Live Long and Prosper...

It's a new year and as is our custom here in the USA, we make resolutions which, while often broken, can be redefined as goals toward which we should strive.

[Updated and slightly edited from 2018]

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #3

• Educate yourself.

BUT I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME

Teachers are overworked and overstressed. Often teachers go home after a difficult day at school and spend an hour or two on planning, assessing student work, or sifting through piles of mostly meaningless paperwork.

A few hours later, after a rushed meal, minimal time with family, and a night of not-enough-sleep, it starts over again.

Weekends are a bit better...time to catch up on everything.

It's no surprise, then, that teachers feel like they don't have time to find out what's happening in the politics of public education. They only know that it seems like each year there are more and more restrictions on what and how they can teach, more tests for their students, fewer resources, and larger classes.

Meanwhile, the forces of DPE (Destroy Public Education) continue to move forward increasing funding for charter schools and unaccountable voucher schools by diverting public money from public schools.


THE ARGUMENT FOR EDUCATING YOURSELF

Make the time.

I know...I'm retired. I don't have to get up and face a classroom of kids every day. It's easy for me to say, "Make the time." I get it.

But things have changed since I retired. Sure, I can still write letters and blog posts. I can still argue with legislators in support of public education and public educators, but I'm out of date. A lot has changed since I last had my own classroom in 2010. Today's classrooms are different than they were ten years ago. Every school is different.

Teachers, this is your profession, and it consists of more than just the time you spend with your students. I would ask you to think of time spent educating yourself about what's happening in education as part of your professional development -- an important part!

The political world of public education will

• affect your students and your children, if you have any, as they progress through school

• affect you and your economic status while you're working and into retirement

• affect how many more years you will be able to teach

• affect how large your class sizes are

• affect your academic freedom

• affect what you teach, how you teach, and how often your students have to pause their learning to take a standardized test.

Right now, legislators, most of whom haven't set foot in a classroom since they were students, are making decisions that will affect you, your students, and your classroom.

This is your profession. You owe it to yourself, your students, your future students, and your community, to educate yourself. Be the lifelong learner you wish to see in your students.

[If you're not a teacher, you owe it to yourself, your children, your grandchildren, your nieces and nephews, and students of the community, to educate yourself. What happens to public education affects your children – and all of the above – and your community.]


WHERE TO START

Here are some places to start (feel free to add more in the comments)...

• If you're in Indiana, join the Indiana Coalition for Public Education and subscribe to Vic's Statehouse Notes.

• Join the Network for Public Education.

Read Books (in no particular order)

• These Schools Belong to You and Me: Why We Can't Afford to Abandon Our Public Schools, by Deborah Meier and Emily Gasoi

• Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education, by Noliwe Rooks

• Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools, by Diane Ravitch

• See also NEIFPE's Public Education Bibliography

Read Blogs (in no particular order)

• The Answer Sheet

• Diane Ravitch's Blog

• Curmudgucation

• Gadflyonthewall Blog

Listen to Podcasts

• Have You Heard

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #1

• Read aloud to your children/students every day.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #2

• Teach your students, not "The Test."

It's a new year and as is our custom here in the USA, we make resolutions which, while often broken, can be redefined as goals toward which we should strive.

[Updated and slightly edited from 2018]

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #2

• Teach your students, not "The Test."

NO, DON'T TEACH TO THE TEST

I taught third grade in the mid-1970s. At that time the State of Indiana didn't require standardized testing for evaluation of teachers or promotion of third graders. Nevertheless, my school system used standardized tests in grades three, six, eight, and ten. The purpose of the test was to see how our students were progressing and to diagnose any specific problems. We were specifically told by the administration not to "teach to the test." It wasn't professional!

When the results came back (always within a couple of weeks) we were able to see how each of our students was doing in particular areas, and plan our instruction accordingly.

10 years later, Indiana started the ISTEP. We were still told to remain professional and not to "teach to the test."

NCLB -- YES, TEACH TO THE TEST

In 2001 everything changed. No Child Left Behind shifted the attention from students to test scores. No longer were we told not to teach to the tests. Teaching to the tests was now encouraged because, we were told, the test covered everything the students needed to learn.

Our school's success depended on the test scores. Individual students were only important insofar as they contributed to the success of the school. It was time to teach so that test scores rose. Nothing else mattered. Teach test-taking skills. Teach test-like questions. Teach skills the students wouldn't normally get to until later in the year because it will be on the test. Focus on the "bubble" kids. Why are you teaching kids about dinosaurs...it's not on the test!

WHY NOT TEACH TO THE TEST?

What happens when you teach to the test, instead of teaching to your students' needs?

1a. It skews the curriculum.

When you spend your day (or most of it) teaching to the test, other content gets lost. Elementary teachers, especially, teach all subjects. If, in a 6 or 7-hour instructional day, most of the instruction is how to take a test and drilling on presumed test content, then there won't be much time left for non-tested content such as social studies, science, health, or read aloud (see Resolution #1). If the goal of public education is a well-rounded education, then a well-rounded curriculum is the logical route to take. Focusing only on test content is not the way to get there. FairTest says,

High-stakes testing often results in a narrow focus on teaching just the tested material (test preparation). Other content in that subject as well as untested subjects such as social studies, art and music are cut back or eliminated. High-stakes testing also produces score inflation: scores go up, but students have not learned more. Their scores are lower even on a different standardized test. This undermines the meaning of test results as well as education.

1b. It redirects a teacher from curriculum-teaching to item-teaching (aka it skews the curriculum).

Testing expert James Popham defines this as follows...

In item-teaching, teachers organize their instruction either around the actual items found on a test or around a set of look-alike items...

Curriculum-teaching, however, requires teachers to direct their instruction toward a specific body of content knowledge or a specific set of cognitive skills represented by a given test...In curriculum-teaching, a teacher targets instruction at test-represented content rather than at test items.

1c. It creates a one-size-fits-all curriculum instead of allowing teachers to focus on students’ individual interests and abilities (aka it skews the curriculum).

It forces teachers to focus on state (or national) standards instead of the needs of his/her students. Standards are important, but sometimes individual students need something else.

1d. It excludes the affective ___domain (aka it skews the curriculum).

A child is more than a reading and/or math score. The school day, and instruction, should reflect that. A well-rounded curriculum includes the arts, civics, play, and other content.

2. It promotes convergent, rather than divergent thinking – excludes higher-order thinking skills.

How much creativity is extinguished by focusing on one right answer? How is problem-solving improved?

3. It makes the test an end in itself, instead of a means to an end.

Not all students learn at the same rate. Some students take longer. When a standardized test-based curriculum is forced on a classroom there will be some students who aren't ready for some of the content. This is why many states have required the educationally unsound practice of in-grade retention to punish third-graders who cannot pass the test.

Instead of a test-based curriculum or in-grade retention, students should receive high-quality instruction and, when needed, intervention using best practices at their instructional level.

Student learning, not a test score, should be the goal of education.

4. When teachers are evaluated by test scores, it incentivizes a conflict of interest.

Ethical and professional problems can occur when a teacher's livelihood is dependent upon student achievement.


New Year's resolution #2 depends, of course, on where and what you teach. It might be easy for one teacher (an art or foreign language teacher, for example) not to teach to the test, since there aren't state-required tests for all subject areas. English and Math teachers might have more difficulty. If you're a classroom teacher who is forced to "teach the test" you'll have to adjust this resolution to meet your own circumstances.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #1

• Read aloud to your children/students every day.

It's a new year and as is our custom here in the USA, we make resolutions which, while often broken, can be redefined as goals toward which we should strive.

[Updated and slightly edited from 2018]

TEACHERS' NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #1

• Read aloud to your children/students every day.

If you want your kids to be fully literate, start reading to them when they're babies.


That statement is the title given to a letter to the editor of the LA Times dated December 30, 2017. The letter was written by Allen and Adele Gottfried, professors at Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Northridge respectively and is in reference to a study the Gottfrieds did (with others) investigating adult success and early life predictors. Their letter, in response to an LA Times editorial, includes the following [emphasis added]...

If you want your kids to be fully literate, start reading to them when they're babies

Research from the Fullerton Longitudinal Study, contained in a paper we recently published in a peer-review journal, showed that the amount of time parents read to their infants and preschoolers correlated with their children’s reading achievement and motivation across the school years, which in turn correlated with higher post-secondary educational attainment...

The research, in other words, reinforces what the Report of the Commission on Reading reported in the publication, Becoming a Nation of Readers, way back in 1985.

The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. This is especially so during the preschool years.

Parents are their children's first reading teachers. They teach by reading aloud to their children beginning the day their children are born.


What happens, however, if parents and children don't have access to books? Stephen Krashen has the answer.

Read alouds lead to reading, reading requires access to books

...Having a reading habit only happens if children have access to books. A number of studies, including our own, have shown that access to libraries correlates with reading proficiency, and our recent work suggests that availability of libraries can balance the negative effect of poverty on literacy development.

Public libraries are an important resource for parents who might have no other means of acquiring books. School libraries, staffed by qualified librarians, are a necessity for every public school.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #1

• Read aloud to your children/students every day.

More on Reading Aloud

- Read Aloud: 15 Minutes

- Jim Trelease's Home Page

- Information on Reading Aloud to Children

Click the image above for a larger version

More on the Fullerton Longitudinal Study

- Fullerton Longitudinal Study

- The Fullerton Longitudinal Study: A Long-Term Investigation of Intellectual and Motivational Giftedness by Allen W. Gottfried, Adele Eskeles Gottfried, and Diana Wright Guerin

- Schools Are Missing What Matters About Learning: Curiosity is underemphasized in the classroom, but research shows that it is one of the strongest markers of academic success.

- W.K. Kellogg Foundation to support the investigation of adult success based on early life predictors

Today would have been Milt Jackson's 97th birthday.

Jackson, who died in 1999, was a jazz vibraphonist and one of my teenage musical heroes. He was the reason that, in the mid-sixties, I bought myself a set of vibes...which I never learned to play well and finally sold.

Jackson, nicknamed "Bags" by a friend, was born in Detroit in 1923 and grew up surrounded by music. He was a singer but switched to the vibes when he heard Lionel Hampton. He was "discovered" by Dizzy Gillespie, and worked his way up the ranks playing with notables such as Woody Herman, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker.

He founded the Modern Jazz Quartet in the early 1950s with drummer Kenny Clarke (who you may not have heard of but who was a jazz percussion innovator), pianist John Lewis, and bassist Ray Brown.

One of my favorite Milt Jackson albums was the one he did with another of my youthful heroes, Wes Montgomery.

Here are two of my favorite tracks from the album Bags Meets Wes -- Stairway to the Stars, and Delilah. Enjoy.

Stairway to the Stars:


Delilah:


For both tracks...

Milt Jackson -- vibraphone
Wes Montgomery -- guitar
Philly Joe Jones -- drums
Sam Jones - bass
Wynton Kelly -- piano

More on YouTube.