Author Archives: nicholasmeier

Merit Pay

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As the idea of merit pay sweeps the nation, and the federal government is pushing the idea down the throats of the states using the old carrot/stick approach, I have been thinking much about this topic. Florida is about to vote on such a bill, tying teacher pay to test scores.

Merit pay is popular in part because on the surface it has such a ring of fairness. Shouldn’t better teachers get rewarded for it? However, in reality, it is fraught with many complications and difficulties.

The issue also gets further confused as there are really two issues. One is teacher evaluation and the other is teacher compensation. Without a fair way to evaluate teachers, merit pay cannot be fair.

Some people complain that current teacher evaluation systems are poor. Usually a principal announces they will come in and observe. The principal makes notes and bases the teacher’s evaluation to a large part on this single observation. Often this happens only once every other year for experienced teachers. I would agree that this method is lacking—but that makes the idea of merit pay more, not less problematic. People also complain that bad teachers are allowed to keep teaching and impossible to fire. That is mostly a gross exaggeration. The problem is that in part it is based on that few are “fired” in the technical sense of the word that would show up on public records. That is because at least 9 out of 10 times, the teacher resigns before being fired. That is typical in any field. Certainly in any professional field I have ever heard of, the employee in danger of being fired is generally encouraged to resign, sparing the employer of the legal steps of actually firing the person, and sparing the employee of having it on their record. All the principals that I admire tell me that they can and do get rid of the teachers they think are not serving the students. While it is not easy, why should it be? If a principal could easily fire any teacher, it would make teaching a risky profession, especially for those with interesting ideas. Fear is never a good long term motivator. Teacher “tenure” (it is not actually technically “tenure”) just means that due process must be observed. Is due process a good thing or not?

But back to merit pay. Shouldn’t teachers get paid more for being better? First off, who get to decide who is better and how? Test scores seem to be the idea in vogue. That is what they are proposing in Florida, and already using in various places. However, our current testing system tests only a tiny fraction of what is important for children to know (and does so in such a poor way). In elementary schools it is rote math and reading skills. That is it. Basing pay on just that would encourage teachers even more than they already are to only focus on what is likely to be on the test, at the expense of everything else (many elementary school, due to NCLB have already reduced the curriculum to almost only these two areas). There is an axiom in the social sciences known as Campbell’s Law that says that the higher the stakes on a particular social indicator (e.g. a single test score), the more the use of that indicator corrupts the original intent, as it encourages people to manipulate the system to look good on that indicator regardless of other effects. We see that happening already—retaining students so they take the easier test; pushing kids to disappear from the system. There is the focus on the kids that show the most promise of moving from one category to the next, while ignoring others. Not to mention the examples of out and out cheating—changing test answers and such. Teachers start to resent the “low” students” the “slow” students, as they put their pay or job in danger, rather than being seen as a challenge, as the place to make a real difference.

There is also the issue of motivation. Merit pay is seen as a way to motivate teachers to work harder. When most of us think of motivation, we often think of rewards. However, the most effective motivation is actually not extrinsic rewards. The most effective motivation is the enjoyment or intrinsic reward of the activity itself. Virtually all teachers go into teaching because they want to make a difference in their students lives, to be successful teachers—not for the great pay! What psychological theory has demonstrated again and again is that the more you externally reward someone for what they find intrinsically motivating, the less motivated they become for the thing itself, as the reward replaces their intrinsic motivation. They no longer care if the results are real, as long as they get the reward. Recent studies have demonstrated that bonuses in business are actually likely to make workers less, not more productive. Extrinsic rewards actually lead to less intrinsic interest in a job well done, not more.

School reform research has shown that the most effective school are those where teachers work together closely and have a shared vision. But merit pay is likely to increase competition among teachers, discouraging collaboration. In today’s climate of limited resources, if one teacher gets a bonus, it comes from the pool that everyone gets paid from, pitting teachers against each other for these limited resources. It becomes in my self interest to sabotage the other teachers to increase my chances of getting that money, or at least not to help them.

It is a truism that teachers are underpaid. Despite that, there is no compelling evidence that teachers leave the field over issues of pay, or that more pay gets them to work harder. It is possible we might attract a higher quality pool of candidates if teacher pay was significantly higher. However, in studies of what makes teachers satisfied or dissatisfied with their job, other working conditions are much higher on the list. How they are treated, what types of autonomy they have, what types of support they receive, resources, class sizes, and leadership all rate higher than issues of pay.

Mostly, merit pay is a side show, a distraction to any real answer to solving the difficult problems of educational reform. It is another quick fix solution that can be used to undermine teachers and the unions that represent them in the move to privatize schooling.

Computer Use In Public Schools

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(click here for the full published version of this article)

In this column I am going to present the results of a small study I conducted with some Masters in Education students in regards to computer use in schools. Computers have become ubiquitous in our society. Shopping and planning travel arrangements, social networking and entertainment are often done through the computer. Jobs from mathematics, the sciences, and even the arts usually require creative and skilled use of computer applications. Groups such as MoveOn have even created new forms of political organizing and activism. Blogging and other Web2 applications are changing the way people get their news. Most people now agree that our schools should therefore be preparing students to be technologically competent.

In considering what such a shift might mean for education, educational theorists interested in the topic have tended to predict one of two types of changes. Some have focused on the ability of the computer to empower students. Others have focused on the power of the computer to effectively and efficiently deliver instruction.

When personal computers were first invented, some claimed that computer technology would transform schools and education as we know it, bringing on new ways of teaching and learning that were not possible in the past. They argued that computers made the traditional role of teachers as lecturers—the sage on the stage—obsolete. Others, while not claiming the inevitability of such a change, promoted the idea that computers could be used to make constructivist, learner-centered teaching easier. With the use of such computers, teachers can and should now play more the role of guide, coach and facilitator.

Another view has been that computers would or should transform schools, not by changing our basic paradigm of learning and instruction, but as a more effective and efficient way to deliver instruction, or at least as a strong supplemental aspect to the curriculum. The idea of using technology for programmatic instruction goes back at least to the 1960s. According this view, the promise of programmatic instruction is now possible with the powerful computers of today. Computers can now assess the individual learner, and tailor the instructional pace and problem presented to that student. No longer will each teacher need to be the expert in instructional techniques, since it will be programmed into the computer. Once we have identified the steps, any skill can be taught most efficiently and effectively this way. While this approach could significantly alter the teacher’s role as deliverer of instruction or information, it does not substantially alter the role of the student.

As of yet, there is not much evidence of either of these becoming realities. There are many individual examples of teachers using computers in creative ways that do speak to the claim of a more constructivist paradigm (see Coppola’s book Powering Up for an example of this). On the other hand, these appear to be the exceptions that prove the rule (read Larry Cuban’s book Oversold and Underused for a full treatment of this). While there is some evidence that many schools are using computers in ways that match the programmatic instructional idea—that is for teaching basic skills—there is of yet little evidence that it has improved learning beyond small-scale examples.

Another issue that has concerned many in terms of technology use is the digital divide. Not surprisingly, those with more money and resources, and those of higher socio-economic-status, are more likely to have computers at home, and use them more powerfully. Potentially, public schools could be the place where those with fewer resources could get that access. However, often resources at schools mirror the resources of those in the community. Therefore, schools, rather than leveling the playing field for disadvantaged students, may exacerbate those differences.

In looking at 16 local public schools, evenly divided between primary and secondary, and between schools serving predominantly low-income or more middle and upper income students, we asked the following questions:

  • For what purposes do the students use the computer technology at the schools?
  • In regards to the above question, what differences do we see among schools? Do socio-economic factors correlate with those differences? Is the age level of students a factor?

In particular, for our analysis we divided computer use into two basic categories. On the one hand were uses we saw fitting more of the constructivist paradigm, where computers were tools the students use to enhance productivity and creativity. On the other hand were uses with skill and drill programs, or as assessment tools of basic skills, fitting the programmatic instruction model.

Our study did find that computers were used differently based on the socio-economic make up of the student body, and based on the grade level of students served. There did not appear to be any consistent factor related to quantity or quality of hardware available to students. However, schools serving middle- and high-income students were more likely to have well-trained computer technicians and teachers to help make the computers more useful. Schools that served low-income students mostly used computers for drill and practice type programs and as an assessment tool. Schools serving middle- and high-income students were more likely to be using computers in ways that built computer literacy, though still not to any large degree. We also found that high school students were more likely to use computers in ways that built their computer literacy skills than elementary students.

The data suggest that schools serving low-income students use the computers mostly for drill and practice due to pressures of the standardized testing. Most of these schools are Program Improvement schools. As such, boosting standardized test scores is their top priority. They are then likely to use the computer programs designed as test preparation. Schools serving middle- and high-income students, not being under those same pressures, may feel the freedom to use computers in ways that are more creative.

In regards to high school versus elementary student use, the findings suggest that high school students are already likely to have basic computer literacy skills, allowing teachers to assign more creative projects without having to spend much time teaching how to use the technology itself, especially among middle- and high-income student bodies.

This study suggests that if we want to create equity for students from all backgrounds we need to rethink what opportunities we provide for low-income students to use computers in ways that prepare them to be able to use them in as powerful ways as their more well-to-do peers.

Given that high SES students tend to have more opportunities and access to powerful technology at home, and that high SES students have more opportunities to use computers in ways that build computer literacy, current school practices are likely to exacerbate rather than mediate the digital divide between low and high SES students.

To change such practices a serious reconsideration of what it would take to really bridge the gap needs to be undertaken. Such an examination is unlikely at most schools serving low-income students, given the pressures on district administrators, principals, teachers on down to students, to raise short-term standardized test scores. With such pressures, almost everything else becomes at best secondary, if considered at all. Such pressures are only increasing under the current Federal policies.

It would also take an enormous input of resources. The real cost of having enough up-to-date computers, the software to use them well, the personnel to keep them running, and the professional development so that teachers would know how to use them effectively certainly does not exist in these times of economic crisis and education budgets cut to the bone.

These are real difficulties that all of us who are committed to equity face. Those of us who do work with low-income students are therefore forced to think of creative ways to overcome these difficulties. While it is true that all students need to learn to read and do basic arithmetic, it is not true that for some students this should be done at the expense of learning other things, including being powerful users of technology. The brains of poor kids do not learn and function differently than those of rich children. Therefore, we do not need to teach them in fundamentally different ways. Without being prepared with equal technological skills, this lack will be just one more division and barrier when these students leave school, leaving them less prepared not just for the world of work, but the world of social empowerment, and access to information to improve their lives and make informed decisions.

Even without a change in resources, it is possible to use technology differently than is now often the case. As the data showed, the difference in resources in the schools between types of schools was minimal. The real differences were in how they were used. These differences underscored an implicit or hidden curriculum. The use of computers as programmatic instruction treats students as passive recipients of knowledge and instruction whose job is to input the correct answer. The uses that the the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards promote, for example, ask students to be active participants in their own learning, using computers as a tool to create and convey knowledge. When these uses are promoted differently, for different types of students (which may coincide with the non-computer based instruction they are receiving), students come to view learning and the purpose of school in fundamentally different ways.

The argument for the need for this different instruction is, as mentioned earlier, the need to raise test scores. However, many schools have been effective using constructivist approaches to learning effectively with low- and high-income students alike. When we ask and support students to use their minds creatively and constructively, they not only do they do better on standardized tests of knowledge in the short term, but they also develop the abilities necessary to succeed in many arenas, in and out of school.

(click here for the full version of this article)

The Big Idea and Thematic Planning

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In this essay I want to think aloud about approaches to planning and carrying out thematic instruction. Those of you who have read my previous essays know I usually have strong opinions on the educational topics I raise, be it policy, instructional pedagogy, assessment…. In this essay I am going to explore my conflicting thoughts on different approaches to such planning, particularly looking at idea of backward planning.

When teachers thought of doing a “thematic unit,” (and in the few places where they still do) they often thought about all the interesting activities that somehow would be fun or interesting connected to that theme. “We’ll study farms… I could take them to a farm. We could study different animals. We can look at the food chain. We can look at how foods are processed…”

Currently another approach is being advocated to replace this type of thematic planning. This newer approach is known generically as backward planning, or as promoted by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Understanding by Design. In this approach, one doesn’t start with a topic per say, but with a big idea or basic concept that one wants the students to understand. In science, this might be, for example, “the food chain” or “properties of solids,” or “the effects of humans on their environment,” in social studies, students it might be understanding revolutions. In this approach it is only after deciding on the central idea, that you decide what topic you might use to learn about that. Then after deciding the topic do we finally get to thinking about the activities that would help lead to an upstanding of the concept or big idea. We could study the food chain in ocean life, in the desert or other environments. In this approach we are studying the ocean, not so much to learn about the ocean, but as an example of the food chain. The topic is an example of a bigger idea, not the topic itself. We could pick from a variety of historical revolutions to understand revolutions in general. Once we know what main idea we want to get across, we think about how our topic and activities will help the students achieve that understanding of the big idea or central concept.

The backward planning approach may fit more easily into a discipline or subject area approach than a traditional thematic approach. The big ideas and concepts come from the what that discipline sees as core and important. It also may be easier to implement within a standards-based system. The big idea or concept can come from the list of standards that the teacher is expected to cover. It also keeps things focused. When one plans under this approach, one is constantly asking oneself, how does this advance the big idea or major concept? How does this prepare the student to be able to show they have this understanding? As one who prepares teachers to enter the field and works with others returning for further education, this has been an approach I have often advocated when I have students plan units and lessons.

Recently, I have been asking myself, what might be lost in this approach. I was brought to think about this in reading Deborah Meier’s January 2010 Column. In it she was briefly mentioning her school’s approach to thinking about a theme. What are all the types of connections that can be made to this topic? One thing leads to another. This approach has a more playful, spontaneous feel to it than the Backward Design approach. In the topic approach, the teacher has more freedom to see where things lead, where the students might want to go, to go off on tangents as the class or individuals discover new things or opportunities arise. This is connected to the second advantage which is connections. In the topical approach, one can look at how this topic connects to lots of concepts in different fields, area, disciplines. In studying ancient Egypt, we might look at Egyptian myths, the culture, fiction about Egypt, the historical implications, the science of the Egyptians, their influence on mathematics. This approach is more likely to integrate the disciplines. I like the sense of intellectual play (see my earlier column on play) that such an approach can encourage.

I just learned about an endeavor to transform teaching using this topical approach at a workshop. In this approach, called Learning in Depth, students are given a topic, such as apples, dust, or circuses, which will become their individual specialty for the rest of the k-12 school experience. “The aim is that students, by the end of their schooling, will know as much about that topic as almost anyone on earth.” The student will study this topic in whatever direction the topic and their interest takes them.

In the backward planning or Understanding by Design approach, many of those topics would be seen as moving away from the central concept that studying of it was an example of. In a topic based approach, the students become knowledgeable about a broad range aspects and connections within that topic. However, we cannot be assured that they will hit on the particular central concept that we or the discipline sees as key.

I do not mean to imply that even under the Understanding by Design approach one does not find tangents, or make connections to other areas. Quite the contrary, this approach encourages making connections. If the connections to other examples weren’t made, the topic would lose its power as an example of a big idea that would transfer to other examples. However, the connections would be focused on connections to the concept, not to the topic.

Really, in the end, maybe it doesn’t have to be either/or. Maybe sometimes we can take the Understanding by Design approach and gain from the advantages of that focus on developing a deep understandings of a concept. Other times, we can explore a topic and gain from the advantages of looking at a topic in all of its dimensions and connections to a variety of disciplines and aspects.

Best Practices

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The term “best practices” has become popular over the last decade. For me the term is problematic in a number of ways. First, it leaves off the essential question: “best” for what? Despite statewide standards and the current move toward national standards, we do not all agree on the aims and purposes of public education. Far from it, as I have discovered every time I teach a new group of teacher candidates.

The other problematic assumption is that there is a best method for whatever our purpose is. While there are practices that are generally more effective then others, human beings and the teacher/students relationship, not to mention all the other contextual variables, are so complex that no one practice is likely to always be the best, if even effective at all.

Let us consider an analogy. Let us say I want to find the “best” shoe size, so I can provide all my students with the right shoes. I do a controlled study, and find that when I give size 10 shoes, more students have shoes that fit them than any other size. Now I can mandate that everyone be given size 10 shoes. But men’s and women’s feet are different you complain. Okay, I may need to do some differentiation. Women get a women’s size 8 1/2. How about ethnic groups? Mexican Americans tend to be smaller. Okay, Mexican-Americans men get a size 9…..

We can all see the utter absurdity of this. But this is what we are doing to our school children, especially to the most needy and disadvantaged school children. I spend a lot of time in a lot of different schools as a researcher and as a supervisor of student teachers. In schools that are considered “Program Improvement” under No Child Left Behind, I see teachers mandated to give lessons where every child is on the same page at the same time doing the same exercises, often not just in the one classroom, but in every class at that grade level. There is a pacing guide to keep up with. The students must move on, whether they got it or not (and do it whether they already know it or not). A few “differentiated” students may be allowed to get special help (by missing out on some other activity, or after school). Extensive data is kept on how the students are doing, with unit tests every few weeks that are diagnosed, often through sophisticated computer programs, Students’ scores get displayed in staff lounges (part of the data driven philosophy). Yet the teacher really cannot make much use of the data, since no matter what it says, they must keep to the pacing guide. This is seen as “equity” under NCLB. All children are afforded the same curriculum, the same instruction. After all, this curriculum has been designated as “research based,” since it uses strategies that the Reading Panel found to be most effective. We must have equally high expectations for all! Most of you probably think I am exaggerating. I assure you I am not. If you think so, find a school that has been designated as a “Reading First” school, and serves predominantly low income students. Maybe it is different in your state, but here in California, what I described above, I have seen over and over again.

The problem is that educational experts are being asked the wrong question: Which is the best method? Such a question was asked of the recent federal National Reading Panel—to come up with the best method for teaching reading. Textbook publishers created the materials that are used by “Reading First” schools, supposedly based on the recommendations of this Reading Panel. However, such one-size-fits-all thinking is equally absurd for teaching as it is for shoe size. Instead we need to be asking, what is the best way to support classrooms and teachers where each child will be best supported to learn in the most effective way? No two children are the same, and even the same child may need something different from day to day.

The best schools, schools that succeed with large percentages of students, are ones where teachers work together collaboratively getting to know the students. In these school they devise curriculum that allows all students to find ways into it, no matter what their learning differences styles and abilities are. These schools honor these differences, while expecting, cajoling, pushing, all students to do their best.

Duncan’s Three-Pronged Attack on Education

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One of the interesting things about recent educational policy is that the political battles over the direction of education do not fall along traditional political lines. In both the state of California (where I live), from Wilson (R) to Davis (D) to Schwarzenegger (R), and at the national level, from Bush, Sr. (R) to Clinton (D) to Bush, Jr. (R), to Obama (D), the move toward standardized curriculum and the high stakes use of standardized tests has been consistent, as has the message that our schools are deteriorating and destroying the national economy. (The Obama administration’s current position is particularly disheartening considering that he campaigned on a platform advocating the opposite).

In this essay, I will be addressing the three-pronged agenda of the present Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, that continues these policies and is based on these same assumptions. I will leave off for this essay addressing the two myths I mentioned above, that somehow the quality of our school directly effects our economy (no evidence exits for such a cause-effect link—in fact the cause-effect is probably reversed), nor the myth that our schools have gone downhill (Richard Rothstein’s book The Way We Were does a great job of myth busting on that score).

Duncan’s three-prong strategy consists of nationalizing educational standards (and the high stakes tests that go with them), implementing merit pay based on student achievement, and the increased use of charter schools. I will argue here that not only are none of these proven to be effective, but actually much evidence exists demonstrating their lack of effectiveness.

I will start with National Standards. Duncan has already started convening state governors to discuss these standards (leaving educational organizations out of the discussion). Having national standards assumes that there is a national consensus on the purposes, goals and means for effective education. Throughout the history of this nation, we have resisted such nationalization precisely because it was felt that such goals and means should be left up to local communities. Does such a consensus now exist? I say not. One little piece of evidence: Every semester for the past 5 years I have taught a class on learning theory. At the beginning of the course, which is during their first semester in the program (before they have been influenced by our beliefs and ideas), I have them do an exercise asking them to come up with their priorities for public education. I have them discuss these and try to come to a consensus. Then I have them compare their goals with what they see as the goals of the schools in which they observe. Not only do they disagree somewhat with each other, but I have found every time that there is very little overlap with their goals and the goals they observe in the public schools. It is possible that the students in this non-selective public university are somehow very different from the average citizen, but I somehow doubt it. In other polls of teachers, their views do not tend to vary dramatically from the general public.

Think of the debates you hear around you, talk to your friends, neighbors. Do you all agree on what should be taught in the schools and how it should be taught? In a pluralistic, multicultural, rapidly evolving society such ours, such a consensus seems unlikely. National Standards and standardized tests force such a consensus upon the public, and upon the education of every public school student. This does not seem to me to be the proper role for a democratic government to play in education. In human civilization, just as in nature, variety and differences are healthy and help create a more vibrant thriving sustainable society.

The expansion of charter schools is another of Duncan’s strategies. This is despite extensive research on charter schools that over and over have shown that such schools, as a strategy, have not shown themselves to be any more effective at raising achievement levels or closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged students than traditional public schools. There is a fair amount of research that, as a whole, they are less likely to be serving the most needy students, especially students with special needs.

In some ways, the charter school strategy could seem to be in contradiction with the first strategy of standardization. One of the original purposes of charter schools was to allow schools to break away from the standardization of the traditional pubic school system (charter schools are public school, however, in that they receive public money, may not charge tuition, and are supposed to be non-selective in their enrollment). That charter schools could set their own goals and methods, based on the desires of the parents, students and teachers that made up that school was seen by many as their advantage. There are many such charter schools that are dear to my heart, and appear to be having tremendous success with their students.

The seeming contradiction is explained by what Duncan’s idea of support for charter schools is: Standardization. He wants to fund a few charter school chains that he sees as effective at raising test scores, and make such models standard. These are not charters that are created by local groups of parents, teachers or local communities and answerable to them. These are chains with their own pre-set agendas, methods and goals. It is really an attempt to give organizations that are outside of public control, control of public schools, on the assumption that “the public” is the problem with public schools. This is a dangerously anti-democratic belief system (reminds me of the anti-National health care debate where people are afraid of the “government” making health decisions, while not seeming to be afraid of corporate CEO’s making those same decisions for them).

His third agenda item is Merit Pay. This is based on the intuitive assumption that offering rewards for success will motivate teachers to work harder and more effectively. It is based on the assumption that the problem with schools (a commonly held belief) is lazy teachers. While some lazy teachers may exist, I know of no evidence to support this as a workable theory for the problem with schools as a whole. While the public seems to accept this theory for other schools, they do not believe it about the one’s where they send their children, the one’s where they can see the evidence of hard working caring teachers with their own eyes (see the Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll in the September issue of Phi Delta Kappan on the public’s opinion about public schooling).

Bonuses do not work even in the private sector, as recent studies have shown. They may, in fact, be counterproductive. Such schemes are no more likely to be effective in education. One explanation for their lack of success is to look at research on motivation. When we offer extrinsic (external) rewards for activities that people are already motivated to do, we actually make them less motivated. Find me the teacher that did not go into education because they truly wanted to make a difference in the lives of children. There may be some, but they are the exception that proves the rule. External rewards tend to lead us to do only what we need to do to get the reward, and attempt to game the system to “look good.” It might work for the worst teachers, but it is likely to have the opposite effect on the rest of the teachers. Most teachers teach because they find teaching rewarding. They find being unsuccessful at it unrewarding. What they need is help in being more successful, not prizes for beating out their colleagues.

Merit pay is also likely to lead to teachers resenting the difficult and hard to reach students, as they will bring the test scores down, and lower the teacher’s pay. These are the students who need the most attention and care. In addition, it can lead to teachers working against each other in pursuit of limited resources, rather than collaborating and supporting each other. In general external rewards sends a message that teaching and learning are not worth doing well for their own reward, but only when bribes are offered (or the other side of the same coin—punishments threatened). Is that the message we want to send to teachers and students?

All three of the approaches promoted by the present administration continue to follow the same failed policies of the last several administrations. With all of the insistence of teachers using “evidence based” strategies in their classrooms, none of the policies promoted by Arne Duncan are evidence based, and in fact contrary to the most compelling evidence that we presently have. Interestingly, one policy they have not considered is equaling the resources between those with the most (who actually have always done quite well in national and international comparison), and those with the least. In fact, we are the only developed nation that funds in such an unequal fashion, where the most advantaged and privileged, get significantly more resources in their schools than the disadvantaged students (for an extensive expose of this read Jonathan Kozol’s book Savage Inequalities).

What is the alternative? Providing strong support for good teaching and teachers. Providing adequate resources with which to teach. Trusting the people closest to the kids to make the important decisions about the best way to educate them, especially those who have the training and experience to do so, and who also know and care about those particular children, in close collaboration with their families. Yes, they need to be answerable, answerable not to standardized curriculum and tests, but answerable to the parents of the children and to the local community by demonstrating meaningful results. This is the meaning of true democracy, with a small “d”: Trusting people to govern themselves, including their schools. Are there risks in doing so? Of course. Will they always make the “right” decisions? Of course not. But, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is the worst possible form of government until you consider the alternatives.

Play is the Work of Children

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Two first graders come tearing down the hall and run into their teacher.
“Children, what was the head master just talking about today? Remember, no running in the halls.”
“But Mrs. James, we weren’t running, we’re horses.” At that, they galloped off into the yard.

This anecdote (much abbreviated and paraphrased here), comes from a talk by Michael Armstrong, author and former teaching principal, at this year’s North Dakota Study Group meeting of progressive educators. He used it to illustrate the essential aspect of playing with language. We learn language by playing with language. It is language that allows humans to be creative beings.

The title of this column is attributed to Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852), the German philosopher, and coiner of the term kindergarten, which literally mean child’s garden. Over the last couple hundred years, other philosophers, psychologists and educators have come to the same conclusion. These range from theoretical giants such as Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey to modern practitioners and thinkers such as Benjamin Spock, Vivian Paley, Eleanor Duckworth, Deborah Meier, and Michael Armstrong, listing just the tip of the iceberg.

What these and many other educators and psychologists have discovered is that play is an, maybe the, essential manner in which humans learn. In fact not only humans, but many mammals learn the important skills they will need for adult survival though play, as anyone who has watched kittens or puppies knows.

Piaget, one of the first to empirically study how children use play to learn, demonstrated that children use play to discover how the world around them works, to develop their schema, and organize the structure of their thinking. It is through such play that children develop intellectually. Piaget demonstrated that while with didactic teaching we can get students to parrot back scientific or logical principles, such rote learning does little to really help individuals internalize and use such rules and theories. According to his research, only when we can play and experience these things for ourselves, test out theories of how the world works, can we make these ideas our own and apply the principles appropriately in real world situations.

Vygotsky saw imaginative play as important beyond the logical-mathematical realm that Piaget focused on. Through his research, Vygotsky demonstrated that through play and imagination children try out new roles. They imitate, creatively, the roles they see of those who are older than them, the adults around them. They develop socially and culturally through this process. In all realms, through play children can go above their current level of being and development. Like an actor, play frees children to act in ways they may not yet be able to do outside of play. Play creates a safe place to task risks, try out new ideas, and take on new roles.

Benjamin Spock, the famous child psychologist of the 1960s, in reaction to rigid and controlling theories of child rearing that were popular at the time, advocated for the importance of play in children’s lives. He explained that children do not engage in play because it is easy, but precisely because it offers meaningful challenges. Human being like to be challenged and solve problems. Otherwise they get bored. It is through such challenges that children learn, learn at just the level that is appropriate to their particular level and skill, what Vygotsky would call, their Zone of Proximal Development.

Many other practicing educators have described the power of play in educational settings, such as long time elementary teacher and author, Vivian Paley, in her book A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play (excerpt), Eleanor Duckworth (who worked with Piaget and Inhelder) in The Having of Wonderful Ideas, Michael Armstrong in Closely Observed Children and Elizabeth Jones and Gretchen Reynolds in The Play’s the Thing: Teachers’ Roles in Children’s Play, to name just a few. When you read these books, you see the joy and excitement that can fill classrooms when play takes a center stage. You see that rather than making school less “rigorous,” play actually makes them a more challenging and intellectually demanding place.

Deborah Meier has developed many schools based on the theory of play as central to learning. Meier’s small public schools of choice serve predominantly low-income minority students. Her work has documented how, when an entire school is designed with the importance of play as central, both in the literal sense of blocks and doll centers for young children, and the intellectual aspect of playing with ideas and theories for people of all ages (including the teachers and other adults) the levels of success for these students skyrockets.

As in the first anecdote, through playing with language, children not only have fun (though the importance of, and their right to, have fun should not be underestimated. Remember, this country was founded on the idea that we have the unalienable right of the pursuit of happiness), but they learn to frame their reality. The anecdote with which I started, in a charming way, illustrates how playing with language is a political tool—we use language to frame an issue. By defining themselves as horses, they find a way of framing reality where they are not breaking the rules—the rules apply to kids, not horses, and horses gallop, not run. These children are becoming powerful users of language, which we claim is a major purpose of education.

Play is a form of practice. But it is not rote practice. It is intellectual practice. Through play children are, in Piagetan terms, developing the schema of how the world works. Through play children have the freedom to discover how materials can be used, the limits and possibilities of those materials. Through play, in Vygotskian terms, children create a low-risk setting to move to the next level in their Zone of Proximal Development intellectually and socially. Through play comes discovery and invention. Through play comes power over language.

Despite all the evidence built up over several centuries, both theoretical and empirical, on the importance and power of play, it appears to be disappearing from the lives of children, especially their school lives, a place where they are compelled to spend 6 hours a day, 180 days a year.

This month, I observed one of my student teachers teach to a class of low-income Latino second graders. She did an hour and a half Reading First language arts lesson (a curriculum that is mandated in Program Improvement schools), following the lesson plan faithfully. The children responded dutifully and more or less competently to the assignments. Not once during that lesson were the children allowed to, much less expected to, use their imagination, to answer any question that did not have one right answer, nor did it allow them to explicitly use any experiences they might have had outside of school.

This experience is not the exception, but rather becoming the rule in schools serving low-income students. If you go into most public schools today, you will see that even in kindergarten (a term which is fast becoming an oxymoron), children spend most of their time sitting in seats filling in worksheets. When not doing worksheets they are engaged in other teacher directed activities. There is almost no time for children to choose their own activities or to freely explore materials. Where there is time to play, it is usually for those who finish their worksheets early, as a way to keep them busy.

Preschools, despite several recent large studies that show that children who attend developmentally oriented preschools outperform those in academically oriented preschools in later years (for more detail on this, read my March 2007 column), are more and more looking like the “traditional” first grades of my childhood—children spending their time doing teacher directed work sitting in chairs. Well-to-do parents are being convinced that only by engaging earlier and earlier in such “academic” work can their children win the race to get into the best schools later in life. Low-income parents are being told that only through such early preparation will their children have the skills that are required for entering kindergarten (when did we start expecting children to enter kindergarten with academic skills?).

There is also evidence that children have less opportunities and experiences engaging in imaginative play outside of school. Homework expectations are rising. Children, especially those of the middle and upper classes, spend more time than ever before in organized structured activities, such as sports, ballet lessons, or music lessons. While these activities are undoubtedly good for children’s development in many ways, they do not engage children in imaginative play. During the unstructured time they do have, children are spending more and more of it in front of electronic media, either television or computers. Neither television nor computer games stretch children to actively use their own imagination. At best they allow children to enter the imaginative worlds of the creators of these shows and games.

To those reading this column who are classroom teachers, I urge you to think about your own teaching. What are you doing in your classroom that allows children to use their imagination? Where can they express their own voice? What percentage of the day? Where are the spaces within the scripted curriculum that you may be mandated to use, where you can allow creativity and student voice?

To all of you, I ask, if you agree with the above critique, what are you doing to change the current system under No Child Left Behind that is driving out much of the space for imaginative work in schools? Preparing students to do well in high stakes standardized testing is often the reason teachers are told they may not allow creative lessons. The only national organization that is actively working to oppose the misuse of such tests for high stakes decisions is FairTest, working on a shoestring budget against the multimillion dollar budgets of the test publishers. At a minimum you can let your elected representative know.

One organization that is currently specifically working on saving the space for play in children’s lives is the Alliance for Childhood. Their site provides articles and links for more information and resources about play in children’s lives.

If you want to read some wonderful books on how to do such curriculum, you could start with any of the following books, some of which were mentioned above:

• Vivian Paley, A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play
• Eleanor Duckworth, The Having of Wonderful Ideas
• Michael Armstrong, Closely Observed Children
• Elizabeth Jones and Gretchen Reynolds, The Play’s the Thing: Teachers’ Roles in Children’s Play

A useful teaching video is:
• Play, a Vygotskian Approach, by Elena Bodrova; Deborah Leong; John Davidson; Frances Davidson (Davidson Films).

For more scholarly academic work on the theory and evidence you might start with:
• Bodrova, E., & Leong, D. J. (1996). Tools of the mind: The Vygotskian approach to early childhood education: Merrill.
• Vygotsky, L. S., & Cole, M. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

Secretary of Education

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George Orwell coined the term Newspeak. An aspect of Newspeak is Doublespeak in which language is often used to mean its opposite. We have seen this come to play in our times in many ways—missiles called “Peacekeeper,” being one of the most infamous. In education, the recent example is the “No Child Left Behind” Act (NCLB), which is leaving more and more children behind educationally. Now it is being used against Linda Darling-Hammond, a possible pick for Obama’s Secretary of Education. “Reformers” are those who want to keep to the policies of NCLB, and anti-reformers are those who want to break with them in this new twist on language.

Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford, was one of the main educational advisors and spokespeople for Obama during the campaign, and has been leading the transition team. In contrast to Dr. Darling-Hammond, possible picks include several who run large city school districts: Arne Duncan, superintendent of Chicago’s public schools, Joel Klein, Chancellor of New York City’s school system, and Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. school system.

In the press, Dr. Darling-Hammond is being labeled as too “status quo” and the other named possibilities as being the “real” reformers. This to me appears immensely ironic. Dr. Darling-Hammond has spent her career working for improving education for poor and minority students (she is herself African American). This has meant a constant battle with policy makers and school leaders, creating reforms on multiple fronts and multiple levels, ones that went against long standing traditions of education in this country. For much of her career, going back at least to her days in New York City with Teachers College, she worked to support the small schools movement and more autonomy for such schools in a system made up of high schools that often have many thousands of students, and were run (and is still run) in a very top down fashion. The small schools movement in New York City, that she was part of starting, has shown remarkable results with low-income and minority students in study after study. The autonomy and sustainability of these schools to has been enormously undermined by “real” reformer Joel Klein, the chancellors of the New York City public schools. More than one of those schools has ceased to exist despite their success, due to the Klein administration.

In Connecticut, Darling-Hammond created new standards for assessing teachers, based on high levels of performance assessment methods, which again have been shown to be successful there in raising teacher quality. The new “reformers” would rather use standardized test scores to measure teacher competency.

At Stanford University, Darling-Hammond has continued her advocacy for poor minority students. She has been a constant critic of NCLB, while the other “reformers” are willing to accept the premise of this act as a valid way to measure schools teachers and students. As in Connecticut, she was involved in creating a performance-based assessment system for credentialing teachers in California. Among her efforts to support teacher quality through capacity building was her involvement in creating the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Not one to work only at state and national levels, at the local level she founded two charter schools, one high school and one elementary school in East Palo Alto, a very poor community that went 25 years without its own high school. Both of these schools were founded on the small school, democratic and constructivist principles, to serve poor minority children. None of these types of reforms have ever been popular among the status quo for use with poor minority children. (These new reformers push policies that reinforce drill and kill rote learning for the most needy students.) At Stanford, she developed the School Redesign Network to support efforts across the nation of local schools and districts who are trying to create smaller learning communities.

On what do they try to base these attacks? Her being a successful academic makes her seen as suspect in a country that is highly anti-intellectual. Part of this comes from the fact that, as a professor, she believes strongly in accurate research. She is both a researcher herself, and an avid and critical reader of the research. She will not support reforms that research shows to be ineffective or counter effective, which is true of some of the reforms posed by some of the other names.

That she does not favor their “reforms,” in particular is probably the main problem. For instance, she has not been a supporter of Teach for America (TfA), one of Rhee’s pet projects. Darling-Hammond dared to examine and report on the actual research on TfA in a less than favorable light. Teach for America has therefore started an offensive against her appointment.

Her support for teachers themselves and their unions is another main criticism. For many reformers, those teachers who have to carry out these reforms are seen as the enemy. This goes along with the general attack on the working class, akin to blaming the auto workers for the failure of the American auto industry to compete. (Look whom our government bailed out—the Wall Street rich, but the auto workers and homeowners are left on their own.) The three above named so-called reformers are among those who see teachers as the problem, rather than the solution, to our schools’ difficulties.

The alternative reform of these three large school district leaders? All three have fought for authoritarian power. Klein, for instance dismantled the New York City School Board and the local semi-autonomous school districts. In the name of making teachers accountable, he is accountable to no one. The idea of these new “reformers” is more reliance on high stakes test scores to measure both students and teachers. Such tests reinfoce rote learning and drill and kill teaching methods. Despite fifty plus years of using such tests and teaching methods with the poor, they have never shown any lasting positive results. The data from any of these districts is less than promising under the leadership of these three.

Not only are the reforms of these so-called reformers unproven, they are highly anti-democratic. They rely on those at the highest levels making the decisions and then using rewards and punishments to insure compliance. It is likely that if any these reformers have national power, they will advance polices that promote top-down mandates, more testing and anti-teacher measures.

This is again in strong contrast to Linda Darling-Hammond, who has been a strong advocate for democratizing schools. She believes instead in giving teachers and local schools the tools, support and professional development to succeed. This is known as capacity building. It is based on the idea that teachers do want their students to succeed, and that those closest to the children are in the best position to know how to succeed, given that those people have the resources and knowledge to do so.

While believing in high standards, Darling-Hammond argues that the measure of success cannot be found in multiple choice tests, either of teachers or of students, but must be found in assessments that authentically measure the skills, abilities and knowledge that we actually want out teachers and students to have. She has spent a career developing and promoting such assessment tools.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could have as Secretary of Education someone who was both one of the most respected researchers in educational reform, knowledgeable about the research on school reform, and experienced at successfully carrying out many of those reforms and both local and state levels? And an African American woman to boot!

Will Computers Free Teachers to Teach More Creatively?

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At a party of a friend recently I got into a discussion with someone about education and the use of computer technology. The person I was conversing with suggested that educational software could and should be developed to relieve teachers of the technical aspects of teaching. Why should each teacher have to figure out how to teach reading or arithmetic when the best minds could solve that problem and create a computer program to teach the children these basic skills? Having software relieve teachers of this technical aspect of teaching, he argued, would free teachers to do the work that needed human interaction—teaching critical and creative thinking. I would like to use this column to explore why this suggestion makes me uncomfortable.

In some ways I agree with this fellow. The main problem in education is not the difficulty of teaching children to read or do arithmetic. Despite claims to the contrary, virtually no student leaves school illiterate. Our students may not be as literate as we would like, but students who truly cannot decode text and do accurate arithmetic are rare outside of classes for the severely disabled. And such failures have only gotten rarer over each decade (1). I agree with him as well that an inordinate amount of time and professional development is spent on the training of the technical aspects of how to teach reading and arithmetic skills more effectively and at an earlier age. The main point we agree upon is that helping students to learn to use their minds well, in critical and creative ways, is given far too little attention in the large majority of classrooms. This is especially true in classrooms serving low-income and minority students. Due to the fact that these students generally do less well on standardized tests, the schools that serve them are pressured to focus on raising those test scores. Most of these schools rely on teacher-centered direct instruction focused on discrete skills to achieve this.

His solution of using computerized instruction of basic skills to free the teacher to do the work of teaching critical and creative thinking is based on a couple of assumptions. One assumption is that if this software actually did efficiently teach these skills, teachers would engage in the critical and creative teaching we both believe is necessary. Is that what would happen? There is certainly no guarantee that teachers would be allowed, much less encouraged to use their time that way. It assumes that those who decide how teachers may use their time want teachers to do those other things. What could happen instead is that teachers, as professionals, are seen as superfluous. Since the computers are doing the “real” teaching, teachers become monitors whose job is to ensure that the students are sitting at the computer doing what they are supposed to be doing. I have actually seen after-school programs that run this way, using adults who are not trained or certified as teachers to oversee the students as they engage in such computer reading or math programs.

To counter this, I argue that we do not need to focus on developing or advocating for such software (and in any case, such software is rapidly being developed by the multi-billion dollar educational publishing industry which spares no expense in advocating for its usefulness). What we need to do is advocate for the second half—the focus on creative and critical thinking for the purpose of developing democratic citizens. There is a real lack of movement in that direction in the public schools. According to the mainstream media the purpose of education is about raising test scores to create a competitive workforce for the global economy. (And what does competitive mean? Best skilled? Or willing to work for the lowest wages?). Even if this first assumption is true, that software could be more efficient in the technical aspect of teaching, the second part is unlikely to become true until we change the perception of the purpose of schooling. That won’t happen without some strong grassroots advocacy since it challenges the status quo.

Another assumption of the software solution is that one can divorce the technical aspects of learning from the emotional, motivational, critical and creative aspects. This is a more fundamental difference in learning theory. What is known as Critical Learning Theory, as developed by Paolo Freire and others, argues that the technical aspects cannot be separated from these other factors (2). This theory claims that the context of our learning, the content of the curriculum, and the power relationships over who decides what and how we learn, are part of the learning itself. When we learn to read by being put in front of a computer, we are learning about what the purpose of reading is. The content of the material teaches us what and who is considered important. If the ideas and content of what is read or learned about are not discussed, the child has no guidance and help in making meaning of it. Constructivist learning theory (as developed by Dewey, Piaget and Vygotsky) shows us that learning is a process of making sense of the world based on one’s actions and interactions with the environment. This theory tells us that we learn skills best in the context of meaningful and purposeful activities. We learned to speak and walk, not by being explicitly taught to do so. Rather, we learned to talk because we had something we wanted to communicate and were surrounded by people who were doing so, and who helped us to do so, in a non-coercive environment. We learned to walk because we wanted to get somewhere—to have more freedom to explore our environment, again in the company of others who already knew how to walk, and were willing to offer assistance when we wanted it. Maybe this is true of all learning—that it is most efficient to learn to read, write and do arithmetic, as well as to learn to have strong democratic habits of mind, by having reasons that are meaningful and purposeful to the student in the company of others who can model and assist them as they learn. Am I talking pie in the sky? Let us examine the evidence.

What is the evidence for the efficacy of using software to teach basic skills? There is currently mixed evidence with some research showing no gains, and other research showing some short term gains, in reading and math scores for some students (3). There is no long term evidence as of yet.

In contrast, progressive schools based on constructivist principals of learning have a track record. The famous Eight Year Study (4) demonstrated its effectiveness at the high school level as far back as the 1930s. Contemporary examples such as Central Park East in New York City (5), Mission Hill in Boston (6), the Shutesbury Elementary School in Massachusetts (7) and many others have been extremely successful with children of all walks of life, over the long term. These schools avoid scripted curriculum and use a minimum of teacher-centered—or software-centered—instruction. They maximize the time students are engaged in projects that have a purpose beyond getting a grade from the teacher. They allow students to be the active agents in the learning process, in charge of much of the “what and how” of the learning. It is creating more of such schools and classrooms that I believe needs our advocacy and support. A focus on technological solutions may distract of from this larger purpose.

Endnotes:

  1. Richard Rothstein, The Way We Were? The Myths and Realities of America’s Student Achievement (New York: The Century Foundation Press, 1998).
  2. Joan Wink, Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World, Third Edition (Longman, 2005).
  3. Andrew Trotter, “Major Study on Software Stirs Debate,” Education Week, April 11, 2007, pp. 1, 18.
  4. Wilford M. Aiken, The Story of the Eight-Year Study (New York: Harper and Row, 1942).
  5. David Bensman, Central Park East and Its Graduates: Learning By Heart (New York: Teachers College Press, 2000).
  6. Deborah Meier, In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002).
  7. Ron Berger, An Ethic of Excellence (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003).

New City School

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In my role as professor, I often supervise student teachers in schools serving some of the most disadvantaged students. For the most part, such education has been reduced to scripted curriculum that turns learning into a lifeless chore for students and teachers alike. I especially find it appalling to enter kindergartens, where I see these young children engaged in either whole class teacher centered instruction, or individual worksheets at their desks for the large majority of the day. All those things that the author of “Everything I need to know, I Learned in Kindergarten” learned are no longer being taught, in our rush to start our children on what we call “academics.” There is no time for creativity, children following their interests, learning to be social beings, or the engaging in the real work of childhood, which is play. Only the future will tell us what the cost of this will be to the next generation.

However, I actually am writing this column to talk about a school visit that renewed my spirit of what is possible! This was an impormptu visit last June to one of my favorite schools. On a vacation to visit friends and family in southern California, my wife and I were driving past Long Beach, when I suddenly blurted excitedly to my wife, “Can we stop here and see my friend’s school?” My wife agreed, somewhat reluctantly, as she has little interest in the topic of education, and few positive memories of her own schooling. I called up my friend, Stephanie Lee, the director of this small charter school in downtown Long Beach. She was more than happy to let us visit.

The New City School, or actually 2 sister schools now, are a pair of two-way immersion (Spanish-English) democratically run small charter schools (K-8), with multi-graded classrooms, and team teaching, using a project-based, constructivist approach to learning. With students from all walks of life, and a large proportion being from low-income Latino families, it represents virtually all the ideas I respect and admire in education.

Their new site, which I had not visited before, is a converted factory floor. The largely open space has mostly partial walls dividing the “classrooms,” with a couple of closed off rooms for particularly noisy or particularly quiet activities. The office is the old office of the factory, which looks down from above on the goings on below from its glassed in window, letting one see all the buzz of exciting activity. In walking around the school, we saw children engaged in projects of all sorts, from making life-sized anatomical drawings of the human body, to creating model cars. Each of the projects had some sort of “academic” aspect, often a written product, to demonstrate the learning of subject area content, and acknowledging that students did need to learn to become proficient in academic writing. Every wall was covered with creative works, arts and crafts. Wherever we went, students were busily engaged in work they cared about, and that had a purpose to them. My wife was amazed that this could be done in a public school, and was now glad she had agreed to come along. She loves music and dance, and was really excited to watch a group of kindergartners engaged in a hip hop dance routine as part of their elective in the afternoon as they learned their second language (dominant English speakers choose activities that took place in Spanish and vice versa).

While recognizing that standardized tests are not accurate measures of meaningful learning, they have managed to do what they need to do to keep their scores high enough to not fall under the thumb of state or federal sanctions. This is more than can be said for most of the schools I visit who use the scripted curriculums specifically designed to raise such test scores, yet still end up missing their targets. The success of The New City School has meant that they have a waiting list as big as the school (which was why they opened a second campus). Since under the requirements of NCLB and the State of California, the required scores are a moving target (each year the scores requirements are raised), how long they can sustain this is anyone’s guess. But for the meantime, this is one school where children are learning that education can be meaningful and worthwhile, and that it can allow for creativity, social learning, and be done in an environment where people treat each other with respect.

If you are in Long Beach, you might see if you can get a chance to visit! It restores my faith in what education can be. Maybe it could do the same for you!

Reading First

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[Click here for the full version of this article as published in Critical Literacy Vol. 3, No.2]

A front page article in Education Week  (May 7, 2008) proclaims that “Reading First Doesn’t Help Pupils ‘Get It.'” This assessment is based on the U.S. Department of Education’s Reading First Impact Report. For those of you who are not aware, Reading First is a Federally funded grant program for “failing” school districts that use textbooks approved by the Federal government as being based on “scientifically based reading instruction.” What makes it scientifically based? That it presumably follows the advice of the National Reading Panel. The question becomes, why haven’t such programs shown effectiveness if they are scientifically based?

It turns out that where these reading programs are failing is in the area of “reading comprehension.” The report documents that schools using the program are increasing their use of the recommended practices. These programs do appear to help at so called decoding skills. However, the use of these recommended practices and these gains in decoding skills do not appear to translate into improvements in actual reading—that is, making meaning of text. Those who actually read the Reading Panel’s report should not be surprised. The fact is that the report did not have any evidence that the recommended strategies would help in reading comprehension. The only “scientifically based evidence” the panel found was that a limited amount of systematic phonics and phonemic awareness instruction would raise scores on tests of phonics and phonemic awareness for “regular” beginner readers(1). Just as in the evidence from the programs used in the field, there was no evidence in the Reading Panel’s report that such practices improved reading comprehension.

That advancement of such skills would raise actual reading ability is based on a theory of reading that is in fact quite controversial among reading researchers and specialists. Many of the foremost reading researchers, theorists and specialists have always contended that only a minimal amount of “skills-based” teaching is helpful, and that reading is most effectively learned through… reading(2)! (With support and help from those who already know how.) Moreover, the Reading Panel report found evidence for even this limited effectiveness of the skills-based approach only for students who were not shown to be problem readers, have learning difficulties nor to be second language learners. Yet these Reading First programs are often used for students of all types. In California, teachers are often mandated to use these programs in schools serving overwhelmingly Latino students whose dominant language is Spanish—in the name of scientifically–based curriculum. These skills–based strategies are applied in these programs for a much larger proportion of the teaching day than the research supports (more than a minimal amount is overkill—it’s like trying to pour more water into an already full glass). And at grades that the research has no evidence for effectiveness (the research on these approaches only looked at first or second grade). Students, whether they are already reading fluently for meaning or not, at all grade levels, are spending hours every week on decoding and phonics skills in these programs.

A friend of mine teaches kindergarten at one of these Reading First schools. The school is made up of over 90% Latino students. On the phone with her just the other day, she was telling me how they are constantly advised to examine the data on the students (another educational buzzword currently popular is “data-driven instruction”). She tells me that she is all for examining and basing instruction on data about her students. In fact the school spends considerable staff development time doing just that—examining the scores of the students so they know just where each student is. She can tell you exactly where each of her students measures up on all of the assessments which are carried out at the end of each six-week unit. Yet then she is told to keep all the students on the same page at the same time, and that she should not deviate from the script in the textbook (see, we’re not leaving them behind, they are on the same page as all the other students!). So what good does it do her to have this data? This practice ignores the research on the uselessness of teaching above students level of understanding(3). If you move on when students don’t get it, they certainly aren’t going to get the next lesson which builds on knowledge from the previous lessons, especially in a skills–based approach(4)! Her story of being mandated to use a one-size-fits-all approach is one I see and hear repeatedly from many of the student teachers and the experienced teachers I work with as a professor of teacher education, particularly those working with low-income minority children.

One of the worst problems of such programs is that they not only ignore the expertise that teachers bring to teaching their actual students—they try to prohibit it! Good teachers have always known that different children learn in different ways. Anyone who has taught knows that. Any parent with more than one child knows that. Good teaching is about figuring out that way for each student. If we really want to “Leave No Child Behind,” we have to stop tying teachers hands with scripted one-size-fits-all programs. We must allow them to do what they are trained to do, and spend a career getting better at—figuring out how the actual students sitting in front of them learn, and adapt their teaching to the students, not the other way around! (Which is part of the argument for small class sizes, but that’s another topic).

[Click here for the full version of this article as published in Critical Literacy Vol. 3, No.2]

Endnotes:

1. Elaine M. Garan, “What Does the Report of the National Reading Panel Really Tell Us About Teaching Phonics.” Language Arts 79, no.1 (2001): 61-71.

2. Edward A. Chittenden, Terry S. Salinger, and Ann M. Bussis, Inquiry into Meaning: An Investigation of Learning to Read (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001). Gerald Coles, Misreading Reading: The Bad Science That Hurts Children (Heinemann, 2000); Kenneth S. Goodman, In Defense Of Good Teaching: What Teachers Need to Know about the “Reading Wars” (York, Me: Stenhouse Publishers, 1998); Stephen D. Krashen, Three Arguments against Whole Language & Why They Are Wrong (Heinemann, 1999); Jeff McQuillan, Literacy Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions (Heinemann, 1998); and Frank Smith, Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read. 6th ed. (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004).

3. John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney L. Cocking, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000); and Linda Darling-Hammond, Barbara Low, Bob Rossbach, and Jay Nelson. The Learning Classroom: Theory into Practice (Burlington, VT: Annenberg/CPB, 2003).

4. James H. Block & Robert B. Burns, “Mastery Learning.” Review of the Research in Education, 4 (1976) 3-49; and J. Ronald Gentile & James P. Lalley, Standards and Mastery Learning (Corwin Press, 2003).