Author Archives: Stephen Seyfer

Effective Study Habits Should Not Be a Mystery for Children.

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Succeeding in school is a mystery to most children. The pathway of learning, testing, and good grades is broad and all children travel it but the doorway to academic success is narrow and few are awarded an A grade. The most common road sign along the way reads “Study and you will do well!” But maps for what it means to study are vague and seldom shared. How to study is the mysterious missing link to school success; we preach about studying but do not children how to study.

What do we know about this?

Our study of child development tells us that children, especially when they are young, are natural learners. Their brain sees and hears and files information automatically. Over time, their brain learns to read and textual information magnifies the quantity of information their brain processes. Children are natural learning sponges; they soak it all in.

Our study also tells us that children are born forgetters. There is a natural dumping of the information their brain processes if they do not purposefully change it from short-term to long-term memory. If they did not forget most of the millions of bits of information they see, hear, read, and feel, they would be in perpetual chaos trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.

Education attempts to meaningfully focus and train a child’s learning brain. A school has curriculum and teachers have instructional methods to teach children subject matter content and academic skills. A spiraling 4K-12 curriculum presents more complex and complicated information so that children can build sophistication in what we know and can do. Teaching and learning help children make sense of what to remember and what to forget.

Education also has tests for children to show they have indeed learned information and can perform academic skills. There is a rational sequence of learn, study, test that drives the annual school calendar. We teach what we test. We test what we taught. We tell children to study, but we do not teach them how to study.

Is there a problem?

You bet there is. On the one hand, schools cite the high-quality instruction of their teaching faculty and their standards-based curriculum. School say all children are taught and prepared to do be successful learners. However, test results continue to look like a bell-shaped curve with as many children achieving less than average as the number of children achieving more than average. And on higher stakes testing, more than half the children tested do not show proficiency in their test results.

It is oxymoronic to claim high quality instruction and accept low quality test results. Yet, we do.

The reason is that most children do not know how to study – how to make sense of what they have learned. I often ask children how they study. “I don’t study” is the most frequent answer. “Why don’t you study? I ask. Again, the most common response – “I don’t know what to do.” When a child tells me that they do study, I ask them who taught them. “No body. I Googled what to do” is the most common response from children who study. Ugh!

What if we taught, practiced, and consistently reinforced best practices in studying? What if students studied for a test under our supervision? What if we did not test a child until we verified that the child had used best practice study habits to prepare for the test? Well, it is likely that every child would be a successful learner. Are we prepared for this result? That may be the greater question.

Best practice study methods

We misconstrue study as how to pack information, and skill sets into the brain. That is why ineffective study is known as “cramming.”  Why is this a mistake? Because testing is about getting information and skill set manipulation out of the brain. We do not test students on how to cram; we test on how to de-cram. Studying should be building the capacity to retrieve what has been learned from the brain not trying to get more information into it.

How do we know this? Without other instructions about how to study and left to their own designs, most children do these two re-packing strategies. They –

  • Re-read the text material and re-read their notes, sometimes several times.
  • Underline or highlight text material and class notes and then re-read the underlining and highlighting.

Post-testing analysis of children who use these practices align how they studied with some B but mostly C, D, and F grades. Study habits using retrieval habits align with A and B grades, though some retrievers still have bad testing days. Study is demanding work – when it feels easy, studying is not working very well. Re-reading, underlining, and highlighting are easy and feel easy. They do not tax the brain; hence they do not work. The following practices feel like and are demanding work.

These are effective retrieval practices.

Flash cards.

  • Making and using flash cards seems tedious with a lot of manual not mental work but using flash cards works. Keep flash cards simple – one fact or one concept per card. Write a prompt on one side of the card – a word, concept, process, or cause and effect. Write the definition, explanation, sequence in a process on the other side of the card
  • Make a card for terminology – words in the text in bold print and words in the text that the teacher uses in class.
  • Make a card for cause and effect, like “these are three causes of the Great Depression.”
  • Make a card for steps in a process – “the steps in photosynthesis are …”
  • Read the introduction to a chapter – “In this chapter you will learn…” or the summary – “In this chapter, you …” Make a card for each of these major ideas, concepts, and processes.
  • Review class quizzes. Make a card for any question you answered incorrectly on a quiz.
  • Then, practice retrieval. Read the prompt from one side of the card and say aloud the fact, definition, process, application, or reasons for on the other side. Doing this aloud is a commitment to the answer; doing it silently is too passive. Mix the cards up so they are not always in the same order. Practice retrieval until you can accurately answer the prompt on every card.

Brain Dump.

  • Consider the topics that will be on a test. For example, a test on a chapter(s) in a book or on a genetics and heredity or cell structure or the order of operations in Algebra or on the causes and implications of the Great Depression. On a sheet of paper write down all you know about the topic(s) on the test. List terms and definitions. People, places, dates, and events AND the significance of each. Write out processes – this is how mitosis works. Retrieve all that you can and try to make sense of it.
  • Then compare your Brain Dump with the text and your notes. Work on completeness and accuracy.
  • Then, repeat brain dumping until your output accurately mirrors the input.
  • Practice tests. When a teacher returns a quiz or test, write down the correct answers to questions or problems you answered incorrectly. Keep all quizzes and tests returned to you. For retrieval practice, copy the questions and retake the quiz or test. Check your answers with your kept copies. Redo practice tests until you can answer all questions and problems correctly.

Distributed retrieval practice.

  • Remember cramming? Do not spend four hours the night before a test trying to remember what you have not remembered. Instead, spend one hour each school night four nights before a test making and reviewing flash cards from the day’s assignments. Spend one hour each night for four nights before a test doing a brain dump. If you do not practice retrieval, your brain forgets as fast as it remembers.
  • Distributing retrieval practice over time builds short term memory into longer term memory.

Interleaving/mixing up the order of retrieval demands.

  • When practicing retrieval for a test, change the “batting order” of your retrieving. If you start with flash cards on terms and definitions one night followed by processes, then explanations, the next night start with processes or explanations. Do not get into a groove for retrieval. Mix up what you are trying to retrieve to make your brain work harder.

Explanations not just facts.

  • Making sense of what we know reinforces the structure of our memory. Retrieval begins with the facts of who, what, and when then builds into stories that explain how and why. This is effective retrieval, especially for essay tests. Remembering the labels and steps of the digestive process is best told in explaining the process of how digestion works.

What should we do about what we know?

Consider your own school education and how you were taught to study. I am wagering that you were taught how to organize what you were to learn but were not taught how to study what you learned. We teach the Cornell note taking system, graphic organizers, and mnemonics to assist remembering. And nothing more. These are processes for learning. They are not processes for retrieving what we have learned

We should teach all children how to remember and how to retrieve what they remember, and we should practice these systems repeatedly in school and not expect children to learn them out of school. What does this look like?

  1. Most teachers plan their first summative quizzes and tests for the third or fourth week of school, usually the end of September. This is when children are finishing a first unit of instruction. BEFORE giving any children their first end of unit test, teach them how to study.
  2. In the third week of school in 4th grade, a week or more before the end of the first unit, TEACH FLASH CARDING. Why 4th grade? We teach children how to read in 4K through grade 3. In 4th grade children begin to read to learn. The amount of content knowledge increases in 4th grade. Additionally, in 4th and 5th grade students begin to attend subject area classes – ELA, math, science, social studies, art, music, world language. Each of these subject areas have content-rich assessments.
  3. Use direct instruction to teach children how to sort what you have taught, what is most important to know, and how to make flash cards of this information. Make this an “I do – we do – you do” lesson to ensure every child knows how to create proper flash cards.
  4. Use class time for children to study their flash cards. Children should study independently and collaboratively. Teachers should actively coach children how to use flash cards reinforcing effective use and correcting ineffective use.
  5. Only give children the first unit test of the school year after they have learned how to study for the test.
  6. Repeat this before any end of semester tests in 4th grade – both first and second semesters.
  7. Do this every year in grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Build and support student study habits.

The Big Duh!

The goal of teaching is to cause learning. Learning is knowing. Testing is the way we ask children to show what they know. So, success in testing, retrieving what they know, should not be a mystery for children. High quality instruction does not stop with packing information into a child’s brain, it continues with how children use the information they packed in.

Teach all children how to study. Every child can earn an A on a test if we teach them how to earn it.

Can a President Be a Role Model for Children Today

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Yesterday is gone and there is no getting it back. True! Yet there are concepts from the past that are helpful in clarifying how we should think about the present and the future.

Years ago, portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln hung in every school classroom. They were black and white reproductions that every child saw daily, often without a second thought. However, these two Presidents served as role models for generations of children. We grew up with stories of the Father of our Country and Honest Abe.

Would we hang a likeness of our current President to serve as a role model for children today and tomorrow? This is not a partisan question. It is a question of character and if his character is a model for our children.

What do we know?

Role modeling is real. Psychologists explain why we try to mirror the behaviors, speech, and values of famous people.

Social Learning theory tells us that people learn not just through direct experience, but through vicarious reinforcement. When we see a famous person gaining status, wealth, or praise for the specific way they act or what they say or the values they hold, we are more likely to model that behavior and hold those behaviors in hopes that we may also gain.

A second way we are influenced by others is a “halo effect.” When we see a person who “has it all,” we place a halo on that person thinking they are experts in everything.

And a third way we consider famous people is through a “friend effect.” Many people hallucinate a friendship with a famous person telling others false stories about their “friend.”

What should we think about what we know?

When I was a child long ago, parents and teachers told us about George Washington, Father of our Country. Most of what they told us was fact. He was a soldier. He was a wealthy Virginia planter. He was esteemed by his countrymen for keeping the Continental army together through six years of war. He was elected our first President, served two terms, and retired from public office saying the presidency is not a kingship with a forever reign.

Parallel to those truths were stories that sounded right but were not based on fact. Let us call them Washington Myths. Myths can be just as powerful as facts. And it is surprising how long myths stick around.

Myth – George Washington cannot tell a lie. Parson Weems wrote The Life of Washington in 1800 and included several made-up stories. Most memorable was that George cut down one of his father’s favorite cherry trees and when confronted by his father, George said, “I did it, Father. I cannot tell a lie.”

When asked what they know of George Washington, after naming him as our first President, school children said with confidence – He could not tell a lie.

Abraham Lincoln was known as “Honest Abe.” His nickname was no myth.

Truth – When running a general store in New Salem, IL, Lincoln once unknowingly over charged a person six cents. When he saw the error the next day, he walked several miles after the store closed to return the six cents.

Truth – As a lawyer, he would not represent a dishonest client. He said, “I cannot take your case. I am afraid I would be thinking about how much I would be lying the whole time I was talking to the jury.”

Truth – In 1833 a store he owned failed leaving him a debt of $1,000 to his creditors. Instead of filing for bankruptcy, he spent 14 years paying back the creditors.

Through myth and fact, Washington and Lincoln served and still serve as valuable role models for children.

Can our current leader serve as a credible role model for children?

The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims by Donald Trump in his first presidential term. An average of 21 per day. Analysis of his tweets showed that President Trump intends to lie. He said, “As long as you keep repeating something, it doesn’t matter what you say.” Use of the “big lie” applies the illusory truth effect. The bigger and bolder the lie, the more likelihood that people will believe it. A very totalitarian tactic.

To recount his lies would make this writing sound partisan. It is not.

The Big Duh!

Role models matter. Even though President Trump hangs his name and face on public edifices, we should not hang his portrait in our classrooms for children to consider as their role model. Stick with Washington and Lincoln and the hope that positive character traits from yesterday will re-emerge in our future national leaders.

New Leadership Is About Solid Outputs Not New Inputs

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What if a school leadership candidate told the interviewing committee, “We will not introduce anything new! We will improve the effectiveness of how we work to improve the quality of our student achievement results!” Would you support that leader?

In our culture of consumption, every version of something new must be bold and innovative. The world’s most recognized brand name is our best example. Each year’s new Apple product rollouts exemplify this requirement. New displays, new functions, and new features make the new product better than the old. With high anticipation, we look forward to the annual Apple rollout of “new and improved.” Even if you have last year’s version, you no longer are in on the best of what is new. In fact, in every industry, including education, the words “new and improved…” precede every big announcement.

How does this work in selecting school leaders?

Currently, our local school board is hiring a new high school principal. Each candidate in the interview process fervently explains that she or he will bring the most benefit to the leadership position. “Pick me,” is the constancy between all candidates. “This is what I will do for you” is the variable that board members listen for and weigh in their hiring decision. Board members want to know what new and innovative thing a candidate gives the district that other candidates do not.

I once was a candidate for principal and superintendent positions selling my “new” ideas and I also was a school board president listening to candidates sell their “new” ideas. From both sides of the interview, the storyline was the same. Leaders are hired based upon how well the candidate identifies district needs and wants and translates those into statements of “new” leadership.

Interview for outputs not inputs.

In hindsight, we ask candidates the wrong questions. We seek leaders who can provide new inputs into our educational systems. Instead, we should be asking new leaders how they can improve the outputs, the results of instruction, in our schools. Just one two-part question matters. How will you improve the teaching/coaching/directing/mentoring to improve the educational achievements of all our children?

Instead of seeking leaders with new inputs, seek leaders who can assure the effectiveness of the professionals in your school to improve the quality of the school’s outputs – its student achievements.

What do we know?

Improving school outputs is not first, second, or third on a principal’s to do list. Principals typically self-report their daily time partitioned in these tasks:

  • Administrative tasks – 15-21%
  • Student affairs – 20-25%
  • Curriculum and teaching – 25-29%
  • Parent/Community interaction – 10-15%

The partitioning of these tasks supports the status quo of a school. The principal pays attention to the business of the school environment when spending time on administrative tasks, student affairs (discipline), and parent/community interactions. Given, each of these task categories is important, but status quo maintenance does not move the student outcomes needle. Too many principals spend too little time on the most important purpose of the school – student educational outcomes.

We get what we settle for from leadership, so raise the bar of what we settle for.

A principal’s primary focus should be on the effectiveness of the instruction, coaching, directing, and mentoring of students. To affect student achievement outcomes, new leaders must focus on what teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors do. To impact achievements, they need to improve professional performances that directly affect student outcomes.

So, what can a new principal do to have a positive impact on student achievements? We know from educational research that everything our teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors do can be calibrated for its impact on student learning in academics, activities, arts, and athletics. A school leader who causes teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors to increase the use of higher impact instruction and to decrease the use lower impact instruction can move the student achievement needle.

What to do?

Start with acknowledging that teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors share the same major task – how to teach children to be competent and improving performers in curricular classrooms and studios, playing fields and gymnasiums, activity venues, and student life. They are instructors, first and foremost. This starting point is significant because very few school leaders consider coaches, directors, and mentors as teaching children. As a generalization, the quality of coaching, for example, is never considered for its pedagogy. Sadly, coaching effectiveness relies singularly on each athlete’s native talent and seldom on talent development.

Second, use educational research. John Hattie provides our starting point. His study of typical school/classroom practices and calibration of their impact on student achievement gives us a ranking of the typical ways teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors “teach” children. See the link below.

Visible Learning – Hattie’s Research on Effect Size

My first take in reading Hattie’s work was clouded by my past understanding of teacher effectiveness studies. I was and still am a practitioner of teaching strategies aligned with learning objectives – direct, inquiry-based, problem/project-based, and implicit methodologies. I had not considered all the aspects of school-centric practices in Hattie’s study. Now, I believe they are the new starting point for improving student outcomes. Increase our capacity and use of higher impact activities and decrease the use of lower impact strategies.

Third, change our concept of the principal as an instructional leader. Instead of being the school’s teacher of teachers, the principal is the school’s empresario of school improvement. The principal causes improvement in student outcomes to happen. Causing positive things to happen is a powerful administrative skill set.

For one, principals neither have the time nor the preparation to teach teachers how to improve pedagogy, coaching, directing, or mentoring. But they can work with their school board to bring experts to the school or send school staff to the experts to learn and improve their high impact strategies.

Fourth, begin a new annual reporting of student achievement that includes all academics, student activities, the arts, and athletics. These are the scope of what students engage in in school, so report on their reality. And stop hyperventilating on annual student performances on state-mandated assessments of reading, ELA, and mathematics. Granted, annual school report cards report reading, ELA, and math for disaggregated groups, and include attendance, discipline, and graduation data. But the governmental view of school achievement exists only for schools and states to receive federal money.

What does this look like?

Use the 25+% of a principal’s current daily commitment to curriculum and instruction to

  • Helping teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors to understand and use data-based research on effective teaching practices. All staff need to see the principal’s big picture – We all are teachers and we all can improve student achievements by using higher impact teaching strategies.
  • Collaborating with the school board, school district leaders, and the school leadership team to teach teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors how to optimize their use of high impact strategies. Do not assume that all “teachers of children” know the top ten strategies on Hattie’s list. Do not assume that their recognition of the strategy is the same as knowing how to effectively use the strategy. Teach or improve the capacity of all “teachers of children” in how to use high impact strategies.
  • Change the principal’s use of daily “walk throughs” around all the school from innocuous comments to reinforcing effective practices and diminishing ineffective practices. Most teachers report that traditional “walk throughs” and notes left in mailboxes are in the “ineffective” practice category.

Effective leadership is not bright and shiny – it is hard earned and endurable.

Most teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors rely on the “teaching” methods they learned in their educators licensing program. Although teachers are required to engage in continuing education, PD is conducted as a check-off requirement. Very little PD is directly connected to the practices that improve the effectiveness of teaching related to student achievements in academics, activities, arts, or athletics.

Consequently, a principal’s initiative to increase and improve the use of highly effective practices and diminish the use of ineffective practices will be “new.”

New is a hard task. New inputs face the age-old trial of change theory. Schools, as institutions, have built-in buffers against change initiatives. School traditions, past practice, standardized training of educators, time, and money are all barriers to novel changes in the system of things. Change theory tells us it takes five to seven years to implement and embed significant changes.

The Big Duh!

Yet, new is required for real change to happen. When school boards hire new school leaders, they must take care that they are bringing a “new” to the school that really will have an impact on the most important things – student achievements.

Will AI Be a Repeat of Cellphone Mistakes?

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Cellphones are educational tools. Educators completely missed the cellphone boat; it sailed without us. We stood on the dock and railed against everything the cellphone represented and closed our eyes to the rest of the world who sailed into using cellphones in daily living. Teachers, especially, never understood the opportunities for using cellphones as teaching and learning tools and they lost by not planning for that adventure.

Public education had no vision for harnessing the use of cellphones in the classroom. Our age-old response to children and cellphones was to prohibit what we could not control. Just like chewing gum in the 1950s. Now, I fear, it is déjà vu time for missing the boat on AI.

Artificial Intelligence is public education’s current test. Will we harness it as a teaching and learning tool or once again bay at the moon and prohibit it? The difference today is that AI does not care if we are on board, it has a mind of its own.

What do we know?

The tide of laws and regulations prohibiting the use of cellphones in classrooms, if not school, is growing. Classroom teachers could not adapt the power of pocket computing and communicating from the real world into educational practices. With their mouths agape, they experienced what any savvy person could have told them. “The more you tell children what they cannot do, the more they will do it.” And, with cellphones, children saw the hypocrisy and the missed opportunity clearly for what it was – a refusal to adapt.

Sadly, the real issue with cellphones in school is not the games and texting students do. The real issue is us.

First, our teacher-student relationships and daily instruction were less compelling than a cellphone screen. Instead of rising to the instructional design challenge and making daily instruction more engaging, we banned cellphones and taught like we always had taught and children disengaged,

Second, we did not make the cellphone a teaching and learning tool, like a tablet or laptop, and productively incorporate it into school life. As an observer, I saw children in classrooms where teachers have strong connections with children and engaging lesson plans. There, children never think about taking a cellphone from their pocket. They wanted and appreciated strong, personalized instruction. I also saw children in classrooms with weaker connections and instruction where children walked into class with cellphones in hand and once seated, gave their teacher little or minimal attention. Their screen was more engaging and more personal. The sad story is cellphones are considered more powerful than our pedagogy and quality connections with children, so we ban them.

The real world is no in school.

A smartphone is a real-world powerhouse. It is an instant information resource, learning apps device, and communicator. It is real world applications that are personified and we know it.

I sat in an audience at a Wisconsin Association of School Boards convention amongst several thousand delegates. Up and down my row of seats, board members and administrators watched and listened to the speakers with their cellphones in their hands. Some took notes on their phones. Some took pictures of presentation visual information. Some dived into a search for information on something the speaker said. Others texted their colleagues and friends during the session. Several played games. More people had cellphones in their hand than they did not. And that was in 2018. The people who would make rules banning cellphones in school used them in their learning experience.

More to the point, children in all decades of schooling heard this from a teacher. “Look it up. Find the facts. Learn what others have written about it.” Decades ago, we paged through encyclopedias and card catalogs and guides to periodical literature. Today, outside of school, children use their cellphones to Google or AI or ask Siri. Children still need to find facts, examine different perspectives, and weigh opinions. However, in school, children can only use approved devices with Internet filters. How foolish! How controlling! Our policies treat cellphones like our policies treated chewing gum in the 60s and 70s. And we wonder why there were so many dried kernels of gum stuck to the undersides of desks and tables.

Banning cellphones in school is all about control not better teaching and learning.

The AI boat can sail without us.

The real question for educators and AI is this – We can harness AI as a teaching and learning tool or AI will replace us as teaching and learning professionals. With AI, even classrooms may be optional.

Sarah Schwartz reported on students at Percy Julian Middle School (Oak Park, Ill) in the April 20, 2026, edition of Education Week. This is necessary reading to inform educators and school boards about the AI boat and its passenger list.

https://www.edweek.org/technology/a-group-of-students-took-a-deep-dive-into-ai-heres-what-they-told-teachers/2026/04

We must clap loudly for a middle school teacher and his students, and a school and its administration for engaging in their study of AI use at their school. They did what we all should do. Study and use AI apps, field test them on our school and community, and learn how to use AI productively for teaching and learning. At the same time, we will learn that AI also presents dangers that must be understood by all. In some ed reporting, the teacher and students seem stiff and opaque. Schwartz relates the experiences of an inquisitive teacher and group of students and what they learned. You will like these people and their story.

I appreciated one student’s comment. During their all-staff reporting session, she saw doubting teachers with frowns. There will be teachers who refuse to get on the boat or get aboard reluctantly. Such is life. The real winner in this story is Percy Julian Middle School. The AI boat will not sail without them, and they are better prepared for the adventure.

The Big Duh!

We missed and still are missing teaching and learning opportunities with cellphones. We continue to separate the real world from the classroom. Shame on us. However, the Titanic taught us that large ships do not change course easily or without peril, and schools are large institutions like ocean liners. I wonder how a school with prohibitions against cellphones in school can rationalize and navigate children into a future where AI is used to teach and learn.

AI is a different game. I work in a teacher licensing preparation program, and we already are envisioning classrooms without human teachers. Truth be told, we already have a total online teacher prep program – no face time with a teacher for our adult learners. We build and teach curriculum with AI, and our licensing candidates learn using AI. The same real world-in-the-school can be created for children.

Or we can watch others treat AI like chewing gum and cellphones and try to control children in classrooms.

We Get Lower Achievement Because We Accept Lower Achievement

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Given time and effort, we can teach every child to be proficient in reading and mathematics. In truth, with time and effort we can teach any child to be proficient in any subject. This is a true and correct statement of teaching and learning.

You can define proficiency as reading and solving math problems at grade level for elementary age children or as achieving a standardized score on reading and math assessments. These are not unreachable goals nor impossible tasks, if ensuring proficient reading and math abilities are as highly valued as we say they are. But they are not that highly valued – if they were, we would achieve them. Children in American schools are not proficient because we accept and even expect lower academic skills from 50% of our children.

The problem is not the students in school who are not meeting our achievement goals. They meet the farcical achievement levels we accept. They repeatedly score below their prescribed proficiency levels and repeatedly are advanced in grade levels. I am not advocating retention of any child, because we can teach students to meet higher learning goals. If we choose to do so.

The problem is not our goal for every child to be college or career ready. This is the banner headline goal for Wisconsin public schools, and it is a solid, high ground goal for public education. We can teach all students to be college and career ready. The problem is that we, the State of Wisconsin, and its hundreds of school districts, say one thing and accept far less. Most Wisconsin students are not proficient by any measure in reading or math. And we accept this. If we did not, the results would be different.

The problem is our hypocrisy.

What do we know?

If reading and math proficiencies are our gold standards for educational quality, we are failing.

A search of data says this – “Based on spring 2025 results, Wisconsin student performance showed slight gains, with 47.7% of students proficient or better in English Language Arts (ELA) and 48.6% in mathematics.”  The data has been saying the same things for years. Less than half of all students are proficient in reading and math.

What does this really mean? Student assessment data are grouped into four categories: Developing, Approaching, Meeting, and Advanced. Students in the Meeting and Advanced categories achieved scores at or above the target for proficient skills. Students in the Developing and Approaching categories are not proficient; some are far below the proficient level.

In real terms, 52.3% of students are not proficient in reading and 51.4% of students are not proficient in math. We can use softer words to describe the results, but softer words do not change the true meaning. Today, by our own measures, we do not make Wisconsin or any other state’s graduates’ college and career ready.

What should we know about this?

The word “readiness” is a misnomer. A high school graduate thinks readiness is acceptance by a college or being hired into a career apprenticeship or job. I am accepted = I am ready. Readiness is not the status of entry. Readiness is the ability to succeed in college or in a career. Our children are victims of standardized assessments and intransigent institutional standards. Instead of archaic and uninformative statements of proficiency, we must give children real school achievements targets. Like these –

  • College ready means the cognitive and emotional abilities needed for a 75% anticipation of earning a C grade as a minimum in college level courses.
  • Career ready means the cognitive and emotional abilities to successfully apply learned skills necessary for an adult career.

To be cognitively ready for success in college, a student must be able to –

  • Independently read and understand high-school level and introductory college level texts. These are complex and complicated texts and documents.
  • Analyze, evaluate, and synthesize multiple sources into coherent written and oral arguments (papers).
  • Use personal, collegiate vocabulary in all subjects.
  • As a beginning point, master Algebra 2 problems, quadratic functions, polynomials, basic trigonometry, and an ability to interpret statistics, and
  • Make sense of a messy, real-world problem and translate it into a mathematical equation.

To be cognitively ready to apply skills in an adult career, a student must be able to –

  • Follow multi-step complex instructions, safety protocols, technical diagrams. Career-based reading in technical careers often is more complex and complicated than general courses in college.
  • Navigate digital resources to expediently find specific data.
  • Communicate in writing and orally with clarity, as lack of clarity can cause safety and work errors.
  • Master applications of ratios, proportions, and spatial reasoning – tolerances matter.
  • Accurately interpret charts, spreadsheets, and data and communicate this with others.
  • Master fractions, decimals, and basic algebra and geometry.

These are the academic achievements that matter for a high school graduate to predict success in college and a career. Instead of a test score or a grade point average, colleges, universities, and technical colleges should use acceptance tests, like placement tests, to verify an applicant’s likelihood of success. Placement tests are used selectively today – make them universal acceptance tests.

Apprenticeships in skilled trades and should require real-time applied knowledge tests. A highly successful home builder friend tells me, “For example, I hand an applicant a 2 x 4 and pencil and give them an applied math question of measurement, angle, and dimension. They need to make a sketch. Then, I check their assumptions, figures, and diagrams. They need not be 100% correct but demonstrate an understanding of building basics. We will refine their accuracy if they know what they what to do.”

Colleges, universities, technical schools and trades need to define college and career readiness not public schools.

Improve the expectations to improve student achievements.

Many worry that students will fail to meet new requirements, so they are reluctant to make new requirements. Hogwash! Experience tells us that children adapt to new school requirements. School boards have been adding requirements for years and students have adapted to each addition. However, adding new requirements has not improved academic achievement, it only makes schoolwork denser.

The real “new” that is needed to improve student achievement is labeling and teaching to the new descriptors of college and career readiness.

What to do.

  1. Stop soft selling the lack of proficient achievement. Drop the categories of “developing” and “approaching.” Relabel them as one – “Not proficient.” Then, counsel each non-proficient student on how to achieve proficiency. Today we expect children to self-identify their own remedies. That is more hogwash! We are teachers, so teach them.
  2. Strengthen “learn to read, read to learn” instruction in PK-4 with mastery teaching techniques. And create a “learn the math, do math to learn” mantra for mathematics.
  3. Reduce the current number of academic assignments and insist that all students succeed at every assignment. Spend more time teaching children to understand and plan how to successfully complete every assignment. Today “how to” is a mystery to most children.
  4. Stop accepting holes in student learning. Today, teachers begin the next lesson regardless of students who were not successful in the prior lesson. The 80% Rule leaves holes in student understanding and skills. Use more mastery teaching strategies in PK-4 to ensure every student is at grade level reading in reading and math. Use multi-tiered interventions in regular education to ensure that every student ends each unit of instruction successfully.
  5. Stop issuing less than proficient grades on student assignments and tests. Use an A, B, I grade system. Stop using C, D, and F grades. Every student whose assignments are less than a B grade is incomplete, and all incomplete grades must be improved to a B grade or better. Stop i

Successful student learning begets more successful student learning. Make these changes in the PK-4 grades and sustain these new practices through subject instruction in grades 5-12. Being below grade level can be habitual for a student. Do not let that habit start. Once students are meeting grade level success, do not let them fall below grade level.

The Big Duh!

No child starts school with the desire to be less than successful. All children look to their teacher with the anticipation of “I can do this.” As soon as we start accepting less than successful from a child, we say to that child “Less than successful is okay for you.” This is wrong. We create a learned habit of unproficiency. When we stop accepting less than successful schoolwork, children will need to be successful every day. We must mean what we say when we say, “Every child will be college and career ready” and begin meaning that in PK.