Tag Archives: expectations

Don’t Sweat NAEP Scores.  What Did We Expect?

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Life has recently given educators many things to worry over.  Pandemic!  School shootings!  Teacher shortages!  Low pay!  Chaotic school board meetings!  Book banning!  NAEP score decline!

I take the last one back.  As we indeed should worry about disease, bullets, teacherless classrooms, and surging radicalism, we should not sweat the reported decline in the National Assessment of Educational Performance scores.  The reason we should not sweat this is – what did we expect assessment scores to be after three semesters of emergency teaching and learning?  Improved? 

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported scores for 4th grade students declined 5 points in reading and 7 points in mathematics.  In terms of trend lines, NCES says these were the largest score declines since 1990 and the first ever score decline in mathematics.

I return to the question – what did we expect?  Actually, the scores represent what we expected, and these are not a calamity.

The decline in reading scores was expressed broadly across all demographics or within a point or two for differentiated groups.  Pick your target population – urban, suburban, rural; ethnicity; gender; wealthy or impoverished; English or non-English speaking – reading and math scores declined.  When schools went into emergency mode due to the pandemic, reading and math achievement amongst all children suffered.  What did we expect?

Interestingly, among higher performing students, those with constant access to computer or tablet, reliable Internet, consistent access to a quiet place to do school work, and consistency of an on-line teacher available top help them with assignments demonstrated less decline in reading and math.  Exactly what we would expect.

Correspondingly and without great surprise, students with low performance in reading and math prior to emergency education, especially children of color, demonstrated greater decline in reading and math.  Many of these children were at the opposite end of educational supports during the pandemic.  They had little to access to computers or tablets, unreliable or no Internet access, no quiet places, and were not connected with on-line teachers.  Exactly what we would expect.

NAEP measures only reading and math.  What of student learning in science and social studies?  What of achievements in art, music, and second language?  As a result of the pandemic, all areas of student learning suffered and expected overall achievement diminished.  Another expectation.  It sounds like educational disaster, but it is not.

What do we know?  First, these diminished student achievements are associated with emergency education and not with usual education.  I recall smashing my leg and spending 16 weeks in a cast and walking with crutches when I was fourteen.  Life, for a while, changed due to that emergency.  Once the cast came off, it took months before I regained strength and flexibility in my right leg.  I had to unlearn living with the emergency as well as living anew without it.  In emergencies, we compensate by doing things differently when we cannot do what we usually do.  Compensatory life is not the same.  When the emergency is over, we typically stop compensating and life returns to normal, although I am more duck-footed.

2019-20 through 2021-22 data were emergency-based data.  The casts we wore during that emergency are off.  We need to look at that data for what it is – emergency data – and not consider it as normal data.

Second, over time, all data resettles around its historic mean.  It will take renewed implicit teaching to cause children who limped through pandemic education to have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need; this learning will not happen without focused education.  But it will happen.  Students who in 21-22 were not solid in their reading and math will achieve improvements in 22-23 and 23-24 and their data will move back toward usual norms.  School bands that suffered developing instrumentation will find new players and students not ready for Spanish 3 will find growth in blended Spanish 2-3.  We know how to teach these children.

Third, our world is too attuned to reports of calamity, and what may not be calamitous gets reported as “disaster”.  Across the 14 years of 4K-12 public education, emergencies will rise, be faced, and we will trend toward normalcy.  The real calamity and disaster of the pandemic was the number of lives lost to death.  Those we cannot recover.  Everything else can be recouped.

Lessons learned.  Don’t sweat what you cannot affect.  The NAEP data is already in the books, and it reported the kind of data we were expecting.  We were in an emergency and now we are not.  Today, we pull up our socks and get at the 22-23 data.

If Not Taught At School, Then Where?

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Is school responsible for teaching children to understand and practice basic human values?  Values like honesty, personal integrity, respect for others, and civility; you can add or subtract what you believe are basic values.  Isn’t this the role of a child’s parents?  Of the child’s church leaders?  Traditionally, it was, but in the absence of these values-teachers we are left with this:  if not at school, then where will children learn and practice basic human values?

Teachers I talk with, ask “Is the teaching of values really a part of my teaching assignment?”  My answer is “Yes.”  A standard curricular assignment entails the instruction of content knowledge, skills necessary to acquire and understand content knowledge, problem-solving skills for using knowledge, and skills to reach supported conclusions, and, here it is, the personal dispositions necessary to be a successful learner and user of the curriculum.  Personal dispositions are laced with basic human values.

We all expect children in school to demonstrate a set of educational and social values.  I will use the word “expect” in this context.  An expectation begins with the teacher describing the positive characteristics of what a child should do and be.  “Keep your hands to yourself.  While listening to this story, don’t grab or hand-play with others.”  “Look at your classmates when they are talking.  Listen quietly.  If you want to add to what they say or ask a question, raise your hand.”  “When doing these math problems, please do your own work.  Don’t copy down what your classmate is writing.”  Teachers explain what children should do and then expect children to do it.

In PK and primary grades, teachers demonstrate expectations.  They model sitting attentively, raising hands, and engaging in the assignment without distracting others.  In intermediate grades teachers use verbal reminders.  In secondary grades, teachers expect these behaviors.

Daily instruction is subliminally loaded with values.  We expect children to be honest without writing the word “honest” in the specific lesson plan.  Children will submit their own work; they will not cheat.  Children will speak honestly; they will not lie.  Children will use and maintain their own learning materials; they will not steal from other children.  It is hard to imagine a classroom without honesty.

We expect children to act with integrity, at least an integrity corresponding to their age.  We understand that Kindergarten children are five years old and when confronted with responsibility may want to squirm and lay blame for their shortcomings onto others.  However, we consistently confront children with expectations that each child owns their personal behaviors with praise for appropriate acts and corrections for inappropriate acts.  It is hard to imagine a classroom without personal student integrity.

And, the list of basic school values grows as children are involved in school athletics, activities and arts programs.  Sportsmanship, being part of a team or troupe, accepting critical review, and putting personal performances on display all require children to exercise value systems. Discussion, modeling, and expectation of these are part and parcel to a school’s extensive curricula.

Outside the classroom, teachers help children to learn and practice civil behavior in the hallways, rest rooms, cafeteria and playground.  Many children and naturally competitive while others are submissive.  In order for all to participate positively in playground games, we teach children how to play “fairly”, how to stand in lunch lines and wait to be served, and how to walk in a crowd in the hallways.

To support school and academic values, we develop and enforce policies with penalties for serious infractions.  Fight, steal or bring or use specified contraband at school and you will be disciplined.  Plagiarize or hide notes for a test in your pocket and you will be penalized.  If we did not teach, practice and expect these values to guide students, we should not enforce punitive policies when the values are violated.

One of the relevant 21st century skill sets school teach is that children will learn to work together and demonstrate the values of cooperation and collaboration.  We teach children the roles necessary for good group work and the skill sets of each role.  We teach children how these roles interact, the value of each person’s contribution to the group, and the way that consensus-building creates results that the group can support.  Group work is all about basic human values.  Political and business leaders expect that school graduates are well versed in these values.

At the end of a conversation with teachers about these school-based dispositions, I often ask and say, “Does your well-run classroom happen by accident?  No.  Children are successful learners because you and your colleagues taught each child how to act as a learner so that he or she can succeed as a learner.  You are a teacher of values.”