In This Issue:

1. Instructional leadership by a team, not just the principal

2. Why some children grow up to be creative and others don’t

3. Supporting students whose families are constantly on the move

4. A comparison of four different programs for English learners

5. Getting reluctant middle-school students reading

6. A parent argues for “exit plans” from special education

7. Helping teachers stay sharp and fresh

8. Short items: (a) Dylan Wiliam classroom experiments; (b) A video of the weather for 2015;

    (c) Finding diverse books

 

Quotes of the Week

“I’ll give you my definition of education: 17 years of sustained sitting. Boys are much antsier than girls. Girls are better studiers than boys.”

            Andrew Hacker in “Who Needs Advanced Math? Not Everybody” in The New York

Times Education Life, February 7, 2016 (p. 9), http://nyti.ms/20kdLFX

 

“You can’t program a child to become creative. Try to engineer a certain kind of success, and the best you’ll get is an ambitious robot. If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.”

            Adam Grant (see item #2)

 

“[Great principals] understand that their role is to teach teachers, not students, and they allow and encourage teachers to be excited and creative about teaching, rather than draining the life out of them.”

            Todd Whitaker in “Pop Quiz” in Principal Leadership, February 2016 (Vol. 16, #6, p.

60), no e-link available

 

“My coaching has no teeth.”

            An instructional coach on the difficulty of getting teachers to change (see item #1)

 

“No responsible educator would, in effect, punish students for coming from an unstable, unpredictable environment by ignoring them and seeing them as a burden.”

            Ruby Payne (see item #3)

 

“Special education rarely has an exit plan.”

Elizabeth Brown (see item #6)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Instructional Leadership by a Team, Not Just the Principal

            In this Bain and Company study, Chris Bierly, Betsy Doyle, and Abigail Smith bemoan the fact that (a) most principals have an unmanageable number of teachers and other staff reporting to them, (b) many principals make very little difference to the growth and development of their colleagues, and (c) few schools have figured out how to boost principals’ effectiveness by getting assistant principals, deans, department heads, grade-level and PLC chairs, teacher leaders, mentor teachers, and instructional coaches working as a cohesive, coordinated team to help teachers improve their craft and get better results from students.

“While many districts are investing heavily in new leadership roles,” say Bierly, Doyle, and Smith, “– upwards of 25% of teachers have taken on a ‘teacher leader’ title, for example – our research shows that very few of these additional leaders feel responsible for the performance and growth of the teachers they lead… All too often we are investing in one-off roles and a broad menu of professional development efforts without a clear vision for how schools should be led or how that model will improve teaching and learning. Simply put, we aren’t expecting the right things from our leaders and we aren’t setting them up for success.”

            The Bain team surveyed, observed, and interviewed more than 4,200 educators in 12 U.S. school districts and charter management organizations to better understand the instructional leadership challenge. A major conclusion: many of the instructional support roles that have been added to schools in recent years are too “soft” to make a difference in classrooms. “Teacher-leader roles can be a valuable way to give teachers opportunities to grow outside the classroom,” say Bierly, Doyle, and Smith. “They expose teachers to new responsibilities and give them a chance to use their skills to help peers succeed. But more often than not, teacher leaders aren’t given specific responsibility for leading and developing other teachers in the building. And most don’t feel accountable for the performance of those they are working with.” A teacher leader in a large urban district put it this way: “I am not responsible for the learning and development of the students taught by these teachers, nor do I feel empowered to impact the learning and development of these students.”

In addition to the problem of mandate and authority, there’s the problem of time – time to observe classrooms, meet with teacher teams, analyze student performance data, and confer one-on-one with colleagues in ways that produce real change. Professional learning communities (PLCs) have a similar problem. According to the Bain researchers, “they usually fall short of plugging the leadership gap. That’s because they aren’t typically led by an empowered leader with the responsibility, time, and authority to help those within the community materially improve their instructional practice. They rely on meetings and group discussion rather than empowering the PLC leader to work closely with team members through observation, coaching, and feedback.”

Instructional coaches are similarly handicapped in improving classroom instruction. “While our research shows they have more time than a typical teacher leader,” say the Bain researchers, “they lack the mandate and the authority to truly lead. Despite having such a focused professional development role, one-third of the instructional coaches in our research did not feel responsible for the growth and development of the teachers they work with, and only 36% said they were accountable for their growth.” As one coach said, “I love coaching teachers but I’m frustrated by the limits of my job. I can make observations and give positive feedback but when it comes to improving instruction, all I can do is make suggestions. My coaching has no teeth.” The instructional coach model is built on the belief, unique to education, that responsibility for coaching and evaluation should be separated. Coaches don’t communicate with administrators about what they are seeing in classrooms, and vice-versa. And inevitably teachers sometimes receive conflicting messages from their supervisors and their coaches.

The good news, say Bierly, Doyle, and Smith, is that some districts and CMOs are successfully addressing these leadership dilemmas. Here are the key steps they recommend to harness the potential of the instructional support roles within each school and provide cohesive, authoritative instructional support and direction to teachers:

            • First, decide on a district-wide leadership model. In setting up school leadership teams that make more effective use of administrators, teacher leaders, and other instructional support roles, districts need to answer four key questions:

-   What will the core leadership roles be and what responsibilities will those leaders have?

-   How will leaders be deployed to support teams of teachers?

-   How will classroom observations and teacher feedback and coaching work?

-   Who will be responsible for teacher evaluations and who will have input?

The Bain team recommends that districts decide on one model for all schools. “We don’t ask principals to design the IT system from scratch or write their own textbooks,” they say. “The school leadership model is no different – it is a tool that is best designed, with plenty of principal and teacher input, to serve the system as a whole with latitude for school-level customization.” The Denver Public School district is an example of this approach, with 80 percent “tight” (centrally mandated) and 20 percent “loose” (school-decided).

• Second, empower and develop leaders working with a manageable number of teachers. One approach is to empower teacher leaders and boost their leadership capacity. Denver took this route, creating Team Leads who are released from classroom duties up to 50 percent of the week so they can coach 8-12 teachers and work closely with one grade-level or subject-area teacher team. The Team Leads observe and support team members, have input on their evaluations, and share responsibility for their performance. “Denver chose to focus on teacher leaders,” say Bierly, Doyle, and Smith, “because it believed that current teachers would have the most credibility among their peers and would bring to the process the most relevant and up-to-date content expertise. Denver also believed that empowering such a group of ‘player coaches’ promotes a healthy culture of teacher collaboration.” Charlotte-Mecklenburg is using a similar approach. “We very deliberately designed our model to keep our best teachers in the classroom but also to allow them to expand their input,” said a CM zone superintendent. “Our great teachers want to impact more than just their own students.”

A different approach is to increase the number of assistant principals in each school. The Green Dot charter schools in Los Angeles, for example, have two assistant principals in schools with 540-620 students, which means that each of the three administrators is responsible for about 13 teachers. Green Dot has also committed significant resources to the recruitment, training, and support of all its school-based administrators. Green Dot took this approach because, as a rapidly expanding charter network, it needed to recruit and develop future principals.

Both approaches are an adjustment for principals, who need to learn how to step back from trying to be the leader of everyone to empowering, training, and supervising their leadership team. “When the Team Leads in Denver began to take on more responsibility, for instance, some principals instinctively used their newfound ‘extra’ time to double down on working with teachers they knew were struggling,” say the Bain researchers. “Some had to learn to pull back and get out of the way. Their job in the new model was to coach and develop their Team Leads to handle those problems, not jump in themselves.”

• Third, focus leaders on frequent, high-quality coaching of teachers. “An effective distributed leadership model starts with an understanding that teaching is an incredibly difficult job – not just technically, but also emotionally,” say Bierly, Doyle, and Smith. “Many teachers invest heavily in their students, reveling in their successes and sharing the burden of their failures. But maintaining enthusiasm and energy for the job is a daily challenge. Too often, teachers see the limited guidance they get as punitive – a one-way, arms-length demand for better performance. The most effective school leaders understand this and see their roles as helping to create energy for teaching by ensuring teachers get the support they need.”

Leadership team members need to spend serious time in classrooms, understand what’s going on, and provide one-on-one support, encouragement, and guidance to each of their teachers. “I am in my teachers’ classrooms every week,” says a Denver Team Lead. “I think about the big picture and what needs to change and then I think about small actions that will help us move forward and we focus together on those. In some classrooms, kids really aren’t clear on what they are supposed to be learning. I work with those teachers to make their objectives clear to kids and then we work together to plan their lessons to ensure they line up against those objectives.”

Green Dot recently decided to shift from rating teachers on an elaborate 29-item rubric after each classroom visit to more focused, qualitative feedback. “Our evaluation system was rigorous but had unintended consequences,” says Green Dot’s chief talent officer. “It had become an all-consuming dog-and-pony show. The conversation was about the score, not improving performance.”

• Fourth, support teams in frequent collaborative work. Grade-level and subject-area teacher teams meet frequently and are guided and supported by their AP or teacher leader. Team meetings are the main vehicle for breaking the historic culture of teacher isolation. Teams are where teachers share challenges and effective practices, look together at student work and assessments, and (with the leader’s help) connect the team’s work with what is going on in individual classrooms. One California high-school teacher said, “If you are a new teacher you are immediately led to your PLC leader and given all the tools you need along with incredible support. How you deliver is up to you, but you are part of a community. You are part of a family and they won’t let you fail.”

• Finally, give leaders the time and authority to continuously improve teaching. “Having more leaders in our schools with true end-to-end responsibility for the development of our teachers is a key part of addressing the current leadership gaps,” say Bierly, Doyle, and Smith: “schools led by thinly-stretched principals; too many isolated teachers who are not growing as instructors; and, ultimately, too many schools with poor student outcomes. But adding more leaders is only part of the answer. Systems must also set those leaders up for success with both the time and authority to effectively lead a team of teachers.” That means a manageable span of control (ideally no more than ten teachers per leader, say Green Dot’s leaders), releasing teacher leaders from classroom duties up to 50 percent of the time, a clear expectation of frequent classroom visits followed by coaching and support for each teacher, a significant voice in teachers’ evaluations, and focusing their team meetings on curriculum, pedagogy, and results. For schools that take the approach of increasing the number of assistant principals, a key element is principals making sure that APs aren’t loaded down with non-instructional duties. And the role of the principal has to change: “Principals need to be able to step back, delegate authority, and focus on ‘leading a team of leaders,’” says the Bain team.

“For some,” they conclude, “the threat of distributed leadership is that it creates more bosses and more bureaucracy. But a well-designed model for empowering more leaders actually has the opposite effect. Instead of a top-down system based on cursory evaluations and little individual support, distributed leadership invites collaboration, shared responsibility, and a sense that we are all in this together on behalf of our students… None of this is easy. It requires a multi-year, system-wide focus on change – restructuring roles, adjusting cultural norms, and creating alignment around major shifts in how schools are organized and run. Yet our research over the past year has left us energized and optimistic. We’ve seen districts and CMOs making real investments in developing and deploying transformative leadership in their schools, and we’ve seen tangible evidence of success.”

 

“Transforming Schools: How Distributed Leadership Can Create More High-Performing Schools” by Chris Bierly, Betsy Doyle, and Abigail Smith of Bain and Company, January 14, 2016, http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/transforming-schools.aspx

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2. Why Some Children Grow Up to Be Creative and Others Don’t

            In this New York Times article, Adam Grant (Wharton School, University of

Pennsylvania) says that exceptionally precocious children rarely become adult innovators who change the world. Out of more than 2,000 finalists in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (once called the “Super Bowl of science”) from 1942 to 1994, only eight ended up winning Nobel Prizes. The reason isn’t that they’re nerds, lacking the social and emotional skills to function in the post-school world. The true explanation, says Grant, is that these child prodigies often perform within a narrow range and don’t learn how to cut loose and get creative. “They strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers,” he says. “But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new… They become doctors who heal their patients without fighting to fix the broken medical system or lawyers who defend clients on unfair charges but do not try to transform the laws themselves.” In the words of William Deresiewicz in his recent study of elite universities, they become “excellent sheep.”

            So how can parents and teachers raise children who are truly innovative? “Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it’s easy to thwart,” says Grant. One study found that the parents of children who grew up to be creative had fewer rules – one or none. They tended to emphasize moral values and developing an ethical code over following rules. As a result, their children learned to think for themselves, to sort out their own values, and discover what really interested them. These parents encouraged excellence and achievement, but they also told their children to find “joy in work,” and this seems to have put them on the road to being creative adults.

            It’s true that spending lots of time developing talent and expertise (10,000 hours, according to the idea popularized by Malcolm Gladwell) is important, but Grant introduces three caveats. First, hours and hours of practice can get people into a rut and make them less adaptive to changing conditions. Second, motivation is the key to being willing to put in so many hours practicing the violin or working to solve mathematical problems. The wellspring has to be the person’s passion, which often emerges spontaneously at a young age and is best nurtured by teachers who make the activity enjoyable. Third, studies have shown that creativity seems to be most common in people who have a broad range of interests. “Evidence shows that creative contributions depend on the breadth, not just depth, of our knowledge and experience,” says Grant. Creative adults who contribute the most significant innovations to the world aren’t just experts in their field – they tend to also be lovers of poetry, dancing, arts and crafts, magic, or other unrelated fields. Einstein, who played the violin from the age of five and fell in love with Mozart sonatas as a teenager, said, “The theory of relativity occurred to me by intuition, and music is the driving force behind this innovation.”

            “Hear that, Tiger Moms and Lombardi Dads?” Grant concludes. “You can’t program a child to become creative. Try to engineer a certain kind of success, and the best you’ll get is an ambitious robot. If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.”

 

“How to Raise a Creative Child” by Adam Grant in The New York Times, January 31, 2016,

http://nyti.ms/1SEcPO6

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3. Supporting Students Whose Families Are Constantly On the Move

            In this article in AMLE Magazine, author/consultant Ruby Payne offers suggestions for how schools should handle students enrolling in the middle of the year, some of whom have been uprooted from their apartments in the middle of the night just ahead of eviction. Putting herself in the shoes of such a student, Payne writes, “You aren’t happy to go to your new school. You know it will take at least one fight to establish that you aren’t a wimp. Is your teacher happy to see you? Well, you’re the fourth new student she has added this week. You just want to be left alone. You’re tired, hungry, and miserable. You don’t know where anything in the school is. And you think you will have to move again pretty soon because it won’t be long before your mom and her sister get into a fight.”

            Being prepared to support the onboarding of students like these is an important school responsibility, says Payne. Here are her suggestions:

            • Arrange for the PTA or someone else in the school to prepare “new student” folders that contain items like these:

-   A pad of paper;

-   A pencil or pen;

-   A map of the school;

-   Coupons for free lunches for several days;

-   A magnet with the school’s name, address, phone number, school hours, principal’s name, school website, holidays and vacations, and days report cards are issued;

-   A DVD showing adults how to get into the building, where to sign in, what each wing of the building looks like, where the cafeteria and gym are located, and where to park when visiting by car.

• Assign a student “ambassador” to help each new student find his or her way around and eat lunch with the student for a week, helping him or her feel included.

• Assign an adult to check in with each new student for 3-5 minutes every day, and make sure the student has a relationship with at least one adult in the school.

• Have the school counselor call the family after the first week to talk about the child and ask if additional support is needed.

Why go to all this trouble when the student will probably move again within a few months? “No responsible educator would, in effect, punish students for coming from an unstable, unpredictable environment by ignoring them and seeing them as a burden,” says Payne. “When students believe there is an adult who cares for them, that they are important enough to be given support, they are less likely to become ‘social isolates’ who cause problems.” It’s even possible that, if the family has to move again, the parents advocate to keep their children in the same school.

 

“Welcoming Highly Mobile Students” by Ruby Payne in AMLE Magazine, February 2016 (Vol. 3, #6, p. 10-12), no free e-link; Payne can be reached at [email protected].

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4. A Comparison of Four Different Programs for English Learners

 (Originally titled “The Promise of Two-Language Education”)

            In this Educational Leadership article, Ilana Umansky (University of Oregon) and Rachel Valentino and Sean Reardon (Stanford University) report on their study of a large urban district in California using four different models to educate its sizable number of English language learners who were native speakers of Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Filipino, and Korean:

-   English immersion – ELLs were in general-education classes, usually with native-English speakers, with all-English instruction; teachers used various methods to help non-proficient English speakers understand curriculum content.

-   Transitional bilingual – Instruction in students’ home language as a bridge to English acquisition and a way to make content more accessible; the aim was a rapid transition into English, typically by fourth grade.

-   Maintenance bilingual – The goal of this program was full bilingualism and biliteracy in English and the students’ home language.

-   Dual immersion – This program enrolled ELLs and non-ELLs, typically in a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio, aiming to get both ELLs and native English speakers bilingual and biliterate in both languages.

The researchers analyzed data from eight cohorts of English language learners who attended the four programs, using up to 10 years of data for each cohort. Here are the comparative results on three outcome measures:

• Students’ English language acquisition as measured by the California English Language Development Test – There were quite small differences in the results in the four programs: more than 80 percent of all ELLs were proficient in English by the end of elementary school, and more than 90 percent were proficient by seventh grade. In the bilingual and dual-language programs, ELLs took slightly longer to become proficient in English than did similar ELLs in English immersion. By seventh grade, 95 percent of maintenance students were proficient, 94 percent of dual immersion, and 92 percent of English immersion and transitional bilingual.

• Students’ academic growth as measured by the California ELA and math tests – By second grade, students who had been in transitional bilingual programs since kindergarten had higher ELA and math scores, on average, than their peers in the other programs. But by seventh grade, dual immersion students had passed those in English immersion and maintenance programs and weren’t statistically different from those in transitional bilingual programs. Math scores were not significantly different. The authors note that ELLs’ math scores in second grade were above the state average, but over time, ELLs’ math scores grew more slowly than the state average.

• Students’ reclassification from ELL to fluent English proficient status – Students in English immersion and transitional bilingual programs were reclassified at higher rates in elementary school. By fifth grade, however, the reclassification pace of additional students slowed in all programs, the most in English immersion. By seventh grade, reclassification rates were very similar across all programs: 92 percent for transitional bilingual, 88 percent for English immersion, 87 percent for maintenance, and 86 percent for dual immersion.

Umansky, Valentino, and Reardon conclude with the following suggestions for schools and districts:

• When possible, invest in high-quality two-language approaches. “In combination with the evidence of the social, health, and economic benefits of bilingualism,” they say, “these findings make a compelling argument for investment in high-quality two-language instructional programs.” However, such programs are not feasible in districts with small numbers of ELLs.

• Choose among two-language programs based on community and stakeholder voice. The research is not definitive, say the authors, and it’s important to listen to the opinions of parents and others.

• Opt for slow and steady. “Rather than pushing ELLs to reach English language benchmarks rapidly and withholding academic or content instruction until they do,” say the authors, “schools should focus on providing high-quality teaching and full, meaningful access to content in all ELL programs, regardless of the language of instruction.”

• Take the long view. Looking at results over only one or two years and using one outcome measure won’t capture the differences that emerge over time. “Evaluations of the effectiveness of ELL instructional programs should track students through elementary and into middle and high school using a variety of outcome measures,” say Umansky, Valentino, and Reardon, “– and given the value of bilingualism, evaluations, when possible, should also measure students’ literacy in their home language.”

 

“The Promise of Two-Language Education” by Ilana Umansky, Rachel Valentino, and Sean Reardon in Educational Leadership, February 2016 (Vol. 73, #5, p. 10-17), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/20Ge2IM; the authors can be reached at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

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5. Getting Reluctant Middle-School Students Reading

            In this AMLE Magazine article, Texas middle-school teacher Leta Simpson says she sometimes notices students choosing library books well below their reading level. Reading too-easy material makes them feel more comfortable and competent as readers, but Simpson knows that if they continue to read this kind of book, they won’t grow as readers. She also knows that research says having students read “just right” or challenging books for 20 minutes a day will improve their reading proficiency, general knowledge, and curiosity about the world. Here are her suggestions for getting all students to be voracious readers:

            • Ask students what kind of movies they enjoy and what they like about them. This almost always gets a response and can provide excellent clues for connecting students with books they won’t be able to put down. For example, a student who says he likes Fast and Furious 7 will probably glom onto books about cars and action.

            • Organize classroom libraries by genre. Simpson has sorted her books into baskets labeled historical fiction, fantasy, sports, etc., with a note on each label steering students to similar genres. “This type of organization exposes students to books they might not have noticed in the library,” she says.

            • Teach students how to “date” a book. At the beginning of each year, Simpson shows her students how to make the acquaintance of a book to see if it’s a good match:

-   Look at the title and cover art.

-   Read the synopsis on the back cover.

-   Open to a random page in the middle and read for two minutes.

-   If the book looks promising after these three steps, read the first two or three chapters before making a final judgment.

During the year, if students tell Simpson they want to abandon a book, she asks whether they’re gone through all four “dating” steps, and if they haven’t, she encourages them to keep trying because the book might be one they’ll end up really liking (she says it took her 100 pages to get into The Maze Runner).

            • Organize book “speed dating.” Students sit in small groups (with desks pushed together or at tables) in the library or classroom. Books of several different genres and reading levels are scattered at each group – enough for there to be two books for each student. Students have a rating sheet to write down the title, author, and their rating (Yes, Maybe, or No). Students then follow these steps with the teacher calling time to keep things moving briskly:

-   Grab a book and write down its basic information.

-   Read the back cover in under a minute.

-   Open the book at random and read for no more than two minutes.

-   Assign a rating and jot down reasons.

-   When all the books at a table have been sampled, move to a new table.

Having actually handled and dipped into a variety of books, it’s highly likely that all students will have found one or more “potential dates” they’ll want to spend time with on their own.

            “Once students figure out what they like, they have an easier time falling in love with books,” says Simpson. “Some of my most reluctant students have turned into avid readers thanks to these strategies. What’s more, I have had many rich discussions about literature and authors with my students simply by tapping into their sometimes-newfound love of literature.”

            In a sidebar to her article, Simpson lists the Association for Library Service to Children’s (ALSC) list of the some of the best middle-school books (ALSC’s full list of books at all grade levels is at www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/notalists/ncb).

-   Because They Marched: The People’s Campaign for Voting Rights That Changed America by Russell Freedman (Holliday)

-   Caminar by Skila Brown (Candlewick)

-   The Crossover by Kwame Alexander (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

-   The Family Romance: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia by Candace Fleming (Schwartz and Wade/Random House)

-   How I Discovered Poetry by Marilyn Nelson, illustrated by Hadley Hooper (Penguin/Dial)

-   The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier (Abrams/Amulet)

-   Nine Open Arms by Benny Lindelauf, illustrated by Dasha Tolstikova (Enchanted Lion)

-   The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin (Roaring Brook)

-   Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes by Juan Felipe Herrera, illustrated by Raul Colon (Penguin/Dial)

-   Revolution: The Sixties Trilogy, Book Two by Deborah Wiles (Scholastic)

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

 

“Ignite the Reading Spark in Young Adolescents” by Leta Simpson in AMLE Magazine, February 2016 (Vol. 3, #6, p. 23-25), no free e-link available; Simpson can be reached at

[email protected].

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6. A Parent Argues for “Exit Plans” from Special Education

            “Special education rarely has an exit plan,” says Connecticut educator Elizabeth Brown, the parent of a teen with special needs, in this article in Education Week. All too often students check in and don’t check out until high-school graduation. Even when plans are modified as students become more proficient, says Brown, “the execution, in most cases, remains unchanged – rigid, operating under the assumption that the student thinks concretely, requires shaping, or needs Pavlovian conditioning.”

            Since 2008, there has been a way out – a federal regulation that allows parents to revoke consent to special-education services. This is a very personal matter for Brown, whose 16-year-old believes strongly that he’s ready to work successfully in mainstream classes without special-education services. But the revocation process is all or nothing. It would be wrenching for her to rescind her son’s right to have a special-education team – “the very team that supported, guided, and believed in him.” What if the boy isn’t ready for full mainstreaming? Brown worries that he’ll be “plunged into the unknown, swimming upstream before maturity… After the revocation, the risks multiply. Supports are gone.”

But there are risks to overstaying his time in special education, says Brown: “stagnation, burnout, a cycling of good and bad days until the bad outnumber the good and there is no educational gain.”

There needs to be a dialogue, she concludes, in which the wishes of a strong-willed child or parent are talked through with the special-education team and a middle ground might be arrived at, with the child retaining special-education support and guidance but able to move toward significant mainstreaming. “An IEP without an exit plan leaves the unsuspecting teenager ill-equipped, destined to fail on his own, if he ever gets the chance.”

 

“Special Education Needs an Exit Plan” by Elizabeth Brown in Education Week, January 27, 2016 (Vol. 35, #19, p. 25), www.edweek.org

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7. Helping Teachers Stay Sharp and Fresh

            In this letter to Education Week responding to an article by Scott Sterling on teacher burnout [see Marshall Memo 615 #2 for a summary], Harry Stein of Manhattan College says teachers look “inward, outward, horizontally, and vertically for professional development.” He believes that PD should tap into the five roles that every teacher inhabits:

-   As classroom teachers – At the end of every year, teachers should be surveyed on what training and development experiences would be most helpful to working with their students the following year.

-   As cohort or subject team members – Elementary grade-level teams and secondary subject teams should create PD plans that serve their common interests – for example, a fourth-grade team getting training on formative assessment and a high-school biology team bringing in a consultant to help implement new state standards.

-   As department members – At least once a year, teachers across the grades should think about PD experiences that will make K-12 curriculum and pedagogy in each subject area more coherent and effective for students as they move through the grades.

-   As members of the school staff – There are common PD needs at the school level, some of which can be identified at the state or district level, some at the building level.

-   As part of the district – “Joining together for districtwide PD would enable educators to know what others in similar situations are doing across the district,” says Stein.

“Burnout avoidance starts with a clear definition of a teacher’s role and function in a district,” he concludes. “Some engagements are self-driven. Others are mutually created. Others are mandated. All should be known in advance of the following school year, properly funded, and aligned with curriculum needs, school objectives, and district goals.”

 

“Professional Development Should Serve Teachers’ Roles” by Harry Stein in a letter to Education Week, January 27, 2016 (Vol. 35, #19, p. 25), www.edweek.org

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8. Short Items:

            a. Dylan Wiliam experiments  – These are links to two 1-hour videos of Dylan Wiliam working with teachers in England to introduce on-the-spot assessment practices – popsicle sticks, cold-calling, whiteboards, and others. The videos show the difficulties encountered and how Wiliam overcame them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J25d9aC1GZA and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iD6Zadhg4M.

 

“The Classroom Experiment” Episodes 1 and 2 by Dylan Wiliam, April 11, 2012

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            b. A video of the weather for 2015 – This eight-minute time-lapse video shows the earth’s weather for all of last year, including the development of a gigantic storm:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/watch-all-of-2015-s-weather-in-a-time-lapse-video/

 

“Watch All of 2015’s Weather in Time-Lapse Video” by Brian Kahn in Scientific American, February 3, 2016

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            c. Finding diverse books – This website is a rich source of information for educators and parents looking for books that feature diverse topics, content, and characters:

www.weneeddiversebooks.org/where-to-find-diverse-books.

 

“Where to Find Diverse Books” in Educational Leadership, February 2016 (Vol. 73, #5, p. 8)

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