Tag Archives: equity

It Is Time to Emulate Others

Posted on by
Reply

Adapt or die. A simple and elegant either/or statement of a problematic state of being. The act of adapting may be voluntary or involuntary, but the need for change is dire. If not, death or literal fading toward obscurity and non-existence will ensue. Such is life.

We use this phrase in many contexts to give urgency to a necessary change. There is no human death, but the symbolism works. Here is one that strikes at the heart of education. American public education is the proverbial mile-wide river that carries a lot of water but has no depth. Our educational system is tasked by legislation and local mandates to achieve a wide expanse of outcomes, but because there are so many tasks our achievements are exceptionally shallow. And without significant depth of achievement, public education is dying of 1,000 cuts of complaint. There is no deep cut channel in American public education to give it an enduring and inarguable purpose.

We need to define the purpose and mission of public education so that our clearly written educational goals for all children are meaningfully understood and assessed and our achievements can stand on the merits of their accomplishment.

Reconsider the problem.

We have tunnel vision in assessing and valuing American public education. We have so many things to do, but we are accountable for only two outcomes – annual reading and math achievement. The Wisconsin statewide school report card system also lists graduation, attendance, and discipline rates and disparities of achievement based on gender and exceptionalities. However, in Wisconsin, as well as every other state, only reading and math achievement matter. And the data for reading and math are not good.

Sadly, the data align with the systems that create them. Our data accurately tell us that reading and math abilities in our students have declined and continue to decline. These are documented facts, because we prioritize and use single data points to assess and label the quality of American education. Thus, we pre-ordain our tunnel vision, fixate on narrowed data points, and bemoan education based on our fixations. Ugh!

It is totally exasperating to public school educators who watch children learn and grow in the arts, music, languages, and technical education curricula. We see children engaged and learning in science, literature, and the social studies. Gyms and auditoriums are packed with students, parents, and community members supporting student performances in athletics and the arts. There are a great many successes in our schools, yet it is the doldrums of reading and math data that form our conclusions about public schools in America.

Our chain link of education systems/assessments/data/conclusions about education are not working so break the chain link.

Adapt new models for American public education.

There are other models of education we should be considering. Today they are competitors and we cannot match the education/assessments/data/outcomes of their schooling. Instead of holding to our non-competitive model, we must learn from them.

Who are they? Singapore and Finland. Although our educational media have described, praised, and then criticized education in Singapore and Finland, we have done little to learn from them. It is time we do. I will generalize about their salient differences from our system. My analysis continues to use math as a curricular example.

  • Educational design.

Singapore is a meritocracy with an emphasis on performance. All students are educated equitably until national assessments begin to sort those with high achievement potential. High potential students continue with a rigorous, academic training and average to low potential students begin career training. A small nation without abundant natural resources, Singapore’s educational system creates human talents that have become their national resource. Education in Singapore is highly centralized, driven from the top down. Their purpose is to find talents in students and optimize talent development for all.

Finland emphasizes social equity, trust, and no stress. All students receive the same, equitable education everywhere. Educational goals are nationalized but delivered locally; teachers not government are responsible for ensuring educational quality. All children are taught to achieve the same high level curricular standards. There are no national/state assessments until the high school (16-year-olds). The Finns place a unique trust in teachers to assess and deliver quality education; they localize education controls. Their purpose is to create generations of well-educated, socially conscious citizens.

American public education is decentralized and regulated by state legislation – we have 50 individual state systems of public education. We define education at the state level and give local control to school boards that create their own priorities based upon local needs and values. Each school has its own mission statement, purpose, and lists of educational goals, but few hold these as their non-negotiable “North Star.” Public education has evolved into educational options with ill-defined standards of excellence. Federal and state governments provide legitimacy and funding to non-public schools as educational alternatives under Parent Choice initiatives. Our purpose is to create literate young adults ready for college and careers and citizenship.

  • Teachers

In Singapore, teachers are recruited from the top 5% of their high achieving students. Teaching performances are rewarded with bonuses, a continuation of their merits system. Curriculum is dictated by the Ministry of Education (MOE). Teachers participate in a career advancement track administered by their government. Teaching is a valued profession.

In Finland, teachers are required to hold master’s degrees in education. Teaching is a prestigious profession, equal to law and medicine. They are experts in assessing student learning and instructional design and have individual autonomy over their teaching.

American teachers meet their respective state licensing requirements. The federal government no longer classifies teaching as a profession and due to diminished public esteem, low annual income, and increasing job responsibilities there is a national shortage of people who want to be classroom teachers. A significant and growing number of classrooms are taught by people who are not trained as teachers.

  • Assessment systems.

Singapore uses a summative assessment that clearly measures and make decisions on what each student has learned. The MOE supervises all assessments.

Finland’s teachers use formative assessments to guide instruction. Teachers develop their own assessments and use data to individualize student learning and growth.

America’s annual high stakes state assessments are evaluative. We rank students and schools based upon their performance on state assessments. Government threatens underperforming schools to improve or lose federal and state funding. We use assessment data to discard and adopt curricular programs.

  • Mathematics

In Singapore mathematics instruction emphasizes mathematical reasoning, modeling, and real-world problem solving. More importantly, the curriculum builds deep conceptual understanding not memorization. Singapore students chronically top the international test takers.

In Finland teachers assess students on learning processes, problem-solving abilities, collaboration, and application of mathematics. Finland’s students chronically top international test takers. Students often work on a single problem for a full week. Add to this, Finland has ranked as the world’s happiest country for eight years in a row (2025).

American mathematics instruction emphasizes problem solving and finding right answers. Students often are assigned a dozen or more problems to solve every night as homework. Students compete with each other and seldom collaborate to solve problems. We focus on the right answers to math problems do not teach mathematical thinking or logic, although high achieving students may intuit these.

What to do?

Singapore and Finland excel in educating their children because they have clear compasses to keep their education system on track. Singapore’s centralized, rigorous, merits-based system is fundamentally different from Finland’s localized, teacher-driven, low stress, socializing system, yet each is a world-class leader in educational excellence because they do not deviate from their well-defined educational goals.

In comparison, we know that American public education will not be centralized and driven by a federal department. Our Constitution says public education is a state’s issue and each state’s politics will form its educational commitments. Because there is no national direction, we do not have a meaningful national purpose. Additionally, there is no consensus among states as to purpose or urgency. Each state treats public education as a status quo issue – it gets attention only when there are problems and or political advantage to addressing a particular issue.

However, we can

  1. From Finland, ensure educational equity for all children regardless of school district, or neighborhood. All children can be taught to achieve our standards of proficiency. Family socio-economic status should not predetermine learning success.
  2. From Finland and Singapore, teach thinking and best solution problem-solving. Our history of rewarding the efficiency of correct answers not their logic and rationale leave more than 50% of all students undereducated. We need to teach for deep understanding not rote recitation.
  3. From Finland, teach collaboration instead of independent competition, an industrial era model that fails us today. Our traditions of competition make socio-economic backgrounds of children even more pronounced. Collaboration is a learned skill set and we need to teach it.
  4. From Finland and Singapore, require classroom teachers to be highly trained experts in pedagogy and assessment instead of being minimally prepared in subject areas. Requiring a deeper professional preparation and continuing education reclaims a professional status for every teacher.
  5. From Finland, teach less curriculum but teach it so that all children master what they are taught. Every course and grade level currently is overloaded with stuff to be taught and learned. Teaching less will allow children to master the learning of more.
  6. From Finland and Singapore, define our descriptors of educational excellence and hold them as our North Stars. End the use of reading and math as our only data points. Use descriptors of high performance in every school program as expectations for educational achievements. Art, music, social studies, science, world language, technical education, et al equally define the quality of our educational systems. If American education continues to provide broad educational programs of academic, activities, arts, and athletics, then teach to, recognize, and celebrate excellence in each of these.

The Big Duh!

There was a time when America’s public education system was a model the world emulated. However, that time has passed. America’s future will not be improved by recreating our past but in our capacity to create a new future. There are systems that are excelling in educating their youth to be productive adults and contribute to the future of their communities and nation. These nations have become beacons for our emulation. We must adapt or die.

In the Time of COVID, If We Value an Equitable and Equal Education for All Children, No Option is No Option

Posted on by
Reply

Almost every question regarding how schools should operate in the Time of COVID leads to this problem – no matter how well intended and accommodating, plans for re-opening schools do not allow all children to receive an equitable and equal education.  A second outcome of almost every plan is that a segment of teachers, staff, children, parents and community are unhappy with its outcomes.  Our educational systems have worked hard to create accommodating options in every area where the education of children is not equitable and equal.  And, educators have worked to create parent, family and community partnerships in school programming and services to assure equity and equality.  COVID is leaving educators without options to provide the kind of options that make education equitable and equal for children and amiable with parents.  No options is not an option.

I posit this as a given. There is a real difference between in-school and at-home learning for students, regardless of how diligent schools are in providing remote instruction.  At-home just is not the same as being in-school and this this builds conditions of inequity and inequality.

The first divisor of COVID is the reality of health conditions.  Children and their families and teachers and their families who have health conditions that are imperiled by COVID have no option.  Their baseline consideration is “I cannot participate in any schooling that presents my exposure to any person who is infected or contagious or has been exposed to such.”  Because the infected and contagious may be present in any social situation, this immediately eliminates in-person teaching and learning for these students and teachers.  Their parameter must be safety first.  Students and teachers with health conditions have no options for in-school attendance.

The second divisor is perception – perceived danger or perceived safety.  Whether a person perceives danger or perceives safety, their perception is right.  Prevalent COVID data yields this “glass half full or glass half empty” proposition.  Our county is rated by our Department of Health Services as being “high in COVID activity” – community spread.  Our county has a suffered few COVID-related deaths and a low number of hospitalizations.  The “high” rating of community spread builds the perception of present danger.  The “low” number of deaths builds the perception of relative safety.  No argument can convince either perceiver that their perception is erroneous.  Perception is reality and the reality is that some children and teachers believe they should be in-school and some children and teachers believe they must be at-home.  Students and teachers who perceive the dangers of in-school attendance are separated into at-home students and teachers. No options to be in-person.

The third and fourth divisors are real time factors.  Some schools have the physical capacity for all children and teachers to be socially distanced in-school.  A combination of lower enrollment and available in-school classrooms spaces allow for a socially distanced instruction of all children.  At the same time, some schools do not have this capacity.  At best, these schools can offer a combination of either in-school and at-home instructional days for all children or in-school all week instruction for some children and at-home all week instruction for other children.    Social distancing requirements are dividing children into full-time or part-time in-school and/or at-home students.

Internet access is the fourth and highly significant real time divisor. Synchronous  screen time between teachers and students has become a strong tool for delivering in-school teaching to at-home students.  Some homes have high speed connectivity and some have little to no connectivity at all.  And, of those homes with connectivity, some Internet is not strong enough to support streaming and Zooming.  Additionally, the amount of school time required for at-home learning can be very expensive given a family’s Internet plan.  Internet connectivity has divided students at home in the “haves” and “have nots”.  Access to the Internet is a very real creator of inequality and inequity.

A fifth divisor is the presence or lack of parental supervision and support for at-home learning.  This is a true have and have not division.  The economics of some homes require that adults work full time.  Their need is inarguable.  Children in these homes do not have adult supervision and daily support of their at-home learning.  The economics of other homes allows an adult to be at home.  Children in these homes have adult supervision and support.  However, not all adults are suited for supervising and supporting at-home education.  The lack of an adult at home or an adult who is suited for at-home education leaves at-home students without needed options for their learning supervision and support.

The final divisor lies in the community. Local economies work best in the school year when children are in school and adults are available for work. When COVID forced schools to shift to at-home student learning last fall, local economies suffered. Reopening the economy pushes schools to provide in-school teaching and in-school learning. When educational leaders attend to health data’s indicating the need for at-home student learning, an immediate adversarial relationship erupts between economic and educational interests with small to no options for compromise.

To reclaim needed options for educators, students and parents, we need:

  • Community commitment to following medical guidance that drives the local infection rate to one (1) case per one hundred thousand citizens (100,000) and hold that rate over time.  In our count of less than 100,000 in population, the rate is no more than one (1) new, positive COVID test per day. This requires enforced masking and social distancing mandates.
  • Suspension of school until the above local infection rate is achieved.  The 180 days of school year for all schools, teachers and students will slide back in the chronological calendar until this rate is achieved.  Education will be achieved, just not now and not with the current examples of inequity and inequality.
  • Governmental financing of ubiquitous high speed Internet for every community regardless of population density and commercial subscription. Every aspect of life in a community needs this.
  • State and local financing to employ enough essential school employees to achieve social distancing in all school operations – classroom, transportation, food service. If essential personnel are not available, schools cannot provide in-school teaching and learning.
  • State and local financing to ensure that all areas of a school can be sanitized quickly and effectively is machine and not hand labor. Cleaning builds both the reality and perception of safe school environments.
  • PPP coverage for an adult to be an at-home supervisor and learning supporter for 4K through grade 6 age children.

It is absurd that a nation of such resources should not ensure an equitable and equal education for all children, even in the Time of COVID.  Or, to restate this, it is absurd that a nation of such resources is willing to squander the educated future of a generation of children.

Stop Being Too Little and Too Late

Posted on by
Reply

“Closing the barn door after the horse has bolted,” was a favorite idiom of years gone by to tell someone that they are making a large to do after the fact. Some might have added “Too little, too late!” Each of these accurately expresses the status of the “Closing the Achievement Gap” mandates that are driving our contemporary educational reform initiatives. We need to close the barn door of learning disparities while the horse is still a colt and has not yet thought of bolting.

Any observer of state accountability systems will see that achievement gaps, the disparity between the achievement measures of disaggregated groups of children compared with the achievement of white, mainstream children, are typically treated equally at all grade level intervals. That is, gaps in learning for early elementary children, middle school students and high school students are to receive similar educational emphasis – close all gaps every year. Teacher resources, supports for assisted learning, time and effort are equally distributed across all student groups. This may be an expression of equity but what are we to do when equity is not working?

Data drives most decisions of modern educational policy. The examination of data has many political and business leaders bemoaning that children in the United States are outperformed by their peers on international achievement comparisons. Similar examinations of data inform us about the disparities that exist between groups of children in our schools. In fact, the gaps in learning among disaggregated groups of children in the US schools is greater than the gap between US children and their international peers. We know this to be true.

Data also tell us that educational achievement at an early age is more potent in enhancing later school and life successes than educational achievement at an older age. Children who are at or above grade level in their academic learning in elementary school and continue on this path build content and skill strengths that can compound each successive year. In contrast, children whose early school achievement is consistently below grade level do not build similar strengths even if they achieve grade level successes in secondary school. Or, in reverse, the lack of educational achievement at an early age has profound and detrimental consequences at later ages. We know this to be true.

Specifically, this is what we know. “Reading proficiently by the end of third grade (as measured by NAEP at the beginning of fourth grade) can be a make-or-break benchmark in a child’s educational development. Up until the end of third grade, most children are learning to read. Beginning in fourth grade, however, they are reading to learn, using their skills to gain more information in subjects such as math and science, to solve problems, to think critically about what they are learning, and to act upon and share that knowledge in the world around them. Up to half of the printed fourth-grade curriculum is incomprehensible to students who read below that grade level, according to the Children’s Reading Foundation. And three quarters of students who are poor readers in third grade will remain poor readers in high school, according to researchers at Yale University. Not surprisingly, students with relatively low literacy achievement tend to have more behavioral and social problems in subsequent grades and higher rates of retention in grade. The National Research Council asserts that “academic success, as defined by high school graduation, can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by knowing someone’s reading skill at the end of third grade. A person who is not at least a modestly skilled reader by that time is unlikely to graduate from high school.”

Stop and consider. “Up to half of the printed fourth-grade curriculum is incomprehensible to students who read below that grade level.” It is easy to read and gloss over this statement, but we must not. If almost half of important written information is incomprehensible in fourth grade, how much is incomprehensible in fifth grade, or eighth grade of 10th grade? The incomprehensibility grows, especially as the reliance on background academic knowledge becomes greater and greater in the subject area texts that essential to high school subjects.

For these reasons, the academic achievement gaps developing in the primary grades must receive a greater portion of our intervention resources. Given that educational resources are finite, this will mean that a seeming disproportionate amount of resources will be focused on the primary grades. Inequity? No. Strategic and necessary. Yes! All children must be academically successful when they begin fourth grade. It is imperative that greater educational resources be targeted on each underachiever in 4-K and the primary grades.

And, there are more reasons that we know to be true which justify such an emphasis on primary grade interventions. “Some children don’t develop the social and emotional skills needed to function in a structured environment like school before they reach school age. These capacities, which are just as essential as cognitive skills for school success, include: the ability to manage emotions, follow directions, take turns, share, take responsibility, work independently and cooperatively, and stick with a task; motivation; enjoyment of learning; and the executive function – an ability to control oneself, make plans, learn rules, act appropriately, and think in abstract terms.

“The readiness gap becomes an achievement gap when children enter school, and this gap persists over the students’ school experience. McKinsey & Company found a gap of two to three years of learning between low-income and higher-income students in its analysis of average NAEP scores (10 points on the NAEP test are roughly equal to one year of education). For many low-income students, the achievement gap is exacerbated by low-performing schools; chronic absence; summer reading loss; and stressors like childhood hunger and food insecurity, housing insecurity, and family mobility.”

http://www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/AECF-Early_Warning_Full_Report-2010.pdf

Again, stop and consider. School readiness is one of the greatest determinants of early learning success. Children who demonstrate social and behavioral deficits in Kindergarten and the primary grades have great difficulty in achieving academic successes. Their social and emotional problems beget learning problems which beget further social and emotional instability. It is essential that primary teachers and staff have the time and resources to extinguish problematic behaviors and build productive behaviors. This cannot happen in the flow of a normal school day. Over-staffing and over-resourcing is necessary to pair and commit teachers with students who demonstrate these learning needs. Again, this is not inequity, but strategic and necessary intervention.

Additionally, although some causes for learning deficits appear to be extra-school, they still must be addressed by school interventions. Needs for nutrition and school supplies are relatively easy to satisfy. Transportation needs also should be easy to satisfy, as is the provision of enrichment materials for children to have at home. Supporting the parents of children with early deficits is more difficult, but not impossible. The key to these issues is the willingness of those responsible for closing achievement gaps to overload their resources toward all of the learning needs of primary grade children.

We must stop trying to put horses that have bolted from the barn back into their barn stalls year after year. It has and still proves to be a “too little, too late” remedy to problems that seem insurmountable given our record for closing achievement gaps. Instead, teach the horses while they are colts. Educational leaderships, by design, must become pre-emptive instead of ineffectively responsive in ensuring that all children are prepared to learn (reading skills, social and emotional readiness) as they enter fourth grade.