Differentiated instruction: solution or fad?
By Katy Murphy
Monday, October 25th, 2010 at 2:08 pm in Steven Weinberg, students.
Steven Weinberg, a retired Oakland teacher and Education Report blogger, questions the effectiveness of a popular approach to teaching.
Last month Mike Schmoker, a prominent writer and speaker on educational improvement, wrote an article for Education Week (September 29, 2010, p. 22) denouncing differentiated instruction as a “pedagogic fad” supported by “no solid research or school evidence.” The article is available here.
This caught my eye because differentiated instruction is frequently suggested to Oakland teachers as the way to cope with the increasingly wide spread of student abilities within a single classroom, which has developed as ability-grouped classes have been discontinued and more special education students have been integrated into regular classes.
My experience in the Oakland school district seems to confirm Schmoker’s statement that it has quickly become “one of the most widely adopted instructional orthodoxies of our time.”
The basic idea of differentiated instruction, according to Carol Ann Tomlinson, who is its foremost proponent, is that “a teacher proactively plans varied approaches to what students need to learn, how they will learn it, and/or how they can express what they have learned in order to increase the likelihood that each student will learn as much as he or she can as efficiently as possible.”
Schmoker says, “I had seen this innovation in action. In every case, it seemed to complicate teachers’ work, requiring them to procure and assemble multiple sets of materials. I saw frustrated teachers trying to provide materials that matched each student’s or group’s presumed ability level, interest, preferred “modality” and learning style. The attempt often devolved into a frantically assembled collection of worksheets, coloring exercises, and specious ‘kinesthetic’ activities. And it dumbed down instruction: In English, ‘creative’ students made things or drew pictures; ‘analytical’ students got to read and write.”
I have shared Schmoker’s article with several teachers, and in every case they said that it confirmed their own feelings about differentiated instruction. One said that she thought it was a convenient answer for district policy-makers when asked how teachers were to deal with the wide-range of student abilities they faced in the classroom, but it was impossible for teachers to carry out successfully.
In my own teaching I sometimes created lesson that would meet Tomlinson’s definition of differentiation, but I did not organize my entire course around it. I usually tried to meet the different needs of my students by having a variety of whole class activities for each unit, aimed at different learning styles and strengths. I found this much easier in History classes where most of the information I was presenting was new to all students, than it was in English where some lessons might be a total waste of time for some students, who already thoroughly knew the skill being discussed, and still too difficult for some others, who did not have the prerequisite skills to do the work.
What do other teachers and parents think about differentiated instruction? Have you used it successfully or seen it work well, or do you agree with Schmoker that it has “corrupted both curriculum and effective instruction?”
[You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.]
October 25th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
I agree with the article. DI will be pushed even harder as the district pushes ALL students to be enrolled in classes that meet A – G Cal entry requirements, regardless of whether they have the pre-requisite skills, and even when test data indicates the student has not mastered elementary standards.
Differentiated instruction sounds great and that is all this Cabinet needs.
October 25th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
There is no choice. The law requires teachers to differentiate instruction for differently abled students. We know this works. Why wouldn’t it work for everyone? The truth is we all have unique learning modalities, but good teachers do what Steven did- offer the lesson in a variety of different ways knowing that students will be hit in one of their learning modalities. Inexperienced or “bad” teachers teach it one way ( or the way they learn, to be more accurate) and then wonder why the kids don’t get it. That is why teaching is an art.
October 25th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Steven: I agree with you. I have designed Tomlinson-like lesson plans. I have an average range of reading levels in my 6th grade classes of six levels of reading and about 9 grade levels of writing in each class.
I scaffold the snot out of my lessons, so much so that the students at the lower levels produce good work and the students on the upper level no longer have to think. I am not serving any student working at or above grade level in the class at all. Differentiating the homework, and even projects, but almost never in the classwork. This is with two hours of planning for each different course I teach.
If I had a gifted or highly motivated child in my class, I would be in the principal’s office demanding that he or she be moved to a more advanced class.
October 25th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
A related fad that the district has been pushing is Kagan Cooperative Learning. The KCL techniques are supposed to be the way teachers can more easily differentiate. Cooperative learning is a large area in education encompassing many approaches, but it could be generally defined small group interactive instruction that offers both academic and social learning experiences. Some of the approaches are more well researched than others. The one promoted by the district as a panacea for all instruction problems, KCL,is a private for-profit company that has few studies behind it other than those done by Kagan himself and others related to the company.
I am not against cooperative learning. But it shouldn’t be promoted as the answer to all instructional problems, and the district shouldn’t be paying a private company to train teachers to use its copyrighted techniques and materials.
This issue also touches on the general low quality of research in education. As a medical provider, I have been appalled by the research I have found when I try to get more information about solutions to problems in my child’s school. There are a lot of really poor quality studies out there. I don’t think teachers or administrators receive enough education on how to evaluate studies or use data, so bad research and data often gets cited as evidence for decisions. If medical research was at the same level as education research we’d still believe getting cold gives you the flu. (Not that medical research is perfect, but that’s a different blog…)
October 25th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
Catherine,
I agree. It is very difficult to address all levels within one classroom. I usually find that if you have more than 5 students in the class, significantly below grade level, they tend to slow the class down. I’ve been told to give other students “more work” but they tend to resent this after a while. They want to move forward. So, what is the answer? Lesson plan for 2-3 levels of students in each class. Exhausting!
October 25th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Grouping students by ability is the most efficient and effective manner in which to teach students. The article is right on the button.
Agreed…differentiated instruction is just a convenient answer for district policy-makers when asked how teachers were to deal with the wide-range of student abilities they faced in the classroom, but it was impossible for teachers to carry out successfully
October 25th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
thank you for sharing this, steven. it is really interesting because as a relative newcomer (4 years in the classroom), DI has been the expectation and gold standard for me. it never occurred to me to question WHY we were differentiating or what the data on it was, and it is unsettling and thought provoking to see that the data out there questions the efficacy of DI.
i agree that it often feels like a panacea for classes with a huge range of skill levels and in the math class i am currently teaching, it manifests itself as students choosing leveled worksheets based on self-assessment. each piece of work measures the same SKILL but with more or less complicated numerical calculations. we mix up the activities we do based on the needs of students to manipulate, calculate and think about the work, but we definitely don’t analyze as frequently as i wish we could. there is pressure to push through material for testing purposes and to stay on pace, and in pushing through i feel like we lose the ability to dig deep, analyze and think about WHY the process is the way it is versus just being able to get at the right answer.
the thought expressed in the edweek article that i most identified with was the calling to return to educational foundations. since i started teaching i’ve been wondering why we are constantly bombarded with new, “better” ways to teach, as if the education our parents (and we) received was somehow incomplete. it seemed to have served generations quite well. this doesn’t mean i’m not interested in pursuing change or improving systems where improvement is necessary, but i do find myself confounded by the whirling changes that seem to be ever-present in our institutions.
October 25th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
I’m skeptical of differentiated instruction, because:
1. It is hard enough to develop one lesson that works reasonably well — and to continually improve it — let alone to develop several.
2. If we are focusing on teaching skills, rather than content, which we should be doing (especially, but not exclusively, in history and English), then I’m not sure that differentiated instruction even applies; are there different ways to teach inference, for example? Supplying a variety of resources, yes, but a variety of strategies? Perhaps not.
3. We run the risk of not challenging many of our “lower skilled” students, who in my experience will often rise to challenges, or at least will derive more from such lessons than from lessons that are ostensibly more “appropriate” to their level.
4. Re: learning styles, we live in a text-based world, and we will live in such a world probably until humans evolve into a different species. Does it really inure the benefit of an “auditory learner” to cater to his particular learning style and give him an auditory assignment on which he earns an A, or is it better for him to get a C- on a text-based assignment. Which will better prepare him for success as an adult? I’m thinking the latter.
5. Steve’s method of having a variety of whole-class exercises is the only practical avenue for D. I., but is it any more equitable than the traditional approach? If Jane learns best from text, and John from kinesthenics, doesnt teaching 50/50 text and kinesthetics shortchange both of them? Might not 12 years of that land Jane at UC Davis, rather than Harvard? Why is that so equitable? And, doesnt Jane’s failure to reach her potential shortchange society, as well?
October 26th, 2010 at 4:21 am
If we’re going to continue down this path to hell, we must move the whole notion of “preferred learning styles” into the 21st century with maximum authenticity.
I’ve come to the conclusion that many Oakland students are Levi-textian Learners. Now our only challenge is to find a way of unzipping their little heads and pouring in the education without disturbing them as they sit in class sending IM’s to all their friends.
Thank you for sharing this article, Mr. Weinberg (and I’m always happy to see Daniel Willingham referenced anywhere.) From what I’ve seen, differentiated instruction can be a self-perpetuating hindrance to real education. We’ve been so busy struggling to meet the kids where they are that, somehow, actually getting them where they need to be has been lost in all the fluff and unconscionable condescension.
When I give high school essay assignments, here are some of the standard student responses: “Can’t I do a poster instead? What if I write a poem about it? Our middle school teacher let us turn in rap songs for grades instead of essays. How about I just tell you what I feel about the book instead of writing it down? OUTLINE? I’m not wasting my time doing no damn outline.”
And “what I feel” plays such a prominent role in some of their essays that if they don’t feel like reading the book they’re supposed to be writing about, that’s supposed to be OK too. One essay on the novel Fallen Angels, for instance, was all about a student’s personal experiences in East Oakland gang wars, complete with how funny he thought it was to participate in a police car chase, “just like Peewee.” Another student began his essay with, “Well, I didn’t read this book past the first page, because if a book doesn’t hook me from the gate, I can’t get into it, and I feel that Mark Twain is a racist, so I was insulted by his foolish book.”
Somehow, too, many of them are in the habit of beginning their essays with odd questions to some mysterious second person: “Have you ever felt out of place and lonely? Well, in The Life of Frederick Douglass…”
Other students will download an entire essay (including weblinks AND advertisements) from StealThisAssignment.com or wherever, design an extravagant cover sheet with colored pencils, and then blow up when I use the P word because “I did my work!” And some of them really mean it. After all, they researched the assignment on theIinternet, they printed out and assembled pieces of paper, they did some coloring, and that’s the kind of “project” they’ve gotten A’s for in prior grades, so what kind of hateful teacher am I?
Then there’s the abominable spelling, the indecipherable grammar, and the crowded, dayglo pink handwriting when I’ve repeated and repeated the instructions to type the paper, doublespaced. Now, it’s difficult to get upset with the children over all this. And I don’t mind the process of backtracking, and backtracking again, to teach them the kinds of basic skills they should have mastered in seventh, fourth, or second grade.
But differentiated instruction is not the answer here; it’s the problem! Most of these students are bright, capable children who should not, by any means, be “low-level” anything. The problem is, the bar has been kept so low for so long that some of them know only to panic or get angry when they’re expected to read critically, listen to instructions, revise their writing, and think about anything besides getting the work “done” and turning it in.
So I can only hope that the next education “revolution” will involve an unprecedented emphasis on REAL research and devising practical strategies for truly educating these children at every grade level. They can do their kinesthetic learning in gym class, but for the rest of the school day they need to be learning to read, write, use math, and think logically.
What’s most frustrating is that none of this is news, or it shouldn’t be. Project Follow Through was completed, and the results promptly shuffled to the ashbin, when I was still in school. The most expensive, comprehensive study ever done of education in the United States, but too many influential people disliked the researchers’ conclusions. So instead, American children wound up with decades of games, billions of crayons, and all manner of TRULY disrespectful “feel good” activities that wasted years of their time and brushed aside their innate ability to learn.
Some further, related reading for those interested:
http://www.illinoisloop.org/mi.html
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/fads.html
October 26th, 2010 at 4:39 am
I think a central problem is that a great deal of effort in education reform over time has been devoted to pursuit of whatever may be the latest fashion. There are many examples of this and limited cumulative progress to show for it. The problem, in my view, lies in the interpersonal and institutional politics that underlies the rise of each fad. I believe that the antidote is the growth of a collaborative educational culture rooted at the local level. I observed for many years, in many settings, a virtual absence of meaningful and effective collaboration. Conversely, I’ve seen a few extraordinarily effective examples of cooperative work on the part of teachers that produced substantial improvement in instruction. The question is not whether differentiated instruction, cooperative learning and standardized testing, etc., etc. are useful or not. The question is how elements of each of these and others can be woven together into a vital, constantly evolving and effective educational process in each individual school at each grade level or discipline. To make progress in this direction, it would be helpful to focus discussion on highly specific examples of effective strategies that have been developed by teachers rather than on a more general examination of the pluses and minuses of differentiated instruction or any other particular approach. In this connection, teacher education courses taught by teams of master teachers, each of whom can can offer particular and detailed strategies, rather than university instructors far removed from the K-12 classroom, would greatly contribute to the development and dissemination of effective instructional methods. Very best of luck to all of you in the successful pursuit of this important work!
October 26th, 2010 at 8:03 am
If you are the parent of a child who is bored in class because they already know the work, then you wish for differentiated instruction to keep your child busy, challenged and moving ahead.
My first wasn’t quite in this boat a few years ago when he started K, but there were kids who began K who could read chapter books. There were other kids who didn’t even know their letters yet. How awful for the readers to spend a whole year on letters when they were leaps and bounds ahead.
My second is noticeable more academically advance than his peers. It’s been frustrating for him. Fortunately he’s often allowed to work a grade level or so ahead and it’s helped.
I’m all for differentiated instruction and wish they would makeup the classes where children would be placed with kids of similar abilities. That way all the instruction would meet them at their level and move them up, no matter where they started!
October 26th, 2010 at 9:17 am
It’s amusing to me that we speak of how the teachers are expected to operate a classroom with mixed-cognitive students.
Why do you think the (brighter) families of the brighter students would permit their smart kids to sit in a classroom of dummies?
They will take their bright kids and enroll them in a good/better school that doesn’t mix dummies and smart kids, not only in the same class but in the same campus.
You go to Piedmont or you go to the Charters. The operative word is you “go”.
Seek your level. It’s not exactly a new concept.
Brave New World.
October 26th, 2010 at 10:16 am
And on that note, Nextset, we are planning to move our children to another school in the next year or so. From then on, they will be surrounded by peers that are more able and willing to learn at a higher level and who, on the whole, will be much better behaved.
Some of the people who know of our intentions make it seem like we’re part of the problem, abandoning public schools in Oakland. To me it’s very simple. I would like my child to be in a diverse environment such as Oakland, but I value learning in a safe, focused, non-disruptive environment even more. That’s two more kids who will be leaving Oakland before middle school…
October 26th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Hills Parent: Better do it quick. I keep harping on the “Brave New World” – and I think even I hope all this can’t be true – We are seeing the destruction of the middle class (downward mobility of their children) at an unprecedented pace.
October 26th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
It seems to me that the alternative to differentiated instruction is teacher specialization based on student abilities, or tracking – but many teachers seem to have large moral issues with this strategy as well.
What’s the right answer?
October 26th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
The wheels are in motion for our move. Many of my friends are planning on a move as well. Sadly as our kids get older, Oakland public schools won’t cut it.
As a side note, I know there are some very good or excellent academic programs, such as the Academies at Oakland Tech. I’m worried about the years in between elementary and tenth grade when the Academies start, as well as the social enviroment at all middle and high schools.
October 26th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
I just finished my day and before I begin correcting homework and writing assignments I wanted to say that I polled all of my co-workers with children and asked how many of them either have had their own children in the school in which they teach or would send their children to the school in which we teach.
The answer ZERO. The vast majority discussed discipline and wasted class time. Several others said that the work our students are demonstrating in middle school was done by their own children in second and third grade. Several used the excuse they wouldn’t because they don’t live in Oakland.
Bottom line – none of the teachers would want their own children to have to deal with bad behavior, cursing, underpants showing, breasts exposed, cell-phone nonsense, low level requirements of the work, rats, mice, roaches and the myriad of other things we as teachers must confront, discipline and work to make students conform to standard school expectations – none.
I asked them what about the differentiation. Each one said unless their own children were in classes with similarly DISCIPLINED students, they would say no. Nearly all believed that all of the students COULD learn at the higher levels – it is the school cultural distractions that makes the difference.
October 26th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
At both the Oakland middle school where I worked, Claremont and Frick, there were teachers who chose those schools for their own children, and they felt their children received excellent educations there. They went on to succeed in high school and college.
October 26th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
I don’t think the problem is differentiated instruction, per se. Rather, it is having a spectrum of ability levels that is much too broad. By the time OUSD students hit the 9th grade, the range of ability may be from grade 2 to 12 in the same room. It is completely unrealistic to expect even a gifted teacher to be able to successfully cope with such a broad range.
If the student skill set were a bit more focused, then the range of learning modalities would become an asset. Each could help bring problem solving approaches into focus. It would help make available to all students the important work environment lessons in collaboration. But once the spread increases to widely, it becomes an anchor dragging the entire group down.
OUSD has embraced differentiated instruction without properly defining the boundaries in which its application is useful. The result is frustrated teachers, bored over-achievers, and ironically, bored under-achievers.
Boredom is trouble waiting for an opportunity.
October 26th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Kids rise to challenges. The key to differentiated instruction is to teach each student at their highest level not some level that bores them to tears. The research shows that all students have multiple learning modalities. Therefore teaching lessons which access all of them. Kids need to be pushed. And discipline problems disappear when kids are engaged in a classroom. I am also tired of hearing that diversity in the classroom means dumbed down instruction. It does not.
October 26th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
I’d be interested to hear about a school or a teacher that has done differentiated instruction well. How did they do it? How could you tell that it was working?
October 26th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
@Hot R:
You tell me how to teach 32 students who are in 6th grade with the lowest three being at second grade-sixth month reading level to my highest one at above 12th grade reading level and the two just below that at high school junior level – the other 27 are somewhere in between.
Hot R – Please tell me. I’m waiting and listening.
October 26th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Hot R, as echoed by others, all kids can learn, but not all kids or families choose the emphasize education. Sadly, I find that it is often the African Americans that are the least prepared for the classroom. These same children are often the discipline cases as well.
I’m delighted when I come across African American families at school who I consider to be peers – responsible families who really care about the learning and foster an environment where academics and good behavior are important. I wish there were more people like this (of all races).
I know that most kids, if they had support at home, would do well in school. It’s unfortunate that too often minority children don’t have this support. So, in Oakland, often times diversity does lower academic standards and increased discipline problems. I blame the parents and the sub-cultures and poverty for not creating an environment that is better for learning.
The new schools we are considering for our kids will not have these same types of problems. This does not mean that they will be perfect or that we won’t encounter new problems, but I will be relieved to know that my kids will be in safe environment where bad behavior won’t be tolerated. The academics will be tougher and the kids will be challenged. What I’m looking for just isn’t available within the Oakland public middle schools.
Catherine, thank you for sharing about your colleagues. I have a friend who teaches at Montera and she tells me stories that only reinforce my fears about that school (and that’s one of the better options in Oakland). Yikes, I’m happy that we’ve got alternatives!
October 26th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Hot R:
I dunno, see pages 195-196 here, stating that research shows that differentiating instruction re: learning styles does not work: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LMj96HLK0I8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&ots=bDyDcUyBxm&sig=O1EmVBtZVj7-V3rDMUdfynpIUJ0#v=onepage&q=stahl&f=false
October 27th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Hills Parent:
My family is in the midst of some long-term planning as well…I am curious are you leaving Oakland or just OUSD?
October 27th, 2010 at 11:12 am
Can you tell the readers, then, why you chose to send your own child to Head Royce as opposed to OUSD, Mr. Weinberg?
October 27th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Something just crossed my desk – unpleasant. My writing on this blog has mainly been from a Black perspective. I forgot about the Hispanic/Mexican perspective because I always thought Oakland doesn’t yet have Norteno/Suereno daily shootings and beatings. The Mexican Gangs generally have superior discipline. They will not hesitate to beat or kill anyone who crosses them and they don’t tolerate rule-breaking by members or associates. They also don’t take attempts to leave well if at all.
Now imagine trying to raise a Hispanic child when the local public schools are completely infiltrated and dominated by Nortenos and the school insists there are no problems? We think the black folks have problems..
Yet the public schools have no policy about detecting and eliminating gang infiltration – they don’t want one.
Perhaps this issue fits the bullying thread better. Think of the bullying concept. The Gangs are using violence on an hourly basis in the teen societies. They will kill you, no doubt about it, if you do certain things to disrespect them or break their rules once you’ve allowed yourself to become an associate or member. They own you body and soul, which the tattoo is there to remind you. You will obey orders and rules or else.
Since our public schools think it’s ok to have these people enrolled in “normal” schools, what are the teachers supposed to do to “protect” (that’s a laugh) a student in trouble with the local gangs? And that (being “in trouble”) can mean just being there – a Norteno will attack a Suereno on sight. And the girls who start talking to them become Associates too.
Are our public teachers being paid, trained and insured to manage all this? Or is Oakland just not experiencing it yet.
Does differentiated instruction cover this also?
October 27th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
AC Mom, we have been considering our options and are learning toward moving to another community with excellent public schools. We hope to move this summer in time for the next school year.
After doing the math of staying put and paying for private vs moving and sending our kids to public school, we felt the latter was the best decision for us. What I like about public schools is that you can go to school with your local friends and neighbors. To me this means less commuting and more community-building. I like that!
If we go private, we’ll be part of a new school community with families from all over which would make organizing and playdates harder. There would be much more time in the car or on the bus.
For our family, paying a higher mortgage and property taxes was preferable to paying for private middle and high school. Plus we’ll be in a nicer, safer community. Fingers crossed! Good luck with your decision!
Nextset, yikes, that is very scary about the Mexican gangs and OUSD’s lack of response.
October 27th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Curious, because I believe strongly in the advantages of smaller class sizes (1 to 15 vs. 1 to 32). I wish public schools were funded at the level to allow those class sizes.
October 27th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Hills Parent:
Thank you for responding. Those are the same questions that we will soon have to answer for ourselves.
October 27th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Steven:
I have friends with students in fourth and fifth grades at Head Royce – both classes have 20 students. I have friends who teach in flatland schools (Title 1) and each of those schools also has 20 students (in some cases 18 or 19 students in a class. Why not choose one of those schools? The student body count is the same or similar.
I am not passing judgment, because I, too, would want my children in classes where 95% of the time is spent on instruction (direct and indirect) with a 5% transition time. It is not about class size that is different it is the level at which we are able to teach in our classrooms. Neither the flatlands, nor Head Royce is differentiating (our topic here), but because Head Royce is closer to the state standards across the curriculum and the spectrum of abilities is narrower (2 – 3 grade levels rather than 7 – 9 grade levels – in middle school) more teaching to student levels and more learning at higher levels is happening.
And, Mr. Weinberg, if were were all honest, would you really, really send your children to flatlands schools even if the classroom levels were identical? I would not.
October 27th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Hills Parent: I don’t know if OUSD has the same problem with the murderous Hispanic Gangs (although some of their members and associates are white) as the Central valley Schools so. Urban Public Schools typically allow infiltration and look the other way at gang discipline, sending messages to just do it off property. Based on what is going on in LA and around the state I’d expect Oakland Unified to keep the welcome mat out for the Mexican Gangs.
My thinking is that if you are raising a Hispanic Child, male or female, and you want the kid to be university capable, you move to Piedmont or you move somewhere else where the gangs are not dominant and send the kid to a school without a gang infiltration. That is not easy to do depending on what your family occupation is. Your remaining options may be to leave CA and move to a whiter state (at the moment) such as the Pacific Northwest or some other region where this is not yet the issue.
My point being that the different ethnics have different serious problems, black gang activity is more concentrated in black ghetto schools with different dynamics and easier to avoid. Hispanics have problems also – trying to protect a hispanic kid from downward mobility is really tough because the societial attraction and discipline of the Mexican Gangs is stronger and more organized than the blacks (ie statewide hierarchy and control).
And exactly how is a public school teacher and principal supposed to deal with this?? Intervene?
October 27th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
Oh, that was an interesting turn of conversation with that one Point of Information, and the response (OUSD teachers placing their own kids elsewhere, and the responding reason/rationale).
Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t care if the OUSD class size were 10—I’d be out. And it’s clearly true from the enrollment statistics over the last 30 years that I am not alone (in a city with a virtually static population over the same time), and I suspect the population of public school teachers have a significantly higher incidence of abandoning ship than the general population of Oakland.
This whole differentiation meme is a symptom of the dysfunction. I can’t believe how much hand wringing and elocution over this conception occupies the attention that fundamental and meaningful reform cannot seem to rise to the same level of general interest in this city. Actually, I can believe it. I think I understand what it must have felt like being on the deck of the Titanic.
Enjoy the ride. And the rationale as to why you wouldn’t put your own kids into this dystopia.
October 27th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
Re: Head Royce:
Years ago when I was a substitute teacher, I subbed at Head Royce (high school) for a day. The experience that students have there is very different from that at other schools. They are very selective, and it shows. It would be very silly to decline to send your child there, should he or she be admitted. It’s like a UC Davis professor sending their kid to Harvard; doing so is hardly an indictment of Davis.
More broadly, I might be stupid, but I don’t see the relevance of where Steve Weinberg sends his kid — it doesn’t shed light on whether schools should differentiate instruction or not.
October 27th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
I teach in New Haven Unified in Union City and I send my own two sons to OUSD schools (Glenview and Brewer). Although I am not ecstatic with Brewer, my son has benefited from being with his neighborhood friends, walking to school every day, the fabulous band and PE program, and in general, he feels he has learned a lot. Because they have a recurring problem of teacher retention and a constant cohort of brand new teachers, many of whom are Teach for America teachers, I believe that he could have had a more challenging academic experience in the middle school where I teach. But we make decisions for all sorts of reasons, and in this case, I thought Brewer was good enough not to disrupt his life.
As for differentiation–I have yet to be trained in it. We are constantly told to differentiate, but in a 50 minute period with 36 students (New Haven is known to have the largest class sizes in Alameda County) in an 8th grade History or Language Arts class, I’m not sure I know what it looks like when I do direct instruction. I find that I can differentiate by creating open-ended assignments, giving students opportunities to choose what they want to accomplish on a certain type of project with my higher skilled students knowing what my expectations are for them not to choose easier activities. And I try to give my lower skilled students as much direct help as possible. I also group students, depending on the activity, either heterogeneously or homogeneously. When I have done Literature Circles, I have felt like it has worked best. Still, do I feel successful or accomplished at it? Absolutely not. Have I ever seen it in action on a regular basis or even once, for that matter? Nope. Do we all talk about how we have to do it? Yep. I was recently thinking of asking my principal to come in and demonstrate a differentiated lesson in my classroom, but I don’t think he’d be able to. He was a PE teacher for less than 5 years when he went into administration and I don’t think differentiation happens at all in PE.
This is my 23rd year of teaching, so I have been around long enough to see many educational programs, strategies, “best practices” come and go. But I also remember when I was in elementary school and my mother, who was a teacher, bemoaned New Math which she had to teach and which destroyed, for me, any understanding of math. I think teachers have been subjected to the latest greatest fad in teaching for a long time. Differentiation is no different. But I don’t know that homogeneous grouping or tracking is effective either. My first couple of years of teaching, we tracked students and I do remember how hard it was to teach a class of lower-skilled students–especially because there were more behavior problems, no strong academic students to model for them, and high absenteeism among the population. I was grateful when we went to heterogeneous classrooms, and in the end, I do think there are more opportunities for students to learn from each other in a heterogeneous classroom than in a tracked classroom.
Having said that, I do think that lower-skilled students need specialized intervention that is targeted and meaningful and I do think that the kids on the opposite end of the spectrum also need opportunities that pose challenges to them so that they grow. One concern I have for both my kids who excel in school is that they aren’t challenged enough in school. We have provided many opportunities for them to be challenged outside of school, but I would like to see more of that within their school day.
October 27th, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Curious, you should refrain from disclosing private information about people’s children on a public blog. It is the business of that person where they decide to send their child to school, not yours. This is a crazy world we live in and your comment is a risk to everyone’s privacy. Let’s stick to the issues.
October 28th, 2010 at 8:19 am
Public School Teacher, I see your point and I think people need to be careful around privacy information. However, if you are going to advocate for public schools and comment that people can get an excellent education by attending such a school (post #18), then I think it’s interesting that that the poster himself opted for private. However, this is moving away from the topic of this thread: differentiation.
Katy, maybe you should do a story on what schools teachers choose for their own children, especially at the middle and high school levels. That would be telling…
October 28th, 2010 at 8:47 am
Hills parent,
There was a Fordham study done in 2004, read this:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/sep/22/20040922-122847-5968r/
Its very interesting when you consider that teachers do not get paid very well(so they say).
October 28th, 2010 at 9:33 am
JR, your snark is stale.
Let’s be blunt:
I am a 40something single father who makes 40K a year working in OUSD as a career-changer teacher. With this salary, I need to provide a home for myself and my child in the wildly expensive Bay Area.
In the Spring, I pulled my child out of his East Bay public school in the same district where I went K-12 because:
a) In the previous grade, his fourth year at the school, his teacher had actually been mentally unstable and continually abusive and was only pushed out of the classroom after months of concerted effort by parents. It was her fifth school in the district in less than ten years!
b) Last year, the teacher was nice, but had zero ability to manage the class. Repeated visits to the class were a voyage into bedlam, with my son looking catatonic in the center of the maelstrom.
c) Troubled children, some of them in foster care and others whose fathers were in prison, began picking on my child with the the classic relentlessness of the true bully. My child began having nightmares, anxiety attacks and psychosomatic illnesses.
d) My child was diagnosed with dyslexia/learning disabilities, affecting basic reading, writing and arithmetic. Yet interventions were vague and/or nonexistent. Simply put, the teacher and school were overwhelmed with students with far greater behavior and academic problems.
e) I asked for a switch in classrooms, which was granted. Parents in that class were shocked I would want in, since they were having the same chaos problems. And the bullying didn’t stop — it was primarily from an older group of kids outside of class, anyway.
f) We asked to switch schools mid-year within the district and the principal even supported our request. It was denied.
g) With my child exhibiting signs of depression, I yanked him. Went to his grandparents and asked them to pay for a switch to a private school where my kid had a friend whose parents were raving about the school/teacher. Yes, teachers don’t get paid that much, JR, but we did all graduate from college which indicates that most of come from middle-class and up background, and our aging parents are often the ones who do for our children what we can’t do for them — including pay for college.
h) My first encounter with a private school EVER was shocking — the adult-student ratio is about 11-1! Zero kids were shouting “mother******” or running out of the classroom and into the street.
i) The private school gave us a 50% scholarship discount based on my tax returns — they apparently don’t believe my salary is that impressive.
j) To help pay for the school, we moved out of our modest apartment in a bad neighborhood and into a room at my parents’ house.
k) Now, when I’m working a 60-hour week at my OUSD school, I at least don’t have to worry that my child is sitting in a school cafeteria while a group of deeply troubled and uncared for children are throwing food at their back — the scene I arrived to on his last day.
The bottom line is that I am willing to work with those kinds of kids and, as an adult, can even love and respect them as they struggle with the terrible hand they were dealt in life. My children can make that kind of decision when they are adults, but for now they are children, not guinea pigs, and it is my job to try and give them a happy childhood and good education, by any means necessary.
October 28th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Cranky,
Underpaid?Then there shouldn’t be anyone more peeved than you when you see incompetence, and highly paid to boot(translation: you might make more if your union didn’t insist that every teacher were the same quality and paid accordingly, and also that years served be “the” criteria for pay raises,irregardless of ability and that same incompetence not being a factor in compensation, and or termination). As for real world struggles, welcome to my world. My child is autistic, and I know what struggle is, fortunately there are mostly good teachers this year, so it’s not as hard as it could be. These kids in your class are the result of a failed welfare society, who’s largest cost is the multitude of youths with no guidance or direction. What do you expect to get when you just hand people money, you really don’t expect them to do their best do you? When you hand people money they sit back and wait for more, that’s human nature.
October 28th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Thank you Ms. McLaughlin for those links. It was nice to see that other people believe those practices I was taught in Ed School are worthless fads – ie. jigsaw, allowing students to produce a poster instead of an essay because of so-called multiple intelligences which apparently are not based on any verified research.
We are supposed to believe whatever our ed professors tell us is the best way to teach without asking them why we should believe this. Where is the actual research? Jigsaw is one of the worst way to learn – it leaves huge gaps in the students’ knowledge. The problem is that there are administrators who will judge teachers on the amount of time they spend having students do projects and using these faddish techniques. If a teacher doesn’t do this, they run the risk of losing their jobs or getting bad reviews. I have rarely observed groups where more learning is going on than if there were teacher-directed instruction. Most of the time the kids are fooling around and one kid is working cutting out pictures and gluing. I know a teacher who spends an inordinate amount of time on projects but can his students write a well-constructed essay using critical thinking? Of course not!
As for differentiating a whole classroom full of 30-35 students – there just isn’t enough time in the day to make three sets of lesson plans. If you then separate the kids into groups based on these plans, are you then tracking, which you aren’t supposed to do? What’s wrong about teaching the standards and expecting everyone to master them? If the standard says “analyze”, a poster isn’t the same. Let’s stop dumbing down school – If a kid can’t do the work because they don’t care, never do homework and text all day in class that is their problem. Teachers aren’t social workers neither are their parents.
October 28th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
On the subject of teachers who don’t or wouldn’t send their own children to the school where they teach…
As I have posted here before, I do think that a huge difference can be made in a school by the families whose children attend. I don’t think money is the only difference; the attitudes of the families can change a school very much for the better. The families which contribute money to their children’s schools no doubt help them, but when they contribute time and effort to helping their children learn and to teaching their children how to behave and treat others, that is invaluable. Therefore, when possible, I urge my friends and colleagues to send their children to the neighborhood school and thus commit to making a difference there.
However, I agree with Cranky–your own children are your responsibility in a way that the children you teach are not. I believe that if you choose to be a parent then your first loyalty must be to your own children. (If all the families who have the ability to support their own children at school would do so, far far fewer schools would be in the situation they are.) If you do not think that the school where you teach is a safe environment, or if you do not believe it would challenge or nurture or meet your own child’s needs, I think it is not only okay but RIGHT for you to send your child to a different school.
By doing so, teachers are not saying that it is okay for the school where they teach to be as unsafe/unchallenging/lacking-in-whatever way as it is. They are at that school, struggling to make it better–committing much more than the armchair bloggers who ceaselessly attack them.
In order to be consistent, do you think the dedicated teachers who love and support their students but won’t send their kids to school with them because of so many other factors should quit teaching? Would that solve anything?
There is so much hatred and judgment on this blog and on this topic, but this particular strand of criticism of teachers is among the most offensive.
Teachers should be honored for the hard and wonderful work we do. If we are also parents, that is our own business.
Or maybe in the new society created by Gates/Walton/Broad and any other billionaires who choose to give money to distort public education, it won’t be. Maybe we’ll all be ideal teaching martyrs who spend 80 hours a week at work and therefore have no time to have our own kids (until we quit after doing our two years in order to go into something more lucrative). Or maybe the evaluation, in addition to standardized test scores (which were never intended to measure teacher effectiveness), will include a judgment of a teacher’s family values.
Outrageous.
October 28th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
JR, we agree on the problems to a large extent — we just don’t agree on the causes or the solutions.
Nobody ever answers these questions I always post:
a) When is ratio of supervisors to “reports” in K-12 education going to be lowered to where evaluation could be meaningful? (In my school the ratio is over 35:1!)
b) What are teachers going to get in exchange for giving up the scraps the system has thrown them (job security, pensions)?
c) What are you going to offer competent teachers to recruit and retain them to the most needy schools, so you don’t just get rookies and “survivors”?
The answers are a) Never. b) Nothing. C) Not even close to enough.
Thoughtful article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paras-bhayani/post_979_b_746956.html
October 28th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
I don’t have a problem with teachers who send their children to private school or to another public school. Teachers need to make those decisions for their own children and are free to do whatever.
Cranky, I can see why you are cranky! I would be in your situation! And you absolutely did the right thing for your child. Also, I appreciate your honest assessment of your own school. I happen to think that the reason a lot of schools are failing has little to do with the teachers themselves. It has everything to do with the home environment of the child and the culture/values of the parents and community. It’s sad that great teachers can’t make the difference alone. It takes a village and that village too often fails the students.
October 28th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Speaking of how terrible it is to judge teachers who send their kids to private schools- why are charters hated so much? Do parents with little or nor resources, or kids with nothing at all not deserving of an option?
By your actions you have said that the district schools do not work, yet you blast charter schools so easily. Hypocrites.
If its not about your kids, screw others right? All kids, espoecially those whose parents do not have degress desrve more.
So many
October 28th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Differentiation is just a tool with which public school administrators give teachers the false impression that large class sizes with a 4 year spread of reading levels can actually be successful for all students.
The main concept I took away from my days of professional development regarding differentiation was triage – the message was: figure out who needs your help and focus on them, have the students who don’t need your help do work on their own. That is not differentiation, that is just cheating some of your students so that others can get more of the teacher’s attention.
Differentiation is necessary in any class, in any school – no two students are alike, but in our public school classrooms the range of learning readiness and ability is extreme, coupled with large class sizes, effective differentiation is extremely challenging. The smaller the class size, the more meaningful the differentiation.
October 28th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Cranky Teacher Says:
October 28th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
“Nobody ever answers these questions I always post:”
I will offer to respond. But I can tell you why you never get an answer. You are inside a Skinner Box. You are looking for answers but you insist they must be inside that box.
“a) When is ratio of supervisors to “reports” in K-12 education going to be lowered to where evaluation could be meaningful? (In my school the ratio is over 35:1!)”
You are looking for a solution where the supervisor has virtually no control over who are the reports. What kind of system is that? A guaranteed dysfunctional system. The ratio is not the issue. The lack of selection of reports is the issue.
And, worst of all, all those reports know the supervisor has no control. And the compensation received is entirely devoid of performance evaluation.
Can you imagine how effective any supervisor would be if he could do what Michelle Rhee did and fire a good chunk of the dead wood based on her evaluation of their performance?
“b) What are teachers going to get in exchange for giving up the scraps the system has thrown them (job security, pensions)?”
Why must we, as taxpayers footing the entire bill for this dysfunctional system offer you something for nothing. OUSD offers nothing to either the taxpayers or the kids in their care. It has high schools with single digit competency levels in math. It has a dropout rate of 60% of AA males and this is by definition a dropout factory. This is not up for dispute. It is definitional.
It is a failure and the fact of the matter is that I feel I owe you nothing because the system is a failure. The only people I owe anything to are the kids. Period. As far as I am concerned, every adult sucking at the teat of that system is subject to dismissal if the reporting supervisor believes that is in the best interest of the student.
“c) What are you going to offer competent teachers to recruit and retain them to the most needy schools, so you don’t just get rookies and “survivors”? ”
As things exist, nothing is currently offered for competency. Compensation is defined by YOS. As a matter of fact, the California teacher’s union lobbied and received legislation making it impossible to compensate based on competency. And that speaks volumes for the union, their real values and why OUSD is such a mess.
If the students are the sole concern, competency should be well compensated. Rookie teachers and veterans alike. YOS should mean nothing in terms of compensation because it means nothing in terms of what matters–the kids.
October 28th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Ramona,
There are several parts of your comment which I don’t understand.
1. I’m not sure what you mean by “if it’s not about your kids, screw others right.” In my post earlier I tried to point out that teachers who send their kids to schools other than the ones where they teach are in fact trying to do something good at those schools (and therefore, I hope and assume, not “screwing” those other kids). Do you really think that teachers don’t have the right to do what they think is best for their own children, or that if they do send their kids to other schools they are trying to sabotage the kids at the schools where they teach?? Seriously?
2. Although I think that many have pointed this out, I’ll do so again: charter schools (the small percentage which get good results) work for the children whose families are involved enough to sign them up for those schools. The reason I, along with many of my colleagues, am against charter schools is that they will further undermine the public school system. Of course I believe that parents should have the ability to support their kids, and options in choosing their schooling. But charter schools are *not* an option for kids who, as you put it, ‘have nothing at all.’ These are the kids who will be left behind in the public schools which are left, even as the charter schools siphon away money and families from the public school system.
3. “By your actions you say that public schools do not work.” By what actions? Who says that? I am a public school teacher and I think public schools do work. If some of my colleagues send their kids to private schools while teaching in public ones, that does not mean they do not think public schools work. I don’t think they would continue to do the jobs they do if they felt that way.
I have to say again that I think the tone of so many of these posts is downright offensive. It is disturbing to me how personal people get, and how very judgmental many of the posters are.
October 28th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
I’m not judging, I just think everyone should have the freedom to put their kids where they choose, The unions have always been an obstruction to that end(they have the politicians and dues money that enable them). The union wants a captive unchanging source of funding(children), and GOD help anyone that gets in the way of the flow of money.
http://www.psrf.org/issues/lloyd.jsp
October 28th, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Schools were slipping decades before anyone even thought of charter schools. The fact remains that the US taxpayers pay to fund education very well(in the top 5 among countries, and yet our results are not top 20), and yet other countries have poverty too. The only things that are truly offensive are the blatant entitlement, and the fact that taxpayers let this charade go on for so long.
October 28th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Cranky: I just read your last post. Words Fail me.
October 29th, 2010 at 6:54 am
Ex-Oakland Staff (46) raises a good point about what happens when “differentiation” becomes the magic word in telling teachers that an unworkable situation can be worked out with, well, more work.
To me (public school product and tenth year PS teacher), differentiated instruction, like Si Swun math and a number of other Teaching Boogeymen these days, is at its core a valid tool that gets warped beyond recognition when adopted by non-classroom staff as the be-all Policy Solution without adequate support.
I remember differentiated instruction from my own elementary school–the classic example of a 15 word spelling list with 5 challenge words thrown in and the most remedial students only responsible for 1, 5, and 15. I remember different reading groups, and a classroom reading block structure that allowed everyone else to work productively at their levels while the teacher met with 6 kids at a time. I remember coming to school in a full leg cast, and my teacher giving me something else to do when everyone else ran laps in PE.
As Ex-Oakland staff says, no two students are alike, and some differentiation is just good teaching practice. In the absence, though, of strong and sufficient resource specialist programs (with do-able caseloads allowing for push-in support) and good Response to Intervention frameworks with support from non-classroom teaching staff to run and monitor the programs, “differentiation” becomes the buzzword when you ask one teacher to do seven jobs for six populations within one ever-growing group of young people.
I can truly see the allure of sending oneself or one’s kid to a school where lack of the more “remedial” population makes the spread of differentiation narrower. But on a policy level, I think that’s a dangerously small band-aid on a much larger wound.
October 29th, 2010 at 10:19 am
Ramona, posting 45 asks: “why are charters hated so much? Do parents with little or no resources, or kids with nothing at all not deserving of an option?”
I oppose charters because they privatize public education. If charters could be prevented from organizing as corporations, I would have less of a problem with charters.
But, even if the protection of being a corporation and hiding how the public’s money was spent where removed, there would be a need to change charter laws to make testing have to be conducted by a independent third party to reduce the amount of cheating associated with high stakes testing.
There would be a need to limit charters to enrolling students within the boundaries of the local school district. For example, if Measure L passes parcel tax money for Oakland charter schools from Oakland property taxes will pay for the education of students enrolled in charter schools from Richmond. There are students from Richmond enrolled in the charter school on the former Golden Gate public school campus. Richmond students are legally enrolled because a charter school under current law can enroll students from any city in the state as charter schools are freed from recognizing city or district boundaries. Perhaps the next election will have on the ballot a measure preventing local parcel tax paying for students living out of Oakland.
And, there would be a website whereby any taxpaying citizen could access on line the record of how each charter school is spending the taxpayers’ money. Oakland School District website shows minutes of its meetings showing each dollar that is spent but citizens have no internet access to how the over 30 charter schools of Oakland spend their money.
I agree that the poor should have options and opportunity. But, destroying public education for a market driven system that weakens public oversight of how the public’s money is spent will, I believe, provide fewer opportunities not more opportunities for the poor.
Jim Mordecai
October 29th, 2010 at 10:33 am
I see your point Mr. Mordecai, however charter schools are a public system, first of all, and what about those Oakland taxpayers whose kids go to charters, yet would not recieve a dime of their tax dollars to go to their kids school. Its robbery? And then there is the matter of the nearly 100 million dollars that OUSD owes the state, should oakland residents whose kids go to charters be exempt?
Are you insinuating that taxpayers should have a say where their tax dollars go? Your union will be destroyed and you know that!
You mean to tell me, since OUSD is so transparent,that you know where every dollar from the distirct goes or has gone? This is what you are claiming right? So why do former employees still get paid?
Your argument is union driven, I get that, but you have no idea what it is to be broke and desperate-thats obvious!
In the meantime I read the Strategic Plan and attended a GO school forum and listend to Mr. Smith give his plan- though its muddled in usual save the community rhetoric from all other public leaders, if you read close enough Mr. Mordecai, I believe it is poised to fight with your group? It will be interesting to see the evolvement.
Charter schools will face tons of regulations and scrutiny- but parents will still vote with their feet.
October 29th, 2010 at 10:38 am
Ms. J
If you cant stand the heat , stay out the kitchen right? This is a blog for gods sake!
YOu choose to go to Private schools- good for you. Poor people should have the right to walk to a local charter school and sign them up as well right?
If you want to make the schools better, send your kids there and feel the heat and change it. What is right for you is not good for others- this is elitism!
By the way, charter schools are public schools.
Was that soft enough for you?
October 29th, 2010 at 10:45 am
Jim Mordecai: I support CA Charters even though I cling to the idea of the 1960 California Public School system and the 1930-1940 Public Schools of the Eastern US States – all of which took immigrants with nothing (of all races) to high office.
This state is a decadent civilization in collapse. It’s clear that the electorate in CA are not going to chang anything in time to avert catastrophic collapse of the municipalities and law and order. That being said, the families especially the poorer families in CA have the Charters and the church and private schools as their only chance to get their children safely to a middle class life. The urban public schools are no longer here to fill that function. They exist only to provide well paying jobs to union members and to pacify the proletariat & lower middle class so they don’t understand what is being done to them. I specifically address Los Angeles Unified, Oakland Unified and other bad districts of the same type.
Those who can’t afford church and private schools only have the Charters to turn to. The Urban School Districts no longer run “schools” they run failure factories, especially for black and Hispanic students and whites acting like them.
So it doesn’t matter what you think of Charters, they are all the proletariat has left to get their kids out. AIM Charter for example.
It doesn’t matter why the public schools degenerated, Brown vs Board of Ed, Socialist teachers, bad school boards, state policy – it just doesn’t matter. If I send the typical black child to OUSD he has a poor chance in life. If I send that child to AIM he does better. Simple. I like to play the winning odds.
All Charters may not be the right fit for every child. There are issues of suitability. But it’s better than OUSD for black kids. And better than LA Unified for Mexican kids (maybe they can find one the gangs don’t use).
Brave New World!
October 29th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Ramona,
I don’t think you actually read my post. I will not send my children to private schools, as you seem to believe. They will go to the local public school as soon as they start kindergarten. I feel very committed to this path and I am fortunate that there are many other families in the school which my kids will attend who feel the same way.
I have written here many times that I believe the way to make the public schools better is for the families who have resources to be involved in them, and I still believe that. If those families send their kids to charter schools they will be undermining the other public schools. Charter schools are publicly funded but the ones which are selective, by lottery or in another way, are not public the way that the school where I teach (or the one where my kids will go) is. These schools must accept and teach any and all kids who enroll. Charter schools do not have that restriction.
And again I have to say that I don’t think you make your meaning clear. “This is a blog for god’s sake!” Is it the definition of a blog that the posts have to be judgmental and irate? Is it the definition of a blog that posters must make personal comments and condemnations of the other posters? Is it the definition of a blog that posters should write replies to other posts without actually having read (or understood) them?
It seems to me as if teachers are being held to a different standard than others, and that was what I sought to point out. I will send my children to public school, and I will continue to teach in public schools, but if colleagues of mine make different decisions I don’t think that is my business, and I am still grateful that they are giving of themselves to teach in the public schools.
October 29th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Ramona:
Vietnam War ended when taxpayers put pressure on Congress to stop funding that war and finally taxpayers did have a say on how their tax money was spent. Perhaps in a future time taxpayers of Oakland will have a say regarding having their property tax pay for charter school students from Richmond. And, yes I am saying that taxpayers should let the governing know how they want their tax dollars spent. I have often spoken out at School Board meetings because not all of the Measure E parcel tax money was spent for the purposes stated in the ballot measure Oakland voters passed.
You are correct that charter schools are by law a part of the public education system in California. While public schools do not have the advantage of being a corporation–corporations have personhood and 14th amendment protections but public schools, including Oakland Unified have neither personhood nor 14th amendment civil rights.
Although not likely to happen in the immediate future, charter school law can be amended to increase public transparency.
The issue of local parcel tax money for charter schools is an issue that the School Board did not want to address. Charter school parents would be able to vote for Measure L and that parcel tax money would go to both public schools and corporate charter schools. Meanwhile, previous parcel tax Measure G is a tax that is collected and only funds Oakland public schools and not Oakland charter schools. Remember Jack O’Connell one year took funding from Oakland Public School Students to send to Oakland charter schools. The School Board could have given Oakland voters the opportunity to vote to send parcel tax money to both school systems but did not. I advocated in giving voters the choice on how their taxes would be used.
My argument is property owner driven but I believe in and support democratic unions as well as democratic public education system.
Jim Mordecai
October 29th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Oakie, thanks for responding to my questions.
Thoughts:
– This is a chicken and egg thing. A principal can have power over their staff, over time, if they have evaluations and enforce the consequences for poor evaluations and then follow-up with another evaluation. This is what happens in all the private corporations I’ve worked at (4 over a period of 15 years before teaching); some were union, most were not — the employers had a deliberate process because they understood they had a sunk investment in the employee and didn’t want them driven out based on personality conflicts, etc.
Here is why this never happens at bad schools but almost always happens at schools with far fewer daily crises (I have worked at both):
– in troubled schools and districts, evals rarely happen. Many vets in Oakland have not had even the minimal eval required on a biannual basis in 5, 10 or 15 years!
– Principals turnover so fast (20% a year nationwide), that they are always just getting to know their staff and trying to meet all the campus stakeholders, kids, etc.
As to being “owed” anything, that is just a red herring. Of course you don’t owe teachers anything — except their constitutional rights! You want workers who have organized and fought for a 100 years to get the modest recompense they have received to give it up “for the children” based on the flimsy idea that the principal who has been on the job for 6 months knows all. People have the right in this country to associate and organize based on their self-interests. This extends to cops, firemen and, yes, teachers.
My position:
1. I think public school teachers are underpaid and undersupported.
2. I think public school teachers do have too much job security.
3. As a person who believes that corporations and bureaucracies are not built to give anything up without the organization of the masses or the threat of such, I would like unions to trade (2) to fix (1).
4. Anybody who suggests unions are the root of all evil in education or anywhere else is naive, ahistorical and/or grinding a libertarian or objectivist axe.
5. Anybody who suggests unions, which like corporations are a engine to defend a certain group’s interests, should give up privileges for the greater good is then obligated to demand corporations do the same.
October 29th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
You cannot equate the free market driven entities(businesses,corporations)with taxpayers funded institutions(education,civil service etc).
Businesses are market based “self supporting” profit driven(success = profits & failure = bankruptcy)although common sense was subverted in this economic debacle. Taxpayer funded institutions(Education,prisons,fire,police)try to apply artificial market forces when bargaining for compensation(no real verifiable marketable products here)Prison guards are probably the biggest waste dollar for dollar that there is(just leave the convicts in their cells and forget about paying these morons six figures to babysit. The compensation(esp.retirement benefits are going to destroy this state eventually, because we are spending more than we have year after year, and there is no more money to take from taxpayers
“Anybody who suggests unions, which like corporations are a engine to defend a certain group’s interests, should give up privileges for the greater good is then obligated to demand corporations do the same”.
I am suggesting that the (education,prison,police and fire i.e. unions) do it because “the money” belongs to the taxpayers, and what corporations do with their money is their own business because they made the money to begin with(big difference). We need fire and police, and teachers too but we can’t give what we don’t have. If some people weren’t like hogs at a trough, then maybe there would be enough money to pay everyone decent wages.
October 29th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Honestly, the ones to blame for the problems in public school education are lawmakers and school district officials. Loading a class of students with differing abilities, in the mid to high 30s is a recipe for disaster. Teachers have to be Jesus to reach all learning styles when the numbers are that high and the range of learning differences are so vast.
Teachers send their kids to private and charter schools because they are against NCLB, forced standardized testing, pacing guides and class sizes of 30+. That is what you get in today’s urban classroom.
We try to make it work within the existing system, but our hands are tied. Put the pressure on lawmakers and school district administrators to limit class sizes and provide remediation to students in the elementary schools who fail to master grade level reading and math skills.
October 29th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
For what it’s worth, I teach at a non-hills public school in Oakland and two of my colleagues have happily enrolled and kept their children at my school. This may be an exception to the norm, but it’s not the absolute case that no OUSD teacher trusts their district with their kid.
October 30th, 2010 at 6:40 am
Differentiated Instruction is the district’s way of coping with “No Child Left Behind”. Teaching the wide range of abilities and dealing with behavior problems in the classroom are 2 reasons why teachers “burn out” quickly. In addition, teachers are blamed for low test scores when there is never enough funds to adequately educate in public schools.
October 30th, 2010 at 8:58 am
Nextset:
I agree with your goal of providing opportunity for all students. But your reading of history is perhaps based on personal experience as I don’t know what your source is for your thesis that 1930-1940 American education system provided immigrant students with greater opportunity than today. If you look at “high office” 1930-1940 the American education system of that day would not have provided opportunity for son of Nigerian to be President of U.S. nor a woman to be Secretary of State. If you were serious about comparing immigrants in high office of today with yesterday, I would like to read your study as my guess is that there are more immigrants in high office today than in either 30s-40s East Coast or when I graduated from high school in the year 1960.
I don’t think you meant to use the term high office but you meant that previously the education system provided a greater opportunity for immigrant students to learn because disruptive students were disciplined and dropped out in greater numbers. But, for drop outs there were more and better paying job opportunities for the less educated with WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps. But, it is difficult to compare one generation with another.
The Catholic schools provided urban education choice. The choice system of charter schools has been destroying Catholic schools that can not compete with the public financing of charter schools. Catholic schools becoming wink, wink, charter schools violates American concept of separation of church and state.
A difficult thing to do is to predict the future. From your perspective the future is bleak and you call it a “Brave New World” as a cautionary statement of what you experience as miseducated students reflective of modern urban public education changed for the worse and a sense that the modern American economic structure is falling apart.
I share with you your sense that the economic system is breaking down. And, the future will be a New World but I don’t want to predict whether it will be better than in the past. How do you measure the education system of the Great Depression with the Second worse Depression?
However, I believe that replacing public schools with charter schools is something that should be evaluated detached from the issue of the American economy in the past, now, and the future. And, my argument is that charter schools are an inferior system for funding public education because they are corporations that inhibit public oversight. That a public school performs better than a charter is not the question when looking at which system to fund. The issue should be which system provides the best use of taxpayers’ dollar. The charter school experiment has failed to show as a system that it performs better than the public schools. Time to stop wasting money on deregulated system that doesn’t peform as promised.
Jim Mordecai
November 1st, 2010 at 9:53 am
The problem identified by Schmokler is not differentiating instruction, which is a basic principle of good teaching – teach material in a variety of ways so that students at different ability levels can access it, and get help for students with basic needs – but the fad of ‘learning styles,’ ‘learning modalities,’ etc. These are utterly unfounded by research, and they do dumb down content. Differentiating is for levels, not for styles. Everyone can get to the same level, more or less, there are no ‘creative learners,’ ‘visual learners,’ etc. that’s all made up junk pedagogy.
November 3rd, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Thanks, Katy and Steven, for raising questions about differentiated instruction (which I’ll abbreviate as D.I. from here forward). As a longtime OUSD parent (one kid at Bret Harte Middle School, plus one at Oakland Tech), I have been trying to understand D.I. ever since my first kid reached middle school and I realized how wide the range of skill levels could be in a single classroom. I saw accelerated classes disappear under district pressure as administrators told me that teachers would use D.I. to meet the needs of kids at all levels. So I set out to learn more about D.I.
After attending seminars on D.I., researching it in books and online, and talking about it with various “experts” in the topic, I’ve come to the following three conclusions:
1) There is no widely-agreed-upon method that constitutes D.I.; it’s more of an umbrella term that covers a grab bag of strategies that various people have come up with to try and meet the goal of effectively teaching students at many different levels in the same class. Some are strategies for providing alternative activities at different levels (or for different types of learners) in the same classroom, while others are strategies for increasing the depth and complexity of what the whole class is doing while keeping the lesson accessible to all learners. Different experts favor different strategies, so one’s description of D.I. may sound nothing like another’s.
2) Because there is no firm definition of what D.I. looks like, it’s very difficult to make a general statement as to whether it works or not (or whether it’s a “solution,” to get back to the question titling this blog post). In fact, it’s even difficult to say whether particular teachers or schools are implementing D.I. – a confusion that works to the advantage of administrators who want parents to believe that D.I. is happening in their schools or districts. For example, I had both a nexo and a school board member try to convince me that OUSD was providing D.I. through Kagan Cooperative Learning. However, when I read up on Kagan, I discovered that it is generally not considered a form of D.I. In fact, it doesn’t seem to provide much academic benefit to more-advanced learners (who are used to teach less-advanced learners) but its founders claim that giving these students better social skills is more important than academics anyway, because “gifted students will do well academically no matter which approach to instruction we take” (from page 1.12 of Kagan Cooperative Learning, by Spencer and Miguel Kagan, Kagan Publishing, 2009).
3) While many strategies that are considered to fall within the realm of D.I. sound alluring to me as a parent, most also sound like they would be extremely complex and challenging to implement in a middle-school setting where teachers may see 150 or more students in a day with a wide range of skills within each class of students. So, I’m not surprised that I don’t see them actually being implemented widely. When I described 13 D.I. techniques to my kids (the strategies discussed in the teacher training that OUSD’s GATE department provided to 26 middle-school teachers in a pilot program last year, which I’ll list at the end of this post*), my kids recognized only two of the 13 (lit circles and open-ended questions) as being techniques they had actually encountered in their classes.
The biggest problem with D.I., in my opinion, is not that it’s a vague umbrella term covering a wide variety of strategies with varying degrees of practicality and effectiveness; the biggest problem is the way the existence of this vague and unproven method has been used to justify removing options like more-challenging classes in OUSD and other school districts. To administrators, I think what D.I. means is: “We’re going to expect teachers to meet the needs of advanced learners and below-proficient learners in the same classroom, because we don’t want to be accused of ‘tracking’ – we’ll just tell the teachers to use D.I.!”
D.I. is a fad because it solves a major political problem for school administrators: how to get two sets of parents off their backs. By shutting down accelerated classes (except at the high-school level, where A.P. is a must for college-entry competitiveness), administrators reassure parents who are worried that their kids will be tracked out of these classes. And by claiming to have implemented D.I., they can tell parents who want accelerated classes that their kids will have their academic needs met without such classes. Never mind that this approach places a huge burden on the backs of the teachers who are now expected to implement this vague and unproven approach with little or no training or support.
While there’s no question that accelerated classes have led to inequities, shutting them down without having a viable alternative way to meet the needs of students needing higher-level challenges (something specific and proven, unlike D.I. in its current state) is doing these students a great disservice. I’m not just talking about GATE students (though I should point out that the mostly powerless and underfunded OUSD GATE department has expended a lot of effort in recent years to identify a very diverse group of GATE students representing all of the elementary schools in Oakland); I’m talking about all students who are motivated to seek higher-level challenges.
I would like to see OUSD middle schools offer something they might call “challenge classes”: classes with high academic expectations (and behavioral expectations as well) that are clearly spelled out, open to all students motivated to attempt the challenge. The expectations of these classes would be aligned with those of high-school honors and A.P. courses, to prepare students to succeed in such courses, and tutoring support could be offered to help the less-well-prepared students. No one would be “tracked” into or out of these courses; any student willing to sign a contract agreeing to the expectations would be admitted, and no one doing the work and meeting the behavioral expectations would be asked to leave.
Right now, the leap between OUSD 8th-grade expectations and the expectations of rigorous high-school classes like those offered at Oakland Tech is a formidable one. My 10th-grader is doing well there with the support of two highly educated, highly involved parents (and a background of being in some accelerated classes at Bret Harte before they were cut), but students with fewer advantages could easily stumble. More-challenging middle school classes could make a real difference for such students.
That’s my two cents. I’d like to respond at length to the other topics that have dominated the comments in this thread (particularly the need to flee to private and charter schools), because I think the comments paint a distorted and overly scary picture of OUSD schools, but this post is long enough already. Suffice to say that my kids are doing very well (thanks in part to some phenomenal teachers they’ve had), they have a great and diverse group of friends (none of whom are foul-mouthed, indecently dressed gang members), and despite my quarrels with some OUSD policies and decisions, I don’t regret keeping my kids in public schools.
* D.I. strategies taught in OUSD pilot program: “Five hardest first,” tiered instruction, essential learnings, Taba concept formation, curriculum compacting, independent contracts/study guide extensions, spotlighting D.I. activities from textbook, icons of depth and complexity, open-ended questions, Bloom’s questioning techniques, small group instruction, literature study circles, and I-Search papers.
November 3rd, 2010 at 3:25 pm
KJ, thank you for your comments and I think your suggestion of “challenge classes” is something the district should consider. I also appreciate your comment that many posters were presenting “a distorted and overly scary picture of OUSD schools.” That is certainly true based on my observations.
November 3rd, 2010 at 5:28 pm
I was one of the teachers who attended some of the DI training listed above. I was ill for some of the training. I was given paid time to develop lesson plans. I did so. I built in contingencies. I tried literature circles. I tried having students write a paragraph about each chapter so they could actually participate in literature circles. I have asked students to think deeply, across the disciplines. I have attended USC training on Sandra Kaplan’s icons in the classroom. I have front loaded vocabulary, background knowledge and writing / thinking maps. All of this is to help the top five to six students in each class who are learning next to nothing in my classes because the other 25 students do not do their homework completely, do not take notes, come to school on Mondays sleeping and ready to leave school on Friday so that they cannot stay seated.
The vast majority of students in my Oakland flatlands middle school are not able to stay on task for 30 minutes. An average of 15% can write an example of one simple sentence, one compound sentence and one complex sentence. The 15% + another 5% of students actually have parents, grandparents, or other adult actually show up for parent conferences. The vast majority say demeaning things or hit students in front of me.
We need to start in middle school with a basic class on how to read for information, how to capture the main point and how to discuss them in a way that is productive. The ratio for this group needs to be 1 adult to 10 students. Volunteers would be helpful.
In all of my DI effort (about 3 – 5 hours of planning a week). I am giving something to about 12 students in the entire school. It is not my time, my expertise, additional education, but a place where they can move away from the students who are working several grade levels below them. During this time the top group has an opportunity to write and discuss, have peer editing and think globally. We say we don’t want tracking because it is a one-way track in the opposite direction of college, but we are not putting these students on that track, they are putting themselves on the track. What we are doing is taking away the college track from the students in the flatlands who could have a way out and up if only they were in classes with other students who were willing to work hard.
November 3rd, 2010 at 5:35 pm
@ Steven Weinberg: I used to also think that my type of thinking was alarmist. Please talk to freshman and sophomores at Cal in the engineering department. Many of our Oakland Tech kids got into Cal. However, every single student that I talked to that came from OUSD said that they have to fill in large gaps of knowledge in architecture, philosophy, critical thinking, writing, history, world religion (mathematical concepts of religious texts such as 19 in the Koran) and many other subjects (to be fair, most say it is not in math that they are needing remediation).
So, while students from Oakland get into Cal, it would be very, very interesting to see the students who graduate in 5 years with a four year degree and what ethnicities those students are. I would bet that it would not come close to matching – even remotely – the makeup of OUSD students.
November 4th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
Catherine, I appreciate that you are incorporating some D.I. training in your teaching and reaching those 12 students who need an opportunity to progress at their own pace. Since they don’t have the opportunity to be in a class with others working at the same level, they are lucky to have a teacher who can offer them some help through D.I. Thanks for describing which strategies work for you and how much planning time these strategies require.
The situation with your students sounds very discouraging. I have to say that the behavioral situation you describe with your students — with the vast majority speaking demeaningly and hitting each other — does not reflect what my kids have experienced in their OUSD schools, or what I have experienced spending time in these schools as a volunteer every week.
I’m also surprised by your comments about Oakland Tech kids being unprepared for college. My 10th-grader’s classes, particularly those in the Engineering Academy and the Paideia Program, are extremely rigorous. The amount and quality of the work expected from these kids is definitely higher than what what I had to do in high school — and I emerged as a National Merit scholar who went on to graduate with honors from a highly-ranked college.
I encourage parents reading these posts to talk to other parents and teachers at the OUSD schools near them before making any assumptions about their quality or lack thereof. Another good resource is the discussions on the Berkeley Parents Network web site — particularly the reviews of Oakland schools and the Public vs. Private discussions. There are posts from parents raving about their kids’ private schools, of course, but also a fair number of posts from parents who switched from private to public and were happier with their situations. A post from a private math tutor says, “it is very clear to me in my 27 years of tutoring that private school students get generally inferior math instruction.” Here’s a link to the BPN schools page: http://parents.berkeley.edu/recommend/schools/
November 5th, 2010 at 6:20 am
KJ:
I am not suggesting that there will be no prepared students from Tech for Cal. My students have a poverty rate that goes up and down from 78% -92% qualifying for free or reduced price lunch. The vast majority of my students do not have a quiet place to study unless I leave my classroom open, do not have a dictionary in their homes, often do no eat three meals a day on school breaks, have one or fewer parents in their homes regularly and lead lives that many readers on this blog have probably had to lead when working on a project temporarily, but the kind that does not lend itself to building of knowledge.
My guess is that your child went to a hills school and then Brewer, Montera or Bret Harte. Why? because the students from those schools have active parents who support learning. At parent-teacher conference time, 75% – 90% of parents show up. They may love what they hear from the school, or they may not but they show up. I am very, very lucky to get 50% of the parents and that is if I try to make contact by phone or stand out in front of the school at drop off to try to make contact.
I am frustrated with Tony Smith. I believe in his vision of equity. However, his vision also includes holding slots for students who have not met the requirements to be at the academies based on the ethnic and socio-economics of the students in middle school WHETHER OR NOT THEY ARE CAPABLE OF DOING THE WORK, but to remediate them.
Our schools do not teach the breadth of courses offered in other districts. And I am not suggesting that the academies do not have rigorous courses. These courses are quite rigorous; there is not the breadth of coursework offered in other districts and that coursework must be made up at the university. I will not enter the arena of public vs private vs charter because I know many of the well-respected boys schools, girls schools, high-priced schools do not teach nearly all of what is required in math, science, and ELA.
My fear in Tony Smith is that rather than bringing students up to the academic, study skills and self-discipline the students need in middle school to make them ready for the academies, he will allow students who are not ready for the rigor of the academies in and slow down the progress for all students in the process.
Very few of my colleagues in this school and other middle schools in Oakland require the kind of writing that is given in the state standards. For example, the vast majority of my students, even at the top end, could take the Iliad, read it, make sense of the broader implications and write a five paragraph essay with correct grammar, punctuation, topic paragraph, three supporting paragraphs and a concluding paragraph of 500 -700 words. This is a California 6th grade standard. By eighth grade our students in Oakland, California are supposed to be able to write essays comparing the religious texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I do not know a single middle school in OUSD which has students studying, writing and comparing. However, the architecture, numerical sequencing and mathematics in all three religious texts are referred to in Cal’s engineering program. Many, many school districts in California hold their middle school teachers and students to these state standards. In Oakland, we do not. Many of our students are just as capable and for many of our students, perhaps this deeper level of thinking may be what pulls them back in to rigorous academic work – I simply do not know.
I have given a lot of thought about whether I want to continue to teach in Oakland. I have long thought that I want to be in a school where students are given an opportunity to learn what the state of California, has said they have a right to learn.
In one of his recent dog and pony shows, Mr. Smith asked Mr. Yee to cover his ears as he told those of us watching and listening that perhaps the parents needed to sue the district to get what they needed. Perhaps that is so, and perhaps not. What I believe is that every student in this district, has the right to be taught at the highest levels of the state standards that they are capable of learning. I do not see that happening at my school. Perhaps your child did learn in middle school the subjects listed above. And if so, I would love to pay a sub and come to observe the classes. My guess is that so few students and parents in our district even know what the state standards are that should be taught, they do not have the knowledge to even request the courses.
November 6th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Catherine, it does not strengthen you arguments to consistently exaggerate what is called for in the California State Standards (Post 71). You refer to sixth grade students reading the Iliad. That is not called for in the standards. In fact, the California Reading List, does not include the Iliad for any middle school list, although it includes an adaptation for the strongest 6th to 8th grade readers (13+). The Iliad itself is on the high school list. The sixth grade history standard 6.4.4 does suggest “drawing from Greek mythology and epics, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and from Aesop’s Fables.” That standard is a far cry from “take the Iliad, read it, make sense of the broader implications and write a five paragraph essay with correct grammar, punctuation, topic paragraph, three supporting paragraphs and a concluding paragraph of 500 -700 words.”
Your description of the writing standards is also exaggerated. They do not say that sixth graders will “write a five paragraph essay with correct grammar [and] punctuation.” The standards say “Students write and speak with a command of standard English conventions appropriate to this grade level” and then give some fairly limited specifics, such as “spell frequently misspelled words correctly (e.g., their, they’re, there).” The standards do call for multi-paragraph essays of 500-700 words, and they do call for an effective organizational pattern, but they do not specify the traditional five paragraph essay that you put forth (although that format would be one of the acceptable patterns).
The California Standards are quite demanding enough without your adding to them, especially assigning high school level work to sixth graders.
In your post you say “I have given a lot of thought about whether I want to continue to teach in Oakland. I have long thought that I want to be in a school where students are given an opportunity to learn what the state of California, has said they have a right to learn.” Based on your various postings it is clear that you have very negative feelings about the behavior of students at your school, the attitude of many of the parents, the level of instruction in your school and the district, and district policies, and that these are sapping your enthusiasm for your work.
In my forty year of working in Oakland middle schools I have met a good number of teachers who felt the same way you did. Many of those people were caring individuals, excellent teachers, and good friends. Some left and went to other districts, and some stayed in Oakland. Most of those who went to teach in other places felt revitalized and believed they were contributing much more to society working in their new locations. Those who stayed in Oakland never seem to feel any better about their work, even when other teachers at their sites saw improvements on a school-wide basis. Everyone needs to find a place where they can contribute most effectively, and everyone deserves the satisfaction that comes when they are doing so. Good luck.
November 6th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Sorry for the mistyping in my first sentence. It should say “your arguments.” Why is always easier to proof-read after the comment is sent?
November 6th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
I have appreciated the recent comments (on this thread and others) that have offered a slightly more optimistic, or at least variable, view of the state of public education in our city. K.J. and others have countered some of the posts that seem to paint the experience of all OUSD children/families with the same brush. While it is clear that there are groups of children who are doing very poorly, there are other children who emerge from OUSD able to compete with children of privates, charters, and other districts. Bloggers sometimes seem to overstate and overgeneralize their points to suit their own world views, or their own individual experiences and choices. I realize that this is somewhat natural, but I agree with Steven Weinberg that gross exaggeration weakens the poster’s arguments.
November 6th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Steven Weinberg:
Thank you for pointing out the weaknesses in my argument. I really do appreciate the positive attitude toward students and learning in Oakland. I have had three principals in the last few years and with each principal the focus changes.
There is a 90-90-90 study that I have read – schools that employ strong writing components in the education with 90% poverty and 90% minority can and do have a 90% proficiency/advanced study body when they spend the majority of time on writing.
Stephen, in your experience do the high school students you have taught come into high school able to write a solid 500 – 700 word essay (narrative or expository) proficiently?
This is something my students really, really struggle with.
November 6th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Catherine,
I first came across the claim that there were 90-90-90 schools about eight years ago when we were still using the SAT9 tests for measuring California schools. I pulled up the list of 90-90-90 middle schools and found that there was only one in the entire state, and it only qualified in Math. The school was so small that there was only one math teacher for the entire school, and there was a huge difference on the scores of the students on the SAT9 (very high) and the CST tests that were being piloted that year (much lower). There were not enough differences between the two tests to allow for the extreme differences in the scores. The SAT9 was used for several years in a row, and unlike the CST, it contained exactly the same questions each year. So the only school that qualified as a 90-90-90 school did so based on very suspicious scores. Most of the states that have 90-90-90 schools have much lower standards than California. Nonetheless, I am convinced by the research that shows that more writing in all subjects increases student understanding.
I taught primarily eighth graders, and I would say perhaps 25% were writing solid 300 to 500 word essays at the end of eighth grade. (Most of my career, 500 words was considered the maximum for middle school. It wasn’t until the standards were published about 10 years ago that the 500-700 word length was suggested.) Another 25 to 50% were writing at a basic level and the rest below that. This was at Claremont, where there was a significant middle income community. At Frick, which is a more flat-land school, the percentage of students writing well fell to 10 to 15%.
But not writing proficiently in eighth grade is not the end of the world. I remember my own school life. I recall quite clearly crying in frustration in seventh grade because I could not hold my pen long enough to write an entire page of long-hand (maybe 150 words). I recently found a letter I wrote in the eighth grade that would certainly not qualify as basic by today’s standards.
Use the state standards and the results of research like the 90-90-90 study to inspire yourself to do your best to help your students, but don’t let the gap between where they are and where you would like them to be eat away at you. If your students leave the eighth grade able to state a clear main idea and put forth reasons to support it, even in a short essay of 300 words, I think most high school teachers would be happy to take it from there.
November 7th, 2010 at 8:20 am
Stephen:
Thank you. As a fairly new teacher (5 years, entering as an intern, just recently fully credentialed) we must pass CBEST, CSET, and RICA. We are constantly being compared against the state standards and so are our students. While I agree with the testing of teachers, particularly the RICA, I find myself expecting that students not only meet the state standards but exceed them. My white, middleclassness shines as bright as the sun.
Although my own children have attended OUSD schools, I have friends with children in schools outside of Oakland – some on this side of the tunnel, some on the other side of the tunnel. The writing process, projects and sentence analysis is far beyond the level of my students and my own children’s experience at the same grade levels. And while I understand child development and pedagogy, many of my students would be able to complete similar work, but it would require direct instruction.
I am not far enough along in my teaching to teach to the group is is at basic and have them work for 25 minutes while I teach a small group with direct instruction and our school will not track or ability group an entire class. While I intellectually and emotionally understand the dangers of categorical tracking of students for all subjects because we have historically underserved students of color and lower socio-economic status, I know that many of my top students are both and would benefit from being placed in an English class which would challenge their current ability and also extend their independent working time.
When I talk about parents, what I am comparing is the power of parents to demand from administration this ability grouping. The parents at Brewer, Bret Harte and Montera go to administration en masse to make sure the needs of their children are being met. Their knowledge of the standards (and often middleclassness) allows for them to be heard in a way that simply expressing desire does not.
I want my students to have the same opportunities as my children. I want my students to have the same opportunities as those students in other districts who are able to diagram sentences in such a way that writing is clear, direct and powerful without using many adjectives but strong verbs. Vocabulary plays a part, however, understanding and using sentence variety is also very powerful.
November 7th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Catherine, I understand your concerns, and in many ways they are shared my all good teachers. We have all struggled with our inability to do all that we wish for our students.
Teaching writing is probably the most difficult task teachers face because, by its nature, writing is personal and no two individuals have exactly the same needs. Reading student writing is time consuming, and it is difficult to spend enough time with each student to help him or her understand how to improve their product.
The issue of ability grouping is a complex one, just as you explained, with good reasons for it and against it. The truth is that it works well for some students and hurts others, that is why it seems to be a never ending debate in educational circles. We ability grouped in English some of the years I was at Frick, and justified it by limiting the class sizes for the lower groups and assigning experienced teachers to those groups, but it never reduced the spread of abilities in the classes as much as teachers expected and it didn’t seem to make an appreciable difference in test scores or other measures of progress.
I also feel the state standards for writing do a considerable amount of harm: they require that students at each grade level write in too many different genres, making it impossible to spend enough time on any one type of writing to make much progress. The standards focus on unimportant aspects of writing, such as how many words are in an essay, and ignore completely vital aspects such as a student caring about what they write and seeing some value in writing.
The good news is that writing is so poorly tested on the CSTs that you can safely ignore some of the requirements without hurting your students’ test scores. The multiple choice questions that claim to test writing skills are basically just reading questions, and the seventh grade writing sample counts for so few points that you can pursue the writing program you think best meets the needs of your students without worrying about it.
In designing a writing program I found two sources of ideas very valuable. For inspiration there was Nancy Atwell’s book “In the Middle.” Nancy uses a “writer’s workshop” approach in her classes that helps her students develop a desire to write, and I found her procedure for keeping track of what each student was able to do and what she asked them to work on (limited to only two things per writing assignment) was very useful. I must warn you, however, that it is frustrating to see the differences between our classroom situations and Nancy’s. She teaches in Maine with all native standard English students, classes of less than 20, and two periods a day of Language Arts for each student (one class for reading and one for writing).
For practical methods of helping students who are not standard English speakers, Kate Kinsella was a source of ideas that were easy to implement and very effective. Eight to ten years ago most middle school English teachers attended one of more of Kate’s workshops and I bet someone at your school has a binder with her lessons. It is well worth finding.
You write about comparing the work that you are able to give to your students and the work that is assigned in other, higher-income neighborhood schools. Don’t let that difference demoralize you. All teachers have to begin where their students are, and you might be surprised by the range of student work you would find in the suburbs. I remember several years ago when a team of suburban administrators came to Frick to review our educational program and look at samples of student work. The area they found the most similarities was in student writing. Just as at their home schools they saw a huge range of skill levels, and many of the mistakes our students made were identical to the flaws in their students’ writing. Another piece of evidence for this same phenomenon is the history of the seventh grade writing test. In the first few years the test was given the distribution of scores on the writing sample was too similar in generally low-scoring areas (such as flatland Oakland) and generally high-scoring areas (like the suburbs). To create the same distribution of scores on the writing samples that occured on the multiple choice items, the state had to modify the rubric used by scorers to increase the penalty assigned for mistakes made by non-standard English speakers and reduce the penalty for those mistakes common to those brought up speaking standard English. (They did so by drawing a distinction between errors that interferred with understanding when the paper was read by a standard English speaker with no experience with other dialects, and errors that did not interfer with understanding. The tests, by the way, are shipped to Iowa to be scored.)
I know that none of this, expect maybe my suggestions to look at Atwell and Kinsella, will make your job any easier, but I hope it will help you keep your spirits up as you undertake what I believe is the hardest job in education, middle school writing instruction.
June 1st, 2012 at 2:20 pm
For all those who have commented that even the weak students are doing good work, I believe you are mis interpreting the essence of DI. Of course we want our children to be strong learners,and produce good work, but if you truly differentiated your curriculum the advanced learners would certainly still be thinking! Peer learning would be prevalent, and all students regardless of ability level would gain new knowledge and skills.