Teacher and student voices matter now more than ever

| By Cory Curl |

Dollars, Decisions, and Data – from my experience, these “Three D’s” have been the traditional foundation for much of education policy work for as long as I can figure. If you were trying to decide how to improve student achievement and educational attainment, you worked out how to increase or redirect funding; what policy decisions need to be added or taken out, or made tighter or looser; and what data should be collected, analyzed, and reported to drive change throughout the system.

Education policy experts were largely those who specialized in one or more of the Three D’s.

In the last few years, however, it’s become clear that the Three D’s, while necessary, are completely insufficient for us to make the dramatic gains in student achievement and educational attainment we need as a commonwealth and as a nation.

Hope Street Group Teacher Fellow Tricia Shelton, other teacher leaders, and Student Voice Team members share their classroom insights to inform their postsecondary transition study

Around 2007, the education policy world had a collective “aha!” moment that the key to unlocking educational improvement rested in promoting great teaching – teaching that leads to strong student learning. Reports from The Hamilton Project, TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project), and many others underscored that the quality of teaching varied, and the education system itself did little to value great teaching over not-yet-great teaching.

Education policy experts reacted to this discovery by relying on the Three D’s, and set about redirecting dollars, making policy decisions, and developing new measures to evaluate and value great teaching.

But then, in 2013 or so, it became abundantly clear that this was but a first step.

• John Hattie’s research indicated that one of the most powerful practices for student learning is for teachers to give specific, actionable feedback to students.
• The Gates Foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project found that students have accurate insights into teacher practices that lead to learning.
• A National Academies of Science report highlighted that most important factor for learning in the early childhood years are the interactions between – you guessed it – teacher and student.

Now we know – we will never get the change we seek until strengthening the learning process between teachers and students is the foundation of our work.

If you’re trying to work on how to improve student achievement and educational attainment, you are missing the boat if you don’t have the most important experts – teachers and students – around the table as equal partners.

For the Prichard Committee to do justice to our efforts to inform the public and policymakers, study the issues, and engage with business and community leaders, families and other citizens, we are ever more committed to lifting up the expertise of students and their teachers.

We collaborate with Hope Street Group Kentucky State Teacher Fellows and other teacher leaders across the state to share teachers’ stories of implementing higher standards, incorporate their insights into our in-depth studies of issues such as the achievement gap, and partner with them in engaging with families and communities. We have launched our Student Voice Team to conduct outreach to collect and share diverse students’ stories, facilitate study groups on a range of issues from school climate to the achievement gap, and lend its expertise and research to educators and other thought leaders as it engages in conversations across the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Student Voice Team leader Andrew Brennan learns from the young Kentucky students

Looking ahead, expect to see us continue to make teacher and student voices an essential part of our work to help build awareness and deepen understanding of what is happening – or not yet happening – in classrooms so that parents, local school board members, and other citizens throughout the state can ask good questions and raise demand for great teaching that leads to strong learning.

Celebrating Vicki Phillips - Visionary and Kentucky Native

| by Brigitte Blom Ramsey, Executive Director |

Recently, I had the great pleasure of visiting with Vicki Phillips while she and her colleagues at the Gates Foundation were visiting Pikeville, Kentucky.  We gathered around a table during a reception at the Blue Raven and Vicki began recounting her path to becoming a leader in education. 

From a humble beginning in a small Kentucky town, Vicki didn’t even envision herself in college.  She found herself there, nonetheless, because of the encouragement and active support of a high school peer who could see Vicki’s potential. She went on to complete a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree.  She taught in Kentucky schools and ended up working alongside leaders in the Kentucky Department of Education to implement the Kentucky Education Reform Act.  Very early on, Vicki was known for her leadership and her ability to connect best practices in schools to policies at the state level. Before long, Vicki was on the national stage - leading school districts, state departments of education and national conversations about education.  Her focus has always been on changing outcomes for students and knowing that this happens in a rich classroom environment and in the relationship between teacher and student. 

Like so many who have a lasting and positive impact on our world, it became clear to me that Vicki’s passion for her work is deeply rooted in a desire to make things better for those who come behind. Her life’s work is in service to the students and teachers in our classrooms and the system that serves them. 

Right before visiting with Vicki around that table in Pikeville, she announced that she would be leaving the Gates Foundation.  She remarked that she had been with Gates for eight years - the longest she’d been anywhere and that it was time to open the space for the next person and to move on to her next thing.  This post is a tribute to Vicki’s amazing work, work that has been supporting Kentucky’s reform efforts since the 1990’s.  Below you will find comments from teachers who have been impacted by Vicki’s vision and passion. 

We wish Vicki all the very best and look forward to hearing about the next chapter in her life.  Until then, send your own best wishes to Vicki and see what others are saying at #whyilovevicki.    

Photo: (From left to right) Me, Brian Bishop, Vicki Phillips, Cory Curl and Brad Clark

Vicki Phillips has changed my life professionally and personally by allowing me to serve as part of the Teaching Advisory Council, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Not only did this opportunity open my eyes to a national perspective of teacher leadership, but my doors are now open to best practice outside of Kentucky.  I have colleagues with whom I collaborate daily in all corners of the United States.  Vicki was our mentor and believed that our voice mattered.  She embraced the quote, “Nobody knows teaching like teachers” and I have the deepest respect for the culture change for which she helped create in Kentucky and nationally.  Thank you, Vicki Phillips, for being a true inspiration and elevating the profession for all teachers and students.

~ Kip Hottman, Spanish teacher, Louisville, KY

“Dr. Vicki P” has been one of the driving forces in my teacher leadership journey.  I will never forget being in her presence for the first time at my initial Teacher Advisory Council experience last June in Seattle.  Her passion came through every word; all in attendance were captivated. In the months since, I’ve had the opportunity to hear her speak in several settings.  Her message continues to be that teachers know what the profession needs, and the time is now to make our voices heard.  The work that teacher leaders do across the Commonwealth is linked by her leadership and vision for improving both student and teacher learning.  

~ MeMe Ratliff, Physical Education teacher, Louisville, KY

Vicki Phillips has been a change maker in education and a guiding light for Kentucky teachers. As a teacher who is spreading her teacher leadership wings Vicki provides an amazing example of what a lil’ ole Kentucky teacher can become and what they are capable of doing for teachers and students around the US. Vicki is an inspiration and I am honored to have had the pleasure of meeting her as well as sharing our Kentucky roots. She will be missed at the Foundation, however nothing but great things lie ahead for the amazing Vicki Phillips.

~ Samantha Sams, Math & Science teacher, Versailles, KY

Dr. Phillips has always been a thoughtful supporter of the education reform work in Kentucky.  Her attention to detail and willingness to ask the difficult questions of teachers on how to improve student and teacher learning experiences created ripe conditions for classroom practitioners to lead the redesign of education systems.  Kentucky will miss her support but what Dr. Phillips and her team kick-started in Kentucky is a sustainable distributive leadership movement that has the potential to deeply impact the public school students of Kentucky.

~ Brad Clark, Hope Street Teaching Fellows, Kentucky

Dr. Vicki Phillips has irrevocably changed my life.  She mentored me while I served on the Teacher Advisory Council for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but has paved the way for Kentucky teachers--and those of the nation--to do what they know best.  Her mentorship has fostered my relationship with teachers across the nation, and her parting words to “raise my voice” collectively with my teaching peers has never been more timely.  I know Vicki will continue to mentor, raise her voice, and challenge all teachers to do what they know best--and I can’t wait to see what the next chapter holds for her.

~ Missy Callaway, English Language Arts teacher, Louisville, KY

Learning at Higher Levels: Active Learning Raises College Results, Closes Gaps

Here's a great New York Times report on how "Active Role in Class Helps Black and First-Generation College Students":

The trend away from classes based on reading and listening passively to lectures, and toward a more active role for students, has its most profound effects on black students and those whose parents did not go to college, a new study of college students shows.

 Active learning raised average test scores more than 3 percentage points, and significantly reduced the number of students who failed the exams, the study found. The score increase was doubled, to more than 6 percentage points, for black students and first-generation college students.

For black students, that gain cut in half their score gap with white students. It eliminated the gap between first-generation students and other students.

As summarized by Richard Pérez-Peña, the study looked at students in introductory Biology classes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and compared classes taught using traditional lectures and others using methods that "demanded more participation by students," including on-line exercises to complete before and after class.

This sort of finding will be no surprise to fans of the Gates Foundation's math and literacy investments or the K-12 research behind those strategies.  Deep learning comes from wrestling knowledge hands on, in a productive struggle that lets each learner assemble a clear picture of how the content fits together and the skills can be combined to solve problems.  Lectures, even brilliant ones, rarely engage students at the level that creates strong understanding.

--Posted By Susan Perkins Weston

In Response to Bill Gates on Evaluating Teachers

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/engagement_and_reform/2013/04/in_response_to_bill_gates_on_evaluating_teachers.html

Teacher growth through teacher feedback

After seeing how valuable peer evaluation is, I think it should be part of every public school personnel system. Dedicating 2 percent of teachers to do this work is a large investment. It can mean raising the average class size by 2 percent or spending 2 percent more money. With budgets as tight as they are, most states will not add extra money for evaluation so we will have to make the case that it is worth the small increase in class size (of fewer than one student per class on average).

That's Bill Gates' bold proposal for a big change in how teachers invest their time, moving to a plan where a small but important fraction of the total teacher corps works full time on observing and strengthening the others.  The idea is that the feedback would strengthen their colleagues greatly in ways that, in turn, strengthen what students know and can do across the whole curriculum.   It's central to the education section of his 2012 Annual Letter.

The letter also explains key experience from the Hillsborough County (Tampa, Florida) school system, which is trying that model of feedback under a major grant from the Gates Foundation:

A key element of the agreement between the teachers’ union and the superintendent was to assign 2 percent of the teachers to become peer evaluators. These teachers were trained to observe classroom teaching and provide feedback on 22 different components. The principals have also been trained in this approach. Every teacher gets in-depth feedback from both the principal and the peer evaluator. 

Tampa has been doing this for three years now, and it is already making a big difference. Teachers told us they value having feedback from two different sources—the principal who knows the school the best and the peer who knows the challenges of their specific job. The first round of evaluation revealed that many teachers need help engaging the students to prompt critical thinking and problem solving. The district started to organize its professional development around these findings, and the teachers have seized that opportunity to become more effective in the classroom. 

When Melinda and I met with students, they told us that they had seen a big change during their time at the school. The success here required great work by Superintendent Mary Ellen Elia, Classroom Teachers Association President Jean Clements, and all of the teachers. I was particularly impressed with the peer evaluators. They all said they understood great teaching far better, having done the peer evaluation job. Some of the peer evaluators will go back to teaching and others will go into schools of education to help make sure new teachers have better preparation.

Crucially, this idea of peer evaluation is about strengthening teachers in their craft, and there isn't any good way to use test data in place of this sort of substantive feedback:

Without this investment I don’t think an evaluation system will get enough credibility with the teachers or provide enough specific feedback to help teachers improve. Looking at test scores is also valuable for most subjects, but test score data mostly just identifies who is succeeding—it doesn’t show a teacher what needs to change.

To me, this is a really big idea.  It's too big for any district or state to do it casually.  It's the kind of thing that any system should review and discuss with great care before jumping in --but it also has enough potential benefits to be worth exactly that sort of study.

Literacy, math, teaching effectiveness work expands (with Gates support)

PrichBlog readers will be delighted by this news: Kentucky is beginning a major expansion of implementation of the literacy and mathematics strategies being supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to be integrated with work linked to the Measures of Effective Teaching project.  Here's the Kentucky Department of Education's press release:

TWELVE KENTUCKY SCHOOL DISTRICTS RECEIVE MAJOR GRANT  

MATH, LITERACY, EVALUATION RESOURCES WILL HELP TEACHERS, STUDENTS

  (FRANKFORT, Ky.) – An $8.8 million, three-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will support teachers and students in 12 school districts, the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) announced today. 

This investment, known as an “Integration Grant,” will support the integration of several critical streams of work – measures of effective teaching, implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the development of innovative tools and resources to help teachers deliver instruction.  

Kentucky is one of three states, including Colorado and Louisiana, to receive an Integration Grant from the foundation. 

“The 12 school districts involved in this work will be models for the rest of the state,” said Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday. “Their efforts will be crucial to Kentucky’s implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Students will receive meaningful and rigorous instruction, while their teachers will be supported through high-quality resources and measurement of their effectiveness.” 

Kentucky’s grant will be used to: 

• build capacity among instructional leaders, principals and teachers to deploy high-quality literacy tasks and mathematics formative assessment lessons 
• implement a professional growth and evaluation system to measure effective instructional practices and supports for continuous improvement 
• implement a delivery plan for tracking and monitoring usage of the professional growth and evaluation system

This project will be implemented with 12 partner districts: Daviess County, Fleming County, Gallatin County, Jackson Independent, Jessamine County, Lee County, Owen County, Washington County, Jefferson County, Kenton County, Magoffin County and Simpson County. 

The partnership between KDE and these school districts will allow district and school leaders to collaborate on content and provide instructional support to teachers. It also will be used to validate and implement Kentucky’s teacher and principal effectiveness system. By the end of this grant period, Kentucky will have better student outcomes as a result of more effective teachers, shown by a valid and reliable evaluation model that includes multiple measures of effectiveness.  

“Kentucky is showing the nation how to accomplish thoughtful, deep integration,” said Vicki Phillips, director of College Ready Programs, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “The Kentucky Integration Grant supports effective teaching in every way: professional development, development of new tools aligned to the Common Core State Standards and real-time feedback that helps teachers improve their practice.” 

The Kentucky work will focus on improving teaching and learning through literacy and math strategies in the partner districts and schools. KDE will use regional networks of English/language arts and mathematics content specialists and Effectiveness Coaches to work with teachers in partner districts to implement the instructional resources and tools in classrooms, in addition to assisting integration districts on the teacher and principal effectiveness component. 

For this school year, 12 school districts have been chosen to serve as integrated strategy districts – demonstration sites that will focus on implementing the math formative assessments and literacy tasks in selected schools. In the second year of the grant, more schools in the 12 integration districts will be added to increase teacher participation in mathematics across grade levels and engage additional content teachers in literacy implementation. In the final year of the grant, teachers from the first and second years of implementation will be videotaped so these resources may be used in professional development and training opportunities for other teachers. Model lesson plans, tasks and assignments related to literacy and mathematics will be distributed. Integrated Strategy Districts were selected in part based on the buy-in of superintendents, district leadership, teachers’ unions and school councils. Another important consideration was commitment to teacher release time and pay stipends for teacher-leader participation. In addition, other factors such as school improvement status, geographic representation and the concentration of students eligible for free/reduced-price meals were considered. 

Kentucky’s Integration Grant builds on earlier investments by the Gates Foundation, including an effort to through the Kentucky Department of Education to support the state’s implementation of the Common Core State Standards through regional networks

Early results from the Gates investments: Learners engage!

The literacy and math strategies supported by the Gates Foundation do an amazing job of getting learners to engage.  Students bring the level of energy they often bring to sports, music, video games, and other activities they value--but don't always bring to their classwork.

I've been hearing stories for a while from Kentucky educators.  There's one about students stopping the principal to say they loved the new way their math classes had been working--and were worried that the teacher was going back to the old pattern.  There's another about students stopping their science teacher a month after completing a module on health hazards from cell phones, because they'd found new information on the topic.

In my recent travels, I've picked up a few more.

In Pennsylvania, an art teacher has been using the literacy approach, but reports ruefully that on the last day of school, her students begged for permission to leave her room and go back to science class: they hadn't finished responding to that teacher's literacy teaching task and didn't want to end the year without having another chance to improve their work.

In Colorado, Ann Shannon was invited to explain the mathematics strategy to potential partner districts there, and she decided to show rather than tell.  She put a formative assessment lesson out on every table in a full ballroom, and in just a couple of minutes had the entire place abuzz with adults trying to figure out how many descendants one mama cat could have in 1 months.  (Completely addictive stuff: I spent my first 90 minutes on the plane home working out my own answer.)

My working theory is that the work learners are doing simply engages at the level adolescent and learners have wanted all along.  They don't want to be spoon-fed: they want to wrestle challenges worth wrestling, and when they get the chance to do that, they turn out to have the strength to win major learning victories over and over again.

Leaders get up-close view of new math, literacy approaches

Here's the full Prichard press release for last week's showcase...

LOUISVILLE - Teachers from school districts across Kentucky shared what they see as revolutionary new teaching strategies and lessons that will strengthen what students know in math and language arts. What started as a pilot program in nine school districts will soon spread across the state - and to other states as well.


An audience of 225 state education department officials, policymakers, college professors, and leaders of statewide education organizations got a first-hand look at the new wave of classroom teaching and learning strategies on Tuesday (June 14) at a showcase in Louisville. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and organized by the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, the event emphasized an approach to math that puts students in the center of problem solving and language arts assignments designed to require deeper thinking and stronger writing in English, science and social studies classes.


Participants worked multi-step math puzzles, looked through real student writing samples, and asked questions to dozens of teachers who have been using new approaches.


"We want to show state leaders what this looks like in the most vivid way possible," said Susan Perkins Weston, a Prichard Committee consultant who is overseeing the work of the Mathematics Design Collaborative group and the Literacy Design Collaborative in Kentucky. Nine school districts across the state are involved in the project, with three of the districts involved in both projects.


Teachers explained how the math program focuses on building students' understanding of math concepts by working through problems, rather than memorizing formulas and plugging them into a page of workbook problems.


"This empowers students to own the work - they think and do the work themselves, building their understanding as they go forward," explained Jenny Barrett, a middle and high school math consultant for the Kenton County schools. She said the district has seen an increase in students' ability to "reason and think mathematically" through the new approach to math.


"This has changed the climate of my classroom," said Stacy Justus, a math teacher at Doss High School in Louisville. The math approach begins with a pre-test to show what students know about a given concept then shows them how to work through the topic. With challenging problems and teacher feedback, students emerge with a stronger handle on what they're expected to learn.


"My students can identify what they know and don't know, and they will tell you that this is constantly pushing them forward," said Justus. "Plus, I know my students a lot better - who's excelling and who needs help. This gives a teacher resources and strategies and a way for students to learn to become a team and accomplish a goal."
Meanwhile, districts in the Literacy Design Collaborative have worked to create "template tasks," or writing prompts that will propel students into deeper thinking and explanation of concepts in science and social studies while building their language arts skills.


Brian Toy, a science teacher at Lafayette High School in Lexington, said the writing tasks developed this year push students to read analytically, synthesize ideas from multiple articles and connect that kind of learning to what they've picked up from classroom lectures or labs. He said the more challenging tasks are the kind of work that will better prepare high school students for college and careers.


"I'm excited to use this because I can see how to use writing to improve content knowledge," added Robin Reid, a social studies teacher at Lafayette High.


Teachers from Daviess County explained how they are moving the approach into middle schools, a growing approach for districts that are part of the pilot effort. In addition to Fayette and Daviess counties, the literacy collaborative has taken root over the past year in Boyle, Jessamine, Kenton and Rockcastle counties as well. The math project, which has been underway for two years, is in Boone, Daviess, Jefferson, Jessamine, Kenton and Warren counties.


Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday, who sat in on showcase sessions, said the project is encouraging. "I got excited because it's about the learning, not the test scores," he said. "The question is how to get this to every teacher in Kentucky."


A recent grant from the Gates Foundation to the state education department will lead to the literacy and math approaches being spread statewide through regional leadership networks created to familiarize teachers and school leaders with the new Common Core Standards. In the coming school year, tools and approaches from the Gates-funded math and literacy programs will become a focus of the state's networks.


Weston said that the showcase provided a way to build a strong understanding about the program as it moves beyond pilot districts.


"This work is going to make a difference across the state and nation," said Stu Silberman, the Fayette County superintendent who is retiring and will become executive director of the Prichard Committee this fall. Indeed, educators from Colorado, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana attended the Louisville session to gather ideas as they start similar work. Representatives of national organizations and foundations working with Gates on spreading the approach were also among the 40 out-of-state attendees.


Commissioner Holliday added, "This is focused on college- and career-readiness and the answer to the question every teacher has about getting there: 'How?' "

Showcasing the literacy and mathematics work

Today, I'm at a showcase of "Teaching and Learning at its Best," where Kentucky teachers will share their early work with two key strategies for supporting teachers in implementing the Common Core State Standards: Mathematics Assessment for Learning and Literacy Design Collaborative.

Both initiatives are supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and over the last 18 months, the Prichard Committee has convened educators from a small set of Kentucky districts as they tried out these two approaches.

I wish we had room for every PrichBlog reader to hear the presentations teachers have developed.

Short of that, I'll share all the documents and some of the highlights of the event here, and keep you posted as these efforts expand to include many more Kentucky classrooms in the coming months.

Starting out, here are links to:

• My presentation summarizing the two initiatives (PowerPoint slides converted to PDF)
• The showcase agenda
• The biographies of our general session presenters
• The teachers who will be sharing their experience in our breakout sessions

Prichard Committee focuses on new academic standards, teacher evaluation

The Prichard Committee held its spring meeting June 5 and 6, with great discussions described in the press release below:

CARROLLTON, Ky. - Kentucky's tough new academic standards defining what students should know before they graduate from high school offer exciting opportunities for progress, a group of teachers told the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence during its recent spring meeting.

Beginning this fall, teachers and students across Kentucky will be working with a new set of standards in math and English language arts. A few school districts got an early start with the standards under a grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Educators from one of those districts spoke with Prichard Committee members about their experiences so far with the new language arts standards.

"The beauty of these new standards is they take these big ideas (of what students should know upon graduation) and back them all the way to kindergarten," said Marty Dixon, middle and high school English language arts specialist for Fayette County Public Schools.

Robin Reid, social studies department chair at Lafayette High School in Lexington, said she was excited about the new standards because they encourage the use of writing to help students learn more about all subjects - a view echoed by Brian Toy, the science department chair at Lafayette. "This type of writing increases content knowledge and prepares students for college and careers," he added.

"Students can do this. They really can," noted Lafayette literacy specialist Sherri McPherson who has worked with diverse classrooms and had initial concerns about whether struggling students could master the work.

The committee also heard from Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday, who encouraged the group to continue its vocal advocacy for the tougher standards and the new assessment and accountability system that is being developed.

The state's limited resources will result in more cuts in education funding, Holliday said, predicting that the department will be pressured to spend less on the standards and assessment work to make money available for other purposes. He reinforced the importance of the standards and the need to improve the college/career preparation of all students with some statistical projections. According to the commissioner:

• Of the 50,000 students who finished 8th grade this spring, between 10,000 and 15,000 will drop out before graduating from high school.
• Of the remaining 35,000, only 10,000 will graduate ready for college-level courses or the demands of the modern workplace. The rest will need additional training or instruction.

The Prichard Committee has launched a public engagement initiative, ReadyKentucky, to help teachers, parents and other involved Kentuckians understand and prepare for the new standards. The committee is working in partnership with several other organizations and the support of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to disseminate information statewide. More details are available at ReadyKentucky.org.

The role of teachers in student success is critical, and improving the way teachers are evaluated was the focus of another presentation to the committee by Sarah Buhayer, program manager of the MET Project: Measures of Effective Teaching for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"In this country, teacher evaluation is broken," Buhayer said in describing the research project that involves more than 3,000 teachers in seven school districts across the country. "Teachers want to be evaluated in ways that are fair and meaningful."

The study includes student surveys, correlations between student responses and classroom performance, videos of teachers' classroom presentations that they can use for self-evaluation, coaching and materials. The goal is to boost the effectiveness of all teachers through effective evaluation and targeted professional development.

The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence is a statewide citizens' advocacy group, founded in 1983, working to improve education for all Kentuckians.

Common Core: moving in Maine, settled in Kentucky

Maine's governor has signed the documents to complete state adoption of the Common Core Standards, and EdWeek's Catherine Gewertz updates her wonderful map to show 44 states and the District of Columbia on board, with Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, NevadaNebraska, Texas, and Virginia (plus Minnesota on math only) still charting an independent course.

Of course, many of these states are in the very earliest phases of thinking through implementation.  For example, in planning the next phase of professional development for the Gates literacy initiative, the outline for nationwide use starts with "Introduction to the Common Core."

What are Kentuckians to do when they come across the idea of "introducing" Common Core sometime next year?  Open bragging on our teachers would be impolite, but our schools are really are already investing deeply in understanding and implementing the new standards.  Considering how far we've come and how fast we're pushing ahead, I think we're each allowed a small, quiet, happy nod of pride.  Maybe two.

Literacy insights from Kentucky teachers

The Literacy Design Collaborative is a strategy for implementing the Common Core Standards, currently being implemented by small groups of teachers in Boyle, Daviess, Fayette, Jessamine, Kenton, and Rockcastle schools.  I learned a lot from those educators last week, including these insights:

• "Argumentation" tasks may engage students more quickly than the "informational and explanatory versions."  The early implementers started with the informational version, but found that on a second round, students found the idea of taking on issue debate appealing.  One wise administrator did point out, though, that students must get the information right on the way to making their arguments.

• To create strong science tasks, teachers need strong science texts that work for students with varying levels of reading proficiency--and those can be hard to find.  That said, we heard about impressive tasks requiring students to martial arguments around health risks from cell phones, climate change, and use of chemical fertilizers.

• Pulling evidence and quotations from the assigned reading texts is a challenge for participating students.  To me, it sounds like a good challenge –something students should be asked to do often on their way to becoming skilled before they finish high school.

• Struggling students are succeeding with these challenging tasks.  The LDC strategy calls for teachers to make intentional choices in the reading selections for students, including being willing to start with varied assignments for students with varied needs as a way to build toward success for all with demanding texts at or above the grade-levels specified by the Common Core State Standards.  (My very favorite parts of the day had teachers telling about students rising to levels of rigor they thought were out of reach.)

I continue to be very excited by this work, organized by the Prichard Committee under a grant from the Gates Foundation, and by the planning underway for statewide implementation under a Gates grant to the Kentucky Department of Education.

The P-12 challenge, Elmore's explanation, and the Gates strategies

As I read this interview with Richard Elmore, I find that the Gates Foundation literacy and mathematics strategies look like a perfect fit. With the Gates designs now slated for statewide scaling work in the next two years, that's worth explaining.  Building from Elmore's comments, I think we could sum up the last two decades as a story of theories, problematic results from trying the theory, and new theories.

Theory 1
If we assess schools and set consequences for results, schools will respond by raising performance dramatically.  Here, you can see the original KERA design from 1990.

Practical Result 1
It turns out that telling schools there will be consequences for bad scores does not enable them to produce better scores. To respond wisely to consequences, schools need to develop internal capacity to work together, analyze problems, and address them.  I've spent the last year arguing that "it happens in teams, or not at all," and I'm pretty sure Elmore is making a related argument.  Theory 1 is partly right, but incomplete.

Theory 2
If schools create strong internal teamwork--perhaps called professional learning communities-- they'll be able to respond effectively to consequences and raise performance dramatically.  If you look at KDE work like the Standards and Indicators for School Improvement (SISI, starting in 1999), you can see a major push toward that kind of collaboration.  If you look to Kentucky's high performance, high poverty schools, you also see major reason to support this theory.

Practical Result 2
Good teamwork results in some valuable improvement, but the growth seems to reach a plateau where improvement slows down.  We get some improvement, but not the dramatic change we were looking for.  Some of the educators I respect most have told me over the last few years that they're struggling to get the next big growth to happen.  Theory 2 is also partly right, but still incomplete.

Theory 3
School teams must focus on "the instructional core" of what happens between teachers, students, and content.  Accordingly, the right next step is to upgrade  the tasks students actually work on.  The idea that "task predicts performance" fits at this point and explains that students can't develop high-level skills if they are almost entirely limited to low-level learning activities.  The tasks must be rigorous, and they must also be organized and implemented in keeping with key formative assessment strategies, so that students enter the needed "virtuous cycle" of success after effort, confidence to make the next effort, and success again.

Implementing Theory 3

The Gates strategies are built on mathematics formative assessment lessons and the literacy tasks and modules.  Those approaches look to me like smart and substantial bids to implement that third theory.  That is, they help educators transform the instructional core, offer an escape from the common plateau in student learning, and and seem likely to start moving students to dramatically higher levels of performance. 

In short, the Gates approach looks to me like a powerful approach to the next steps Elmore recommends and the next steps Kentucky needs.

A note on sources: I've heard Literacy Design Collaborative leaders mention Elmore in discussions of their approach, and that's one reason I've been exploring his work. That said, the discussion above comes from my own comparison of the work underway in Kentucky districts to the Elmore interview and to the ideas published by Elmore and his colleagues in Instructional Rounds in Education.

Gates strategies to grow in Kentucky

Having shared earlier about the Gates Foundation strategies for implementing Common Core State Standards, I'm delighted by today's announcement of a new grant for statewide work around those approaches.  Here's part of the press release issued today:

(FRANKFORT, Ky.) – The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) has received a two-year, $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support implementation of the new Common Core Academic Standards (CCAS).

The goal of the grant is to improve classroom instruction and align content taught to the Common Core standards by developing instructional strategies and tools in mathematics and literacy. The project will build off the work already underway in Kentucky via the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) and the Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) and shared so that teachers throughout the state can use them to improve student learning.

“This work is directly connected to Kentucky’s successful implementation of the Common Core Academic Standards, the development of a model curriculum framework and the mandates of 2009’s Senate Bill 1,” said Felicia Cumings Smith, associate commissioner of KDE’s Office of Next Generation Learners. “These strategies will provide immense benefits for teachers and promote students’ critical thinking skills within and across the content areas.”

KDE will partner with the state’s school districts through its Leadership Network system during this project. The networks — comprised more than 2,500 Kentucky educators across 29 networks — are designed to build the capacity of each Kentucky school district as they implement Kentucky’s Common Core Academic Standards, develop assessment literacy among all educators and work toward ensuring that every classroom is a model of highly effective teaching and learning practices.

Network partners, such as the regional education cooperatives, institutions of higher education, the Council on Postsecondary Education and the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, also will be included in the expanded implementation of LDC and MDC. As part of an earlier, separate grant from the Gates Foundation, the Prichard Committee has been working with a group of pilot school districts on LDC and MDC implementation, and the work of those districts will be shared through the Leadership Networks.

This will provide wonderful next steps on the efforts already underway to use:

• The mathematics approaches in Boone, Daviess, Jefferson, Jessamine, Kenton, and Warren schools.
• The full task-and-module version of the literacy strategy in Kenton County schools
• The literacy tasks and elements of the literacy module design in Boyle, Daviess, Fayette, Jessamine and Rockcastle schools.

Powerful idea: "Task predicts performance"

Sometimes, you hear a phrase three times in two weeks, and realize you'd better find out where it's coming from.  Can you when you first heard Steven Covey's "Seek first to understand" or Jim Collins' "Face the brutal facts"?  For me, "task predicts performance" is quickly becoming an educational equivalent.

The main point is that simple, low-level assignments won't equip students for complex, demanding, high-level work (on tests or later in life).  Blogging about that idea a few weeks ago, I wrote:

If you ask me to peel vegetables, that's only going to give me a small step toward becoming a competent cook. If you assign me to walk around the block daily, that will never get me into shape for a marathon. And if you give me worksheets and drills and lists of facts to remember, that isn't going to equip me to analyze demanding texts, build strong arguments from credible evidence, or tackle serious math and science challenges effectively.

I've seen the idea attributed to Richard Elmore, but in an interview from last year, Elmore clearly attributed the idea to others, saying:

The seminal piece is an article written in the 80s by Walter Doyle called ‘Academic Work’ in which he makes the proposition that task predicts performance. Since that time, Fred Newmann and his group have done empirical work on intellectually challenging tasks, and operations like the Chicago Consortium for School Research have actually done these analyses in real schools – and it turns out to be a pretty robust relationship.

What Elmore and his colleagues are doing is making the idea central to important research and engagement with practicing educators.

Finally, the idea that "task predicts performance" practically radiates out of the Gates Foundation strategies for supporting the Common Core Standards in literacy and mathematics.  In the math effort, the center is student engagement with tasks that demand active struggle to find the mathematical connections and apply mathematical practices.  In the literacy approach, the center is student tasks combining demanding reading with significant writing on important academic content.  In both approaches, the students themselves are called on to do the heavy lifting and develop the important intellectual muscles they'll need to meet the expectations of higher education, good jobs, and effective civic participation.

Quality Counts puts Kentucky 19th in student achievement

EdWeek released its 2011 Quality Counts report today, offering highly respected grades of states on multiple aspects of education conditions, policies, and results.

On achievement results, EdWeek is a tough grader, giving the country as a whole a D+.

On that scale, Kentucky's C- came with a score that put us 19th among the 50 states.

That score came from scores in ten areas and improvement over time in each of those areas.

So, here are Kentucky's current rankings among the states on those indicators, which come from the 2009 NAEP test unless another source is indicated:

• 11th in percent proficient in grade 4 reading
• 12th in gap in grade 4 reading scale scores between students who qualify for the federal lunch program and those who do not
• 14th in gap in grade 8 mathematics scale scores between students in those same groups
• 19th in percent proficient in grade 8 reading
• 26th in in 2009 Advanced Placement scores of 3 or higher per 100 students in grades 11 and 12
• 28th in 2007 high school graduation rate (calculated using the EPE Research Center’s Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI) formula)
• 35th in percent proficient in grade 4 mathematics
• 38th in percent proficient in grade 8 mathematics
• 40th in in percent advanced in 2009 grade 8 mathematics

And then, here are the changes, reflecting 2003 to 2009 NAEP scores unless otherwise noted:

• 3rd in increase in percent proficient in grade 4 mathematics
• 4th in increase in percent proficient in grade 4 reading
• 7th in increase in high school graduation rate (2000 to 2007)
• 21st in increase in AP scores of 3 or higher per 100 students in grades 11 and 12 (2000 to 2009)
• 22nd in decrease in scale score gap in grade 8 mathematics
• 26th in increase in percent proficient in grade 8 reading
• 28th in increase percent proficient in grade 8 reading
• 36th in decrease in scale score gap in grade 4 reading
• 44th in increased percent advanced in grade 8 mathematics

Overall, these numbers show a state in the Top 20 in more categories than our history would lead us to expect (highlighted in green), and closing on that level in some others.  

Shown this way, they show the weakest results (highlighted in red) to be clustered heavily in mathematics, and especially grade 8 mathematics.

I'll add one new thought on seeing the numbers this time: the mathematics assessment of learning strategies that the Gates Foundation is developing for middle and high school use could be a great fit for a state with those priorities.

Supporting instruction: literacy modules, courses, and construction in progress

In describing the literacy tools being developed by the Gates Foundation, I've focused so far on the template tasks and on the skill and mini-task elements of the instructional design.  Those pieces are also meant to provide building blocks for some bigger efforts.

MODULES AROUND TASKS
Participating teachers are asked to develop their work into modules that can be shared more widely. A full module identifies:

• The content standards the students will be learning, both the science, history, or other topic and the literacy standards from the Common Core
• A teaching task created by filling in one of the LDC template tasks.
• The skills students need.
• The mini-tasks to build those skills.
• The needed results, showing samples of the student work that meets the expectations for the overall teaching task.

With standards shared across the country, the idea is for educators also to share their module designs from school to school and from state to state.

COURSE DESIGNS AROUND MODULES
There's also thinking underway about full courses that include a sequence of modules, so that central elements of a year's classroom content would be taught through a series of these intensive teaching tasks.


CONSTRUCTION WORK IN PROGRESS
Having shared this much from the Supporting Instruction monograph and our Kentucky experience, it's worth slowing down to clarify where this design stands.

The templates are ready for early use, and small groups of teachers are just now launching that use, filling in their own classroom content and trying out the instructional strategies, the rubrics, and the shared scoring options.  The very first modules have been taught and are being refined based on initial experiences with the methods.  That's what roughly fifty Kentucky participants are exploring right now under the Prichard Committee's grant for this work, along with teams from a handful of districts elsewhere and some related organizations that develop instructional strategies.

Building out a library of modules and an array of course designs is part of the plan, but implementing that plan has only just begun.

COMPLEX TEXT AS THE MAIN GOAL
An LDC module, as described above and in the earlier posts, spread over about two weeks, can be a powerful investment in building science literacy in science classrooms, history literacy in history classrooms, and overall capacity to handle complex texts in middle and high school classrooms across the country.  If tackling those complex texts is the core added skill American students need for future success, this design is a serious bid to support the teaching of that exact type of skill.

Supporting instruction: the teaching around the literacy tasks

The Literacy Design Collaborative strategy discusses in yesterday's post starts with the template tasks and then backs them up with an instructional design.

That instructional design provides "mini-tasks" for each of the key skills students will need.   For a particular task, the reading skills might be:

• selecting relevant and credible texts
• analyzing essential vocabulary
• taking notes
• sorting through those notes to identify central points.  

The Supporting Instruction monograph comes with examples of mini-task prompts, including four that build those four skills, followed by the kind of product students will produce:

Because the teacher applies a simple scoring rubric to each prompt, the mini-tasks have a powerful feedback loop. The student learns quickly what to improve, and the teacher also sees clearly which areas need further support.

Some key point to note about this approach:

• The template tasks are teaching tasks: they are meant to be used in the process of classroom learning, rather than as an outside measure separate from the instructional process.  
• In keeping with that focus, the LDC assumption is that teachers can and should make professional judgment about which skills their own students need and about which mini-tasks will build those skills most effectively.  The design offers a prototype list of skills and mini-tasks, but innovation at the classroom level is built into the expectations.
• The design illustrates formative assessment practices in active use: both students and teachers are actively figuring out how to take the right next steps to deeper understanding and higher performance.

Further illustrations of the template tasks and the mini-task design can be downloaded here.  Earlier PrichBlog posts on the Gates Foundation's investments in supporting instruction around the Common Core Standards are here, here, here, and here, with the press releases on participation by Kentucky teachers and the Prichard Committee here and here.

Supporting instruction: the literacy tasks

To succeed in higher education and demanding future jobs, all students must be ready to work with complex texts in many subjects. The Common Core Standards emphasize this point repeatedly, including separate standards for science literacy and history/social studies literacy and using exemplar texts from multiple disciplines. To support those Standards, the Gates Foundation is investing in a Literacy Design Collaborative (or LDC) strategy designed for use across grades six to twelve and in science, history, English, and other studies. That approach is outlined in the Supporting Instruction monograph, alongside the mathematics strategy I discussed in earlier posts here and here.

The LDC strategy starts from template tasks that teachers can fill in with curriculum content from varied subjects. For example, here’s a template task that leads to an argumentative writing piece:

Task 4 Template: [Insert essential question] After reading _______ (literature or informational texts), write an _______ (essay or substitute) that compares _______ (content) and argues _______ (content). Be sure to support your position with evidence from the texts.

In turn, that task can be filled in with content from varied disciplines.  Consider these three different versions:

English Language Arts What makes something funny? After reading selections from Mark Twain and Dave Barry, write a review that compares their humor and explains which type of humor works for a contemporary audience and why. Be sure to support your position with evidence from the texts.

Social Studies Do presidential policies really make a difference in the lives of Americans? After reading primary and secondary sources, write an essay that compares John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier social policies with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society social policies and argues which had a more significant impact on Americans. Be sure to support your position with evidence from the texts.

Science Which is the better energy source? After reading scientific sources, write an essay that compares the chemistry involved in producing nuclear energy and fossil fuels and argues which is the better energy source for urban communities. Be sure to support your position with evidence from the texts.

All three tasks lead to student work that can be scored against a common rubric, allowing teachers to work together on shared scoring and ongoing discussion of how to help students move forward.  A central point of the LDC strategy is to make literacy a central issue both in classrooms and in teacher collaboration across the middle and high school years. ( Examples of other argumentative and informational template tasks are available here)

Those template tasks are the cornerstone of the LDC strategy. Around that cornerstone, there’s a further teaching strategy, and building on that foundation, there’s a vision of restructured overall curriculum—but those are topics best addressed in my next few posts.

Supporting math instruction (a bit more)

Yesterday's post focused on mathematics formative assessment lessons being developed to support the Common Core State Standards.  To put those FALs in context, here's a bit more.

First, where do FALs fit into an overall curriculum? 
The Supporting Instruction monograph emphasizes the flexible options:

The FALs are intended to be used by teachers every couple of weeks or so as part of their courses. Individual teachers or districts can decide exactly how each FAL will be used. Some teachers, for example, could use one FAL to introduce a math topic, and other teachers might use it two-thirds of the way through their teaching of the topic to raise questions and check for further understanding, or some weeks later to consolidate learning.

Second, where (literally) are the FALs being used in Kentucky? 
Under the Gates Foundation's math grant to the Prichard Committee, Boone, Daviess, Jefferson, Jessamine, Kenton, and Warren County ninth and tenth grade teachers (and some eighth grade teachers as well) spent last spring in intensive professional development around formative assessment strategies for overall classroom instruction. This fall, they have begun using the FALs directly, with plans to explore how the overall curriculum can use those lessons systematically to deliver on the Commmon Core.  Their accounts of classroom success add to my excitement about these new tools for deeper mathematics learning.