Author Archives: Stephen Seyfer

If You Do Not Hear A Student, Is The Child Really Present? A Cartesian Problem.

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Today I am writing about children in school who are seen but seldom heard. Each of these conditions, to be seen and to be heard or not, is a personal choice a specific group of children. While most kids clamor for the attention of their peers and their teachers, there are kids who are inclined or consciously choose to be visibly present every day AND to be audibly and participatorily absent. It raises a spin on Cartesian logic. If a shy or introverted child is present in the classroom everyday but never volunteers to speak and shuns large group engagement is the child really here? Is the child successfully learning? Is school supporting and helping shy and introverted children?

A different kind of invisibility.

While learning can be exciting, schooling can be devastating. Universally, our youngest children are social beings when they enter school. As they look at their classmates, they only see other children just like themselves and they instinctively move toward and with their new age-mates. If they cannot be the first in line, they all want to be the second. The group, like a swarm of bees, moves together and any child who wanders off, quickly scurries to rejoin. Their judgements of each other only last a micro-second because the very next moment holds new excitements and things not to be missed. They seldom see differences that may exist between themselves and others.

Early school days are filled with the excitement of new things. Children have large eyes and hands that want to touch everything. There is sensory stimulation galore. Most children are energized by the sounds, sights, and activity of their school environments. In fact, they contribute to the managed chaos. School is a beehive of activity.

Early in their school experiences, children learn that attention swings between the whole and individual students constantly. When their teacher asks a question, many children want to answer at once. Before the question is finished they have their hands in the air waving and saying “Call on me! Call on me!’ At school, taking turns is a learned school behavior. However, with taking turns comes the spotlight of attention. When a child asks the teacher a question or the teacher asks a child a question, the attention of all other students and the teacher is on THE student. How a child responds to being the focus of attention can decide whether the child will choose to be visible or invisible in school.

Elevated levels of sensory stimulation and focused attention abound in school. In fact, schooling promotes these and success in school requires children to adapt to these two conditions. So, what about the child who is shy or introverted?

Yes, the child may be present every day. Yes, the child is present but seems to cower at sudden and loud noises and overly excited and prefers to work alone. Yes, the child has opportunities but declines to speak and never volunteers to speak. Yes, the child can learn successfully if the child can do so independently. And no, schools typically prefer and reward extroverted children and do not help and support shy and introverted children very well.

Choosing to be a non-participant is both an unlearned and learned behavior.

What causes a child to clam up in school? Fear and/or avoidance. Shy children fear or are highly self-conscious about being negatively evaluated by others. Introverted children avoid external stimulation and prefer quiet and solitary environments to process their own thoughts. Fear and avoidance – each is a distinct psychology and emotion and are not the same. They may overlap – shy children can also be introverted. And they may seem contradictory – introverts can seem outgoing, and extroverts can prefer shy environments. However, in school, we tend to lump the shy and introverted together. They are children who seldom volunteer in class or do not like to take part in public and social activities. They avoid being in the spotlight or being singled out. As a result, most teachers “let them ride,” do not call on them, and leave them alone because they do not cause trouble or draw attention to their needs. We let shy and introverted children become invisible in our classrooms.

Shyness is a real behavior and can be the product of a variety of things. Shyness or behavioral inhibition can be genetic. This inherited trait is related to about 15% of children who appear shy. Inherently, some children are cautious, tentative, and sensitive in social settings. They can be shy by nature.

Children can become shy and tentative when their parent(s) is domineering. A mom or dad who is overbearing, overly critical, and loud in directing a child can cause that child to become tentative. If the child were older, we would say they are “brow beaten.” An overly critical parent diminishes a child’s willingness to take risks. Why volunteer for loud, unwanted criticism? Adults around them can cause children to be shy.

Shyness, as in social anxiety, also can be attributed to personal experience. A child builds confidence and social security when she is successful in engaging with others, in raising a hand to volunteer, and giving correct responses when asked questions. Overtime, these successes encourage risk taking. However, the lack or success and a personalization of failed attempts can cause the opposite. It does not take many disappointments in social settings for a child to self-create a fear of any events that could result in public failure.

Social anxiety also can be the result of peer intimidation, ridicule, and harassment. If a classmate(s) makes fun of a child’s failure to answer a question correctly or asking a question another student labels as “stupid,” that child can become inhibited from speaking in class. Student to student bullying is a hot topic in schools today with interest on stopping bullies and helping the bullied. Too often the bullied already face other challenges.

At an extreme level, shyness can be a social phobia and is classified as a mental health issue.

Introversion and extroversion also have a genetic basis. Heredity accounts for 40% to 60% of children characterized as either introverted or extroverted. In their inherited biologies introverts have a higher level of baseline cortical arousal and dopamine sensitivity in their brains. They already are intrinsically stimulated so they avoid extrinsic stimulation. Over stimulation with more dopamine actually drains their energy and makes them emotionally edgy.

At an extreme level, introversion also is classified as a mental health issue.

Classroom anonymity.

Being shy can just be shyness and being introverted can just be introversion. They are are not related to intelligence and are not synonymous with school failure. Many valedictorians, National Honor Society members, accomplished athletes, and school leaders are shy and/or introverted students. They succeed in the classroom fringe and school shadows where they avoid attention or environmental distractions. They find anonymity in taking tests and submitting written assignments and papers. Given the solitude of paper and pencil, now digital schoolwork, these students can quietly earn As and Bs and build strong academic records without raising a hand in class or being in the front of a line. They learn to work independently, whenever possible, and often are the most creative and divergent thinking children in class. If assigned to group work, they make positive contributions, often leading the group in a behind-the-scenes way that does not draw overt attention.

They excel in sports and arts that feature independent, solo performances in more controlled environments. They run and swim, play golf, and chess and e-games, and debate, and build robots. The endure negative aspects of these with a focused commitment on what they can control – their personal achievement.

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, each stupendously successful in their business lives, were shy and introverted in school. Buffett says he became physically ill in anticipation of public speaking and would do all he could to avoid it. Gates is a classic introvert who focused on academics and showed asocial behaviors of awkward or rude social awareness. Introversion can cause children to miss or not recognize social cues clear to others. Successful introversion breeds continuous introversion.

Though good examples of introversion, Buffett and Gates are outliers. Few shy children will reach their levels of worldly success. The question before us is “What potentiality, like a Buffett or Gates or just a good, solid, and productive person, lies behind the shell of a shy or introverted child in school?”

Insecurity is a hard nut to crack.

Success in school requires a substantial level of risk taking. Children must navigate different environments each having its own challenges. School busses, hallways, cafeterias, restrooms, playgrounds, recesses and before and after school activities, as well as classrooms, are risky places. They also can be places possessed by elevated levels of activity, noise, lights, and chaos. In each of these, we see children walk along the walls, sit alone, appear head down, and talk with no one. They are risk and chaos averse individuals. And they can thrive when their work is evaluated not their persona.

There are self-help routes available to shy people and introverted children. Buffett enrolled in a Dale Carnegie public speaking course and says what he learned changed his life. With determination and strong personal effort, an introvert can become less introverted. The last words are key to Buffett – he became less introverted by learning skills of social engagement, like public speaking. Two things are true – earned billions of dollars and he still is a shy person.

Bill Gates was a loner in school avoiding large group activities and social events. He also is a gifted as a computer programmer and scientist. He has extraordinary strategic vision, critical thinking skills, and intellectual rigor. He overcomes his introversion when speaking about his work passions but prefers solitude when not. Due to his many successes, he can selectively choose when to be less introverted.

As educators, we can be as life changing for shy and introverted children as Dale Carnegie was for Warren Buffett. Our goal should not be to change shy children into attention seekers or introverts into extroverts. We need to teach them less shy and introverted behaviors and mentor them to optimize their personal assets. At the end of the day, shyness and introversion are not bad behaviors, they are behavioral preferences.

We can help and support the shy and the introverted child in your classroom by –

  • Providing opportunities for children to engage in independent and small-group work. Give all children to choice to work autonomously or in a small group (2-3) as often as possible. While some lesson activities are most productive as whole group activities, alternatives support all children.
  • Before whole group or larger group activities, incorporating time for children to process their thinking alone. Private time promotes their thinking and creativity.
  • Having quiet spaces in the classroom – a table and chair, a puff pillow chair, or a rug – where a child who prefers to engage in their lesson privately can do so.
  • In whole group discussions, quietly encouraging a shy child to take part with “I see you have done some good thinking/work. I would like to share it.”
  • Or quietly forewarning the shy child that you will call upon that child to take part. Give the child time to prepare for risk taking.
  • Using digital tools for student participation where a shy child can contribute ideas, written responses, or turn in work without speaking.
  • Expanding your definition of participation if you grade or record each child’s level of participation. Positive engagement in learning is not always extroverted speaking. Substantive participation can be the level of personal note taking, submission of quality work to a group, non-verbal contributions. Participation is not always what is seen and heard.
  • Scaffolding oral participation. Assign lesser time requirements or smaller audiences as beginning points for shy children. Consider the quality of thinking and planning prior to their speaking not just the length of time they speak.
  • Frequently using one-to-one checking with shy and introverted children to assure you, the teacher, that they are on track with their learning. Extroverts give lots of clues.
  • Valuing progress being made by a shy or introverted child as a class participant. Extroverts grab attention but may not improve the quality of their thinking or planning as much as a progressing introverted child.

We need to

  • stop applying negativity to children whose fearful shyness keeps them from raising a hand or volunteering for class activities and introversion avoidance moves them to fringe of classroom excitements. Their preferences are not a statement about our teaching or their classmates but about how they can learn best.
  • Find the academic and performance strengths that shy and introverted students bring to their studies and create curricular pathways for them to achieve our curricular goals using those strengths. When we hold to curricular goals, individual pathways don’t matter.
  • Expand how we communicate and reinforce communication with all children. The private, quiet, and individualized touch with shy and introverted children assures them that our teaching includes them.

Principals and administrators can help and support shy and introverted children by recognizing their quieter and less demonstrative successes and contributions to the school and their classmates. There are usually more shy and introverted people “backstage” contributing to the success of the few extroverts “on stage.” Personal recognition by school leaders reinforces the self-esteem of a shy or introverted child who avoids the limelight.

The Big Duh!

Increasingly, we are seeing the whole group of a classroom as a collection of diverse children. Some have special education challenges. Some have cultural and linguistic needs. Some are gifted and talented. And some are shy and introverted. The characteristics we once considered normal are now a small group within the diversity.

Educators need to respect the preferences of shy and introverted children for independent and less stimulating school environments AND provide them with diverse opportunities to express their intelligence and skills as students.

These are four references that can be helpful for the informed educator.

Teaching Is Renewal By Surprises

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If, as Solomon said, there truly is nothing new under the sun, why do we rise with any new anticipations? In its basic forms, classroom teaching can be nothing more than the routine instruction of a routine curriculum. Why aren’t we stuporized by the same old, same old? Do we really expect the children we teach today to be different than those we taught in years past? Will we be surprised?

The answer is yes. Good teachers are constantly renewed and invigorated by the surprises children deliver every day often in expected ways.

What do we know?

Surprise really is the spice of life. Seeing, hearing, and experiencing the unanticipated pleasantries that populate daily life adds sweet, incremental value to our existence. As a spice, a surprise makes the moment it happens different than moments before. And the following moments carry the aftertaste of the surprise.

(In this writing, I will speak only about joyful surprises. Teachers also confront events that are not joyful but are rooted in wrongful and harmful words and behaviors. These indeed are and should be surprising and require an entirely different response.)

First, you must allow yourself to be surprised every day because surprises, just like the proverbial hits, they just keep coming. Being surprisable is a personal quality that we can refine. It is like standing in front of a natural life exhibit with a hole for your hand to fit into. The exhibit will teach you the feel and texture of porcupine, rabbit, and beaver fur. You will feel the fur without seeing which fur you are touching. There always is trepidation about putting your hand into a hole holding remnants of an animal, but in your hand goes, and you smile at the feel of the soft down of rabbit fur. It could have been the porcupine. Surprise is an immediate and unretractable emotion.

I believe that teaching oneself to be ready for surprises is essential. Otherwise, a dull perspective fogs your ability to appreciate surprise when it happens. No matter how long a teacher has been in the classroom, they find joyful surprises in front of them everyday. Expect to be surprised by good things and you are more likely to be so.

Second, surprise brings joy and a teacher’s joy is contagious to children. It is like the saying, “When momma is happy, everybody is happy.” Teachers set the tone for their classroom and when a teacher is joyful, it makes it easier for all children to accept and appreciate their own joys. When a classmate says or does something that is unexpected, many children look to the teacher first to reinforce their response. Is it okay to laugh? Should I be shocked? Let yourself express your surprise and the joy it brings to you, and your students will be instructed by you once again.

Third, surprises in school take many forms. It can be a child who says something innocently or even wickedly funny that brings immediate laughter. Surprises arise when a child is just being a child full of surprises. Be prepared to laugh and smile and enjoy.

Classroom surprises are not magnificently extreme nor tangible. They are more like standing in front of the Old Faithful Geyser knowing that sooner rather than later it will erupt and already knowing what its eruption looks like. But still you are surprised and elated when the waters shoot to the sky.

So it is when a child who struggles with addition or balancing a chemical equation or performing a clear note on the trumpet does so and knows their success, be surprised and elated with that success. Your response will translate into immediate positive reinforcement for the child and promote the continuing struggle that is learning.

Lastly, learning and schooling are not easy for all children. Just being in school every day can be a personal effort. On top of that, reading and writing are not natural acts for humans like speaking and listening are. Mathematics is a foreign language to many. Science can seem unknowable. Making music come out of your mouth is magical. And children learn at differing rates and degrees. For these reasons, surprises always are on the classroom table. The fact that schooling and learning can be difficult makes the timing of its successes unpredictable. Hence, surprising.

The Big Duh!

We are given a tremendous gift when we teach children. They are raw talents and bundles of energy and each experiences their schooling and learning independently. A teacher who is ready to be surprised by children and knows how to express the joy of a good surprise not only enhances her own career but uplifts the lives of the children she teaches.

Self-inspect Your Teaching Professionally to Prevent Meh!

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Meh in the classroom is when a teacher does not know how good or bad their teaching is but just keeps teaching the same way day after day. Children know meh when they see it. They know it long before a teacher is aware of stale teaching practices and behaviors. It takes courage and effort for a teacher to inspect her teaching. And inspection requires professional assistance.

What do we know?

Classroom teaching is a black box profession. Teachers deliver hundreds of lessons without much feedback on whether their teaching practices and behaviors really work to cause children to learn. Their principal evaluates their teaching minimally in compliance with state and contractual requirements and provides formal feedback every three years. State assessments purposefully disconnect from statements about instructional quality. We make inferences only about state report cards and daily classroom teaching.

Even then, self-criticism is not easy. The curricular calendar and classroom dynamics work against a teacher’s understanding of the effectiveness of daily teaching. Grade level and subject area teaching assignments have an annual curriculum that always is more than a teacher can teach in a school year. Even with good planning, school life interferes with emergency drills, special observances, and assemblies, and unplanned “we need to talk with kids about this” topics. No teacher teaches a complete unit of planned instruction without school interruptions.

Also, children are complex learners. Teaching always is within the contextual interplay between children’s socio-emotional lives with their ability to focus on what they are being taught. Seldom is a lesson taught without a teacher’s need to consider or respond to extra-learning needs of students. For example, this month, October, traditionally includes homecoming activities in secondary schools. The rich schedule of pep assemblies, school decorations, homecoming dance, and girls’ and boys’ athletic events associated with homecoming create multiple instructional road bumps.

Lastly, even though teachers are colleagues with fellow teachers, they seldom to never see other teachers teach. While all PK-3 teachers are reinforcing their reading instruction with phonics-based strategies, they never see how the teacher next door is doing it. And the 8th grade math teacher trying to bolster flagging student math achievement never sees how the 7th grade math teacher filled in the math scaffold the year before.

Black box classrooms work against the improvement of teaching.

What does effective teaching look like?

The easy answer is that effective teaching causes children to learn what they are taught. There should be a tight correlation between planned teaching and measured learning assessments. But effective teacher practices and behaviors are more than that assumed correlation. I have known teachers who could plan and deliver a well-planned lesson that should have produced strong learning results. However, the teacher’s unawareness of student needs during the lesson or unawareness of her own speech, posture, language, facial expressions, and lack of connection with children in the classroom doomed the possibility that a well-planned lesson would cause good learning. As teachers make a proverbial “1,000 decisions per hour in their classroom, those decisions cover a myriad of practices and behaviors.

If good planning is not a consistent cause of good learning, then what is? Our teacher preparation programs point us back to the state’s approved professional standards for teachers. These standards were embedded in our license preparation courses with the hope that, at the end of a prep program, a licensed teacher would be imbued with these qualities.

In my work, I asked veteran teachers if they could recite the ten Wisconsin Teacher Standards from memory. Or at least talk about the ten standards. These interviews included veteran teachers with long records of their students achieving high scores on standardized tests as well as rookie teachers. Few teachers could recite the WI standards, though most knew some of the concepts of the standards. Fingertip knowledge of professional standards is not necessarily a correlation with effective teaching.

As another measure, I asked veterans and rookies about the preparation standards of their license. For example, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the Council for Exceptional Children offer strong supportive guidance for the preparation and continuing professional development of math and special education teachers. Teachers have vague recall of the standards of that preparation and their connections with national organizations diminish over time.

In the absence of other information, we fall back on the end of chapter quizzes, unit tests, and state report card assessments to provide some data of teaching effect. However, these data may or may not correlate with good teaching. Test results also reflect what a child learned previously from another teacher, what they learned on their own out of school, what they infer but did not clearly learn from your teaching, and a lot of good guessing in their test taking.

Effective teaching is a process of connecting teaching practices and behaviors with desired learning outcomes.

Effective teaching is not a mystery. We know what it is when we see it. Effective teaching also is not an accident. We know how to produce the practices and behaviors of effectiveness. If not a mystery or an accident, then effective teaching is a qualitative state of our professional work we can focus on and improve. Also, the state of our professional work is not a constant quality but a variable that ebbs and flows across a career. Most teachers self-recognize when their teaching is superb, and they feel wonderful about it. They may also feel it when it is meh. However, when it is meh, they usually are unsure about how to change it. This is when professional inspection is needed.

Self-criticism, that is a teacher taking steps to inspect, criticize, and improve her own teaching, got much easier with technology. It starts with recording one’s own teaching and all it takes is courage and a smartphone.

  • Begin by telling all students you are going to make audio and visual recordings of yourself while you teach. They will be heard and seen in your recordings, but you will not use the recordings to grade or evaluate them. Also, tell them that you will ask other teachers to listen to and watch the recordings for the purpose of improving your teaching. Your recording is not about students. Not surprisingly, students will quickly forget the presence of your smartphone.
  • Focus on segments of teaching practices and behaviors. Consider the first ten minutes of a class period. How do you greet students each day? How do you connect this day of learning with prior days – how do you introduce and give context for the lesson? What are your speech patterns? How do you stand – does your posture promote positive enthusiasm? What facial expressions express your interest in their learning this day’s lesson? How do you respond to the initial class period needs of all students?
  • Record your explicit instruction. This is the heart of your lesson plan and where lesson planning and lesson teaching connect. Do you connect new learning with prior learning? Do you pre-teach new vocabulary, conceptual terms, and new skill sets? Do you model correct understanding and performance of what students are to learn? Do you check for student understanding during not just after your instruction? How do you respond to student questions? How do you address wandering or distracting student behaviors?
  • There are so many aspects of classroom teaching you can focus on for self-inspection. Recording an entire class period us necessary occasionally, but only for a global view. Instead, focus on discrete episodes in your classroom work.
  • Listen to and watch your recordings at a suitable time and place when and where you can give your recordings your undivided attention. If you are making the effort to record, also give the effort to view and critique.

Self-criticism is a required professional development disposition. Too often teachers believe that criticism is always negative and defeating. It is not! Self-criticism finds successes and challenges. When you watch Smile and clap hands when in self-approval. Also, take notes -write down – practices and behaviors you want to change.

  • Label your practices and behaviors professionally. Refer to your training and the terms used in lesson planning. I professionally use Madeline Hunter’s Lesson Design and the terms and definitions she used to teach effective instruction. Describe your instructional Purpose. Consider your Objectives in “the learner will …” terms. Be critical of your Explicit Instruction and how it incrementally develops what students are to learn. Replay your Modeling of new instruction to assure fidelity to the Objectives. Replay your Formative Assessments to assure that all students were ready for the next part of the lesson. Labeling across lessons ensures that you are comparing and contrasting practices and behaviors properly.

Be bold. After you have listened to and watched recordings, ask a fellow teacher, a teacher you respect and trust, to listen and watch with you. Explain the purpose and process in your self-inspection and let that professional comment on successes and challenges. Do not be surprised if your colleague has difficulty with labeling and defining as the practice of self-inspection may be new to them as well as to you. Make this a collegial venture.

And do it again. “Again” means

  • Make a second and third recording to find recurring practices and behaviors. Incidentals that do not repeat are hard to change, so do not focus there. Focus on repetitive practices and behaviors.
  • Take enough time to self-inspect, understand the successes and challenges you saw,
  • Plan to change explicit practices and behaviors you saw. Change for improvement is a planned process. Being explicit improves your ability to notice change. Lack of specificity can also be chance.
  • Make follow-up recordings to see the effectiveness of new practices and behaviors.
  • Ask your colleague to view follow-up recordings to confirm your observations.

The Big Duh!

First, a teaching career is supposed to last many years. A successful teaching career is causing all children assigned to you to learn what you taught. The feeling that your teaching is successful helps to sustain a lengthy career. Second, over the years, your teaching practices and behaviors will change given experience and school district priorities. The reality of professional improvement, however, does not change. While a public may criticize education, the educational system only addresses programmatic improvement not classroom teaching improvements. Last, teachers are on their own if they want to improve their professional practices and behaviors. So, pull up your socks and create your own self-inspection. Your career and your students deserve your doing this.

Test Less and Converse More

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How do you really know what your students know? Is a student’s learning only the composite score of tests, quizzes, papers, and projects?

Too often students in our classrooms are not children. Students are the grades and points behind their names in our grade books. In the long slog of a school year, each student in your class becomes what their line of grades says they are. A student is – passing or not passing, exceeding expectations or not meeting expectations, or the child who will always give the right answer versus the child who does all he can to avoid being asked a question. The reality of classrooms is that one student is only a single student in the totality of a teaching assignment, one amongst the many, and the speed of curricular coverage blends them all together. This is the web we weave when the only source we use to know how well children are learning are whole group assessments.

As negative as the second paragraph reads, it is the truth in too many classrooms. We prove it’s true when a parent or your principal asks how Alexa is doing in your class, and you immediately need to consult your grade book to answer. School, not just Alexa’s teachers define Alexa’s learning progression by the data in a grade book. How sad for Alexa and how sad for education. We can do better.

What do we know?

First, a child is one among many children. If the average public school teacher’s career is 14 years long and a class assignment averages 25 students, then a grade level elementary teacher teaches approximately 350 children and a secondary subject area teacher teaches 2,100 children in that span of years.

https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/who-average-us-teacher

It is probable that an elementary teacher who sees the same faces for an entire school day is more familiar with each student than a secondary teacher who sees the same faces for only one class period each day. However, the same portrait of what we know about our students holds for elementary and secondary classrooms – students are characterized by the grades they are assigned by the assessments the are given.

Second, we do not plan for a teacher to know each child in the classroom. In their college preparation courses, teachers learn that a teacher’s knowledge of each student’s prior school learning achievement, their so-called learning styles, their academic strengths and learning challenges, and their cultural, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds help the teacher to better instruct each student. Theory does not always find its way into practice. The short cut answer most teacher take to the idea theory of learning about their students prior to teaching them is “I will find out what I need to need to know as I teach them.” This is not necessarily a teacher’s fault. Contracted in-service time includes several days at the beginning of the school year for a teacher to get ready for the first day of school. But after mandatory district and school staff meetings and required organizing of a classroom, there is little to no time for a teacher to study and know what they should know about their new students. Theory is pushed aside and all they know will know of Alexa is gained through daily in-class interactions in the running stream of school days.

Third, successful teaching is about the success of a statistical majority students not individual students. Instructional school goals want 80% of the students to 80% or better learning success 80% of the time in class. The Rule of 80% is commonly applied is schools using Tier 1, 2 and 3 instruction and Response to Intervention concepts. Sometimes teaching really is an industrial quality control model or at least a cattle drive.

Last, we prioritize efficiency over effectiveness. Each teacher is assigned a grade level or subject area curriculum to teach. In the continuity of PK-12 education, these are building blocks that create an educated school graduate. If the teaching of a single building block is incomplete, there are consequences to the integrity of the education. Completing the total annual curriculum is more important than assuring what is taught is learned well by all students. Emphasizing totality of instruction over quality of learning ensures that the 80% rule becomes 70% or 60% or 50%.

An alternative – talk with Alexa.

An alternative model is Socratic-like: A teacher often sits with Alexa asking Alexa key questions as a verbal quiz AND then asks Alexa to explain her answers. Alexa talks about the background knowledge of her answers, the context for her answering, her problem-solving, and her conclusions about what she knows. When done with proper frequency, this takes 15 minutes. In the aggregate of meetings with Alexa, the teacher’s conversation models what Alexa should know and how she should know it and the conversation coaches Alexa’s personal learning strategies over time. Alexa may have scored only 5 of 10 correct on a written quiz but scored 8 of 10 in an oral discussion of what she knows and how she knows it. Alexa knows more than what a quiz can extract from her.

The conversation is not a complete Socratic model. It stops with a personal assessment of what Alexa knows and how well she knows it. Instead of leading directly into personalized new instruction, the conversation informs the teacher about Alexa’s learning as well as all the Alexas in the class so that the teacher can best confirm what has been learned well by all all students and clarify or correct what has not been learned well. This modified Socratic conversation helps the teacher move the quality of learning above the 80% Rule.

Children respond to this alternative differently. Some will love the opportunity to talk with their teacher and gladly explain what they know and how they know it. On the other hand, some children will be intimidated by the face-to-face time with their teacher and not want to risk talking. These are the same children who do not volunteer in class and of whom the teacher knows the least about their personal learning using traditional assessments. As they are intimidated by all assessments, it is easier to wean them away from fear or their teacher than it is fear of a test. Most children will respond positively to their teacher’s sincerity in wanting to know what they know and how they know it.

Personal conversation models instruction as well as assessment. Children quickly learn that simple yes or no answers or one-word answers only cause the teacher to say, “Tell me more.” Children learn that conversation is like composing an essay. The teacher is looking for the second and third sentences that provide evidence for the answer the child gives to the first question. The child also learns to summarize and give a conclusion.

The conversation also instructs the teacher. She can easily understand from a variety of conversations how well her instruction caused children to learn the curriculum she taught. Some children will need clarification or correction if their learning had errors. The conversation tells her more than which students have errors in learning; she knows the dimensions of their errors. The conversation also affirms that children are ready for the teacher’s next instruction.

This modified Socratic conversation takes time. What do other children do while the teacher converses with Alexa? Individualized and collaborative learning advanced immensely with the pandemic. Classrooms have the technologies for a teacher to readily make individual assignments for students or organize a collaborative activity for groups. Classrooms no longer live in the whole group instruction only era. A contemporary teacher has the resources to provide ongoing instruction for other children while she converses with Alexa.

We get what we settle for.

The traditional model of “teach and test, teach and test” efficiently moves children through the school year’s curriculum. That model drives children from grade level to grade level and course to course. It is a “ready or not, here I come” model.

When we consider that most 4th, 8th, and 10th grade students show “less than proficient” scores on state assessments in reading and math, we should understand that the traditional model is not achieving the 80% Rule but a less than 50% reality.

The traditional model gives us an incomplete understanding of what each child knows and how well she knows it. Based on an incomplete knowledge of what children have learned, we only create an incomplete design for their next instruction.

We can do better when we use better practices.

Weep Not For NAEP – Rely On Local Data

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Data about how children are doing in school is a lot like the price of gasoline. The only meaningful data is the cost of gas at your local gas pump. Likewise, the only meaningful data about student learning are assessments at your local schools. National report cards are irrelevant and misleading. If we are to be data-based, we need to consider and use the right data. Stay local!

What do we know?

Everyday the media posts the average price of a gallon of gas on national and state and regional averages. For example, today AAA posted that the national retail price of a gallon of regular gas is $3.319. AAA says that the retail average for Wisconsin is $2.924 per gallon. I disregard these data because the gas prices are always higher in rural, northeastern Wisconsin. Today’s price in northern Door County is $3.37 per gallon. The price of gas depends on location.

The quality of education also depends on location. And the only location that matters is the quality of education in the school teaching your children. I always read educational data in this order – national, state, local school district. Then I consider the data in reverse order – district, state, nation. I do this because the only data that is meaningful and classroom-related is that of my local school district. National education policies and commitments are political not educational. While federal politicians lament the United States’ falling status internationally and the annual negative slope of reading and math scores nationally, their commitment to education is always partisan. Even though the US Constitution assigns responsibility for public education to state governments, national politicians consistently try to implement policies and programs to “ram” change into the 16,200+ school districts in our country. Their “carrot or stick” efforts are guided by political hubris and constantly prove futile.

Last week the 2024 NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) data were published. The latest NAEP assessment always reports data from the prior school year. NAEP assessments tell us that national student achievements in reading and math continue to decline. The data displays current scores compared to a decade of pre-pandemic scores and most recent post-pandemic scores. The graphs show a consistent decline in reading and math scores with a sharper tick downward after the COVID pandemic.

As expected, commentary about this week’s NAEP report once again asked what can be done to reverse the national data trend and strengthen student achievement in reading and mathematics.  “We need to fix this problem,” our politicians said. However, the current administration’s work in dismantling the US Department of Education shows that all we will hear from Washington DC is an exaggeration of the “economic effects” of the reading/math score decline who to blame for it.

Policy and commitment to public education at the state level resembles national futility only at a smaller scale. Conservative statehouses are more willing to engage in legislating cellphone policy, book banning, and LGBTQ issues than discussing educational outcomes in their state’s schools. The ultimate truth about state responsibility for public education lies in the language of the state constitution. The Wisconsin State Constitution tells us there will be schools, schools will be mandated to teach core subjects to prepare graduates to become productive citizens, and responsibility for funding schools will be shared by the state and local school boards. There are many chapters and verses, but this is the gist of our state’s responsibility.

The policies of local school boards and their schools are where public education lives best and thrives.

Treat local educational data with care and commitment for improvement.

There is an interesting tipping point in school districts about their understanding of educational achievement data. If the school district is a large, urban district, the data becomes disoriented by the tens of thousands of students and the hundreds of teachers. Yet if the school district is a small, one building rural district, the data can be isolated to a classroom of students and an individual teacher. It is dangerous to draw conclusions about all schools in a large district and equally dangerous to drill too deeply in a small district.

However, conclusions want to be drawn. Always consider educational data clinically and from a respectable distance. The positive care and humaneness schools show about their data aids their future improvement; negativity gets in the way of improvement.

A healthy school board and district administration look at local educational data as indicators of school success not failure. Their assets-based approach says, “80 percent of third graders are reading at grade level and what can we do to raise that percentage?” An unhealthy approach focuses on the 20 percent reading below grade level and deficits that must be contributing to their lower achievement. A healthy approach assures and reassures that the reading program includes strong instruction and then extra instructional time for positive aid for below grade level readers. That approach does not ignore the learning needs of students who need more instruction in reading, nor does it trash can a reading program that causes 80% of the students to be successful readers. An unhealthy approach is sum-zero and takes time and resources from other curriculum just to bolster time and resources where deficits appear. To be Gump-like, positive, and healthy school leadership is as positive and healthy school leadership does. We want local school leadership to be healthy and positive in their data consideration while constructively working to improve educational programs for all children.

If annual data says that the annual achievement of students in reading is declining, constructive school leadership looks at all the data and considers it without knee jerking a response. Leaders disaggregate the data. They want to know for whom the program is and is not causing success and where and how separation between students who are successful and unsuccessful takes place. Knowing about that separation is essential for closing gaps in student learning performances. A decline in some students’ reading and math achievement does not happen overnight but over time, yet it always has a beginning and characteristics that begin a definition of successful and unsuccessful performances. This is how data can and should be used to improve education for all students and this careful and considered use of data only takes place at the local school level.

The consideration of local school performance data must be macroscopic as well as microscopic. Educational data about students in our community is not impersonal; these are our children. As we consider microscopic annual reading and math data, we also must consider the full profile of the educational programs for these children. Are they equally engaged in the school’s academic, activity, arts, and athletic programs? Are they growing in creative ways as well as performative ways? Are they well-adjusted and integrated as a student body without outliers? Are the school’s programs preparing all students for post-secondary college and career entry? Is the school creating an informed and prepared pathway into local citizenry? A macroscopic perspective allows school leaders better adjust reading and math programs, or any program that is not microscopically creating success for all students. Too often a look at data causes knee jerk responses that cause more harm to students than help.

The Big Duh!

The data about student reading and math achievement on a national level is an ongoing story that is always historical. The data tell us about what happened last year and in years past. Federal and state attempts to affect that data through line over all students and over time consistently have proven politically and educationally futile. As readers of national educational news, we should remember that the only data that matters is local data. Change in national trends will not be the result of action by federal or state governments, but only by careful and healthy consideration and use of data at the local school district level. Know your local data and help your local leaders to use it effectively.