Tests, Tests, Tests

This past week my students in grades 3-8 and all over New York State sat for the English Language Arts exams. I realize that these tests are secure documents and I cannot discuss what was on the test or reveal the texts.



I read every exam and handled letters about who was refusing to take the test and phone calls from worried parents about a particular child's test day anxiety. We had large print tests, tests in several other languages, tests given with explicit modifications for our special education students, and the test that was scribed for the student who broke her arm the day before (this seems to happen every year).

I thought the test was difficult, especially the third grade test. Difficult does not scare me. I have a great respect for rigor and welcome this into our curriculum. My concern was about what was tested. It is easy to add rigor to the curriculum. You can go so deep into a subject that you lose sight of the big picture.

I was reminded of one of my favorite stories. It is called The Seven Blind Mice by Ed. Young. It is about a group of seven blind mice who bump into a large object living near their pond. One mouse only examines the bottom of the object and thinks it is a pillar. One mouse only examines the top of the object and thinks it is a fan. One mouse only examines the front of the object and thinks it is a snake. It is only when one mouse examines the entire object that they realize this is an elephant.

This week I don't think my third graders were able to see the elephant. Many of them are still eight years old. They have spent this year reading and learning about characters, setting, and sequences of events. They had lessons on point of view and genre and I think their teachers did a great job. Questions on the test this year asked about the structure of the story. Generally, the narrative structure of a text contains a plot, theme, and resolution. Should third graders know this? Is this important for comprehension? Theme is far more difficult than main idea. Isn't that what they need to concentrate on? I know my high school students study structure and knowledge of structure leads to a deep understanding of text. Developmentally, though, should third graders learn about structure?

I think it is important to assess our students. I would like to know how each child is reading and writing. We have started a new writing program in fourth and fifth grade this year. I would like to know how effective it is. But are we measuring what needs to be measured? I would like to know if there are weaknesses in my program, across all grades. I would like to look at different groups of students and see how they are faring. Somehow, the tests that are being mandated for our students have turned into a billion dollar industry. Something is very wrong here.

Our English Language Learners

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Over the past few years, the English Language Learner (ELL) population in my Long Island district has at least doubled. That is true for our surrounding districts as well. McRel just completed their most recent report on ELL in the US. Although I knew the ELL population was growing, I was surprised at their findings.

*There are 4.7 million ELL students in the U. S., nearly one in ten. (National Center on Ed. Statistics, 2012)
*While western states have the largest concentration of ELL students, federal data documents an increase in all but 12 states.
*More than 25% of ELL students speak a language other than Spanish. Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, and Haitian Creole are the 3 most common languages following Spanish.

ElL's academic performance significantly lags that of their non-ELL peers. In New York, after being in the country for one year, students are required to sit for any and all state testing. So, if a child is in fourth grade, they must take the English Language Arts exam. If a student is in eleventh grade, they must sit for the U.S. History exam. I have imagined myself sitting for an exam on the history of China in Mandarin, after spending one year in the country. There is no question that I would fail.

My grandmother came to this country at the age of 15. She could not speak one word of English. English was her third language. Her accent always remained heavy and she always struggled with getting a joke in English. My grandfather arrived at 17. English was also his third language. When he was drafted into World War I, his English was still so weak that when he was involved in one of his first combat missions, he did not understand the expression, "Heads Up." He was wounded and permanently lost the use of his right hand. Somehow my grandparents were able to work hard enough to open their own factory and raise a family. I wonder what would have happened to them in the schools of today.

Students who remain in an ELL program for several years are called long-term English learners. In California this has been defined as a student who has been in the United States' schools for at least 6 years. Typically, long term ELL students have grade point averages below 2.0 and are two to three years below grade level in ELA and math. Many drop out of high school. Many general classroom teachers lack the specific knowledge and skills to bring ELLs to proficiency in the four domains of language acquisition: speaking, reading, listening, and writing. Regardless of teacher training, classroom teacher attitude towards ELLS can significantly impact the instruction they received.

When teachers did not engage ELLs as participants in classroom instruction, mainstream students followed suit and did not spur their participation or seek to work with them. Ownership of the ELL students by the teacher was critical(Yoon, B.,2008).

Only 12 states use an English Language Proficiency test. Eighteen states leave classification to the discretion of each district. In 2010-2011, 16% of kindergarteners came from households where English was not the primary language. Some researchers establish that by 2020 the number of preschool age children using or exposed to a language other than English will outpace their peers who speak only English at home (Education Week, 2013). When an awareness of this increasing need is added to the fact that critical brain development occurs between zero and five, it is not surprising that states are expanding their preschool programs.

Currently, only three states have recognized that speaking more than one language is an asset--not a liability. California, New York, and Illinois have enacted legislation to create a State Seal of Bi-literacy to affix to the diplomas of high school graduates who demonstrate a high level proficiency in one or more languages in addition to English.

Professional development and teacher training in this area is critical. Currently, 15 states have no provisions requiring teacher certification candidates to have any expertise or training in working with ELLs. Four states, including Florida require all classroom teachers to complete training in the teaching of English as a second language. This must change. Florida's certification requirement for regular and special education classroom teachers go beyond those in other states. All teaching candidates must take a minimum of 15 semester hours of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) covering 5 areas:
1) methods of teaching
2) ESOL curriculum and materials development
3) cross-cultural communication and understanding
4) applied linguistics
5) testing and evaluation of ESOL

Florida has not often been held up as a paradigm for education. In this case, let's take a page from the Sunshine State.

PISA and Poverty

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The following information was taken from Education Week --January 8, 2014 www.edweek.org/go/commentary

The results of the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment or PISA were released last month. The results were released by Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education. He said, "Americans need to wake up to this educational reality--instead of napping at the wheel while emerging competitors prepare their students for economic leadership. Results are a picture of educational stagnation."

The scores reported were the average scores. No detailed information was released.

In 2009 when the detailed information was released important insights were released along with the data that really paint a very different picture. This information was reported by Martin Carnoy and Richard Rothstein in their report titled "What do International Tests Really Show About U.S. Student Performance?" They revealed that 38% of students who sat for the 2009 PISA were from the two lowest socioeconomic categories. That is the largest percentage of low income test takers among our comparative nations. It is a fact that students from low-income families throughout the world score far lower than students from more advantaged families on these tests. In 2009,the U.S. had the highest poverty rate--22%_- of any of the comparative nations, yet our PISA sample included 38% low-income students. If our sampling was so skewed it gives us little confidence in the validity of the test.

So how do our students' scores look when we compare them in a fairer, disaggregated manner? Much better. In fact, if you look carefully at our students' scores in comparison with those of countries with somewhat similar socioeconomic profiles France, Germany, and the United Kingdom---our lower-income students score the highest among these nations, on both the reading and the math tests. American schools with fewer than 10% low-income students score at the very top. American schools with fewer than 25% low-income students are near the top. The achievement gaps on the reading and math tests--between upper income students and lower income students are smaller in the U.S. than in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Mr. Duncan's flawed snapshot of American students' achievement is part of his unrelenting message that our mediocre schools are placing our nation's economic well-being at risk.

We are not napping Mr. Duncan. Instead of continuing with this doomsday rhetoric that serves to tear down the morale of our teachers and parents, we urge you to take a closer look at some of the successful schools in our country. There are thousands of them. Please call me if you need directions.

The Stuff We Can't Measure--What the Research Says

A few months ago I was reading an old copy of School Administrator and came across a study I read about years ago and forgot. It rekindled my curiosity about the outcomes and I can't stop thing about it.

In the mid- 1960's a group of child psychologists wanted to see what the effects of pre-school were on 3 and 4 year olds. Researchers recruited low-income, low IQ parents from the town's black neighborhoods in Ypsilanti, Michigan, an old industrial town west of Detroit. Children in the treatment group were admitted to Perry Preschool, a high-quality, two year preschool program. Kids in the control group were left to fend for themselves. The children were then tracked for the rest of their lives. The subjects are now in their 40's, which means researchers have been able to trace the effects of the Perry intervention well into adulthood.

As a case for early-childhood intervention, the experiment always had been considered something of a failure. The treatment children did do significantly better on cognitive tests while attending preschool and for a year or two afterward, but the gains did not last. By the time the treatment children were in the third grade, their IQ scores were no better than the control group's.

However, when researchers looked at the long-term results of Perry, the data appeared more promising. It was true the Perry kids hadn't experienced lasting IQ benefits. But something important had happened to them in preschool, and whatever it was, the positive effects resonated for decades.

Compared to the control group, the Perry students were more likely to graduate from high school, more likely to be employed at age 27, more likely to be earning more than $25,000 a year at age 40, less likely ever to have been arrested and less likely to have spent time on welfare.

James Heckman, a former Nobel prize winner in economics is re-examining the results of the Perry Project. Heckman began to rummage more deeply into the Perry study, and he learned that in the 1960's and 1970's, researchers had collected some data on the students that had never been analyzed. These were reports from teachers in elementary school rating both the treatment and the control children on "personal behavior" and "social development."

The first term tracked how often each student swore, lied, stole or was absent or late; the second one rated each student's level of curiosity as well as his or her relationships with classmates and teachers.

Heckman labeled these noncognitive skills, because they were entirely distinct from IQ. After three years of analysis, Heckman and his researchers were able to ascertain that those noncognitive factors, such as curiosity, self-control, and social fluidity, were responsible for as much as two-thirds of the total benefit that Perry gave its students.

It turns out the Perry Preschool Project worked entirely different than everyone had accepted. Although the program did not have long lasting IQ benefits, it did improve behavior and social skills. For the students in Perry Preschool those skills turned out to be valuable indeed.

Heckman is showing that if we want to improve the odds for children, and poor children in particular, we need to approach early education anew, to start over with some fundamental questions about how human skills develop and how character is formed. Daniel Willingham said that "We don't yet know how to teach self-direction, collaboration, creativity, and innovation the way we know how to teach long division."

Maybe James Heckman can show us how.

On Thanksgiving morning I awoke to the sounds of my granddaughter's little feet scurrying on the floorboards and imagined what my new granddaughter will look like when she arrives. As I savored the scents and events of the day, I wondered what lay in store in the years to come. What kind of world are we preparing for the children of tomorrow? What kinds of schools will they attend? What careers will there be? Will they be healthy? Will they be happy?

For a moment I wanted to hold the happenings of the globe at bay. Instead, I wanted forests filled with soft new snow and wild horses and silver bells and brave princesses with crystal wands and a world filled with peace. For a while I was able to hold that image. I am thankful that I had that moment. It filled me with possibilities and gave me hope for a better world.

May you all have moments filled with possibilities and may we all find a way to realize our dreams.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Spoken Word

For the past few days I have been at the National Council of Teachers of English conference in Boston. The general session began at 8:00 in the Hynes Center Auditorium with a presentation by the First Wave Hip Hop and Urban Arts Learning Community from the University of Wisconsin. The First Wave Learning Community is the first university program in the country centered on spoken word and hip-hop culture. I have seen performances on the spoken word, but this was the first one I saw live. I was transfixed. Subtle chords of guitar music were interspersed with rhythmic machine gun fire words interspersed with heartfelt pleas and bruising accusations.

The art of spoken word poetry has existed for many centuries. The ancient Greeks included spoken word in their Olympic Games. I know that spoken word is used to inform or make an audience conscious of some human aspect pertaining to life. I felt the frank raw pain in these performers. They are reinventing the future of poetry.

That's the Way We've Always Done It

I am reading a book called Teaching the Digital Generation by Kelly, McCain and Jukes. It examines how educators can address the learning needs of secondary students immersed in a digital world by designing and implementing new instructional models and technology infrastructures. It starts by examining our railroad system.

Today in North America, the spacing between the rails on railroad tracks is always 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches--- a rather odd and seemingly arbitrary number. It is said that the reason that this particular spacing is used is because that's the rail spacing they used to build the railroads in England, and Englishmen built the railroads in America. So why did the English use that measurement for the spacing? It was because the English railcars were built by the same people who built the horse-drawn wagons in the pre-railroad era. That's the axle width wagon makers had always used, so they just kept on using it when they built the first railroad cars. Why did the wagon makers use that particular axle width? They did this because, if they used any other axle spacing, the wagon wheels would break on the sides of the established wheel ruts on English roads. So, where did those old rutted roads come from? The first long distance roads in Britain and Europe were build by Imperial Rome for the use of the Roman military, and they have been in use ever since. Why did the Romans use that particular axle spacing? That was the width of the two horses that were used to pull the chariots. Thus, the North American standard railroad track spacing of 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

This story is a great metaphor for our public school system. Schools were designed and developed for an Industrial Age that no longer exists. At the beginning of the Industrial Age more than 90% of students lived on farms or in rural areas. The school year had to be conceived as a seasonal accommodation. Why hasn't it changed? Because that's the way we've always done it. It is time to rethink some of these outdated notions. On Wednesday I will be taking a field trip with a group of students. As we board the train, I will be sure to point out that the tracks are 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches apart.