Curriculum,
Instruction, Intervention, and Equity
[CLICK
HERE to Read the Entire Blog]
Dear
Colleagues,
Introduction
It seems that every
day this month, I’ve received yet another e-mail or Blog from a national
educational organization, newsletter, or “edu-prognosticator” predicting or discussing
what we need to prepare for in 2020. . . our next new decade!
Being the
contrarian that I am, I would like—instead—to devote my two Blogs this month to
reviewing the “themes” that we have discussed this past year. . . so
that we can improve the future (2020) by “learning from and not repeating the
errors of past.”
To this end, I have
re-read all of my 2019 Blogs, organized them into themes or clusters, and prepared
synopses that will hopefully prompt you to go back and read the originals as
needed or desired.
The themes,
arranged in Part I (this Blog) and the forthcoming Part II (toward the end of
December), are:
Part I
- Equity in Education and Educational Funding
- Improving Students’ Academic Achievement
- Untested and Ineffective Practices: The U.S. Department of Education
_ _ _ _ _
Part II
- Concerns with the Trauma Sensitive School Movement
- Improving School Discipline, Classroom Management, and Student Self-Management
- The School Seclusion and Restraint Epidemic
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Equity in Education and Educational Funding
The following Blogs
addressed equity and educational funding in our schools today. As usual, I reviewed a number of new national
reports that addressed this issue, and then added my analysis, perspectives,
and recommendations on the topic at-hand.
If you CLICK on
the date of the Blogs below, you will link directly to the Blog that is
posted on my website (www.projectachieve.info/blog).
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”
_ _ _ _ _
The Journey toward Real
School Equity: Students’ Needs Should Drive Student Services … and
Funding (Part II). The Beginning of the Next School Year Starts Now: The
“Get-Go Process”
_ _ _ _ _
Inequities in the
Distribution of School Funds to Individual Students Revisited: Required
Transparency, ESEA/IDEA Funding Flexibility, and Multi-Tiered Efficacy.
Reminding Schools of their Responsibilities and Possibilities
_ _ _ _ _
Maybe It’s the (Lack of)
Money that Explains the Relationship Between Black-White Achievement Gaps and
Disproportionate Disciplinary Suspensions? Analyzing the Results of a New
National Study: Why Some “Two-Dimensional Problems” Need “Three-Dimensional
Thinking”
_ _ _ _ _
Synopsis of these Blogs
[CLICK
HERE to Read the Entire Blog]
In the first two Spring Blogs above
(Parts I and II), written near the 65th anniversary of the landmark Brown
v. Board of Education case, I discussed the national issue and reality of
how students and schools are inequitably funded relative to their students’
psychoeducational and multi-tiered academic and behavioral needs.
One of the “bottom lines” discussed was
that:
While segregated
educational facilities were deemed by the Supreme Court to be inherently
unequal, the quality of instruction and the availability of resources and money
in today’s schools—for many students from poverty and students of color—is
unequal.
Indeed, at the root of this statement was an
April, 2019 Report by the Shanker Institute, The Adequacy and Fairness of
State School Finance Systems. This
Report demonstrated that there is a cumulative state education funding gap
in this country of $23 billion per year favoring white over non-white
districts—a gap that is experienced by approximately 12.8 million of our
nation’s students.
_ _ _ _ _
In Part I of this Series, we provided data
from a number of sources showing that 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. While this involves approximately 12.8
million students—many of them attending schools in urban settings—this is a
nationwide problem.
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 have more skill gaps, and who resign
from their schools more often and after fewer years in-rank. In addition, the students in these schools
typically 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 ESEA-driven school improvement programs or
that are rated at the low end of their 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.
Part I ended with a plea for systemic
changes relative to federal, state, and district funding policies, principles,
and practices. We recommended a “Core-Plus Funding” process whereby all
schools in a district receive the core funding needed for student success, but
where the schools with additional or significant student needs receive,
annually, the additional funds and resources needed for their success.
_ _ _ _ _
In Part II of this Series, we discussed a
new report showing the impact of poverty and the importance of inequitable school
funding, and revisited our Part I recommendation that districts and their
school utilize a Core-Plus Funding process.
Core-Plus Funding is when every
school in a district receives the “Core” funding that it needs to implement a
sound educational program for its students.
The “Plus” funding involves the additional funds that each school
receives based on the intensity of the academic and social, emotional, and
behavioral needs of its students.
The new
report was released on May 15, 2019 by Georgetown University’s Center on
Education and the Workforce. The report
was titled: Born to Win, Schooled to Lose: Why Equally Talented Students
Don’t Get Equal Chances to Be All They Can Be.
This study is important to our discussion of
inequity because it (a) demonstrates that socio-economic inequity for students
in kindergarten has dire, long-term effects; and (b) that schools with large
numbers of poor students (many of whom are students of color) need more
(not fewer—as shown in Part I of this Blog series) resources and funding
to address these students’ needs.
[CLICK
HERE to Read the Findings from this Report]
These results of the study crystallize the
long-term impact of poverty. And while
the Georgetown University report did not analyse whether low-SES students
attending better resourced schools had better outcomes, past research suggests
that quality education and sound multi-tiered supports can mediate the impact
of poverty. This, then, reinforces the
critical need for funding for schools by student need when they have
high numbers of students from poverty.
_ _ _ _ _
In the September
14, 2019 Blog, we summarized a 2018 report by the Aspen Institute, Ensuring Equitable Funding
which stated that ESEA requires:
- States and school districts to produce report cards that include information about per-pupil expenditures, including actual personnel and non-personnel expenditures disaggregated by source of funds at the district and school levels.
- Districts are required to conduct resource reviews for schools that are identified for comprehensive support and improvement and additional targeted support and improvement.
Given these
requirements, this document suggests that Districts have an opportunity “to
drive bigger conversations around equitable funding, expanding the equity
conversation beyond funding to include other dimensions affected by funding
like teaching, school design, instructional support, and central services.”
For some districts and schools across the country, the reporting of the
now-ESEA-required financial data will be the first time that the public will truly
know how public funds are being used to “run” the school district and to
educate its students. Consistent with
the Aspen recommendations above, this will hopefully fuel a discussion—for both
district personnel and the different constituencies within the community—as to
how to best use the available funds as most-directed toward all students’
academic and social, emotional, and behavioral progress and proficiency.
_ _ _ _ _
In my November
23, 2019 Blog, I reviewed
and analyzed a study published on October 15, 2019 in AERA Open,
a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.
The article was titled, “Are Achievement
Gaps Related to Discipline Gaps? Evidence from National Data.”
[CLICK
HERE for a Review of this Article]
Written by Pearman, Curran, Fisher,
and colleagues at Stanford University, the University of Florida, the
University of Louisville, and Drexel University, the authors analyzed the
correlations between academic achievement and school suspension/disciplinary
gaps for White, Hispanic, and Black students—from third through eighth
grade—from over 2,000 school districts across the country. The data were pulled from the U.S. Department
of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection and the Stanford Education Data
Archive for the 2011-12 and 2013-14 school years, and the districts were chosen
to be nationally representative.
The authors
summarized the results as follows:
We find evidence that districts with larger racial
discipline gaps have larger racial achievement gaps (and vice versa). Though
other district-level differences account for the positive association between
the Hispanic-White discipline gap and the Hispanic-White achievement gap, we find
robust evidence that the positive association between the Black-White discipline
gap and the Black-White achievement gap persists after controlling for a
multitude of confounding factors (e.g., parents’ education levels, the
concentration of poverty among students, the level of racial segregation among
districts). We also find evidence that the mechanisms connecting achievement to
disciplinary outcomes are more salient for Black than White students.
We also found evidence that the association between the
Black-White achievement gap and the Black-White discipline gap was
attributable, in part, to the tight coupling of achievement and discipline for
Black students in particular, who experience higher suspension rates in
districts with larger achievement gaps and who experience higher achievement in
districts that suspend them less frequently. Notably, this tight coupling of
discipline and achievement was not observed for White students. This pattern
indicates that the mechanisms connecting achievement and discipline (e.g.,
teacher biases, peer effects, feelings of belonging) are more salient for Black
than White students.
While the results of our study do not speak directly
to solutions to discipline and achievement gaps, they do suggest that
interventions aimed at addressing one gap may have potential to influence the
other. First, recent research has found that teacher professional development
focused on improving instructional capacity and other classroom practices
improves classroom behavior and reduces racial disparities in discipline (Gregory, Allen, Mikami, Hafen, & Pianta, 2015), which may be particularly the case for curricular
and pedagogical approaches deemed successful at raising the academic
achievement of ethno-racial minorities, such as culturally relevant teaching
and ethnic studies programs (see, for instance, Dee & Penner, 2017; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Milner, 2010). Second, a body
of evidence is emerging on alternative disciplinary practices that can reduce
the time students spend out of the learning environment.
_ _ _ _ _
Significantly, I discussed a “hidden”
variable in the “Achievement Gap” study, stating my belief that the inequitable
funding between schools that serve mostly white versus mostly students of color
may triangulate with the racial achievement and racial discipline gaps
found. In fact, I believe that funding— which
was not explicitly analyzed or controlled for in this study—may be a primary
predictor in the achievement and discipline gaps discussed in the AERA Open
article.
Once again, please feel free to re-read the
original Blogs to get a more detailed analysis of the Reports and summary
discussed above.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Improving Students’ Academic Achievement
The following Blogs
addressed how to improve students’ academic achievement, and some of the ways
that schools are using the research-to-practice in this area in questionable
ways. As usual, I reviewed a number of
new national reports that addressed this issue, and then added my analysis,
perspectives, and recommendations on the topic at-hand.
If you CLICK on
the date of the Blogs below, you will link directly to the Blog that is
posted on my website (www.projectachieve.info/blog).
How Hattie’s Research Helps
(and Doesn’t Help) Improve Student Achievement. Hattie Discusses What to
Consider, Not How to Implement It . . . More Criticisms, Critiques, and
Contexts
_ _ _ _ _
Closing Academic Gaps in
Middle and High School: When Students Enroll without Mastering Elementary
Prerequisites. The MTSS Dilemma—Differentiate at the Grade Level or Remediate
at the Student Skill Level? (Part I)
_ _ _ _ _
Closing Secondary Students’
Significant Academic Skill Gaps: Teach at Their Grade Level or Their Skill
Level? Reviewing Two Recent Studies of Math Deficient Students (Part II)
_ _ _ _ _
Synopsis of these Blogs
[CLICK
HERE to Read the Entire Blog]
While we have discussed and analyzed
Hattie’s research a number of times in my Blogs prior to 2019 (go to the list
of “Blog Categories” on the right-hand side of my Blog master-page, www.projectachieve.info/blog), we revisited this topic earlier this
year given a number of very recent articles by some notable researchers who
critiqued (criticized) his statistical and decision-making rules. The esteemed researchers documented how Hattie
has used simplistic statistical approaches to establish his meta-meta-analytic
lists of the variables that most correlate with students’ academic achievement. In all, the critiques appear to invalidate
most of his research and results (see the original Blog for this essential
discussion).
So that schools don’t “throw the baby out
with the bath water,” I described a step-by-step multiple-gating
decision-making process so that schools can choose the correct Hattie
recommendations for their students. Even
when using this process, it must be emphasized that meta-meta-analysis
research combines studies that often have different methodologies with
different student groups.
This means—even if Hattie’s research
suggests a global approach that has a strong effect size with achievement—that
schools still do not know which strategy, approach, or methodology most contribute
to the effect size reported.
This Blog also
provided a “Primer on Meta-Analysis” to teach schools what a meta-analysis is
and is not. . . so that they can effectively analyze Hattie’s work.
Finally, the Blog
decried the emergence of a “cottage industry” of “official and unofficial”
Hattie consultants (some sponsored by major publishing companies) who are providing
“Visible Learning services”—even though some of them do not have the research,
statistical, or methodological expertise to be effective in their positions.
Relative to this
latter situation, I recommended five questions that schools should ask “Hattie/Visible
Learning Consultants” before offering them a contract.
_ _ _ _ _
The second two Blogs in this category
(published in the Fall) discussed a common middle and high school
pedagogical problem that occurs when students transition in (or up), and they haven’t mastered the
prerequisite academic skills to succeed at the next grade level.
While this occurs most often in the areas of
English, reading, and literacy, or mathematics, calculation, and numeracy, we
sometimes forget the impact on students’ learning when they are also unprepared
to effectively write or communicate verbally at their grade levels.
And then there are the “lateral effects”
when students’ low literacy or mathematics skills negatively impact their
learning and performance in science, the social sciences, or in other transdisciplinary
areas.
Part I of the Blog Series describes the four
typical Options used by middle or high schools to address these students’
needs, and then recommended Option 5 for students with significant
skills gaps.
Option 5 is for students who have
no chance of passing their next middle or high school course even using Options
1, 3, or 4 above—because their prerequisite academic skills are so
low. This appraisal is based on
objective, multi-instrument, diagnostic skill gap analyses of each struggling
student—conducted at the relevant secondary school level.
Option 5
involves scheduling students into a course (or a double-blocked course) in
their academic area(s) of deficiency that targets its focus and instruction
on the students’ functional, instructional skill level. That is, the course takes students from their
lowest points of skill mastery (regardless of level), and moves them flexibly
through each grade level’s scope and sequence as quickly as they can master and
apply the material.
This should
be an instructional—not a credit recovery or computer/software-dependent—course
with a teacher qualified both in instruction and intervention.
Moreover,
this is the students’ only course in the targeted academic area, and the course
instructors are responsible for making the content and materials relevant to the
grade level of the student, even as they are teaching specific academic skills
at the students’ current functional skill levels.
Thus,
students are not concurrently taking a grade-level course in the same
academic area (as in Options 1 through 4 above). In addition, the teachers in these students’
science, social science, or other courses also know the students’ current
functional skill levels—differentiating their instruction as needed, while
providing additional supports, so that the students’ areas of academic weakness
do not negatively impact their learning in these “lateral” courses.
Part I also emphasized the importance of
completing, for all students with significant academic skill gaps, a
data-based problem-solving process— including diagnostic assessments to
determine the depth, breadth, and root causes of the gaps—so that needed
services, supports, instructional strategies, and interventions are accurately
identified.
_ _ _ _ _
In Part II of this
Series, we focused on the impact and implications when students have
significant skill gaps in mathematics at the secondary level. We did this by analyzing a recent article:
“Do Kids Fall Behind in Math Because There Isn’t Enough
Grade-level Material, or Because There’s Too Much? It’s Both” (published in the74).
that cited a 2018 TNTP Report, “The Opportunity
Myth.”
In their the74
article, the authors reproduced a figure from a 2012 ACT report that
longitudinally analyzed tens of thousands of students who were behind in math
in fourth versus eighth grade, respectively.
The goal was to identify—from a normative perspective—how many students academically “caught up” over a
four-year period of time.
Based on this
figure (see the original Blog):
- Students who began 4th grade “far off track,” had an 10% probability of being on grade level in 8th grade—four years later.
- Students who began 8th grade “far off track,” had an 3% probability of being on grade level in 12th grade—four years later.
From the Report, it
appears that most of the (especially) “far off track” students were receiving
Options 1 through Option 4 above. This
Report and these data simply reinforce that these Options have a low
probability of significantly improving the learning, mastery, and math
proficiency of students with significant skill gaps—in both middle and high
school.
This, at least,
puts the consideration of Option 5 “on the table”—once again, in the context of
both root cause analyses and multi-tiered systems of support.
_ _ _ _ _
The the74
article went on to reference a September 2019 Report released by the New
Classroom Innovation Partners:
“The Iceberg Problem: How Assessment and Accountability
Policies Cause Learning Gaps in Math to Persist Below the Surface . . . and
What to Do About It”
In my Blog, I described three “Key Insights”
from Report—conclusions that support the primary theses of this two-part Blog
Series.
Key Insight #1: Math is cumulative—unfinished learning from
prior years makes it harder for students to master more advanced concepts.
Key Insight #2: Current educational policies favoring
grade-level instruction (i.e., teaching students at their current grade
placements) are hindering many students’ longer-term success.
Key Insight #3:
Balancing pre-grade level, on-grade level, and post-grade level skills to each
student’s needs can better support their long-term success.
Once again, please feel free to re-read the
original Blogs to get a more detailed analysis of the Reports and summary
discussed above.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Untested and Ineffective Practices: The U.S.
Department of Education
The following Blogs
addressed how the U.S. Department of Education (and its federally-funded
National Technical Assistance Centers continue to singularly advocate
frameworks that have not been adequately field-tested and validated prior to
their recommendations. These Blogs
included discussions—with validation—showing how the U.S. Department of
Education has spent millions of taxpayer dollars in Grant Programs to validate
these frameworks—after they have largely been unsuccessful in the schools
across the country.
The U.S. Department
of Education’s Multi-Tiered System of Support (RtI/MTSS) was discussed as but
one example of this problem.
If you CLICK on
the date of the Blogs below, you will link directly to the Blog that is
posted on my website (www.projectachieve.info/blog).
Redesigning Multi-Tiered
Services in Schools: Redefining the Tiers and the Difference between
Services and Interventions
_ _ _ _ _
The Art of Doubling
Down: How the U.S. Department of Education Creates Grant Programs to Fund
and Validate its own Frameworks. Call Congress: The Tainting of
RtI, PBIS, MTSS, and SEL
_ _ _ _ _
Synopsis of these Blogs
[CLICK
HERE to Read the Entire Blog]
The first Blog here
asserted that the goal of every school across the country is to maximize the
academic and social, emotional, and behavioral progress and proficiency of
every student. Ultimately, this
translates into academic independence and social, emotional, and behavioral
self-management, respectively.
All of this is
accomplished through (a) effective and differentiated classroom instruction,
complemented with (b) positive and successful classroom management, that (c) is
delivered by highly qualified teachers who have (d) administrators,
instructional support and related services staff, and other consultants
available to support classrooms, grade-level or teaching units, and other
school programs and processes. All of
this is intended to result in students who demonstrate age-appropriate (or
beyond) independent learning and behavioral self-management skills.
While an admirable
goal, the reality is that not all students are successful even when in
effective classrooms. Indeed, some
students come to the schoolhouse door at-risk for educational failure, while
others are struggling learners who are disengaged, unmotivated, unresponsive,
underperforming, or consistently unsuccessful.
These struggles occur academically and/or as social, emotional, or
behavioral challenges. For these
students, districts and schools are required to have multi-tiered services,
supports, strategies, programs, interventions, and systems to address their
individual academic or behavioral needs.
This Blog addressed
four inter-related topics:
·
How the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act flexibly defines a “multi-tiered system of supports”—encouraging
districts and schools to create their own system to address their own student
needs;
·
What a model multi-tiered continuum could/should
look like in the academic and social, emotional, behavioral areas;
·
Why schools and districts need to
reconceptualize their systems away from the invalid framework that
relies on the percentages of students being served in each tier, and toward
a continuum that looks at the intensity of the services, supports, strategies,
and interventions needed; and
·
How services and supports need to be
discriminated from strategies and interventions so that students receive the
approaches needed to change the areas of concern and to maximize the academic
proficiency and independence, and their social, emotional, and behavioral
self-management and competence.
To expand briefly, the
U.S. Department of Education—and its various federally-funded Technical
Assistance Centers—describe their multi-tiered framework as having side-by-side
three-tiered triangles representing the interface of a school’s attention to both
academics and behavior.
The three tiers are
typically described as involving: Tier I
(Universal programming for All Students); Tier II (Selective or Group
programming for Some Students); and Tier III (Intensive or Individual
programming for Few Students).
Also associated
with the Tiers are percentages that reflect the assumption that schools will
have 80% of their students responding exclusively to Tier I approaches; 15% of
their students needing Tier II approaches; and 5% of their students needing
Tier III approaches.
Critically: There
is no research or support anywhere that has validated these percentages. . . or
even this framework of universal versus group versus individually-tiered
interventions.
In fact, from a
strategic planning perspective, if schools prepared their budgets, organized
their staffing, and allocated their resources to this “prototype of
percentages,” many schools would be woefully unprepared to address the
critical academic and behavioral needs of all of its students.
And so, this Blog
describes in detail a redesigned multi-tiered system in both the academic and
social, emotional, and behavioral domains.
At the core of this redesign is the fact that the tiers in a
multi-tiered system reflect the intensity of the services, supports,
strategies, and interventions needed by students, and that these intensities
additionally reflect the service and support resources and expertise in any
particular school or district.
From an academic
perspective, the Blog describes a multi-tiered, science-to-practice academic
instruction through intervention continuum organized as the Positive
Academic Supports and Services (PASS) model.
From a social,
emotional, and behavioral perspective, the multi-tiered, science-to-practice
instruction through intervention continuum is organized as the Positive
Behavioral Support System/Social-Emotional Learning (PBSS/SEL) model.
_ _ _ _ _
Building on the
first Blog in this cluster, the second Blog provides a history, extensive
data-based documentation, and critical analyses demonstrating that the U.S.
Department of Education (and, specifically, its Office of Special Education
Programs—OSEP) has singularly advocated for its own academic (RtI/MTSS) and
social, emotional, and behavioral (PBIS) frameworks since the late 1990s. .
. .
even though these frameworks were never extensively
field-tested and validated prior to their advocacy, and well-established
researchers and practitioners demonstrated that they were delaying services to students
and impeding their educational progress.
Critically, much of
this advocacy was funneled through a series of incestuously-linked (through
their Advisory Boards) National Technical Assistance Centers funded by the
U.S. Department of Education since 1997. The U.S. Department of Education funded these
TA Centers (a) to make it appear that their frameworks were research-based and
legitimate; (b) to beholden the research community to its singular agenda; and
(c) to influence (bias) the next generations of advanced-degree graduates in education
and psychology to their approaches.
Moreover, in the
face of independent two separate national evaluations of RtI and PBIS, commissioned
by the U.S. Department of Education, the Department threw “good money after
bad” by “doubling down” on their frameworks and issuing multi-million dollar
Requests for Proposals (RFP) to “validate” their frameworks after-the-fact.
The results of
these two separate evaluations are described in detail. And, four specific Double-Down examples are
specifically documented in RtI, MTSS, PBIS, and SEL.
Finally, the Blog
describes one specific national RFP where there was a clear appearance of a conflict
of interest in who was involved in writing the RFP, paneling the RFP, and
selecting the eventual grant recipient.
Specifically, the ultimate grant recipients had instrumental members of
their organizations involving in all three phases of the RFP process.
Beyond this, the
Blog builds on past Blogs where data and documentation have been presented to
demonstrate that the U.S. Department of Education (USDoE)—at the very least—has
given its RtI, PBIS, and MTSS frameworks preferential treatment, funding, and
funding opportunities—in the billions of dollars.
The USDoE has done
this, often through its funded National Technical Assistance (TA) Centers, in
ways where
- It has misrepresented the federal law;
- It has recommended or used only these programs in other federal grant programs—serving to extend these frameworks’ “legitimacy” and national reach;
- By default, it has ignored, minimized, or failed to similarly acknowledge other evidence-based or effective models or programs that (often) report better results than their frameworks; and
- It has done all of this as part of a conscious agenda whose goal is to “brand” their frameworks in national prominence.
Collectively. . .
The lack of success of these frameworks has
cost districts and schools millions of hours organizational and staff
development time and resources, and our country and districts millions of
dollars of taxpayer funds. . . with no real or sustained return on investment.
More important are the services, support,
programs, and interventions that academically struggling and behaviorally
challenged students have not received because of the misguided advocacy of
these frameworks.
_ _ _ _ _
Once again, please feel free to re-read the
original Blogs to get a more detailed analysis of the Reports and summary
discussed above.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _
Summary
Writer
and philosopher George Santayana said:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
For us as educators, repeating the past
sometimes means that the successes that we did not have for some students. . .
significantly impacting their futures perhaps for their entire lives.
Reframing President Kennedy’s famous quote—when
talking about landing a person on the moon for the first time, even as he knew
it would require education, training, and technology that the United States did
not have and that would transform our educational system:
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the
other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because
that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and
skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are
unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.
We have to choose a fair, equitable, and
outcomes-based education for all students, in all communities, and in all
schools.
We have to choose research-to-practice approaches
so that all students will graduate from high school with the skills needed for
college and/or career success—even if that means redesigning instructional
approaches at the secondary level for students with significant academic skill
gaps.
And we have to choose to question our “educational
leaders” and the frameworks that they advocate to ensure that they have been extensively
field-tested, independently validated, and successfully sustained.
_ _ _ _ _
As always, I appreciate your dedication in
reading and thinking deeply about these messages. As always, I am trying not just to critique
the current (and historical) state of our educational affairs across the
country, but to suggest field-tested and proven “other ways” to help us get the
student, staff, and school outcomes that we all want.
If any of you—with your school or district
team—would like to talk with me by phone, Skype, Google Hangouts, etc. about
any of these (or other school improvement, academics or student discipline, or
multi-tiered services) issues or practices, all you need to do is contact me
and get on my schedule. The first
conference call is totally free.
Meanwhile, at this Holiday Season, please accept
my best wishes for a joyous, safe, and family-filled celebration.
Until
the next Blog, be successful and well !!!
Best,
Howie
