In This Issue:

1. “Do less, then obsess”

2. Supporting below-level readers as they grapple with difficult texts

3. Building literacy skills in secondary content classrooms

4. A New Jersey high-school district addresses equity issues

5. A study of teacher merit pay in North Carolina

6. Pointers for white teachers working with children of color

7. Including LGBTQ content in elementary classrooms

8. More books that build empathy in children

9. Questions to ask a book buddy

 

Quotes of the Week

“Visiting other schools is the best professional development that exists. There’s no slide deck that is going to lead to seeing new things and being able to apply them to your school.”

New York City principal Luke Bauer, quoted in “Access Does Not Equal Equity” by Amadou Diallo, March 1, 2019, Hechinger Report, https://bit.ly/2NEW5Y0

 

“Grades improve learning onlywhen accompanied by specific guidance and direction from teachers on how to improve.” 

            Thomas Guskey and Susan Brookhart in “Author Interview: ‘What We Know About 

            Grading’” by Larry Ferlazzo, in Education Week Teacher, March 3, 2019, 

            https://bit.ly/2TXnLNS

 

“When taught effectively, with an emphasis on critical thinking and mathematical reasoning, high-school mathematics has the potential to help combat the increasing problem of truth decay in American society.”

            Robert Berry III and Matthew Larson in “The Need to Catalyze Change in High-School

            Mathematics” in Phi Delta Kappan, March 2019 (Vol. 100, #6, p. 39-43), 

            https://bit.ly/2CF6SNA; Berry can be reached at [email protected].

 

“[N]o digital learning program can replace many of the experiences students should be having in our classrooms. A rich, robust, empowering education gives students regular opportunities to talk with each other, actively problem-solve with real-world tasks, collaborate on multifaceted projects, impact their communities, and wrestle with life’s big questions. These need to be designed and facilitated by live human beings who build relationships with students.” 

            Jennifer Gonzalez in “How Khan Academy Is Bringing Mastery Learning to the

            Masses” in The Cult of Pedagogy, March 3, 2019, https://bit.ly/2NMWoQF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. “Do Less, Then Obsess”

(Originally titled “Embracing the Power of LESS”)

            In this article in Educational Leadership, author/consultant Mike Schmoker describes the experience of an Arizona elementary school that got the green light from its central office to concentrate on one initiative: increasing the percent of students who wrote effectively about fiction and nonfiction texts. “By focusing on this single goal,” says Schmoker, “the principal, teacher leaders, and grade-level teams were able to devote their time, energy, and data collection to this priority at everyfaculty meeting – thus fostering all-important continuity, enthusiasm, and momentum. And they had time to address the resistance, confusion, and small setbacks that inevitably beset any new initiative.” The result: rapid, significant improvements in students’ reading, writing, and thinking achievement. 

            Schmoker embraces author Morton Hansen’s maxim – “Do less, then obsess” – as the key to school improvement and educator job satisfaction, even joy. But of course schoolwide focus initiatives must be chosen wisely. Schmoker believes that in most schools, an honest self-assessment will lead to choosing one of these:

            •Creating a clear, coherent, content-rich curriculum– In all too many schools, the “curriculum” is a catalog of state standards or a thick document that isn’t a helpful grade-by-grade pathway for teachers, students, and parents. The resulting gaps and inconsistencies mean that what students learn depends on which teachers they get. The solution, says Schmoker, is to work backwards from state standards and map out clear, detailed statements of the most essential content and skills students need to master by the end of each grade level, then spell out what will be taught quarter by quarter. “And we must never forget,” he says, “that any curriculum worthy of the name must include generous amounts of substantive reading, discussion, and writing.” 

            •Promoting authentic literacy– Effective reading, writing, and speaking have never been more important to school and career success, says Schmoker, and yet students spend very little time on those in classrooms. He tells the story of Brockton High School in Massachusetts, which focused instruction on content-based reading and writing assignments and then (in the words of principal Sue Szachowicz) “monitored like crazy.” Over the next six years, this low-SES school, which had scored poorly on rigorous Massachusetts tests, made rapid progress to the top 10 percent of the state’s schools. 

            •Delivering soundly structured instruction– Schmoker believes every lesson should have these elements: (a) a clear statement of what will be learned, why it’s important, and how it will be assessed; (b) the teacher checking on all students’ understanding for each chunk of instruction; and (c) if some students haven’t reached mastery, the teacher following up to deal with misconceptions and error patterns and get the highest possible level of student success. This structure (embroidered, of course, with each teacher’s individual style and voice) should be a look-for in administrators’ classroom observations.

 

“Embracing the Power of LESS” by Mike Schmoker in Educational Leadership, March 2019 (Vol. 76, #6, p. 24-29), https://bit.ly/2IIwvCF; Schmoker is at [email protected]. 

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2. Supporting Below-Level Readers As They Grapple with Difficult Texts

            In this Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacyarticle, Sarah Lupo (James Madison University), John Strong (University of Delaware/Newark), and Kristin Conradi Smith (William & Mary) question whether giving struggling adolescents reading material at the instructional level – just above their current reading level (the “zone of proximal development”) – is the best way for them to catch up and become proficient readers. This widespread practice stems from four beliefs:

-  A high Lexile level means that a text is difficult to read.

-  Readers are more engaged and can learn more from easier versions of texts.

-  Reading easier texts leads to greater gains.

-  Some readers cannot (or will not) read complex texts.

These are all misconceptions, say Lupo, Strong, and Smith: “In our view, literacy educators should adopt the mindset that when it comes to reading, struggle is not necessarily a bad thing. As we prepare students for college and careers, we ought to engage them in texts and tasks with which they will struggle but will learn to be successful with support.… [S]tudents must practice reading difficult texts, with support, in order to improve their comprehension ability.” Here are the authors’ recommendations, addressing the misconceptions one by one:

            • Consider what makes a text difficult. Readability formulas (like Lexile) don’t take into account a number of factors that make texts more challenging. When deciding on classroom texts, teachers should consider Lexile level, but also: students’ familiarity with vocabulary; the amount of academic vocabulary; how frequently words are used; concreteness versus abstraction; sentence length; syntactic complexity (modifiers and dependent clauses); cohesiveness (connections between sentences and ideas); and how formal the language is. 

            • Motivate students to read difficult texts. “Providing easier versions of texts does not necessarily improve learning or comprehension,” say Lupo, Strong, and Smith. A study of students who used the website Newsela to access easier versions of challenging texts showed that this strategy didn’t boost comprehension. As for graphic novels, the authors don’t agree that they make texts easier to comprehend or build important reading skills and motivation (reading a graphic novel version of Romeo and Julietcannot compare to reading the original play with support). “Instead of turning to an easier version of a text to engage students,” say the authors, “we recommend focusing on the facilitative role of motivation: what might move a student to read.” They recommend: giving students some choice in what they read; maximizing classroom interaction with peers about texts; making connections with students’ prior knowledge of the topic; and filling in knowledge gaps with videos, visuals, and other material.

            • Provide more opportunities for students to read. Reading easier texts may improve fluency, say the authors, but studies have not shown that it improves comprehension. What does help is spending more classroom time reading a variety of texts, including some that are challenging. “Reading experiences need to be rich and engaging,” say Lupo, Strong, and Smith, “with opportunities to talk about and choose texts. Teachers should provide readers with an opportunity to develop a sense of agency to persist through texts of varying levels of difficulty because of their own need to make sense of them.” The authors are critical of using texts to teach certain skills (e.g., main idea, key details), which they say is not supported by research. Better to assemble sets of thematically connected texts – for example:

-  A news article about the history of Canterbury (easy vocabulary, well organized);

-  An excerpt from Paper Townsby John Green (easy vocabulary, challenging theme);

-  A video trailer of Into the Wild(visual, challenging theme);

-  Canterbury Talesby Geoffrey Chaucer (challenging vocabulary, sentences, themes).

“Providing opportunities for students to read related texts,” say the authors, “allows them to garner interest in the topic, draw connections between ideas, and be exposed to vocabulary used in different contexts.”

            • Scaffold students’ reading of quality texts. “We recommend abandoning the notion that some readers need easy texts,” say Lupo, Strong, and Smith. “Doing so robs them of quality time in quality texts and hardly cultivates a love of reading… Instead of defining a student’s zone of proximal development as a text level, we have found it productive to think about differentiating the instructional supports provided by the teacher instead.” Reading texts aloud can help with motivation, engagement, and a love of reading, but it should be combined with lots of minds-on work with texts. Here are scaffolding ideas for texts that have unfamiliar words, abstract language, lack of cohesion, and difficult concepts and themes:

Before reading:

-  Preview unfamiliar vocabulary with definitions, visuals, examples, and non-examples.

-  Build knowledge by watching an engaging video or reading easier, related texts.

-  Involve students in a discussion about key concepts related to the topic.

During reading:

-  Have students read a short section of text followed by a question.

-  Use a think-aloud to model comprehension, or a reading guide to help support knowledge and connections.

-  Provide a specific purpose for reading short sections of the text.

After reading:

-  Have a discussion using the new vocabulary.

-  Use a graphic organizer.

-  Discuss the text’s purpose.

 

 

“StruggleIs Not a Bad Word: Misconceptions and Recommendations About Readers Struggling with Difficult Texts” by Sarah Lupo, John Strong, and Kristin Conradi Smith in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, March/April 2019 (Vol. 62, #5, p. 551-560), 

https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jaal.926; the authors can be reached at

[email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. 

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3. Building Literacy Skills in Secondary Content Classrooms

(Originally titled “Instructional Leadership for Disciplinary Literacy”)

            “Secondary-school leaders are uniquely positioned to support teachers in creating the next generation of artists, authors, historians, mathematicians, and scientists,” say Jacy Ippolito (Salem State University) and Douglas Fisher (Health Sciences High and Middle College) in this article in Educational Leadership. “But they need to shift away from the well-intentioned (but sometimes harmful) instructional rhetoric of ‘every teacher is a teacher of reading.’” Instead, say Ippolito and Fisher, school leaders should focus on the discipline-specific literacy work of each subject area, ask good questions, provide shared and differentiated PD opportunities, support teacher leaders, and observe perceptively in classrooms. Here are some questions for teachers in four key areas of literacy:

Reading:

-  In your classroom, what does it mean to read like a historian/literary critic/ mathematician/scientist? Have you made this explicit to your students?

-  Which texts might students read that mirror what professionals in this field read?

-  What supports might students need to read such texts?

-  What real-world problems, tensions, phenomena, or discoveries might these texts address?

-  What’s the best balance between easy, challenging, and complex texts to help students improve their reading skills in this field?

Writing:

-  In your classroom, what does it mean to write like a historian/literary critic/ mathematician/scientist? What kinds of writing are common in this discipline? Have you made this explicit to students?

-  What are some good mentor texts for students to study – for example, argumentative essays, infographics, writing from sources, technical reports?

-  How might what students are reading inspire their writing?

Oral communication:

-  In your classroom, what does it mean to speak and present like a historian/literary critic/mathematician/scientist?

-  What types of public presentations are common in this discipline?

-  What exemplars might students watch – for example, TED Talks?

-  How is vocabulary used in oral communication in this field?

 

 

Group work:

-  In your classroom, what does it mean to collaborate in ways similar to professionals in the discipline?

-  What language structures and communication norms are common in the field?

-  What roles do members of this discipline play when working with others?

 

“Instructional Leadership for Disciplinary Literacy” by Jacy Ippolito and Douglas Fisher in Educational Leadership, March 2019 (Vol. 76, #6, p. 50-56), available for ASCD members, or for purchase, at https://bit.ly/2ukIP1J; the authors are at [email protected]and [email protected]. 

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4. A New Jersey High-School District Addresses Equity Issues

(Originally titled “Reversing Course: Equity-Focused Leadership in Action”)

            In this article in Educational Leadership, Charles Sampson (Freehold Regional School District), Jeff Moore (Hunterdon Central Regional High School District), and Rachel Roegman (University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign) describe two strategies used by the Freehold district’s generally high-performing high schools to highlight pockets of low achievement:

            •The Opportunity Index– A graphic for each student subgroup (special education status, each racial/ethnic group, SES levels, sending K-8 district) visually juxtaposed the percent of students in each subgroup in:

-  AP courses

-  Honors courses

-  Magnet programs

-  The student population

Differences between the last line and the other three provided striking visual evidence of underrepresentation in high-rigor programs, and were then summed up in a number – for example, students with disabilities were a minus 10. 

When principals, superintendents, school board members, and community groups were presented with the Opportunity Index graphics, many were surprised – and some were defensive. The question on the table, say Sampson, Moore, and Roegman: “What are you going to do to help kids take higher-level classes, give kids more opportunity, and not hold them back?” The graphics created a sense of urgency about equity and lots more scrutiny of students’ assignments and the support they were receiving.

            •Patterns of deceleration in course taking– District leaders began tracking students’ progress on a continuum of rigor and independence:

-  Resource classes

-  In-class support

-  General education

-  Honors classes

-  Advanced Placement 

After implementing several policy changes (eliminating the lowest-level English and social studies offerings, creating more heterogeneous classes, no longer requiring teacher recommendations for AP placement, and supporting students for entry to previously restricted classes), the district saw a significant number of students with special needs moving up the continuum. In particular, AP course participation between 2012 and 2017 rose from 1,540 to 2,658, despite a declining student population, and the number of Latino students taking AP exams rose by 110 percent over that time span.

            Detracking was tricky. English and social studies went first, and then leaders took a careful look at mathematics. It turned out that there were multiple student pathways in math, and the lowest-track ninth graders were taking repetitive, non-rigorous courses that didn’t prepare them for state tests and college admission. Students in this dead-end track were disproportionately African-American and Latino, and some were actually decelerating; the latter was most often the case for students of color and students with disabilities. 

            To counteract this pattern, the district took three steps: (a) reworking the ninth-grade Algebra I curriculum, injecting more differentiation and in-time support for struggling students; (b) eliminating the lowest-level ninth-grade math class, making the general level more heterogeneous, and providing PD on differentiation; and (c) creating a new eleventh-grade math course designed to be a springboard to passing state tests and taking higher-level courses as seniors, including statistics. There were immediate results; for example, among students with disabilities, deceleration dropped from 72 percent to 12 percent from 2014 to 2017.

            These changes have not been easy, conclude Sampson, Moore, and Roegman. Teachers had to work on differentiation, guidance counselors on supporting students with rigorous course placements, supervisors on keeping track of progress, sending schools on improving the preparation of students for high school, and principals on maintaining a sense of urgency. But they are pleased with the schools’ progress on equity.

 

“Reversing Course: Equity-Focused Leadership in Action” by Charles Sampson, Jeff Moore, and Rachel Roegman in Educational Leadership, March 2019 (Vol. 76, #6, p. 58-63), available to ASCD members, or for purchase, at https://bit.ly/2WlChMc; the authors can be reached at [email protected],[email protected], and [email protected]. 

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5. A Study of Teacher Merit Pay in North Carolina 

            In this Teachers College Recordarticle, Karen Phelan Kozlowski (University of Southern Mississippi) and Douglas Lee Lauen (University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill) analyze why performance incentives do not appear to dramatically affect teaching practice or student achievement in U.S. schools, particularly in low-performing schools (as compared to positive results in some other nations). The theory of action behind merit pay goes something like this:

-  It is very difficult for principals to monitor teachers’ daily work and ensure effective instruction because of the number of classrooms in each school and the impossibility of observing more than a tiny fraction of instruction.

-  The result is that teachers have a good deal of autonomy, which theoretically means that they can put forth less than maximum effort without consequences.

-  What’s needed is, first, a way to measure the outcomes of teaching – student learning – and the best way to do that is by setting student test-score targets.

-  Second, we need a way to incentivize teachers to meet student performance targets.

-  Three key assumptions underlie merit pay: (a) that teachers are primarily motivated by money to put forth maximum effort; (b) that teachers are not currently working as hard as they could; and (c) that teachers know how to be more effective but are choosing not to put forth the necessary effort to do their best work.

-  Merit pay as a reward for improved test scores will provide the needed incentive and improve teaching and learning.

To test this logic model, the researchers conducted interviews and focus groups with 150 teachers and 20 administrators in some of the lowest-performing districts in North Carolina as they implemented performance incentives under Race to the Top. At the time of the study, North Carolina’s teachers ranked 48th in the nation for teacher pay. “If any teacher would be responsive to a performance incentive for extra pay,” say Kozlowski and Lauen, “it would likely be a teacher in North Carolina.” But the findings rebut every part of the theory of action:

• Teachers are motivated by a desire to serve their students, not money. This is not to say that compensation isn’t important. (The result of low pay in North Carolina, say the authors, has been a high incidence of teachers leaving the profession.)

• Almost all teachers are working as hard as they can and can’t see working harder with higher pay. Between the hours teachers put in for grading, extra tutoring, and other unpaid time, they cannot imagine what working harder would look like. Teachers felt this way about their own practice, as well as that of a vast majority of their colleagues. 

• Improvements in classroom practices (which were sometimes needed and were readily identified by teachers) come from opportunities to learn new strategies and teaching techniques. The key to improvement is not harder work but ways of spreading effective practices to more classrooms. One of the best ways to improve classroom practices is collaboration among colleagues; perversely, individual merit pay creates disincentives to share effective practices. 

 

“Understanding Teacher Pay for Performance: Flawed Assumptions and Disappointing Results” by Karen Phelan Kozlowski and Douglas Lee Lauen in Teachers College Record, February 2019 (Vol. 121, #2, p. 1-38), https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1200525; the authors are at [email protected]and [email protected]. 

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6. Pointers for White Teachers Working with Children of Color

            In this Education Weekarticle, Bettina Love (University of Georgia) recalls that in her own K-12 schooling, she had mostly white teachers who “at their core, were good people but unknowingly were murdering my spirit with their lack of knowledge, care, and love of my culture.” Love is now a teacher educator and strives to help budding teachers, overwhelmingly white women who enter education with the best intentions, understand and nurture African-American and Latino students. She believes all prospective teachers should:

-  Take courses to increase their knowledge of African-American, Latinx, Chicána/o, Caribbean, African, Asian, Southeast Asian, and Native American students;

-  Work in urban school communities to understand the “beauty and the difficulty of teaching in that environment;”

-  Examine the forces that allow schools to be underresourced and students frequently labeled at-risk; 

-  Be effective educators and advocate for a first-class education for all children. 

“So the question is not: Do you love all children?” Love concludes. “The question is: Will you fight for justice for black and brown children? And how will you fight? I argue that you must fight with the creativity, imagination, urgency, boldness, ingenuity, and rebellious spirit of abolitionists to advocate for an education system where all black and brown children are thriving.” 

 

“Dear White Teachers: You Don’t Love Black and Brown Children in Ways That Matter” by Bettina Love inEducation Week, March 20, 2019 (Vol. 38, #25, p. 18), https://bit.ly/2CwZS51; 

Love can be reached at [email protected]. 

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7. Including LGBTQ Content in Elementary Schools

            In this article in American Educator, Jill Hermann-Wilmarth (Western Michigan University) and Caitlin Ryan (East Carolina University) acknowledge that there is discomfort with the idea of addressing LGBTQ issues in elementary classrooms. “Such concerns often arise because people assume talking about people who identify as LGBTQ means talking about sex,” they say. “That is not what we believe at all. Instead, when we advocate for elementary school teachers to address LGBTQ topics, we simply want them to talk about the diversity of families and relationships and communities in ways that include LGBTQ people.” Students will inevitably encounter these issues in their extended families (an uncle who comes out as gay), their neighborhoods (a friend with two moms), on the news (a TV report about a trans controversy), perhaps as they think about their own sexual orientation. It’s good for elementary teachers to be helpful – starting with making their classrooms and schools safe and welcoming for all children and families. Hermann-Wilmarth and Ryan have these suggestions:

• Include LGBTQ texts– Books in the classroom library and used for readalouds should serve as windows and mirrors for a wide range of diversity, affirming children’s own status and taking them beyond their own experiences.

• Question categories– “If it’s difficult for you, given your school or district, to read books with LGBTQ characters in them,” say Hermann-Wilmarth and Ryan, “you can make your classroom safer and more inclusive of LGBTQ people and families by discussing gender and relationships generally in broader ways, even when reading books you already teach… Why, for example, does Kate DiCamillo’s Despereaux make his mother so disappointed that he isn’t big and strong? Why does he get in so much trouble for being a mouse who doesn’t act like other mice and who falls in love with someone he’s not supposed to?” 

• Question representations in LGBTQ books– The problem with some books featuring an LGBTQ character is that they provide a “single story” – a stereotypical and one-dimensional view of a complex person in a multi-dimensional community. Raising questions, say Hermann-Wilmarth and Ryan, “helps us move away from asking simply if LGBTQ people are represented and instead turn our attention more specifically to how they are represented and what the overall message is of those representations.” 

• Handle students’ questions– “Sometimes teachers are worried about saying the wrong thing, or what will happen if they don’t know the answer to a child’s question,” say Hermann-Wilmarth and Ryan. “Trust us that everyonefeels this way sometimes. Knowing all of the right words is not the goal… It’s always OK to tell a child that you don’t know something or that you aren’t sure but that you can look up the answer together. It’s also OK to say something like, ‘That’s a better question for you to ask your families at home.’”

• Address parent resistance– Objections usually come from a very small number of parents, say Hermann-Wilmarth and Ryan, with the vast majority supportive of LGBTQ inclusion. “But the fear of parental resistance is real. Therefore, it is useful to have thought through and to be able to articulate to others why you are doing this work.” A teacher might send home a written statement at the beginning of the school year about having a safe and inclusive classroom community. It’s also important to be aware of local policies, especially in states or districts that place limits on teaching about homosexuality. 

 

“Reading and Teaching the Rainbow” by Jill Hermann-Wilmarth and Caitlin Ryan in American Educator, Spring 2019 (Vol. 43, #1, p. 17-21, 40), https://bit.ly/2CF6SNA; Ryan can be reached at [email protected]. 

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8. More Books That Build Empathy in Children

            In this article in The Reading Teacher, Stephanie Kozak and Holly Recchia (Concordia University/Montreal) suggest novels that transport children to other cultures and help them understand the social world around them. Their suggestions for the middle grades:

-  Ms. Bixby’s Last Dayby John David Anderson

-  El Deafoby Cece Bell

-  Because of Mr. Teruptby Bob Buyea

-  Matildaby Roald Dahl

-  Out of My Mindby Sharon Draper

-  Georgeby Alex Gino

-  Paper Thingsby Jennifer Richard Jacobson

-  Fatty Legsby Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton

-  The Chronicles of Narniaseries by C.S. Lewis

-  Wonderby R.J. Palacio

-  Hatchetby Gary Paulsen

-  Percy Jackson and the Olympiansseries by Rick Riordan

-  Love, Ishby Karen Rivers

-  Harry Potterseries by J.K. Rowling

-  Counting by 7sby Holly Goldberg Sloan

-  When You Reach Meby Rebecca Stead

-  Charlotte’s Webby E.B. White

-  Karma Khullar’s Mustacheby Kristi Wientge

 

“Reading and the Development of Social Understanding: Implications for the Literacy Classroom” by Stephanie Kozak and Holly Recchia in The Reading Teacher, March/April 2019 (Vol. 72, #5, p. 569-577), https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trtr.1760; the authors can be reached at [email protected]and [email protected].

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9. Questions to Ask a Book Buddy

(Originally titled “Partner Talk Bookmark”)

            In this sidebar in Education Updatetaken from a book by Lindsey Moses and Meredith Ogden, the authors suggest questions that reading partners might ask each other about books they’re reading:

-  What is the book about?

-  Did you like the book? Why?

-  What was your favorite part?

-  Did anything make you smile or laugh?

-  Describe the characters.

-  Who was your favorite character? Why?

-  Did you have any connections?

-  What was the author’s message?

-  Did you learn something new?

-  Did you wonder about anything?

-  Did anything confuse you?

 

“Partner Talk Bookmark” in Education Update, March 2019 (Vol. 61, #3, p. 3), 

https://bit.ly/2TvnL2w, from What Are the Rest of My Kids Doing? Fostering Independence in the K-2 Reading Workshopby Lindsey Moses and Meredith Ogden (Heinemann 2017)

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