Skate Providence

A little tour with some legends, starting at my beloved Neutaconkanut.

Student & Task Models in the Common Core Revisited

I tried using the basic psychometric concept of student and task models to look at the structure of the Common Core ELA standards. My premise was that an individual grade level standard represents the student model, or "what we want to say about what a student knows or can do—aspects of their knowledge or skill." For example the grade 9-10 version of reading literature standard 5:

Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.

This is a particular manifestation of the anchor College and Career Readiness Standard 5:

Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.

Which is rather similar to a standard from the English (that is for England) 2007 Programme of Study for Key Stage 4:

Students should be able to understand how meaning is constructed withinIt’s not too late for the Washington Post to insist that the City Council put Dr. Sandy Sanford, former Chancellor Rhee, Chancellor Henderson, former OSSE head Deborah Gist and others under oath. sentences and across texts as a whole.

I would note that deleting the word "understand" from standards is a very important ideological point in American standards politics. It is kind of a dog-whistle, but also emphasizes the collapsing of the student and task model in American standards, particularly the Common Core. The goals of learning, this approach says, should avoid fuzzy abstraction and focus on observable outcomes (but don't say "outcomes," that's another dog-whistle).

On the other hand, however, I keep forgetting that the standards also say "Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades."

So the "narrow" grade 9-10 literature standard 5 really also includes:

• Recognize common types of texts (e.g., storybooks, poems).
• Explain major differences between books that tell stories and books that give information, drawing on a wide reading of a range of text types.
• Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.
• Refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems when writing or speaking about a text, using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza; describe how each successive part builds on earlier sections.
• Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.
• Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.
• Analyze how a particular sentence, chapter, scene, or stanza fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the theme, setting, or plot.
• Analyze how a drama’s or poem’s form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning.
• Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style.

Exactly how this ever growing list of standards is meant to be addressed is not spelled out. Should there be 10th grade questions about the kindergarten "types of texts" standards, just with an appropriately 10th grade range of text types? There's no real indication that there shouldn't be, or particular reason not to.

If we want to do a full comparison with the single standard from the English Programme of Study, we would also include the informational text standards:

• Identify the front cover, back cover, and title page of a book.
• Know and use various text features (e.g., headings, tables of contents, glossaries, electronic menus, icons) to locate key facts or information in a text.
• Know and use various text features (e.g., captions, bold print, subheadings, glossaries, indexes, electronic menus, icons) to locate key facts or information in a text efficiently.
• Use text features and search tools (e.g., key words, sidebars, hyperlinks) to locate information relevant to a given topic efficiently.
• Describe the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text.
• Compare and contrast the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in two or more texts.
• Analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, or section fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the ideas.
• Analyze the structure an author uses to organize a text, including how the major sections contribute to the whole and to the development of the ideas.
• Analyze in detail the structure of a specific paragraph in a text, including the role of particular sentences in developing and refining a key concept.
• Analyze in detail how an author’s ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs, or larger portions of a text (e.g., a section or chapter).

And we also have History/Social Studies versions:

• Describe how a text presents information (e.g., sequentially, comparatively, causally).
• Analyze how a text uses structure to emphasize key points or advance an explanation or analysis.

And science (I'm just going up to 10th grade, btw):

• Analyze the structure an author uses to organize a text, including how the major sections contribute to the whole and to an understanding of the topic.
• Analyze the structure of the relationships among concepts in a text, including relationships among key terms (e.g., force, friction, reaction force, energy).

So... what the hell does all that add up to? Who knows? It isn't "fewer, clearer," that's for sure. And I don't understand people who say these standards make more sense the longer you study them.

But anyhow, if we're looking at this in terms of a student model/task model frame, I think one can read the individual grade level standards as the task model and the CCRS anchor as the student model. If you read the individual standards as "the situations we can set up in the world, in which we will observe the student say or do something that gives us clues about the knowledge or skill we’ve built into the student model," it all hangs together better, and it would make sense that the people from ACT and The College Board who we were originally told designed the standards would like that structure.

Unfortunately, Not Out In Time for Teacher Appreciation Day

Providence Grays 2013 Brochure

Enjoy.

New National

I'm Proud to be Represented by Sheldon Whitehouse

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

First Murdoch, Now Bloomberg

Natasha Lennard:

Following revelations that Bloomberg News reporters had used the Bloomberg terminals — ubiquitous in the finance sector — to spy on some banker activity, the Financial Times reported Tuesday that thousands of private messages sent between terminal users have been leaked online and available for public view for some time. The latest news “undermin[es] he company’s attempts to restore faith in its ability to keep client data confidential as it scrambles to allay clients’ privacy concerns.”

Yes, the case for giant databases of sensitive student information just gets better and better.

What Jobs Are These Kids Going to Get? WHAT JOBS, WHERE, PAYING WHAT?!?

Mike Petrilli:

Let's imagine that our schools can help the average child born into poverty do somewhat better. Let's say that with a combination of talented and well-trained teachers, a rich and rigorous curriculum, lots of supports, and strong leadership, we're able to get poor students, on average, to a 10th-grade level by the time they graduate high school. Suddenly they can attend a community college, or even a four-year university, without starting in remedial education. They are much more likely to graduate, at least with an associate's degree or a technical credential. Rather than making minimum wage, they will make a living wage.

They are less likely to get pregnant as teens, or end up in prison, or drop out of the workforce. Their children wouldn't be born poor—they would be born middle class. This would be transformative.

Notice the key assumption built into this "theory of action": reading and math matter a lot. Getting to the 10th-grade level instead of the 8th-grade level (even as measured by rinky-dinky standardized tests) would make a meaningful difference in real lives. With that assumption in place, it's not crazy—in fact, it's perfectly rational—to hold schools accountable for helping their students make progress every year with their reading and math skills. It's smart to put in place clear, high standards—let's call them common-core standards—that will delineate the path from poverty to prosperity, that will help schools and teachers focus on the knowledge and skills that matter most, and will get students to true readiness for college and career by the age of 18.

So Deborah, are you ready for the big question, the kicker, the heart of the matter?

The key assumption, the kicker, the heart of the matter is, would there be jobs paying a living wage for all these community college graduates? Even the kids who pick exactly right and get, say, the exact kind of welding certification that is needed when they graduate, how secure is a job like that now? Think it'll last 10 years? Do you know how mediocre the pay for those jobs is now even though the employers can't fill them? Think about how much less they'd pay if there was a glut of newly certified applicants.

And that's leaving out the fact that all the jobs that are currently held by the working poor still have to be done by somebody. Are we going to massively expand low-wage immigration to make up for the ever increasing pool of jobs native-born Americans "won't do?" And then, once our awesome new education system gets their children through college, will we have to import a whole new batch of immigrants for the next generation of service workers?

Petrilli:

The typical high-poverty school is, and has always been, pretty mediocre. That's not an indictment of the people who work in these schools; the problem is the system. And it's not unique to education. Any big, bureaucratic government agency is going to struggle to achieve effectiveness, much less excellence. (Think the DMV.) Heck, even most large, private-sector companies are pretty lame, especially ones that don't face much competition. (Think the electric company.) Layer on top of that all of the distracting demands placed upon schools, the fragmented nature of education governance, and, in some places at least, too few resources, and it would be a miracle if the typical high-poverty public school were good, much less great.

Yes, "the typical high-poverty school is, and has always been, pretty mediocre," BECAUSE OF THE HIGH-POVERTY. If the problem was "the system," all of our schools would be equally bad, and in fact, all the schools everywhere would be bad, because "the system" per se isn't that different around the world.

If the argument has to end up with "and pretty much all large organizations suck anyway, so whatever," you're losing.

Last Gasp of the Old Guard

I Hate Music Too!

Student & Task Models in the Common Core

Tom Sgouros keeps dragging me into the psychometric weeds and was trying to explain the concept of "theta" in psychometrics last week. I ended up reading some of this paper on Psychometric Principles in Student Assessment, including this paragraph:

The assessment design framework provides a way of thinking about psychometrics that relates what we observe to what we infer. The models of the evidence-centered design framework are illustrated in Figure 1. The student model, at the far left, concerns what we want to say about what a student knows or can do—aspects of their knowledge or skill. Following a tradition in psychometrics, we label this “θ” (theta). This label may stand for something rather simple, like a single category of knowledge such as vocabulary usage, or something much more complex, like a set of variables that concern which strategies a student can bring to bear on mixed-number subtraction problems and under what conditions she uses which ones. The task model, at the far right, concerns the situations we can set up in the world, in which we will observe the student say or do something that gives us clues about the knowledge or skill we’ve built into the student model. Between the student and task model are the scoring model and the measurement model, through which we reason from what we observe in performances to what we infer about a student.

This gives me a little more language to describe my most basic reaction to the Common Core ELA. I think the most fundamental design principle in the CC is to collapse the task model and student model as much as possible.

Picking one example quickly, here's 2.2b from the English (that is for England) 2007 Programme of Study for Key Stage 4:

Students should be able to understand how meaning is constructed within sentences and across texts as a whole.

You can see that a broad range of tasks could address this student model. You can also see that it would be easy to end up with a task model which does not completely cover to the theoretical student model.

The equivalent in the Common Core would be:

Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.

If this is the student model, and the task model is "the situations we can set up in the world, in which we will observe the student say or do something that gives us clues about the knowledge or skill we’ve built into the student model," how much difference is there between the two here?

To be clear, I don't think my observation here is controversial. However, I haven't seen it discussed -- because there has been little serious analysis of the structure or design of the Common Core ELA. My complaint is that as a result, the student model is way to narrow, specific and incomplete to represent what we really want students to know and be able to do.

I'm Proud to be Represented by Carmen Castillo

Everything Is Worse When You Don't Have Enough Money

Carol Lloyd:

When Lutz opened her letter from the San Francisco Unified School District to learn her daughter had landed a spot at Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, she felt optimistic — lackluster test scores notwithstanding. On the tour Lutz had noticed the small class sizes, the beautiful classrooms filled with light, and the civil rights theme embodied by the rainbow coalition of children beginning their day with a “pledge of allegiance to the world.”

She joined a fundraising nonprofit founded to help raise money for the school from the surrounding neighborhood. That's when Lutz got a glimpse of the hostility between a few of the parents — mostly white and middle-class — and the new African-American principal. “I thought, what have I gotten myself into?”

The fighting was “so unpleasant,” Lutz shifted her focus to co-chair the parent-faculty club. Compared to neighboring schools with turbocharged PTAs, the school’s fundraising paled in comparison. “Teachers even complained about not having the most basic of supplies,” explained one mother. So with a small group of zealous parents, Lutz helped organize events that brought in some $16,000. While the money would have been needed either way, the rising enrollment of more affluent families tipped the scales and changed the school's budgeting for the worse. As the percentage of low-income students and English language learners fell, the school lost funding that helped support teacher aides and the other extra staff. “I think there was a lot of resentment about that,” says long-time Harvey Milk parent Jennifer Friedenbach. (Tracy Peoples, the principal, did not respond to requests for an interview.)

When the YMCA aftercare program asked the parent club to send an email about how to sign up for the program, Lutz found herself on the defensive. One mother — who, like Lutz, is white — objected that email communication would exclude families who most needed aftercare. When Lutz explained that there was room for every child and no one would be excluded, she says she received emails “accusing me of being racist and being an elitist and catering to certain parts of the school. The level of vitriol was off the chart.”

On one hand, yes, these are complex issues, and as it turns out, I don't feel very comfortable with either the affluent white parents at the girl's pre-school or the parents at our daughter's public school, so I've avoided getting very involved with either, which just means I'm a cranky, opinionated misanthrope. I'm sure everyone mentioned in the article would just get on my nerves.

But anyhow, reading over Lloyd's article, it is clear that everything is worse because the school doesn't have enough money:

And for parents whose school becomes a spectacle of infighting, the solution is often to lie low and reduce involvement, or move schools. “Now nobody wants to get involved or raise money,” says Lutz, with a weary sigh. “Since then we’ve lost our parent liaison, our reading specialist, and I think our arts, science enrichment, and civil rights camps will go by the wayside, too.”

We can wring our hands over the nuances of diversity and gentrification, but the fundamental problem is that the school's budget isn't covering a full program, and distracting people's attention away from that fact ensures it will not be addressed.

And indeed, one of the main reasons you want a mixed income student body is so that more affluent parents will lobby the government for increased school funding. If they think they're there to run bake sales, they're missing the point.

The Progressive Reading Instruction Straw Man

Deborah Meier:

Progressive preschools never rejected a rich reading culture or knowing facts as "developmentally inappropriate." They just didn't think you needed direct instruction to kick in this love of reading, of hobbies, of facts, of curiosity, of indefatigable and repetitive practice in subjects and skills they were fascinated by. The kids come to us with curiosity—and our job is to extend it. Progressives understood that the playful mindset that serious learning depends on is too often silenced in school. For example, I frequently step into classrooms where well-meaning teachers are doing as they are told: stopping at the end of every paragraph or page to ask didactic questions that turn great stories into "lessons" with "objectives" that can be "measured." That's hardly likely to whet children's appetite for "more, more."

How Are Those SIG Schools Doing?

Well, all the "persistently low performing" elementary and middle schools that received SIG-funded interventions are clocking in under 50 for mean student growth percentile in reading, so, I guess not so good? At least according to RIDE's favorite metric.

Pleasant View and Sackett Street are doing a bit better in math, at least.

Also, I have seen measurable improvement in my ollie technique after practicing the last three days in the Sackett Street school parking lot.

2012 RI Principal of the Year's School Posts Second Lowest Math Growth in the State

Unless I'm reading this wrong, last year while Veazie Street School Principal Susan Chin was named RI Elementary Principal of the Year, her students were well on their way to posting the second lowest student growth percentile in math in the state (23).

Chin is considered one of the most successful leaders in Providence. A 26-year veteran of the Providence school system, Chin came to Veazie Street in 2007 when it was the worst-performing elementary school in the state.

Veazie Street is now one of the schools that is making substantial gains in English and math, among the highest in the state.

What does any of that mean? Who knows!?!

Anyhow, if you follow the link, I've highlighted Veazie, Reservoir and Vartan Gregorian Elementary. If you flip between subjects and years (above the graph at right), you can see how much the scores can jump around, and if you're actually comparing two schools, it can be pretty extreme. Veazie and Gregorian had the same reading SGP last year, and they're 25 points apart this year.

The Story from Pawtucket: Business as Usual from RIDE

Anonymous:

At the start of last year, both Shea and Tolman High (the only two non-charter public high schools in Pawtucket) were told that they had failed to make AYP as per NCLB and would have to undergo transformation. Note that since RI has accepted RttT, last year was the last possible year that this could have happened.

Despite high poverty, transience, ESL population, etc. the only AYP target that Shea had failed to meet was for graduation rate. It had remained stagnant at about 59% for three years, just barely failing to meet the target of 60%.

When the announcement was made last year that we were to undergo transformation, we were told that this would involve at the very least the removal of our principal (a fantastic, very bright, and driven man who had been principal for about ten years and whose leadership was one of the greatest reasons we had managed to make AYP in every other required category). As we had only failed to make AYP by a fraction of a percent, and we knew that a high transience rate contributed greatly to our low graduation rate, teachers and other stakeholders scrambled to locate students who had simply disappeared over the years.