Suddenly, in the wake of the state’s testing results, the Rhode Island General Assembly has whipped up legislation designed to quash any thought of the state having meaningful diplomas. How like them.

Companion bills — H-5277 and S-177 — would eliminate the unbelievably-modest test requirement for graduating from high school. Last week, the House version was heard by the Health, Education and Welfare Committee. Passions waxed. Abuse of the kids alleged. The mediocrity of the current status quo affirmed. Enabling lauded.

Julia Steiny

No wonder the state is such a mess.

Mind you the requirement is minimal, a small step up from zero diploma standards, which is what we have now. The class of 2014 and high-school students henceforth need to score at Level 2 or better to qualify for graduation. Level 1 is “substantially below proficient.” See last week’s column for details about currently available supports and accommodations for non-passers.

My concern this week is the message these bills are sending to the kids. It is: Well, no, we don’t want you to have to work hard and earn, however modestly, a diploma that certifies Something. If you’re blowing off your work or cutting school, we’ll protect you from consequences. If you’re legitimately struggling, we’ll protect you from the bother of exercising your right to get all the help you need to meet the standard for real.

The expectations of the Rhode Island public are so low, you can walk on them.

Already in 2008 and then again in 2010, the Board of Regents told the public-education community that students would eventually need to test out of Level 1. Both times public uproar pushed the deadline back in order to give teachers, kids, schools and parents time to get their act together. After the second bruhaha, the requirement was finally established for next year’s graduating class.

So this is nothing new. The General Assembly certainly could have taken action before now, but didn’t. The message was out there. But when challenge presents itself, the attitude in Rhode Island is: this too will pass.

And lo! It does. The Legislature now jumping in for a last-minute save proves the point. We set goals and then dismantle them. Which is exactly how we get our nation-leading unemployment rate, dismal business climate and expensive, mediocre schools.

So it’s sad, but not a huge surprise that the class of 2014 who took the test last fall, as juniors, did not ramp up their game as though urgency were upon them.

True, proficiency in the Math test, the hardest one, improved a healthy 4 percentage points. And the percentage of students in Level 1 dropped from 44 to 40. So there were some gains. But that 40 percent is about 4,000 students. The state can not afford 4,000 drop-outs.

But wait. Annually, about 1,900 students drop out of Rhode Island high schools. To date none of those left because of a test score.

Furthermore, of the students who do graduate from RI high schools, about 20 percent are chronically absent, meaning that they miss a month of school each year, or more. (See: High-school absenteeism and college persistence on the RIDataHUB, page 6.) Twenty percent?! Surely those students could achieve more if they got their sorry butts to school more often.

And students have been quoted recently saying they receive only “A”s and “B”s in their classes, but score at Level 1? Huh? What’s wrong with that picture? I was no testing hotshot myself, so I had to learn strategies to improve my scores. If these students are so diligent, with grades like that, surely they too can pick up the test-taking skills that would get them out of Level 1. (Or the kids’ school is a total sham.)

Because life is a test. Meeting benchmarks is a life-long requirement, whether it’s getting a drivers license or dressing for a job interview. What’s the standard and what do I have to do to meet it? Learn that lesson.

Mind you, the plight of the 4,000 kids is real, and upsetting. I do not minimize the steep challenge of meeting the new bar. They have been done wrong. In several respects. Including that they haven’t been held accountable for their performance to date.

You’d think the taxpayers, parents, teachers, indeed the kids themselves would be applauding the higher standards. Pluck and ambition are good things. You’d think folks would be rallying around those kids who haven’t yet made it, offering to help in any way.

You’d think they’d be saying: We know you can do it. We have high expectations of you and we want you to have high expectations of yourself. We understand you need support to get there, so we’re here to help however we can. We believe in you. We’ll both feel marvelous when you succeed! And you will!

These are the encouraging words of all great parents, teachers, politicians and adults in general.

Instead, what we’re doing is called “enabling.” We are the Ocean of Enabling state. We see struggle and rush in to spare anyone from working harder or learning anything. Our status quo is famously bad. Rock-bottom expectations keep us there.

Dear Legislators: A meaningless diploma serves no one, especially not the kids. How dare you think so little of them. Encourage and help them instead.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: Rhode Island, Raise Your Rock-Bottom Expectations appeared first on Education News.

by Julia Steiny

Until the year 2000 I adamantly opposed “high-stakes” state testing, where failure would cost a kid a diploma.  Why penalize kids for what the schools failed to do?

But that year, in a stunning upset of my assumptions, Massachusetts’ 10th-graders improved an enormous 20 percentage points on the statewide MCAS.  From 48 percent proficient to 68 in a single year.  Educators do happy dances when they gain 4 or 5 points on large-scale assessments.  But 20?  Truly miraculous.

Julia Steiny

What happened was that the kids suddenly had skin in the game.  For the first time the tests counted towards their diplomas.  Starting with the graduating class of 2003, MA required students to “pass” the MCAS — albeit at a very low bar — to be eligible for graduation.  That lit a fire under a lot of adolescent butts.  My overly-trusting heart assumed the kids had been doing their best.  Well, not so much.

For three years, the kids and schools had been told this requirement would kick in.  They heard it.  Many of the 32 percent who didn’t pass the first round were only just shy of the goal.  At each of the five opportunities to retake the test, the passing percentages increased until 95 percent had met the requirement in time for their graduation.  The remainder were welcome to stay in school until they too were successful.

Rhode Island is now going through the same crisis.  Shortly after she arrived, Commissioner Deborah Gist mandated a similar requirement for RI’s class of 2014.  So the juniors who took the NECAP test last fall are the first class whose diplomas depend on “passing” the test — again, at a low level.  They too will have multiple chances to re-take.

They can also apply for waivers for extenuating circumstances, or submit other tests, such as the PSAT or ACCESS, designed for English-language learners.  And to make it totally possible to succeed, they don’t have to make it all the way out of “substantially below proficient,” but just show improvement in small, specified degrees.

Honestly, to meet such a nominal standard, kids really only have to pay serious attention in class and cooperate with whatever support the school provides.  Schools do NOT want to withhold diplomas.

I don’t meant to minimize the concerns of those protesting against this policy.  The students most affected are specifically those whose life prospects already look dim.  The numbers of students now at risk of not graduating is scary.

Currently 4113 students, or 38 percent of the class of 2014 has not yet passed one or both of the tests.  Math is a nightmare, with 4,075 non-passers.  Failing both math and English were 745 students.  Only 19 failed the English test, but passed math.

But Massachusetts was in exactly the same pickle, at the same juncture, with 32 percent who’d failed the first round.  So have faith.  If the RI re-take experience is anything like the Bay State’s, most students will get their fannies in gear and pass.

Or drop out.  Which remains a danger of high-stakes testing, to be fair.  But kids drop out for a million reasons.  The NECAP is not the only diploma requirement.  They could fail their courses or blow off their senior project.  In any case, if students are at all connected to school or motivated by the value of a degree in their future, they’ll get themselves over the hump.

The point is that the days of the utterly meaningless diploma need to be over.  Business and higher education have been screaming for years about incompetent young people coming to them entitled to a paycheck or a college “A” for whatever they produce.

Massachusetts’ diplomas are starting to have credible value.  Since the state passed its famed 1993 education-reform legislation, their schools have clawed their way from middling to the tippy top of the national achievement benchmarks (NAEP) in all subjects.  And it has stayed there over time.  The many facets of their reform efforts are too numerous to mention here.

But among them was the dynamo of handing some responsibility for success to the kids themselves.

Mind you, I still think Americans are just weird about their faith in tests and testing.  I keep hearing about “multiple measures,” but see the same old test scores sliced and diced only to be over-emphasized in all sorts of evaluations.  “Multiple” means tests along with a bunch of other, different indicators.

Still, while not golden, test data are valuable.  The public, businesses and taxpayers deserve to know that the diploma certifies something.

And protecting kids from a minimal standard of performance is just a form of enabling them — as the Massachusetts’ story demonstrates.

Maybe if the RI kids have to share the responsibility for their results, they’ll turn on us, the adults, demanding we take better care of the institutions that should be serving them better.  We deserve it.

Because at the end of the day, the educational results belong to them.

Meaningful diplomas are an excellent goal.  All parties — including parents and the public — should be doing their bit to improve education.  It’s not nuts to hand some of that responsibility over to the kids as well.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: Students Can Take More Responsibility for Success on State Tests appeared first on Education News.

The canary first wavered in Rhode Island schools’ coal mine in 2005 when a state test showed that 25% of RI 4th graders were “substantially below proficient” in math — and now that those students are approaching graduation, that number has swelled to 40%. Students must test out as “partially proficient” in math, which means that Rhode Island has a year and a half to ensure that 2 out of 5 of its graduating class won’t have to repeat their senior year.

Dan McGowan of WPRI.com reports that the data has been known for so many years — with no indication that the trend was getting better — that teachers and administrators aren’t shocked.

“This is not something we were surprised about,” Patti DiCenso, a secondary school performance officer for Pawtucket schools, said. “This is not something we knew was going to happen last year. This goes back a few years. Are we frustrated? Absolutely. Are we concerned? Absolutely.”

The state has done a better job of attacking deficits in reading — districts saw improvements in achievement in that area — but math has not only continued to be a problem, but has grown in severity. And as the clock ticks, solutions are becoming more pressing.

In Providence, school officials have launched a graduation awareness campaign that maps out a strategy for its 11th graders to improve their NECAP scores and students. The plan includes:

• more rigorous academic interventions;
• the creation of personalized graduation plans for all students;
• a community engagement strategy that will promote better school attendance;
• and policy development that will engage stakeholders in the city’s graduation policy.

“We are opposed to reliance on a single test for determining a student’s future,” Robert Walsh, the executive director of the NEA, told WPRI.com. “We support the ongoing evaluation of student achievement based on multiple measures, including authentic assessments that are directly linked to the standards, curricula and materials teachers use.”

The post Poor Math Skills May Keep 40% of Rhode Islanders from Graduating appeared first on Education News.

by Julia Steiny

Last year on March 1, the town of Woonsocket, RI, laid off all its public school teachers, spreading considerable misery around town.

The year before that, also on March 1, Providence pink-slipped each of their nearly 2,000 teachers.  And, as is usually the case with RI’s winter layoffs, every single teacher was hired back again by fall.

Julia Steiny

The year before that, Central Falls got national attention by laying off its high school teachers on, you guessed it, March 1.

Are you seeing an ugly pattern here?  Rhode Island law — Title 16, Section 13 — mandates that any teacher who might need to be let go, come September, must be notified by March 1.  Districts must lay off anyone and everyone who might be affected by a worst-case budget scenario, or risk over-spending in the fall.

Rhode Island’s state budget is due July 1, but delays are common.  With the State’s fiscal decisions in hand, cities and towns’ can finally firm up their budgets.  In February, schools have no clue what their September enrollment will be, what programs will change, how many teachers will retire, and so forth.  Totally bass ackwards.

The annual ocean of pink slips induces a giant, statewide bummer for teachers, students and their families.  For four more months of school, teachers soldier on, nurturing students in an atmosphere of impending doom.

Does this sound like a law that promotes academic health?  Or achievement?

Supposedly, the March 1 law gives terminated teachers time to look for other jobs.  In fact, the teacher job market only heats up much later, more like June.

The story in Woonsocket was that massive incompetence in the schools’ finance office had put the town in fiscal shambles.  Laying off the teachers didn’t improve the immediate fiscal situation at all, but it had to be done.

In Providence, a big drop in student enrollment partly drove the mass layoffs.  The new Mayor declared a “category five fiscal hurricane,” which meant the City couldn’t afford to run many partially-empty, inefficient schools.  But which buildings needed the most repairs?  Which consolidations made most sense?  Such decisions take time.  Again, every teacher returned eventually, but many were re-deployed to other schools.

Note the variety in these stories.  It was the feds who designated Central Falls High School as among the 5 percent lowest-performing in the state.  The feds demanded that districts with such schools choose one of four radical-change models.  When the schools’ union and administration could not agree on the specifics of a model, the March 1 deadline forced administration to maximize its flexibility with a mass layoff.  Mind you, the feds caused dozens of schools across the nation to lay off and sometimes fire masses of teachers.  So the only reason RI’s nasty episode made national news was that it was the first such.  Again, all teachers were re-hired, but March 1′s pressure left totally unnecessary wounds.

In the state tied for the highest unemployment rate and only one of two states losing population, stories of struggle, such as those above, will likely continue.

Most states’ deadlines, if they even have such a law, are set for late May or June — although California bums their teachers out on March 15th.

Massachusetts, the nation’s educational darling according to their marvelous NAEP scores, has a June 15th date.  June 15th leaves only a bit more than a week for being upset.  MA kids get a full year of non-depressed instruction.

People wonder how Rhode Island can lavish so much money and effort on school reform, but have so little to show for it.

As he has every year since taking office, Senator Louis DiPalma (D) has submitted a bill (2013-S 0049) to move the hated date to June 1.

He says, “This is no small thing.  It’s hard for me to fathom why anyone would be against the bill.  I have yet to hear a teacher say that the March 1 date is right.  The consternation it causes!  And for what reason?   It doesn’t need to happen.”

Rep. Ruggerio (D) has a companion bill in the House (2013-H 5066).

There’s still a month before March 1.  No one supports the March 1 deadline.  Legislators could get these bills to a vote asap.  If there are objections, let them come forward and say what the objections are.

If not, give the state a huge gift of uninterrupted teaching and learning.  Spare the school Human Resource Offices the expense of getting the pink slips out and the pain of fielding fretful phone calls.  Avoid all the screamingly obvious damage done by this bad law.

Be heroes to kids, teachers and the state’s emerging workforce.

Or risk more mass misery.  As DiPalma put it, “God forbid there’s another Woonsocket, and we (the Legislature) could have stopped it!”

It’s a no-brainer.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: Time to Change Rhode Island’s Pink-Slip Policy appeared first on Education News.

Beginning in 2009, the Office for Civil Rights, a part of the U.S. Department of Education, began appending another data point to the Civil Rights Data Collection survey it releases every two years: teacher absences. As Raegen Miller writes for the American Progress, this information is vital for predicting education success, because her research has shown that the rate of teacher absences is strongly linked to student achievement.

The data collected by the U.S. Department of Education presented an alarming picture. Over the course of 2009-2010 academic year, the first for which the information is available, more than a third of all teachers were recorded as absent for more than 10 days. When looked at closely, it was clear that the absence rates varied greatly between states and even districts in the same state. In Utah, where the excessive absence rates were the lowest in the country, only about 20% of teachers were out of the classroom for ten days or more. In Rhode Island, which topped the list, more than 50% of teachers took off at least ten days over the course of the year.

The percentages reported by individual schools range from 0 percent to 100 percent, with 62 percent of the variation in the measure occurring between districts and a third occurring within districts. The latter statistic is significant because all schools within a given district operate under the same leave policies, and teacher absence levels well above a district average may be a symptom of a dysfunctional professional culture at the building level.

There was also a substantial gap between absence rates in traditional public schools and charter schools. On average, 15.2% fewer charter teachers were excessively absent from class than their public school counterparts.

If the absence rates have an impact on student achievement, then this fallout is in large part borne by African-American and Latino students. Even accounting for factors like grade level and type of school, teacher absence rates at schools where the student body was 90% minority were, on average, 3.5% higher than at those where minorities make up only 10% of the school’s population.

Schools spend more on the salary and benefits of teachers than any category of expenditure, so it’s not surprising that the financial costs of teacher absence are high. With 5.3 percent of teachers absent on a given day, stipends for substitute teachers and associated administrative costs amount to a minimum of $4 billion annually. Additional financial costs tied to teacher absence include payouts of accumulated, unused leave and annual awards designed to discourage unnecessary absences. In some states these payout costs come in the form of enhanced lifetime pension benefits. A comprehensive cost figure is extremely difficult to calculate, but this does not preclude knowing that the figure is too high.

The post Excessive Teacher Absences Linked to Achievement Shortfalls appeared first on Education News.

by Julia Steiny

The windowless basement meeting room buzzed with excited, nervous chatter.  Rival schools were about to sit down to get to know one another, rather intimately.

Julia Steiny

Nine schools in the Providence School District have agreed to consider converting to charter status by partnering with one of Rhode Island’s excellent charter schools.  Together they’ll adapt the charter-school’s educational strategy, write up their co-created new design, and apply for charter status from the state.

The new joint-venture schools will remain district-run and unionized.  These sorts of district-school conversions are not terribly common, but they do exist — mainly because faculties get so frustrated with certain district policies, curriculum or labor-contract provisions that they want the flexibility that comes with charter status.  In Providence’s case, the district itself is encouraging the conversions.

Actually, this was whole point of the charter-school movement from its inception in the early 1990s — to encourage experiments and innovations that could spread back to the regular district schools.  But the way history played out, charters and district schools felt pitted against one another, bitterly competing for resources, students and praise.

True, tiny Central Falls, also in Rhode Island, has a nationally-recognized collaboration among district schools and the charters that serve that city’s children.  But it’s the only collaboration of its kind I’ve ever heard of, until now.

Superintendent Dr. Susan Lusi introduced this highly-unusual meet-and-greet as the “collective brain child” of Providence’s leadership, including the School Board chair and the President of the teachers union.

Surely they’d noticed that almost all of the local charters soared in the recent “Report Card” state rankings.

By contrast, fully half of the Providence Public Schools are “chronically low-performing,” which is ed-speak for failing and coming under state scrutiny.

Even so, it’s bold for any district to welcome a range of ideas with proven track records from the oft-resented charters.

During the first hour of the meeting, each presenter was supposed to make an absurdly short, 2-minute presentation.  Schools sketched out a wide range of successful strategies.  Power-point slides, changing every 8 seconds in the background, presented stats faster than anyone could read.  It was a little nuts.

Also pitching their strategies as potential partners were a few more familiar and non-controversial providers – social services, volunteer organizations.

Then, for the second hour, the presenters occupied tables where district teachers and school staff could ask questions.

Several people called the event “educational speed dating.”

Superintendent Lusi was blunt about what she was hoping her schools would get from collaborating with the charters:  community, capacity and resources.  “First, charters are characterized as being cohesive communities of parents, students and staff.    Secondly, for over a year Providence has been building partnerships to bring more capacity and expertise to our schools.  We’re still looking for more value-added partnerships.”

Lastly, sighs Lusi, “We need the resources.  The RI Department of Education has 3 million dollars that can be used for charter start-ups.”  Regular district schools can get a piece of that pie, but only if they convert to charter status.

Nationally, the public is frustrated with the pace of school reform, creating intense pressure to satisfy the parents’ and public’s demand for better school options.  Either district schools can become the change we all want to see, or they’ll let competition put them out of business.

Ironically, most charter schools nationally are just as academically mediocre as the regular public schools kids are trying to escape.  But since charter schools live or die on their ability to attract and keep students and families, they’re famous for being warm, welcoming places that parents prefer to the often-hidebound, district schools.

So consider this little clash of cultures.  Many of the Providence district attendees expressed a strong desire to improve their relationship with parents.  One charter director conceded that involving urban parents is a super-tough job.  So his teachers all visit their students’ homes before school opens in the fall, to meet or re-connect with the family and talk about their mutual expectations for the year.

A Providence teacher asked, “Who does these visits?”  The Director enthused, “The classroom teachers.  And giving the parents a business card, saying call me any time; this is my cell phone number, that creates a relationship that’s crazy powerful.”

“The teachers give out their cell phone numbers?” asked one.  “Yeah,” said the Director.  And there was an uncomfortable pause.

Charter and district-school cultures are very different.  I asked Superintendent Lusi if she thought her schools would be willing to be flexible.

She shrugged and said, “We’ve got to do something.  We need so much help.  We’re not going to get anywhere without getting out of the box.  This seems promising.”

Even more enthused was Dr. Robert Pilkington, now applying to start his fourth charter school. “This is historic!  This is the crucible.  This is what it was supposed to be all about at the get-go.  There’s no anger here.  Just collegial involvement!”

I’m not sure there wasn’t a smidge of anger.  But hey, everyone there seemed fairly serious about collaborating.  I only wish Congress could also grow up and learn to collaborate in the best interests of all.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: A Struggling Urban School District Turns to Charters for Help appeared first on Education News.

by Julia Steiny

In second grade, Henri could only read 7 words a minute accurately.  You’re hoping for about 60 words.

As such, Henri was about to slam into the critical 3rd grade reading milestone.  That’s when students switch from learning to read, to reading to learn.  Reading is the key to school success.  Remediation is certainly possible, but gets progressively harder to accomplish.  Statistically, students who blow that 3rd-grade benchmark face a bleak academic future.

Julia Steiny

When Henri first entered kindergarten at Fort Barton School in Tiverton, he spoke no English.  Rhode Island considers this K-4 school “rural,” though North Dakotans would laugh.  Still, English Language learners are not common in that neck of the woods.  Poverty is more so, as 19 percent of the school’s students are eligible for subsidized lunch.

Furthermore, Henri was two weeks late coming back to enter the third grade.  And he’d spent the summer with his family in their native Colombia, speaking only Spanish.

But — huge big deal — by the end of 3rd grade, Henri was only just shy of reading at grade-level.  His mother was thrilled.  She gushed at the school’s staff because he was avidly reading street signs to her.

And Henri was by no means the only child snatched from the jaws of failure.  This past year, 98 percent of Fort Barton’s 3^rd graders were deemed proficient in reading.

But get this: fully 53 percent achieved “proficiency with distinction,” over half.  Both of these rates far exceed those of the wealthiest and highest-performing districts in the state.

The new Report Cards deem Fort Barton Rhode Island’s best elementary school:

Okay, how’d they manage that?

In 2008 the school’s teachers were seriously frustrated that they couldn’t seem to help roughly 30 percent of their kids to “proficiency.”  About 70 percent of their students regularly passed the state assessments, but with the others, they’d flat-lined.  They asked Principal Suzette Wordell to please find them some help with teaching “diverse learners,” which is to say those kids whom no amount of effort seemed to touch.

Wordell found The Highlander Institute, which invited the school to be part of their new grant-funded literacy project.

As a suburban school not swimming in poverty, Wordell says, “We rarely qualify for grants.  So our kids have minimal resources, minimal staff.  But they still have needs.”  So, sure, they’d be game.

The Highlander Institute used to specialize in special-needs kids — aka “diverse learners” — but now it has developed a process that helps all students get whatever it is they specially need.  Their process drives questions and provides answers to how schools and teachers can get the exact-right challenge or skill remediation in front of each student — whether they’re struggling, academically gifted, or somewhere in between.  The Institute has beta-tested their process and their academic materials at their lab school, Highlander Charter.

So, the process starts with teaching teachers how to collect and use data.

Project director Dawn August says, “We find that in most schools there’s very little data.  Everyone’s been saying use data, use data.  But really, no one’s ever shown them how to drive the data bus.”

The project schools commit to assessing each child’s mastery 3 times a year, with the DIBELS assessment.  And using the PET-R survey, teachers gauge which of their school’s programs and systems are effective and firmly in place.

August shared the crunched results with the staff.  On the survey, teachers were clear that, remarkably little was solidly “in place.”  Even great teachers can’t get great results with ill-designed, uncoordinated strategies.

The kids’ results were painful.  See the Fall 2008 results for yourself, at the left of the accompanying chart.  Fully 35 percent of Fort Barton’s 200 students were at risk of not passing the state tests.  August sighs, ” At first you get a lot of finger-pointing, “Oh it’s the family, the poverty, language, attendance, special needs.”  Teachers generally felt they already knew how to do better, so the message to August was, “Thanks, we’ve got it from here.”

But the second DIBELS test ignited “the winter of discontent.”  The kids had gotten worse.  Apparently, this decline is typical and the Highlander staff were all but expecting it.  Still, Fort Barton’s hard work had increased the gaps.  Teachers cried.  But now at least they were listening.

August says, “We really kick into gear during this so-what?, what-now? period.”  Once again, she showed teachers how to use the data to divide their classes into four groups.  Each group gets instruction precisely tailored to their needs.  Teachers freaked at the idea of managing four different groups with different needs, and at collecting data daily.  August guided them through the process, and it got easier.

Wordell says, “Teachers use running records and every day they cull information from those.  As quickly as the data tell us, we move to remediate.  Now we can honestly say that what we do is driven by data.  Every single day.”

After 4 years of working together, Highlander considers Fort Barton to be a well-oiled machine.  Getting results in education is not sexy.  It takes hard work, over time, and a willingness to change strategies along the way.  But the Institute’s ability to get everyone laser-focused on student needs was the secret weapon that got fabulous results.

The school fought hard for success, and they won.  Good work, Fort Barton!

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: Rhode Island’s Top Elementary School and its Secret Weapon appeared first on Education News.

Julia Steiny

For two weeks, Mariposa Pre-school in Providence immerses their class of core-urban 4-year-olds in a story.  They read and discuss it for a little over a week.  Then they give it a rest for a day.  McDermott collects props from Mariposa’s wealth of toys available for fantasy play, and assembles the story’s scene on a special table.  Over two days, each child tells the story in his or her own words.  They can fetch another prop if they feel it’s necessary.  The story is now their own.

Jason settles in by handling and talking to himself about the toy props on the table.  He buttons the jacket onto naughty Peter Rabbit and checks the shoes that Peter will lose in his harrowing escape from grumpy old Farmer McGregor, also close at hand.

He starts by waving the Peter doll at us.  “Peter is a rabbit.  Peter squeezes his little body through the gate.”  And he threads the doll through the gate prop.  “He munched at the plant.  The… um… carrot!  And then he eats another.  And then a pepper.”  And so it goes with the doll performing the right tasks.

At Mariposa, kids love being the story-teller.  School staff remind parents to ask for a re-telling at home.  Which gives talkative Jason another chance to recount the drama.

How fun is that?

Well, way fun.  But here’s the kicker:  These re-tellings are a test.  Not the dreary regurgitate-dead-facts kind, but an evaluation of how much children are learning, given the opportunity to display their mastery.

McDermott records each child’s performance on her phone.  These mini-videos help the staff assess the child’s recall of the story, ability to follow the sequence, their growing vocabulary, and confidence at expressing themselves.  The school uses the GOLD Assessment System, which values “remembering and connecting experiences,” while playing down letter and letter-sound recognition which, according to the documentation, has only “moderate correlation with reading in the primary grades.”

I love it.  Piaget, the French psychologist, called the urge to push academic curriculum onto ever younger children “the American disease.”  Instead, enrich their opportunities to be kids.  Kids are hard-wired learners.

Mariposa is one of 6 pilot classrooms in Rhode Island that are part of a federal early-learning grant – so of course they must collect data and have assessments.  That’s what we do these days.  Mind you, assessments are a bad thing only when we use test results like hunting rifles to thin out an over-population of failures.

Actually, schools should be held accountable for offering kids genuine opportunities to do something all by themselves.  Autonomous mastery of a skill feeds self-esteem and love of learning far more effectively than gobs of misguided praise.

Four-year-olds can’t ride bikes by themselves, or write and produce dramatic skits, or complete Eagle Scout projects.  But they can tell coherent stories.  Proficient story-telling is a ancient, valued skill that will serve a lifetime – not that developing expert raconteurs is exactly Mariposa’s goal.

Mariposa’s director, Kristen Greene, explains that while the pre-school is influenced by the Waldorf philosophy and Reggio Emilia methods, “We’re creating something new, with our own curriculum.  But we keep the essential ideas of our influences.  So we teach that the world is a beautiful place.  And that there’s hope of great things.  Children are born ready to learn.  They need opportunities that allow their brains to be well nurtured so they can become confident learners.”

But there’s a scarcity of enriching opportunities in most urban kids’ lives.  Our fear-driven culture keeps kids indoors, away from the neighborhood that used to be their personal world.  Many are cut off entirely from nature.

As are the their families.  Greene says, “Parents tend to be a little afraid of any plaything that does not come out of a box.”

No park or green space surrounds the Wanskuck Boys and Girls Club, where Mariposa is housed.  Inventing encounters with the natural world requires creativity.

For a cold-weather celebration, the staff put a portable fire pit out in the asphalt parking lot, with stumps around it as seats.  Two parents asked if the fire itself was real.  The kids wouldn’t go near it.  Their only direct experience with fire might have been a burning building.  Slowly, the staff’s trusting relationships with the families drew everyone into a warm huddle around the fire.

Similarly, Greene wrote a grant for a bus to take them to Roger Williams Park four times a year.  The kids and as many of their family members as can go spend the day outside, with trees and ponds and a hill to roll down.  While staff helped kids see the world around them, the parents were wowed by the color of the azaleas just coming into bloom.  They looked with new eyes at the natural world.  Hopefully, now they’ll want to get out to explore parks and nature with their kids.

These opportunities boost learning.  Research says so.  Soaking up the glories of nature sparks scientific curiosity.

And becoming a pre-school story-teller builds confidence in communication.  Just ask Jason.  He has a story he’d just love to tell you.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.  She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island.  She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data.  For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: Rich School Opportunities Reduce Poverty of Experience appeared first on Education News.

Central Falls’ Calcutt Middle School has passed students onto high school with failing grades in four core subjects. The stunning development has led to shocked teachers swapping emails with the incoming principal, David Alba, who made the decision to scrap retention of failing students.

“To be clear,” Alba responded in one of the emails. “The change I have made to the Calcutt retention policy is not a matter up for debate.”

This isn’t so much a change in retention policy though, as it as an abolition of it. Central Falls’ Superintendent Frances Gallo appears to back Alba’s position:

“There is an internal discussion regarding whether or not student retention is or is not helpful,” Gallo wrote. “Retention significantly increases the likelihood of a student dropping out of school.”

Of course, being hopelessly lost in the high school version of a subject that one failed in middle school has wonderful long term effects on a student’s ability, stress levels and future.

Teachers are equally bemused:

“You are essentially saying that failing 50% of the time and even 75% of the time is a standard in which Central Falls believes,” the teachers wrote in one response to Alba.

The change in policy isn’t merely theoretical, nor does it apply to one or two isolated cases. Dozens of Calcutt Middle School students failed at least two of their core classes, but will still become freshman.

Alba agreed that the failing students may not be as prepared for high school, but he backed up his policy by pointing to studies that he said indicated retention does not work.

“If retention was proven effective, I would support it,” Alba wrote.

Walt Buteau, writing for Target 12, has also recently notes that Central Falls is graduating students from the class of 2011 who missed months of classroom time. Eight graduates from the class missed at least 50 of the 180 school days with at least two missing more than 90 days. With standards for graduating as high as these, perhaps Alba has a point in passing the failing children. If they don’t need to attend high school to graduate with their diploma then what does it matter if they failed middle school?

This rash of truancy happened the year Central Falls climbed from a 48 percent graduation rate to a 71 percent graduation rate. Several Central Falls teachers tell Target 12 they are skeptical about the 2011 rate.

The post Rhode Island School Passes Students With Failing Grades appeared first on Education News.

Julia Steiny

Well, except for the boy banging the head of a cloth baby doll against a table.  Hmmmmm.

An oven in the real-kitchen area – there’s also a play kitchen – is baking granola-bar snacks that the four-year-olds made with Miss Susan, an adult aide.  While one little baker stirred the dough, others sang a cooking song.

At the sink, two girls stand on chairs to “wash the dishes” in super-sudsy water.  The kitchen is a floury, sudsy mess.  But the clean-up song and Miss Susan help them get it tidy again.  Even housework looks fun.

Across the way, a kerfuffle erupts because the grocery-store shelves are empty.  How can they play store, shrieks one irate customer?  An adult wonders aloud if the store might be re-stocked with the toy food and packages that found their way to the play dining area.  The little rocket scientists light up with a genius solution – grab baskets and move the stuff.

At this Waldorf-inspired school, the playthings are attractive, non-commercial, designed for imaginative play, and distinctly unhip.  (Who needs hip 4-year-olds?)

But that boy – we’ll call him Roger – can’t seem to stop banging that baby’s head, even when asked nicely.  His vehemence is upsetting.  Perhaps a new sibling at home has ignited murderous Cain-and-Abel passions.  This could happen to any family.

Or he could be signaling bigger, distressing issues in his life.

One of six public preschools being piloted in Rhode Island with a federal grant, Mariposa’s students are predominantly urban.

So however gauzy, pretty, and middle-class the atmosphere, Child Protective Services has been called more than once.

My heart warms all the more to see low-income urban kids having a blast, losing themselves in self-made games, make believe, and building projects.  Without Mariposa, they’d likely be home with too much TV, or in a less-gorgeously appointed daycare center, also with TV.

Head Teacher Miss Meghan (McDermott) finishes what she’s doing to work with the boy whose attacks are turning full-on violent.

I can’t hear specific words over the kinder-din.  But McDermott gets down to child-level to show him how to hold a baby.  This only triggers his inner Cain.  So she gently takes the poor baby doll herself to comfort it, with the gestures of a fabulous mom.  She cradles it in her arms, rocks gently, and repeatedly kisses what would have been a fatal concussion.  Occasionally she strokes Roger’s arm, to help him feel what the baby would be feeling.  He nods studiously.  He looks at the doll at least as much as McDermott.  He asks questions.  She answers one by showing him how to put the baby over her shoulder and pat it.

Then, with outstretched arms, he wants the baby back.  Okay.  McDermott gets another doll and together they mother their respective babies, cradling, rocking, stroking.

Waldorf classrooms always have squares of fun-colored cloth hanging about, as an all-purpose toy.  McDermott adroitly fashions one into a snuggie for Roger’s baby.  Roger, enraged moments ago, holds very still, as though the operation were quite delicate, and with surprisingly bright eyes, watches her tie the baby to his body.

By then an audience of three other boys had assembled, fascinated.  With Roger’s sling complete, they all want babies and slings of their own.  McDermott obliges.  Roger, now an expert, instructs them in his new-found skills – stroking, kissing, snuggling.  McDermott generously praises them.

So there they were, four urban boys practicing mothering in a comically-serious way.

Perhaps such care and comfort is not so available at home.  They’re learning it now, though, rehearsing the sweet behavior of a confident, secure mom, not harassed by the challenges of poverty, or working long hours, or single motherhood, or having more children than she can handle.  McDermott leaves them, busy soothing their babies, and in the case of Roger, soothing himself.

Mariposa’s Director Dr. Kristen Greene says, “Modeling mothering is a great route to teaching empathy, caring, kindness – all qualities we know we want to bring forth in our little ones.  Sadly, we are ignoring these human traits too much of late. Gentleness is actually something that children need to be taught.  The gentle person is considering another person’s experience, wanting it to be loving and caring. Children must learn this skill, or at least see it, experience it, have it recognized and affirmed when they act in this way.  Our predominant culture contains a lot of violence, especially in the media, and does not offer children a lot of opportunities to observe gentleness in action.”

So many parents today, at every socio-economic level, had poor models of sweet and gentle parenting when they were little.  How would they know how to teach it to their kids?

These boys’ lesson in nurturing might stay with them, if their schools continue to reinforce such values with them and their parents.  All problems, at home, school and elsewhere, are more tolerable when people treat one another mindfully, affectionately, playfully.

Nurture is a critical life skill, like showing up to work every day on time.  Everyone should know how to comfort a child.  (And how to comfort one another.)  How will children learn to be kind and caring, if they don’t see us model the behavior we want to see in them?

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.  She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island.  She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data.  For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: Comforting a Child is a Basic Life Skill appeared first on Education News.