The Need for Recognition

Our efforts to improve public education have created a focus on results and a reliance on technology.  We now use sophisticated ways to track learning; our students’ scores on national, state, and local assessments are warehoused in systems that follow them through their educational experience.  Cutting edge technology helps us deliver a national curriculum, evaluate our effectiveness, and prepare students for the 21^st century. We use a variety of data as evidence of our progress.

However well-intentioned these reform efforts, they have resulted in unintended consequences. As our attention shifted to results and technology, we lost focus on the only critical components of education: our young people and their educators. They have become invisible. If our efforts are to be successful, we must begin at a personal and individual level. We must recognize our students and teachers.

In this sense recognition does not refer to praise or reward for some behavior. Recognition is instead seeing the value of another person, acknowledging that person as "one of us."  When we are recognized, we see ourselves as a valued part of a collective action. Without this recognition, we find it difficult to see ourselves as part of a greater whole. 

In order to move forward, we must recognize those for whom these extraordinary reform efforts are designed to serve.  Moving students and their teachers to the forefront of any and all educational initiatives is the only way.

We must say to them in actions and in words, “I see you.”

Social Emotional Health Creates Readiness for the Core

When a new initiative is being introduced into a system, most of the efforts focus on planning, training, implementation, and evaluation. The Common Core, an initiative on a level never before seen in educational reform efforts, shares this focus. For several years we have anticipated the implementation with curriculum development and educator training. We are making progress toward meeting the technology capacity needed in every school. Lately, the discussion is moving toward the assessments based on the Core.

What is often missing in the design of reform efforts is readiness. Despite the capacity needed on so many levels for the successful implementation of the Core, readiness is a critical first step.

Readiness goes beyond the capacity building, and instead refers to the school climate and group norms that must be in place before the implementation occurs. The climate must be a safe and positive environment conducive to learning. The development of norms among educators is just as vital as those developed within individual classrooms with students.

The Core requires deep levels of discourse and collaboration that can only occur when there is a sufficient level of trust among students, between students and teachers, and among educators in a school building.

By tending to the social and emotional health of our school buildings now, we will create and strengthen both our school climates and our relationships. In doing so, we will have achieved a readiness necessary for successful implementation of the Core.

"Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success." ~Henry Ford

Social Emotional Health at the Core of the Common Core

While the push for academic content standards continues at a constant rate and with a looming launch date, the social emotional health of our children must be at the forefront of this initiative in order for the implementation of the Common Core to be successful and to make the  greatest difference.

The Common Core standards assume a level of social skill ability that cannot be ignored. Before the Core is in our classrooms, we must first be sure that our students are ready for this substantive change on an emotional and social level.

Some educators are overwhelmed at the thought of having students perform at the high level required of them by the Common Core. One way to shift perspectives to a proactive stance is to tend to social emotional needs now and make it a part of every moment in the classroom.

Teaching students to become better decision makers, increase their self-awareness, and develop strong and healthy relationships will help them in all aspects of their lives, including their initiation to and success with the Common Core.

Social emotional learning "is not adding to your plate. It is the plate." —Dr. Ed Dunkelblau from the

Institute for Emotionally Intelligent Learning

Shovel-Ready Bullet Points 101

In a recent Ed Week blog post, Nancy Flanagan urges her fellow teachers to speak up and offer their perspective on the Common Core. She encourages them to develop salient ideas, and then asks teachers, "Can you put them into shovel-ready bullet points, for the limited attention span of your average legislator?"

Having teachers weigh in the Common Core is so needed, after all they are the first-order Core users. The much-needed voice of the teacher has been almost absent from the Common Core policy making table. Even as the weight of  educator accountability evolved to the misguided connection between standardized assessment scores and teacher quality, the public has so rarely heard from the teacher. Even as conventional wisdom seemed to turn on the teacher, and as teacher unions were dismissed as self-serving, the teacher voice is missing.

One explanation, and one that I have heard most often, is that teachers are so busy doing the thing they know and do best that they have no time to engage in policy conversations. In a vacuum teachers might spend every waking hour improving their practice to increase student learning; however, our teachers live in the real world. They interact with the public. They are family members, they are friends, and they are neighbors. They are not silent, but we have yet to hear their voice.

This silence has been so difficult to understand. Teachers are rarely, if ever, without a perspective on what is happening outside their classroom or without a prediction on how it plays inside the classroom. They understand the political nature of schools. Teachers know that almost everything they do, from the curriculum they deliver to the contracts they negotiate, is heavily influenced by the greater political environment. It is in their best professional interest to aware of and well-versed in the current atmosphere. Most teachers understand that holiday dinners and friend/family gatherings provide yet another opportunity to tease out the complex state of education to interested parties. Teachers stand ready and able to provide impromptu performances like these. Where have their voices been?

I began to think of "shovel-ready bullet points" in a different way. I started to wonder whether the short attention span and the language barrier of our policy makers were at the core of this perceived silence. Teachers have not been silent; teachers have been speaking in their native tongue.

If our teachers, those who feel the impact of the Common Core first and most profoundly, are to weigh in on the Common Core, they make a commitment. They must first combine their knowledge, experience and insight into a nugget or two of wisdom. Then, they must translate this wisdom into a simple language that our policy makers identify as their own.

The language of our policy makers frowns upon complete sentences, has no patience for elaboration, and delights in numbers and characters, especially dollar and percentage signs. They believe that one message fits all, and by George, it better be a short message. Conflict is inevitable and is resolved as the majority crushes all other perspectives. There is little time for discussion, no interest in putting flesh around the numbers, and  new terminology catches like wild-fire. If it happens to be an election year? This new terminology becomes a staple in every stump and sound bite.

While teachers are speaking in their native tongue, policy makers have been exchanging ideas and topics, considering new approaches to education, determining new standards for our students, and developing assessments to measure student progress toward these standards. Teachers have been discussing the complex, messy thing called learning. while our policy makers have been racing to the top in order to leave no child behind. The public, policy makers, many others have assumed the silence of the teachers to be acceptance of the recent educational reform efforts.

Instead, teachers have been doing just what the Common Core requires. Among other complex skills and abilities, the Common Core requires students to attain higher-order thinking skills, to develop sound arguments, complete with compelling evidence that supports their claims. These sophisticated ways of thinking are difficult, if impossible, to represent in shovel-ready bullet points. Most importantly, developing these skills and abilities take considerable time. In this process, students could not and would not be required to translate nuggets of wisdom into simple language and as soon as possible.

In order to maintain their professional integrity, teachers have not learned policy maker language; they have not registered for Shovel-Ready Bullet Points 101. It pushes against the Core that they have been mandated to deliver. It flies against what they know to be true about teaching and learning.

How do we resolve this situation where two very different cultures, complete with different languages, expectations, and behaviors, are both trying their very best to improve education for all children - especially when the power lies in the hands of those who speak a simple language and display a microwave mentality?

We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For

"What do we want the students we teach to be like as adults?"

This question is at the base of the research conducted by Ron Ritchhart and Project Zero at Harvard University. The responses he has received from educators are rather consistent. Rather than content knowledge, educators indicate that they want students to be inventive, risk-taking, responsible, compassionate, creative, reflective, meta-cognitive, and skeptical. These dispositions, coupled with thinking skills and abilities, produce good thinkers. If this is what we envision for our students, Ritchhart poses, how do we create schools that develop good thinking?

Good thinking is developed by students being able to communicate their ideas and by interacting with one another. It occurs in classrooms and schools where everything about the culture communicates the importance of wondering, noticing, and problem-solving.

While not likely to gain political attention, there is an important finding here. Ritchhart and colleagues have found that when student are immersed in "Cultures of Thinking," their scores on standardized achievement tests go up.

In the last post I talked about the positive effects of authentic intellectual work. Authentic intellectual work is considered to be assignments or activities that require students to use higher-order thinking skills and to gain in-depth understanding. This work also involves elaborate conversation, such as structured dialogue or extended writing. Finally, the work is directly connected to the lives of the students; there is a real-world relevance.

This research was conducted in the Chicago Public Schools system five years after the district made extensive reform efforts. Researchers found that when teachers required students to do authentic intellectual work, students performed better on standardized achievement tests.

These two studies, vastly different in student populations and locations, have two fundamental elements in common: complex sophisticated thinking and extensive social interaction. Students dig deep to find answers, engage with one another in doing so, and learn how to navigate the world outside the school. Students develop these strong communication and deep thinking skills, and their achievement scores on standardized tests go up. The absolute most powerful thing here is that students leave schools with abilities, skills, and attributes needed to lead successful lives. How can these efforts be anything but our moral imperative?

"What do we want the students we teach to be like as adults?"

I recently had the pleasure and honor of working with twenty or so high school students, helping them develop stronger reading skills when faced with informational text. These students were enrolled at what I call the "alternative" alternative high school. This school is the literal last stop in the K-12 experience for 150 or so students enrolled. These students have been failed by our K-12 system, have suffered unimaginable life circumstances, were court ordered, or a combination of insurmountable challenges. So many of these students had or were living stories that would make most of our complicated, messy lives look very manageable. Most importantly, this is the last opportunity for many of these students to develop what it takes to be successful in life, guided and coached by committed, talented educators.

Despite my charge to improve their reading ability, the need was far greater than literacy. Many of these students were so used to persistent and immediate crisis that they had little skill in being strategic, weighing options, and being discerning; they were living life in survival mode. The students with whom I worked never had the experience of elaborate verbal communication. Just having them learn to write about their thinking was so very difficult for most of them. While I know I made a difference, it was with such few numbers, and the need is so great. The talent and the commitment of those teachers and administrators in this building is more than commendable.

However, this school is not unique, and unfortunately, we have far too many schools with similar stories. With this incredible body of research that shows the powerful effects of students developing complex thinking skills and strong social  skills, why aren't we taking this knowledge and implementing these efforts in the places and with the students that need us the most?

What a difference it would make in day-to-day or in international interaction if we had growing numbers of people that have the attributes of responsibility, compassion, risk-taking, and creativity-  and are able to engage in sustained, elaborate conversations in resolving problems.

The bonus here is that as we develop students with complex thinking and social interaction skills, they will produce the increased standardized scores that policy makers find so very appealing.

I read an op ed piece yesterday by a former Michigan State Superintendent of Schools. He challenges educators to formulate and advocate for a school reform effort of our own. In short, educators are silent in this national conversation.

I accept this challenge and am ready to begin the reform effort now. I know that many of you are right beside me. Without additional research, international comparison, other meaningless assessments, and new academic standards, I propose that our vision for reform be based on this question:

"What do we want our youth to be like as adults?"



With a clear vision, we will identify and remove those structures, laws, policies and any other impediments that will prevent our success. We will restore those resources that have allowed us to be powerful educators, including mental health personnel, fine arts programs, and physical education at all levels and every day. We will be indiscriminate about the students we enroll, asking only that the student and the family is in partnership with our efforts. We will find one of the many empty school buildings in this nation and begin - one building at a time.

These buildings are located in communities, and we cannot do this in isolation from those communities. Unlike the national reform effort folks, educators understand that communities have unique needs, just as our students have unique needs. We will take into account those needs as we keep the driving question in front of our every move.

We will use our knowledge, passion, experience, and research to create schools that teach students how to be good thinkers and strong communicators. Because we know that will bring success, that learning is possible - and at depths we have only really dreamed of reaching.

It is time to begin. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

We Know Better (Part II): No More Research!

Previously, I wrote about our failure to learn from the successes of other countries, namely Finland, and their educational reform efforts that now provide international models for success. Our competitive nature got the best of us, and we missed the true lessons in our quest to be #1.

Not only have we ignored the important lessons in international practice, we have also dismissed research conducted over the last several decades that gives us powerful methods with sound reasoning to improve teaching and increase learning. Maya Angelou says, "We do what we know to do. When we know better, we do better." This is not the case in education.

Long before we started racing to the top, ranking educational systems by state, and comparing ourselves to Finland and Singapore, we were provided with some very compelling research and meta-analyses that show how to increase student achievement scores on standardized tests without using standardized tests. Yes, we have almost 40 years of evidence that shows what teacher practices and student abilities increase learning. Additionally, we have at least ten years of educational research that says when we tend to the social emotional learning of students, standardized test scores go up.

This research has been translated in many languages, cited thousand of times in educational journals and during staff meetings. This work appears in books for teachers, administrators, and all involved in the education of our children.

For the sake of space, I want to focus on three bodies of research on teachers and students that provide solid evidence that we can increase student achievement scores on standardized tests by focusing on important beliefs and practices that have absolutely nothing to do with standardized tests.

1. Students that are engaged in authentic assessments do better on standardized tests. When students have assignments that require higher-order thinking, in-depth understanding and elaborate communication and that have a real-life connection to their lives, students perform better on standardized tests than those who are not given authentic assessment. It is not enough to require students to think more deeply, they must see the relevance of what they are doing in order to engage.

For African-American students in high poverty schools, the effects of authentic assessment are even greater. 

2. Students who are taught particular strategies can gain up to 45 percentile points on standardized tests. The top three strategies that have the biggest gain are straight-forward and attainable by any classroom teacher. First, students must be able to identify similarities and differences, including being able to use similes and metaphors. Second, when students learn how to take notes and summarize, they are able to synthesize and analyze information, higher-order thinking skills. Third, my personal favorite, students need to be acknowledged and recognized for their effort. Thirty-five years of research shows that students believe their efforts lead to success.  Therefore, when their efforts are acknowledged, they learn more.

These strategies are available for any teacher at any time, given adequate resources and support.

3. Research and work done over 30 years on improving teaching show that increases in student achievement are predictable by two equally important reasons. First, teachers must that believe their students can learn. More than just this belief, teachers must have deep content knowledge. Even after taking into account all of those things that are used to excuse poor performance, teacher belief and teacher knowledge are the greatest predictors of student success.

The teacher remains the single most important predictor of student success.

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I was an English language arts teacher of high school students for 11 years. I went into teaching because I absolutely adored teenagers and because I had a passion for literature, for reading, for writing. I wanted to share that passion with students.

I don't believe there are many teachers who enter this profession that feel any differently. Not about their speciality, not about their students. We have evidence that shows how beliefs and practices are critical in increasing student learning.

But what have we done? We have stripped teachers of any self-efficacy or autonomy. We have put into place policies and procedures that prevent teachers from doing what they do best - teach. Instead, we have increased class sizes, removed school psychologists and guidance counselors, reduced administrative support, and now hold teachers in a national accountability spotlight. We have attempted to strip them of any sense of professionalism and leave them demoralized. We hold teachers responsible for more than what is humanly possible. Most disturbing is that we know that the teacher is the key to student learning, yet we stop them from teaching.

We know what works. We have more than 30 years of research that makes one thing crystal clear:  In order for teachers to do what they do best, we must provide them with the time, the structures, the resources, and support to do just that. We need to hold teachers up, not keep them down.

The last thing we need to improve education in the United States is to allocate money for additional research. We do not need a new program or person to suggest a fix to a problem that already has been solved. And the very last thing we need is another standardized test or any initiative that takes teachers away from their students any more than we already have done.

We know where the magic occurs, and we know that it is not really magic.

We know better.

We Know Better (Part I): No Need for Competition!

Over the past few years or so, and with increasing frequency, international comparisons have been made about student achievement, and thus, the quality of schools, across the globe. The American response to these comparisons reflects two very different perspectives.

On one hand, our lawmakers have used these comparisons to note the weaknesses of our system. They then propose reform efforts that race to the top in order to leave no child behind. Over the last 10 years, we have watched how our policymakers have moved from looking at student achievement to looking at individual states and now to individual schools and teachers. In Michigan we went from the Michigan Curriculum Framework to Grade-Level Content Expectations (GLCEs) and now to the Common Core State Standards in less than 20 years. The Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP), our measure of quality, has morphed over the last decade, reflecting these changing standards. Now, we anticipate yet another standardized test, one that is computer adaptive, that will allow us to make comparisons across the states involved in the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium. Meanwhile across the nation, additional tests are imposed that aim to measure the progress of schools and teachers as they make these substantial improvements so that we can be at the top of the world. Billions of dollars have been  given to individual states and to individual schools who have shown great promise in reform efforts, that have reduced achievement gaps.

These well-intentioned and obscenely-funded reform efforts have missed the mark. Policymakers, so impatient, so quick to blame, and so intent to put the United States at the top of the world, have lost sight of some very valuable insight provided by these top-achieving countries. This competitive mind-set allows for decisions to be made that are not in the best interest of our schools.

Educators, on the other hand, have looked at this from a very different lens. We have sent observers and researchers to places such as Finland, in order to see what is happening in the schools. Linda Darling-Hammond, Diane Ravitch, and many teaching experts and educational advocates have already described these school systems and what makes them successful. It takes only a Google search of "Finland education" to see that many have reported on these aspects. From a science perspective to the business industry, we have some powerful and consistent evidence on why Finland's reform efforts have been so successful and student achievement remains the top of the world.

The disconnect between the educators and policymakers, basically what we know and what we do, is daunting. For the sake of this post, I am going to limit what Finland has taught us to two simple ideas.

First, the Finnish educational system did not set out to be "The Best" in the world; instead, they sought to provide "The Best" educational experience for every child, regardless of region, background, and any other factor that is used to excuse low achievement.

Oh, we Americans with our short attention spans and competitive natures. When the US continued to fare so low in international comparisons that the test scores got the attention of our policymakers, we immediately formed task forces and subcommittees. The appalling inequities of our educational systems had been ignored for decades. It was only until the spotlight was directed to US schools scoring lower in international comparisons that we began the race. Finland was probably uninterested in how it stood globally, as the efforts were on Finnish schools and children. I heard once that when Finnish school reformers set out to make substantive changes in their educational systems, they used the research that was already conclusive on effective schools. No additional moneys or committees were needed to determine the best direction, as plenty of evidence existed that provided that direction. This brings me to the second idea.

Finland's educational reform efforts did not change with leadership, politics, or conventional wisdom; these efforts are more than 40 years old.

Compare that to the US educational reform efforts that are renamed, discarded, generated, revamped, and replaced after failing to give many current efforts adequate time to see how and if they are working. In my almost 30-year career in education, I have seen fads come and go, entrepreneurs rise and fall, and standards and assessments change so many times. We latch onto the latest and greatest and the glitz and the glam.  We learn new terms that become the rage, from "curriculum mapping" and "differentiated instruction" to "formative assessments" and "flipped classrooms." This is not to suggest these ideas are not powerful ways to improve the educational experience of students. Finland began an endeavor that made fundamental changes in the business of schools. If curriculum mapping or flipped classrooms helped the progress toward these fundamental changes, I am sure they became tools and strategies that were incorporated toward the end goal. A key issue here is that Finland had an end goal, and nothing detracted from the progress of that goal, despite four decades of reform work.

Recently I saw an article with a headline similar to this: What Will Finland Do Next? My response? Finland will probably do nothing other than stay the course; that is, to work toward providing the best education for every student, regardless.

In order to make fundamental changes in the American educational system that lead to increased student achievement, we need to replace the scoreboard mentality for an abundant one, one that believes that not only is a high quality educational system attainable, but also that it will be available for every student in this country, regardless. Once we adopt this mentality, we need to step away from the microwave and know this effort will not bring immediate gratification. It is not for the faint of heart, nor for those who seek profit and fame in this process. The hard work will be done by those who have our children at the heart and at the forefront of any reform effort.

Quick fixes have done nothing more than further erode our educational systems. Long-term, sustained efforts toward a clear vision of student success is the way we bring fundamental changes in American schools.

We already know what to do. After all, we are the ones we've been waiting for.