Marshall Memo 618
A Weekly Round-up of Important Ideas and Research in K-12 Education
January 4, 2016
1. Qualities of an effective school leader
2. Practice-embedded educational research
3. Getting better at getting better
4. A sea change in school discipline policies
5. Zero tolerance for abandoning the use of discretion
6. Are traffic-light behavior charts effective?
7. Short items: (a) One teacher’s approach to grading math tests; (b) A history website
“The idea that a zero-tolerance philosophy based on punishment and exclusion could create effective learning climates has proven to be illusory.”
Russell Skiba and Daniel Losen (see item #4)
“I strongly believe that all rules should be followed.”
Richard Curwin (see item #5)
“Consequences have the goal of changing future behavior, not punishing the past.”
Richard Curwin (ibid.)
“Fair is not equal. We are never fair when we treat all students the same.”
Richard Curwin (ibid.)
“A teacher affects eternity,” says Adam Rohdie (Greenwich Country Day School) in this article in Independent School paying tribute to his mentor and friend, John Hanly, who was battling Parkinson’s disease. Just before Hanly went into hospice care, Rohdie asked him for a list of the ten most important qualities to look for in a school principal. “He, of course, gave me 14!” says Rohdie. They are:
“Transcending the low status of educational research will require demonstrating its relevance to improvements in practice,” says Catherine Snow (Harvard Graduate School of Education) in this article in Educational Researcher. She believes that the “alarming fecklessness” of K-12 research over the years – “the gulf between the science we do and the science we need to improve educational outcomes” – can be traced to two flaws in the traditional research model: (a) many of the most relevant and potentially helpful areas for research – reading comprehension and classroom management, for example – have not been primary targets for basic scientists; and (b) the assumption “that if the basic science was sound, the application process was simple, requiring only interpretation or translation.” Not so!
Snow believes that the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP), initiated a little over a decade ago, is a promising departure from the past. SERP points the way to practice-embedded educational research that gets scholars working in close partnerships with practitioners in the complicated world of schools; starts with urgent problems of practice while maintaining rigorous methodology; and produces results that will be far more helpful in improving teaching and learning. An example in medical research would be shifting from proving the germ theory of infection to getting hospital personnel to wash their hands before working with patients.
Such a change in researchers’ emphasis, Snow believes, will also result in spreading the word about solid research findings that “could be authorized today and made tomorrow.” Some examples:
“Accelerating How We Learn to Improve” by Anthony Bryk in Educational Researcher, December 2015 (Vol. 44, #9, p. 467-477), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/1Pb7mHr; Bryk can be reached at [email protected].
Here are the troubling statistics on the percentage of U.S. secondary students who received at least one out-of-school suspension during the 2011-12 school year (the national average was 10.1%):
“The Real Meaning of Zero Tolerance” by Richard Curwin in Edutopia, September 29, 2015,
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/real-meaning-of-zero-tolerance-richard-curwin
a. One teacher’s approach to grading math tests – This video from The Teaching Channel shows California middle-school teacher Leah Alcala demonstrating her new method of grading tests. She highlights each student’s errors, doesn’t give a grade, and has students look over their tests and talk through each mistake with classmates and with her. Only later can students check their grade online. They can re-take the test, using a different version. Alcala says this approach gets students focused on the mathematics rather than grades. One goal, she says, is to “normalize the process of making mistakes.”
“Math Test Grading Tips” by Leah Alcala on The Teaching Channel, January 2016,
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/math-test-grading-tips
b. A history website – Chronas http://chronas.org is a new site (in beta stage) with text, graphics, and interactive maps orchestrated by Dietman Aumann. It looks promising.
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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).
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
AMLE Magazine
ASCA School Counselor
ASCD SmartBrief/Public Education NewsBlast
Better: Evidence-Based Education
Center for Performance Assessment Newsletter
District Administration
Ed. Magazine
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
Educational Horizons
Educational Leadership
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
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 Reading Teacher
Theory Into Practice
Time Magazine
Wharton Leadership Digest