Marshall Memo 614

A Weekly Round-up of Important Ideas and Research in K-12 Education

November 30, 2015

 

 


In This Issue:

1. Is poverty the reason U.S. students don’t compare well internationally?

2. A high bar for using value-added measures to evaluate teachers

3. Tips for working with adult learners

4. David Brooks on a school that develops community and character

5. The evolution of the Pledge of Allegiance

6. Using data in world language classes

7. Graphic novels in high-school classrooms

8. Short item: A model backwards-designed Algebra I course

 

Quotes of the Week

“All over the country there are schools and organizations trying to come up with new ways to cultivate character. The ones I’ve seen that do it best, so far, are those that cultivate intense, thick community. Most of the time character is not an individual accomplishment. It emerges through joined hearts and souls, and in groups.”

            David Brooks (see item #4)

 

“It is the foremost task of education to insure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible denial, and above all, compassion.”

            Kurt Hahn of Outward Bound (quoted in item #4)

 

“Instructional coaches need to demonstrate humility and a genuine respect for the knowledge, experience, and abilities of others,”

            Sloane Castleman (see item #3)

 

“If they are not making mistakes, they are not trying hard enough.”

            Nicole Sherf and Tiesa Graf (see item #6)

 

“From Day One of language learning, we should be teaching our students how to expand on what they communicate, pushing them to do so, and rewarding them for their efforts at elaborated responses.”

            Nicole Sherf and Tiesa Graf (ibid.)

 

“Although there may be differences in views about the desirability of using VAM for evaluation purposes, there is wide agreement that unreliable or poor-quality data, incorrect attributions, lack of reliability or validity evidence associated with value-added scores, and unsupported claims lead to misuses that harm students and educators.”

            An AERA statement on value-added models for teacher evaluation (see item #2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Is Poverty the Reason U.S. Students Don’t Compare Well Internationally?

            In this article in Education Next, Michael Petrilli and Brandon Wright (Thomas B. Fordham Institute) examine the proposition that poverty is the major reason that American students’ test scores are mediocre compared to those of students in other developed nations. For this to be true, say Petrilli and Wright, at least two of the following claims need to be established:

-   Poverty is related to lower levels of student learning.

-   America’s poor students perform worse than those in other countries.

-   The poverty rate in the U.S. is substantially higher than comparison countries.

The authors examine each in turn:

Is there a correlation between poverty and academic achievement? Definitely, say Petrilli and Wright. “That’s not to say ‘poor children can’t learn,’” they continue. “It is to say, rather, that there’s long been a clear connection between families’ socioeconomic status and students’ academic achievement.” This is true at the state, district, and school level because financial stress can make it much more challenging for parents to afford books, computer access, educational games, afterschool activities, tutoring, museum trips, summer camps, and other educational experiences for their children outside of school. Poverty is also correlated with a number of other risk factors associated with lower test scores, including growing up with a single parent, lower parental educational attainment, and a higher incidence of alcoholism, drug abuse, and child neglect and abuse.

            • Do low-income students in the U.S. perform worse than those in other countries? The best available data (which are not perfect, say Petrilli and Wright) are collected by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). They show that the U.S. is right in the middle of the pack with other developed nations – it does equally well, and equally poorly, at teaching its least well-off students and its more-advantaged students. In other words, conclude the authors, “There is no evidence that disadvantaged students in the United States are underperforming other countries’ disadvantaged students. If anything, it is the ‘advantaged’ U.S. students (those whose parents have a high level of education) who are falling short in international comparisons.”

            • Does the U.S. have a higher rate of child poverty than other countries? A number of experts believe it does, including Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg, Columbia University’s Michael Rebell and Jessica Wolff, and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten (who says that poverty is “the elephant in the room” that accounts for poor student performance in the U.S.). But Petrilli and Wright say these opinions are formed by looking at the level of relative poverty, which they say is more a measure of income inequality and is weakly correlated with student achievement. Taking into account all sources of income and looking at the rate of absolute poverty (which is strongly correlated with student achievement), the U.S. is quite typical by international standards – the rate is lower than Ireland and the U.K, almost the same as Germany, and only slightly higher than Finland. “To be sure, the U.S. still has too much poverty,” say Petrilli and Wright. “But once social welfare benefits are included, and we look at absolute instead of relative poverty, the U.S. is hardly an outlier.” They note that these figures are for the general population; international data for child poverty are not available.

            What’s the bottom line? “[P]overty is an issue for every nation on the planet,” say Petrilli and Wright, but “poverty can’t explain away America’s lackluster academic performance. That excuse, however soothing it may be to educators, politicians, and social critics, turns out to be a crutch that’s unfounded in evidence… Why U.S. student performance is mediocre is a topic worthy of study and debate, as is how to help students at all points on the economic spectrum perform better.”

 

“America’s Mediocre Test Scores: Education Crisis or Poverty Crisis?” by Michael Petrilli and Brandon Wright in Education Next, Winter 2016 (Vol. 16, #1, p. 46-52), http://educationnext.org/americas-mediocre-test-scores-education-poverty-crisis/

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2. A High Bar for Using Value-Added Measures to Evaluate Teachers

            This AERA (American Educational Research Association) statement in Educational Researcher reviews the literature on value-added models (VAM) for evaluating teachers, school leaders, and educator preparation programs. The authors distinguish value-added models, which measure how each teacher’s performance affects students’ standardized test scores during a school year, from status models, which measure the proportion of students who exceed a performance threshold at the end of a school year, regardless of their academic standing at the beginning of that year. “Under a status model,” say the authors, “a teacher with a higher-scoring entering class typically will be advantaged in comparison to a teacher with a lower-scoring entering class. In contrast, VAM focus on test-based changes so that teachers or leaders with higher scoring entering student cohorts are not necessarily advantaged.”

            But just because value-added models are superior to status models, the authors continue, “does not mean that they are ready for use in educator or program evaluation. There are potentially serious negative consequences in the context of evaluation that can result from the use of VAM based on incomplete or flawed data, as well as from the misinterpretation or misuse of the VAM results… Only if such indicators are based on high-quality, audited test data and supported by sound validation evidence for the specific purposes proposed, can they be appropriately used, along with other relevant indicators, for professional development purposes or for educator evaluation.” The authors list five prerequisites for responsible use of value-added data:

            • Validity and reliability – VAM scores must be derived only from students’ scores on assessments that meet professional standards for the purpose at hand – that is, the tests used measure growth in the actual subject matter being taught and the full range of student achievement in teachers’ classrooms.

            • Additional evidence – VAM scores must be accompanied by separate lines of evidence of reliability and validity that support each claim and interpretation. Does the evidence take into account the potential impact of contextual factors and selection bias?

            • Evidence from several years – VAM data “should not be used unless they are derived from data obtained from sufficient numbers of students over multiple years,” say the authors. “VAM scores should always be accompanied by estimates of uncertainty to guard against overinterpretation of differences.”

            • Comparability of tests over time – The transition of most states to Common Core and other revised curriculum standards in recent years can “pose a threat to the validity of the interpretation of VAM scores,” say the authors, “especially when these scores are compared before, across, and after the transition… In these instances, assessments across years may no longer be equated and the statistical links between scores are not sufficiently strong to support the validity arguments and interpretations required for VAM.”

            • Student learning objectives in non-tested grades – For grades and subjects without standardized test data (e.g., K-2, art, music, physical education, health, and most high-school subjects), locally developed measures should not be used for educator accountability “unless they are accompanied by evidence of reliability and validity,” say the authors. “Because the validity of VAM scores is so dependent on the quality of the underlying assessment, they should not be implemented in grades or subjects where there is a lack of evidence of reliability and validity.”

If these technical requirements are met, the authors have three provisos for the implementation of value-added models in schools:

Multiple measures – “VAM scores must never be used alone or in isolation in educator or program evaluation systems,” they say. “If VAM scores are used, they should be only one component in a more comprehensive educator or program education. Also their meaning should be interpreted in the context of an individual teacher’s curriculum and teaching assignments, with cautions issued regarding common interpretation problems, such as ceiling and floor effects of the tests for estimating growth for high- and low-achieving students.”

            • Ongoing monitoring of technical quality – VAM analysis is relatively new, say the authors, and school districts need to keep a close eye on the quality of data and be alert to unintended consequences. “The monitoring should be of sufficient scope and extent to provide evidence to document the technical quality of the VAM application and the validity of its use within a given evaluation system,” they say. “When there is credible evidence that there are negative consequences, every effort should be made to mitigate them.”

            • Transparency – The authors believe the following elements of every VAM program should be made public:

-   A description of the data and the data-quality checks used;

-   The methodology, statistical models, and computational methods employed;

-   A rationale and explanation of how each indicator has been incorporated into the evaluation system;

-   Validity evidence to support the use of the system.

When concerns or problems are reported, they say, a review should be triggered so glitches can be fixed.

The authors have one additional note of caution: “[T]he validity of inferences from VAM scores depends on the ability to isolate the contributions of teachers and leaders to student learning from the contributions of other factors not under their control. This is very difficult, not only because of data limitations but also because of the highly nonrandom sorting of students and teachers into schools and classes within schools. Consequently, such disentangling can be accomplished only imperfectly and with an unknown degree of success. The resulting bias will not be distributed evenly among schools, given wide variation in critical factors like student mobility, and could in itself make some students, schools, and teachers appear to be underperforming.” 

In sum, say the authors, “the AERA recommends that VAM (which include student gain score models, transition models, student growth percentile models, and value measures models) not be used without sufficient evidence that this technical bar has been met in ways that support all claims, interpretative arguments, and uses (e.g., rankings, classification decisions). Although there may be differences in views about the desirability of using VAM for evaluation purposes, there is wide agreement that unreliable or poor-quality data, incorrect attributions, lack of reliability or validity evidence associated with value-added scores, and unsupported claims lead to misuses that harm students and educators… Ultimately, only rigorously supported inferences about the quality and effectiveness of teachers, educational leaders, and preparation programs can contribute to improved student learning.” The authors recommend further research on value-added models, and also exploration of “promising alternatives,” including the use of teacher observation data and peer assistance and review models “that provide formative and summative assessments of teaching and honor teachers’ due process rights.”

 

“AERA Statement on Use of Value-Added Models (VAM) for the Evaluation of Educators and Educator Preparation Programs” by the AERA Council, June 2015 in Educational Researcher (p. 1-5), http://bit.ly/1jvKtFy

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3. Tips for Working with Adult Learners

            In this article in Literacy Today, Florida administrator Sloane Castleman says that one of the most positive developments in the last decade is the shift from one-shot PD workshops to instructional coaching. Effective coaches, she believes, have the potential to give teachers “growth opportunities embedded in the workplace, relevant to the specific needs of each learning and teaching community, and sustained over time.”

The problem, she’s noticed, is that not all teachers are open to working with an instructional coach. When working with colleagues, coaches need to constantly ask themselves, “What am I doing that’s conflicting with the developmental needs of adult learners?” Castleman identifies the following:

-   They have a deep need to be self-directed.

-   They are intrinsically motivated.

-   Their life experience is an excellent resource for learning.

-   They prefer learning opportunities that address immediate problems.

-   They’ll learn best when a coach meets the demands of their social roles.

Castleman has four principles for staying tuned to teachers’ developmental requirements:

            • It’s all about relationships. “Instructional coaches need to demonstrate humility and a genuine respect for the knowledge, experience, and abilities of others,” she says. “In a field that is complex and constantly evolving, instructional coaches should resist the temptation to tell their colleagues what is best and should cultivate collegial conversations and collaborative explorations into best practices.”

            • Trust is essential. Teachers need to feel safe in exposing their weaknesses and asking for help in areas of need, which means they must believe that coaches won’t convey negative evaluative information to administrators. “If teachers can’t trust their instructional coaches,” says Castleman, “coaches can’t help teachers learn from their mistakes and take important professional risks.”

            • Involve teachers in PD decisions. Program choices should be made with teachers’ challenges and wishes in mind.

            • Orchestrate collaborative learning opportunities. Teachers need forums in which they can share their diverse life experiences with colleagues. “Instructional coaches have to look for creative ways to connect teachers so they can learn to take action as a community,” says Castleman.

 

“Digging Deeper: Unearthing the Roots of Teacher Resistance to Instructional Coaching” by Sloane Castleman in Literacy Today, November/December 2015 (Vol. 33, #3, p. 14-15),

http://bit.ly/1lUwSJJ; Castleman can be reached at [email protected].

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4. David Brooks On a School That Develops Community and Character

            “All over the country there are schools and organizations trying to come up with new ways to cultivate character,” says David Brooks in this New York Times column. “The ones I’ve seen that do it best, so far, are those that cultivate intense, thick community. Most of the time character is not an individual accomplishment. It emerges through joined hearts and souls, and in groups.” He describes a recent visit to the Leaders School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, which has about 300 students speaking 22 languages, 85 percent living in poverty, and is organized on Outward Bound principles. This high school, says Brooks, “is a glowing example of community cohesion.” Here’s what struck him:

-   Incoming freshmen are assigned to a “crew” of 12-15 students guided by an advisor, and stay together through graduation. Many upperclassmen serve as peer mentors to younger students.

-   Students’ first experience together is a wilderness adventure in which they learn to cook for each other, deal with outdoor challenges, and go through the sequence of storming, creating norms, and learning to perform together.

-   Students are given lots of responsibility in real-life social situations and challenged to develop compassion, judgment, sensitivity, and mercy. “If one student writes something nasty about another on social media, then the two get together with two student mediators and together they work out a resolution,” says Brooks.

-   Students who commit serious infractions meet with a “Harm Circle” and figure out an appropriate act of contrition and restorative justice.

-   One day in December, all students gather outside the school and cheer the seniors as they march as a unit to mail their college application letters.

-   Socratic dialogue is the pedagogy used in most classrooms, with students learning to negotiate disagreements through protocols like “Step Up/Step Back.” Students build on each others’ statements and make a point of drawing out shy students.

-   The school has a broad definition of achievement, with grades for character and leadership as well as academics. In report card conferences, students present their successes, failures, and improvement strategies to parents, observers, and a teacher.

-   “Most of all,” says Brooks, “I was struck by their kindness toward one another. No student could remember any racial or ethnic conflict… There’s a palpable sense of being cared for.”

-   Last year, the school’s graduation rate was 89 percent, with average SAT scores of 411 in math and 384 in verbal and all graduates headed for college.

Brooks quotes Kurt Hahn, the founder of Outward Bound: “It is the foremost task of education to insure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible denial, and above all, compassion.”

 

“Communities of Character” by David Brooks in The New York Times, November 27, 2015, http://nyti.ms/1IwESWd

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5. The Evolution of the Pledge of Allegiance

            In this article in The Synapse, Kelli Marshall traces the history of the Pledge of Allegiance, which was first recited by U.S. students in 1892 in this form:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands – one Nation, indivisible – with Liberty and Justice for all.

Written by Francis Bellamy, a 37-year-old minister, and published in the Boston-based family periodical Youth’s Companion, the Pledge was part of a nationwide school program coinciding with the opening of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Bellamy had three goals:  rekindling patriotism among young Americans; recapturing the heroic purpose of the Civil War years to address dangers facing the nation; and Americanizing thousands of young immigrants arriving from other countries. In his article, Bellamy stipulated that students should stand, face the flag, give a military-style salute, and when they reached “to my Flag” in the Pledge, extend their right hands, palm upward, toward the flag and keep their arms extended until the end. Right afterward, he wanted each class to sing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”

            This procedure became commonplace in American schools. Then in 1923 and 1924, the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution persuaded the National Flag Conferences to revise the Pledge so it read like this:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands – one nation, indivisible – with liberty and justice for all.

The idea was to make sure immigrant children knew they were saluting the U.S. flag, not the flag of the country from which they had come.

            In the 1930s, another change was made. Noticing the eerie similarity between the Bellamy arms-extended gesture and the Nazi “Heil Hitler” salute, parent and teacher organizations, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the Red Cross, and other organizations led a movement to have students use a military salute or hold their hands over their hearts. In December 1942, Congress passed an amended Flag Code, requiring that the Pledge “should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart.”

            A final revision to the Pledge came in 1954, when President Eisenhower, responding to many Americans’ fear of “godless” Soviet Communism, asked Congress to add the words under God. The purpose, he said, was to “reaffirm the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future” and “strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.” Congress made it official, and that’s the form that most American students recite today:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Subsequent court cases have addressed objections from atheists to “under God” and from Jehovah’s Witnesses, who argued that requiring children to recite the Pledge violated their prohibition against venerating a “graven image.” The bottom line: the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects students from being compelled to recite the Pledge in public schools.

 

“The Weird History of the Pledge of Allegiance” by Kelli Marshall in The Synapse, September 2, 2015, http://bit.ly/1YCQCzA

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6. Using Data in World Language Classes

            In this article in The Language Educator, Nicole Sherf (Salem State University) and Tiesa Graf (South Hadley High School, Massachusetts) examine the kinds of assessments used by world language teachers. “The easiest data to collect and analyze are those that are objective and clear-cut,” they say – for example, filling in a missing word in a sentence, choosing the word that correctly conjugates a verb, or listing the right possessive adjective. A typical item:

            Elena _______ alta.

a.   está

b.  es

c.   tiene

d.  hace

The correct answer is (b), and the item accurately assesses a fragment of Spanish grammar and is quick and easy to score. But, say Sherf and Graf, “the fill-in offers no way for the student to express a message that is meaningful or communicative, or to elaborate on Elena’s other physical characteristics and personality, if, in fact, Elena even exists to the teacher and students.

“[W]e have historically placed far too much emphasis on precision,” they continue. “We have valued correctness over communication, which has led to a focus on form rather than on communication in teaching… If the profession continues to rely on assessment through completion of disconnected, abstract and decontextualized sentences to practice or assess discrete grammar or vocabulary, students will not understand that the ultimate purpose of language learning is communication.”

            Language educators can change the traditional dynamic, say Sherf and Graf, “by encouraging our students to have less fear in creating with the language and telling them that errors are a natural part of language learning. If they are not making mistakes, they are not trying hard enough. Taking risks is an important part of language learning… The data we collect and analyze to determine evidence of student growth must be connected to what our students can do with the language.”

For ideas on escaping the quick-and-easy assessment trap, Sherf and Graf harken back to the 2010 ACTFL goal of 90%+ classroom interaction in the target language. There are three key steps in making this happen:

-   The teacher speaking as much as possible in the target language, focusing on content related to unit objectives.

-   Getting students to speak only in the target language and not responding or reacting to them if they use English. In other words, class discussions are in the target language, not about it.

-   Getting students interacting with each other in the target language (asking each other follow-up questions on a presentation, reporting or commenting on their partner’s responses, or providing summaries of their group’s conclusions), with the teacher circulating and monitoring the quality of discourse.

The four criteria used to describe proficiency in this type of exercise are (a) the functions or tasks that are being completed, (b) the various contexts or curriculum content, (c) the text type or level of production, and (d) the level of precision or accuracy.

            Sherf and Graf take the third, text type and level of production, and give examples of two levels of proficiency:

-   Novice – the learner relies on memorizing words and phrases;

-   Intermediate – able to create with the language at the sentence level.

What’s essential is getting students to respond at the sentence level. “From Day One of language learning,” say the authors, “we should be teaching our students how to expand on what they communicate, pushing them to do so, and rewarding them for their efforts at elaborated responses. If they are not encouraged and supported from the very beginning of language learning to include more information and provide strong, solid responses, they will have a hard time moving up the proficiency scale to the Intermediate level.” Students can be encouraged to think about who, what, when, where, and how to add details and use linking words like and, or, with, because, for, then, and next to extend their thinking. In the early stages, quantity is paramount; as students develop proficiency, they can begin to think about how to vary sentence types. Sentence starters like these are also helpful:

-   My best friend is ….

-   My best friend has….

-   My best friend needs….

-   I like my best friend because….

-   I am with my best friend when….

To assess, teachers can record the number of words written and the amount of time students can talk with each other, and track progress as a unit progresses.

            Another way to develop fluency is to have students write a weekly journal entry for a given number of minutes, answering an open-ended question on the context of the unit (for example, in a unit on the family, writing about a favorite family member, a celebrity family, or a made-up family based on TV characters). Students should keep their pencils or pens moving without worrying about correctness, not using dictionaries, and focusing on the message. Students can keep track of their word count, focusing on quantity of writing, and gradually transition to assessing and improving the quality of their entries – for example, the number of connected thoughts, extensions, and elaborations.

            To measure students’ oral proficiency at the beginning and end of a unit, Sherf and Graf suggest having students take out their cell phones, dialing a number attached to the teacher’s Gmail account, and using Google Voice to speak for one minute in response to a prompt (for example, in a vocabulary unit on houses, they might be asked to describe their ideal house, or describe what is special about a specific room in their house). Students’ messages are recorded in easy-to-access files in the teacher’s Gmail account. “Amazingly, the recordings are clear and easy to understand even though all students are speaking at the same time,” say the authors. “It is best to give the task to the students and ask them to call immediately during class, offering no time to think through their answers. This trains students to speak spontaneously and to respond to the assignment quickly, an important skill in interpersonal communication.” (Sherf and Graf add that it’s important to remind students to say their names at the beginning of their message.) If cell phones can’t be used, students might use Google Voice, Audacity, or some other voice recording application in the school’s language lab.

 

“Evidence of Student Learning: A Starting Point for Collecting and Analyzing Data Related to Communication” by Nicole Sherf and Tiesa Graf in The Language Educator, October/ November 2015 (Vol. 10, #4, p. 40-43), http://bit.ly/1SsYBM7

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7. Graphic Novels in High-School Classrooms

            “For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved graphic novels, comics, and visuals,” says Michael Cook (Millicent University) in this article in Literacy Today. “As a child, I lived vicariously through superheroes and exciting protagonists. During my teen years, I found myself connecting better with the visuals of comics and graphic novels than with the traditional texts in school.” When he became a high-school teacher, Cook included graphic novels in his curriculum, and as a college professor, he uses them to stretch the repertoires of budding teachers of English, science, social studies, and mathematics. Here are his recommendations of graphic novels that he believes will build critical thinking skills, creativity, and the ability to read, critique, and analyze multiple modes of communication:

Social studies:

-   American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (Macmillan)

-   The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon (Hill and Wang)

-   Vietnam Journal by Don Lomax (Transfuzion)

-   The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

-   The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The Graphic Novel by Eric Shanower and L. Frank Baum (Marvel)

Science:

-   The Cartoon Guide to.. Series (Physics, Chemistry, etc.) by Larry Gonick (William Morrow)

-   Clan Apis by Jay Hosler (CreateSpace)

-   Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists by Jim Ottaviani (G.T. Labs)

-   The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA by Mark Schultz (Hill and Wang)

-   Suspended in Language: Niels Bohr’s Life, Discoveries, and the Century He Shaped by Jim Ottaviani (G.T. Labs)

English Language Arts:

-   Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller (DC Comics)

-   Macbeth: The Graphic Novel by John McDonald and William Shakespeare (Classical Comics)

-   Ms. Marvel: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona (Marvel)

-   Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge (Amulet)

-   This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (First Second)

 

 

Mathematics:

-   Factoring with Mr. Yang (Interactive online comic strips/tutorials) by Gene Luen Yang (www.geneyang.com/factoring)

-   Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou (Bloomsbury)

-   The Lost Key: A Mystery with Whole Numbers by Melinda Thielbar and Tintin Pantoja (Graphic Universe)

-   The Manga Guide Series (Calculus, statistics, linear algebra) from No Starch Press – varied authors

-   Who Killed Professor X? by Thodoris Andriopoulus and Thanasis Gkiokas (Birkhauser)

 

“The Big Picture: Why Your High-School Students Should Be Reading Graphic Novels – Whatever the Content Area” by Michael Cook in Literacy Today, November/December 2015 (Vol. 33, #3, p. 30-32), no e-link available; Cook can be reached at [email protected].

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8. Short Item:

            A model backwards-designed Algebra I course – Check out this course designed by the Alexandria City Public Schools in Virginia using the Understanding by Design framework: http://www.acps.k12.va.us/curriculum/design/sample-algebra-course.pdf

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About the Marshall Memo

 


Mission and focus:

This weekly memo is designed to keep principals, teachers, superintendents, and others very well-informed on current research and effective practices in K-12 education. Kim Marshall, drawing on 44 years’ experience as a teacher, principal, central office administrator, and writer, lightens the load of busy educators by serving as their “designated reader.”

 

To produce the Marshall Memo, Kim subscribes to 64 carefully-chosen publications (see list to the right), sifts through more than a hundred articles each week, and selects 5-10 that have the greatest potential to improve teaching, leadership, and learning. He then writes a brief summary of each article, pulls out several striking quotes, provides e-links to full articles when available, and e-mails the Memo to subscribers every Monday evening (with occasional breaks; there are 50 issues a year).

 

Subscriptions:

Individual subscriptions are $50 for a year. Rates decline steeply for multiple readers within the same organization. See the website for these rates and how to pay by check, credit card, or purchase order.

 

Website:

If you go to http://www.marshallmemo.com you will find detailed information on:

• How to subscribe or renew

• A detailed rationale for the Marshall Memo

• Publications (with a count of articles from each)

• Article selection criteria

• Topics (with a count of articles from each)

• Headlines for all issues

• Reader opinions (with results of an annual survey)

• About Kim Marshall (including links to articles)

• A free sample issue

 

Subscribers have access to the Members’ Area of the website, which has:

• The current issue (in Word or PDF)

• All back issues (also in Word and PDF)

• A database of all articles to date, searchable

    by topic, title, author, source, level, etc.

• A collection of “classic” articles from all 11 years

Core list of publications covered

Those read this week are underlined.

American Educational Research Journal

American Educator

American Journal of Education

American School Board Journal

AMLE Magazine

ASCA School Counselor

ASCD SmartBrief/Public Education NewsBlast

Better: Evidence-Based Education

Center for Performance Assessment Newsletter

District Administration

Ed. Magazine

Education Digest

Education Gadfly

Education Next

Education Week

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

Educational Horizons

Educational Leadership

Educational Researcher
Edutopia

Elementary School Journal

Essential Teacher

Go Teach

Harvard Business Review

Harvard Educational Review

Independent School

Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk (JESPAR)

Journal of Staff Development

Kappa Delta Pi Record

Knowledge Quest

Literacy Today

Middle School Journal

Peabody Journal of Education

Perspectives

Phi Delta Kappan

Principal

Principal Leadership

Principal’s Research Review

Reading Research Quarterly

Responsive Classroom Newsletter

Rethinking Schools

Review of Educational Research

School Administrator

School Library Journal

Teacher

Teachers College Record

Teaching Children Mathematics

Teaching Exceptional Children/Exceptional Children

The Atlantic

The Chronicle of Higher Education

The District Management Journal

The Journal of the Learning Sciences

The Language Educator

The Learning Principal/Learning System/Tools for Schools

The New York Times

The New Yorker

The Reading Teacher

Theory Into Practice

Time Magazine

Wharton Leadership Digest