Solving Mr. Johnson's Dilemma with the Tools of a Writing Renaissance

April 21st Update: Teacher Magazine  features a wonderful collaborative writing piece and nice set of digital composing tools (e.g. Wikispaces, Google Docs, Glogster.)

Mr. Johnson, a retired English instructor, spoke of the instructional dilemma he had during his teaching days:  

"If I did it right and gave students the assignments they needed to increase their writing proficiency, I was overwhelmed as an instructor and ultimately unfair to myself.  But if I did it wrong by not giving enough assignments, I would be shortchanging the students.  Either way I felt guilty."

Over the long course of academia, the discipline of writing has stood alone where student assessment is concerned.  While some writers aspired to have their work read by large numbers of people 'one day,' nearly all needed to endure having their work read by a few readers at time-- their current English teacher, Mom, & maybe a standardized test essay reader more recently-- up through their undergraduate years.

Thankfully developments in the last quarter century have produced some fine ways for addressing "Mr. Johnson's dilemma:"

Process Writing is perhaps the most significant among them.  If you happen to be a parent of school-aged children, you may have never heard of process writing.  Mounds View High School writing instructor Liv Rosin, who is a curriculum contact person for a program called College Writing Lab, explained it is a formative type of instruction in which a writer's work-in-progress is subject to interventions by both an instructor and a student's writing peer group.  This approach, which is now the norm in many high schools, differs from the traditional writing approach where a writer works alone before submitting the final product for an instructor's judgment.

Most educators prefer formative assessments to summative ones due to their capacity to diagnose, then allow students to improve upon their work before moving on to the next class or grade level.

For those school districts who still find the labors of process writing instruction too heavy a curricular burden, long-time writing proponent Paul Carney has just the "online shop" for them.  A no-nonsense educator who saw far too many graduates receiving diplomas who didn't have the second "R" of  "readin', writin' & 'rithmetic" mastered, Carney developed  Step Write Up  for 8th graders and Ready or Not Writing for high school students.  Under both programs, students whose schools enroll in the free program can submit either school-assigned pieces or independently-crafted ones for a college ready assessment from a Minnesota college English instructor.

Nowhere does the virtual world of the internet become so practical as in the case of Carney's supplementary creations, which are recognized by both Democratic and Republican leaders at the Minnesota Department of Education who realize there has been a decline in the writing of many graduating seniors.

By now, you could be asking what type of feedback is available for addressing Mr. Johnson's dilemma at the elementary level.  After all, the group interactivity of process writing might fly a little high for K-5 kids, and students aren't eligible for the services of Step Write Up until the 8th grade.

A Minnesota-based website called Kidblog provides budding grade school writers the opportunity to have their work absorbed by the most intriguing audience type of all-- similar-aged students of other countries! Kidblog was recently the subject of this front-page, above-the-fold, Sunday feature:Pioneer Press Kidblog Piece. Begun by Matt Hardy-- an Eden Prairie, MN, elementary teacher in 2007-- the site not only makes keyboarding miraculously fun, it has also sufficiently allayed safety concerns enough for 500,000 elementary-aged writers & readers to be sharing their thoughts and life experiences with new friends across the planet.

Taken together, these new programs, processes, and platforms have combined to truly make the days we live in an unparalleled period for the art of writing.  Add in the technological changes allowing for the rapid, digital "deconstruction" of a piece and near-instant publishing capabilities-- and calling this period a Renaissance for Writing is not too strong a description.

At the very least, our educational culture now has what it takes to solve "Mr. Johnson's dilemma."

Does MN's Teacher Evaluation Bill Mesh with Secretary Duncan's NCLB Reauthorization Efforts?

April 3rd Item Update:  Gov. Dayton and MDE Commissioner Cassellius share a  desire to go where research findings lead them to improve teacher effectiveness and close the achievement gap.--- Attributed to Rep. Pat Garofalo in Star Tribune's This year, may this state witness the art of compromise by Lori Sturdevant.

Original Entry of March 30:

Memo to MN Education Policy Makers: Before approving the groundbreaking new teacher evaluation bill that cleared its first hurdle in the House of Representatives, please consider U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's ongoing campaign to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act.

"I've said repeatedly our department must continue to support and encourage innovation, not force compliance," Secretary Duncan testified to the House Education and Workforce Committee on March 9.

In the currently available version of Minnesota's HF 945, Article 1, Sec. 1, Subd. 1: teacher effectiveness would be linked to student performance with this language: 

"When determining a school's effect, the data must include both statewide measures of student achievement and, to the extent annual tests are administered, indicators of achievement growth that take into account a student's prior achievement.  Indicators of achievement and prior achievement must be based on highly reliable statewide or districtwide assessments."

Sect. 5, Subd. 1 of HF 945 then constructs a teacher evaluation structure by establishing a  "mechanism for translating the performance data into a five-part teacher effectiveness rating scale."

Big Question #1: Should we take MN's "effectiveness" language to be the innovation that Secretary Duncan encourages or the compliance that he warns against?

We've often heard the phrase "hold harmless" where education policy is concerned.  On the topic of reauthorizing the now 10 year-old NCLB law, Secretary Duncan specifically holds the NCLB Act responsible for the challenges districts and states face:

"Almost everywhere I go, I hear people express concern that the curriculum has narrowed," the Secretary has said. "I think the law is too punitive, too prescriptive, and it's led to a dumbing down of standards, and a narrowing of curriculum," Secretary Duncan stated regarding a "must-make" policy change at the federal level.

Duncan asserts that 80% of the nation's schools will be labeled as failures this year, and by law, all of them will be subject to an identical set of interventions, regardless of a given school's individual student needs.  If that happens, the schools with the widest gaps in achievement are most at risk of continued failure, which worries him deeply since the whole point of the law is to ensure that the schools with students most at risk are served. Duncan also contends the current law "created dozens of ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed."

In its place, Secretary Duncan does support a system of accountability based on individual student growth, one that "recognizes  success" and "holds all of us accountable for the quality of education we provide to every student in the nation." This shift in policy direction would represent a "sea change" from the current law, which simply allows every state to set an arbitrary bar for proficiency, and measures only whether students are above or below that bar.

Duncan also advocates a common sense law that is "tight on goals and loose on the means of achieving them", instead of the reverse as it is now. Towards that end, many states are are already developing robust student data systems so they can measure student growth, so the academic bar can be truly be raised.

Big Question #2: Will the passage of HF 945 properly leverage the longitudinal data systems being built in Minnesota school systems?

By mandating  and prescribing "one size fits all" solutions, Duncan says: "NCLB took away the ability of local and state educators to tailor solutions to meet the unique needs of their students, and that is fundamentally flawed.  This law is fundamentally broken, we need to fix it, and we need to fix it this year."

Secretary Duncan himself is not averse to the idea of teacher evaluations:

"At the end of the day, the best way to make  a difference is with effective, well-supported teachers.  The best way to achieve that is with stronger teacher recruiting and training programs linked to rigorous teacher & principal evaluation systems.  That work is underway all across America, and if we do our part by fixing the law, we can accelerate that progress."

Calls for meaningful teacher evaluation have been issued by everyone from Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Casellius to the Minnesota Education Association to the American Federation of Teachers to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Big Question #3: Would the teacher evaluation methodology set out in HF 945 accelerate progress toward a rigorous educator evaluation process-- or will it decelerate it?

Given the landmark nature of this teacher evaluation legislation, let's all hope & pray that any such efforts adequately address some important questions before the bill becomes a full-fledged law.
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You can listen to Duncan's entire 13-minute set of remarks to the House Education Workforce Committee (the primary source for this analysis) between the 10:40 and 23:40 points of the following C-Span video:

Commit it to Memory

What k-12 student couldn't benefit from practicing a good memory technique?  According to Joshua Foer, having a powerful memory was once equated with genius.  Today, with the "outsourcing" of information to digital technology, that is not so much the case, and people with other aptitudes are better able to excel.

MPR Kerri Miller Discussion with Joshua Foer

But make no mistake.  Tapping into one's memory is critical to being a successful student.

On the practical side of memory skills, Foer says the general principle is to "pay attention."  People are also naturally better at remembering things that have significance to them, and the more senses you can engage and emotions you can associate to something you've seen or heard, the better.

• Want to remember someone's name?  Bounce it back to them as they tell you what it is.

• Need a good language acquisition resource? Try Memrise -- a website in progress designed for language learning .

• Need to give a speech?  Don't remember it word for word. Instead, create an image 'topic by topic.'

Memory techniques can be difficult to develop for structured information. Mnemonics, creating musical rhymes and branching are possibilities here. As for the student who's hitting the books for the test, we are indebted to everyone from Gutenberg to 3M:

The simple act of being able to tab a book section with a "one or two word jotting" --is a gift, Miller and Foer agreed.

Before the printing press, people obviously didn't own many books, nor were there libraries.  There was a premium on remembering what you read.  After Gutenberg, it became possible-- through page numbers, tables of contents, indexes-- to access information externally.  Add the variable of book ownership and tabbing, and you have a remarkable informational retrieval device, even before the invention of Google :)

The primary focus of this discussion on memory, however, concerned Foer's preparation advice for the annual U.S. Memory Championship in New York City, which he won in 2006.  Contrary to popular opinion that certain people possess "photographic memories," Foer said his success depended on the adoption a year-long regimen  that involved  taking unmemorable things ( random numbers, poems, decks of cards, names of strangers) and making them 'super duper memorable' in his mind's eye.

"The art of this is in taking those unmemorable numbers and transforming them in your mind's eye through some sort of a process into a scene that is so bizarre, so beautiful, so strange, so unlike anything you've ever seen before that you can't forget it," Foer explained.

This effort is so serious that 'blinders beneath memory goggles' and 'earplugs under earmuffs' are required to block out as much sensory information as possible to get about the business of remembering. 

Foer explained most memory champions employ the technique of a Memory Palace (derived from the Roman Cicero and the Greek Simonides before him) to create visual associations with particular objects in their quest to become quality rememberers.  Cicero believed this technique was so well-known that it needed no explanation to his countrymen.  Because of  the decline of the oral tradition  and the advent of many storage devices besides people's minds for retaining things, ironically the ancient technique has been largely forgotten.

After trying it, Foer was surprised to find how well the technique worked.  Surprisingly, Foer asserts that memory training is not an innate natural talent, and that many such people are also accomplished ATHLETES, as development in this area is about "discipline", "will" & "grit."

Maybe there is hope for us average folks.

'First of Spring' Marks Turning Point in Legislative Session for Education

While the first day of Spring finally here, the season's first Robin sighting is not :)  But signals from the Legislature show things are growing unseasonably warm early this Legislative Session.

As evidence, Minnesota's House Education Finance Committee will conduct a marathon 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 midnight walk through of the 2011 Omnibus Education bill (HF934) on Monday, March 21st.  Public testimony will be taken early in the day, and expert observers believe Omnibus Bills from both the House and Senate could be completed this week-- which would be record speed for the Legislature.

According to the educationally-earnest folks at Parents United for Public Schools, other bills to watch this session include these, some of which may find their way into the Omnibus bill.  Each set of companion bills is followed by a few sentences on what I gleaned from the Revisor-provided draft of the House version. (Please don't blame me for trying :)

HF1187 Greiling (DFL-Roseville) | SF902 Stumpf (DFL-Thief River Falls) Governor’s Education Finance Bill

Deals variously with all-day kindergarten revenue (still optional for districts) , a new Governor's award for educational excellence, achievement gap innovation fund, lease aid for charter schools, and state levy accounting, among other matters.

HF273 (Woodard-R-Belle Plaine) | SF388 Nienow (R-Cambridge) Students at low-performing schools enrollment options established

Allows students of families at 175% of poverty or lower whose school does not meet certain performance criteria to enroll at nonpublic schools, and carry per pupil and transportation funding with them.  Effectively Minnesota's "school voucher" bill (Would take effect for the 2011-12 school year).

HF945 (Petersen-R-Andover) | SF636 Olson (R-Minnetrista) Teacher licensure, evaluations, and tenure modified

Article I: Teacher Evaluation & Professional Development- a 10-section article concerning:

Select Sections:
1. Commissioner reporting of school & student growth based on highly reliable statewide or districtwide assessments. (Not mentioned, but possibly applicable,  is the Common Core Assessments push being made at the national level.) (Would apply in 2012-13.)
2-5. Directs school boards to develop a professional development model, mentoring, & peer review for both probationary and continuing contract teachers for improving teaching & learning. (Applicable 2013-14.)
6. Proposes  a teacher evaluation structure including:

    A. teacher appraisal framework that identifies performance measures for determining teacher effectiveness
    B.  a mechanism for translating the performance data into a five-part teacher effectiveness rating scale
    C.  a four-tier status designation that identifies teachers as standard, advanced, distinguished, or exemplary based on a teacher's effectiveness rating over time.
(Section would be applicable the day following enactment.)

7. Requires  school boards to establish staff development advisory committees & site professional development teams-- the majority of whom must be teachers representing various grade levels, subject areas, and special education. The advisory committee must also include nonteaching staff, parents, and administrators.  (Section would take effect in 2013-14 school year.)

9. A school board and the school administrators in a district must collaboratively establish a professional development model for school administrators designed to:
provide professional development to effectively evaluate teachers and  identify systemic strengths and weaknesses within a school, among other things. (Section effective 7/1/2012)

Article II: Teacher Employment

Select Sections:
1. Requires annual school performance report card that includes teacher effectiveness ratings established in Article I. (Would be effective July 1, 2014)
2.  Annual contracts and evaluation plan for probationary teachers (under 3 yrs. service)
3-4. Concerns 5-year contracts awarded at end of probationary term & each successive 5 year period based on growth plans and teacher effectiveness system. (Effective 2014-15 and beyond.)
12. Teacher effectiveness based bonuses: Teachers with "distinguished" rating would receive annual bonus equal to 10% of base salary and those with "exemplary" rating could receive bonus equal to 20% of base salary. (Section w/b effective July 1, 2019.)
16. Establishes Advisory Task Force for implementing teacher evaluation structure. (Would be effective the day following enactment.)

HF947 (Erickson-R-Princeton) Alternative teacher pay system modified

Refines alternative teacher pay systems (like Q Comp) that  reform the traditional "steps and lanes" salary schedules.
For those with existing plans, requires reapplication by June 1, 2013.

HF329 (Bills-R-Rosemount) | SF577 (Thompson-R-Lakeville) Public school employees prohibited from using public funds and resources to advocate to pass, elect, or defeat a political candidate, ballot question, or pending legislation. 

No additional comments necessary.

HF638 (Myhra-R-Burnsville) School grading system created, school recognition program created, school report cards modified, rulemaking authorized, and report required.

Seeks to establish an "A to F" school and district grading system for identifying schools and districts where students are achieving low, medium, or high growth on statewide assessments.
Under this plan:

• 50% of a school's grade is based on disaggregated student data for those achieving proficiency in reading and mathematics the previous year
• 25% of the grade is based on whether students achieved low, medium or high growth on the previous year's reading and mathematics assessments
• 15% of the grade is based on students who did not achieve proficiency in the previous year's reading assessments
• 10% of the school's grade is based on students who did not achieve proficiency in the previous year's math assessments

(For HF 638, data could be collected on 2011-12 for rewards to be distributed in 2012-13.)
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It is common for legislators to say they often hear more from constituents on stadium bills than on education matters.  For those who think their input will be insignificant: 

Rep. Margaret Anderson Kelliher (D) and Rep. Paul Kohls (R) reinforced the value of constituent-initiated communication during a Midday with Gary Eichten discussion last December:

"The most powerful thing that a legislator receives today is a handwritten note from anyone," explained Kelliher, who shared the distinction with Kohls of being an outgoing legislator who had recently run for Governor. "The personal story ... the invitation to come out and visit, those sorts of things, do change legislators minds, even if you disagree with that person," Kelliher added.

In "broad bipartisan agreement," Rep. Kohls said constituent input clearly impacted "how he thought about the issues" before stating: "It's a pretty rare event for legislators to get more than a handful of comments on any one particular issue .... If I got 10 emails on any particular subject, that was a lot of noise made by my constituents ... so I hope people know that."

Take the US Dept of Education's Financial Literacy Challenge

8/17/11 Resource Addition: See this for gaming fun that enhances financial literacy skills. 

The US Department of Education proved it is about more than mandates & testing by reaching out to high school students with a voluntary 2011 financial literacy challenge from March 7 to April 8.

Designed to enhance the financial capability of student understanding in saving, budgeting, and investing--  the Challenge is open to any student (age 13-19) whose educator successfully registers, prepares students, and administers the online exam:  Financial Literacy Challenge Registration

From saving for college and retirement to managing expenses like cell phones, the exam tests a wide array of topics that together constitute a basic understanding of personal finance.

This joint Dept. of Education and Treasury Dept. outreach effort is consistent with current NCLB reauthorization efforts whose design is to make competitive grants to states & districts that provide a well-rounded curriculum in financial literacy, as well as environmental education, the arts, world languages, and history & civics.

Later this spring,  high-scoring students will be recognized in a national awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. The educators and students who place in the top 20 percent nationwide will receive official award certificates.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan offers remarks about the Challenge in this video: