Over at Eduwonk, Andy Rotherham posts a pair slides of 7th-grade writing assignments from two different middle schools in California, culled from a presentation by Ed Trust. In the first, students are asked to submit a detailed character analysis of Anne Frank; the second asks students to write about “my best friend” or “a chore I hate.” The point is stark and obvious. ”When you hear people talk about the expectations gap, this is the sort of thing they are talking about,” Rotherham writes.
Would that it were so simple as “raising expectations.” In the comments section, the smart and fiery John Thompson, an occasional contributor to this blog, describes a disappointing exercise at his Oklahoma City high school similar to the one posted by Eduwonk, and gets to the heart of the empty slogan that is “high expectations.”
Had it been done as a wake-up call, and a first step towards raising standards, it would have been constructive. Had they asked why some teachers wrongly lowered standards too much, making class dull, it would have been a great professional development tool. Had they addressed the extreme classroom disruptions in neighborhood 7th grade classes that make it virtually impossible to do more than busywork, it would have been a contructive excercise….But our district leaders had the the same visceral response as you seem to be having, and mandated immediate and much much higher standards. Instantly, many core teachers were intimidated into teaching five years above the students reading level, and failure rates soared to 95% in some. The dropout rate exploded and the distrcit immediately abandoned the experiment.
“The reality is so shameful, when administrators/lobbyists with no relevant experience in the classroom come in contact with it, they have no idea how complex the problem is,” writes Thompson. ”Then when the consultants offer the simple and free solution of just “raise expectations,” the blame and shame game takes over, and the students are hurt even more.”
In my own comments on Eduwonk, I point out that curriculum is an undiscussed piece of the “high expectations” dodge. To John’s point, students don’t just show up in middle school five years behind their higher-achieving peers. You can’t feed kids a thin gruel of content-free, “self-directed” reading and writing for their entire academic career and then expect them to suddenly be able to write a nuanced character study of Anne Frank in the 7th grade. You can’t ask kids to do “self-directed” writing about their family, their friends and their personal experiences throughout elementary school to the exclusion of nearly all else, then expect them to dazzle you with their insights into literature in middle school.
The policy community, alas, continues to be nearly silent on curriculum, focusing instead on incentives, “teacher quality,” and other structual issues. Read Eduwonk’s post and the responses. May I humbly submit that the time has long since come to a) start looking at what students are actually being taught and, b) listening to teachers?
Hi Robert,
What do you mean by listen to teachers in this context?
Cheers, Mike
Hi Robert,
Who is supposed to look at what students are taught and who is supposed to listen to teachers?
And how is that information supposed to translate into quality student learning?
I could write a book about what that means Mike. But in this specific context, it means giving teachers a voice in policy, and taking their input seriously rather assuming that everything that comes out of a teacher’s mouth is an excuse. Too often, I fear, people outside the classroom proceed from the assumption that if something has gone wrong, the teacher has screwed up, they’re not data-driven, clinging to outmoded practices or [your pet solution here]. “Teaching for high expectations” is a classic example. It is possible for two different teachers to go to work in the morning, both believing they are teaching for high expectations, earnestly doing so, and delivering two completely different student experiences. And they might both be right, based on how they were trained and how expectations were set for them as teachers. My rant on curriculum is of a piece with that. There were a lot a well-paid, highly educated people in and out of my elementary school every day telling me that history, science, geography, music and art were at best luxuries we didn’t have time for until kids could read, and at worst “trivial pursuit” that wouldn’t help kids become “critical thinkers.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but it gets a little tedious damaging children for a living in the name of high expectations. It was literally impossible to teach to my definition of high expectations. And the educational malpractice that had been inflicted on the majority of my kids for ten years made it pretty obvious I wasn’t going to get to it in ten months anyway. Think that’s an excuse? Them’s fightin’ words.
As John’s example shows, you can’t get in high dudgeon about low expectations and expect students who are five years behind to suddenly perform competently merely because you read the staff the riot act about expectations. It’s sound and fury, signifying nothing.
In a broader context, listeing to teachers to me also means not assuming that every problem that walks into a classroom can be fixed by a teacher. And, speaking personally, it might mean coming up, every now and then, policy prescriptions (merit pay comes to mind here) that don’t proceed from the assumption that teachers are sandbagging — that we know how to close the achievement gap and for a few thousand bucks in ransom, we’ll do it. Accountability measures that shed as much light as heat would be nice, too.
For me, it would also mean stop telling me how to teach. Hold me accountable by giving me a curriculum, and judging me on how well students understand it at the end of June. If I stink, you won’t need to worry about due process and union rules. If I don’t break rocks, no one will need to tell me to find another line of work. I’ll have come to that conclusion on my own before anyone else.
Erin, I’m not ignoring you but I’m not going to refight the national standards/curriculum battle. For all their faults that you articulate well and passionately, I’m still in favor of them. I’m tired of making the perfect the enemy of the good.
Robert,
By coincidence, yesterday I just started to define the word “genocide,” and a sophomore volunteered a comment about Ann Frank. When something like that happens, you have to make a big deal out of it, and also find out if there are any others who have some background info. So, you are absolutely right about the “thin gruel.”
But you’ve also made comments on discipline that tell me that you also agree that it is a prerequisite. Isn’t that inherent in replacing the gruel with a balanced and hearty stew? It takes a lot of different inputs to turn things around.
Keeping with the theme of needing straw to make bricks, and knowledge to teach critical thinking, etc., how much background knowledge does it take for a high school student to understand Obama’s policy statements? I just got a transfer from a magnet school who has that much greater background, and she was the one who asked what the word “wise” means? It reminded me of how many times that I use the same simple phrase “smart choice” and how I now need to work the more advanced term into my routine.
So, in regard to implementing a Core Knowledge or a similar curriculum in elementary school, it makes sense to me. I try to stay out of elementary issues though. For me, I’m still asking whether I’ve been turning out students who understand the words: genocide, feudalism, colonialism and the multiplier effect, but don’t know the word “wise.” I think I need to incorporate the term “wise ass” into my curriculum.
I will confess to having somewhat draconian opinions about student discipline, which I try not to talk about in public, lest polite people stop inviting me to dinner parties. Suffice it to say I think it’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room that no one talks about. Until we fix it (and, no, saying if every teacher was highly qualified and delivered engaging instruction we’d solve the problem) we’re in mud up to our axles with no towtruck in sight. Without the right learning environment nothing — literally, nothing — will work.
John, you need to speak up about elementary school, not stay out of it. If we don’t do our job K-8, how can we expect you to perform miracles? Or maybe you’re just another one of those broken bat, sand-bagging excuse makers!
Robert, I agree with not making the perfect with the enemy of the good. But shouldn’t the good be (at least some) improvements in student learning? How do you do that without improving classroom instruction?
Does the state tell a surgeon how to operate, the accountant how to add numbers, or the lawyer how to argue in court? As a teacher I have no problem being told what to teach. The soul of my professional practice is in determining how best to do so.
Robert,
Get out of that rocking chair of old cliches from a dead sport and help me draft our new elementary curriculum, “Be a Wise Ass, not a Smart Ass.” Lets start with the vocabulary building blocks for real trash talking on the BB court.
It is so nice to hear two teachers who think akin to me. Like you, John and Robert, I’m dismayed when I hear people talk as if the system’s main problems are lazy teachers, unions, insufficiently-motivating lessons, etc. Chatting, slouching, undisciplined students are a massive drag on educational efficiency in this country. And the lack of a solid k-12 curriculum prevents us from furnishing young brains with the matter WITH WHICH to think critically. To illustrate how solid content-teaching engenders critical thinking: recently in my 7th grade world history class we were talking about the spread of Islam across North African and how Muslims, while tolerant of “peoples of the book”, were less keen on pagans. The girl asked, “If that’s so, then did the Arabs force the Egyptians to give up their religion, since they had all those gods like Osiris?” I said, “Kaitlyn, that’s the brainiest questions I’ve heard all year!” Think about what she did: she took some facts acquired in 6th grade ancient history (our 6th grade teachers do an admirable job) and used them to analyze some facts she was acquiring in her 7th grade class. Had she not learned those odious, dead, disconnected facts, she would never have produced such a bright and shining feat of critical thinking.
Many Teachers in NYC public schools must periodically assess themselves using the “Continuum of Teacher Development” published by the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. You rate yourself as “beginning,” “emerging,” “applying,” “integrating,” or “innovating” in six categories and various subcategories. The rubric is obviously process-oriented and biased. Here’s an example:
In the category “Engaging and Supporting All Students in Learning,” the third subcategory is “Facilitating learning experiences that promote autonomy, interaction, and choice.” The rubric reads:
Beginning: Directs learning experiences though whole group and individual work with possibilities for interaction and choice.
Emerging: Varies learning experiences to include work in large groups and small groups, with student choice within learning activities.
Applying: Provides learning experiences utilizing individual and group structures to develop autonomy and group participation skills. Students make choices about and within their work.
Integrating: Uses a variety of learning experiences to assist students in developing independent working skills and group participation skills. Supports students in making appropriate choices for learning.
Innovating: Integrates a variety of challenging learning experiences that develop students’ independent learning, collaboration, and choice.
First of all, there’s the flawed assumption that all teachers of all grades and all subjects should “promote autonomy, interaction, and choice.” Then there’s the judgment that you’re a “beginner” if you mainly use a whole group structure and only put limited emphasis on interaction and choice. Some of my best and most brilliant teachers would have been deemed “beginners” for their entire careers.
There are many more examples of bias in this “continuum.” It makes no allowance for disagreement with its assumptions. It is silly in too many ways to enumerate, but it goes beyond silly. It explains in part why many children don’t get beyond the “me” of learning.
Diana Senechal
But isn’t forcing teachers to adhere to a highly detailed standard curriculum micromanaging them as well? We allow physicians and lawyers wide latitude to do their jobs as they deem best.
I’m on my 4th pediatrician in 6 years due to a combination of moves and switching health insurers. Each of them has done things somewhat differently based on his/her professional judgment. While different groups like the CDC or the American Academy of Pediatrics make recommendations, there’s no one set of mandatory standards that the government forces doctors to follow.
You’re confusing ways and means. Specialization is part of professional practice. If you want to teach decoding and number sense, teach kindergarten. If Ancient Egypt and multiplication are your thing teach third grade. Shakespeare? Here’s an 11th grade English class. To let the teacher choose the subjects to be covered is tantamount to allowing them to play dice with a child’s education. The gaps and redundancies are bad enough, but more often than not we deal with that by teaching no content whatsoever (content doesn’t matter, don’t you know? I’m teaching critical thinking skills and learning to learn. The content is just a mere vehicle.)
Your analogy doesn’t ring true, CW, because while you may have seen different doctors, with different methods, they were all practicing the same specialty of medicine. The OB/GYM doesn’t come in one morning and say, “You know what? I feel like doing cardiac surgery today.” Likewise, a 4th grade teacher should be able to practice whatever pedagogical method that’s effective, as long as they’re teaching the 4th grade curriculum.
Robert, The surgeon, the lawyer and the accountant are very constrained by state/federal laws. So yes, they are constrained in a huge part of their practice, but within those very defined, very prescriptive constraints left to their own professional judgment. Their professionalism and the constraints imposed by the government is in large part, is the reason that they are trusted by the public.
CW, We do not allow wide latitude by our doctors/pediatricians. If they do not adhere to best practices they are open to lawsuits. It may feel like it from a patient point of view, but every doctor will only prescibe the truly vetted solutions. Within the options of equal treatments, doctors are given some leeway, but not much. If the same idea was applied to education, then only proven pedogogies/teaching techiques/curricula would be used to avoid educational malpractice lawsuits.
The doctor/lawyer analogy has a problem that never gets brought up (that I have seen, anyway): doctors see their patients one on one, and lawyers see their clients one on one. Teachers, by contrast, see their students one on twenty-five, one on thirty.
What difference does this make? Much pedagogical dogma is preoccupied with the social nature of teaching. Teachers should break students into small groups, give them a task, and circulate. Teachers should have students use “Accountable Talk” with each other at all times, and create multiple opportunities for such talk. And so forth. If you happen to think that learning should be just a little less social and more contemplative, you won’t find sypathy in ed courses or PDs. “Learning noise” is in. “Learning quiet?” Who ever heard of that?
Consider, also, the principle of “differentiation.” Doctors and lawyers base their actions on their patients’ or clients’ varying needs. But unless they are on the battlefield, they still deal with people one on one. Teachers are told they must “differentiate” instruction: not only must the students work in groups, but they should be doing different things in those groups, and the teacher should be able to give reasons for those differences.
Much of what we are told to do has to do with the group. If we taught our students one on one, our professions would be closer to those of the doctor or lawyer. The dominant ideology in the schools treats small group interaction as sacrosanct, and makes the lesson serve it. Teachers who disagree are simply told they’re wrong, although there’s no proof that all this noise would help a student understand a nuanced text.
Diana Senechal
Learning noise??!? Oh. Dear. God. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Diana, you raise two excellent points: first, about how contemporary thought in pedagogy is really the enemy of achievement (unless of course you think of schooling as a never-ending process aimed at socialization, which I don’t) and the orthodoxy of pedagogical thought. Your post reminds me of a moment that occurred, like the movie Groundhog’s Day, over and over again, during my grad school classes. When I would raise questions about classroom environments and ask how all this group work, jigsawing, etc. was helping students learn (”socializing the learning” was the buzzphrase at the time), I was invariably told, “Well, we know so much more about how children learn now.
“Oh,” I always thought to myself. “So that’s why test scores are going through the roof.”
Robert,
I think you went a little too far in your response to the Crimson Wife. If nothing else, think of the bench you would need to specialize to the point where prospective teachers who are expert in Shakespeare have to teach in the 11th grade.
But look what I’ve done! I started with a baseball cliche! You’re having a bad influence on me already, but that’s nothing compared to the pontificating your talking me into in regard to elementary issues. I visualize K-8th curriculum as needing many more Core Knowledge schools, and other types of schools that accept the Core Knowledge balanced principles.
Diane hit a home run with her reminder that teachers are different in handling 25 to 30 or more clients at once. Then as usual she provides subtle and profound explanations. I’ll over-simplify and focus on one of her points. Avoid unforced errors. Get rid of the silly commitment to differientiation. Differientiation is important and its part of the job, but the theorists have taking it beyond the rationality. And like she has said, attempts at full differientiation have got to be crucial in contributing to teacher burnout.
Ordinarily I laugh when the theorists embrace “learning noise,” “mulitasking,” or giving teachers electronic assistance so they can hear their students over the din and the student who is being addressed (in a differientiated environment) can hear her. But NPR was describing the cognitive reasons why multitasking the way we do it now is a bad idea when I retired cop said that he’d multitask by using his computer while driving his patrol car (presumably not stopping at red lights either)!
I’d been meaning to respond to the previous post on charters and “reform.” Yes, the Rightwing is celebrating their victories from one end of Deliverance Country to the other. From the southern Applachians to the Quachitas, they can celebrate Change! Teddy Roosevelt correctly called Oklahoma a “zoolological garden of cranks,” but Oklahoma will not reject our resident grown-up, Secretary of Education Sandy Garrett. Sure she has to make so many compromises that nobody is completely thrilled, but she’s the latest of our progressives who uses smoke and mirrors to keep us from becoming Mississippi. The Republicans who that Center praised as reformers have a simple guiding principle, what Would Jesus Do?” He would ban Charles Darwin’s ideas from schools. He would impose Social Darwinism on the schools and every other facet of civilization.
Oklahoma progressives say “thank God for Mississippi” so we’re not always last, but soon we can also say “thank God for Kentucky and Tennessee.” And if you extend the Core Knowledge to high school, that phrase (which is also used in Arkansas and Alabama and the other cutting edges of Change) has to be a part of the curriculum.
John, I was unclear in my point about specialization. I’m not suggesting elementary school teachers must specialize. I was merely suggesting that if you have a burning desire to teach a subject — say, Shakespeare, geometry or physics, then professionally you should steer yourself to a grade and classroom where it’s appropriate, rather than incorporate it into your elementary school classroom (at the expense of other subjects in a core curriculum) as a matter of personal preference.
Without this structure — as your experience teaching high school attests — students will end up with yawning gaps in their background knowledge. I’m all for letting teachers present material how they wish, provided they do so responsibly and effectively. But I do think all children benefit from being exposed to a broad, established body of background knowledge that sets them up for success in high school and beyond.
Differentiation. Goodness, where to begin. I’ll confess I’m an unabashed tracking fan as a teacher. It’s simply more efficient to teach kids who are on the same level, and I was never able to escape the sense that differentiation cheats the advanced students. I’m not discounting that there are master teachers who can effectively differentiate, but as a practical matter, our nation’s classrooms are not filled to the brim with master teachers. Ability tracking would increase new teacher competence quickly. I also wonder if studies have been done on the achievement rates (no, not just reading scores) of top performing children in hetereogeneous classes vs. homogeneous. In high needs schools it seems beyond question that high achievers are viewed as finished products and starved for oxygen.
“I also wonder if studies have been done on the achievement rates (no, not just reading scores) of top performing children in hetereogeneous classes vs. homogeneous.”
One would need to use an assessment with a much higher ceiling than standard grade-level tests in order to determine whether this is the case. Many bright students are going to ceiling out on a grade-level test no matter how well or poorly they’ve been taught.
Anecdotally, I have a bunch of friends from college who were extremely bright but who struggled in their classes due to the weak preparation they had received at their high schools. The ones I knew who had attended prep schools or elite public schools did not strike me as appreciably smarter than the others, but they found the college classes to be much easier due to their strong academic foundation.
The policy community, alas, continues to be nearly silent on curriculum, focusing instead on incentives, “teacher quality,” and other structural issues.
You can say that again.
And again and again.
I will confess to having somewhat draconian opinions about student discipline, which I try not to talk about in public, lest polite people stop inviting me to dinner parties.
You can say that one again, too!
The discipline issue is major, and appears to be a large part of the reason why middle class family finances have become so precarious.
Here is Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the oversight panel dealing with the federal bailout, on the subject of classroom discipline, school quality, and family finances:
The rise in housing costs has become a family problem. Home prices have grown across the board (particularly in larger urban areas), but the brunt of the price increases have fallen on families with children. Our analysis shows that the median home value for the average childless couple increased by 26 percent between 1984 and 2001—-an impressive rise in less than twenty years. (Again, these and all other figures are adjusted for inflation.) For married couples with children, however, housing prices shot up 78 percent during this period—three times faster. To put this in dollar terms, in 1984 the average married couple with young children owned a house worth $72,000. Less than twenty years later, a similar family bought a house worth $128,000—-an increase of more than $50,000. The growing costs made a big dent in the family budget, as monthly mortgage costs made a similar jump, despite falling interest rates….
Why would the average parent spent so much money on a home?
[snip]
For many parents, the answer came down to two words so powerful that families would pursue them to the brink of bankruptcy: safety and education. Families put Mom to work, used up the family’s economic reserves, and took on crushing debt loads in sacrifice to these twin gods, all in the hope of offering their children the best possible start in life.
The best possible start begins with good schools, but parents are scrambling to find those schools. Even politicians who can’t agree on much of anything agree that there is a major problem in Amercia’s public schools. In the 2000 election campaign, for example, presidential candidates from both political parties were tripping over each other to promote their policies for new educational programs.
[snip]
Everyone has heard the all-too-familiar news stories about kids who can’t read, gang violence in the schools, classrooms without textbooks, and drug dealers at the school doors. For the most part, the problems aren’t just about flawed educational policies; they are also depicted as the evils associated with poverty. Even President Bush (who didn’t exactly run on a Help-the-Poor platform) focused on helping “failing” schools, which, by and large, translates into help for schools in the poorest neighborhoods.
So what does all this have to do with educating middle-class children, most of whom have been lucky enough to avoid the worst failings of the public school system? The answer is simple—-money. Failing schools impose an enormous cost on those children who are forced to attend them, but they also inflict an enormous cost on those who don’t.
source: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers & Fathers Are Going Broke by Elizabeth Warren & Amelia Warren Tyagi
http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Elizabeth-Warren/dp/0465090907/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product”
Failing schools impose an enormous cost on those children who are forced to attend them, but they also inflict an enormous cost on those who don’t.
For years now, all over the country, families have been buying houses they can’t afford because the wealthier the town, the better the the schools (in theory).
Regardless of whether the curriculum and instruction are better, parents count on the classroom discipline being better.
Chatting, slouching, undisciplined students are a massive drag on educational efficiency in this country.
Absolutely – but the question is: why are students slouching & undisciplined?
The usual answer is: bad parents.
However, the same child can be slouching and undisciplined in one setting, energized & focused in another.
I’ve seen this with our move to a Jesuit high school.
On parent-teacher conference day I talked to one of the other new moms, who said she’d just been to a conference with a teacher who had said her son was “very energetic.”
Then he went on to say a lot of other nice things about the boy.
She told me, “I wanted to ask him, ‘Are we talking about the same child?’ My son has no energy. I call him my Southern child because he’s so laid back.”
[I don't mean to offend folks by this reference to laid-back Southerners & nor did this mom; she was alluding to a regional difference between New York/New Jersey & the South, but could just as well have been talking about New Jersey versus central IL, where I'm from originally]
I told her, “It’s the school.”
My own 14-year old, here at home, has been so low-energy it’s been worrisome.
Now that he’s enrolled in a Jesuit high school, his energy has soared.
The school is serious, intense, and fun — all the kids are revved up by their days at this school.
High joy/high discipline.
That’s the formula that works.