On the Shoulders of Giants

The New ELA Test

Yup. It’s the season for ELA testing, and when I go back to school, it will be crunch time.  A teacher at Gotham Schools wrote, “Wouldn’t it be great if the high-stakes tests were in September? Then teachers could have the rest of the year to inspire and transform their students.”

I responded, “Wouldn’t it be great if the tests were designed such that true teaching and authentic learning led to higher test scores? Right now, there is nothing authentic about this ELA test. Students must choose the best of four answers, none of which they created, in response to questions they never asked, relating to passages they would never have read were it not for this test. The same is true for the writing portion. We all know there’s a formula for how to score well on the writing, even though those of us who actually write for a living as adults would never dream of using this formula. So we are stuck teaching skills that are not applicable to the real word of thinking, reading and writing. This is why our students rebel and why teachers feel so conflicted around this time of year. If we could redesign the test to be relevant to the world our students are living in today, 2009, what would it look like?”

I decided to take up my own challenge and create The New ELA test.  Here are a few sample questions from the 8^th Grade edition.

  

The New ELA Test Sample Questions [Draft]

1. Revisions. Steve is writing an essay on the poor quality of school lunches in his building.  His classmates read his essay and offer feedback.  They say that he makes a strong point, but suggest that his introduction could be more compelling.  One student says, “Based on this introduction, most people wouldn't want to read the rest of the essay, even though they might actually like it if they did.” 

Steve currently begins the essay like this: School lunches in my building need to improve for three reasons. First, they are not healthy enough. Second, they don’t taste very good.  Third, the cuisine at my school is all from one culture, even though students at my school represent many cultures.

      Write 2 alternate introductions Steve could use to begin his essay. 

2. Essay. Pick one of the three Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales printed in the Literature Packet.  Answer the following question in an essay.  You must support your answer with evidence from the story. 

Would you read this tale to a younger child who asks for a bedtime story?

3. Fiction Writing.  Pick another story from the literature packet.  Create a new character to add to this story.  Write a new scene in which that character enters the story, or rewrite an existing scene to include the introduction of this character.  You must include dialogue in your scene.  

4. Discuss and Evaluate your choices for number 3.  Describe the character you added, including basic traits and motivation.  Why did you choose to add this character to this scene?  What else did you have to change in the scene to accommodate the new character?  Overall, how did your addition strengthen or weaken the story?  

5. Classroom Community/Persuasion.  Your class is about to begin a new project, which will be conducted in groups.  After the last group project, students in the class complained that some members of the class had not contributed significantly to their groups' projects, but had still received credit for the work.  This seemed unfair to the other members of class who had, in fact, taken on extra work in order for their group to complete the assignment.  Your teacher asks for proposals from students for a new policy that would ensure fairness in group work.  Write a proposal that you believe would solve the problem described above.  Describe your policy in detail and explain how it solves the problem of inadequate student contributions to group projects.  Explain any potential imperfections with your policy and how the class could address them effectively.

6. Grammar & Mechanics.   Fix the following run-on sentence.  Use proper punctuation. You may add words if necessary. 

They laid eyes on the center of the city none of them could believe what they saw it wasn't what anyone had expected or remembered from the books searching for a web portal but all were evidently knocked down by the storm and a tinge of regret in each of them for not taking Grampa's advice packing more batteries.

Add your own questions to The New ELA Test!

    

[image found at www.edgewoodexecutiveeducation.com]

Neighborhood Schools Going Out of Style?

In my previous post, The Cloud Factor, I compare the uneven conditions affecting teaching and learning at my school, a small five-year-old public school in Brooklyn, with those of a KIPP charter school, where a former colleague of mine works. I argue that the job of teaching in these two disparate environments is not the same. I also suggest that it may not be fair to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers in these two schools with a single identical test, because of all of the "X factors" that teachers at my school must become adept at dealing with in order to survive and succeed.  (One commenter pointed out that using a single measure of teacher effectiveness in two very different environments is not only unfair, but unscientific, because the teacher is not the only variable being measured. Nice point!)

I received some comments on my blog page, but also at other sites, such as the NYC-based Gotham Schools, suggesting that I transfer to a charter school, and one that even congratulated me on "my decision" to move to a charter school (this person misunderstood me: I'm not going anywhere). I appreciate that charter schools provide a variety of alternative models of education and think they play an important role in our country's education system. If I were to start my own school, I would certainly weigh the benefits of opening a charter school over a regular public school because of the freedom charters can provide. As a teacher, freedom over my curriculum and methods and having a voice in decisions made at my school are really important to me. I left my first school with a broken heart when those opportunities were taken away from teachers in a frantic effort to raise standardized test scores.

Right now, however, NYC public schools that elect to be part of the "Empowerment Zone" have very similar freedoms to those of charter schools. Principals manage their own budgets entirely and can structure their schools and curriculum as they like, as long as they comply with the union contract and state standards. This freedom allows my school's administration to create a progressive environment for teaching and learning. We have an unusually collaborative culture made possible by innovative scheduling and teacher-centered professional development as well as many opportunities for teacher voice and leadership in the ongoing shaping of the school. I have autonomy over my curriculum and opportunities to share best practices with and get constructive feedback from colleagues and administrators. (See my post "Excited About Teacher Leadership" for a better description.)
 
In the time that I've worked there (1.5 years), I've seen my school make siginificant progress toward offering a quality education to all of its students, which is why I have no plans to leave. I do wish to point out the particular conditions under which my school, its teachers, and its students make progress. We do so despite the x factors, which I think deserves some consideration.

As I described before, most charter schools seem to benefit from a few advantages that my school does not: the power to counsel out difficult students, and, in many cases, extra private funding to offset the inadequate public funding of schools serving high needs populations. (Urban schools with wealthier student populations usually have active PTO's which raise lots of money from parents and the connections parents have, and in suburban areas these schools are adequately funded through property taxes.)

Now, a regular DOE school can receive private donations, right? But it seems to be far more common for charter schools to receive large-scale private funding. Why is this? Why don't wealthy philanthropists "adopt" a neighborhood public school and help level the playing field there? Does starting or promoting a charter school carry a certain cachet that PS## or MS## doesn't? Are regular public schools going out of style?

If so, what could be behind this? Could it be that funders feel (consciously or unconsciously) that charter schools will deliver faster surer results because they don't have to work with non-compliant students (and/or parents) and don't necessarily have to build relationships with the communities that surround them?

On the other hand, is private funding even a reasonable or viable way to ensure that every student gets a quality public education?

[image credit: thegreenguy.typepad.com]

The Cloud Factor

I had an interesting conversation with a teacher who used to work in my school, whom I will call Joe. He was one of our strongest teachers and a leader in our school. After about five years of working in high needs, under-resourced schools, he made the decision to transfer to a KIPP school, where he could still work with students who come from poor families, but where the school would provide all the resources and support he needed.

Joe said the two jobs are like night and day. He described a school that is tightly and thoughtfully organized, highly supportive, and fully resourced. He works a longer day, but gets paid for it, rather than arriving early and staying late voluntarily, as most of my colleagues and I do. The long afternoon, he explained, includes a few hours of band for the entire middle school. During this time, teachers meet and then pull out small groups of carefully selected students for targeted interventions.

Students are indoctrinated into strict behavior standards, which they almost always meet (all of the students have been at the school since sixth grade). This includes becoming completely silent when the teacher claps two times. Students are explicitly taught how to discuss their feelings with their peers and solve problems. The curriculum for this portion of the program is provided for teachers. Students who consistently do not comply with the behavior standards can be counseled to leave the school, and attend their neighborhood zoned school.

I was most intrigued when Joe said this: "All the behavior stuff is basically taken care of for you. I feel like now, I've become such a better teacher than I ever was. I didn't fully realize it before, but all the craziness that was constantly going on around me was clouding my teaching. With all of that gone, I can identify my weak points and improve on them."

This was a little hard for me to hear. I knew exactly what he was talking about and have felt this clouding effect at times in two very different high needs schools in New York City. With the exception of one student teaching placement at Bank Street's own School For Children (a private lab school), I have always taught in an environment that had some dysfunctional aspects to it. In many cases, these dysfunctions are not the fault of anyone at the school, but rather, are related to the lack of adequate funding of the school's resources or the unstable home lives of the students.

For example, I may plan a lesson that involves students researching something on the Internet, only to find that a good number of the computers on the laptop cart I have signed out won't connect or won't even turn on. We have no technician on staff to maintain the computers, and we likely never will, because we spend our limited funds on more pressing things. I can either stop using computers completely, which seems like a disservice to my students, or I can take my chances every time. In another example of unavoidable dysfunction, I have a few students with chronic attendance problems. The school has made home visits, reported the families to ACS, but the attendance problems persist in some cases. When I strategically assign my students to work in partners for a project, I may find that a student is absent for days with no explanation, leaving someone without a partner for the duration of the project, while the absent student misses the entire learning experience. These are both issues that a fully resourced school--with the power to make noncompliant students transfer out---can prevent from happening (for better or for worse).

Teachers at schools like mine get used the multitude of x factors. In fact, we stop expecting everything to be "just so" and start going out of our way to plan for all of the unexpected things that might happen. Does this make us less effective? Maybe it does, in a way. It is harder to address problems quickly and effectively, when new problems present themselves simultaneously. But is it fair to call us less effective? Is it actually fair to measure my effectiveness in the same way my former colleague's teaching is now measured, when the playing field is not level? Is the job of teaching in these very disparate environments even the same?

If the quality of my teaching is measured by my students' scores on the same test that Joe's students also take, and soon, I am compensated based on this same determination, then tell me-why should I keep on working at a school that can't provide me everything I need to reach my full potential as a teacher?

If I can choose to be "more effective" in a "better" school, then what is really being measured?

[image credit: commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Image:Clouds.JPG]