National Standards

There are many movements to reform education and many of them do nothing to develop creativity.  We are in a race for high scores in reading and math at the expense of creativity. Recently, Governors and state commissioners of eduction developed a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics for grades k-12.  According to their website,    

These standards define the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers so that they will graduate high school able to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing academic college courses and in workforce training programs. The standards are:

• Aligned with college and work expectations;
• Clear, understandable and consistent;
• Include rigorous content and application of knowledge through high-order skills;
• Build upon strengths and lessons of current state standards;
• Informed by other top performing countries, so that all students are prepared to succeed in our global economy and society; and
• Evidence-based.

Now the question is what exactly does the government want to do with these standards?  The Wall Street Journal on its editorial page sees national standards as a distraction from the work of firing teachers and handing out vouchers, but more importantly pointed out that monies from the Federal Government could end up being withheld for noncompliance

 With the Administration's blessing, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers have proposed a set of uniform K-12 math and reading standards for all states. Compliance will supposedly be voluntary, but Education Secretary Arne Duncan said states that support the effort will have a better chance of receiving Race to the Top money. And President Obama suggested that states that opt out risk losing millions of dollars in Title I grants for low-income students.

 I was raised in an Air Force family and we moved a lot.  I certainly see the sense in having national standards.  As a youngster some states were ahead of others and there was always a fear of being setback when your family moved to a new duty station.  However, as an educator I am in agreement with Tamim Anasary in Edutopias article From Education at Risk:Fallout from a Flawed Report

 Only on-site teachers can really make a broad ongoing assessment that gets at a range of achievements and takes the individual into account. By contrast, uniform standardized testing whose outcomes can be expressed as simple numbers allows someone far away to compare whole schools without ever seeing or speaking to an actual student. It facilitates the bureaucratization of education and enables politicians, not educators, to control schools more effectively.

NCLB has left a bad taste in my mouth for federal education mandates and I am fearful that the common core standards could become another mandate.  Just as we are a mobile society and need some standards across state lines, we are certainly a republic and our states and communities have aligned their education product nationally by adopting common curriculum created by educational organizations and through state development of benchmarks and standards.  Education corporations, specifically textbook companies have  gathered that information and created curriculum for our country.  Seems to me that is free market capitalism at work.

My  true fear is that as we work to create educational reform we are taking away the strength of our country.  The ability to create and innovate are not being encouraged in our schools.  Teachers should have the ability to create lessons based upon the needs of their students and local situations.  Children should be encouraged to explore and learn what interest them without being stuck in a timeline of instruction.  Unfortunately all of the reform to date is really based around the philosophy that teachers do not know what they are doing and the national standards are another method to undermine their authority and expertise.

What would happen if schools encouraged kindness?

Information about Kindness in Education
Teacher's Guide for Teaching Kindness
A to Z Teacher Stuff - Teacher Tips: Promoting Kindness
Random Acts of Kindness Lesson Plan for Teachers
Acts of Kindness | In Your Classroom

Thoughts from Yrisarri
Bella said, “They can make me come to school, but they can’t make me learn anything.”  This was 1994 and Bella was a 16 year old girl responding to my question of what her parents would think when I told them she did absolutely no work in my class.  Bella taught me about motivation, I had to work very hard and be very nice to Bella.  She wasn’t a problem student, she was very quiet, she just sat at her desk and reflected all period long.  In the end I won Bella over and she began to work, but only because I did not write her off and treated her decision not to work with respect, kindness finally won her over. 

I remember a third grade grade teacher in an elementary school where 1/2 of the students had to take her class.  She was always punishing children by isolating and belittling them.  Her message was that these bad little boys and girls have to be taught how to behave.  Yet, when treated with respect these same students responded with excellent behavior.

What brings these stories to mind was the news a couple weeks ago about an elementary principal who had written a letter mocking a second grade student’s ability to learn.  It was meant as a letter to his staff, but this kind of leadership encourages truly poor teachers.  Rather than discrediting an entire profession for failing test scores, let’s look beyond superficial evaluation methods and find out why our children are not motivated to get an education in a country that provides unlimited opportunities for those who succeed in our school systems.  The teachers I would like to see leave the profession are the ones who cause the Bellas to hate school, maybe she had the 3rd grade teacher who thought little boys and girls need to be taught how to behave!

Society seems to have become a place where calling names and discrediting others is more important that solving problems .  The data we are gathering in education is being used for finger pointing and punishment rather than evaluation and improvement.(Diane Ravitch: Education has become search and destroy mission and teachers are often the targets | Get Schooled )  It seems to me that rather than acquiesce to the lack of civility and inability to get along with others education should view this as a problem to tackle by treating students in a respectful manner. 

The competitive and punitive nature of our education system causes young children to behave in ways we can not fully appreciate.  One unkind word can change the course of a child’s thinking about how people should treat each other.  I would like to share a Chinese story that I think addresses this problem.

Chang Kung and the Golden Secret

Chang Kung was a good and kind grandfather with a very large family. He had so many children, grandchildren and great -grandchildren, that his house was full of people all of the time. His house had to grow larger to hold everyone, and so it became a collection of houses, side by side, in a big circle around a yard.

The unusual thing about Chang Kung's huge family wa s that nobody ever quarreled! The children never teased each other, or got into fights. The grown-ups never got mad at each other. They never scolded the children, or spanked them.

Stories about this family that never quarreled spread over all the countryside until even the Emperor heard about them. He said “I wonder is these stories are really true. I shall go find out.

The Emperor rode to Chang Kung's house in his sedan chair, carried on the shoulders of four men dressed in red. His guards carried long bows and arrows, and other attendants followed, pIaying flutes and harps.

The Emperor visited all the houses of the family of Chang Kung, going from room to room, talking to everyone he met. Finally, he said to Chang Kung, "It is true that no cross words are spoken within your walls. You must have a golden secret in order to keep so many people living together in such peace. I would like to know your secret. "

Old Chang Kung took a brush and ink and a bamboo tablet. He carefully wrote one word. Then he wrote the same word over and over, until he had written it a hundred times. This is the word he wrote.

The Emperor said, "You have written many words, but at the same time you have written only one word. "

Chang Kung said, "That one word is my golden secret. That one word is kindness, over and over without any ending. "

The Emperor was so pleased that he said, "Let all the families in China learn the golden secret of Chang Kung and his family!" The Emperor had pictures of Chang Kung painted so that people could hang them on their kitchen walls to remind them to keep the golden secret.

Standardized Testing is a Narrow Measure of Teacher Effectivenss

Interesting Websites
Xpeditions a National Geographic website with an interactive “museum” that takes you on geography journeys. Here you’ll climb a mountain, hover over the Earth, speed across Europe, visit an archeological dig, and even order sushi—plus games, animations, and more!
Thinkfinity.org   is the cornerstone of Verizon Foundation's literacy, education and technology initiatives. Their goal is to improve student achievement in traditional classroom settings and beyond by providing high-quality content and extensive professional development training. This free, comprehensive digital learning platform is built upon the merger of two acclaimed programs Verizon MarcoPolo and the Thinkfinity Literacy Network. 
Lifestyle will introduce children to the wonderful world of writing with four websites they will have fun exploring. 

Articles to Read 
Retaining Teacher Talent This article contains research from Learning Point Associates about teacher effectiveness.  The studies probe teachers for their views on what makes and effective teacher. 
Moms' Depression in Pregnancy Tied to Antisocial Behavior in Teens is a Science Daily article about a study with some surprising findings.  
Physical Education to Valuable to Sacrifice to Budget Cuts an article by Besty Hurd from Saginaw Michigan explaining the importance of PE to a community that just cut those programs from their school.   
Convergent Education  (You have to subscribe to be able to read this article) is a special report from ESchool News about the growing schism between students use of technology and the way schools want them to learn. 

In short, students no longer are limited to learning only in classrooms under the tutelage of certified instructors during designated school hours–and this change has profound implications for educators.

 Thoughts From Yrisarri
There has been much in the news lately about evaluating teachers as a core principle for educational reform.  Much of the discussion is politically driven as part of an effort to challenge educational unions and some of it comes from corporate effectiveness models.  All of this discussion leads one to believe the schools are full of bad teachers that we can not get rid of and that effective teachers have students with high test scores.  Evaluating teachers is an important aspect of the job and I have certainly met some who should not be teaching.  That does not mean we should develop narrow prescriptive tools for evaluation purposes. 

But what is an effective teacher and who determines which teachers are effective?

Our new policy makers want to create a one size fits all test for effective teachers,  student achievement on standardized tests.  If your students aren’t performing well on those tests you lose your job; if they are doing well you get a bonus.  This seems to me to be a narrow approach to a complex situation.  If that is all it takes to be an effective teacher let us just put all the kids on computers and let them study for the tests!

Teaching is a combination of skills and artistry that takes time to develop and should be measured in a more responsible manner.  Teachers must motivate groups of children and differentiate their learning to match their developmental needs.  Students are not products to be formed in molds but individuals with unique needs and wants to be counseled and given guidance.  The effective teacher connects with their students and helps each one to reach their potential.

Measuring a teachers effectiveness has to be done in the context of the community.  This does not mean we should not hold all learners to high standards, just that what is a high standard to some is not perceived to be so by others.  Expectations need to be realistic from student to student, school to school and community to community.  Teachers should not be judged in isolation, but as part of a team.  All the teachers who teach a child are responsible for his or her education, not just the teacher being evaluated.

If the aim of education is to develop learners into effective and productive citizens, you may not be able to evaluate a teacher until the students are adults and in the workplace.  Shouldn’t we expect our schools to develop healthy, happy adults who love to learn?  That is what I expect.   How do you measure a teachers ability to do that?

Sometimes things teachers do are not immediately learned.  How do yo measure the effectiveness of teachers who plant seeds that do not grow right away?  There are teachers who develop the social emotional skills of their students, those are just as important for their future as academics, but not easy to measure.  Are those bad teachers?

Why not allow the evaluation of teachers to be done by their customers, the community they serve?  What if parents were allowed to choose their children’s teacher or even their children’s school? Wouldn’t that be a pretty good indicator of what the community views as a good teacher?  How about allowing for peer review and student input?  How about improving that the process for hiring educators to insure that dedicated competent individuals become our children’s teachers.  Why not guarantee that a teacher can advance in salary and responsibility to insure better schools?   There are many ideas for measuring and improving teacher effectiveness.  Why do policy makers seem to be stuck on the narrow measure of teacher effectiveness based only on standardized testing?

Unfortunately education is under attack and has become highly politicized at the national and state levels.  Fears about the future, wars against unions, calls for narrow agendas, and misunderstanding about what teachers do all contribute to a climate that causes us to look for scapegoats for what is perceived to be a deteriorating education system. 

Evaluating our teachers is too important to allow policy makers and bureaucrats to create narrow systems of evaluation that measure only one aspect of a teacher’s work.  If we want better schools, then we must expand the discussion about how we will evaluate the job our teachers do.

 

National Standards

Websites for Learning
Funology has all kinds of acitivities for kids ages 5-8!!
Time for Kids - A powerful teaching tool, TIME For Kids builds reading and writing skills and is easily integrated across your curriculum, including social studies, science and math.
Discovery Kids is based on the Discovery Channel and has many interesting science and and nature activites and information.

Articles to Read
Differentiate Don't Standardize by Nel Noddings
"What do advocates of national standards expect to accomplish? Unless the ends sought are both significantly important and feasible, we should turn our attention to problems that are truly pressing, such as reducing the number of high school dropouts and curbing youth violence."
Debunking the Case for National Standards by Alfie Kohn
"I keep thinking it can’t get much worse, and then it does. Throughout the 1990s, one state after another adopted prescriptive education standards enforced by frequent standardized testing, often of the high-stakes variety. A top-down, get-tough movement to impose “accountability” began to squeeze the life out of classrooms."
We've Always Had National Standards by Diane Ravitch
"Most educators believe that the United States has never had national standards in education, but this is not correct. Without any action on the part of the federal government, we have indeed had standards in the past, and we have them now. They were not written in a document, nor are they now, but they are real nonetheless."
College and the Workforce: What 'Readiness' Means by Catherine Gewertz
"As the standards movement has evolved, one of its key questions has shifted. Instead of simply asking what students should know and be able to do to complete high school, educators and policymakers are now asking what students need to master to be prepared for the higher-level demands of college and career."
Teachers' Letters to Obama by Anthony Cody
"The overwhelming message is that, although we supported President Obama as a candidate and continue to have hope today, we do not feel heard by this administration, and have grave concerns about many of the actions of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan."
Educational Delema: Rigor v Relevance by Tom Vander Ark
"I remain committed to the idea that we can build rich instructional systems around fewer, clearer, higher standards--systems that incorporate content-embedded assessment (e.g., score from a learning game), performance assessment (e.g., essays and projects), adaptive assessment (e.g., quick online quizzes), as well as summative assessment--that promote rather than detract from engaging personalized learning experiences."

Thoughts from Yrisarri
In a mobile society standardized education seems an essential ingredient for success.  The big question is how do we standardize instruction across a vast population with diverse needs and wants?  Should all students in our public schools be studying the same thing at the same time? Are national standards a limiting factor to one of our national strengths ie: creative thinking? Will national standards prepare all students for their future? Will national standards cause teachers to become little more than technicians for a program? Will national standards solve our education dilemma? Do we truly have a dilemma?

These questions and more come to mind as I follow the debate on implementation of national standards for our schools.  My primary concern really comes down to the question of how we view our children.  It seems like we are experiencing another top down educational reform by people who are not cognizant of the true needs of our children.  Seldom are children mentioned as something other than a statistic to be manipulated by reform so that our national interests will be served.

If there is an educational dilemma it is based in my observation that many students see no connection between what they learn in school and what they perceive to be needed for their future.  By and large our students are not motivated to learn, and those who are learn to pass the tests.

I believe there have always been standards in our schools and that those students who desire to go to college are able to acquire what they need to succeed in college from their high schools.  Those students who did not wish to go to college have had various options during high school to pursue their perceived needs.  But, high school has not provided a well-balanced curriculum that provides for intellectual, physical  and emotional growth.  Without this balance we are sending our young people to confront life with only part of the skills they need.

Our emphasis has historically been on the intellectual side of the balance scale and today we have inactive kids who have a difficult time getting along with others who are different from them.  I believe that if we are going to create national standards they should be geared around developing programs that decrease our need for prisons,develop healthy and inquisitive young adults.

It is time we reorganize rather than reform education.  Instead of spending our time developing programs that have students lock stepping through an education, we should develop and organize our education system to allow for individuality and creative thinking.  A caring system that values the individual will cause more students to be motivated and prepare themselves for their futures.

There is agreement that we have a problem in particular with keeping our kids in school and that problem manifests itself around the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence.  Why don’t we address the problem at that level?  Most of the information needed for further learning is in place by that time in our children’s education.  Why not graduate our students from mandatory education at age 15?  If they have learned the information that our society deems necessary for understanding our society we should acknowledge it.  In New Mexico we have a pass or fail test given to students at 15 testing that type of knowledge.  Why should a student go on if they can pass that test?

After graduation, with basic knowledge for living in our society in place, let students choose what they wish to study for, college, business, vocation, military, or paraprofessional work.  As the Australian's call it, let us develop a useful tertiary education system from ages 16-20.  They can all be rigorous programs that teach all students workforce skills at the same time.  Aren’t workforce skills the ability to understand that you must be on time, you must focus on your work, you must take responsibility for what you do?  Reading is not the problem in our youthful workforce; it is attitude!

While my idea is not perfect and perhaps not workable, let us use the strength of America, creative thinking, to solve our problems.  Let us work together to identify the true problems and then create local solutions to those problems.  If we continue the path we are on we will only do more of the same, continue to create students as products rather than individuals whose futures are in their hands not ours!

Help not Punishment for Struggling Teachers, Schools and Students

Some Useful Websites
AAA Math features a comprehensive set of interactive arithmetic lessons. Unlimited practice is available on each topic which allows thorough mastery of the concepts. A wide range of lessons (Kindergarten through Eighth grade level) enables learning or review to occur at each individual's current level.
Energy Kids-Find energy related stories, hands-on activities, and research articles for your classroom! These curriculum-based lessons are separated by age-grade.
The Open Door Web Site is a reference source for both students and teachers.  The contents of this site are designed for use by students between the ages of 9 and 17.

Articles about Cognition, Affective Education and Pyschomotor Benefits
Emotional Intelligence Is the Missing Piece -This article is explains how social and emotional learning can help students successfully resolve conflict, communicate clearly, solve problems, and more.
Why Exercise Makes you Less Anxious - At a time when high stakes testing is imposed upon our students this article by Gretchen Reynolds point makes it clear that Physical Education should be more important to our curriculum than before.
Proficient Readers Need Good School Libraries - Gaby Chapman's article focuses on the fact that studies show that reading achievement in a school is directly related to the quality of its library but says,

School libraries are slowly but steadily being replaced by an onslaught of packaged reading programs designed to teach “virtual reading,” in which students can learn everything about reading without actually doing it.

Book Review
Mind Reading- by Allison Gopink  is a book review for Stanislas Dehaene's new book about the reading and the brain called Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention .  Neuroscientist are discovering that reading has not been around long enough for humans to have become an inate part of the human brain.

Thoughts From Yrisarri
In my years of teaching and working in schools I came across a few poor teachers.  But, as I listen to to the movement for reform it seems as if there are many more bad teachers than I ever imagined.  One of the cornerstones of the current push from the Secretary of Education and other reformers is to rid the schools of bad teachers.  It seems that teacher unions and teachers themselves are to blame for the education disaster in America!

Once again the Department of Education is missing the point of the future for our children.  It is more important in today's workforce to know how to cooperate, punitively firing teachers who are deemed "bad" teachers by some objective or subjective criteria, is not going to help create a culture of learning that teaches our children good values.  Competition is between companies, not between workers in the companies.   The current thinking seems to be that competition is the missing equation in education.  This includes students and the teaching force. It is as if teachers and students are always applying for the job but never get to practice their skills.

Instead of calling for dismissal of teachers for doing poor work, let us first decide that we will help any teacher who does not meet basic benchmarks without threatening the job of someone who invested personal treasure in themselves to become a teacher.  Perhaps schools that don't meet the benchmarks can be assured that their community will be helped without a threat of takeover or dismantling of a community investment.  Maybe we can even make it clear to our students that we want to help them not fail them.  I think that message is not received by many of our students today.

What I suggest is that our first instinct be to help others rather than dismiss them.  One of the great reforms for education could be to create a culture of kindness and a tradition of caring about others.  We can begin this by finding ways to "dismiss" the punitive natures of some of our classrooms and schools.  One way to begin this reform is by committing to help struggling teachers, schools and students rather than punish them when they fail. 

Development Based Education

Useful Sites  
Librarians' Internet Index
Refdesk.com
Infoplease

Articles of Interest
Schools Need a Culture Shift is an article by Betty J. Sternberg who addresses motivation in schools.
What the Workforce Will Require of Students is another Education Week article by Catherine Gewertz who questions the need for all students to have college-level skills.

Technology
Here are two short videos from ConnectEd a site for educators from Walden University.  They address topics that have been part of discussions with educators throughout my career.
Why We Need To Teach Technology in School
21st Century Skills: How do We Get There?

Thoughts From Yrisarri
As I listen to the discussions about educational reform I feel that a key concept is missing from the dialog.  I was trained to be a middle school teacher and learned the importance of considering how children are grouped in terms of developmental progress.  That was the impetus behind the middle school movement, that children have a stage between childhood and adolesence that requires a different approach to teaching than children or adolescents. 

I was reminded of this while reading  Scholars: Parent-School Ties Should Shift in Teen Years by Deborah Viadero in Education Week  as she talked about education reform and parental involvement.  She says that there is no mention of how the parental involvement requirements of No Child Left Behind should differ between age levels.  I believe this is the cause of some of our problems in education.  As we discuss public policy we do not recognize the different roles of each stage in the education system.

We only seem to consider that each grade is a preparation for the next grade.  We do not consider that children have development stages and teachers should employ different modes of teaching to capture the interest at different stages.  If the federal government is going to become the source of education policy then they should discuss educating our children not just general education beliefs.

Are we preparing our students for their future?

Useful Sites for Teachers
Teaching With Contests.com caused me to remember how much my students loved to study using games.  Here is a site full of academic contests students can enter!  In addition, you can find activities for different subject areas, as well as scholarship help and more.
Activity TV is a site that my 9 year-old grandson will love!  It contains hundreds of videos that will teach him how to do something new.  It includes activities for crafts, magic, dance and much more.  Activity TV Jr.  does the same for pre-schoolers.
Black Holes , a part of the Hubble Site, has students making decisions while exploring outer space looking for a black hole.  Great animations of the universe!
Mr. Martini's Classroom has all type of flash cards.  A great place to practice learning math facts in many math topics including algebra, fractions, geometry, the four basic operations and more.

Articles of Interest
Newsweek's Top 100 Books - This is a great list of books that should be read.  You will recognize the name of many books on the list that you will want your children to read.
For Improving Early Literacy, Reading Comics is No Child's Play from Science Daily is an interview with Carol L. Tilley a professor of library and information science who talks about understanding comics as literature. Last Week I provided a site for creating comics called Tap Into The World of Comics  This article points out another important aspect of the comic book.  Professor Tilley says;

Comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of literature, and children benefit from reading them at least as much as they do from reading other types of books.

This School is on a Mission by Grace Rubenstein describes YES Prep North Central. This charter school in Houston's mission is to send every graduate to college.  They are very successful.  I believe it is because they have motivated students (read last weeks blog).  These students achieve that same success at Sudbury Valley School where there are no classes.  YES has a lot of structure and the students come from lower economic background, but motivation is what drives the success of both groups.

Thoughts from Yrisarri
Education Reform and Web 3.0

I began working with technology in the 1960s.  I received an education which enabled me to understand how computers work.  As a library director I filled data bases with information from the card catalog and automated library operations.  Then, as a teacher and as a librarian, I began accessing and interacting with that information.  Thanks to the computer almost anybody today can do what I was trained to do, find infomation and interact with that information with on-line learning or some other variation of research, social, or academic networking program.

So I have worked through Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 and the experts say Web 3.0 is on its way.  Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world wide web calls it the "semantic web" which will,

...... enhance every piece of data on the Internet with related 'metadata' . This would, for instance, enable currently passive computer applications to think about the data you enter and advise you.

Wow, I thought my gradparents, born in 1899 and lived to experience the moon landing, had experienced change in their lifetime.  Think about that, you computer will think about the data and it will interact with you!  If I, in my lifetime have experienced such change, what will my grandchildren be wrapping their minds around?

Neuroscientists in their study of the brain have found that our environment literally wires our brain as we grow.  Don Tapscott in Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World speculates that;  

....from ages 8-18, the brain is still being built and that kids’ brains are becoming hard-wired to live in a digital culture.

So my grandchildren are going to grow up with a brain hard-wired to live in a digital culture!  What does this mean for education?  It seems that we have embraced web 1.0, still covet that data base of knowledge, and we use web 2.0 technology to present that data to our students.  But are we preparing our students for their future?

David Nagel, in an article entitled Are Schools Preparing Students for 21st Century Learning?  , reports that there is a "disconnect" between school administrators and parents on this topic. 

The findings were part of a report released this week--Learning in the 21st Century: Parents' Perspectives, Parents' Priorities. They were compiled from data collected as part of Project Tomorrow's annual Speak Up survey, which included responses from more than 335,000 K-12 administrators, students, parents, and educators.

The report says that parents think teachers need more training and schools need more "technology-infused approaches to education".  At the same time more than half of the prinicpals in the survey thought they were doing a good job preparing students for the 21st century.

I think that we need more than "technology-infused" approaches to education.  Our children are already infused with a way of thinking that includes technology.  We need to allow them the opportunity to learn to think about the massive amounts of data they will encounter.  How do they make meaning of all that infomation.  How do they deal with a machine that can think about their problems?  Can you teach them how to do that in 12 years?

The Speak Up Survey also notes that students are gravitating to on-line schools in astonishing numbers. Schools may not even have 12 years to help them make meaning of the data because they will be persuing information that interests them on-line. We must begin thinking about educating our children to think critically and creatively and we better be able to do it in a "technology-infused" manner.

Maybe we should begin treating the students and their parents as customers of the education system.  The education system has a product called curriculum that the customers can peruse to find the best  and most effective deal.  Will they know any better than the educaton establishment what is needed for the future?