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.

_ _ _ _ _

   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]

Closing the (Pandemic?) Reading Gap in Our Schools: We Need to Link Sound Assessment with Strategic Intervention

How One New Federal Status Report (and Three Popular Press Articles) May Lead Educators Astray

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

Dear Colleagues,

Introduction: The Newest Status Report on Students’ (Pandemic) Literacy Progress and Achievement

   While technical reports and popular press articles on students’ academic and social-emotional status are released virtually every week, it seems that those involving literacy and reading has been more prevalent the past few weeks—especially as the beginning of the new school year approaches.

   In fact, we are now receiving national data from this past year on how many students are “behind” in literacy. . . along with lots of opinions on the interventions that best “close the achievement gap.”

   Some of these national results were published this past week (August 4, 2022) by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)—the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing the data from and status of our nation’s schools.

   The NCES Report is based on information collected in June (2022) through the School Pulse Panel, an ongoing study that surveys the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic from a national sample of elementary, middle, high, and combined-grade public schools. While the study repeats some survey questions over time to analyze trends, it also asks some questions just once to get a “snapshot” in a specific area.

   In the latest series of School Pulse Panel reports, the focus has been on students’ learning recovery, summer learning, staff vacancies, COVID-19 mitigation strategies, learning modes offered by schools, and student and staff quarantine prevalence.

   This Blog will discuss only the results related to students’ learning loss and recovery.

[CLICK HERE to Link to the School Pulse Panel Reports]

   Here, the following conclusions were reported:

·    Public school leaders estimated that nearly half of their students (50%) began the 2021-22 school year behind grade level in at least one academic subject, which is 14 points higher than the percentage of students (36%) they estimated to be behind grade level in at least one academic subject at the beginning of a typical school year before the pandemic began. 

 

Of those schools that reported having students starting the 2021-22 school year behind grade level in at least one academic subject, 64% believed that the COVID-19 pandemic played a major role as to why students were behind grade level at the beginning of the 2021-22 school year.

_ _ _ _ _

 

·     Public school leaders estimated that just over one-third of their students (36%) ended the 2021-22 school year behind grade level in at least one academic subject.

_ _ _ _ _

·   Public schools enacted a variety of strategies to support pandemic-related learning recovery for their students this year, including additional instruction, assessments, and peripheral supports.  

 

The most common types of additional instruction used by public schools were remedial instruction (72%) and high-dosage tutoring (56%).

 

More than three-quarters of public schools used diagnostic (79%) and formative (76%) assessments.

 

The most common types of peripheral supports addressed student mental health and trauma (72%) and provided teacher professional development specifically focused on learning recovery (51%).

_ _ _ _ _

 

·    According to an analysis in the74, almost 90% of respondents to the NCES survey blamed continuing pandemic-related disruptions, including quarantines and staff absences, for the lack of progress (see the Figure below).

 

At the same time, according to the 74, limited efforts to ramp up tutoring programs could also be a factor even though more than half of School Pulse Panel schools reported using high-dosage tutoring to help students make up for lost learning, and many offered tutoring as part of their summer learning and enrichment programs this year. 

   The NCES survey assumes that there is hard, objective, reliable, and valid academic assessment data backing up the survey results. If used, some of this hard data is probably based on the interim or formative assessment results (e.g., from the NWEA, iReady, Renaissance STAR, or MAP tests) collected and analyzed by each school this past academic year.

   Regardless, from a national perspective, the NCES survey results confirm what has already been reported. Many of the interim/formative assessment publishers of the tools cited immediately above have published a series of statistical studies concluding that more grade-level students across the country are functioning below grade-level expectations than before the pandemic—especially in math and literacy.

   The Questions for each individual school, however, are:

·       Which specific students are functioning below grade-level expectations—for example, in literacy? 

·       How far below expectations are they, and—even more important— what literacy skills have they mastered (and at what grade level), not mastered (and at what grade level), and at what grade level are they capably decoding and reading fluently, while also comprehending text? 

·       For the students with significant skill gaps, when did these literacy struggles begin (i.e., did they pre-date the pandemic or not)?

·       For these same students, why are the gaps present (e.g., due to lack of instruction or poor curriculum, due to poor or ineffective instruction or inconsistently-delivered curriculum, due to student learning or motivational gaps, or other (or combined) reasons?

·       Based on the diagnostic and root cause assessments (as immediately above) with these same students, what are the strategic interventions needed to effectively and efficiently recalibrate their literacy learning, mastery, and proficiency?

_ _ _ _ _

   My experience in schools across the country suggests that:

·       Many schools are not diagnostically assessing the root causes to explain why individual students are significantly behind in reading/literacy; 

·       They are not comparing and contrasting these students’ pre-pandemic versus current-pandemic status and progress; and 

·       They are not linking the individual student diagnostic assessment results to multi-tiered, high probability of success strategic literacy interventions that are implemented and evaluated with appropriate levels of fidelity and intensity.

   Indeed, many schools are implementing large-scale (and often incorrect) interventions with large groups of students before ever determining the length, intensity, specificity, and root causes of their reading difficulties.

   Using a medical analogy, this is similar to medicating—before any individual diagnostic assessments— a large group of patients who have the same surface-level symptoms (e.g., a fever) with the same medication to then see which patients are still sick after “the intervention.”

   The problem is that this approach delays and/or changes the correct treatment for some patients. Hence, some may get sicker, some may become resistant to the first medication, some may experience additional medical complications, and some may die.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Literacy Gaps are not Closed by Popularity Polls or Either/Or Interventions

   Triggered by the NCES study, Education Week published an article (August 4, 2022), “Tutoring or Remediation: Which Learning Recovery Strategy Is Most Popular?”

   While the title accurately represents some of the NCES results, it is critical to note that (obviously) (a) interventions should not be based on how popular they appear or the testimonials they accrue; and (b) given the individual nature of individual student’s history, status, challenges, and psychoeducational make-up, educators should not be choosing between “one intervention or the other.”

   Among the most important points in the Education Week article are the following:

New federal data provide a glimpse into what strategies schools have used to support learning recovery, and which ones school leaders think are most effective.

 

The results show that while some research-tested models—such as intensive tutoring—have become popular, other strategies touted by prominent education groups haven’t gained as much traction. And schools report that the learning recovery methods they have been using have had mixed effects. That may partly be because both student and staff quarantines and absences continued to disrupt time in classrooms this past year, and schools reported high levels of teacher burnout.

_ _ _ _ _

 

Even so, these data show that (the most popular strategies used by) schools trying to enact academic recovery plans are: (a) Remedial instruction—in which teachers go back to prior grades’ content to teach skills or concepts that students have missed; and (b) High-dosage tutoring—one-on-one or small group instruction offered three or more times a week.

 

Among academic interventions that the NCES schools reported using, they reported high-dosage tutoring moved the needle the most: 43 percent said that the strategy was either “extremely” or “very” effective.

 

Still, that means that more than half of schools using tutoring found it only “moderately” or “slightly” effective, or not effective at all.

 

For tutoring to have the highest impact, it needs to be aligned with the rest of the instruction that students are getting throughout the day—and that’s not always the case in practice, Cato Czupryk (a vice president for practices, diagnostics, and impact at independent consulting firm TNTP) said. For example, a 3rd grade student might be working on arrays in math class but a 1st grade skill related to fluency in tutoring. “If I don’t see the connection between those two things, then they’re not going to be as effective as they could,” she said.

_ _ _ _ _

 

More popular among schools was remedial learning: going back to past years’ content. Seventy-two percent of the NCES schools said they used this strategy. This is in contrast to the 39 percent that used accelerated learning, a strategy that attempts to keep moving students forward while shoring up skills and content that they might have missed in previous grades at the same time.

 

Some states, districts, and many education advocacy organizations have promoted accelerated learning as a pandemic recovery strategy. The goal is to make sure that every student still has access to grade-level content, even if they need additional support.

 

Advocates of this approach say that it’s a way to drive equity in instruction. When students are in remedial lessons, their peers move on, widening the gap between the two groups. Studies have also found that teachers are less likely to give students of color, and particularly Black students, rigorous, grade-level work. Acceleration, its proponents say, can address both of these issues.

 

But these NCES data show that remedial instruction is more popular—and that schools rate acceleration and remediation as similarly effective.

_ _ _ _ _ 

   Once again, we hope that the NCES results are back by hard reliable and valid data. . . but this needs to be demonstrated.

   We also (as above) are concerned that some educators will interpret this article as suggesting (a) a fixed, “one-or-the-other” remedial instruction versus high-dose tutoring versus accelerated learning choice for their students and schools; (b) that decisions should be based on popularity, rather than objective data-driven proof; and (c) that these decisions should be first made on a group or cohort basis in the absence of individual student-specific diagnostic, root cause analyses.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Throwing the Baby Out With the Bath Water

   The last popular press article discussing literacy that we will review today was published last month in a well-regarded national educational publication.

   Quite honestly, I do not want to give it much attention as the main premise of this Op-Ed piece was that—in order to maximize their success—we need to systemically delay formal reading instruction until children are six or seven years old.

   Without critiquing the author and his/her background, I must state that I was unconvinced by both the arguments, and the fact that the piece did not include the actual citations of the references sprinkled within.

   However, more important is the fact that many students successfully learn to read formally at the preschool, kindergarten, and first grade levels. . . so why would we deny them that joy and privilege?

_ _ _ _ _

   At the same time, I am sensitive to the Op-Ed author’s desire to decrease the number of students who do not learn to read as quickly as others, to decrease their need for “remedial” instruction, and to decrease their feelings of failure due to standards and instruction that are often “one size fits all.”

   Critically, there are significant psychoeducational differences in students’ readiness, and speed of mastery relative to how quickly they formally learn how to read. . .

   And our educational systems do not do a good job of accommodating these individual differences.

_ _ _ _ _

   In this context, I do want to revisit a past suggestion of mine:

   That, because students learn how to read at different developmental speeds, we should not be using the “end of third grade” as the time-marker for when students should be “on grade level” in reading.

   This is especially true now due to the effects of the pandemic.

   But this was true even before the pandemic—even as many states passed (developmentally inappropriate) laws requiring students to be retained in third grade when not “proficiently” performing on grade-level in reading at that time.

   My recommendation is to move this criterion to the end of Grade 4 at the earliest, and to require—as in many states’ dyslexia regulations—diagnostic assessments for unsuccessful students by Third Grade, complemented by well-designed and implemented strategic interventions for at least two years.

   As states are currently re-evaluating and re-regulating their scientific approaches to reading instruction, this would be a perfect time to change any “Third Grade Retention” states’ regulations in this area.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Six Interdependent Blueprints for Closing the Literacy Gap

   For those who follow this Blog, you know that I always pair my critiques of different psychoeducational policies, practices, and procedures with proven, evidence-based approaches that I have field-tested and demonstrated as successful in my nationwide school consultations over the past 40 years.

   For today, I am going to refer back and reference a Blog that I wrote on March 14, 2020 titled,

Underachieving, Unresponsive, Unsuccessful, Disabled, and Failing Readers. Diagnostic Assessment Must Link to Intervention: If We Don’t Know “Why,” We Can’t Know “What”

[CLICK HERE to Link]

   This Blog describes in detail six interdependent evidence-based Blueprints that are instrumental in helping schools to close students’ literacy gaps. . . whether they existed before or due to the pandemic (or to determine which one is which).

   These Blueprints are:

·       Blueprint 1: The Principles Underlying Effective Educational Policy 

·       Blueprint 2: A Psychoeducational Science-to-Practice Blueprint for Effective Literacy Instruction and Multi-Tiered Services and Supports 

·       Blueprint 3: Understanding the Instructional Environment and Its Contribution to Student Reading Proficiency 

·       Blueprint 4. The Data-based Problem-Solving Blueprint for Struggling and Failing Readers 

·       Blueprint 5. The Seven High-Hit Reasons Why Students Struggling or Fail in Reading 

·       Blueprint 6: The Multi-tiered Positive Academic Supports and Services Continuum

   While I encourage everyone to read the original Blog, let me detail Blueprint 6 as I believe it is particularly pertinent to the current Blog’s discussion of the NCES Report and the three articles reviewed above.

Blueprint 6: The Positive Academic Supports and Services (PASS) Continuum

     Grounded by effective, differentiated classroom instruction, Universal Design for Learning strategies, and well-designed progress monitoring and evaluation, the Positive Academic Supports and Services (PASS) continuum identifies services, supports, strategies, interventions, and programs—at different, student-needed levels of intensity—to address the root causes when students are struggling or failing to master different facets of literacy.

   The PASS continuum consists of the following (see also the Figure below):

·       Assistive Supports

·       Remediation

·       Accommodation

·       Curricular Modification

·       Targeted Intervention

·       Compensation

   These instruction- and intervention-related components are briefly described below.

 

   Assistive Supports involve specialized equipment, technologies, medical/physical devices, and other resources that help students, especially those with significant disabilities, to learn and function—for example, physically, behaviorally, academically, and in all areas of communication.  Assistive supports can be used anywhere along the PASS continuum.

   Remediation involves strategies that teach students specific, usually prerequisite, skills to help them master broader curricular, scope and sequence, or benchmark objectives.

   Accommodations change conditions that support student learning—such as the classroom setting or set-up, how and where instruction is presented, the length of instruction, the length or timeframe for assignments, or how students are expected to respond to questions or complete assignments. Accommodations can range from the informal ones implemented by a classroom teacher to the formal accommodations required by and specified on a 504 Plan (named for the federal statute that covers these services).

   Modifications involve changes in curricular content—its scope, depth, breadth, or complexity. 

_ _ _ _ _

   Remediations, accommodations, and modifications typically are implemented in general education classrooms by general education teachers, although they may involve consultations with other colleagues or specialists to facilitate effective implementation.  At times, these strategies may be implemented in “pull-out,” “pull-in,” or co-taught instructional skill groups so that larger groups of students with the same needs can be helped. 

   If target students do not respond to the strategically-chosen approaches within these three areas, or if their needs are more significant or complex, approaches from the next two PASS areas may be needed:

   Strategic Interventions focus on changing students’ specific academic skills or strategies, their motivation, or their ability to comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize, or evaluate academic content and material.  Strategic Interventions typically involve multidisciplinary assessments, as well as formal Academic Intervention or Individualized Education plans (AIPs or IEPs). 

   Compensatory Approaches help students to compensate for disabilities that cannot be changed or overcome (e.g., being deaf, blind, or having physical or central nervous system/neurological disabilities).  Often combined with assistive supports, compensatory approaches help students to accomplish learning outcomes, even though they cannot learn or demonstrate specific skills within those outcomes.  For example, for students who will never learn to decode sounds and words due to neurological dysfunctions, the compensatory use of audio or web-based instruction and (electronic) books can still help them to access information from text and become knowledgeable and literate.  Both assistive supports and compensatory approaches are “positive academic supports” that typically are provided through IEPs.

_ _ _ _ _

   Critically, there are numerous components and strategies embedded in each of the components (and Blueprints) above. Only through a comprehensive professional development experience—that includes using real case studies to demonstrate how to link assessment to specific multi-tiered services, supports, strategies, and interventions—can school personnel truly learn, build, and sustain the skill and capacity needed to address the different levels of academically struggling students.

   Beyond this, while there is a sequential nature to the components within the PASS continuum, it is a strategic and fluid—not a lock-step—blueprint.  That is, the supports and services are utilized based on students’ needs and the intensity of these needs. 

   For example, if reliable and valid assessments indicate that a student needs immediate accommodations to be successful in the classroom, then there is no need to implement remediations or modifications just to “prove” that they were not successful.  In addition, there are times when students will receive different supports or services on the continuum simultaneously.  Indeed, some students will need both modifications and assistive supports in order to be successful.  Thus, the supports and services within the PASS are strategically applied to individual students.

   Beyond this, while it is most advantageous to deliver needed supports and services within the general education classroom (i.e., the least restrictive environment), other instructional options could include co-teaching (e.g., by general and special education teachers in a general education classroom), pull-in services (e.g., by instructional support or special education teachers in a general education classroom), short-term pull-out services (e.g., by instructional support teachers focusing on specific academic skills and outcomes), or more intensive pull-out services (e.g., by instructional support or special education teachers).  These staff and setting decisions are based on the intensity of students’ skill-specific needs, their response to previous instructional or intervention supports and services, and the level of instructional or intervention expertise needed.

   Ultimately, the intervention goal is to provide students with early, intensive, and successful services and supports that are identified through a data-based problem-solving process, and implemented with needed integrity and intensity.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Summary

   The August 4, 2022 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) School Pulse Panel report provides survey results quantifying how many students ended the just-past school year with academic skill gaps. This confirms what has already been reported by many of the interim/formative assessment publishers of tools like the NWEA, iReady, Renaissance STAR, or the MAP.

   Rather than “chasing symptoms” and moving prematurely to “intervention,” this Blog recommends that every school first ask the following questions:

·       Which specific students are functioning below grade-level expectations—for example, in literacy? 

·       How far below expectations are they, and—even more important—what literacy skills have they mastered (and at what grade level), not mastered (and at what grade level), and at what grade level are they capably decoding and reading fluently, while also comprehending text? 

·       For the students with significant skill gaps, when did these literacy struggles begin (i.e., did they pre-date the pandemic or not)? 

·       For these same students, why are the gaps present (e.g., due to lack of instruction or poor curriculum, due to poor or ineffective instruction or inconsistently-delivered curriculum, due to student learning or motivational gaps, or other (or combined) reasons? 

·       Based on the diagnostic and root cause assessments (as immediately above) with these same students, what are the strategic interventions needed to effectively and efficiently recalibrate their literacy learning, mastery, and proficiency?

_ _ _ _ _

      These questions are important because, in our experience:

·       Many schools are not diagnostically assessing the root causes to explain why individual students are significantly behind in reading/literacy; 

·       They are not comparing and contrasting these students’ pre-pandemic versus current-pandemic status and progress; and 

·       They are not linking the individual student diagnostic assessment results to multi-tiered, high probability of success strategic literacy interventions that are implemented and evaluated with appropriate levels of fidelity and intensity.

   In fact, many schools are implementing large-scale (and often incorrect) interventions with large groups of students before ever determining the length, intensity, specificity, and root causes of their reading difficulties.

   Based on our critique of three related articles, we additionally note that (a) literacy interventions should not be based on how popular they appear or the testimonials they accrue; and (b) given the individual nature of individual student’s history, status, challenges, and psychoeducational make-up, educators should not be choosing between one intervention (e.g., remedial instruction versus high-dose tutoring versus accelerated learning) or the other for school-wide implementation. 

   Finally, we stress that there are significant psychoeducational differences in students’ readiness and speed of mastery relative to how quickly they formally learn how to read. . . and that schools need to have the differentiated, instructional flexibility to accommodate to these differences—rather than deliver a “one size fits all” program and intervention process.

   In this context, we recommended that states (and district and schools) not use an “end of third grade” time-marker for when students should be “on grade level” in reading. Indeed, we suggest, especially as they introduce and implement new laws or regulations for dyslexia and (separately) to ensure more scientifically-based literacy instruction, that states change existing statutes that require students to be retained in third grade when not “proficiently” performing on grade-level in reading at that time.

   In fact, our recommendation is to move this criterion to the end of Grade 4 at the earliest, and to require—as in many states’ current dyslexia regulations—diagnostic assessments for unsuccessful students by third grade, complemented by well-designed and implemented strategic interventions for at least two years.

   Relative to these strategic interventions, we referenced six interdependent evidence-based Blueprints— from a previous, linked Blog—that are instrumental in helping schools close students’ literacy gaps... whether due to or existing before the pandemic. We then provided details on Blueprint 6 which involves a multi-tiered continuum of literacy services, supports, strategies, and interventions for struggling students.

   The six interdependent Blueprints are:

·       Blueprint 1: The Principles Underlying Effective Educational Policy 

·       Blueprint 2: A Psychoeducational Science-to-Practice Blueprint for Effective Literacy Instruction and Multi-Tiered Services and Supports

·       Blueprint 3: Understanding the Instructional Environment and Its Contribution to Student Reading Proficiency

·       Blueprint 4. The Data-based Problem-Solving Blueprint for Struggling and Failing Readers

·       Blueprint 5. The Seven High-Hit Reasons Why Students Struggling or Fail in Reading

·       Blueprint 6: The Multi-tiered Positive Academic Supports and Services Continuum

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

   I hope that this Blog has provided helpful information on how to effectively conceptualize the closing-the-gap literacy instruction needed in today’s schools—especially addressing students who are underachieving, unresponsive, unsuccessful, disabled, and failing.

   Clearly, this is a complex area of education, instruction, and intervention.

   But that’s the point. Too many are over-simplifying this complexity, and the result has been the continued failure of thousands of students who are being retained, not mastering essential literacy skills, and/or graduating (or dropping out of) high school as functional illiterates.

   I appreciate, as always, the time that you invest in reading these Blogs, and your dedication to your students, your colleagues, and the educational process.

   Please feel free to send me your thoughts and questions. 

   And please know that I continue to work with new schools and districts across the country as much as my schedule permits. If interested, send me an e-mail, and let’s set up an initial Zoom consultation.

Best,

Howie

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