Thursday, December 13, 2012

Schools For The 21st Century-Dr. Pedro Noguera


Dr. Pedro Noguera

Schools For The 21st Century: What It Will Take to Really Leave No Child Behind.

The current direction in education is not working and there is sufficient evidence to support this fact. According to international comparisons there is a decline in the academic performance of American students.  A continued persistence of high dropout rates particularly in urban areas, and a growing  number of struggling and mediocre schools across the country—especially in communities with high levels of poverty is still a challenge.

Students are turned off and alienated by the persistent emphasis on test preparation and pervasive boredom brought about by passive learning.  There is an urgent need for a new direction and a new set of policies that will once again stir the creative minds and engage learners.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was a needed reform which focused our attention on achievement patterns and disparities however, policymakers and schools became fixated on standardized tests.  A decade later NCLB continues to leave millions of children behind, and does little to facilitate the implementation of real reforms that guide schools on matters that address the learning needs of children in poverty. Race to the Top, complicates matters even more, with its prescriptions for evaluating teachers by student test scores, forcing districts to institute inconsistent monitoring systems in order to capture federal dollars.

Several civil rights organizations have supported NCLB because they see it as a way to guarantee accountability in academic outcomes. However, what they and others have largely ignored is the profound inequity in learning opportunities caused by concentrating our most disadvantaged students in racially segregated and under-resourced schools.  A study conducted two years ago, regarding the ten years of reform in Chicago( under Superintendent Arne Duncan), found that schools lacked the capacity to meet the needs of  the most disadvantaged children

Many schools in urban communities today face learning challenges that are compounded by an insurmountable   combination of hardships such as a lack of stable housing or inadequate home support. Many of these schools serve large numbers of children with severe behavior problems that are rooted in a history of abuse and neglect, or children whose parents are incarcerated, or who are being raised by grandparents who are worn out and tired and often overwhelmed by their needs.

 The schools in these communities need to provide much more than an education for the students they serve. They need to create supportive communities that give students the safety and stability they desperately need and make it possible for them to focus on learning.  There are successful models currently operating in various cities throughout the United States and they should be commended and used as models for other communities. 

We continue to look for solutions and ways to close the achievement gap in schools that serve a disproportionate percentage of low income students but we fail to acknowledge and learn from the schools that have been successful.  The educational community as a whole does not turn to these schools as models in an attempt to discover how this success can be replicated.  The policy makers also ignore these school models as possible solutions. 

A narrow reform agenda has dominated education reform for the past decade. It is an agenda that has turned assessment into a weapon instead of a tool for improving learning; an agenda that strips teachers of the professional title; an agenda that refers to parents as consumers instead of partners in the educational process; an agenda that has ignored the development of the whole child by narrowing the curriculum and ignoring instruction in the arts, physical education and nutrition.

Effective coordination of school and community resources is essential at the school site. Research shows that students will achieve when resources for addressing students’ academic and nonacademic needs are tailored, coordinated, and accessible. Community school coordinators create, strengthen, and maintain the bridge between the school and community. They facilitate and provide leadership for the collaborative process and development of a continuum of services for children, families and community members within a school neighborhood

Research shows a major gap between life and learning for students in low performing schools; thus, instruction with deeper connections to the real world and the community, done from a community problemsolving perspective, will be more engaging and likely to improve student achievement. In addition, educators and staff of community partners must have the knowledge, skill, and ability to work effectively with families, communities, and each other

 We need to create comprehensive support systems around schools in low-income communities to address issues like safety, health, nutrition, and counseling. This should include the expansion of pre-school and after-school programs, and extended learning opportunities during the summer. We need to seek additional resources beyond federal funds to support such initiative so local communities must be encouraged to develop public-private partnerships to develop and sustain these systems of support for children and schools.

 We need a new approach to assessment that focuses on concrete evidence of academic performance—writing, reading, mathematical problem solving—and moves away from using standardized tests to measure and rank students, teachers, and schools. A number of schools in New York State utilize performance-based assessments and longitudinal studies have found that these students are more likely to enroll in college and less likely to take remedial courses in college than their peers who are subjected to traditional standardized tests.

 States and school districts must undertake careful evaluations of struggling schools to determine why they are failing to meet the needs of the students they serve before prescribing what should be changed. We must pay greater attention to enrollment patterns (i.e. have we concentrated too many "high needs" students in a school?) and devise a strategy to build the capacity of schools to meet the needs of the students they serve.

 This is the positive and constructive direction for change. We have no time to lose, time is of the essence.  It is time to change policy and realize that education must be considered the prime resource for helping our nation devise solutions in order to  create a more just, equitable, and prosperous nation.

 

Friday, December 7, 2012

Pedro Noguera: Improving Student Efficacy Considered a Key to Improving Retention

Pedro Noguera answered many of our questions during his visit yesterday.  One of the points he passionately spoke about was ensuring that the focus was always on the student, regardless of grade level.  A second point was improving instruction by teaching teachers/instructors how to best teach their students (diversifying pedagogy). 

At WCCCD we dedicated a large amount of our budget to professional development.  An entire track was specific to improving the delivery of instruction.  We discontinued these efforts because attendance was poor.  Several years ago we decided to dedicate 1 day per semester for professional development.  It occurs the Saturday prior to classes starting.  During this 1 day event faculty are paid for attending and receive a list of workshops they can attend.  I found that the majority of faculty chose to attend those led by other faculty.  This year we decided to put out a call for presentations.  We have about 6 faculty members who will be presenting.  I expect them to be very well attended.  This is just one successful way to get faculty to attend, and learn from, professional development.

What are some successes at your schools?  Perhaps we can learn from each other and start improving classroom instruction 1 classroom at a time!

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Monday, November 19, 2012

A Reflection on Deborah Ball's Presentation: (How) Can All Children Get Great Teaching?


A Reflection on Deborah Ball's Presentation: (How) Can All Children Get Great Teaching?
 
After a conversation at work that pit two ideas against one another--teacher development to support teaching effectiveness versus talent pipelines to replace ineffective teachers--I found myself particularly engaged by Dr. Deborah Ball who stated, “We must reframe the problem of teacher quality and educational inequity.”   
 
Such reframing includes moving away from simple teacher replacement, which generally falls in the wake of poorly developed professional development systems toward finding out what the top 20% of high-performing teachers do and teaching others how to do it.  The problem, according to Dr. Ball, is a “predominant focus on recruitment, outcomes, and sorting—instead of training.  This does not augur well for redressing educational inequity and uneven quality.  Without training, the teaching profession is undermined and the notion that teaching comes natural to some and not to others perpetuates the belief that effective teaching is based on the individual.  This notion reinforces style over skill."  If true, skillful instruction is lost on most individuals whose skill sets do not adequately prepare them for the profession.
 
Dr. Ball furthers this argument with several rather comedic comparisons between the ways in which one becomes a teacher to how pilots and surgeons are trained.  The gist of it was if the expectation is for pilots and surgeons to pass rigorous examinations, performance tasks or participate in residencies to determine their qualifications for practice, teachers--much like individuals who fly airplanes and perform operations—ought to have strong training so they, too, can engage in responsible practice.
 
From Dr. Ball’s perspective strong training for responsible teaching practice would have three facets: 1) “clear specification of skills, capabilities, and qualities of performance necessary for independent practice, 2) detailed developmental clinical training, progressing from observing to simulations to supervised apprenticeship to supervised independent practice, and 3) performance assessment of individual competence before allowing independent practice.”  According to Dr. Ball, next steps toward training that promotes responsible practice would include “identifying key practices of teaching and high-leverage content, developing specific approaches to training beginners to carry out those practices, and developing performance assessments of specific practices and content required for entry.” 
 
The night I sat in the audience to witness Dr. Ball’s presentation there was no better example that demonstrated why we (as a country) need clear parameters that describe and determine effective instruction than when Dr. Ball showed a video of a math teacher.  She asked the audience of at least 100 educators to turn and talk about the type of feedback we would give the teacher.  Then we were asked to raise our hands to determine whether or not we would rate the teacher highly effective, effective, ineffective or highly ineffective.  Although folks appeared initially reluctant to do so—which was probably out of fear that Dr. Ball would deem some of us wrong and others right—her point was well taken.  “Even in this room,” she said, “our ratings are pretty evenly distributed—some rated the teacher highly effective and others highly ineffective, but the majority of you rated the teacher either effective or ineffective.  That’s because there is no common professional metric of looking at a piece of teaching.”
 
Discussion Questions:
1) If given the opportunity to train ineffective teachers or replace them, which would you choose and why?  

2) Are there clear expectations or performance tasks that determine improved performance in your organization?  If so, explain the process or experience.  If not, describe the impact on performance in the absence of a common assessment to measure and promote responsible practice.

3) Why is it necessary for there to be an objective perspective about effective teaching?  


Sunday, November 11, 2012

Vang SOE Colloquium Response


Hi All,

This post was written by Randy Dillard and Matt Bennet I am just moving it from comments to a post. We had some technical problems getting it posted.  Please be patient with us as we are just starting out with the Blogg. We will have the technical issues sorted out soon. 

Chris-

SOE Colloquium Summary: Community Opposition to State-Mandated Educational Management in a Large Urban School District in the Midwest. -Dr. Maiyoua Vang-


Urban education does not exist in a vacuum:



Dr. Vang established that educators cannot analyze the problems of urban education independently, but must examine it through its symbiotic relationship with suburban education. To study urban education you must also acknowledge and study the surrounding exosystems, which envelop both suburban and urban centers. 



Dr. Vang argues that researchers and educators are not asking the right questions to enable those in poverty to break the vicious cycle and transcend the social condition they are born in. She directly points to a form of structural amnesia that pervades the discourse currently. She asserts that this structural amnesia allows us as educators, as leaders, and as parents in many instances to ignore the educational policies that are dishonest and more importantly detrimental to the children most affected by those policies. 



It is of her opinion that if we are going to be serious about education reform then we must also be serious about acknowledging, addressing, and combating the structural factors that are directly impacting the physiological and psychological makeup of children living in urban settings. Education needs to be examined through the context in which it is delivered; education reform without contextual reform just brings us more of the same. 



Socioeconomic factors (SES) as predictors of the MEAP:



Dr. Vang cited Marylone’s study which closely examined SES factors as predictor of MEAP. Using a prediction formula, Maylone, with good accuracy, predicted whether SES would pass the MEAP. Maylone’s study showed that the factors that measure wealth distribution are extremely powerful in predicting standardized testing achievement. Dr. Vang prodded us to think more critically about the extra contextual factors that contribute to individual and familial economic situations and how in turn it impacts things such as standardized tests scores. Poverty matters! Consequently, she implores researchers and educators to listen to the data and follow suit of some of the other social sciences. 

Prison-industrial complex in the United States:

A portion of the presentation highlighted the significant problem of minority incarceration in the United States. The United States is one of the most highly advanced countries in the world yet has the highest incarceration rates. Ironically, as crime was leveling off in the late 70s, early 80s, incarceration began to soar in the United States. She went on to pose a rhetorical question to the group: What is our excuse? She then continued to point out the correlation between the surplus of “disposable bodies” in “disposable cities” like Detroit and the proliferation of political institutions set up to handle these “surplus bodies”. Cities like Detroit are fueling incarceration rates, as citizens, who lack skills and are denied social mobility, are turning to the underground economy (i.e., drug trade) as a means of survival. What is the solution though? The solution is delivering real school reform and providing urban students’ education that enfranchises, rather than disfranchises. 



The Baltimore Algebra Project – An example of grassroots organizing: 



Dr. Vang discussed the Baltimore Algebra Project in detail and we had the opportunity to hear from three young men (Trey, Tim, and Jamal) working with the project as they conference called in live to join our discussion. The Baltimore Algebra Project is an organization of civic minded young men and women who are campaigning for real school reform within their own communities, under the banner “No Education/No Life”. These three young men discussed the underfunding and discrimination that exists in Baltimore Public Schools. Through civil disobedience and petition, the Baltimore Algebra Project wants the state of Maryland to be held accountable and pay restitution, for what they believe, are unconstitutional acts. The Baltimore Algebra project is providing a voice to a segment of the population who have, historically, been silenced. Their belief is that real education reform must occur within, rather than from an outsiders, who are disconnected from the population and students they are trying to serve. As Trey articulated to us while on the call “top down decision making is not resonating with people in the Baltimore neighborhoods.” In their opinion if officials are unable or unwilling to authentically connect with the needs and wishes of the constituents in which they were elected or appointed to serve then these officials are really not serving a purpose at all. Students deserve leaders and decision making that acknowledges their voice, context, and delivers education that meets their needs. Until this occurs, education in Baltimore continues to restrict social mobility, is fragmenting the community, and is not providing students the skills to attain high quality jobs. 



Current state of education in Detroit:



To conclude the presentation Dr. Vang brought the discussion full circle and examined the current state of education in the city of Detroit. She discussed how a perpetual cycle of poor decisions and mismanagement has led Detroit to its current set of circumstances. A historical timeline was used to help those attending the presentation clearly see the sequence of decisions and their accumulating effects over time. She worries that privatization of education will continue to fragment the community and silence the voices of students and the electorate. Similar to the Baltimore Algebra Project, students, parents, local grassroots leaders, etc need to take back their voice and advocate for the schools and education that they deserve. 



QUESTIONS to start our discussion:



1)    In light of the fiscal realities is the movement toward more charter schools and/or closing the doors on public school facilities the best remedy for solving some of the most crippling educational problems in urban centers like Detroit?



2)    What are the ramifications, if any, on the social, political, and cultural capital of the neighborhoods left behind after public schools are closed in their area?



3)    Drawing from your own personal and professional experience respond to or expound upon one of the topics either in this post or from the the video sent to us by Dr Vang http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04CaLMODRuM

Friday, March 18, 2011

Welcome to the SOE EdD Blog

Hi All,

This is the SOE EdD Blog.  This will be a public forum for sharing information of interest to students in the Ed.D. program.  The information will include information about the program and the field of education and educational research.  Students in the Ed.D. Program will be invited to join the blog and participate in the conversation.  This is an experimental activity and I welcome feedback on ways to make this more useful.  Welcome to the BLOG.

Chris-