In This Issue:

1. Trying to get a handle on personalized learning

2. Teachers making videos of lessons and reflecting on what they see

3. Principals freelancing with state teacher-evaluation policies

4. Are principals’ ratings of classroom observations fair?

5. A low-cost intervention to improve elementary students’ attendance

6. Jigsaw teaching done right

7. A comparison of online and in-person credit recovery courses

8. Award-winning children’s nonfiction books

9. Short item: Funded travel for educators

 

Quotes of the Week

“We speak different languages, we come from different cultures, we keep different traditions. No matter who we are, or where we are, we are not responsible for the past, but we are responsible for the future.”

            A high-school poster quoted in “Abby as Ally: Argument for Culturally Disruptive 

Pedagogy” by Timothy San Pedro in American Educational Research Journal, 

December 2018 (Vol. 55, #6, p. 1193-1232), https://bit.ly/2DXlslL

 

“A diverse teaching corps should be a goal of every school not because it may raise the test scores of some students, but because it will help all students understand that our country is made up of many different kinds of people and that this variety is one of the strengths of our democracy.” 

            Jeremy Glazer (Rowan University) in a New York Timesletter, September 23, 2018,

            https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/22/opinion/letters/teacher-diversity.html

 

“[T]he deeper reason that technology so often disappoints and betrays us is that it promises to make easy things that, by their intrinsic nature, have to be hard. Tweeting and trolling are easy. Mastering the arts of conversation and measured debate is hard. Texting is easy. Writing a proper letter is hard. Looking stuff up on Google is easy. Knowing what to search for in the first place is hard. Having a thousand friends on Facebook is easy. Maintaining six or seven close adult friendships over the space of many years is hard. Swiping right on Tinder is easy. Finding love – and staying in it – is hard.” 

            Bret Stephens in “Plato Foresaw the Folly of Facebook” in The New York Times,

            November 17, 2018, https://nyti.ms/2zeVvKj

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Trying to Get a Handle on Personalized Learning

            “Personalized learning has a big problem,” says Benjamin Herold in this Education Weeksupplement. “Inside America’s schools, the term is used to mean just about anything… a little bit of everything, and nothing in particular.” Thousands of schools claim to be doing personalized learning, but it comes in many flavors:

-  Adaptive software that adjusts to each student’s skill level;

-  Grouping students based on their personal interests;

-  Letting teens design projects based on their passions;

-  Customized activities to help students develop a growth mindset;

-  Algorithm-driven playlists.

There is a common theme here: getting away from students listening to the same lecture, completing the same worksheet, taking the same quiz, and receiving limited feedback on their work. But there’s a tension between the desire to escape the time-honored lockstep and the countervailing pressure of state standards, age-graded schools, high-stakes tests, district pacing guides, and a plethora of school-improvement plans. 

            John Pane of the RAND Corporation believes that we shouldn’t be asking whether personalized learning is working: “At this stage, we really need to be looking at the actual components of what people are trying to do and assess them each on their own.” To get a better fix on all this, Education Weekinterviewed more than a dozen principals, district leaders, learning network officials, researchers, advocates, and vendors, who offered insights on three aspects of personalized learning: 

• What does a typical day look like?Here are three different models: (a) San Jose elementary students use Dreambox Learning for math. A lesson starts with 20 minutes of whole-class instruction, then students split into small groups for the next 40 minutes and cycle through using an “intelligently adaptive” computer program, working collaboratively with peers, and small-group time with a teacher; (b) Big Picture Learning high schools (65 around the country) get students developing their interests through real-world internships, processing their learning in small advisory groups that stay together for four years, and demonstrating their learning in public displays; (c) Teach to One, a middle-school math program in 39 schools around the country, has 60 or more students and a number of teachers in an open classroom space for up to 90 minutes a day, with students following individual schedules based on data from the previous day’s assessments. 

• What are the underlying beliefs about how children learn?One philosophy is an “engineering model” based on the notion that there is an established body of content that students should learn as efficiently as possible. Students move at their own pace, guided by assessments before, during, and after learning segments. The other end of the philosophical spectrum is found at High Tech High in San Diego, where students discover and pursue their passions; curiosity, imagination, and exploration are key drivers of learning. Between these poles is a classroom structure in which all students take the same courses at the same grade level and are expected to master the same standards, but there’s flexibility within each lesson for targeted supports and student choice. Underlying any philosophy is what educators want students to attain; are high test scores the priority, or is it higher-order thinking skills and social-emotional learning?

• What’s the degree of student agency?In Teach to One, students are guided every day by the results of the previous day’s math assessments – tests drive what they do. But if a student takes the time to master a lagging skill, she can take that one off her “playlist.” A different approach is in operation in a Chicago elementary school using an approach pioneered by LEAP Innovations: during 60-minute literacy blocks, each student is at one of four “levels of autonomy:” students at the lowest level are told where to go and what to do; at the highest level, they have a lot of freedom to decide where they work and what they work on. The goal is to move all students up the levels and develop autonomy and self-sufficiency. High Tech High is using a third approach, with teachers designing their own curriculum units and students picking the big questions they want to explore, with the broader goal of helping others and changing the world for the better. 

An important question is whether personalized learning works. Pane from RAND is a skeptic: “This idea about having the learner make their own decisions about the best way to learn something has not been proven to be productive,” he says. And there’s the question of how technology will be used – as an elaborate, comprehensive playlist or as a series of behavioral “nudges” to encourage students to optimize their decision-making. All this is up for grabs.

 

“Personalized Learning Still Means Whatever People Want It to Mean” by Benjamin Herold in Education Week, November 7, 2018 (Vol. 38, #12, p. 4-7), https://bit.ly/2yW4JuN

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2. Teachers Making Videos of Lessons and Reflecting on What They See

(Originally titled “Spreading the Practice of Video Reflection”) 

            In this article in Educational Leadership, principals Steven Lamkin (Salisbury Christian School and Salisbury University, Maryland) and Todd Nesloney (Webb Elementary School, Texas) describe how teachers in their schools use video for guided reflection. At first, watching oneself on video can be emotionally challenging, which led Lamkin and Nesloney to take a step-by-step approach to introducing the idea:

            •Normalize videos. Both schools used videos to send announcements and other communications to colleagues and families, sometimes using Facebook Live (on snow days, they taped bedtime stories). They also used Flipgrid, a video response platform, for exit tickets from staff meetings and to gather and share shout-out videos to celebrate colleagues.

            •Model.Both principals made videos of themselves teaching lessons and solicited comments. 

            •Start small. The authors suggest identifying a small group of teachers who are genuinely interested in using video and encourage them to experiment with recording lessons and using the videos for reflection. If the experience is positive, these teachers can be encouraged to spread the word in faculty and team meetings. 

• Make it safe. Teachers were reassured that classroom videos would not be part of the performance evaluation process, and they had full control of their videos.

            •Make evaluation an option. Interestingly, some teachers found a camera in their classrooms less intimidating than an administrator; they chose to share videos for evaluations because they believed the videos captured daily reality more accurately than a principal taking notes, and there was more potential for reflection and helpful suggestions. 

            •Keep it simple. Lamkin and Nesloney purchased Swivl mounts for classroom videos, allowing teachers to tape their lessons without the need for someone to operate the camera (Swivl units mount a tablet, camera, or smartphone and robotically track teachers as they move around their classrooms).

            •Support reflection. Teachers could keep the classroom videos they recorded to themselves, but were prompted with questions like, “What did you notice that went well?” “Did anything on the video surprise you about yourself or your students?” Principals also suggested watching a video more than once, focusing on a different component each time. Even if principals didn’t view the videos themselves, they sometimes asked teachers what insights they derived from the process. 

            •Accentuate the positive. Because teachers tended to be their own worst critics, Lamkin and Nesloney required teachers to identify the most effective parts in a video. “Intentionally helping teachers to identify positive aspects of their recorded lesson and instructional delivery,” they say, “is essential to building a positive experience that results in lasting learning.” 

            •Focus on students. One way of getting past teachers’ self-consciousness viewing their videos was to encourage them to pay close attention to what students were doing. This provided valuable insights about student engagement, misconceptions, struggles, and pedagogy.

• Encourage co-viewing. Lamkin and Nesloney suggested that teachers view their videos with a colleague or with their teacher team. Some teachers said that sharing their videos was “absolutely terrifying,” but the rewards almost always outweighed the risks. 

            “In both of our schools,” conclude Lamkin and Nesloney, “teacher-led video reflection has been a catalyst for both instructional and cultural change. Teachers have implemented new instructional strategies and used video to hold themselves accountable for monitoring the effectiveness of those techniques with their students.” 

 

“Spreading the Practice of Video Reflection” by Steven Lamkin and Todd Nesloney in Educational Leadership, November 2018 (Vol. 76, #3, p. 50-54), available for ASCD members at https://bit.ly/2r4zlWV; the authors can be reached at [email protected]and [email protected]. 

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3. Principals Freelancing with State Teacher-Evaluation Policies

            In this article in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Morgaen Donaldson and Sarah Woulfin (University of Connecticut) report on their study of the ways that principals in 13 Connecticut districts implemented new teacher-evaluation policies. The state’s System for Educator Education and Development (SEED), launched in 2012, was similar to those in many other states, using: teacher-developed student achievement goals (45 percent of teachers’ ratings); classroom observations using the Danielson rubric (40 percent); parent or peer feedback (10 percent); and student feedback or whole-school measures of student performance (5 percent). SEED required six observations of every teacher per year, three formal and three informal. A district algorithm combined ratings on all the components and calculated teachers’ summative ratings. 

            In addition, there was a change in the state’s teacher tenure law that explicitly included “ineffectiveness” as a reason for dismissal. This reflected SEED’s emphasis on accountability as well as instructional improvement. 

            Donaldson and Woulfin conducted in-depth interviews with 44 principals and found that during SEED’s pilot year, school leaders “exercised substantial discretion” in the way they implemented the new policies – everything from tinkering to “going rogue.” School leaders were supportive of SEED’s aims, but their discretionary actions were aimed at (a) making the process more manageable for very busy school leaders, and (b) emphasizing instructional improvement over accountability. Most of the tinkering took place in the parts of the policy that carried more weight for teachers: student-achievement measures and classroom observations; there was less discretionary activity in the other components, including parent and student input. 

            Donaldson and Woulfin meticulously catalogued the ways principals exercised discretion with classroom observations, feedback to teachers, midyear conferences, rubric ratings, goal-setting, professional development, and summative conferences. Here are the overall percentages for each kind of adaptation:

-  Tinkering – 58% – Making minor adaptations or adjustments to rules or practices (for example, not meeting with teachers promptly after observations, skipping post-observation meetings, and extending the window for conducting midyear conferences);

-  Reducing – 18% – Choosing not to carry out some evaluation rules or practices (for example, doing fewer observations than required, de-emphasizing parts of the Danielson rubric, or not using some of the cumbersome observation forms);

-  Framing – 14%– Communicating strategically about evaluations (for example, explaining to teachers in a staff meeting that the system was “just a pilot”);

-  Hybridizing – 7% – Integrating evaluation activities with preexisting school practices (for example, integrating the SEED rubric into ongoing PD or student-centered learning); 

-  Double dipping – 2%– Using an existing practice to cover for another evaluation activity (for example, counting an observation of a teacher’s department meeting as a formal observation of teaching);

-  Gaming - <1% - Manipulating the process to benefit the leader and school (for example, a teacher requesting an observation of a high-performing Advanced Placement class and a principal strategically avoiding or targeting certain classrooms for observation).

The researchers found that there was an average of 6.7 instances of discretionary modification per principal. Some school leaders sought to improve the system – for example, creating a more-efficient system for notetaking – while others diluted or undermined it – for example, cutting corners on observations and documentation and not being able to make the case for dismissing a persistently ineffective teacher. 

            “For various reasons, principals can and will push and pull state policy in different ways,” conclude Donaldson and Woulfin. “Our findings suggest that principals who are overwhelmed by policy demands may wield their agency as a coping strategy, and this alters the path of implementation.” One approach, they say, is more training and monitoring for principals; another is crafting a less burdensome system.

 

“From Tinkering to Going ‘Rogue’: How Principals Use Agency When Enacting New Teacher-Evaluation Systems” by Morgaen Donaldson and Sarah Woulfin in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, December 2018 (Vol. 40, #4, p. 531-556), available for purchase at https://bit.ly/2r51n4q; the authors are at [email protected]and [email protected]. 

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4. Are Principals’ Ratings of Classroom Observations Fair?

            In this American Educational Research Journalarticle, Shanyce Campbell (University of California/Irvine) and Matthew Ronfeldt (University of Michigan) report on their analysis of teacher-observation data from the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study. They looked at teachers with similar instructional proficiency and found that certain teachers were consistently given lower classroom observation ratings by their administrators:

-  Male teachers;

-  African-American and Hispanic teachers;

-  Teachers working with students of color, male students, and low-performing students.

Campbell and Ronfeldt explored some possible reasons for these discrepancies. Are administrators biased against certain teachers? Do less-proficient teachers tend to be assigned to more-challenging classes? Do teachers teach better, or worse, depending on the kinds of students in their classrooms? Are administrators evaluating teachers more or less favorably based not on the teacher’s performance but on the kinds of students in their classrooms?

            The researchers weren’t able to come to a definitive conclusion, but they lean toward the last two explanations; it seems that teaching more-challenging groups of students is associated with lower administrator ratings, regardless of teachers’ instructional skills. There’s an obvious problem with this: it creates a disincentive to teach students who have the greatest need for effective teaching. 

            “The implication,” conclude Campbell and Ronfeldt, “is not to do away with observation ratings. To the contrary, observation ratings can provide teachers with formative feedback that has been shown to improve instructional quality. Rather, these results suggest that educational leaders, policymakers, and scholars should pay careful attention to possible unintended consequences of these evaluation systems and then make necessary adjustments to ensure they are fair and equitable.” 

 

“Observational Evaluation of Teachers: Measuring More Than We Bargained For?” by Shanyce Campbell and Matthew Ronfeldt in American Educational Research Journal, December 2018 (Vol. 55, #6, p. 1233-1267), available for purchase at https://bit.ly/2r4GoPc; the authors can be reached at [email protected]and [email protected]. 

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5. A Low-Cost Intervention to Improve Elementary Students’ Attendance

            “While the term ‘chronically absent student’ brings to mind a teenager cutting school, propensity to be chronically absent actually begins to emerge early in kindergarten and is often as prevalent in early grades as it is in middle and high school,” say Carly Robinson (Harvard Graduate School of Education), Monica Lee (Stanford University), Eric Dearing (Boston College), and Todd Rogers (Harvard Kennedy School) in this American Educational Research Journalarticle. “As it stands, we know absenteeism robustly predicts many consequential educational outcomes, but much less about how to effectively improve attendance.” 

The researchers led an initiative in ten West Coast school districts (urban, suburban, and rural) targeting the following mistaken parent beliefs: undervaluing the importance of elementary school attendance (compared to middle and high school); underestimating the total number of days their children are absent; and thinking that other children’s attendance is worse than their own children’s. Each parent in the treatment group received six mailings over the course of the year with (a) the total number of days the child had been absent up to that point (excused and unexcused); (b) a cartoon showing a child moving from kindergarten through high-school graduation; and (c) these messages about the importance of school attendance:

-  November – Attendance in early grades affects student learning.

-  February – Absences in earlier grades can build long-lasting habits that result in absences in later grades(mentioning Common Core standards).

-  Early March – Absences result in missed learning opportunities that cannot be replaced.

-  Late March – Attendance is linked to literacy skill development.

-  April – Attendance in early grades affects students learning(again, mentioning Common Core).

-  May – Strong attendance is associated with higher likelihood of high-school graduation.

The mailings went to parents whose children had medium to low attendance. The researchers decided to omit a comparison of each child’s attendance with classmates’ after learning that it made no difference to parents’ actions.

            What was the impact? Treatment families made modest improvements in their children’s attendance. The effects were larger in low-income families and with students who had chronic absences. Most significantly, the mailings decreased chronic absenteeism by 15 percent. 

[See Marshall Memo 735 for a similar intervention with high-school students and 734 and 733 for other initiatives.]

 

“Reducing Student Absenteeism in the Early Grades by Targeting Parental Beliefs” by Carly Robinson, Monica Lee, Eric Dearing, and Todd Rogers in American Educational Research Journal, December 2018 (Vol. 55, #6, p. 1163-1192), available for purchase at 

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

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6. Jigsaw Teaching Done Right

(Originally titled “Let’s Get Jigsaw Right”)

            In this article in Educational Leadership, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (San Diego State University and Health Sciences High and Middle College) say they have seen jigsaw teaching misused in classrooms and PD presentations, leaving out important components. Jigsaw was first developed by psychologist Eliot Aronson in 1971 to get diverse and contentious groups of students working collaboratively. It was evaluated by John Hattie as having an effect size of 1.20. Here’s how Fisher and Frey believe jigsaw should be implemented:

            • Students sit in groups and silently read different sections of a single text. 

• Students regroup and sit with those who read the same passage (the “expert group”), summarizing key information, making connections, discussing the author’s intent, and analyzing the text, prompted by questions like, One important point was____ because____. I think one logical inference we can make is____. The evidence for this is_____.

            • Students return to their home groups and go around, each sharing their understanding of the section of the text they read and answering questions. This piecing together of the whole reading might be prompted by questions like,In this part of the reading, the author’s main point was___. What’s critical for everyone to know from this part of the text?

            • Students return to their expert group and discuss how their passage fits into the whole text, based on the discussion in their jigsaw groups. The teacher may or may not distribute the full text at this point. 

The last part is what’s most frequently missing, say Fisher and Frey. “This process,” they say, “requires that students listen carefully to their peers and analyze the ways in which each part contributes to the entire text.” 

 

“Let’s Get Jigsaw Right” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey in Educational Leadership, November 2018 (Vol. 76, #3, p. 82-83), https://bit.ly/2FGzZnn; the authors can be reached at [email protected]and[email protected]. 

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7. A Comparison of Online and In-Person Credit Recovery Courses

            In this article in Educational Researcher, Jordan Rickles, Jessica Heppen, Nicholas Sorensen, and Kirk Walters (American Institutes for Research) and Elaine Allensworth (University of Chicago) report their comparison of online and face-to-face credit recovery programs. They looked at downstream data from 1,224 Chicago ninth graders who failed Algebra I and were randomly assigned to online and in-person credit recovery courses, comparing the number of math credits students accumulated and their rates of on-time graduation.

            The result: there were no statistically significant differences between students who took online courses versus those who were in face-to-face classes. This is surprising, given that the in-person classes used the same chalk-and-talk, whole-class pedagogy and content as the Algebra I courses students had just failed, whereas the online courses had interactive components, mastery-based pacing with students able to spend as much time as they needed on each topic, and two teachers interacting with students. But the outcomes were almost identical.

 

“Online Credit Recovery and the Path to On-Time High-School Graduation” by Jordan Rickles, Jessica Heppen, Elaine Allensworth, Nicholas Sorensen, and Kirk Walters in Educational Researcher, November 2018 (Vol. 47, #8, p. 481-491), available for purchase at https://bit.ly/2P3FpbN. 

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8. Award-Winning Children’s Nonfiction Books

            In this feature in Language Arts, Mary Ann Cappiello and six colleagues share the winners of the annual Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction:

• Grand Canyon by Jason Chin (Roaring Brook, 2017) – A fully illustrated exploration of the Grand Canyon from the rim to the deepest depths.

• Chef Roy Choi and the Sweet Food Remixby Jacqueline Briggs Martin and June Jo Lee, illustrated by Man One (Readers to Eaters, 2017) – The son of Korean immigrants learns high-end cooking and ends up running a successful food truck in Los Angeles.

• Dazzle Ships: World War I and the Art of Confusionby Chris Barton, illustrated by Victo Ngai (Millbrook, 2017) – The story behind the Dazzle camouflage paint scheme used on allied ships during World War I and II.

• Her Right Footby Dave Eggers, illustrated by Shawn Harris (Chronicle, 2017) – The story behind the Statue of Liberty, including the torch, the seven rays in her crown, the inscription on the book she holds, the broken chains at her feet, and the reason one foot is striding forward.

• The Quilts of Gee’s Bendby Susan Goldman Rubin (Abrams, 2017) – The descendants of Alabama slaves come together each night to quilt, chat, laugh, and sing hymns as they stitch scraps of old shirts, dresses, and aprons into vibrant designs.

• The World Is Not a Rectangle: A Portrait of Architect Zaha Hadidby Jeanette Winter (Beach Lane, 2017) – The life of an award-winning, convention-bending architect and the ideas, images, and dreams that shaped her life.

• Danza!: Amalia Hernández and El Ballet Folklórico de Mexicoby Duncan Tonatiuh (Abrams, 2017) – The story behind choreographing and performing ballets based on the folklórico traditions of villages across Mexico.

• Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today by Cynthia Levinson and Sanford Levinson (Peachtree, 2017) – This book lays out the “limitations, ambiguities, and flatly bad ideas” in the U.S. Constitution that have led to crises through the nation’s history.

• If Sharks Disappearedby Lily Williams (Roaring Books, 2017) – A smart and insightful child of color invites readers to consider the devastating implications of a planet without sharks.

• Isaac the Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’dby Mary Losure (Candlewick, 2017) – A narrative biography of the father of physics, beginning with his awkward and bookish childhood and drawing on his notebooks and diaries.

• Life on Surtsey: Iceland’s Upstart Islandby Loree Griffin Burns (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) – The ecosystem of an island newly generated in 1963 and now home to myriad flora and fauna.

• Maya Lin: Thinking with Her Handsby Susan Goldman Rubin (Chronicle, 2017) – The life of the mastermind architect and activist (creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.).

• The Music of Life: Bartolomeo Cristofori and the Invention of the Pianoby Elizabeth Rusch, illustrated by Marjorie Priceman (Atheneum, 2017) – Through trial and error, Cristofori crafted an instrument that can play piano (softly) and forte (loudly), and how the instrument unleashed the musical imagination of composers from Haydn to Joplin.

• The Whydah: A Pirate Ship Feared, Wrecked, and Foundby Martin Sandler (Candlewick, 2017) – The discovery of the wreck of the Whydah off the coast of Cape Cod in 1984 has opened the troubling history of this ship in the 1700s.

 

“2018 Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children” by Mary Ann Cappiello, Seemi Aziz-Raina, Denise Dávila, Daryl Grabarek, Jennifer Graff, Scott Riley, and Julie Waugh in Language Arts, November 2018 (Vol. 96, #2, p. 127-134)

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9. Short Item:

            Funded travel for educators – There are hundreds of programs that provide teachers and other K-12 staff with free summer professional development travel in the U.S. and abroad. Many of these programs have applications that open in December, with deadlines in early 2019. This website (created by my daughter, Lillie Marshall) compiles educator travel opportunities, complete with links to apply: https://www.teachingtraveling.com/tag/grants/

 

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