High School Should Not be a GPA Competition

       You may need good grades to get accepted to college.  But what you really need is good learning (and a good ability to learn) to graduate from college.  Lots of people go to college, but not a lot of people graduate from college.  A study completed in 2015 found that only 52.9% of students who began college in 2009 had earned a college degree by 2015.  This means that even if we allow students an additional two years to complete a 4-year degree, we are still have only barely half of the students graduating from college.  (Imagine the outcry if the high school graduation rate was 50%!)

       Another study has found that one reason for this dismal college graduation rate is a lack of preparation in secondary schools.  As a educator with 30 years of secondary school experience, I would suggest that it isn't so much that we don't prepare students well, but instead (perhaps) we struggle in our communication with students (and with their parents) when we talk about their actual academic ability.

       First of all, our grading system probably doesn't tell the whole story.  Grades are often the primary communication tool that a school has with its students (and their parents) about how well they are doing.  High grades imply high ability and low grades imply low ability.  But is this always true?  And what to medium grades imply?  We don't have a uniform method for determining grades from school district to school district, so does a "B" mean the same thing in every high school in America?

       Secondly, we have high school graduation requirements that are developed in each state in the United States.  Different states have different requirements; although there may be similarities.  But the bigger issue (to me) is:  Is "Graduating from high school" the same as "Being prepared for college"?  Should we have one set of criteria that says "This is sufficient for high school graduation." and another set of (higher level) criteria that says "This is sufficient for good preparation for college."  I think a lot of people feel that if they graduate from high school, then they are prepared for college-level work.  But this isn't always true.

       Hence, high school should not be a place where we only care about getting good grades and getting a high Grade Point Average (GPA).  That might be good enough to get you recognized in high school; and good enough to get accepted to college.  But students who only know how to get good grades without an accompanying ability to learn, will struggle in college.

       Everything in life isn't a competition.  Your education is one of these things.  It doesn't matter if you come in first place.  What matters is that you learn well.

Learning and Thinking - (getting the right answer isn't good enough anymore)

       Learning and thinking have always been closely linked.  But sometimes, in our schools, we only achieve the appearance of learning--often accompanied by very little thinking.  This problem has been recognized by educators for a long time.  In recent years, however, we have been addressing this issue on various fronts.

       Let me begin by explaining what I mean by the term Appearance of Learning.  This is when students get good grades, but their actual learning is very low.  The grade to the students and to their parents makes it appear as if they have learned a lot, but the attainment of those grades may have been based partly on non-academic measures such as good behavior or mere compliance with rules such as turning in homework on time.  This is a problem because when students move on to more complicated coursework that requires previous knowledge, they struggle due to never actually learning the earlier content in the first place.

     Over the past few years, there has been a stronger attempt to balance the need for teaching skills (such as solving an equation) with the need for teaching conceptual understanding (such as using an equation to solve a problem).  This sort of "teaching" is different from when our students' parents were in school--a time in which just-getting-the-answer might have seemed good enough.  Today we know that this isn't good enough.  Students going to college and students going to work need skills and knowledge beyond merely doing what they are told to do.  Today's world demands more from our citizens.

       Our schools recognize this need and we are trying to make changes to address this challenge.  It's hard to change a system of 100,000 schools, 50,000,000 students, and 3,000,000 teachers.  But (indeed) this change is already happening.  What we used to call a "computer room" is now just about any classroom in the building.  Classrooms with students sitting in nice, neat, straight rows that discouraged collaboration among students have been replaced with classrooms with tables or desks arranged in groups to encourage students to work together and ask questions of each other and learn together.  Grades for non-academic behaviors (mentioned above) are strongly discouraged so that a student's grade can more accurately reflect his/her ability in the content.  Finally, student engagement strategies and growth mindset strategies are constantly being discussed and implemented.  These reflect our knowledge of the best way that students learn.  No longer do we expect everyone to learn strictly by listening to the teacher and taking notes.

       Indeed, the change to an educational system that requires more from our high school graduates is well underway.  The past is in the past and we're not going back.  Those that choose not to change risk creating a generation that is ill prepared for the challenges that they will face.  Learning, thinking, reasoning, and problem solving will be more and more integrated into our schools.

       You're welcome.

Preparing Our Students for College and/or Careers

       "College and Career" has become the new buzzword in American high schools.  We want to prepare students to be ready for the social and academic demands of college; and--for students who go to college and don't go to college--we want to prepare our students for the demands of being in a working environment.  This has become a rallying cry for our P-12 school system because of so many surveys, studies (also see this study) and articles that have touted how unsuccessful our schools have been at accomplishing this goal.

       Certainly many recent high school graduates (and their parents) can speak from personal experience.  They completed high school and received their diploma, but they couldn't do the same in college.  Among students that began college in 2007, less than 40% completed their Bachelor's degree by 2011.  Even if you give them another two years the college graduation rate is still very low--59.4% (source).  Employment rates for high school graduates may (certainly) be affected by general conditions of employment in society, however employers often have serious concerns about the readiness that recent high school (and college) graduates have for the workplace.  So what should be done to better prepare students for college and careers?

       First let's define the problem that is faced by our public schools.  In a (very) broad sense, we need to be everything for everyone.  We need to prepare the rich kids and the poor kids, the learning disabled and the academic superstars, the sports kids and the theatre kids and the band kids.  And we need to prepare them for community college, for 4-year colleges, for selective and ivy-league colleges, as well as for certification in cosmetology and welding and mechanics.  Additionally, we want them to be able to express themselves in writing, verbally, and online.  We want them to know that it is important to be on-time, to be polite, to be a learner (for jobs and for college), to be wise with money and credit, to make good decisions.

       Hence, our public schools are tasks to develop rules and policies and requirements for everyone even though everyone isn't following the same path after high school.  So we have to find a balance between what's necessary for most or all students with what's probably really, really helpful for some of the students.  For instance, mathematics is important, but should we require all students to take and pass (and know) Algebra 2?  Financial Literacy is important, but do middle school students need to learn about home mortgages?  Finding the right balance can be tough.


       The other issue is that too many students (and parents) view high school as just a list of requirements to complete.  The idea of "learning" is too far removed from the idea of "getting-a-grade".  How do we help students to see the value of what they are learning in the midst of a system that constantly "rates" students with grades?  Too many people feel that school is merely another one of life's competitions in which there are few winners.  How does this prepare students for their life after high school.  Therefore, our P-12 schools are also tasked with helping students to appreciate the learning and to increase their understanding of their abilities to learn.

       Some of this can be done with requirements from school districts and from state education agencies.  But, it seems to me, that some of this requires a societal view of school as preparing students for after school.  We need parents to support this view; we need television to support this view; we need law-makers to support this view.  College and career readiness is a big job and it requires a big response from all of us.

High School Graduation and Beyond

       May and June is the time in the school year when we think and hear a lot of graduation.  High school and college students are graduating; completing one important life event and moving on to the next.  It's exciting, it's a happy time, it's a time to celebrate!

       As a nation, we have a lot to celebrate because we have seen a rise in the high school graduation rates over the past few years and that's a very good thing for our nation.  In the 2013 - 2014 school year, the high school graduation rate was 82.3%--an increase of over three percentage points from the 2010 - 2011 school year.

       Our society demands a workforce that is willing and able to continually learn and to use the knowledge of past learnings.  Students who succeed beyond high school are the people who understand that their ability to do a job is not dependent on the grades they earned in high school as much as it is on their desire to continually learn and to do their best.  We need thinkers and doers and believers.  While high school graduation is a big step (and an important step), it is still only one step.  Those students who were only successful in "playing school" and earning grades without any concern for learning will find it difficult to succeed in college or the workforce in places where thinking and problem solving is necessary.

       Sometimes it seems like we put too much on our schools.  We teach courses, but we also teach how to work together, how to get along with others, how to learn, how to struggle, how to accept responsibility.  No one gets a grade for these things; no one is denied a diploma for not attaining these traits.  But those that lack the ability to do these things often struggle to live in a society that doesn't always give you second chances; a place where breaking the rules have real consequences and no one is there to remind you what to do and when to do it.

       We all get one chance to make the most of our 13 years of K-12 education.  After that, the number of opportunities rise with the number of decisions.  It's not enough to do what you're told; just ask those that barely graduated high school.

Helping Students with Learning Disabilities is Common Practice

       In my lifetime, the transformation in public schools towards helping students with learning disabilities has been incredible.  We've gone from self-contained classrooms--in which these students rarely or never interacted with their peers, to full inclusion--in which, today, it is rare for almost any classroom to not have a student with a learning disability.  We used to call it "Mainstreaming"; but now we just call it normal.  Teachers from the 1970's and 1980's would have never imagined a world in which this was possible.  They never had the training that our teachers have today.

       Teachers know that the sort of strategies that help our Special Education students are just good teaching strategies that help all students.  We are better (now) at teaching students who might be weak in reading or mathematics (and don't have a learning disability) than we were in the past because of our training for Special Education students.  Every school has a Special Education department chair or specialist that works with a team of teachers that assist students with learning disabilities AND help to train teachers on best practices.  These students have special learning plans that we call Individual Education Plans (or IEP for short) that give them goals to reach.

       Every year we look at data that measures the learning of our students with IEPs and we consider ways to increase their achievement.  Gone are the days when these students were made to feel that couldn't learn and they spent their days doing basic reading and math skills.  Companies outside of our public school system have developed software and resources and programs designed to help these students to reach their potential.

       The story of our special Special Education students is (indeed) a success story of our public schools.  It was a huge problem and we figured out a way to make it a much smaller problem.  There are lots of young adults in our society today that proudly hold their high school graduation certificate thanks to our public school's efforts to identify their learning disability and to find a way to help them to learn.

       This success story gives me hope that our public schools will solve today's issues:  increasing the achievement of our poor students, better education for our English Language Learners, raising the high school graduation rate without compromising our high standards, and eliminating the achievement gaps that exist between certain student groups.  These are huge problems and every one of them has a solution.  I believe that we have already begun to address these issues.  And I believe that when my students are my age they will look back on the early years of the 21st century be proud of the accomplishments of our public schools.

Why Do You Remember Your SAT Score?

       What's your social security number?  What is your phone number?  How tall are you?  When were you born?  What did you get on your SATs?  Huh??  Why is your SAT score is a number that you memorize every bit as much as your phone number?  I can't find any survey data that says the percentage of adults who recall their SAT score (from among adults who have taken the SAT), but my own anecdotal evidence suggests that it is very high.  I dare say that a far majority--maybe more than 75%--of adults who have taken the SAT more than 20 years ago can still recall their score today.

       Why?

        Why is this number, this score--which has no power whatsoever in lives of people in their 30s and 40s--so ingrained in our memories?  It's just a number that (years ago) described our ability to do high school mathematics and our knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.  It won't get us a raise or a promotion twenty-plus years later.  There's no college admission counselor to impress when you're in your late 30s.   We're certainly not going to get any reward or trophy or recognition of any kind.

       So why is your SAT score so important to you that you remember it for your whole life?  Why?  I have a theory....  At the time we took the SAT, everyone around us made a big deal about it.  It was billed as the most important test we will ever take.  They said, "Your life depends on it."  (Or something to that effect.)  It was like training for the Olympics.  The test date was on our mind for weeks before.  We thought and thought and thought about it.  We worried about it.  It was a sort of a milestone in our young lives; like getting our driver's license.  We might have taken it more than once because someone said that that was a good idea.  It was an accomplishment akin to graduating from high school or running a mile in six minutes or going out on your first date.

       I think that taking the SATs was billed as such a huge event in our lives, that most of us figured it was important enough to remember our scores.  But, I fear, that it also produced a generation of people that valued test scores over actual learning.  Today in education, we are trying to change this thinking.

       Today educators value frequent formative assessment over the results of unit tests and final exams.  We value multiple data points over the "one big test".  We value a combination of conceptual understanding and procedural knowledge over the mere regurgitation of facts.  Learning and the measurement of learning has come a long way.  Some colleges don't even use the SAT as a consideration for admission.  Others use it as one of many factors for making the admission decision.

       Aside from the college admission process, your SAT score really isn't very important in your life.  Americans are competitive people.  We like to win.  We don't want people to pass us on the highway; we don't want to lose a promotion to someone else; we don't want our lawn to look worse than our neighbor's lawn.  We have to stop competing for everything.  Your SAT score does not define who you are.  You won't "win" or "lose" anything because of your SAT score; especially twenty-plus years after you take the SAT.

       There are lots of experiences that most adults would gladly like to forget about their high school experiences.  Your SAT score should be one of them.

PARCC Results are all about Learning

       2010 - Common Core Standards go public
       2010 to 2014 - School systems throughout the country align courses to these updated standards
       2014 - PARCC Field Test takes place in all "PARCC" states
       2015 - First full administration of the PARCC assessments
       Fall 2015 - We get to see the results of the PARCC assessments

       I feel like I'm the only person who is happy to see the results from these new tests.  Once again, the press is constantly talking about bad results, bad tests, bad schools.  To me, these results are all about learning.  They tell us how well our students are learning based on the world-class standards that are being taught in our classrooms.  Isn't this what we really want???

       It doesn't help to compare our students to each other in their school or to the students in the school on the other side of town.  The comparison that matters is the comparison to the standards.  This comparison will help us to know if our children are ready for the academic demands of college level work and for the societal demands of a career.

       School is supposed to be about learning.  The PARCC results give us a measure of this learning.  This is a good thing.  Up until today, we've had far too many students graduating from high school and believing that they were ready for college only to face a harsh reality that their high school did not prepare them as well as they thought.  Too many students begin college and don't finish college.

       Today, thanks to PARCC results (and other data points), our students and their parents will get a true measure of their ability--as early as in third grade.  And there will be time while our children are still in P-12 school for them to get help and for them to raise their abilities.

       PARCC results are a good thing.  Learning is a good thing.

       Don't you want to know if your child's true level of learning?

Building the Academic Strength of Our Weakest Students

       School is about learning.  And most students do fine when it comes to learning what they need to learn in school.  For most students, its not a matter of passing or failing; its more a matter of learning very well or not learning so well.  But for some of our students, keeping up-to-speed in their reading, writing, and mathematics skills as they go through their middle and high school years is difficult.  As a public school system, a lot of effort is focused on helping these students to improve their skills.  This is an important mandate in every public school.

       We know from research that students who are below grade level in reading by the end of third grade often struggle with their reading skills throughout the rest of their P-12 schooling experience.  (link to study)  They are also more likely to leave school without a high school diploma.  Difficulties in learning mathematics have been similarly well documented.  Students with weak math skills also struggle in high school mathematics and are less likely to graduate from college (see here; go to chapter 3 on page 45).  It is because of these known consequences that schools make every effort to raise the skills, abilities, and understandings of students who are weak in reading, writing, and mathematics.

       At the heart of this effort is the struggle of understanding how these students think and how they learn.  Clearly, the "usual way" of teaching and learning is not working; and so schools look to other resources and teaching strategies to reach these students.  Understanding the best ways to motivate students to do their best in school (especially when they have experienced only failure in the past) is an important task for schools and teachers.  One excellent resource is the book Mindsets by Carol Dweck.  In it Dr. Dweck explains the psychology of how people perceive their abilities to learn.

       There is no shortage of intervention programs that are available to schools (at a cost) for the purpose of helping students to regain "grade-level" status.  Schools invest in these programs and train their teachers.  Some students show excellent improvement while others do not.  It is a constant challenge to find the best way to help our weakest students.  But it is a challenge that our public schools eagerly accept every day.

       Learning is for everyone and everyone can learn.  Building the skills of our weakest students is an important responsibility of our public schools--one that we take very seriously.

Graduation and Austin Cincotta

       A recent report from America's Promise Alliance on high school graduation rates reports that the United States High School Graduation Rate rose to 81.4% in 2013.  This represents a steady increase over the two prior years--a promising trend toward the (albeit, lofty) goal of a 90% high school graduation rate by 2020.  Ninety percent?? Maybe.   By 2020??  Not likely.

       About 3.3 million students are expected to graduate from high school this year according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. When we talk about millions of high school graduates and their collective prospects in the working world and the college world, it's easy to look at broad trends and predict likely outcomes.  But when we look at individuals, we move to the realm of real people with real concerns, real emotions, and real dreams for the their future.

       One of this year's high school graduates is my son, Austin Cincotta.  He was born in the waning years of the 20th century and grew up in the early years of the digital age.  He never used a rotary phone and he never changed a TV channel by turning a dial on the television.  He's loves his family, is a good friend, has been a boy scout since first grade, plays multiple instruments, and is interested in robotics and motion pictures.  He is excited about graduating from high school and moving on to the next phase of life.

       As for me, I am very excited for him and for the types of experiences that he will have over the next few years.  He will experience the freedoms and responsibilities of college while he thinks about his future endeavors.  He will be frustrated by meeting requirements that don't seem to have a direct link to his interests, and he will thrive in the areas that do.  He will have support from family and friends and (hopefully) from his school and his teachers.

     Our P-12 system along with family and community has done its best to prepare my son for his life after high school.  There will be ups and downs.  Ultimately his ability to make decisions, to meet goals, and achieve are up to him.  Still, I have the following hopes:

• I hope he is willing to ask questions when he doesn't understand something and he needs to understand it
• I hope he chooses right over wrong, even when right isn't comfortable
• I hope he understands the value of hard work and sees (or "imagines" if he can't see it) the benefits on the other side of hard work
• I hope he takes some chances that may be based on good criteria, but who's endpoint cannot always be known at the beginning.
• I hope he loves what he does

       When he was little, people always told me that I couldn't protect him from all of life's dangers.  I still can't.  I can try, but I can't do it all of the time.  It is his time to face the joys and dangers of life.

       Ladies and gentleman of the world, I present my son, Austin Cincotta--quite possibly the most precious and special high school graduate this year!

       Be nice to him.  He's still learning.

The Challenge of Educating Poor Students - Part 2

       American Public Schools face many and varied challenges.  Funding, equity, and public support to name a few.  On the top of this list of challenges, I would include: The Achievement of Poor Students.

       It is easy to understand the underpinnings of this problem, and yet it is extremely complex to succeed in overcoming this problem.  The problem stems from two indisputable facts:

1. Poor students consistently demonstrate lower achievement than their non-poor peers.
2. The proportion of poor students in our nation's public schools is over 50% and is growing.

       I will examine this challenge from three perspectives:

1. Poor students who have succeeded in our schools
2. Understanding the special and different needs of poor students 
3. Expert advice on successfully educating poor students

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The Challenge of Educating Poor Students - Part 2

Understanding the Special and Different Needs of Poor Students

       People who grow up in a middle class (or higher) home environment may take for granted simple life experiences that poor students and their families never experience.  Well-meaning teachers may have never experienced living in a poor environment and working with poor people until their first year in the classroom.  Particularly since school teachers must have a college degree and it is rare for poor people to earn a college degree, teachers are generally from a middle class (or higher) background.  

       Here is a short list of challenges for most poor students:

1) Regular, quality medical care

       

       Middle class families generally have a regular doctor for their children.  When children are sick, they go to the doctor and they get better in a couple of days.  When poor students get sick, they don't have access to a doctor or to medicine; this makes them sicker.  When they are too sick to come to school, they generally miss more school days because it takes them longer to get better.  And if they come to school when they are sick, it is harder for them to concentrate on their school work.       

      A lack of medical care leads to other issues that are more prevalent among the poor such as untreated ear infections and hearing loss issues, greater exposure to lead, and a higher incidence of asthma (source).  All of these health issue contribute to higher absenteeism and lower engagement with class lessons at school.

2) Small vocabulary when they start school

       Students from poor households hear and use considerably less words than students from middle class households.  This puts poor students at an academic disadvantage from their first day of kindergarten.  Students who are less able to use words to express their feelings and to explain their thinking because frustrated and soon shy away from activities that involve reading because they don't want to appear less able than their peers.

      Opportunities to increase each students' personal vocabulary must be of primary importance for poor students.  We know from multiple studies that students who are not reading on grade level (or above) by third grade have a reduced chance of graduating from high school. (source)  This is a significant risk factor for poor students.  In 2013, the overall national high school graduation rate was 81.4%  but the rate for poor students was only 73.3%.

3) Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

       Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, and her book Mindset has taken the education world by storm over the past few years.  And so it should.  She has proved that students who believe that they are not smart will refuse to try to succeed.  This is the belief of the "Fixed" mindset; the one that says, "I have a fixed capacity for learning and no matter how hard I try I won't get any smarter."  In fact, nobody has a brain that isn't capable of learning more.

       But poor students are more likely to believe in the Fixed Mindset because they are less likely to see the many opportunities that will be offered to them in the future beyond high school and college graduation.  Poor students need to be praised for their effort and teachers need to point out when their thinking has led to a great solution to a problem.  Students with Fixed Mindsets believe that they just got lucky whenever they get a good test grade.  They need to understand that it is their effort and their learning that led to that good test grade.

       Teachers at every level (elementary, middle, and high school) can help poor students to succeed.  But we have to understand the deficiencies that they bring to school and we cannot label every lack of effort as "laziness".  Some poor students do succeed; they are the lucky ones.  They probably had great teachers and caring parents or caring authority figures at home.  Overcoming these deficiencies is a very difficult job for our public schools; but understanding the problem is certainly the first step.

       All teachers should receive some training in the education of poor students.

Learning, Smoking, and The Long Arc of Change

       When I think about the huge job of improving education outcomes among our students (especially our poor students) in America, I think about the amazing turn-around in behavior about smoking over my lifetime.

       It is nothing short of a modern-day miracle that smoking has declined so dramatically in the United States over the past 50 years.  In 1965, 42.4% of U.S. adults were smokers.  By 2003, that number was cut in half and in 2013 we were down to 17.8%.  And, of course, our population has risen quite a bit over this timeframe from 194 million people in 1965 to over 320 million people today.

       No one in the United States in 1965 would have ever believed that Americans would give up their love for smoking so dramatically.  Even with today's relatively low rates of smoking, nearly 70% of current smokers want to stop smoking.  It is nothing short of amazing the way this addictive behavior has changed in the United States in just a couple of generations.

       I believe that our public schools can look at this incredible event, this long arc of changed behavior, and that we can use it as a lesson for tackling the equally difficult task of improving the educational outcomes of our students.  We can examine the efforts that took place (and continue to take place) that convinced people that smoking is bad for you; and (perhaps) we can undertake similar efforts in our public schools.

       First of all, there was a national effort to inform the public of the dangers of smoking.  This began with the first surgeon general's report that provided proof that smoking was bad for your health.  Of course, there were lots of people of that didn't believe the contents of this report.  I'm sure there were people who pointed to relatives and friends who lived well into old age and smoked their whole life--and, therefore, refused to believe that smoking was bad for your health.  But more and more information came out from public and private sources about the dangerous health risks of smoking and eventually it became very hard for people to believe that smoking wouldn't harm their health.  As smokers died from lung cancer and other diseases, people began to link these deaths to their habit of smoking.  This gave people a personal connection to the ill effects of smoking and it convinced them to never smoke or to quit smoking.  As they grew up and had children of their own, this knowledge of the evils of smoking was passed on to the next generation.  And so, what started as a national effort from government sources, slowly became a combined effort of government and private resources that worked together to bring down the rates of smoking in America.


       I believe that a similar combined effort is underway in our public schools today.  We have a government that believes in the value of education and is dedicated in improving the education of our citizens.  We also have many private efforts underway that are striving to do the same.  We also have segments of our population that don't believe that education is important.  As with the smoking example, they point to friends and relatives that quit school in eighth grade and grew up perfectly fine.  But (as with the smoking example), we also have generations of parents that have regrets of not doing better and trying harder when they were in high school.  They look at their peers who went on to college or some sort of vocational training and now have higher-paying jobs.

       I believe that we can change the behavior of Americans toward the value of education--and all of the hard work that this entails--over the next generation.  I believe that we can see a country with higher high school graduation rates and higher college graduation rates.  And when this happens, we will reap the benefits of a more educated society.  We will see less crime, less people on welfare, less obesity, and a strong economy.  And I believe that this will happen within the lifetimes of our current high school students.

       We can do it.  We have done it in other areas of our society and we can do in education too.  We must do better and we will.

We Must Do Better - Part 1

       This post starts a three-part series titled We Must Do Better.  I love public schools; and there is a lot to cheer about when it comes to the ability of public schools to prepare students for their futures.  But there are three major areas in which public schools must improve if we want to see ourselves as providing a world-class education to our nation's children.

       1) We must raise the achievement of poor children.

       2) We must increase graduation rates.

       3) We must provide continuous, high-quality professional development to our teachers.

       It isn't that there aren't other areas that can and should improve in our public schools.  But improvement in these three areas are absolutely critical if we truly want our school system to be exceptional and of the highest quality for all of our students.

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We Must Do Better

Part 1 - Achievement of Poor Children

       It's easy to find data and information on the topic of Low Achievement Among Poor Students.  (see Jensen, Honey, dosomething.org)  Few professional educators and very few education researchers disagree about the effects of poverty on a child's education.  And children living in poverty in the U.S. will soon become the majority of our public school students.

       The list of obstacles for children living in poverty is long and difficult to overcome.  (Which is why school system continue to struggle to solve this problem.)  Here's the short list:

• higher absenteeism
• when poor kids get sick, they tend not to go to the doctor; then they get sicker and it takes longer for them to get well
• higher dropout rates
• poor kids need to work to make money for the family
• poor kids see school as "not for them"
• academically behind from the start
• poor kids tend to have parents that didn't go to college or didn't finish high school
• poor kids have less books in their home and parents read to them less than their non-poor peers
• poor kids also tend to actually hear less words prior to entering school which adds to their academic shortcomings
• less than 30% of students in the bottom quarter of incomes enroll in college and less than 50% of them graduate.

(source for all of these bullet points is here)

       In the past decade, public schools have shone a light on the academic achievement of poor students--which is a good start.  We cannot address a problem unless we recognize it as a problem.  But the next step--improving the achievement of poor students--is still a struggle for most schools and school systems.

       The Educational Testing Service (ETS) Center for Research on Human Capital and Education put out a report in July 2013 that laid out seven strategies that education policymakers can address that would have an effect on the problem of increasing achievement among poor children.  There strategies are:

1. Increasing awareness of the incidence of poverty and its consequences 
2. Equitably and adequately funding our schools
3. Broadening access to high-quality preschool education
4. Reducing segregation and isolation
5. Adopting effective school practices
6. Recognizing the importance of a high-quality teacher workforce
7. Improving the measurement of poverty

       These strategies require a national response. This is something that can happen in America.  I know this because it has happened before.  Civil Rights for African Americans; Women's Right to Vote; Reduction of the Prevalence of Smokers; wearing seat belts.  All of these things were (at one time in America) considered impossible dreams.  Yet a national effort that lasted decades led to each of them becoming a reality.

       We can do the same thing with the education of children living in poverty.  We can and we must.  We have a moral responsibility to help our most vulnerable citizens.  We must do better than we are doing now.  For us as a country; and for every individual citizen.  We can begin to see the reduction of this problem in our lifetime; and the elimination of this problem in our children's lifetimes.  

       This is a huge problem that can be fixed.

       We must do better.

Change What You Do (or else improvement will never happen)

     It seems we are constantly hearing and reading statistics that say American students are not achieving very well.  We rank low in reading and mathematics compared to other industrialized countries.  A quarter of our children never graduate from high school and the graduation numbers are even worse in college.  Our poor children and learning disabled children and minority children have lower rates of achievement than our white and economically advantaged children.

     All of this is true.  And we don't like it; and we want it to change.  We want all students to be successful; we want all students to graduate from high school; we want all students to be grow to be capable, responsible adults.  But this is a difficult problem--as is evidenced from the years and years of data with very little improvement on these fronts.

     Something has to change.  We cannot keep teaching the same way we have always taught and expect different results.  Teachers give their best everyday.  It isn't a matter of "not trying" or "not doing our best".  We have to do things differently.

     If I knew the solution(s) to this problem, I would tell you.  The best I can do is offer my ideas:

     (1)  We need to instruct students in a way that they respond to; we need to know what they "get" and what they don't get--so we can help them.
     (2)  We need to use more technology in a more effective way.
     (3)  We need to be more concerned about learning and less concerned about grades.
     (4)  We need to use valuable classtime for addressing student questions and much, much less classtime forcing students to complete worksheets.  (If they already know how to do the work, why force them to show us again and again and again.  If they don't know how to do the work, why force them to do ten problems that they can't do.)
     (5)  We need to increase student engagement every minute of every class.  There should be less teacher-talk and more student-talk.

     What are your five best ideas for changing teaching?  If you could do anything in your classroom to help students to learn better, what would you do?  We have to do something different if we want different (and better) results.

Three Wishes for Education

     As I begin my 27th year in education, I would like to look ahead and think about the three biggest things that I would like to see in education in the United States.  These things may happen before I retire (still a long way off), they may happen before I die (hopefully a longer way off [!] ); but I hope they happen.  So rub the lamp; here are my three wishes.

#1) Poor students learn just as much and just as well as rich students

     We are constantly bombarded with data that shows poor students having lower achievement than their richer peers.  We (in education) know why this happens.  It's not just that they lack money for adequate, nourishing food.  Students from poor families come to school in kindergarten already behind their richer peers.  They have less books in their home.  They have a higher percentage of parents who didn't finish high school and/or never went to college.  They live in more dangerous neighborhoods compared to rich kids.  They don't always have a space at home to study or to do homework.  They don't always have an adult in the home who can help with homework.  When they get sick, they don't go to the doctor as much or as quickly as richer kids; so they get sicker and they miss more school.

     The list goes on and on.  And it's all true.  Poor students have many, many disadvantages when it comes to schooling and learning.  Add to this list that all of their teachers went to college, graduated from college, and probably (most of their teachers) were never poor--since the percentage of poor students going to and completing college (still) remainings embarrassingly low for Americans.  So many of their teachers have little or no experience at what it's like to be grow up in a poor household.

     And so, for all of these reasons (and more) poor students in America have lower achievement than rich students.  I feel that America's public schools have a moral responsibility to these children to see to it that they get a great education and that they succeed in education.  It is our responsibility to prepare these students for the world that they will inherit.  It is our responsibility to see to it that each and every poor student does not continue the cycle of poverty but ends poverty for themselves and for their children.

     It is my number one wish that our public schools do a better job with our most vulnerable students.  In fact, we must do better.

#2 Learning is more important than getting grades

     It probably isn't fair to say this, but a lot of the time I feel that so many of our students are more concerned about getting grades than they are about learning.  I hope that isn't true for the majority of our students, but it certainly seems to be true for many of our students.  We created a monster when it comes to grading and it is out of control.

     Students stay up late and worry endlessly not about whether or not they will learn something, but instead, whether or not they will get this or that grade.  It has led us to a system where many students are great at (what I call) "playing school".  They do what they're told, they read the book, they turn in their homework, they take the test, they get the grade.  And one week later they couldn't tell you anything they learned from that unit of study.

     This is a major reason why so many students begin college and so few finish college.  Heck, this is a major reason why so many students do great in (say) Algebra 1 and do lousy in Algebra 2.

     We have to do a better job and emphasizing the learning and de-emphasizing the grading.  Students need to be rewarded for actually learning.  When they do, they will feel a great sense of accomplishment and will celebrate the learning--and care less about the grading.

     We don't give grades when children learn to ride a bike or play the piano or do a magic trick or hit a baseball.  Yet children find great enjoyment in doing these things--all without grades.  My second wish is for students to find enjoyment in learning--in conquering a difficult subject or a difficult learning task--and succeeding.

#3 All students graduate from high school

     The high school graduation rate in the United States is around 75%.  (Note: In our colleges, the graduation rate is even lower.)  This is a serious problem for our nation and is certainly a serious problem for the people who don't have a high school diploma.  The statistics for people without a high school diploma are awful.  Higher rates of unemployment; lower wages; higher percentages on welfare; poorer health; and (worst of all) a much higher chance that their children will not graduate from high school.

     There have been studies that tell us that many high school dropouts leave school for non-academic reasons.  They don't feel a connection to the school or they don't  feel as if any of the adults care about whether they stay in school or leave.

     We have to take a hard look at what we can do in our schools to keep students in school and to help them to graduate.  I know that this is being done in a lot of places--this isn't (unfortunately) a new problem.  But our economy in the United States is not kind to people who don't have a high school diploma.  This is a problem that can be solved and it will improve the lives of millions of young adults as well as improving the communities all over our country.

     These are my three wishes for education in the United States.  What are your three wishes?  Let me know.  Leave a comment or use the Twitter hashtag #ThreeWishesForEducation.

College and Career: (Or, Should It Be...College and/or Career???)

     Public Schools (at least in my state) are engaging in a big push called College and Career.  "We are preparing students for College and Career."  "We want students to be College and Career Ready."  It is a good slogan; and, let's face it, it makes sense.  It should be our job, as a public school system, to prepare students for the next phase in their life; whether it be College or Career.

     We do a lot to prepare students for college.  We offer Advanced Placement courses, we prepare students to take the SAT and the ACT.  We provide information about scholarships.  We hold College Fairs.  We allow students to take college courses while in high school--and earn (both) high school and college credit; we call this "duel-credit".

     We also do a lot to prepare students for careers.  We invite speakers to come to schools to talk about their work.  We have a Career Technology Center that prepares students for many different careers from Cosmetology to Carpentry to Engineering (and lots more).  We help to set up students in internships during the summer and (sometimes) during the school year.

     We do our best to honor our commitment to both college-bound students and career-bound students.

     The struggle comes as we try to make one set of rules for both of these populations.  Particularly academic rules.  Here is a recent article that questions if college is appropriate for everyone.  And here are some statistics about jobs with the potential for growth in the next ten years--and the amount of education needed for them.

     The real issue of concern is for the population of students that are weak academically, but very strong artistically--or they have a talent that doesn't require high levels of knowledge in math and science such as Culinary Arts or HVAC or writing fiction.  How should the public school system account for these students in our policies regarding high school graduation requirements?  That's a tough question.

   

     We know that earning a high school diploma affords our young people many advantages that are not available to people without a high school diploma.  Therefore, we take great strides to ensure that the opportunity to earn a high school diploma is available to all students.  But over the years, our efforts to increase the high school graduation rate in the United States have led to too many students who graduate from high school who are not ready for college (as seen in this graphic about college graduation rates in the fifty states of the United States).  So, in response to this concern, we have raised the standards so that high school graduates are better prepared for college.

     

     And so we are left with this difficult balancing act.  We want everyone to graduate from high school and we want everyone to be ready for college--if they choose to go to college.  Public schools serve everyone; and sometimes "serving everyone" leads to difficult decisions.  We know that education is the gateway to a better life for everyone and we take that responsibility very seriously.  Some students go directly to college and some go directly to careers, but all students need to be College and Career ready.