and the schools often do not successfully emerge from their persistent states of crisis. 

   Critically, most of the national discussions regarding the impact of inequitable funding have focused on how high-poverty schools do not have important “foundational” educational programs, classes, services, and supports.  While noting these gaps is important, many national policy reports miss the fact that the solutions needed to “right the equitable funding wrongs” must include both:

• The implementation of the missing foundational programs; and

• The availability of strategic and intensive interventions for students with significant academic and social, emotional, or behavioral problems—some that are student-specific, and some that are due to the programmatic gaps caused by the inequity.

[Two recent reports—one from Virginia and the other from Public Impact and the Oak Foundation—are described to validate these point.]

[CLICK HERE for the full Blog message]

   Critically, these reports largely focused on whole-system or whole-school reparations.  They do not address the multi-tiered strategic and intensive academic and/or behavioral services, supports, strategies, and interventions needed by students who are products of the gaps (as above) caused by inequitable funding patterns.

   The ultimate point is that the lack of an effective multi-tiered system results in a continuation or exacerbation of these student problems, the “fire continues to burn, and becomes an inferno.”

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What If the Inferno Can’t be Extinguished?

• This then circles back to make it difficult for teachers to build strong, positive relationships with all of their students, thus impacting even more students’ educational opportunities and learning outcomes, and creating another “layer” of student challenges.

  To finish where we started, when teachers have students with academic or social, emotional, and/or behavioral challenges in their classrooms, and these challenges are not addressed, they potentially worsen and escalate into crisis mode.  This, then, impacts the classroom on an ecological level, affecting its climate and other teacher-instruction interactions to the degree that other students’ progress is comprised. . . and then they potentially move into crisis.

   Relative to high-poverty schools with inequitable funding:  If the original student challenges were related to the funding gaps, and if there are limited or no funds for strategic or intensive interventions, then why would we expect the school to suddenly have resources or highly-skilled professionals to deal with the intensification of the crisis?

   While there are no intervention “silver bullets” for some students’ needs, when a system is in crisis, the resources and interventions typically need to be focused on stabilizing the crisis before re-focusing on addressing the needs of (a) the individual students at the center of the crisis, and (b) the students who are at-risk of becoming the next phase or layer of the crisis.

   But if there is no money to address the crisis, then the fire may have to burn itself out. 

   Metaphorically, this leaves you with rubble, and the need to fully re-build.  In education, this is called “reconstitution”. . . or what happens to some schools when they “sell-out” and get taken over by a charter school or for-profit school company.

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   One Solution: Core-Plus Funding.  While this is but one solution for the inequitable funding problem, and it clearly has political and fiscal implications, Core-Plus Funding is a potential and viable “equity toward excellence” solution.

[Core-Plus Funding is defined, with federal through local examples, in the full Blog message.]

[CLICK HERE for the full Blog message]

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Summary

   High-poverty non-white schools in this country receive significantly less money per pupil each year than high-poverty white schools and middle or upper class dominated schools, respectfully.  This involves approximately 12.8 million students—many of them attending schools in urban settings.

   Because of the financial inequity, these high-poverty schools have fewer resources than middle or upper class-dominant schools, and they are typically staffed by less experienced teachers who, naturally, have more skill gaps, and who resign from the school more often and after fewer years in-rank.  In addition, the students in these schools have less access to high level science, math, and advanced placement courses, and less access to needed multi-tiered academic and social, emotional, and behavioral services, supports, programs, and interventions.  

   Correlated with the poverty, many of these students exhibit health, mental health, academic, and social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, that also triangulate with stress and trauma—including the impact of hunger and poor nutrition, parental incarceration and loss, abuse and neglect, and the exposure to violence and drugs.

   From a school perspective, all of this translates into lower numbers of academically-proficient students, and schools that are either in their state’s school improvement programs or that are rated at the low end of the state’s school report card scale.

   From a student perspective, all of this translates into negative effects on students’ school attendance and expectations, classroom engagement and motivation, academic readiness and proficiency, emotional self-control and prosocial interactions and, ultimately, their high school graduation and readiness for the workforce. 

   The financial inequity occurs at the federal level relative to funding for students with disabilities.  Some of the inequity also rests at the state level relative to its funding formulas and how it distributes educational funds to all of its districts.  Other inequities occur at the district level relative to funds generated from local property taxes.

   In the final analysis at the school level, a vicious cycle is created.  Despite the fact that teachers’ relationships with their students are one of the strongest predictors of student engagement and learning, these relationships are hard to establish and maintain given the effects (noted above) that correlate with schools that are underfunded—especially relative to the intensity of the conditions in their communities and of the needs of their students.

   Because of the under-funding, many of these schools do not have the effective multi-tiered system of supports that the students need.  Thus, the students’ problems persist or expand, classrooms and schools go into crisis, staff become reactive instead of proactive, more students are sucked into the negative climate and culture, and the entire cycle begins anew.

   Systemic changes are needed—at the federal, state, and district levels—relative to educational funding policy, principles, and practice.  While a Core-Plus Funding process was suggested, it will take more than this.

   It will take a collective vision, and a decision—especially by the educators, community leaders, and parents in the successful districts and schools across this country—to see and advocate for the unsuccessful districts and schools in their states as their own.

   Part of this vision and decision requires seeing what is happening—not just in these schools, but to these schools, and why.  Some of this requires an understanding of history, white privilege, and equity rights.  Some of this requires an understanding of the circular factors described in this Blog.

   As Billy Joel sings:

We didn't start the fire.
It was always burning, since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire.
No, we didn't light it.
But we tried to fight it.

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   It’s time to fight it. . . .

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   I hope that this discussion has been useful to you.

   As always, I look forward to your comments. . . whether on-line or via e-mail.

   If I can help you in any of the areas discussed in this Blog, I am always happy to provide a free one-hour consultation conference call to help you clarify your needs and directions on behalf of your students, staff, school(s), and district.

Best,

Howie