Category Archives: Blog

When Safe Is Impossible, Safer Is A Better Place To Be

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Safety is an illusive perception. When a person believes he is safe from danger, he remains vulnerable to the threat that he cannot conceive. When a person believes he is threatened by danger, while he is more sensitive to all potential threats, he is prisoner to each of the safety precautions constructed against every threat he can conceive. Yet, the danger lies in the threat that has not been conceived. Vulnerable and imprisoned is the current state of safety in our schools. If we cannot be safe, we must be safer.

We need to be honest when we deal with illusions. While no honest person would choose to do nothing in response to the murder taking place in and around school houses, no honest person should attach himself to “we must assure that this never happens again” action. There is no action that can be legislated by school boards, state houses or congresses that will assure that murder will never ever happen again. Never cannot be legislated. And, legislation, even responsive to tragic murder, remains political. Left to legislators, safety and school house safety, in particular, is a political action in the name of safety. Tragically, harm to people in school will happen again.

That said, we must work the margins of our illusions of how to make school houses safer. Safer is the operative word. Safer is the aggregate of our preventive and responsive measures. Safer includes actions to screen access to school property to prevent danger from entering and to issue tourniquet supplies to classrooms to be applied after injuries have occurred. Safer is rehearsing active shooter practices and advocating “see something – say something” procedures to address persons in of assistance before tragedy strikes. Safer is paying for a police presence in and around school houses to either dissuade a murderer or to assure that a school house attack is “death by school house attack.” Sad it is to even write that last sentence.

Safer is not placing school in a prison-bubble. Safer is not going Wild West and issuing guns to school staff. Safer is not metal screening every student entering the school house every morning, an hours-long process, or every parent visiting school, or every patron at a school event. Safer is not building impenetrable walls around school children – what will we do with school buses and on school field trips? Safer is not raising the imprisoning measures that morph a school house into a malfunctioning “safe” house.

Because we will never be capable of assuring school house murder never ever happens again, we must reasonably work to make school houses safer. Safer, when completely safe is impossible, is a better place to be.

There is No Teaching License for Mental Health

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As much as politicians and media want it to be otherwise, there is no teaching license, not expertise, that certifies teachers in the area of mental health. There is no major or minor in colleges of education for the certification of a mental health teacher. There is no student teaching preparation for the instruction of mental health. With the exception of a DPI-certified school psychologist, there is no faculty or staff member in a school who is remotely prepared to inquire into another person’s mental health. Any teacher, administrator or school staff member who engages as a professional in the treatment of mental health, acts are their own peril of practicing without a license.

That said, any person advocating that public schools must identify and attend to children who exhibit characteristics of mental illness is guilty of obfuscating the issues of mental health in our state and local communities. Mental illness is a serious problem that requires the attention of trained and expert practitioners in the mental health industry. Psychologists. Psychiatrists. Therapists. Clinicians. These are persons trained to engage with the afflictions of mental health. The 50,000-plus public school teachers in Wisconsin have a full-time professional commitment to educating children and are not substitutes for trained mental health practitioners.

Oh, you say there are not enough trained mental health professionals. Or, there are none in your community. Or, care from a mental health professional is expensive. These are facts and it is these facts that must be addressed. Politicians who want to make a difference in improving the mental health of their constituents need to act to fund the training of more mental health professionals. We observe political will to provide tax incentives, grants and forgivable loans to industry in the name of “jobs.” Mental health jobs warrant their action.

But, you continue, when children of poverty come to school hungry, schools provide free lunch. And, when parents are not at home to supervise children before or after school, schools provide activity programs. And, when children need pencils and school supplies or coats and hats, schools usually have resources that provide. These and more examples of how schools care for the needs of children are true, but they are far from the requirements of mental health.

Every time a governor or legislator or congressman publicly laments that failed mental health resources are the causation of a tragic event, I ask, “And, what have you done to assure adequately trained mental health professionals for your state or community?”

The problems of mental health will not be solved in schools or by school faculty and staff. We will support the work of mental health professionals just as we support children with their physician-prescribed medications during school hours. We will become “first responders” for children demonstrating mental health crisis just as we are first responders of child abuse. These are positive and appropriate roles for educators.

While I grieve for every victim of a crime perpetrated by a person suffering with a mental problem. I shall not tag a local public school with a responsibility for the too often uttered lamentation, “We must assure that this never happens again.”

Instead, I shall promote the responsibility of state and county government to provide the services of trained mental health professionals in local public mental health clinics. Government provides for the defense of the accused through the legal services of public defenders. In the same vein, government should provide publicly supported mental health services to the afflicted. Providing public assistance in front of the injurious actions of persons with mental health issues is more efficacious than using public resources to deal with their aftermath.

Look at External Data, But Work to Improve the Internal Data

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Baking bread is a matter of following a recipe. I pre-heat my oven stove to 450 degrees and place my Dutch oven on the middle rack. When the oven is heated, I place my properly mixed and raised dough in the Dutch oven and set the timer for 22 minutes when I will remove the lid and continue baking for 7 minutes until the crust is lightly browned and firm to the touch. Voila! A loaf of artisan bread. Until I take my first slice and find that the crumb is under-baked. It is dense and over moist. Why? I used the proper data of my recipe that to create both a good crust and a tasty crumb. What went wrong?

Last week I purchased a new oven thermometer for checking the interior temperature of a loaf of bread while the bread is baking. Yesterday I found that when all my external data adhere to the recipe’s data, the internal data, the temperature of the crumb, had not reached a degree where it will have that structured, soft, tasty, air-pocketed texture that my bread wants. My external data did not fit my internal data.

What did I learn? That sometimes the external data prescribed for the outcomes we want does not match the internal data that tells the real story of the outcomes we will receive.

So what? This concept is readily applied to other endeavors, especially education. In fact, the examination of external data and internal data fits our concerns for closing achievement gaps very well. As with my loaf of artisan bread and its perfect crust, larger picture achievement data may not stand a closer inspection of its underlying data. Or, to reverse the usual generalization about synergy, the sum of the parts may be less than the whole.

Many schools today apply scheduled and on-demand formative assessments of child learning. Locally these are Star Achievement Tests. Children take state assessments once each year to create a crust-like image of academic achievement in reading and math. Compared with state norms (recipes), we deduce the quality of education in a school from these external data. This approximates the crust of my unbaked loaf. Formative data, like Star tests, provide the internal data of a thermometer inserted into the loaf while it bakes. These data examine the underlying knowledge and skill sets and how they are being developed inside the school year, perhaps on a monthly or quarterly basis. These interior data look at each child, not a grade level or a school as whole, and provide a close-up status report. They also look at groups of children with common learning challenges to describe their learning.

https://hosted410.renlearn.com/291769/

Examination of skill set and content knowledge development at this incremental level informs us of the quality of a child’s ongoing learning. Can he or she respond accurately and properly to frequently asked micro-questioning? Does the child understand or is the child “parroting”? How well is our instructional design preparing each child for enduring learning versus doing daily assignments? How well is our teaching program using the ingredients of daily instruction to build the strongest of learning outcomes for every child? The emphasis of internal data analysis is every child. Where generalized external data may yield one conclusion through averaging data, examined internal data can yield different conclusions about the strength of each child’s learning.

Introspection not only informs us, but it begs the question – Now what? If the internal data is strong, keep on keeping on. If the internal data is weak, instructional design must change? It is the “now what” dilemma that challenges the need to close achievement gaps. How can teacher talent, teaching-learning engagement, and time be used differently to produce an improved outcome?

Of interest is the how well children fit into this instructional design: In PK-3 children learn to read and in grades 4 – 12 they read to learn. The latter is premised on the first and if children have not learned to read well enough, then reading to learn is a chronic problem for child and teacher. Generalized data often indicates that “as a grade level” children are meeting school goals for reading achievement. Introspection of the internal data may find that individuals or groups of children with specific learning challenges are not accurately described by “as a grade level.” What then?

These are “whats” that work.

  • Start looking at internal data in Pre-K.

Know the language and vocabulary and numeracy skills of each child entering Pre-K. Children come to school with a wide variance in their Birth to 4 experiences and some of these lead to achievement gaps. Schooling needs to level the field of the academically-based variances. Spend the time and resources of 4K and K screening to create PK academic status report for each child and then use the data of that report to design the child’s PK-3 teaching and learning sequence.

Share the results with parents. Be clear about the language and numeracy goals of K-3 learning, where their child begins in meeting those goals and how teachers will instruct to move their child to a “reading to learn” student by 4th grade. Make the parents part of the instructional program.

For children who begin with a deficit in language (vocabulary, phonics) development, send materials home on a regular basis. Make home visits. Share weekly vocabulary lists. Share phonics drills. Build each student’s temporary or permanent home library. The inexpensive cost of trade books given to parents to use at home is far less than the teacher costs for upper elementary grade tier 2 RTI interventions.

  • Intervene now – don’t wait to see if the gap persists.

Provide intensive work on oral vocabulary development in PK and K.  Children who enter PK recognizing 500 spoken words have an unbelievable disadvantage compared with children who enter knowing 5,000 spoken words.  Overteach spoken vocabulary for those with limited word recognition.  Be unrelenting in pushing vocabulary early if you want children to read-to-learn after grade 3.Be identical in overteaching for numeracy proficiency.  Require every student to master the goals of every math unit in 4K – grade 3.  The introduction of higher math foundational standards in primary education seems impossible for children who demonstrate difficulty with basic numeracy, but they are not impossible when their mastery is the only acceptable outcome.  Use frequent assessments to check language and numeracy growth.  Celebrate and reinforce frequently.  If your school uses an RTI model, attach student learning at Tier 1 and Tier 2.  Make the interventions at these tiers work.  Reserve Tier 3 for children with needs more severe than incomplete and mistaken learning.Achieving weekly or monthly goals is not enough.  Achieving reading and mathematics proficiency by the end of third grade is the only goal.

  •  Teach to eliminate what is wrong as well as teach what is correct.

Correct misunderstandings and mistakes when they first occur.  Repetition does not necessarily lead to perfection, but it does lead to constancy.  Don’t let K-3 children repeat what is not correct.

If a child mispronounces a word, correct it.  If a child uses a word incorrectly, correct the usage.  If a child keeping using the same word, require synonyms.  Push correctness hard.  If a child misses number sequences, is inaccurate in counting, makes mistakes in reciting math facts – correct every mistake every time.

Once a correction is made, reinforce the correction.  This takes time and it takes teacher persistence.  Often times, mistakes are rooted in a child’s out-of-school experiences and those influences cause a child to return to those mistakes.  Push corrections hard even after a correction has been made.

Looking backwards for children who are challenged with fractions and algebra, we too often find incomplete understanding of basic facts and operations.  A quadratic is a nightmare for a child who is not confident in basic math operations.

  • Close gaps by grade 3.

Make closed achievement gaps by grade 3 a district goal not just a grade level or school goal. Pile in all of the district resources needed to achieve grade PK-3 learning success for all children and you will find a cost savings in grade 7 – 12 that can be applied to enriching and advancing learning for all secondary students. Do the right work at the right time.

What is wrong with spending more money on the instruction of PK-3 children than is spent on any other grade level if it assures that all children have attained the same quality achievement levels, especially in ELA and math, by the end of grade 3? Not a thing is wrong with that expenditure.

Closing achievement gaps requires the use of internal data. Scheduled and on-demand formative assessment data points teaching at the specific learning needs of each child as well as affirming when children achieve the district’s 4K – grade 3 learning goals. Stick your assessment thermometer inside the body of learning to really understand how well the instructional program is working.

Multiple Literacies Required

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How literate are you? How literate should an educated person be in order to lead a full contemporary adult life? Literacy, the ability to read and write, is almost universal in the United States today. Although we quibble annually about the degree to which children are able to read and write, as indicated as proficiency on state tests, 89% of children in Wisconsin read and write well enough to graduate from high school. But, are they literate for a successful adult life?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate

https://dpi.wi.gov/news/releases/2016/2015-graduation-rate-884-percent

The definition of literary expands, according to Merriam-Webster, from the ability to read and write to having a knowledge or competence about a subject. I prefer this definition because it adds context and consequence to the ability to read and write. Instead of a neutral measure of literacy, our working definition of literacy should be “the ability to read and write and create an understanding in a variety of media. The ability understand and create communicative language and to do something with that ability.” This is the “so what” measure of literacy. If you can read and write your native language, can you read and write other forms of communicating? Can you read and understand the the language of music? A non-native language? A computer language? Sign language? Does your ability to read and write provide you with an understanding of scientific topics? Societal issues? Economic and financial concerns? Can you read social and emotional communications? And, if you can do these things, can you do something with these abilities? Literacy, the ability to communicate effectively over 80+ years of post-high school adult life, requires more than the ability to read and write native language. Literacy, or multiple literacies, are required for prospering in our increasingly complex world.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literate#h1

An educated, or literate person using my new definition, is not necessarily an expert in a subject. To use a common overstatement, “We need to know just enough to be dangerous!” Dangerous as in knowing enough to learn more, to ask relevant questions, and to use what we know to solve problems. Just as reading and writing a native language does not assure that a school graduate can read complex, subject-rich texts with understanding, like a medical journal, being literate in a subject does provide that graduate with the competence to engage in further study and discussion of the subject. Using music as an example, if every child in an elementary school were proficient in reading and interpreting a musical score, that is sing it, play it, hum it, or tap it out, they would have the ability to engage with music throughout their lifetime. The music they hear or read for years to come becomes more than sounds – it is its own language, just as a story written in English. Without this literacy, a sheet of music might as well be written in Martian. Music education in our schools is gifted and talented education, if we do not assure that every child can read and understand the notes of music. Yet, most high school graduates cannot read music. Why do we settle for less that musical literacy?

Apply the same reasoning to technical communications. How many adults can program their own television or manipulate settings on their computer or tablet? How many can read or write a sentence of code?  Or, to a foreign language, especially Spanish is spoken by more than 45 million residents of the United States. Non-Spanish speakers are foreigners in many locales of their own country   Or, to the language of personal finances. How much of the daily economic or tax or interest rate trend news passes over the understanding of our high school graduates? Too many lose money everyday due to their financial illiteracy. Or, the language of science? Ask a friend to explain why the outdoor temps are well below zero in Wisconsin when the world is undergoing global warming. Illiteracy too often leads to a refusal to accept scientific facts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language_in_the_United_States

The same storyline should be applied to a child’s ability to read and understand social and emotional communications. While we encourage children to actively engage as individuals in all aspects of their schooling, most are illiterate in navigating the social network of children and adults. We do little to nothing in teaching children to read the emotional clues of their classmates, to understand signs of agreement and disagreement or feelings of support or intimidation. In the absence of pro-active social-emotional education, faculty and staff are entangled constantly in responding to and assuaging social-emotional crises. Some of which have led to tragic events of violence in schools. Further, we need to educate all faculty and staff in the understanding of social-emotional language so that they can be educators of this literacy. Then, we need to educate all children in the effective use and understanding of social-emotional language. There is an entire sub-industry of therapists working with young adults and adults who harbor injuries derived from our universal illiteracy in social-emotional communications.

K-12 education is a powerful tool for preparing children to enter their adulthood. K-12 is only a preparation, however. Continuing education is no longer a matter for professional or vocational certification or graduate studies. Lifelong learning is a necessity in a world in which information and informational literacy is the new currency for prosperity. And, lifelong learning requires every person to be multiply literate.

Moving the Needles of School Improvement Begins with the Teacher’s Needle

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With all good reason we focus school accountability on the improvement of student achievement and accomplishments. The bottom lining in most discussions about education relates to children. School Report Cards measure student academic achievements in reading and math, promotion and graduation rates, daily attendance, and student disruption/discipline events. When the measures of achievements increase and the measures of disruption/discipline decrease, especially when measured in each of the disaggregated student populations, we celebrate how a school has “moved the student achievement needle.”

The driver of school improvement, however, begins with the teachers who cause student learning. An essential question in the dynamic of moving the measurement needles of student achievement is “How are we addressing the measurement needles of teacher instruction and student nurturing?” If we do not take care of the engines for school improvement, we can only hope that students will intuit what they are supposed to know, do and be.

The first step in addressing teacher needle movement is to ask, “Does the teacher have a valid working needle?” It may seem to be a question asked and answered, but an appropriately licensed teacher is not always the case. Is the teacher licensed to teach the subjects assigned? With teacher shortages, teachers may be assigned to teach outside their licensed subject areas. This may be a short-term staffing fix, but it has consequences for student learning. Is the license a standard issue or an emergency or provisional license? Teachers who have not completed the criteria for a regular license often work with an emergency or provisional license while they complete the course work required for a regular license. Half- or partially-prepared teachers also present consequences for student learning. Teachers with emergency and provisional licenses also are less expensive to hire. What is the teacher’s most recent professional development in the subject of their approved license? Or, has the teacher renewed his or her license with credits or certificates unrelated to their licensed subject area?   A teacher who was issued a regular license based upon their academic major, but constantly renews that license with non-subject area professional presents consequences for student learning. If your ELA or math teacher does not have a regular license and/or has not engaged in ELA or math professional development, your teacher does not have a working professional needle.

Apply the same inspection as presented above to each teaching assignment. The same pros and cons present themselves for teachers of art, business education, computer technology, foreign language, music, science, social studies, and technology education. Teachers with strong working professional needles make a more significant and consistent contribution to student learning than unprepared teachers.

The second step in addressing teacher needle work is to ask, “What is the school district doing to strengthen each teacher’s professional needle?” A school board invests in school facilities improvements, school technology improvements, school transportation improvements, curricular additions and improvements, and arts and athletics program improvements. Board investment in improving a school district’s assets is expected. So, what expectation exists for the board’s investment in their teachers’ professional development?

The first expectation should be one of aligning district goals and district resources. When the board makes improving student achievement a major district annual goal, the board should support that goal with a commensurate amount of time and money for the professional development needed to accomplish the goal. Time and money translate into professional development to strengthen and enhance teacher knowledge, skills and attributes.

The second expectations should be that professional development directly related to a teaching assignment is not negotiable by the board or by any teacher. Every teacher regardless of assignment should receive the same expectation for and financial support of their professional development. And, every teacher regardless of assignment should be required to engage in the district-provided professional development. The aggregate of professional development for all may seem like a lot of money, depending upon the size of the school staff. The aggregate of professional development for all also says a school board should expect significant movement in student achievement needles when the board annually aligns major financial resources to its major goals.

The third step is requiring every teacher to improve student achievement or accomplishments due to the teacher’s instruction. This step follows from assuring that every teacher is regularly licensed for their teaching assignment, every teacher is actively engaged in professional development to advance their licensed subject area, and the school board annually invests in professional development aligned with district annual goals for every teacher. If these three conditions are in place, then a school board should expect that every teacher will move the learning needles of students assigned to their instruction.

Some student achievement needles are measured and published – ELA and mathematics. Schools gain and lose comparable and competitive status based upon ELA and math needle movement. Because social studies and science education also are translated into Common Core-like standards and often are related to legislative mandates (civics and financial literacy education, science-based industry and careers), achievement in the social studies and science receive some public scrutiny albeit minor compared to ELA and math.   Other achievement needles never seem to be discussed let alone measured and published. Art, music and theater education are applauded, but student knowledge and skills are not measured. Business, computer-science education, and technology education are vaunted by every state’s business and industrial lobbyists, but what gets measured also gets prioritized and these subjects linger in the shadows of open and public discussion.

Instead, a school board must discuss in open session its goals for annual improvement in student achievement and accomplishment in every subject. Measures of current student knowledge, skills and dispositions must be discerned and published along with expectations of improvement.

We can only imagine what could be achieved and accomplished in a school when every teacher is properly licensed, every teacher is engaged in profession development of their teaching assignment, every school board annually aligns and commits significant financial resources to its goals for the improvement of student learning in all subjects, and every teacher is required to advance measures of student learning every year.

“Can’t be done”, is the usual response to what this blog proposes. Teacher shortages in specific subject areas make short-cutting license alignment necessary. Budget shortages make hiring provisionally- and emergency-licensed teachers a necessity. “Pipe dreamer”, is the usual comment. No school district mandates district-provided professional development for all teachers. Teachers demand personal control of their professional development. “Expecting too much”, is the usual rejoinder. No district measures each student’s growth in every grade level and every subject area. It would take too much time and money and result in too little advantage.

That leaves us in the current status quo. Too often, we assign unprepared teachers, expect little from professional development, only talk about high expectations but make no investment in accomplishing those expectations, and do not require student growth in every grade level and every subject. If we don’t take the appropriate steps to assure that every teacher has a working profession needle with accountable investments and accountability for improving and working their needle, we can’t expect anything but happenstance to cause student achievement needles to be moved.