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.

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

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

NYTimes spots Gates video effort, omits research purpose

Friday's New York Times describes the video technology being used for the Measuring Effective Teachers initiative funded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  It's an interesting piece about the efficient use of 360-degree cameras to get a panoramic idea of how everyone in the room is affected by a given day's lesson, and the reporting shared several expert opinions on how the technology might move into direct use of teacher evaluations.

That said, I see the article as focusing on the video than on the bigger project the video will support.  Months back, I blogged about the Foundation's own description of the project, which describes the video cameras as a way to allow multiple observers apply several different respected rubrics for classroom observation.  Live observations on the needed scale would be unduly disruptive of ordinary classroom work, which is why the camera strategy was created.

Along with the varied ratings of the videos, the study is gathering data from student surveys about classroom processes, teacher surveys about working conditions, and teacher tests of content knowledge and content teaching methods.

Next year,  each of those indicators will be correlated with several kinds of data on student growth compared to their achievement this year.

With that huge collection of data, the project will be able to offer answers on a really big question:  How well does  each of the gathered indicators (teacher knowledge, surveys, and the different observation protocols) relate to actually delivering student growth?


The NYT coverage could leave the impression that the main point is finding a way to videotape teachers.  Far from it. The video is mainly a tool for developing richer and more important insight into which measurement tools best identify teaching that changes student performance.

Note: The Prichard Committee and I personally have not been involved in the implementation of this Effective Teachers part of the Gates Foundation's education investments.  However, we are working on several of the Gates Foundation's College-Ready Work initiatives (see information here, here, and here), and I have been included in several briefings on the progress of this measurement effort.

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.

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?' "

Prichard Committee to pilot new teaching and testing resources for math: grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help fund work

I'm just catching up on the news from the end of the last week.  An important Prichard Committee release is below:

LEXINGTON, KY – Teachers in six Kentucky school districts will be among the first in the nation to explore new ways to teach mathematics under a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence. The ninth and tenth grade teachers will work with new teaching and testing resources that have been developed by national experts to accelerate students' mastery of mathematics.


"We’re tremendously excited by this opportunity," said Robert F. Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee. "The new materials will help schools implement Kentucky's brand new mathematics standards, tracking each student's level of understanding and developing teaching methods that keep all students moving forward. It's an early look at the kind of professional development all Kentucky teachers will need."


The new approach—known as "assessment for learning" or "formative assessment"—fits well with legislation passed by the 2009 General Assembly requiring that Kentucky adopt new mathematics standards and develop a new testing approach. The "assessment for learning" approach emphasizes classroom-level activities that provide teachers with better insight into student learning needs. The emphasis is on quickly helping teachers adjust their teaching to help all students reach high standards of learning.


During intensive professional development sessions, the participating teachers will work with classroom "performance events" that provide immediate information on what part of a topic students already understand and what still needs work. In turn, that will allow teachers to adjust instruction so that all students ultimately master the mathematics being taught.


"Each performance event will allow teachers to shape future learning," said Ann Shannon, a mathematics researcher with a leading role in the project. "We'll be working on how teachers can quickly address student difficulties, pose follow-up questions that deepen understanding, and ensure that all students end up with a strong grasp of the key concepts they need to master."


The pilot testing in Kentucky is part of a larger nationwide effort by the Gates Foundation to support the development and testing of prototype math and literacy classroom assessments and instructional tools to help educators better prepare all students for life beyond high school.


The Prichard Committee has selected the following high schools to participate in the project:

• Boone County, Conner, Cooper, and Ryle high schools, Boone County
• Apollo, Beacon, and Daviess County high schools, Daviess County
• Doss and Iroquois high schools, Jefferson County
• East Jessamine and West Jessamine high schools in Jessamine County
• Dixie, Scott, and Simon Kenton high schools in Kenton County
• Warren Central and Warren East high schools in Warren County

Eighth-grade mathematics teachers in Daviess County also have been invited to participate in the work.


The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence is a nonprofit citizens' organization that works to improve education for all Kentuckians.


###

It happens in teams (Weingarten on football)

In Newsweek's new joint interview of Bill Gates and the AFT's Randi Weingarten, I love this paragraph:

Football teams do this all the time. They look at the tape after every game. Sometimes they do it during the game. They’re constantly deconstructing what is working and what isn’t working. And they’re jettisoning what isn’t working and building up on what is working, and doing it in a teamlike approach. We never do that investment in public schooling. What’s happening in Finland is they do that investment in the graduate schools of education before people become teachers. They recruit a very select group of people who become teachers. Now it is also true that Finland has a 5 percent poverty rate and the United States has a 20 percent poverty rate. But there’s this notion of really figuring out what the best teachers do and trying to scale that up.

That's from Ms. Weingarten, not Mr. Gates.  It's a great interview, with both voices focused on stronger education for America's students.

He's got a sound point about making annual formal evaluations more substantive, reflecting the Gates Foundation's deep investment in measuring effective teaching--an investment that even includes new video tools that produce something very like the game tapes used in football.

She's got a sound point, too.  Her focus is on year-round cycles of continuous improvement organized primarily by professional colleagues. At the school level, teams that work together to build skills and raise results are often called professional learning communities, and attempts to measure that sort of environment are made through surveys on working conditions.  She's also arguing for similar loops on a larger scale, both for preparing teachers and for defining standards, curriculum, and testing methods.

While both takes are important and the two strategies certainly should be deployed, Ms. Weingarten's emphasis on the continuous, team-based feedback process looks to me like the more important part of the total change we need to create.

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.

College readiness work: a bit more on the Gates Foundation investment (repeat post)

I'm reposting this in response to discussion with some great teachers this morning:

Here are two good sources of added information on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's new investments in college readiness

First, Vicki Phillips and Carina Wong explain the overall strategy in an article on "Tying Together the Common Core of Standards, Instruction, and Assessments"  in the February 2010 Kappan (scroll down to the "Features").  Respectively, they are the Foundation's director of education and its deputy director for College-Ready Work. 

Second, the Foundation press release from February, begins:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced 15 grants totaling more than $19.5 million to support the development and testing of prototype classroom assessments and instructional tools in math and literacy to help educators better prepare all students for success beyond high school. The investments are part of the foundation’s support of the effort to build a coherent system of consistent college- and career-ready standards, aligned assessments, and teaching tools to strengthen teacher effectiveness and dramatically improve student achievement.

The Prichard Committee project blogged here is a piece of this larger effort.

College readiness work: a bit more on the Gates Foundation investment

Here are two good sources of added information on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's new investments in college readiness

First, Vicki Phillips and Carina Wong explain the overall strategy in an article on "Tying Together the Common Core of Standards, Instruction, and Assessments"  in the February 2010 Kappan (scroll down to the "Features").  Respectively, they are the Foundation's director of education and its deputy director for College-Ready Work. 

Second, the Foundation press release from last Thursday, begins:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced 15 grants totaling more than $19.5 million to support the development and testing of prototype classroom assessments and instructional tools in math and literacy to help educators better prepare all students for success beyond high school. The investments are part of the foundation’s support of the effort to build a coherent system of consistent college- and career-ready standards, aligned assessments, and teaching tools to strengthen teacher effectiveness and dramatically improve student achievement.

The Prichard Committee project blogged here is a piece of this larger effort.

Nurturing consistent teaching quality

Here's a great analysis of the challenge:

But what amazes me about most great teachers, is that in most cases nobody taught them how to be great. They figured it out on their own. That takes a spark of genius. But there’s a problem with that method. If we leave teachers to learn it on their own, we will never make the most of their talent. If we don’t develop the talent of our teachers, we’re going to waste the talent of our students.

We can’t afford that. We need to make sure that every teacher can learn from the best – and keep learning every year for their entire career. That’s what drives a profession forward.

When I was working in software, many times I would look at the computer code someone wrote and I’d say: "Oh, wow, this guy is good. That’s better than what I would have written. What process did he go through? How did he model it?” Whenever I found someone great, I would study how they worked. I looked at every factor that made that person successful.

This happens in a lot of fields.

Some of you may have read a book by Steven Jay Gould about baseball. Gould explains that in the 1920s and ’30s, there was a big gap between the highest and lowest batting averages. But over time, people learned from each other, the gap narrowed – and the average hitter today is much closer to the best hitter.

That’s an important mark of a profession: the difference between the average and the great becomes smaller – because everyone is eager to get better, and they’re doing everything they can to learn from the best. That trend improves the entire profession. But it requires a process: you have to identify the skills of the best and transfer them to everyone else.

That hasn’t been happening enough in teaching. And that give us a big opportunity.

If we analyze the teachers whose students are making big gains, if we identify what they do, and if we find out how to transfer those skills to others – then every teacher can move closer to the top. It will elevate the whole profession. Teachers will experience the same thrill of getting better that they make possible for their students.

That's fresh from Bill Gates' speech today to the American Federation of Teachers. The full speech is here.

(Side note: the speech does not discuss the Gates Foundation's support for new teaching tools that support the Common Core Standards, and thus is not connected to Prichard work around those tools.)

Fall Perspectives

The Prichard Committee's newest Perspectives newsletter is available now, featuring these headlines:

• KY Moving Toward Top 20 in Many Areas
• 'ReadyKentucky' Promotes Standards
• Words & Influence: Robert F. Sexton, 1942-2010
• Groups Publish Transition Index Data
• Gates Foundation Hears Prichard Lessons
• CIPL Institutes Enlist 57 to Start 13th Year
• Institutes In Other States Building Traditions
• Districts Launch Gates-Backed Literacy Work
• Two Prichard Members Named to State Board
• Heine Named Prichard's Interim Director
• TEK Task Force Gathers Input at Forums
• Business Leaders Joining Council Focused on Pre-K
• How to Donate to the Robert F. Sexton Legacy Fund

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."

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.

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.

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.

Sharing the Kentucky story (in Seattle)

Bob Sexton will be sharing lessons from Kentucky's education reform efforts next week with a large group from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The"college-ready" team of the Foundation's staff is seeking new insight into how a state can carry out sustained, substantial educational change, and looking to Bob for thought on our efforts to date at a major annual convening.

(Bev Raimondo and I will also be part of the work, looking forward to learning from Bob, each other, and the Gates folks as well.)

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

Digital competence, civics, and the common core

Vicki Phillips of the Gates Foundation wrote in October that:

The explosion of media and technology has added remarkable opportunities for gaining and sharing knowledge, but it also has made it all the more important that students master the core skills of gathering and evaluating evidence. Reading and writing with independence and confidence will remain master arts in the information age.

As I blogged the research skills built in to the new draft of the common core standards for writing, that comment kept going through my head.

The current technological revolution raises the bar for citizenship: with vast information at our fingertips, our new struggle will be to evaluate and use that information well.

In response, the draft standards raise the bar for students, and call on schools to equip students for exactly that type of work. It's time to push forward on developing those "master arts" at a high level for every student.