Students Going Further: Tasks and Task Ceilings

| Post by Susan Perkins Weston |

Kentucky students can do powerful work given opportunity, but opportunity matters. They can’t learn to apply geometry to major design projects by cranking out answers to thousands of small equations. They can’t learn to evaluate and synthesize research by filling in worksheet blanks. They can’t learn to design experiments, implement them, and analyze the resulting data by reading about experiments in books. They can’t learn to communicate and collaborate by keeping their eyes on their own separate papers.

In many education circles, this problem is tied to a great Richard Elmore claim: task predicts performance. Around that phrase, Elmore rallies many different classroom observations and the work of many research projects to show that powerful tasks matter and yet remain rare.

Huge numbers of school assignments continue to operate at the level of small, disconnected activities, giving students little chance to grow the big skills.

I know powerful exceptions, including the Literacy Design Collaborative and Mathematics Design Collaborative work that Kentucky teachers have helped lead. Project-Based Learning and Deeper Learning efforts also show promise by offering students much larger and more authentic challenges to take on.

I also know that the teachers who do the work report steady struggle to convince colleagues that the big efforts are the right next steps.

There are reasons that schools ask too little from students. There’s habit and tradition, since so many teachers were mostly taught by worksheet and lecture themselves. There’s the ready availability of handouts that implement the small-scale efforts. There’s the shortage of time to develop the better tasks and think through teaching plans that empower students to work with growing insight and independence. Especially, there’s the shortage of collaborative time to work though those approaches with colleagues, share student results, and think together about what else to improve for future learning.

There’s also testing. The assessments Kentucky uses for accountability are heavy on quick-answer questions. If we base accountability on 30 questions in an hour, it stands to reason that teachers will hesitate before spending three hours on a single, much richer challenge. Even a decade ago, students had to respond to open-response items that required them to build their own explanations, but that’s nearly gone in our current assessments, and especially lacking at the high school level.

Kentucky students can go much further: my case for that is based in part what students do when given big opportunities in the form of substantial tasks. Today’s students do not often fly that high: my explanation for that starts with the fact that they do not often get the opportunity. Together, those two points show how potential can both exist and go unfulfilled.

Opening the big doors to big student tasks will require deep changes in school culture and practice,  changes that I think will only be fully secured when a large majority of teachers come into the profession having spent many years learning from that kind of assignment. It will be hard work, but it will be work very much worthy of our energy.

Source note: Elmore makes his task claim in many places, including his work with collaborators in Instructional Rounds, and also regularly attributes the claim to Walter Doyle and his 1983 piece on “Academic Work.” 1998 work by Fred Newmann and his colleagues on “The Quality of Intellectual Work in Chicago Schools” and 2009 work by Kim Koh and Allan Luke on “Authentic and conventional assessment in Singapore schools” add depth to the analysis, and I’m specifically grateful to Barb Smith at the Literacy Design Collaborative for putting those works in my path.

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?' "

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.

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.

The Power of Students Working Hard and Showing What They Can Do

| by Cory Curl, Associate Executive Director |

“I didn’t expect…to be so absolutely captivated by my students’ performance.”

-        Katrina Boone

If there is one conclusion I’ve reached during my own journey to understand what works well in education, it’s that there is no silver bullet, no panacea, no one perfect shot that is going to solve all of our dilemmas and produce the results that we have so long sought for our kids.

(It would be very nice if that were the case, though!)

But I do hold dear a few Powerful Concepts. They help me make sense of the thousands of ideas – some good, some not so good – that are floating around out there.

One Powerful Concept that has been tugging on me lately is this simple proposition: learning emerges through quality work.

In a recent blog post, Katrina Boone, a teacher at Shelby County High School and a teacher-in-residence at the Kentucky Department of Education, reflected on the power of a Socratic seminar to help students master several state English language arts standards in reading, speaking and listening. Before the lesson, she didn’t know if the students could pull it off. But they did. They wrote “ridiculously good” discussion questions. She found herself “absolutely captivated.”

Kids can do more than we ever imagined. Engage them in good work. Give them good feedback. See what they learn.

I am not a courageous teacher like Katrina Boone. I am a trying-to-do-the-best-I-can parent of a four-year old. But I recognize that feeling – the feeling of being absolutely captivated.

My child does good work in his school. I know that because he talks to me about it, because some days he doesn’t want to leave school because he is still absorbed in his work, and because he brings his work creations—the products of his work process, the evidence of what he is learning—home. I’ve had moments of being absolutely astonished by what he can do.

Recently, I heard Carmen Coleman, from the University of Kentucky College of Education and Center for Innovation in Education, reflect on efforts in Danville to engage students in deeper, project-based learning. What struck me most was this – she said that, for students, being engaged in this learning environment looked like – well, work. The students had meetings. They made plans. They adjusted their plans. They solved problems together. Work.

Kentucky is fortunate to have visionary teachers who have taken on the challenge of working together to truly bring the still-new Kentucky Academic Standards to life for students. It takes a lot of effort to lay the foundation needed to engage students in aligned, high-quality lessons that expect them to work hard and show what they know and can do. Bold efforts such as the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC), Math Design Collaborative (MDC), and the recent Common Assignment study are incredible examples. 

* Note: See these past PrichBlog posts on LDC (http://prichblog.blogspot.com/search?q=Literacy+Design) and MDC (http://prichblog.blogspot.com/search?q=Mathematics+Design), and see this recent blog post on Common Assignment from Renee Boss at the Fund for Transforming Education in Kentucky.

The challenge for all of us is to ensure that students throughout Kentucky are engaged in quality work that leads to real learning – particularly for students of color, students in poverty, students with disabilities, and those in other student groups that so urgently need access to the most stellar opportunities to learn, to grow, to succeed – to absolutely captivate their teachers, their families, and their communities. Thanks to the LDC, Sherri McPherson’s students at Lafayette High School in Lexington are doing just that.

As parents and advocates, by asking good questions, communicating our priorities, and supporting changes, we can help meet this challenge—to rally for our children, our neighbor’s children, and all children across the Commonwealth to do high-quality work that absorbs them in the learning process, empowers them with knowledge, and prepares them for what comes next on their educational journeys. 

Kentucky educators part of innovative literacy initiative

Here's a press release issued Thursday by the Prichard Committee, with the added note that as a participant in this work, I'm finding it to be the most exciting education initiative I've encountered in my decades of active work on education policy.

Educators in six Kentucky school districts are part of an innovative new effort to dramatically improve students' literacy skills and their preparation for college and career.


The Literacy Design Collaborative focuses on organizing the class work that students do around reading and writing in all subject areas - a break from the traditional practice of limiting most reading instruction to English or language arts classes - and preparing them for challenging writing tasks. Teachers in Kenton, Boyle, Daviess, Fayette, Jessamine, and Rockcastle counties are developing the approach along with researchers and educators from states across the country.


The academic foundation of the work is the new standards that Kentucky has adopted, along with many other states, defining what students should know. The standards for language arts and math were drafted by nationally respected experts who used research and information on how each subject is taught in the countries with the highest academic results.


The Literacy Design Collaborative approach involves the development of components, or modules, for classroom use that specify reading and writing tasks and assignments on specific topics; "template tasks" that can be used to teach a variety of subjects to students working at different levels; and plans that set out teachers' step-by-step approach to helping students successfully prepare for and complete assignments.


In Kentucky, the collaborative work is supported by a $300,471 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, for supporting and coordinating the work in the six participating districts. The committee is a statewide citizens' organization that works to improve education at all levels. Committee associate executive director, Cindy Heine said, "The Gates Foundation is providing important new tools for teachers, supporting implementation of the newly adopted Kentucky Core Academic Standards. This kind of support was not available in the 1990s when Kentucky adopted standards for student learning and an accountability system for our schools and we believe this professional work with teachers will improve our efforts to help students become ready for success in college and career."

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.

Fantastic LDC task from Simpson County

Ashley Gore of Simpson County has created one of my favorite Literacy Design Collaborative modules ever, now recognized as meeting the "exemplary" standard under LDC's national jurying standards.  She asked her students to address this teaching task:

Is Hester Prynne a virtuous woman? After reading The Scarlet Letter, write an essay in which you discuss Hester's Prynne's character attributes and evaluate her virtues in connection with Proverbs 31. Support your position with evidence from the text(s).

In keeping with the LDC design process, the plain black text comes from an LDC template, but the part I've underlined in blue reflects wording Ms. Gore added to create a distinctive task for her own discipline and students.  Then she supported her students by identifying the reading and writing skills essential to the task and designing "mini-tasks" where students learn and apply each of those skills on the way to completing their essays. (Past Prichblog posts on LDC are here.)

The whole design is excellent, but my special excitement comes from seeing one of my very favorite Bible texts deployed in a way that requires respectful, critical analysis and comparison with a powerful novel.  It's a truly great teacher-created approach to implementing the Kentucky Core Academic Standards in a deep literary study.  

The complete module is available in LDC's CoreTools Library: you'll need to set up a free account to log in to the site, which also offers a complete set of LDC design tools for anyone who wants to try them out.

 (Illustration by By Mary Hallock Foote [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

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.

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.

Happy 2011 literacy and math possibilities

I'm delighted to kick off 2011 with great hopes for some great tools.  The Gates Foundation website now features an overview and samples of the literacy and math strategies it is developing to support the new Common Core State Standards. "Supporting Instruction" explains the overall project this way:

While the standards were being produced, we were also investing in the tools teachers will need to help their students meet them. For the last two years, we’ve been leading two design collaboratives, one in mathematics and one in literacy. These groups have been developing and piloting the formative assessments teachers need to understand where students are relative to the standards, the lessons to move students forward, and the rich classroom-based summative assessments that demonstrate student progress.

In both cases, the design teams are indeed collaboratives and involve subject-matter experts, education leaders, and classroom teachers who keep the effort grounded in real schools and students.

These tools are now being codeveloped and piloted in 14 school districts in 8 states during the current school year, along with a rigorous evaluation process to ensure that they work. It will be several months before we can report on their progress, but we expect to be ready to share “version 1.0” in the 2011–2012 school year.

Yes, Kentucky's one of the eight states doing co-development and piloting, through grants for Prichard Committee work with a small group of educators around the state, described here and here.

And, yes, I've had the privilege and delight of being right in the middle of the convenings where the participating share their early experiences with each strategy.  I think these tools have huge potential to raise student engagement, understanding and achievement in very exciting ways.

You can download the Foundation's monograph here, and I'll blog on the mathematics and the literacy details a little later in the day.

Students Going Further: Teaching and Learning Refined by Evidence

| Post by Susan Perkins Weston |

 Kentucky students can go much further, and the right kinds of responsive support can put that excellence in reach. Gene Wilhoit has called for “a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning.” That feedback uses students' own work, compared to pertinent standards, as key evidence of what needs to come next in the learning process.

When evidence is gathered and used that way, over and over, important things happen. A big set of studies show that the process raises achievement for students of all backgrounds and especially raises achievement for students who have long been underserved.

Here’s a tricky part of that research: it often calls the evidence work “assessment.” Phrases like “assessment for learning” and “formative assessment” try to keep the emphasis on how the evidence is used quickly to improve (form) teaching and learning. But those words also allow us to imagine many little tests, often multiple choice, almost always separate from the learning itself, provided by an outside testing company or developed in close imitation of what those companies sell.

The research actually supports something different.

Its main point is about teachers finding evidence in work students produce through their regular learning. Backing that up, there’s thought on designing the assignments to be sure that evidence will be available. For example, in Literacy Design Collaborative modules, the building blocks are mini-tasks where students develop skills by creating products and the products can be checked against quick scoring guides to tell if learning is on track or if further instructional support should be added. The evidence comes from the learning work, not from a pause to take a test.

On the surface, this approach can sound familiar and simple, but it actually calls for a huge shift in the culture of American schooling. Our ingrained tradition is offering everyone similar teaching and then counting the very different results for different learners. What the research describes is a process of varied teaching, with rapid adjustments, aimed at getting higher and much more similar results for the learners.

That shift is key.  Those who use, study, and support this alternate process do not deny that students who fall short had may have learning disabilities or face cultural and economic challenges or bring the wrong work ethic to class. Instead, they call for for steady cycles of analysis and innovation to defeat whatever has been limiting the learning. And it offers a big stack of research evidence that teaching effort structured that way results in students going further, revealing their potential, and doing work at levels that we haven’t expected to see using other approaches.

Actually, even that summary isn’t good enough, because it’s much too centered on teachers. At its most powerful, students themselves use the feedback, engage the standards they’re aiming for and participate in identifying the next steps that will let them climb to full success. That “sunlit vision” of learning has been a pillar of my understanding since I first read Rick Stiggins “Assessment Manifesto,” and it’s built into the Wilhoit definition at the start of this post.

Understanding how big a shift we need in the design of teaching and learning offers a second part of the explanation of how Kentucky students can have the potential to go much further, and yet we can see that example regularly going unfulfilled.

Source Notes: Before the 2008 Stiggins manifesto, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam offered a big 1998 research synthesis on this type of assessment/evidence use, writing for researchers in Assessment in Education and for educators in the Kappan.  Margaret Heritage’ 2010 report for the state Chiefs summarizes follow-on research in some depth –and the Wilhoit quote above appeared in her forward. Roger Marcum gets personal credit for pulling me into the Stiggins report and Ann Shannon gets a hat tip for showing me Wiliam's argument.

Students Going Further: My Case for Confidence

| Post By Susan Perkins Weston |

I am entirely confident that  Kentucky students can move to substantially higher levels of achievement than we see today. For the start of 2017, I'm going to share my reasons and back them up (over multiple posts) with notes on the challenges we’ll have to meet to deliver on that potential.

I’ll start with the core of why I believe our students can fly much higher.

One big pile of evidence comes from seeing young learners thrive. Big examples for me include:

• The quality of reading, thinking, and writing students do when they take on big tasks through the Literacy Design Collaborative. For example, those could be tasks that ask them to explain the human impact on marine ecosystems or argue whether presidents should have line item veto power or analyze whether Hester Prynne was a virtuous woman within the description offered in Proverbs 31. (At coretools.ldc.org, anyone who creates a free account can see those three exemplary Kentucky teacher designs and many more.) I’ve listened to teachers debriefing after teaching those tasks, and they report students showing tremendous capacity for effort and discovery. I’ve read the student work, and been so absorbed by the substance that I forgot the age of the writers who were teaching me.

• The perseverance and effectiveness of students taking on the multi-day classroom challenges offered by the Mathematics Design Collaborative.

• The sudden fire that lights up when students realize that what they have learned at home and in their communities is important for something they’re studying at school. The term of art is “culturally responsive teaching.” The examples that haunt me involve fiddlers in Powell County and second-graders whose teacher thought they were permanently disengaged until they heard the words "Montgomery, Alabama" and stood right up to go over 1955 as though they'd been there for the entire bus boycott and participated in all the planning before it began.

• The soaring work of the Student Voice Team, where statute reading and data analysis and pubic presentation and professional caliber layout all get done at a pace that seems almost magical, because the participants see why it deserves this effort.

More broadly, I’ve watched dozens of young people, mostly starting at 11 or 12, take on huge bodies of knowledge on their own initiative. Once athletes or actors or authors spark a passion, they’ll read and read, and search and find, and explore and imitate and explain in overwhelming depth. Schools can offer sports and band and theatre as extracurricular programs because students come without being commanded. A simple way to state my confidence is this: I am convinced that students can master school-type content with at least half the depth they bring to understanding the music they call their own.

The other big pile of evidence comes from learning about schools and school systems where students beat the odds. That’s more systematic proof, but it isn’t ideal, because the evidence has to come from standardized tests that don’t show us much about ability to research and solve problems, gather and evaluate evidence, or communicate and collaborate in a team. So I use it, but use it second. Floyd County’s impressive pace of improvement is a compelling example, as are the high-performing schools and programs featured in EdTrust publications over many years. Helpfully, the best reporting on students flourishing in those places don’t just cite the numbers: they wrap the numbers in descriptions of the students doing active work and discussions of teacher observations of that work over time.

Over the coming posts, my goal is to tell a story of moderate complexity. It’s about kids who can do big work, but frequently don’t. It’s about educators who bring their talent and devotion every day, but often can’t pull off the big changes. And it’s about institutions that say they want the big shifts, but rarely build consistent opportunity for students and teachers to pull them off. Most of all, it’s an account of why we should press onward, aiming higher and pushing harder, and reject arguments that we can only expect a tiny snail’s pace of improvement in the years ahead.

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.

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

Common Core: good teaching and "cold reading"

Linking to a thoughtful essay by Jeremiah Chaffee, who teaches English in upstate New York, Richard Day writes:

If this author can be believed, low-ordered thinking skills dictated by Common Core "Exemplars" seem to undermine creative and critical thinking. Will we find ourselves five years from now wondering why such a great idea isn't working?  ...and blaming teachers for the failure?

Since I’m investing many of my waking hours in Common Core implementation, I want to respond in some detail.

Mr. Chaffee’s concerns

Mr. Chaffee writes that his department has been working with an “exemplar” lesson designed to align with the Common Core State Standards, one centered on the Gettysburg Address.  He then shares his concerns, which I hope can be fairly summarized in with this excerpt:

Most of [the lesson] was too scripted. It spelled out what types of questions to ask, what types of questions not to ask, and essentially narrowed any discussion to obvious facts and ideas from the speech. 

*** 

Another problem we found relates to the pedagogical method used in the Gettysburg Address exemplar that the Common Core calls “cold reading.”This gives students a text they have never seen and asks them to read it with no preliminary introduction. This mimics the conditions of a standardized test on which students are asked to read material they have never seen and answer multiple choice questions about the passage. 

Such pedagogy makes school wildly boring. Students are not asked to connect what they read yesterday to what they are reading today, or what they read in English to what they read in science.

I’ve quoted those two concerns, about scripting and cold reading, in the order Mr. Chaffee shares them, but I’ll offer my response in the reverse order.

Cold reading

It is true that standardized tests require students to read texts cold, without teachers coaching them to pull up their other knowledge or connect to other interests.

 

The thing is, life itselfrequires cold reading.  On the job, adults get handed manuals, assembly instructions, and memos, and they don’t always get an experienced colleague to coach them through figuring out what they’re reading and what to do in response.  When studying for a technical certificate or a college degree, older students will be assigned texts and expected to read the assignments on their own.  As citizens, we all need to be able to work our way through articles, editorials, and websites as part of thinking through public issues.

 

Equipping students for cold reading

In some classes, for some topics and some texts, it makes sense for teachers to provide context, help students activate their prior knowledge, review needed vocabulary before students open their books, and otherwise provide a scaffolding that helps students make meaning of the assignment.  All of that makes students’ work easier and all of it can help make it easier for them to engage the substance of what they read.

Still, if every lesson front-loads that kind of support, how do students develop the reading skills they’ll need when they graduate and the support goes away?

Some lessons need to begin with cold reading, to start students on the way to independence. 

Then, after students do their own wrestling, good teaching can include modeling good skills for pulling the text apart and deepening their understanding of what it says.  For example, a teacher might prompt students to identify and wrestle with challenging words, then tricky phrases, and then the overall organization of the piece, before reading it through a second time to think more deeply about how the whole piece fits together. Long-term, students need to be able to summon up those strategies on their own, but part way through their learning process, they may still need to rehearse the steps with a teacher illustrating how to do each one.

As I read Mr. Chaffee’s description of the exemplar lesson, I developed a strong hunch that he was looking at a lesson that specifically designed to model that type of sound teaching: cold reading as the first step, questions to guide students in closer reading as the second round of work.

That is, I suspect that cold reading—meaning independent work to make sense of text without a teacher softening the work—was a central purpose of the exemplar lesson. Understanding the Gettysburg Address wasn't the only goal, and the reading step was not just a teaching method.  On the contrary, independent reading was a capacity being taught both in the "cold" phase and the questioning phrase of the lesson, and the Gettysburg Address, though valuable in itself, was also being used as a vehicle for skill development.

Again, I am not saying that is the only kind of teaching students should receive. I am, though, saying that Mr. Chaffee’s description makes me think that the exemplar is one of the kinds of learning students need. 

Scripting or empowering teachers

The exemplar lesson Mr. Chaffee worked with does not come directly from the Common Core State Standards. I can say that with certainty because the Standards document does not contain any lesson plans.  There are many ideas circulating about how to teach to Common Core, but none of them are required by the Common Core itself, and it’s worth repeating that none of them are mandated by the federal government. 

Given the many different people and jurisdictions involved, it’s certainly possible that some one is dictating scripted lessons for teachers to recite. 

However, many places, including Kentucky, are following far more empowering strategies.  The Literacy Design Collaborative, for example, calls for teachers to develop robust teaching tasks and then plan instruction that builds students’ reading, thinking, and writing skills on the way to responding to that overall task—giving teachers huge control over the skills to be taught, the order of teaching, and the activities used to build each skill.  Kentucky is sharing that strategy across its Leadership Networks, and I’m part of the design team that has been working to develop LDC for use in other states and on-line.

The bottom line

Almost any sound idea can be undercut by foolish implementation, and nothing built into Common Core prevents that from happening.  If teachers convert to “all cold reading, all the time,” that will be a mistake.  That said, “all scaffolded reading, all the way through senior year” would also be the wrong approach.

The ability to “read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently” is clearly part of what every member of the rising generation will need to be ready for higher education, the jobs of the future, and the challenges of the coming century. In the Common Core State Standards, that ability is listed as Reading Anchor Standard 10, and the part about doing the reading independently-- or cold--is a serious part of the expectation.

Quality Teacher Preparation

The following post is from Dr. Ann Elisabeth Larson, Vice Dean and Professor, Dean-elect of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville.

The Kentucky Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (KACTE) a state affiliate of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) is pleased to have received an invitation and this opportunity from the Prichard Committee to post a blog about educator preparation, particularly teacher preparation, in Kentucky. 

KACTE members represent 28 public and private higher education institutions across the Commonwealth that prepare university-based certified educators in traditional and alternative route programs. KACTE member institutions have a long history of collaboration, with a common goal of offering accredited university-based programs at the state and/or the state and national levels and preparing high quality educators for Kentucky's P-12 schools. We work closely with Kentucky's state agencies, the Education Professional Standards Board (EPSB); the Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE); and the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE). 

As well, KACTE has ongoing collaborations with other state groups and associations, including the Prichard Committee, and members of our association, including through the leadership of the executive board, are actively engaged in Kentucky's reform efforts to improve the preparation of teachers, other school professionals, principals and superintendents.

A number of recent statewide reform initiatives in collaboration with state agency and association partners have been at the forefront of our work. Some of these projects, in collaboration with state agencies, include: Senate Bill 1, Unbridled Learning (2009), Common Core and College and Career Standards' professional development for higher education faculty who teach courses in education and arts and sciences; co-teaching training, based on St. Cloud State University's model, for cooperating teachers who mentor teacher candidates; university supervisor training for those supervising teacher candidates in P-12 field and clinical experiences; and design and implementation, with funding from the Council on Postsecondary Education, of a clinical model of teacher preparation similar to a medical model of physician preparation (three universities received significant, competitive grant funding to design and implement replicable clinical context teacher preparation models - University of Louisville; Western Kentucky University; and Eastern Kentucky University - in collaboration with P-12 district partners).

Also, KACTE has collaborated to support individual higher education institutions to implement new and more rigorous admission to teacher education requirements (as outlined, among other principles for reform in teacher preparation, in Our Possibility, Our Promise: Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession , Council of Chief State School Officers, 2012) and new student teaching regulations promulgated by the EPSB; will soon focus on enhancing literacy and reading across the curriculum for teacher candidates in elementary, middle and secondary program levels; will be ramping up to respond to and infuse new Council on Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) standards and contribute to program and accreditation reviews for educator preparation by CAEP and EPSB - all of this is occurring as Kentucky moves ahead of the nation in many regards in educator preparation reform. 

KACTE has also been at the forefront of continuing to explore the development and implementation in collecting, using and reporting data for program and continuous improvement aligned with accreditations and examining ways to access more P-12 student learning data needed by teacher candidates to build knowledge and skills in developing and managing data-driven instruction.

KACTE also focuses on the uses and implementation of new technology in educator preparation. Our association has been providing feedback through our Kentucky Instructional Technology in Educator Preparation (K-ITEP) committee to the EPSB and is continuing a dialogue on the accuracy, cleanliness and usefulness of data collected and presented. Additionally, KACTE is leading efforts in higher education to connect teacher candidates and higher education faculty to CIITS (Continuous Instructional Improvement Technology System) and Infinite Campus as the Kentucky Department of Education expects teachers and administrators to use and access these systems to be at the cutting edge and forefront of supporting P-12 student learning and achievement. Ethics training and a focus on development and monitoring of positive dispositions demonstrated through teacher candidates and educators in advanced roles as exemplified in practice are also priorities in our work in educator preparation in Kentucky. Our education faculty are former P-12 practitioners who typically hold doctorates in their respective fields, are trained in research methodology and are active scholars.

Teacher quality, particularly as it relates to the preparation of new teachers, has drawn widespread national and state attention in recent years. With data indicating the growing problem of teacher attrition, especially among early career teachers (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Darling-Hammond, 2003; Ingersoll, 2001), the need for a new model to educate teachers in the service of P-12 student learning has never been more compelling. Guided by principles detailed in a 2010 report of NCATE's Blue Ribbon Panel, current reform in teacher education focuses on the role of clinical preparation and partnerships between higher education and P-12 to prepare teachers for improved student learning. KACTE is at the forefront of this model in Kentucky through teacher education reform in higher education. Clinical preparation of new teachers includes the following design principles identified by NCATE's Blue Ribbon Panel Report: a focus on P-12 student learning; a mutually beneficial and reciprocal partnership; the integration of clinical preparation for teacher candidates throughout the program, beginning early in the program and concluding with a practicum/clinical experience/student teaching; continuous assessment of teacher candidate progress; strong content or disciplinary preparation; teacher candidate learning within a professional community of practice; rigorous selection of clinical educators in the schools who serve as mentors and cooperating teachers; designated and supported clinical sites which have the support and investment of the school district and the university; cutting edge technology applications to support P-12 student learning and teachers' and teacher candidates' practice; data collection and analysis for data-informed decision making and program improvement; and development, support and nurturing of the partnership among the district, school and the university.

Current reform in teacher education focuses on the role of clinical preparation and partnerships in preparing teachers for improved student learning. The transformation of teacher education through clinical partnerships form the organizing structure within which all stakeholders commit to the recruitment, admission, preparation, assessment and continuing development of teachers who effectively enable the learning of all students in all contexts. KACTE recognizes that preparation within partnerships is a central tenet both in the design principles and the five major recommendations of NCATE's Blue Ribbon Panel Report (2010). These new types of partnerships in which we pool resources and human capital can lead us to shape the new normal in a way that increases P-12 student learning.

New standards, priorities and reform in policy and practice will shape and be shaped by clinically rich, effective forms of teacher preparation programs. Dr. James Cibulka, president of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), reflected on the transformation of teacher education: "One of the major themes of NCATE's Blue Ribbon Panel Report, Transforming Teacher Education: A National Strategy for Preparing Effective Teachers, is the need for new types of partnerships between higher education and P-12 in the service of P-12 student learning (Cibulka, 2010)." These clinical partnerships form the organizing structure within which all stakeholders commit to the recruitment, admission, preparation, assessment and continuing development of teachers who effectively enable the learning of all students in all contexts. Cibulka advised, "Preparation within partnerships is a central tenet both in the design principles and the five major recommendations of the Panel."

At the University of Louisville, our clinical model of preparing elementary and middle grade teachers not only connects to the current efforts to transform teaching as outlined in the Blue Ribbon Panel Report, but also builds from the foundational efforts associated with Professional Development Schools (PDSs). As noted in NCATE's Standards for Professional Development Schools, established over a decade ago (NCATE, 2001), professional development schools are innovative institutions formed through partnerships between professional education programs and P-12 schools. Their mission is the professional preparation of candidates, faculty development, inquiry directed at the improvement of practice and enhanced student learning (p. 1). This mission resonates with the overarching goals and activities of our current clinical model of teacher preparation at the University of Louisville as we have recently expanded its application from an elementary setting to that of a middle school.

UofL's Signature Partnership Initiative (SPI). The purpose of the University of Louisville's Signature Partnership Initiative ( SPI) is to work with community agencies and organizations to enhance the education, health, economic and social conditions of West Louisville. The focus on education has engaged the College of Education and Human Development (and other units on campus) with identified SPI schools. Of particular significance has been our work with J. B. Atkinson Academy for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, our University's designated lab school. The clinical model developed in partnership with J. B. Atkinson Academy has resulted in: on-site university classes; a faculty liaison to support candidates' development; high quality and rigorous early field and clinical placements to provide authentic learning experiences for teacher candidates; collaboratively developed professional development to invoke change aimed at improved student achievement; opportunities for teacher growth such as a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) cohort, the Louisville Writing Project (LWP), the Kentucky Reading Project (KRP); numerous collaborative research projects; and participation by teacher candidates and experienced teachers on funded grant projects designed to boost student learning.

KACTE recognizes that by bringing together theory, practice, preparation and application in the clinical setting of a P-12 school, all stakeholders gain new knowledge and skills aimed at improved P-12 student learning. Teacher candidates have authentic teaching opportunities with excellent and dedicated teachers; teachers have professional development opportunities to develop innovative "best practice" teaching strategies; and inquiry and data based decision-making guide instructional and program improvement in both the school and university settings. The need for new types of partnerships between higher education and P-12 schools to educate teachers in the service of P-12 student learning has never been more compelling. As identified in NCATE's Blue Ribbon Panel Report, Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education noted, "The report of NCATE's Blue Ribbon Panel marks the most sweeping recommendations for reforming the accreditation of teacher preparation programs in the more than century-long history of our nation's education schools." 

KACTE stands ready and is committed to reforms and initiatives shared in this blog post, including a clinical model of teacher preparation. We look forward to continued collaboration with Kentucky's state agencies - EPSB, CPE, and KDE - and with our numerous and key partners at community and state levels to ensure a high quality educator for every student, every day in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. And, finally, we invite interested observers to follow our efforts and provide feedback on our higher education work to reform educator preparation in Kentucky.

Speaking and Listening (CCSS Goes Deep)

The Common Core State Standards reach beyond reading and writing to address speaking and listening.  The anchor standards for college and career readiness come under two headings and look like this.

Comprehension and Collaboration
1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
3. Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.  

Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas 
4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
6. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.

Through the Literacy Design Collaborative, I'm seeing lots of potent work on these skills, with students becoming more able to do this work and teachers developing new insights into what further support and challenge students will need.

I'm a bit more puzzled about whether states can and will assess these skills in a standardized way.

Maybe the answer will be that, to learn academic content and make sense of complex texts they read, students will need to use these kind of speaking and listening as part of how they sort out what they are studying, and to write their own strong pieces, they will need to use similar skills on the way to organizing their work.  I see many LDC teachers adding those steps as means to the end of strong writing about important reading and essential questions in academic fields.

 Or, possibly, innovative districts like my own Danville Independent will work out richer ways for students demonstrate this sort of skill, moving us beyond what "pencil and paper" or "keyboard and screen" assessments can measure well.

Or, perhaps, some other approach is already being developed for these issues.  Part of the genius of Common Core is that, because many states have the same goals, an innovative approach can be used many places.  For all kinds of organizations working to support schools and students, that means each effort that works can spread farther and make a bigger difference.

The Power of Our Shared Science Standards

| By Susan Perkins Weston | 

Kentucky now shares the Next Generation Science Standards with 18 states and the District of Columbia--as shown in the EdWeek map below and discussed in today's Curriculum Matters post.

Over the last year, I've been studying those standards more closely and getting more excited with each round, because there are shifts so deep I didn't understand them on my first or second read.

For one thing, NGSS makes it almost impossible to think about content apart from skills or knowledge apart from active engagement.  That starts with life sciences call for kindergartners to be able to "use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive."  It flows all the way through to the high school engineering expectation that students will be prepared to "use a computer simulation to model the impact of proposed solutions to a complex real-world problem with numerous criteria and constraints on interactions within and between systems relevant to the problem."

Even more deeply, NGSS focuses on a short, powerful list of eight scientific practices:

• Asking questions and defining problems
• Developing and using models
• Planning and carrying out investigations
• Analyzing and interpreting data
• Using mathematics and computational thinking
• Constructing explanations and designing solutions
• Engaging in argument from evidence
• Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

Those practices give a clear idea of the types of hands-on work students should be doing, the ways critical thinking and active problem-solving  should become tools they can use through a lifetime, and the forms of teamwork and communication that will be embedded in the work they will do as adults. We've known for decades that we need to cultivate  deeper learning and 21st century skills: the NGSS practices look to me like a specific, muscular plan for making that happen.

And at the deepest level, NGSS calls for students to be active science users and science makers.  That's about recognizing students as current participants, rather than just preparing for future engagement.  It's about seeing them as contributing and building here and now and watching for the energy and innovation they're already able to share.

Added note: there are brand new resources teachers can use to combine NGSS standards with Literacy Design Collaborative approaches to reading, writing, and thinking. Battelle Education has developed an impressive set of new resources, complete with video of the students and teachers who designed and tested them, focused on analyzing data, designing and conducting experiments, and solving engineering problems. I was honored to get an early look at these materials, and I think they offer very important illustrations of how much more students can know and do with the right opportunities. If you give them a look, I think you'll share my excitement about NGSS and the possibilities in reach for learners here and across the country.

Check out the Battelle LDC tools and videos of students at work!