By Rob
In a comment on my recent blog post Tom asks: "How can we rewrite the federal education bill so that it actually helps student learn?" This is a huge question. The difficult issues of funding, evaluation, accountability, standards, and testing must be addressed in a politically feasible manner. I don’t know what is feasible but I'd advocate for these ideas-
Standards: I support national standards. As a population we are more mobile than ever and there should not be a drastic difference in the curricular content among states. This requires a level of monitoring and evaluation of states and educational systems. Currently this evaluation and monitoring is done by comparing the separate standardized tests in each state. Although these tests are given to every student multiple times throughout their schooling it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions since these tests vary in rigor and content. Our testing system needs reform.
Testing: Evaluation and monitoring of education systems is necessary for oversight and informed policy decisions. However this does not require the current two week assessment window, every child tested, a huge financial cost, lost instructional time, and enormous pressure on educators and students. Instead this should be done with a smaller randomized sample of students and less impact and intrusion on instruction.
Summative tests, currently the HSPE and MSP (sort of), are assessments of learning given at the end of a particular educational stage. Passing these tests is necessary for students to receive credits or in some cases progress to the next grade. Presently these are a part of a broken testing system. With rare exception, the students who come into the tenth grade performing far below grade level are the ones who are not going to pass the High School Proficiency Exam.
This idea isn’t new but I support summative tests at grade 3, 5, 8, 10, and 12. Students should not exit that grade until they are proficient. How can a fifth grade teacher instruct a student on comparing and contrasting an author’s inferred message when the student is struggling to sound out every third word? How can an eighth grade math teacher approach the Pythagorean Theorem with a student who struggles to multiply?
I’ve heard teachers say (myself included) I could teach 35 students if they came to me proficient in the previous year’s content. Let’s go with this idea-
It begins with half day Pre-K for all students and full day kindergarten. Before they leave kindergarten they need to know their letter sounds, numbers, reading behaviors, and should be able to read and discuss the events in a predictable text. Those who are proficient enter a first grade class capped at 24 students (35 is too many first graders for any teacher no matter how academically proficient the kids are). Those who are approaching proficiency enter a first grade class capped at 16. Those far below proficiency enroll in a class capped at 12.
Schools would use their ongoing formative assessment in grades 1,2,4,6,7,9, and 11 to reconfigure classes and to carry the model forward. The student who enters second approaching standard but exits meeting standard would enroll in the third grade class with the highest student-teacher ratio.
This model has imbedded funding implications. The schools with the highest performing students would have higher class sizes and would be cheaper to staff as long as they continued to maintain high student performance. The schools with lower performing students, ostensibly with underserved populations, would have a lower teacher-pupil ratio and would receive more funding.
This model is not without its challenges. Schools would need to take great care not to track students by providing some students with continual remediation while others engage in higher order thinking. I believe smaller numbers of students is important when serving struggling students in reading and math it is also important for students not to be ability grouped for other content areas.
Can somebody tell me why this wouldn't be an improvement? Maybe this idea isn’t ready to be written into law but couldn’t congress earmark some funding so some districts could try it?
I agree Tracy. I was held back in first grade. I believe it was the most important decision my parents ever made regarding my education. That wasn’t the end of my learning struggles but I was much better prepared to learn after repeating that grade. I was more mature and new learning was easier to grasp. Schooling was always difficult. I think it was college where I actually learned how to learn but thankfully I was able to do good enough through high school to earn admittance into college (barely).
But I am positive had I advanced without repeating a grade I would have been lost academically as many of my friends were. Had I not repeated I would have had almost no chance at college. I never felt any shame about being held back. In fact it was pretty cool to earn my driver’s license before most of my classmates.
But if a child can’t learn to read in the earlier grades they will be unable to read to learn in the upper grades. Often the upper grade teachers are not well prepared to differentiate their instruction to the extent necessary meet the needs of their most struggling students.
Let’s get the students to a proficient level to ensure success in the following grades.
It cracks me up every year, on the last day of school, when I pass out report cards and the kids all rip them open, looking to see if they passed. The greatest irony is the kids don’t know. They still think I can hold them back. I try to use this to my advantage – I might suggest they won’t be ready for 6th grade and may need spend another year with me in 5th grade if they don’t work harder. But, I also know that look when they realize that everyone passed – even the kid who missed a third of the school year, never did any homework, or a school project, and needs extensive support. I’m guessing they wise up to this pretty quickly after elementary school.
We do our students a huge disservice by not expecting them to meet certain standards, and move them along to the next grade level regardless of their performance. Having watched one girl and her mom fight for her to repeat the 5th grade, I know that we claim the greatest reason for this is social. “But won’t kids tease her?” was repeated by everyone I talked to to help her reenroll. Her mom had to write letters, and both of them had to attend several meetings in order for them to convince school officials to let her stay. When asked about what she’ll do when kids tease her, I saw her look at the principal dead in the eye and say, “I will walk away. That doesn’t matter to me. … I want to stay in 5th grade because I know I’m behind and I want to learn more now so I can do better in 6th grade.” She’s now in 6th grade and doing great. Every time I see her she’s smiling. And, no one’s teasing her.
Isn’t it just as likely that these students will be teased for their inability to read or multiply? In a class with too many students, some of whom with far below grade level skills, it’s nearly impossible to get these kids up to grade-level. These are the students who slip through the cracks and who drop out of school. That seems to me to be much worse than the possibility of teasing.
Rob, I like many of your ideas. I will need to consider them for a few days to think about I intended outcomes and then decide if those outcomes are (a) negative or (b) worse than what exists.
I am especially fond of the idea that students do not move on to the next grade or course level if they are not proficient. It does make sense. It is how levels work. I cannot be a rock climber who leads 5.11 climbs (tough) if I have not worked my way and shown proficiency with level 5.8 (easy) to 5.10 (challenging) climbs. This is just my own personal example of how this idea of gate-keeping works in my life. Everyone can think of an example: medicine, sports, martial arts…however, we do not enforce the same reasoning in schools. I ask the same question — why not?
I wonder if families and students would be more successful, or at least motivated to do so, if there was the option of not promoting. It would clearly make obvious the students with needs as Johnny, an 18-year-old in 7th grade) would be clear.
In my district students are moved on to the next grade regardless of skill. For example, a freshman who is not working at a freshman or above level is still moved on to sophomore English and is only offered the freshman class again as a junior. Odd? I guess a student does not need 9th grade English to do 10th grade.
When I queried about this, it came down to classes and “the master schedule” and the kids have to be somewhere. It just seems like the approach does not match the want.
I just wish there was a way. One way is to get families involved in holding their students accountable–in even the worst school, my kids will succeed because I will see to it. In my house teachers teach, students learn, and parents provide support and follow through at home.
Thanks for your kind words Connie. Over the past few days I’ve been thinking more and more about this. I realize the need to avoid stigmatizing students by placing them in the manner I suggest. But I doubt that stigmatization is worse than passing a student year after year for them to only fall further behind. And that student must face, and likely fail, test after test, course after course. If that was my reality day after day I think I’d learn to hate school.
Rob,
I so admire your passion. Your proposal makes so much sense … which is why it will probably not happen. I teach high school EBD students, a few of whom decode at a 2nd to 3rd grade level, and are required, as freshmen, to take AP Human Geography. It doesn’t make sense.