Tag Archives: I Got Schooled

Gallup Poll’s 2013 State of America Schools report

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Since the early 1970s, Gallup has reported the results on their annual survey of American education. This year’s report includes findings from:

  • more than 600,000 5th- to 12th-grade students participated in the survey
  • results from Gallup’s decade-long study of exceptional teachers and principals are included

Here are the highlights of the 2013 survey and report.

  • Just 33% (1 in 3)  students scored highly on all three factors linked to success at school and beyond: hope, engagement, and well being.
  • Emotional engagement is the heartbeat of the education (learning) process.
  • Less than half of students strongly agree that they get to do what they do best every day, leading to boredom and frustration as their greatest talents go undeveloped.
  • Within the first five years on the job, between 40% and 50% of teachers leave the profession. A lack of autonomy needed to effectively use their talents plays a significant role in these turnover rates.
  • Nearly 70% of teachers are not engaged in their work. While teachers compare favorably to other U.S. workers in agreeing they are able to do what they do best every day – they are last among 12 occupational groups studied when it comes to feeling their opinions count at work.
  • Just 19% of Americans agree that the country’s high school graduates are ready for college, and only 17% say graduates are prepared to join the labor force.
  • Just as exceptional teachers help students stay emotionally invested in the learning process, great principals provide the support that teachers and other staff members need to achieve high levels of performance.
  • Many U.S. school districts struggle with a lack of adequate school board leadership; only 37% of superintendents strongly agree that their districts are well-governed at the board level.
  • Young adults who say they had frequent opportunities in their last year of school to develop real-world problem-solving skills are about twice as likely as those who disagree to report higher-quality work lives.
  • Securing three simple rights for students can change the trajectory of their lives:
    1. They feel they have someone who cares about their development;
    2. They are able to do what they like to do each day;
    3. They are able to do what they do best every day.

You can download the entire 47-page report  here.

I am struck with how tightly this couples with M. Night Shyamalan’s findings in his excellent book, I Got Schooled. By clicking on that title in the tags below, you can find summaries of his five practices that lead to success in the classroom.

U.S. Schools Chief Calls California Ruling ‘A Mandate’ to Fix Tenure, Firing Laws

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A California judge ruled as unconstitutional Tuesday the state’s teacher tenure, dismissal and layoff laws, saying they keep bad teachers in the classroom and force out promising good ones.

Poor and minority students are especially hurt by the laws because “grossly ineffective teachers” more often work in their schools, Los Angeles County Judge Rolf M. Treu said.

[You might want to read this post discussing this topic]

The ruling was hailed by the nation’s top education chief as bringing to California – and possibly the nation – an opportunity to build “a new framework for the teaching profession.” The decision represented “a mandate” to fix a broken teaching system, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.

The court ordered a stay of the decision, pending an appeal by the state and the teachers union, the plaintiffs said.

Read full article here

Changing Demographics of Teaching = school-student-society drain

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Thanks to Franklin Schargel for pointing out this new Carnegie Foundation study.

BEGINNERS IN THE CLASSROOM  –  WHAT THE CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS OF TEACHING MEAN FOR SCHOOLS, STUDENTS, AND SOCIETY

BY SUSAN HEADDEN  –  Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of teaching 2014

This is my attempt to summarize the main points of 28 pages of this important and timely study. Interestingly, much of this tracks very closely with M. Night Shyamalan Foundation’s studies and book: I Got Schooled, which I  summarized earlier in my blog.

Talent Drain – turnover and departures are lowering the average classroom experience level

Why They Leave – mainly because of poor/lacking administrative and professional support

New Generation, New Attitudes – impatience with dysfunctional structures, older teachers didn’t have to put up with all the testing and curriculum changes

Myths About Money – again, solid administrative support seems more important than money, pension back-loading is hard to swallow

The Toll of Teacher Turnover – turnover is very expensive, student relationships suffer, support from veteran teachers is rapidly vanishing

How Much Turnover is Too Much – it turns out that number/quality/costs of turnover is very poorly tracked, principles aren’t getting good teachers to stay and aren’t good at getting bad ones to leave, there are no good ideas what effective turnover targets should be

Supporting a Teacher’s First Years – careful hiring is important, new teachers are not prepared for realities of classroom, there is too little summer training, there is too much late hiring, there is lack of comprehensive induction (useful discussion of benefits of comprehensive induction and various approaches)

Houston Boot Camp – a mentoring program in the face of daunting statistics and politics

Roving Mentors in Iowa  –  mentors working outside of their normal grade levels and subject areas have much to offer to the new teacher, a lot of work gathering data on what was working

Teacher Residencies: Working Into The Job – pre-service apprenticing for up to a full year is producing desirable results in effectiveness and retention

A Matter of Match – problems arise from weak interviewing, little interaction with school personnel, hiring late in the process and after school year starts. turnover destroys continuity and trust for teachers and students

Returns On Investment – high quality induction produces lower turnover and higher retention, poor hiring practices leaks good teachers

Anamosa, Iowa –a detailed example of mentoring support

To read the whole study, click here.

Why is Feedback Shyamalan’s #3 Practice?

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Shyamalan’s 3rd identified practice for closing the education-opportunity-achievement gap is Feedback. Regular, consistent, timely feedback in formats usable by teachers, principles, and parents. This TEDx talk describes the behavioral economics, psychology and power of feedback in some very interesting ways.

Dan Ariely: What makes us feel good about our work?

“Despite our best efforts, bad or inexplicable decisions are as inevitable as death and taxes and the grocery store running out of your favorite flavor of ice cream. They’re also just as predictable. Why, for instance, are we convinced that “sizing up” at our favorite burger joint is a good idea, even when we’re not that hungry? Why are our phone lists cluttered with numbers we never call? Dan Ariely, behavioral economist, has based his career on figuring out the answers to these questions, and in his bestselling book Predictably Irrational (re-released in expanded form in May 2009), he describes many unorthodox and often downright odd experiments used in the quest to answer this question.”

I Got Schooled – Practice #5 – More Time in School

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Here is the final I Got Schooled  practice #5 – More Time in School

M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) has written a book (I Got Schooled)  describing how – and how not –  to close the education gap in the U.S. It should be very supportive in the current conversation and climate regarding what’s wrong with – and how to fix – New Mexico education.

For five years through his MNS Foundation, Shyamalan studied what is succeeding in closing the education gap — that depended only on practices inside the classroom itself and that were scalable.

He discovered closing the achievement gap depended on five practices and couldn’t be figured out by examining just any single practice by itself.

These five practices must be implemented together to have any substantive effect:

•            Effective teachers – dropping poor; hiring good; why it’s important; how to do it

•            Leadership – how it’s important; what it looks like; how to do it

•            Feedback – critical: frequency, consistency, teacher/principal usability

•            Smaller (high) schools –part of the “system” that turbocharges the other practices

•            More time in school – summers matter – children of low income and of color fall behind a month every summer; by the time they reach third grade they are so far behind it’s virtually impossible to catch up

Covered: successful schools, programs, clinical studies, and data and statistics, including: Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), Uncommon Schools, Achievement First/Endeavor, FirstLine schools, North Star Academy, Arthur Ashe, Los Angeles Green Dot Public Schools, and more.

The study also found four popular, expensive practices contribute little to closing the education gap:

•            Small classroom sizes

•            Master’s programs and Ph.D.’s for the teachers

•            Paying teachers like doctors

•            Funding the schools at $20,000 per pupil

MORE TIME IN SCHOOL

  • More time in school is needed to overcome the deficiencies inherent in low-income, inner-city family environments
  • Upper-income families use an average of 2,153 words every hour; middle-income families use 1,251; welfare families use 616
  • Average words per year for upper-income are 11.2 million; middle-income families 6.5 million; welfare families 3.2 million words
  • By age four that is a gap of some 30 million words
  • The number of words a four-year-old can understand and speak relates directly to the number of words they have heard
  • By the time poorer kids reach third grade, they are already so far behind it is virtually impossible to catch up
  • Early intervention (preschool) with significant hours of exposure closes the gap
  • Consistency and good quality here are critical
  • Our natural tendencies are to blame failures of others on something flawed inside them, and while attributing our successes to merit and our failures on chance
  • American families that tend to obsess about pre-K education are the ones that need it least
  • The children who would most benefit from preschools are the least likely to be enrolled in them
  • Even then, generally, preschool effects disappear nearly completely by the third year after the program
  • Lower-income and African-American kids stay more or less even with upper-income, white suburban classmates – so long as school was in session
  • They fell behind a month or more every summer!
  • Summer matters far more than any has thought
  • Student test scores change powerfully by what happens between June and September
  • Lower-income student families cannot compensate for middle- and upper-income families’ ability to continue to enrich their children’s experiences over the summer
  • Current standard in most places is 180 days of school a year, each one between six and seven hours long
  • Before the Civil War, Philadelphia’s schools were in session more than 250 days a year; New York’s were open all year except for a two-week break in August
  • While more classroom hours is a serious part of closing the gap, five hundred additional low-quality hours taught by a teaching staff full of below-average instructors who are neither observed regularly by their principals nor given the quantitative and qualitative feedback they need is a waste
  • Keep kids in school longer during the year and you won’t need superheroes to close the gap. Most teachers can do the job just fine
  • And this practice is scalable

I Got Schooled – Practice #4 – Smaller schools

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Here is I Got Schooled  practice #4 – Smaller schools

M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) has written this book to describe how, and how not, to close the education gap in the U.S. It should be very supportive in the current conversation and climate regarding what’s wrong with, and how to fix, New Mexico education.

For five years through his MNS Foundation, Shyamalan studied what is succeeding in closing the education gap — that depended only on practices inside the classroom itself and that were scalable.

He discovered closing the achievement gap depended on five practices and couldn’t be figured out by examining just any single practice by itself.

These five practices must be implemented together to have any substantive effect:

•            Effective teachers – dropping poor; hiring good; why it’s important; how to do it

•            Leadership – how it’s important; what it looks like; how to do it

•            Feedback – critical: frequency, consistency, teacher/principal usability

•            Smaller (high) schools –part of the “system” that turbocharges the other practices

•            More time in school – summers matter – children of low income and of color fall behind a month every summer; by the time they reach third grade they are so far behind it’s virtually impossible to catch up

Covered: successful schools, programs, clinical studies, and data and statistics, including: Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), Uncommon Schools, Achievement First/Endeavor, FirstLine schools, North Star Academy, Arthur Ashe, Los Angeles Green Dot Public Schools, and more.

The study also found four popular, expensive practices contribute little to closing the education gap:

•            Small classroom sizes

•            Master’s programs and Ph.D.’s for the teachers

•            Paying teachers like doctors

•            Funding the schools at $20,000 per pupil

SMALLER SCHOOLS

  • Again, small size is only one part of the “system”
  • Smaller size turbocharges each of the other practices
  • The current school size debate is almost entirely focused on high schools, grades 9 through 12
  • National average elementary school size is 451 students; middle schools average 575; high school averages are 900 to 4,000 students
  • In the 1920s, the ‘high school movement’ promoted ‘comprehensive high schools’ that accepted everybody and required them to take mostly the same coursework
  • Before that time, exam requirements meant only 20 percent of kids attended high school and the rest were expected to go to work; even then, only half of the students graduated
  • Vocation training began to be thought of as a ‘less than’ education endeavor
  • This helped white suburban families a lot more than nonwhite urban ones
  • Weekly exam results for a thousand high school students’ produces an overwhelming amount of data which must/should then be analyzed, evaluated, and returned to instructors as meaningful, useable feedback
  • School size is a key part of any gap-closing strategy
  • It’s a lot easier to find principals who can effectively run schools with four hundred to six hundred kids (scalability and sustainability)
  • Attendance, graduation rates, and attitude toward learning rise as school populations fall – violence rates decline
  • Smaller schools are an environment in which other gap-closing practices can flourish
  • Implementation over some period of time, grade-by-grade allows teachers and faculty to acclimatize to the newness
  • And this practice is scalable

I Got Schooled – Practice #3 – Feedback

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So, here is Practice #3 – Feedback that is timely, consistent and teacher/principal-usable

M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) has written a book (I Got Schooled) describing how, and how not, to close the education gap in the U.S. It should be very supportive in the current conversation and climate regarding what’s wrong with, and how to fix, New Mexico education.

For five years through his MNS Foundation, Shyamalan studied what is succeeding in closing the education gap — that depended only on practices inside the classroom itself and that were scalable.

He discovered closing the achievement gap depended on five practices and couldn’t be figured out by examining just any single practice by itself.

These five practices must be implemented together to have any substantive effect:

•            Effective teachers – dropping poor; hiring good; why it’s important; how to do it

•            Leadership – how it’s important; what it looks like; how to do it

•            Feedback – critical: frequency, consistency, teacher/principal usability

•            Smaller (high) schools –part of the “system” that turbocharges the other practices

•            More time in school – summers matter – children of low income and of color fall behind a month every summer; by the time they reach third grade they are so far behind it’s virtually impossible to catch up

Covered: successful schools, programs, clinical studies, and data and statistics, including: Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), Uncommon Schools, Achievement First/Endeavor, FirstLine schools, North Star Academy, Arthur Ashe, Los Angeles Green Dot Public Schools, and more.

The study also found four popular, expensive practices contribute little to closing the education gap:

•            Small classroom sizes

•            Master’s programs and Ph.D.’s for the teachers

•            Paying teachers like doctors

•            Funding the schools at $20,000 per pupil

FEEDBACK

  • Some way is needed to improve the performance of teachers that are retained
  • To increase the value of existing teachers, some way to measure that performance will be needed
  • Value Added Method (VAM – in its ideal form) compares students’ actual progress to predicted progress, and assumes that differences are due to the instruction they received
  • While it is true, “kids can’t be reduced to a test score,” subjective grading is even worse; a flexible yardstick may not have created the achievement gap, but definitely perpetuated it
  • Measuring progress in literacy or math requires more than just observing reading or math level at age seven. It needs to include:
    • Family income
    • Parents’ educational background
    • Geographic location
    • Inner city versus suburbs
    • Past performance by other kids in same school
    • Past performance by the individual student
    • That is to say, some form of VAM
  • VAM works generally quite well so long as
    • good data are available, and
    • when it’s used to measure GROWTH rather than ACHIEVEMENT
    • important: these two measures are easily and frequently confused
  • The most effective schools are focused on GROWTH; based on their scores in the first grade, did our eighth-graders do better than predicted
  • An even more valuable way to use VAM data is for improving teachers and improving instruction; make the practice of teaching data-driven
  • Figure out the reasons for failure and success
  • A successful organization is one that goes through cycles of planning, doing, studying, and acting, over and over again, i.e., continuous Improvement
  • End-of-year tests tell a school whether it is doing its job, but not how to do it better
  • Value-added data adds value only when someone actually uses it
  • To work, data-based instruction can’t be just voluntary
  • Teachers and principals opting out of the feed-back loop system destroy the possibility of positive results
  • Data is collected everywhere, but no one has taught teachers and principals how to analyze, interpret, and use the data that are being collecting
  • Teachers at high-achieving schools receive some kind of feedback from classroom visits and student achievement between 16 and 13 times a semester
  • High-achieving schools make 4 interim assessments (tests) every semester in math and language arts
  • High-achieving schools have more strategies for using data to customize instruction for different students, i.e., different data-driven ways to create individualized lesson plans
  • The frequency of this feedback is critical
  • The effect size for employing effective feedback is twice as large as the effect size for reducing class size
  • The effect size for employing effective feedback is even larger for the estimated effect-size from replacing the lowest-performing 8 percent of teachers with average ones
  • Feedback and consistency are also important for empowering students
  • Feedback must be meticulous, frequent, and mandatory
  • Feedback must be produced in a form that is usable by teachers and principals
  • Keep realistic the number of teachers that every principal is responsible for; maybe schools need to be smaller
  • And this practice is scalable