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Correctly Coloring our World Was Never More Important Than Now

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We are “multi-, and you can fill in the hyphen-linked word. Multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious, multi-economicked, and multi-politicked. Let’s start there. And, in our being so multi-, we are constantly engaged in equality and equity arguments based on who has advantages over others in their daily living. This, I think, is an accurate description of our contemporary American society.

Equality and equity are burning issues in our nation that pre-date our founding. And they are huge today. I read that the way for our nation to be fair and equal is to be color blind and the only way to be color blind is to be completely blind to all colors. This is a perspective embraced by several Supreme Court Justices, and they give being color blind a large amount of traction in our political conversations.

Blind to color means paying no attention to color, race, or ethnicity in all aspects of life – ignoring all differences among peoples. The purest outcome of a color-blind society, they say, ensures all people are treated exactly the same. “Exactly” is an important word because “exactly” insures no variance in treatment. There is no advantage or disadvantage to a person’s color, race, or ethnicity.

Well, wake up! Those in power calling loudest for color blindness are trying the hardest to gain the greatest advantages over other people.  Power tilts our world, and power is corrupted by its own existence. Power does not willingly relinquish its status or capacity to affect its world. Power also is expanding in scope while diminishing in the number and characteristics of the people who hold it. The first dictum of power is that those who hold power must commit to sustaining their hold on it. This is United States political and economic theory 101.

So, let’s talk about the coloration the powerful want us to be color blind to. Our nation is split ethnically – 57.5% white and 42.5% non-white. Race and ethnicity are not demographically the same.

Race:

  • White 74.8%
  • Black/African American 13.7%
  • Asian 6.7%
  • American Indian/Alaska Native 1.4%
  • Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander .3%
  • Two or more race 3.1%

Ethnicity

  • White (non-Hispanic) 57.5%
  • Hispanic/Latino 19.5%
  • Black 12%
  • Asian 6%
  • Multi-racial 4.5%

Minorities make up 42% of the US population. Color blindness ignores the historical and cultural background of almost half our population. Consider what we serve as meals at home. How many recipes are ethnic based? At our July 4th picnics, the most American of celebrations, food served will represent all the cultures of our nation. Hot dogs, brats, and all the flavorings on ribs are imported variations.

Primary language at home

  • English 77%
  • Spanish 13.5%
  • Other Indo-European languages 4%
  • Asian/Pacific Island 3.5%
  • Other languages 1%

Color blindness is deaf to all languages but English. Yet our commerce is not. All manuals and directions accompanying a store-bought purchase are in multiple languages, Spanish especially. Manufacturers understand and serve people speaking languages other than English who use their products.

Religious affiliations

  • Christian 62%
  • Non-Christian 7%
  • Religiously unaffiliated 29%

Among Christians

  • Evangelical Protestant 23%
  • Mainline Protestant 11%
  • Catholic 21%
  • Other Christian 2%

Non-Christian

  • Jewish 2%
  • Muslim 1%
  • Hindu 1%

Although our national motto is “In God We Trust,” the peoples of our nation worship a variety of Gods. Notably, almost one-third do not claim religious affiliation. This does not mean they are Godless – it says they are outside the generalizations that we are a church-going nations. Power aligns with the vocal minority who are Evangelical Protestants and America First supporters. But whose America? The powerful’s America. What about the 75% of Christians who are not evangelical nationalists?

Color blindness ignores these real data. Like the ostrich with its head buried in the earth, color blindness does not see or hear any of these real differences. The color blind know the consequences of zeroing out so much in our communities, states, and nation and do not care.

How does this work? Can we reset the game clock and backstory and become color blind?

As a child, I played outdoor games after supper. Tag, hide and seek, and kick the can were our favorites. In our games players had the possibility to stop a game at any time. In their loudest child voice, a player yelled “freeze” and all other players stopped where they were, became statue-like and did not move.

During a “freeze” we allowed players to “unstatue” to retie shoestrings, take care of toileting, get a drink or a snack, get a sweatshirt against the evening chill, or check in with their parents about how long into the evening they could play. We took care of whatever needed attending to so that we could continue playing the game. Sometimes we traded positions with another player because we each thought the other’s position was more favorable.

On some occasions, we even modified the rules of the game. The slowest afoot were allowed to be tagged twice without becoming “it.” If they were “it” they were unlikely to catch anyone but the next slowest. Those of us with poor eyesight could use a flashlight to penetrate the darkness. Home base in hide and seek was larger for girls than for boys. Every modification was intended to “even” the playing field. Interestingly, as children, we knew differences existed among us and we, in our innocence, made compensation.

A “frozen” status held until all players returned to their former or new statue posture and the freezing player yelled “unfreeze.” Then the game continued, often with new rules, as if the game had not stopped.

Ah! If only we could yell “freeze” today and stop the world in its tracks for true time-outs so we could take care of needs and correct or change positions. If only we could yell “freeze” and change or correct the way the world works. But we cannot.

Life does not have a “freeze” possibility. Changing our world from its multi-variants to a color blinded perception of people requires a God-only freeze action, like the end of days and, though it feels end-of-days-like, we are not there yet.

Public education helps us to correctly color the world.

Instead of becoming color blind, we can correctly color the world. Correctly coloring the world means to historically understand time and events from multi-sources, multi-places, and to understand them without prejudice. To say it bluntly, correctly coloring negates a partisan political urgency to whitewash our history, to literally and completely whitewash history without recognition of the world’s multi-back stories. Instead of whitewashing, correctly coloring teaches about all colors in order not to be biased by any color.

Correctly coloring means to consider how each of the multi-perspectives views and addresses a problem in the world. It means understanding the variances in food-, health-, and wealth-security. Coloring correctly knows how various political, economic, and religious systems work in the world for the benefit of the people who live in those areas and how these various systems connect or collide with each other. Correctly coloring the world means studying and learning without bias. It is an equal and equitable knowledge and understanding of a multi-world.

Correctly coloring in public education means that teachers have non-partisan academic freedom to correctly color teaching and learning. They are not pressured to influence or bias what and how they teach, and what and how students learn. Teachers are accountable for creating a correctly color-informed next generation.

Can we do this? Yes. Will we do this? It will be hard.

Our public education is becoming tilted by the powers in our federal and state governments and local governance. While crying for color blindness, the powerful decry the existence and value of color in our world.

As with all change, correctly coloring the world begins small and in small places. Classrooms and schoolhouses are small places. All education begins and ends with grass roots teaching and learning. Children learn from their daily instruction and experiences. Thus, teachers in their classrooms, studios, labs, and fields start with color correct teaching. I will use the word color or coloration to mean races, ethnicities, religious groups, and linguistic groups.

We educate all children with multi-perspectives. There is no “one” viewpoint used to learn about people or our world and national history or the colors of the world. We teach many perspectives so that children will learn there are many ways to view people, places, and events and all colors have worth.

We educate all children with understandings of multi-backgrounds. Understanding applies higher order cognition. Children know the names and characteristics of each coloration. They can objectively analyze and compare each other to the others. They can evaluate how a color lives in the world, its aspirations, its needs, and its challenges.

Teaching children is not relegated only to classrooms. We can educate all children to address each other with dignity and respect. The best way to teach this to children is to model it. I find the greatest satisfaction in the simple act of acknowledging others and being acknowledged by others. In the checkout line at Target, I smile and nod towards people I do not know. Yesterday, I saw a black man with his family two lines over and we looked at each other. I nodded toward him and he nodded toward me. We each smiled. Expressing “I see you” is easy and reciprocal.

I say hello to people on the street, at the mall, while passing, and sitting in waiting rooms. Men, women, children, my color, any color. Recognition and acknowledgement of someone else confirms that we each exist and co-exist. That acknowledgement without prejudice opens opportunities for conversation and conversation for understanding.

I wait for, aid, and help anyone of any color who can use my small assistances as we mutually navigate our communities. Courtesy is free, goodwill is easy, and doing these often is habit-forming. I cannot count the times when, after holding the door for someone, I turn to see a younger person holding the door for others. Is this causation or a coincidence of courteous people? I like causation. Goodwill can be learned.

We can educate all children to know the human story, live in the realities of our multi- nation, and create a future without the prejudice of artificial advantage.

The Big Duh!

A color-blind public education is not color blind but is color real. It teaches all the colors of nature, all the stories of our history without prejudice, and treats all children with dignity and respect.

If we want a color-blind society, we do not deny color but see all the colors so well and with such understanding that we live our colors. And we stop all attachment of advantages or disadvantages to color-relatedness. I swear, the next person who lectures me about our need to be color blind deserves a dope-slap.

I guess my goodwill towards all may know some bounds.

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.

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.

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.

Teachers And Co-Conspiratorial Smiles

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Inside every child lives a teacher pleaser. From pre-school through graduation children are in a student/teacher relationship with their instructors in which “making a teacher happy or satisfied or pleased with me” is a focal motivation/reward of each day. Children sitting in a class with other students often compete for their teacher’s smile. With maturity, a child learns that teacher smiles associated with school-based achievements are earned smiles. Teachers give feedback to children in many ways, but “I am smiling for you and with you” is the simplest yet most rewarding of all. This is true even for the senior-sliding 12th graders. Sincere smiles work wonders!

What kind of smile do you have?

I ask this because children know the difference in adult smiles. Consider these four.

  • I am just smiling.
  • I am smiling at you.
  • I am smiling for you.
  • I am smiling with you.

The first is a loser, the second says little, and the second and third are winners.

Smiling by itself is just smiling. Our human physiology makes smiling easier than frowning, so why not smile. Or said differently, smiling comes naturally. And smiling in the presence of children comes easily. Yet, a smile that is on the mouth and jaw line only and never lights up the eyes is just that, a biologic. On the other hand, a smile that lights up the eyes, raises the cheeks, crinkles the skin, and that even moves the ears is psychological. It is stimulus-response personified. Children learn to know the difference between deadpan smiles and real grins, because they see it in the adults in their world. Children know their teachers’ smiles.

Children in school are in the presence of adults all day. Bus drivers, crossing guards, hall monitors, custodians, food servers, librarians, teacher aides, teachers, counselors, and principals. These folks do not smile all the time. A lot of the work and the stuff they attend to during a school day does not call for a biological smile or psychological. And many smiles are just a reaction to something they find humorous.

“Smiling at you” is non-contextual. It is a pasted-on expression children see all the time. It is the face of an older aunt who has no time for children but is trapped in a family get together as she sits with children on either side of her. It is the face of salespeople in a store who want customers to feel welcome. It is impersonal. Is Washington smiling on Mt. Rushmore? Is he smiling at us?

“Smiling for you” is how teachers invest in children. This is not whole class or group smile, but one that is just for you. The teacher knows it and you know it. It is special.

This smile is not about the teacher; it is about you. “I smile because of who you are and for what you have done and for how you are learning.” In this context, when a child sees a teacher smiling for them, the reward/motivation to keep trying, to do more, and to do it better escalates. A child who shares her math problem and solution with her classmates and gets a teacher’s smile will volunteer to do it again.

Consider all the times a teacher, coach, or director gave you a smile that said, “this one is for you.” You hoped someone at home will ask you, “How was school today” and you will tell them about getting a teacher’s smile. It feels good to tell someone about the time a teacher smiled for you.

And finally, “Smiling with you” is a co-conspiratorial glow. Teachers teach, coaches coach, and directors direct so that children will learn. Most of the time, learning is transitional and immediately leads to the next teaching, or coaching, or directing. Now and again, there is a pause. It need not be a ceremony but just long enough for a teacher and a child to stop, pay attention to something of significance that a teacher/coach/director and child have done. And smile.

The child knows that the teacher knows what and how the child is feeling at that precise time and that the child achieved that special feeling because of the teacher’s teaching. It is a look between two people that transcend words. I see co-smiling when children reach supernal moments in school. A child who masters a musical piece and performs it well because of personalized instruction. A child who uses learned technique to create an art piece that makes others stop for a second and deeper look. A child who struggled with fractions and with teacher help can achieve a perfect test score. These smiles happen all the time, but they are so personal to the child and teacher the rest of us may not notice.

I like the co-conspiratorial wording. Teaching and learning are a very personal transaction between two people.

Good teachers teach children; best teachers connect with children.

Being a lifelong schoolaphile (I make up the word), I can remember the name and instructional mannerisms of every teacher I had Kindergarten thru PhD. And across more than fifty years of schoolwork, I remember the work of hundreds of teachers and know them by name and instructional manner. As a person responsible for the quality of educational outcomes, I learned that any teacher could learn and demonstrate subject content and instructional pedagogy, but no teacher can learn to like children in school if they do not do so innately. Can it be that some teachers, deep in their personality, do not like children? Oh, yes.

I liked art as an elementary and middle school student and learned a great deal about conceptualization, perspective, color and shading, shape, and form. My teacher was a veteran who had taught the parents of many of my classmates, and every generation had the same feeling about our teacher. She was a good teacher, but she was a cold one. A petite woman, she was energetic around the classroom, often looking over our shoulders and commenting on our work. But she never connected. I still have things I created in hanging on a wall and sitting on bookshelves – I was pleased with what I learned to do but never met a “smile for you” or a “a smile with you.”

I compare her with another art teacher, an elfin man whose baggy slacks, long-sleeve shirts and vests were his signature look. He had a smile that could melt a glacier. It began in his eyes, rose in his cheeks, and lifted a grin to ear-to-ear. He never knew just how golden his “smiling for/with you” because it was his natural personality. The child in him never got in the way of his connecting with the child in each child.

The other side of his story was the hundreds of students who warmed with his smile for them. And the scores of young artists who created wonderful works that conveyed their inspiration, learned techniques, and mastered artistry. He conspired with them in their learning and they will know him forever.

The Big Dug!

Know your smiles and use them to benefit children. If you are not a smiler, not everyone is, consider changing professions. If you are a smiler, build your capacity to smile for children like the cheerleader they need and smile with children like the conspirator you want to be. Children in school deserve teachers who like them, want the best for them, and can cause them to learn.