Disrupting School Rituals

           In this article in Urban Education, Eric DeMeulenaere (Clark University) describes how he and two high-school teachers started their school year in a way that shook up the usual get-acquainted/syllabus-review/rules-and-expectations ritual for a group of 27 seniors: 

• The classroom lights were out and the blinds closed. 
• At the rear of the classroom, a projector displayed the question, Why are we here? 
• On a side wall in bold letters were several signs with life aspirations, including: Write a novel, Hike the Appalachian Trail, Be a Mom, Live off the grid. 
• Chairs were arranged in a circle, and students sauntered in and sat near their friends. 
• The teachers stood in a corner, backs to students, talking among themselves. 
• Three minutes passed, and students’ chit-chat subsided to puzzled whispers. 
• Finally one teacher walked to the middle of the circle and read a story about a painful conversation he had with his father, who had returned after abandoning the family. 
• The teacher said, “I’ve only shared that story with four people before today,” and then, gesturing to the back of the room, added, “This is partly why I am here today.” 

          This was the kick-off for an innovative “Roots and Routes” class in this low-performing urban high school in central Massachusetts, designed to change the usual pattern of very few students going on to post-secondary education. The group was drawn from every achievement level in the school – potential valedictorians and gang members, gamers and teen moms – and all, says DeMeulenaere, were “woefully underprepared for college.” The principal’s charge to the teachers and DeMeulenaere was to help students prepare for and apply to colleges – and teachers had free rein to try different methods.

          “While this project focuses on the internal and micro-level interactions of students and teachers in a single urban school classroom,” says DeMeulenaere, “it recognizes that the classroom culture is deeply influenced by the larger school and community context.” This included a depressed economy, poverty, and segregation, along with inadequate funding for the school, poor administrative decisions, less-than-effective teaching in some classrooms, and insufficient counseling and psychological services. Still, DeMeulenaere and his colleagues hoped to change the distrustful relationships between students and their middle-class teachers by shifting school rituals associated with factories and the military to trust-building rituals drawn from the theater and places of worship. 

          DeMeulenaere describes three other experiences from the first week of the Roots and Routes project (which took place during the 2008-09 school year), all designed to “shake the students free from going through the motions of schooling…” 

• The altar – At the end of the first day, students were given a handmade artist book created by one of the teachers and given several days to create their bucket list and a symbol that represented themselves on their life journey. When they were finished several days later, students placed their books on a table at the back of the classroom decked out with a black tablecloth and candles to resemble an altar. DeMeulenaere shared his aspirational list and symbol, and invited students to follow suit. After an awkward silence and some giggling, one student stepped forward, and others followed, clearly investing in the ritual that couldn’t have been more different from standard school protocols. “The fact that no one could even assess these projects,” says DeMeulenaere, “that teachers completed this task alongside students, and that everyone shared their books in the class disrupted the status hierarchies in this classroom and began to forge new relationships between teachers and students. And through a collective and ritualized sharing, each member of the classroom community was recognized for their individual humanity rather than their status role in the classroom.” 
• The mountain climb – On a hot day shortly after this, students were driven to the base of the tallest mountain in the region, divided into three teams, and dropped off at different locations. With no maps, compasses, or assistance from the teacher accompanying them, students were asked to figure out how to get to the top of the mountain. In addition, each group had an egg, a helium balloon, a bag of ice, and an opened 50-pound bottle of water; the challenge was to get to the mountaintop without breaking the egg, popping the balloon, spilling any of the water – and before the ice melted. Each group got lost at least once, says DeMeulenaere. Students expressed frustration that the teachers wouldn’t help them and struggled with the four items, especially the water container. But all the groups came up with creative solutions, including using hair ties and plastic bags to seal the top of the water bottle and using sticks and belts to harness the heavy jug. All students reached the summit before their ice melted, and there was great celebration and euphoria, with the first arrivals cheering on the others. One high-achieving student who initially wanted nothing to do with one member of her group who she believed was headed for prison was deeply moved by the leadership he took and, in her college essay, said she “began to see myself and the people I grew up with in a new light.” 
• The permanent marker incident – At the top of the mountain, one of the teachers noticed that several students had used a permanent marker to write their names on one of the stone lookouts. Before they returned to school, the teachers gathered students in a circle and asked them to reflect on the incident without saying anything. Back at school, there was a lengthy discussion in which some students said it wasn’t a big deal (like carving initials in a tree, a way of capturing the moment), others saying they should tell the principal and accept the consequences. But the discussion wound up in a different place: several of the perpetrators paid for cleaning supplies and those students, accompanied by others who weren’t complicit, returned to the mountain with their teachers and scrubbed the stone markers clean. 

          DeMeulenaere and his colleagues continued in this vein for the rest of the year, including taking students through a high ropes course, visiting their families, and returning several times to the “altar” to discuss students’ and teachers’ aspirations. The result was a higher level of trust within the group, students seeing their classmates in new and more-accepting ways, and improved academic achievement. 

          “Teachers want students to do more than just go through the motions of schooling,” DeMeulenaere concludes. “But teachers too often fail to recognize that their deployment of scripted school rituals fosters routinized relationships marked by hierarchy, control, distrust, and disengagement. This is even more pronounced in urban schools where differences in the socioeconomic and racial backgrounds between teachers and students foster even greater distrust… Teachers committed to social change need to think beyond curriculum redesign and pedagogical innovation and begin to re-envision the micro-level interactions of classroom rituals.” 

 “Disrupting School Rituals” by Eric DeMeulenaere in Urban Education, January 2023 (Vol. 58, #1, pp. 59-86); DeMeulenaere can be reached at edemeulenaere@clarku.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #966 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Homework as Gap-Widener

          In this article in Educational Researcher, Jessica McCrory Calarco (Indiana University/Bloomington) and Ilana Horn and Grace Chen (Vanderbilt University) say that in many schools, homework is a “status-reinforcing practice,” one of several that “stratify students’ opportunities for learning and bolster the ‘meritocratic’ narrative that higher-status groups succeed in school because of individual competence, effort, and responsibility.” And indeed, lower-SES students report spending less time on homework, more often hand it in late or incomplete, and receive more-frequent and harsher penalties, contributing to a widening achievement gap vis-à-vis more-advantaged students. 

          In their longitudinal ethnographic study, Calarco, Horn, and Chen were surprised to find that in elementary and middle schools, where teachers are more aware of students’ home situations, teachers don’t attribute homework difficulties to outside-of-school factors and structural inequalities. Rather, teachers tend to blame students who struggle with homework (and, in elementary schools, their parents). The researchers found that many teachers see homework through a lens of individual agency and a “myth of meritocracy – the idea that people who are responsible, motivated, and hard-working will be successful, regardless of the challenges they face.” 

          This belief system gives teachers justification for three practices that clearly widen pre-existing SES gaps: 

• Assigning homework that students are not able to complete independently; 
• Punishing students who don’t complete homework (many classes begin with students being      asked to get out their homework so it can be checked by the teacher); 
• Rewarding students who regularly meet homework expectations with praise, bonus points, and    “homework passes” that allow them to miss assignments without penalty. 

Step one to addressing this situation, say Calarco, Horn, and Chen, is for teachers to question the myth of meritocracy and recognize the structural inequalities affecting many students’ ability to successfully complete homework. Steps two, three, and four are assigning manageable homework; not treating homework as a proxy for individual responsibility, competence, and effort; and lowering the stakes for homework completion. 

          Some educators have gone further, making homework optional or ungraded. But “because homework is such a deeply entrenched part of the grammar of schooling,” say the authors, “and because homework can also serve other purposes – signaling school rigor or helping parents feel connected to the school – some families and educators may resist its elimination.” Schools that stop giving homework need to find other ways to fulfill these legitimate needs. 

          Even the radical step of eliminating homework doesn’t address the unequal advantages of students whose families have more time and resources to support their children’s learning. “The need for structural solutions to structural inequalities, however, should not discourage educators from taking steps in the short term to reduce the harm caused by status-reinforcing practices,” conclude the authors. “Schools and teachers alone may be unable to fix social inequalities, but they can avoid making them worse.” 

 “‘You Need to Be More Responsible’: The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers’ Accounts of Homework Inequalities” by Jessica McCrory Calarco, Ilana Horn, and Grace Chen in Educational Researcher, November 2022 (Vol. 51, #8, pp. 515523); Calarco can be reached at jcalarco@indiana.edu, Horn at ilana.horn@vanderbilt.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #965 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Can Project-Based Learning Work in AP Courses?

        In this article in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Anna Rosefsky Saavedra (University of Southern California) and seven colleagues report on their study comparing students’ performance on two Advanced Placement exams (U.S. Government and Environmental Science) following traditional and project-based instruction. For teachers trying to implement an innovative project-based learning classroom, say the authors, “the AP context is particularly challenging because of the sheer amount of content covered in the course-specific AP curriculum frameworks and the looming end-of-year, high-stakes examination.” 

        The researchers looked at the exam results of students in five predominantly urban, low-income school districts around the U.S. What did they find? Students who learned through project-based learning did significantly better on AP exams than those with lecture-based instruction. This was true for students from both low- and high-income families. The researchers found that teachers using project-based learning focused their learning objectives on more-sophisticated thinking and communication skills, did less AP test prep and quick-turnaround assignments, and spent more time on student-centered activities like simulations and debates. 

        The authors have several caveats. First, shifting from traditional to project-based pedagogy is a “substantial change for teachers,” requiring high-quality, ongoing, job-embedded PD and coaching support. Second, the teachers using project-based learning in this study chose to participate, indicating that they were “early adopters” who were more motivated than those in the control group to try something new and/or were drawn to, or already knowledgeable about, project-based learning. Third, the schools in the study were philosophically aligned with project-based learning, offered many AP courses, and required open access enrollment in AP courses. Classrooms and schools without these favorable conditions might not get the positive results found in this study.

        Still, say the authors, “The traditional ‘transmission’ model of instruction, in which teachers transmit knowledge to students through lectures and assigned readings, may be suboptimal for supporting students’ ability to think and communicate in sophisticated ways, demonstrate creativity and innovation, and transfer their skills, knowledge, and attitudes to new contexts.” 

 “The Impact of Project-Based Learning on AP Exam Performance” by Anna Rosefsky Saavedra, Kari Lock Morgan, Ying Liu, Marshall Garland, Amie Rapaport, Alyssa Hu, Danial Hoepfner, and Shira Korn Haderlein in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, December 2022 (Vol. 44, # 4, pp. 638-666); Saavedra can be reached at asaavedr@usc.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #964 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Using Fermi Questions to Foster Community

        In this article in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, Kathryn Lavin Brave and Jillian Miller (Baltimore County Public Schools) describe using Fermi questions to get students thinking about key mathematics standards while bolstering their social and emotional skills. Fermi questions were named after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, who was known for his theoretical and practical contributions and for making reasonable estimates from limited data.

        Fermi questions are designed to get students working on a challenging problem “by making reasonable assumptions about the situation, not necessarily relying on definite knowledge for an exact answer” (Taggart et al, 2007). These questions are especially helpful, say Brave and Miller, as schools emerge from the pandemic, providing an opportunity to combine math problem-solving with building SEL skills, especially collaboration. Some examples:

        - How many times can you say the ABCs in 24 hours?

        - How many hairs are on your head? 

        - How many sticky notes would cover the chalkboard? 

        - How many pizza boxes would it take to cover our classroom floor? 

        - How much water is wasted by a leaky faucet in one day? 

        - How many cars drive by our school building in a day? 

        - How many plastic containers does the cafeteria throw away each week? 

Brave and Miller suggest this step-by-step plan for using a Fermi question in an upper-elementary classroom:

        - The teacher gives background information on Fermi and the role of estimation in solving problems.

        - Students are presented with a Fermi question that’s appropriate to their grade level and a mathematical skill or concept they’re learning.

        - Students are encouraged to make “wild estimates” on what the answer might be.

        - The teacher introduces the idea of “outliers” and the class discusses answers that seem too high or too low to be plausible.

        - Students discuss which estimates might be closer to the exact answer and why.

        - The class discusses a plan for finding the answer, dividing the Fermi question into a series of questions than might be used to get relevant data.

        - Students get into groups to find the answer; the teacher fields initial questions like, Can we use a ruler? Can we use a calculator?

        - The teacher circulates, guiding students with mathematical questions and prompts and highlighting interesting strategies and insights for the whole class.

        - The teacher points out SEL insights on self-regulation, sharing, self-awareness, patience, and persistence.

        - The teacher reminds students to evaluate their work and make mid-course corrections.

        - Finally, groups present their answers to the whole class for critique and discussion and share what they learned about social and emotional skills. 

 “Using Fermi Questions to Foster Community” by Kathryn Lavin Brave and Jillian Miller in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, November 2022 (Vol. 115, #11, pp. 801-807)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #964 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

How One Elementary School Dramatically Improved Math Achievement

        In this American Educational Research Journal article, Elham Kazemi (University of Washington), Alison Fox Resnick (University of Colorado), and Lynsey Gibbons (University of Delaware) describe how the principal of a racially diverse, low-SES elementary school shifted math instruction from teacher-centered and procedure-focused to student-centered and emphasizing discussion, problem-solving, reasoning, and sense-making. Over three years, the school rose from “failing” status to being named as a School of Distinction by the state, with fourth and fifth graders outscoring the district and state (passing rates for fifth graders went from 20 to 79 percent) and no achievement differences among the school’s racial and socioeconomic student groups. 

        Kazemi, Resnick, and Gibbons studied this turnaround with a particular focus on how the principal worked with teachers and teacher teams. Their observations:

        • Teachers as learners – The principal was clear about her vision for an improved mathematics curriculum and classroom practices that needed to change, say the authors, but she also believed teachers “needed to be trusted and engaged as competent sensemakers in messy and experimental learning.” To encourage risk-taking, one of the principal’s mantras was, “You can’t look good and get better at the same time.” She knew it would take time for the pedagogical changes that needed to be made, with plenty of mistakes along the way.

        • Modeling risk-taking – As the principal worked shoulder to shoulder with teachers in grade-level meetings, math labs, and PD sessions, she shared their struggles implementing new materials and pedagogical practices, built collegiality and trust – and continued to communicate clear and high expectations. “I’m constantly shifting back and forth between pressure and support,” she said. “As I’m listening, I’m thinking all these things at once.” Because the principal sat in on so many teacher meetings, she was a keener observer of math teaching and learning when she visited classrooms.

        • Equity – One of the school’s goals was to close racial and economic achievement gaps, but the principal “resisted pervasive equity discourse,” say the authors – also the idea that black and brown students needed to “catch up” with their white and Asian peers. Instead, the principal “focused closely on students’ experiences and participation in classrooms” – and on all students’ opportunities after they graduated from the school. Bringing effective, rigorous instruction to every classroom was central to the principal’s equity philosophy. “It’s not fair,” she said, “that a child could have two different experiences because of the flip of a coin, you got this teacher and not that teacher.”

        • Student agency – “Our goal,” said the principal, “is to change kids’ outcomes in life by having them be thinkers, by having them be leaders of their own learning.” In classrooms, she watched for who was doing the intellectual heavy lifting – the teacher or the students. When a teacher said, “I wish you were in here five minutes ago when I was teaching,” the principal said that “teaching” was everything teachers were orchestrating that got kids talking to each other about their work and understanding math content and skills.

        • Teacher collaboration – The principal saw weekly 45-minute grade-level teams (during teachers’ common planning time) as the “unit of change,” the key “leverage point” for improving individual teachers’ effectiveness. The school’s math coach facilitated these meetings, guiding teachers as they talked about what had been most successful in their classrooms. The principal and coach watched for how well teachers were working together, and the principal reassigned teachers to different grade levels when team dynamics were not productive. Maximizing the potential of teams was also a key consideration when the school filled teaching vacancies.

        • Lesson study – Four to six times a year, each grade-level team, joined by special education and ELL teachers, participated in a full- or half-day “math lab” in which (facilitated by the math coach) they (a) unpacked new ideas about content, instruction, and student thinking; (b) collaboratively planned a short lesson; (c) taught the lesson in their classrooms; and (d) discussed their insights. The principal made a point of attending all teams’ math labs in the course of each year (24 in all), and saw these cycles as key to improving instructional planning and disrupting some teachers’ deficit ideas about what students were capable of doing mathematically.

        • Individual coaching – Every week, the principal and the math coach visited classrooms to gauge how teachers and students were making sense of the curriculum and provide feedback and support. The principal sat with students on the rug or checked in with them as they worked at their desks, asking about what they were learning and which problems they found easy and difficult. The principal and the coach followed up with teachers during and after visits, praising effective practices and problem-solving when students were struggling.

        • Teacher evaluation – The district’s system for evaluating teachers was incompatible with the principal’s desire to have conversations about teaching and learning throughout the year, setting goals and giving feedback from September through June. The principal also disagreed with the district’s practice of making each classroom visit evaluative. “I need to be spending my time with teachers learning and planning and reflecting and adjusting,” she said. She complied with the district’s requirements, but her main focus was on being in classrooms and team meetings every week, noticing how teachers were interpreting and implementing lesson plans, communicating with teacher teams about their insights and ideas, and fine-tuning teaching throughout the year.

        • Instructional leadership team – The ILT, consisting of the principal, assistant principal, and the math and literacy coaches, focused on how well teachers were implementing new practices, how successfully students were learning, and teacher interactions in grade-level teams. The leadership team made decisions about supporting individual teachers and teams and brainstormed ideas for the next round of math labs.

        • All-staff communication – The principal used e-mails, staff meetings, and schoolwide professional development sessions to deprivatize practice, spread effective ideas, and communicate a sense that “we are all learning this together.”

        • Storytelling – The principal encouraged teachers to tell her when lessons went especially well and send students to her (or the math coach) when they made a learning breakthrough. The principal often began staff meetings by sharing one or two of these stories, and frequently used metaphors to make important points: they were all in the same boat and needed to be rowing in the same direction; building a new mathematics system was fragile and vulnerable, like a house of cards; when sharing learning data that showed student progress, she stressed that students were on the road but had not yet arrived.

        • Buffering outside agendas – Once the school’s instructional vision was clear, the principal pushed back on district initiatives that would distract teachers from the path they were on. “Part of what I do,” she said, “which is my least favorite part of my job, is I say no all the time. ‘No, I’m sorry our teacher can’t go to that. No, I’m sorry, we can’t help you do that. No, I’m sorry, we can’t have another visit. No, we do not want that curriculum you bought because you think every elementary school needs it. No, I can’t even store it in my building because… that sends a message.’” 

 “Principal Leadership for Schoolwide Transformation of Elementary Mathematics Teaching: Why the Principal’s Conception of Teacher Learning Matters” by Elham Kazemi, Alison Fox Resnick, and Lynsey Gibbons in American Educational Research Journal, December 2022 (Vol. 59, #6, pp. 1051-1089); the authors can be reached at ekazemi@uw.edu, alison.resnick@colorado.edu and lgibbons@udel.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #964 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Amanda Gorman - An Ode We Owe

How can I ask you to do good

When we’ve barely withstood

Our greatest threats yet:

The depths of death, despair and disparity,

Atrocities across cities, towns & countries,

Lives lost, climactic costs.

Exhausted, angered, we are endangered,

Not because of our numbers,

But because of our numbness.

We’re strangers

To one another’s perils and pain,

Unaware that the welfare of the public

And the planet share a name–

–Equality

Doesn’t mean being the exact same,

But enacting a vast aim:

The good of the world to its highest capability.

The wise believe that our people without power

Leaves our planet without possibility.

Therefore, though poverty is a poor existence,

Complicity is a poorer excuse.

We must go the distance,

Though this battle is hard and huge,

Though this fight we did not choose,

For preserving the earth isn’t a battle too large

To win, but a blessing too large to lose.

This is the most pressing truth:

That Our people have only one planet to call home

And our planet has only one people to call its own.

We can either divide and be conquered by the few,

Or we can decide to conquer the future,

And say that today a new dawn we wrote,

Say that as long as we have humanity,

We will forever have hope.

Together, we won’t just be the generation

That tries but the generation that triumphs;

Let us see a legacy

Where tomorrow is not driven

By the human condition,

But by our human conviction.

And while hope alone can’t save us now,

With it we can brave the now,

Because our hardest change hinges

On our darkest challenges.

Thus may our crisis be our cry, our crossroad,

The oldest ode we owe each other.

We chime it, for the climate,

For our communities.

We shall respect and protect

Every part of this planet,

Hand it to every heart on this earth,

Until no one’s worth is rendered

By the race, gender, class, or identity

They were born. This morn let it be sworn

That we are one one human kin,

Grounded not just by the griefs

We bear, but by the good we begin.

To anyone out there:

I only ask that you care before it’s too late,

That you live aware and awake,

That you lead with love in hours of hate.

I challenge you to heed this call,

I dare you to shape our fate.

Above all, I dare you to do good

So that the world might be great.”

Amanda Gorman's Poem:“An Ode We Owe,” recited to the U.N. General Assembly Sept 19, 2022

Recommended Children's Books with Neurodiverse Characters

In this School Library Journal article, Allison Staley recommends 12 books featuring characters with dyslexia, autism, ADHD, dysgraphia, and anxiety: 

• The U-nique Lou Fox by Jodi Carmichael, grade 3-7
• A Perfect Mistake by Melanie Conklin, grade 3-7 
• When the Sky Falls by Phil Earle, grade 3-7 
• Flipping Forward Twisting Backward by Alma Fullerton, grade 3-7 
• It’s So Difficult by Raúl Guridi, grade 1-4 
• How to Find What You’re Not Looking For by Veera Hiranandani, grade 3-7 
• Honestly Elliott by Gillian McDunn, grade 4-7 
• A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll, grade 4-7 
• Brilliant Bea by Shaina Rudolph, preschool-grade 3 
• Ellen Outside the Lines by A.J. Sass, grade 4-7 
• A Walk in the Words by Hudson Talbott, grade 1-3 
• The View from the Very Best House in Town by Meera Trehan, grade 4-7

 “Great Minds Don’t Think Alike” by Allison Staley in School Library Journal, September 2022 (Vol. 68, #9, pp. 46-48)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #952 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Respectfully Pushing Back on Parents' Attempts to Censor Literature

            In this article in English Journal, Sean Connors (University of Arkansas) and Roberta Seelinger Trites (Illinois State University) note recent challenges to controversial books, among them New Kid by Jerry Craft, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George Johnson, Drama by Raina Telgemeier, and Maus by Art Spiegelman. Connors and Trites believe that most parents who object to these and other books are genuinely concerned for their children, and educators need to understand their concerns while also helping them understand why teachers want to use the books in their classrooms. Here are their suggested talking points: 

• The desire to shield young people from certain kinds of knowledge and content is based on an unrealistic understanding of innocence. Many adults believe that children are born pure, gradually gain knowledge, and eventually lose their innocence, say Connors and Trites, and parents see their job as preserving and protecting youthful innocence as long as possible. “But anyone who has taught school-aged children,” they say, “knows that children are typically so inquisitive that they are rarely innocent of knowledge about, for example, sex and sexuality.” Whether they live in cities, suburbs, or rural areas, children find out about that subject, and others, around the age of seven. Most parents will acknowledge that fact. 

• Paradoxically, many parents assume their children have a Rousseauian innocence while admitting that they, as children, did not. Upon reflection, adults remember when they first learned about topics like the Holocaust and economic injustice and heard homophobic slurs. “How many children are truly innocent by the time they leave middle school?” ask Connors and Trites. “And how many more have developed empathy and understanding because they witnessed (or read about) an injustice that stirred their social conscience?” 

• In every classroom, students are at different stages of maturation. When Connors taught eleventh-grade English, a parent said her child wasn’t old enough to read The Bluest Eye with the class. They arranged for an alternative book and writing assignment without denying the rest of the class the powerful experience of reading Toni Morrison’s novel.

• Arguments for protecting young people are often made with only one type of student in mind. Are those objecting to a particular book “thinking of African-American teenagers who have no choice but to attend underfunded and under-resourced schools?” ask Connors and Trites. “Or immigrant children whose parents live under the threat of deportation? Are they imagining children who have experienced physical or sexual abuse, or who are exposed to some form of addiction at home, or whose families struggle in poverty?” 

• Reading literature develops young people’s capacity for empathy and understanding. Research shows that people who read fiction on a regular basis are better able to understand and empathize with fellow humans and see the world from their perspective – abilities most parents want their children to possess. 

• Removing books that might make white, heterosexual students feel uncomfortable ignores the fact that LGBTQ parents and parents of color also have school-aged children. They too want their children to learn about their own histories and experiences. All students need books that provide “windows” and “mirrors” on their own experience and culture. “By engaging in this kind of perspective-taking,” say Connors and Trites, “students are better able to comprehend how other people understand and experience those historical events and social topics. Equally important, they are better prepared to make informed, conscious decisions as to whether they wish to reproduce discriminatory policies and practices that have been, or are, injurious to other people.”

“What Happens to Knowledge Deferred? Defending Books from Conservative White Censors” by Sean Connors and Roberta Seelinger Trites in English Journal, May 2022 (Vol. 111, #5, pp. 64-70); the authors can be reached at sconnors@uark.edu and seeling@ilstu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #940 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Helping Students Become Flexible, Sophisticated Thinkers

            In this Educational Leadership article, author/consultants Harvey Silver, Abigail Boutz, and Jay McTighe say that five thinking skills are essential to grappling with the modern world’s complex problems (acronym IDEAS): 

• Inquiry – Thoughtful questions drive an investigative process that seeks to explain and understand. Inquiry involves analyzing documents and data, generating models, and conducting experiments. 
• Design – An iterative process produces a new way of solving a problem, addressing a need, or improving an existing product or way of doing things. Designers describe a need, generate possible solutions, test options, and plan for implementation.
• Evaluation – Appropriate criteria are used to assess a product (for example, the strength of a bridge), an outcome (how the stock market did), or a process (did a group collaborate well?).
• Argumentation – This involves making a claim or critique and justifying it with reasons and evidence. 
• Systems analysis – Changes in one or more parts of a system may produce short- and long-term consequences. 

            These are the very skills that have been used during the Covid-19 pandemic: scientists inquired about the origins and mode of virus transmission; the pharmaceutical industry designed vaccines; government officials evaluated different strategies for reducing the risk of infection; everyone argued about which to prioritize; and system analysis is being used to address supply-chain issues. 

            Silver, Boutz, and McTighe believe the goal of K-12 education is to develop “sophisticated thinkers and learners who understand content deeply and can transfer their knowledge and skills to real-world challenges.” But even in schools committed to project-based learning, they say, there’s not nearly enough practice with the IDEAS thinking skills. They give examples of tasks that focus on authentic issues, are engaging and relevant, and require deep thinking and transfer of knowledge: 

            - A secondary social studies inquiry task – How did a ragtag colonial militia with limited financial support defeat Great Britain, at that time the world’s most powerful nation? 

            - A high-school psychology design task – After studying the behavioral and intellectual development of toddlers, create a safe educational toy that will appeal to toddlers and help them develop attention, memory, reasoning, imagination, and curiosity. 

            - A secondary ELA evaluation task – Examine three options for a complete 10th-grade reading list, make a recommendation, and explain your thinking. 

            - A primary-grade health argument task – Use insights from sleep research to advise your parents on how to respond to your sister’s argument that bedtimes are silly and she should be able to stay up as late as she wants. 

            - An elementary science systems analysis task – Research an endangered tropical animal and create a children’s picture book that explains the rainforest ecosystem and predicts what might happen if the animal became extinct. 

This link provides additional task starters and guiding questions for the five skills. 

 “5 IDEAS for Developing Real-World Thinking Skills” by Harvey Silver, Abigail Boutz, and Jay McTighe in Educational Leadership, May 2022 (Vol. 79, #8, pp. 38-42); the authors can be reached at hsilver@thoughtfulclassroom.com, aboutz@thoughtfulclassroom.com, and jay@mctighe-associates.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #937 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Recommended Graphic Novels

            In this School Library Journal feature, Brigid Alverson recommends ten standout graphic novels: 

• Almost American Girl by Robin Ha, grade 7 and up 
• Chibi Usagi: Attack of the Heebie Chibis by Julie and Stan Sakai, grade 4-7 
• Geraldine Pu and Her Cat Hat, Too! by Maggie Chang, grade 1-3 
• Lola: A Ghost Story by J. Torres, illustrated by Elbert Or, grade 3-6 
• Marshmallow & Jordan by Alina Chau, grade 4-7 
• Palimpsest: Documents from a Korean Adoption by Lisa Wool-Rim, grade 11 and up 
• The Princess Who Saved Her Friends by Greg Pak, illustrated by Takeshi Miyazawa, grade 4-6 
• The Rema Chronicles Book 1: Realm of the Blue Mist by Amy Kim Kibuishi, grade 3-7 
• Stealing Home by J. Torres, illustrated by David Mamisato, grade 4-7 
• Wingbearer by Margorie Liu, illustrated by Teny Issakhanian, grade 5-8 

 “APA Artistry: 10 Standout Graphic Novels” by Brigid Alverson in School Library Journal, May 2022 (Vol. 68, #5, pp. 24-27)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #936 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Preparing Students for an Uncertain Future

(Originally titled “Future-Proofing Students”) 

            When they’re adults, more than half of today’s students will work in jobs that don’t yet exist, says author/psychologist Michele Borba in this Educational Leadership article. Her research has identified seven skillsets that are vital to success in this ever-changing world. “These strengths are not fixed nor based on scores, IQs, or ZIP codes,” says Borba, “but teachable abilities that can be woven into daily lessons and help prepare kids for life.” Here are the strengths, each with several associated abilities: 

            • Self-confidence: Self-awareness, strength awareness, finding purpose – “Confidence is the quiet understanding of ‘who I am’ that nurtures inner assuredness and appreciation of one’s unique strengths and interests,” says Borba, “as well as areas in need of improvement.” Schools can develop self-confidence by having students keep digital portfolios of their learning progress and scheduling “genius hours” to encourage students to get deeply involved in a particular area of interest. 

            • Empathy: Emotional literacy, perspective taking, empathic concern – “Empathy allows us to feel with and understand others,” says Borba, “setting us apart from the machines we create. Its cultivation will be crucial to successfully navigating life in a world dominated by artificial intelligence and augmented reality.” Students can get better at perspective-taking through cooperative learning activities, retelling stories from the point of view of different characters, or acting out a different way of seeing a historical or current event. 

            • Self-control: Attentive focus, self-management, healthy decision-making – Many young people can’t go more than two minutes without checking their devices, so self-control is a key growth area. Schools can help students set limits and teach mindfulness, meditation, and yoga. 

            • Integrity: Moral awareness, moral identity, ethical thinking – “Students don’t learn integrity through osmosis,” says Borba; “it must be intentionally taught, and we have to work at it.” Studies show that despite expressing self-satisfaction with their ethical standards and conduct, 57 percent of teenagers agree with the statement, “Successful people do what they have to do to win, even if it involves cheating.” Teachers can lead ethically focused discussions about books like The Outsiders and foster moral consciousness through service projects addressing issues like climate change and income disparities. 

            • Curiosity: Curious mindset, creative problem-solving, divergent thinking – “If adversity strikes,” says Borba, “this strength helps kids stay open to possibilities and find solutions.” Curiosity is an essential skill in a rapidly evolving job market. Teachers can nurture it by asking provocative open-ended questions, designing lessons that make students pause and wonder, scheduling innovation days where teams can explore topics of interest, and providing time to tinker in maker spaces. 

            • Perseverance: Growth mindset, goal setting, learning from failure – “Students who attribute gains to their inner drive are more creative and resilient than those who think they have no control over outcomes,” says Borba. Schools need to temper parents’ overprotective tendencies; for example, a school that forbids parents, starting in third grade, from escorting children to their classrooms and dropping off forgotten assignments or nonessential items. Schools also need to cut back on extrinsic rewards like trophies and stickers, foster an “I got this” attitude to challenging situations, and teach students to set goals and track progress. 

            • Optimism: Optimistic thinking, assertive communication, hope – One in three high-school students report persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, reported a recent study, and instant access to disturbing news is making the world seem volatile and scary. Fortunately, research has shown that explicit, skillful teaching of optimism protects against depression, increases engagement and resilience, and boosts learning and work productivity. In their morning announcements, principals can highlight stories about young people who made a difference; schools can play video clips on hallway screens of inspiring local and national stories; and service projects can give students a chance to make a difference, however small. “Our moral obligation,” Borba concludes, “is to equip this generation with the content and abilities they will need to handle an unpredictable future and thrive. Doing so may be our most important educational task.” 

 “Future-Proofing Students” by Michele Borba in Educational Leadership, May 2022 (Vol. 79, #8, pp. 18-23); Borba’s book is Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #935 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Notable Children's Picture Books of 2021

            In this feature in Language Arts, Jeanne Gilliam Fain, Vera Ahiyya, Elizabeth Bemiss, Janine Schall, Jennifer Summerlin, and Fran Wilson list the books they selected from 538 titles as the best for readers in grades K-8: 

• Above the Rim: How Elgin Baylor Changed Basketball by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Frank Morrison
• All Because You Matter by Tami Charles, illustrated by Bryan Collier
• Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks by Suzanne Slade, illustrated by Cozbi Cabrera
• I Am Every Good Thing by Derrick Barnes, illustrated by Gordon James
• I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott, illustrated by Sydney Smith 
• If Dominican Were a Color by Sili Recio, illustrated by Brianna McCarthy 
• Lift by Minh Le
• On Account of the Gum by Adam Rex 
• Once Upon an Eid: Stories of Hope and Joy by 15 Muslim Voices edited by S.K. Ali and Aisha Saeed 
• Overground Railroad by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James Ransome 
• Packs: Strength in Numbers by Hannah Salyer 
• Swashby and the Sea by Beth Ferry, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal 
• Swish! The Slam-Dunking, Alley-Ooping, High-Flying Harlem Globetrotters by Suzanne Slade, illustrated by Don Tate 
• The Day Saida Arrived by Susana Gomez Redondo, illustrated by Sonja Wimmer 
• The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read by Rita Lorraine Hubbard, illustrated by Oge Mora 
• The Power of Her Pen: The Story of Groundbreaking Journalist Ethel Payne by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by John Parra 
• We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom, illustrated by Michaela Grade 
• What I Like Most by Mary Murphy, illustrated by Zhu Cheng-Liang 
• Winged Wonders: Solving the Monarch Migration Mystery by Meeg Pincus, illustrated by Yas Imamura 
• Write! Write! Write! by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, illustrated by Ryan O’Rourke 
• Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompson-Bigelow 
• Your Place in the Universe by Jason Chin 

 “The 2021 Notable Children’s Books in the English Language Arts” by Jeanne Gilliam Fain, Vera Ahiyya, Elizabeth Bemiss, Janine Schall, Jennifer Summerlin, and Fran Wilson in Language Arts, March 2022 (Vol. 99, #4, pp. 281-290)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #931 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Shifting Feedback Conversations to Results

 (Originally titled: “What Teachers Really Want When It Comes to Feedback”) 

             In this Educational Leadership article, Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) and Laura Link (University of North Dakota) say there’s no shortage of suggestions to teachers from principals, instructional coaches, teammates, and PD providers. But how much of that feedback is helpful? Teachers in a K-12 midwestern school district told Guskey and Link that five types of feedback are truly helpful: 

• Information about student learning – Most teacher evaluations focus on posting lesson objectives, asking higher-order questions, differentiating instruction, and other teacher behaviors. But these don’t resonate with many teachers, and besides, formal observations happen only once or twice a year. “Above all else,” say Guskey and Link, “teachers want to know if they are making a difference for their students” – Are kids “getting it”? Can they solve problems they couldn’t solve before? Do they feel good about themselves as learners? Sharing observations about outcomes like these and what the teacher did to make them happen – that’s solid gold for teachers.
• Local evidence – Most teachers have learned to be skeptical about ideas that supposedly work for other teachers with different students in different contexts. “Eliminating that skepticism,” say Guskey and Link, “requires personal mastery experiences that provide teachers with tangible evidence that the ideas work with their students in their classrooms.”
• Trustworthy assessments – Administrators and school boards use standardized test scores to judge schools’ success, but those results arrive too late to help improve classroom instruction in the here and now. Many teachers look at high-stakes tests with a jaundiced eye, especially if they aren’t aligned with the curriculum they’re asked to teach. What teachers do trust is students’ daily work, their projects and presentations, and data from teacher-made assessments. One of the most powerful improvement dynamics is teachers looking at an error analysis of a common formative assessment and zeroing in on items that need to be retaught using a more-effective strategy.
• Timely feedback – “When it comes to classroom-level strategies or procedures,” say Guskey and Link, “teachers want evidence of improvement quickly, typically within the first few weeks.” Lacking that, teachers often abandon an innovative approach, especially if it comes from outside. That’s not because they’re against change but because they don’t want to waste time on practices that don’t benefit their students. New methods and materials should have built-in assessments that give rapid feedback on what’s working and what isn’t within days or weeks, not months or years.
• Feedback that’s constructive and diplomatic – Guskey and Link say that helpful correctives for teachers parallel what we know about feedback to students: 
• Begin with something positive. 
• Describe non-judgmentally what needs improvement. 
• Offer ideas and practical guidance on an approach that might be more effective. 
• Express belief in the recipient and confidence in success. 

            “Teachers want timely and trustworthy feedback that focuses on their students’ learning and offers practical suggestions for classroom applications,” conclude the authors. “When we offer teachers this type of feedback, they gain meaningful information for improvement and direct evidence that their work makes an important difference.” 

 “What Teachers Really Want When It Comes to Feedback” by Thomas Guskey and Laura Link in Educational Leadership, April 2022 (Vol. 79, #7, pp. 42-48); the authors can be reached at guskey@uky.edu and laura.link@und.edu; a related article by Guskey and Link is summarized in Memo 925.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #931 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Recommended Children's Books on Climate Change

             In this School Library Journal feature, Baltimore librarian Liz Bosarge recommends books for tweens and teens on global ecology: 

Elementary: 

• Living Planet: The Story of Survival on Planet Earth from Natural Disasters to Climate Change by Camilla de la Bédoyère, grade 3-6 
• Climate Action: What Happened and What We Can Do by Seymour Simon, grade 3-6 
• Young Water Protectors: A Story About Standing Rock by Asian Tudor and Kelly Tudor, grades 2-5
• Can You Hear the Trees Talking? Discovering the Hidden Life of the Forest by Peter Wohlleben, grade 3-5 

Middle school: 

• The Beekeepers: How Humans Changed the World of Bumble Bees by Dana Church, grade 6-10
• All the Feelings Under the Sun: How to Deal with Climate Change by Leslie Davenport, grade 6-9
• Be the Change: Rob Greenfield’s Call to Kids Making a Difference in a Messed-Up World, by Rob Greenfield, grade 4-7
• Hothouse Earth: The Climate Crisis and the Importance of Carbon Neutrality by Stephanie McPherson, grade 8-10 
• Imaginary Borders by Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, grade 7-9 
• Planet Ocean: Why We All Need a Healthy Ocean by Patricia Newman, grade 5-8 
• Girl Warriors: How 25 Young Activists Are Saving the Earth by Rachel Sarah, gr. 7-9 
• Seen: Rachel Carson by Birdie Willis, illustrated by Rii Abrego, grade 6-8 
• Earth Squad: 50 People Who Are Saving the Planet by Alexandra Zissu, grade 4-7 

High school: 

• The Story of More (Adapted for Young Adults): How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here by Hope Jahren, grade 8 and up 
• How to Change Everything: The Young Human’s Guide to Protecting the Planet and 
• Each Other by Naomi Klein, grade 8 and up 

 “An Eco-Hero’s Bookshelf” by Liz Bosarge in School Library Journal, March 2022 (Vol. 68, #3, pp. 47-50)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #929 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Dealing with Math Anxiety

             “Up to 30 percent of adults report moderate or severe mathematics anxiety, experiencing fear or dread when encountering mathematics,” report Holly Klee, Michelle Buehl, and Angela Miller (George Mason University) in this article in Theory Into Practice. For many people, math anxiety begins in elementary school and increases as they move through the grades, leading them to avoid courses and careers that involve math. Research points to four variables that are at play with math-anxious students:

• They believe that doing well in math is important. 
• They compare their performance to that of other students and external benchmarks. 
• They strive to not mess up and avoid failure versus mastering the material. 
• They believe they have very little control over how they’ll do. 

Studies have shown there’s no correlation between math anxiety and ability and IQ; when students are anxious, they have difficulty with tasks they were able to perform when their anxiety was low. 

            How does math anxiety make people less capable? Klee, Buehl, and Miller believe it’s because the anxiety reduces working memory. “The cognitive worry experienced by students with mathematics anxiety,” they say, “can occupy a large portion of working memory, leaving less available to process the task at hand… Thus, students with mathematics anxiety are performing two tasks when others are performing one: they are working to solve the problem while also coping with their anxiety.” 

            Klee, Buehl, and Miller suggest six ways for teachers to decrease students’ math anxiety and thus improve their self-efficacy and performance: 

• Conceptual teaching – “The ‘drill and kill’ method of practicing procedures, while easy to implement and effective in producing ‘correct’ answers, does not help students gain deep understanding of mathematics concepts,” say the authors. It’s better to frame goals in terms of understanding versus correctness and good grades, praise students for working hard and explaining their reasoning, and wrap up lessons with a short explanation of the conceptual takeaways. 
• Contextualizing mathematics – Studies show that the more personal and real-world connections students see, the less anxious they are, the more agency they feel, and the better they do. 
• Partner and group work – “Encouraging students to work together to discuss potential solutions,” say the authors, “provides students the opportunity to voice their own understandings and potentially recognize there are multiple ways to find the correct solution, which can also support autonomy.” Working together in pairs or small groups is also reassuring when students realize that they’re not the only ones having difficulty. In addition, they can get insights as they wrestle together with problems and come up with novel solutions. Group work increases student autonomy – a valuable psychological factor in success – and allows the teacher to circulate and get ideas about what’s causing difficulty and how to boost the conceptual level of the material. 
• Formative assessment and feedback – Frequent, low-stakes checks for understanding let the teacher know whether to slow the lesson down or increase the conceptual level, and also give students feedback on their level of understanding – perhaps a sense of mastery. Low-stakes assessments convey the importance of mastery, versus students comparing themselves to peers. Short online quizzes during and after class give students an immediate sense of how they are doing and focus on whether they used successful or unsuccessful strategies. Some teachers ask students to self-report on their level of mastery and confidence and follow up with individual check-ins. 
• How summative assessments are framed – Final exams and end-of-semester tests are when student anxiety is highest, and teachers need to address this head on. Having students talk openly about how they’re feeling before a big test is surprisingly helpful, say the authors: students realize they’re not alone and gain a greater sense of self-efficacy and control. It’s important for teachers to verbally emphasize mastery – This is an opportunity to show what you know – versus performance – I’m looking to catch you on what you don’t know and compare you to your classmates. Teachers should point out that the summative assessment has the same material students have been seeing in formative assessments in recent weeks. It’s also good to be open to feedback on the quality of test questions: if all students got a question wrong, that test item needs to be revised – or the teacher needs to change how the concept was taught. 
• Student awareness of strategies to address math anxiety – “One of the most powerful things we can do as educators is to help students be aware of the anxiety they are feeling,” say Klee, Buehl, and Miller. Polling students on their anxiety on the first day of class reveals that students are not alone in the way they are feeling, which is tremendously reassuring. “Hearing anxiety is normal seems to function as a form of social persuasion that increases self-efficacy beliefs and decreases anxiety,” they say. “Checking in throughout the semester, especially around exams, continues this acknowledgement from educators and increases students’ sense of autonomy. Making anxiety a purposeful conversation is an important strategy for reducing it.” One study showed that getting students to write about their worries just before an exam improved performance and speeded up processing time, indicating that working memory had been improved by neutralizing some of those anxious thoughts. Mindfulness interventions have also been shown to improve performance for math-anxious students. 

 “Strategies for Alleviating Students’ Math Anxiety: Control-Value Theory in Practice” by Holly Klee, Michelle Buehl, and Angela Miller in Theory Into Practice, Winter 2022 (Vol. 61, #1, pp.49-61); the authors can be reached at hklee@gmu.edu, mbuehl@gmu.edu, and amille35@gmu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #929 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Karin Chenoweth on the Secret Sauce of Gap-Closing Districts

            In the concluding chapter in her book on six beat-the-odds school districts, Karin Chenoweth (The Education Trust) ponders how to summarize the key ingredients. She noticed a number of seemingly important elements: passionate, hard-working teachers; a coherent reading program; an effective assessment system; a good student management program; well-targeted grants. “As nice as it would be to boil the success of these districts down to a couple of those things,” says Chenoweth, “I don’t think the answer lies in that direction. After all, there are plenty of passionate, hard-working teachers in ineffective districts, and the same can be said about good reading programs, assessments, data systems, and grant programs.” 

            She believes that what explains these districts’ remarkable achievements is their “ethos,” which was powerfully summed up by Ronald Edmonds in a 1979 article: a culture in which “it is incumbent on all personnel to be instructionally effective for all pupils.” Chenoweth unpacks Edmonds’s statement: 

• Incumbent – Educators have internalized the responsibility to ensure that kids get smarter, and they (the educators) are willing to be accountable for that. 
• All personnel – Getting results is not the sole responsibility of individual teachers but of every adult in the building, including cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and custodians. 
• Instructionally effective – This is broadly defined, encompassing curriculum, schedules, materials, pedagogy, interventions, engagement, and encouragement. 
• All pupils – This includes children living in poverty, African-American children, and others who are left out of school success in far too many U.S. schools. 

The districts Chenoweth describes – and the schools she’s written about in her other books – “are filled with adults who feel it incumbent on themselves to be instructionally effective for all kids.” Here’s what that looks like in concrete terms: 

• Leadership – “None of the leaders in this book is a fluffy, utopian idealist,” says Chenoweth. “All are hard-headed career educators who have seen the power schools have to change lives… They aren’t waiting for the cavalry to teach the kids; they are the cavalry.” As one of the superintendents put it, educators “can change the path of poverty.” Leaders communicated a clear, ambitious vision and set measurable goals (in one case, that no fourth grader would fail the state reading test and have to repeat the grade). Notably, none of the district leaders blamed educators for student failure; rather, says Chenoweth, they expected principals, teachers, and other staff members “to be curious and willing to learn, improve, and lead efforts to find solutions to problems.” 
• Scientific method – A common theme in the districts was the systematic application of these steps:
• Identify an important problem. 
• Propose a solution based on local data and existing research. 
• Implement it. 
• Gather and analyze data to see if the problem was solved. 
• If it was, identify the reasons and extend and expand the solution. 
• If it wasn’t solved, identify the reasons and either adjust or start over. 

“When you do that week after week, month after month, year after year, you start seeing results,”   said an Oklahoma superintendent. This is not easy work, says Chenoweth, and many educators aren’t good at the last three steps. But when the scientific method is applied, “This way of working by its very nature builds leadership capacity throughout schools and districts, because ideas and solutions come from everywhere. A paraeducator’s insight into why a student may be having trouble with a particular concept or skill is just as valuable as those of a teacher, principal, or superintendent. A bus driver or school secretary may have information about a student that no other professional in the building knows. A brand-new teacher might have better training in reading or math instruction than a veteran one.” With common metrics of success and continual examination of data, schools can be creative, try new things, and find the best solutions for kids. 

• Systems of support – Chenoweth quotes Paul Zavitkovsky of the University of Illinois/Chicago: “The key to a high-performing school is that it becomes a community where adult learning is as important as kid learning is. And because of the infrastructure of American schools… you’re fighting an uphill battle to create the time and the space to do systematic adult learning where adults can really learn their way through chronic problems together.” The districts Chenoweth profiled won this battle by: 
• Effective teamwork – Teacher teams pored over assessment data, behavioral data, attendance data, and student work and thought deeply about the effects of their work, what they should do more of, and what they should do less of; 
• Common assessments – “Teachers need to be looking at how students did on the same assessment given at roughly the same time,” says Chenoweth… “Without common data there is no real way to expose and learn from expertise.” This means that teacher teams agree on what their students should be learning, and then experiment with how to teach it.
• A culture of trust – The question often heard in highly productive meetings: Your kids are doing better than mine; what are you doing? “It is long past time to acknowledge that it is impossible for individual educators to know all there is to know about making kids smarter,” says Chenoweth. “There is simply too much to know. It is only by pooling their knowledge and learning from expertise that educators can possibly expect to help all kids.”
• Using the research on how people learn – The districts Chenoweth chose mostly figured this out for themselves. It would be more efficient, she says, for districts to draw on the rich insights on human learning from neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychology. -
• Understanding that the work is never done – “There is always another problem to solve,” she says, “more opportunities to provide for children, better ways of doing things, higher standards to reach.” 

 “So, to sum up,” says Chenoweth, “the common elements of these districts are leadership that defines a vision of high expectations for all students and builds a culture where all adults in the system feel it incumbent to make kids smarter; a process to guide the adults in the district to making better decisions while growing their ability to do so using the scientific method; and systems to undergird that improvement process.” 

            Why aren’t more districts implementing these ideas? Why do economic and racial achievement gaps continue to be so wide across the nation? Chenoweth points to these factors: 

• It’s hard to translate research into practice. 
• Many educators resist the idea that others have something to teach them. 
• Most school and district leaders don’t understand how to lead improvement. 
• We as a nation have not fully committed to making all kids smarter. 
• Not everyone agrees that all kids can get smarter. 
• Local newspaper reporters aren’t effectively describing what’s happening in schools. 
• Some Americans “have become discouraged about whether public schools can do much to help kids become smart,” says Chenoweth. “Others have become convinced that schools can but won’t.” 

“I wrote this book hoping to counter such pessimism,” she concludes. “The districts I have profiled… provide clear arguments against the idea that public schools are incapable of improvement and excellence. They demonstrate that our future fellow citizens – children from all backgrounds – are capable of getting smarter and that the efforts of ordinary educators, when marshaled together, can help them do so. Kids can get smarter. We can all get smarter. We just have to muster the will to do so.” 

“We Can All Get Smarter” by Karin Chenoweth in her book, Districts That Succeed: Breaking the Correlation Between Race, Poverty, and Achievement (Harvard Education Press, 2021, pp. 129-152); Chenoweth can be reached at kchenoweth@edtrust.org.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #929 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Intervening Early to Improve Students' Math Self-Efficacy

            In this article in Theory Into Practice, Jeesoo Lee, Hyun Ji Lee, and Mimi Bong (Korea University) say that self-efficacy “is arguably the most powerful motivational resource that drives individuals to engage, persevere, and accomplish goals in various domains.” In classrooms, self-efficacy is “the strongest predictor of students’ academic achievement.” 

            But self-efficacy in math – students’ belief that their efforts will produce success – declines during the elementary grades. Lee, Lee, and Bong suggest the following causes: 

• There’s a shift from a mastery orientation toward math in the lower elementary grades to a performance orientation in the upper grades, with increasing emphasis on demonstrating one’s ability, outperforming peers, and getting high test scores. 
• As they encounter frustration in math, many students adopt a fixed mindset about math ability – that it’s innate, you either have it or you don’t – versus a growth mindset – that ability can be developed. 
• Young children initially believe that peers who work hard at math have high ability, but they gradually shift to believing that having to put in a lot of effort for the same result is a sign of less ability. 
• Students are exposed to the belief that boys are naturally better at math than girls, triggering stereotype threat – this despite the fact that in the elementary grades, girls do as well as, or better than, boys. 

These factors undermine elementary students’ self-efficacy in math – especially girls’. The authors say it’s urgent to counteract this negative trend before students reach adolescence, and suggest communicating these core messages to all students: 

• Anyone can get smart and do well at math. Students need to hear loud and clear that math ability improves with effort and practice. A growth mindset message should be conveyed without referring to the opposite mindset, say the authors, because that “could inadvertently strengthen the fixed mindset of children who already hold this undesirable belief.” 
• My brain is like a muscle, and I can train my math muscles. Giving students vivid examples of neural plasticity – for example, how aspiring London cabbies’ brains change as they study for The Knowledge (the extraordinarily difficult test to get a London taxi license) – and making an explicit link to math ability. 
• I can do math better by working hard, using good strategies, and getting help. Studies have shown the efficacy of students embracing this three-part belief. 
• Overcoming difficulty is part of doing well in math. It’s helpful to tell analogous stories of athletes and musicians who overcame handicaps and challenges to master their skills. 
• Girls can perform just as well at math as boys. The authors suggest classroom activities such as Draw a Mathematician and tabulating responses, or guessing the occupation of a series of photos of people who turn out to have counter-stereotypical jobs (e.g., a male nurse, female mathematician), and then following up by eliciting from students the negative consequences of holding gender stereotypes. Again, the authors say that “it is essential not to explicitly inform children of the stereotype because direct messaging can trigger the stereotype threat effect.” 

            Conveying these messages well can change students’ fixed mindsets and gender stereotypical beliefs. The messages are most effective if they are presented in engaging classroom activities that make good use of the following processes: 

• Internalization – Students might be asked to write a letter to a friend or a struggling student, explaining what they’ve learned about brain plasticity or gender stereotypes. 
• Modeling – “Involving successful figures or influential role models in the intervention makes the delivery of messages more effective,” say the authors – another student, a cartoon character, or a story to which students can relate. 
• Attributional feedback and strategy – Students might be presented with the story of two people who tried hard: one succeeded, the other didn’t – the difference was strategies. 
• Goal-setting – If targets are specific, short-term, and seem attainable, they can increase self-efficacy and allow students to measure progress on the road to mastery. 
• Interest – The concept of neural plasticity is not easy for young children to grasp, say the authors, so it needs to be embedded in a variety of fun activities – for example, after learning about the parts of the brain, coloring in areas used by a pianist or someone solving a math puzzle. 
• Surprise – A good example is students guessing wrong about the professions of people working outside stereotypical occupations. 

The authors say it’s better to conduct these activities with a classroom of students rather than individually, because some of the beliefs being counteracted are social in nature. It’s also important that teachers and parents be included in the interventions, since these adults have a major impact on the way children think about their math ability. 

            If this intervention is handled well, conclude the authors, children’s math self-efficacy will improve markedly and they “can face math with stronger convictions in their abilities to succeed and greater tenacity to overcome challenges and setbacks.” 

 “Boosting Children’s Math Self-Efficacy by Enriching Their Growth Mindsets and Gender-Fair Beliefs” by Jeesoo Lee, Hyun Ji Lee, and Mimi Bong in Theory Into Practice, Winter 2022 (Vol. 61, #1, pp. 35-48); Bong can be reached at mimibong@korea.ac.kr.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #928 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

The Story Behind Chicago Schools' Improvement from 1987 to 2015

             In this chapter from her book describing five school districts that have broken the all-too-common correlation of race, poverty, and achievement, Karin Chenoweth (The Education Trust) tells how the Chicago Public Schools, over nearly three decades, brought about significant improvements in student performance. Citing Sean Reardon’s massive analysis of U.S. test scores from 2009 to 2015, Chenoweth says that Chicago “grew” students six academic years in five calendar years. In other words, third graders who had been more than a grade level behind were pretty much at the national average as eighth graders. Other results: 

• On the NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA), Chicago improved steadily from 2002 to 2015.
• Once far below other TUDA districts, in recent years Chicago has matched or exceeded many others and is near the national average. 
• In 2011, 48 percent of Chicago fourth graders met basic standards for reading; four years later, 67 percent of the same cohort met basic reading standards in eighth grade. 
• In 2015, only 2 percent of fourth graders read at an advanced level; in 2019, 7 percent of eighth graders were advanced (compared to 4 percent nationally). 
• From 2006 to 2018, the high-school graduation rate moved from 57 to 76 percent (counting the alternative schools, it’s 81 percent). 
• Almost half of Chicago high-school graduates enroll immediately in a four-year college and another 22 percent in a two-year college – rates higher than the rest of the nation. 
• On state assessments in 2017, Chicago’s students did better than the Illinois average. 
• In 2015, white and black students outperformed same-race students across the state. 
• An official in the Chicago Teachers Union told Chenoweth that when he arrived in the city in the late 1990s, he didn’t know a single teacher whose children attended city schools; by 2017, he didn’t know any teachers his age or younger whose children didn’t attend CPS. 

Many people are incredulous when told about Chicago’s success, but the data speak for themselves, says Chenoweth, adding, “There is an important conversation to have about why people were surprised and why, even years after [Reardon’s] analysis, you probably still haven’t heard about Chicago’s improvement.” 

            What accounts for this track record? Chenoweth says it all started in 1987 when the newly elected mayor, Harold Washington, convened a community-wide meeting and heard a torrent of complaints about the schools. Shortly after that, William Bennett, the U.S. Secretary of Education, visited Chicago and said its schools were the “worst” in the nation. The energy generated by these two events set in motion a series of reforms in governance, policy, data collection, and training. Here’s a brief summary: 

• Radical decentralization – In 1988, the Illinois legislature passed the Chicago School Reform Act, which created local school councils in every one of the city’s 542 schools. Each council’s elected members (six parents, two community members, two teachers, and a student member in high schools) had the power to hire and fire the principal, approve the school improvement plan, and allocate the school’s Title I budget and any grant money. This move to hyperlocal control of schools was an attempt to break the grip of the central office, stop patronage appointment of principals, and focus funds on each school’s needs. 
• Journalistic accountability – Two local foundations were persuaded to fund Catalyst Chicago, a new publication devoted entirely to covering the schools, and it published for 25 years, at which point it was folded into the Chicago Reporter, published by a faith-based organization. “Catalyst was brutal,” says Chenoweth. “It documented dirty buildings and professional malfeasance, drooping test scores and staff turnover, teacher shortages, exclusionary discipline, and overcrowding.” The fact that it covered bad news so honestly gave it real credibility when it reported good news. Catalyst became required reading for many parents, community members, principals, teachers, and district leaders. 
• University brainpower – The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, led by Anthony Bryk, began a long-term study of the impact of the 1988 Reform Act. Funded by a major grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and subsequently by other benefactors and the Annenberg Foundation, Bryk and his colleagues (“a set of education research superstars,” says Chenoweth) were able to dig deeply into the details of the schools and document efforts to improve teaching, leadership, and learning. Catalyst Chicago covered the researchers’ reports on an ongoing basis, bringing key insights to educators and the broader community. “None of this was quick or easy,” says Chenoweth. “There were fits and starts and difficult conversations with district officials who weren’t always happy with the Consortium’s findings. They rarely made for good press releases.”
• Strong and consistent central leadership – In 1995, Chicago mayor Richard Daley Jr., impatient with the slow improvement in test scores, convinced the state to enact a second reform bill that gave him more control over the school board and superintendent. The district now had a governance structure that was at once radically decentralized and highly centralized. Daley appointed Paul Vallas as CEO – a man with no school experience but great management skills – and he proceeded to straighten out the finances, begin a massive building and renovation project, and reform the bureaucracy. In 2001, Vallas was succeeded by Arne Duncan, who served until 2009, so Chicago had energetic, steady central leadership for eleven years – rare in an urban district. 
• New schools – Duncan partnered with the business community (including several hedge fund managers) to foster the creation of 100 new schools, both charter and non-charter. Their performance was similar to that of other Chicago public schools. 
• Improved instruction – A respected chief education officer, former CPS principal Barbara Eason-Watkins, led a major effort to improve classroom teaching, including the Chicago Reading Initiative led by literacy expert Timothy Shanahan. He revamped the literacy curriculum and sent reading specialists to 114 schools. Chicago’s K-8 structure necessitated another major staff development effort – training and certifying middle-school teachers who didn’t meet No Child Left Behind “highly qualified” standard. This ten-year investment in pedagogy was funded by the Chicago Community Trust, one of the city’s biggest philanthropies. 
• Research insights – In 1998, Bryk’s team published a study of how decentralization was working. It raised big concerns about equity – the poorest schools weren’t making as much progress as those in more-affluent neighborhoods – and dug deeper into the data to identify the characteristics of successful schools in all parts of the city. The two most notable findings were: (a) “relational trust” among educators, parents, and the community was a key success factor; and (b) identifying several key indicators of ninth graders not on track for graduation and urging early intervention. These and other research findings gave Chicago principals a clear path forward, focusing their leadership on factors that actually improved student success. One result was educators fretting less about test scores and addressing the antecedents in classrooms that ultimately drive better scores. The Consortium continues to track multiple streams of data and report to the community on progress and problems. 
• Tuning in on key school effectiveness factors – In 2010, the Consortium published another study comparing 100 schools that improved and 100 that didn’t. The two sets of schools had similar demographics and other characteristics, including principals who worked hard and cared deeply about improvement. What made some schools more effective than was a set of organizational characteristics that greatly amplified impact of teachers’ daily work with students. Those elements, updating the effective schools research of Ronald Edmonds and Michael Rutter et al., were:
• Principals focused on results and school improvement; 
• A safe and supportive school culture with high expectations; 
• Engaging teaching pointed toward challenging, worthwhile objectives; 
• Teachers collaborating and striving for excellence; 
• Partnering with families and the community. 

“When schools had all five essentials firmly in place,” says Chenoweth, “they were ten times as likely to improve than if they didn’t.” These, along with test scores, became the elements of the district’s accountability efforts, and still are today. 

• Transforming school leadership – University and district leaders realized that principals were the key to individual teachers’ success with students, and ramped up efforts to train and recruit effective school leaders. Training programs at the University of Illinois/ Chicago and New Leaders for New Schools used selective enrollment, a cohort model, paid internships, and ongoing coaching to launch more than 350 principals. Subsequent research confirmed that the new principals were more successful at building the five key correlates of good schools, with test scores, a lagging indicator, following along. An important part of this effort was convincing local school councils to hire the new wave of school leaders who didn’t follow the traditional route of serving for many years as assistant principals. District leaders also had to persuade principals not to leave for greener pastures. 
• High standards and a guaranteed and viable curriculum – At one point a few years ago, a reporter pushed Chicago superintendent Janice Jackson on the ambitious goals being set for students. Was she trying to “impose middle-class values” on Chicago kids, the reporter wanted to know. “At the core of what I heard,” said Jackson, “is why are you expecting low-income, predominantly black and Latino kids in Chicago to do what everybody else is doing throughout the United States? That’s what I heard. I believe everybody wants to learn, everybody wants a good education and access to the American Dream, however you define that.” 

            Chicago’s steady progress has plateaued in the last few years, with instability in district leadership, teacher strikes, and the impact of the pandemic. But what the city’s schools accomplished over thirty years provides key insights for other districts, says Chenoweth: “a community-wide commitment to improving the lives of children by improving schools; a willingness to seek out facts in order to make better decisions; and an agreement that the job of school districts is to help principals organize their schools in ways that help kids get smarter.”  

“The Work of a Generation” by Karin Chenoweth, a chapter in her book, Districts That Succeed (Harvard Education Press, 2021, pp. 27-59); Chenoweth can be reached at kchenoweth@edtrust.org.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #928 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.