We Thought We Should Mention

This recent Education Week Teacher article, “Survey: Teachers Place Little Value on Standardized Tests” prompts the consideration of the purposes of standardized testing in the United States. A recent report published jointly by Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations states that only 28% of educators believe the state-required standardized tests inform or gauge student achievement.

Additionally, survey respondents worried that many students fail to take standardized test seriously and therefore, do not perform as well as they do on quizzes and test administered during classroom instruction.

It’s important to point out, however, that standardized testing can actually be used to inform instruction if those assessments have been linked to The Lexile^® Framework for Reading and The Quantile^® Framework for Mathematics. When standardized tests are linked to these frameworks student score reports can identify their levels of ability, monitor growth over time, and inform instruction that in a way that allows educators to target student ability levels for both reading and mathematics.

The Lexile framework offers a developmental scale that teachers can use to match text to a student’s reading ability. The Lexile Find a Book site offers an abundance of book titles with Lexile measures so that parents and teachers can match the material appropriate to the student’s interest and reading ability level. The Quantile framework is another developmental scale that teachers can use to match student’s mathematics ability to the difficulty of mathematics topics at the introductory level. These various topics in mathematics can be found at the Quantile website where most major skills and concepts have been aligned to state standards.

If standardized tests are linked to The Lexile Framework for Reading or to The Quantile Framework for Mathematics, the assessment allows educators to differentiate in meaningful ways.  If you haven’t already check out these valuable resources, be sure to take a look.

In the move away from the teacher-centered classroom towards a student-centered one, a classroom is often set up in “pods” of desks rather than in rows.  Most tasks are done in cooperative learning groups rather than the teacher lecturing to the class.  Many educators and parents consider the student-centered classroom the ideal.  But in the move towards the learner-centered classroom, ironically, a third to half of learning styles may not be addressed if teachers rely heavily on cooperative and collaborative learning.

In Susan Cain’s Ted Talks video, “The Power of Introverts,” she expresses concern regarding the over-emphasis on group learning in the classroom and the challenges it presents for the introvert.  She recognizes that extroversion has become the ideal in the United States and that introversion tends to be looked down upon.  History shows us though that many of our most revered thinkers were introverts who did their best work with quiet strength and often in isolation: Ghandi, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Rosa Parks, and Steve Wozniak, to name but a few.
 
The student-centered classroomhas its roots in the educational philosophy of John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky.  Both of these philosophers asserted that learning is a social process.  Consequently, “student centered” tends to mean “group work.”  

Introverts generally do their best thinking alone.  They tend to prefer listening over talking.  Introverts are energized when they are by themselves or in small, well chosen, groups of people.  It is a basic personality trait with which people are born.  The classroom that requires introverts to think and work constantly in groups does not play to the strengths of students with introverted personalities.   That’s why personalized learning platforms offer so much promise – they allow all students access to individualized instruction at their own level.

Taken at face value “student-centered” should be about playing to our students strengths as well as encouraging them to overcome challenges.  For the introvert, working in groups and actively asserting themselves in an unfamiliar situation tends to be the challenge.  For extroverts, focusing, thinking, and working by themselves is.  Both sets of qualities are equally important in an ever changing world.  As teachers enacting the student-centered classroom, we serve our students by helping them move outside of their comfort zone but equally, if not more important, is identifying and encouraging their strengths.

As schools and districts around the country begin planning their summer reading programs, it’s important to remember that the effectiveness of a well-intentioned program depends largely on the strength of implementation. A solid initiative, built around well-established research principles, can still fall apart if the implementation is flawed. The devil is in the details, and implementation is a key component of ensuring that more students read more over the intervening summer months.

Those details often account for whether a summer reading program fails or succeeds – even one built on a bedrock of solid research. This recent IES Regional Education Laboratory study, for example, was built around the idea of allowing students to self-select texts of interest and around targeting students at their individual Lexile reading level. Given the amount of research on the importance of targeting and self-selection, the authors should be commended for their efforts to build a summer reading program vastly different from the majority of programs that simply allow students to pick from a small menu of non-targeted texts, or worse, assign every student the exact same text.

The guiding question of this specific effort was to discern if a summer reading program can be taken to scale without the burden of parent and teacher involvement. Based on what the authors have shown us with this particular implementation, the answer would appear to be a qualified ‘no’. Or, at least, not when administered in this way.  This specific study found that, while there was a small positive effect, it was not statistically significant.

As the authors acknowledge, this effort suffered from a number of limitations. For starters, students received their books en masse. Rather than being given a few books at a time, students were presented with large stacks all at once, making it possible that students felt overwhelmed and without direction on which step to take next. Secondly, students received their books long after summer had already begun – in July. Receiving a large collection of books relatively late in the summer sacrifices valuable time.  In fact, for many students, the program was a 30-day program – not a summer reading program.  Efforts to determine the effects of targeted and self-selected reading on summer reading loss might fare better if those books are provided near or at the end of the school year. Notably, this particular study lacked a way to determine if the books were actually read. The best medicine may be effective, but without ingestion, it’s unlikely to have any effect. Similarly, a well-targeted collection of books may very well stave off the debilitating effects of summer learning loss, but if the students simply neglect the books, it’s unlikely those texts will have any effect at all. Lastly, it’s worth pointing out that the assessment to determine the effectiveness of the program was administered well into the start of the school year. As the authors point out, any positive effects of this particular program may have well been obscured by additional instruction that may have occurred since the school start date.

 Here are the study’s authors commenting on possible reasons why five other similar studies did find statistically significant effects on student’s reading comprehension levels:

One possible inference to draw from this study, and the more recent work of Kim and colleagues (Kim and Guryan 2010; Kim and White 2008), is that some of the components that Kim and his colleagues added—in particular, personalized teacher encouragement of each student to read the books during the summer and brief, small group lessons on strategies for reading—may be essential components to success.

 As schools wrestle with the most effective summer reading programs, the ones most likely to reduce the impact of summer learning loss, it would pay to be mindful of implementation. And to remember that involving the community and parents is an important part of refining even the most thoughtful summer reading programs.

Here’s yet another example of a school using an innovative approach to improve student reading scores:

After noticing an uptick in ELL and other students with below average reading scores at his school, Skip Johnson, principal at El Crystal Elementary in San Bruno, CA, created a forward-thinking reading program pairing iPods and print books that has helped to successfully boost reading comprehension scores among non proficient readers.

The idea for letting struggling readers follow print and iPod audiobooks simultaneously was first sparked when Johnson was browsing the iTunes store trying to spend a $50 iTunes giftcard–a generous gift from a teacher. “I happened to notice audiobooks for sale and I went, ‘Hmm, there are a lot of books here that kids want to read,” he said.

Whether he knows it or not, Johnson’s program capitalizes on multiple avenues of research: the importance of reading outside the classroom, the power of self-selection and allowing students to pick what they read, the significance of utilizing technology as an always-on solution, the impact of audio learning, and, of course, the importance of targeting students at their own reading level:

With help from his colleagues, Johnson curated hundreds of audiobooks on a sliding scale arranged by lexile level. Students check out books from the library and take them home to read, following along with the audio loaded on school-owned iPods. When students finish, they take a Scholastic Reading Counts quiz to test their comprehension. After passing, they can progress to another book on the playlist, often at a higher level of difficulty.

Johnson obviously realizes the importance of targeting readers as a way to improve their reading ability.  And utilizing technology to provide audio-scaffolding ensures that each student receives an individualized approach to their reading growth.  Kudos to teachers like Johnson for blending multiple lines of research into a concrete, practical classroom strategy for improving student reading ability – one that appears to be working very well.

Every mathematics teacher wants to be able to help their students learn more math and learn math better.  The typical mathematics classroom contains a diverse range of students who differ in their readiness to learn.  Quality mathematics teachers seek new strategies to reach their students and help them grow.

Differences in learning occur for a variety of reasons.  Some students may have academically encouraging homes.  Some students may have academic learning disabilities. Other students may have physical differences.  And just as with physical growth, some students may simply grow in their mathematical abilities at different rates. 

Regardless of the reason, mathematics educators often strive to find tools and resources to help meet individual student needs and differentiate instruction.  Handheld, mobile technologies may offer just the means to do that.  As this recent article from SmartPlanet, details there are new opportunities for the visually impaired learner using “haptic” technology. 

Haptic means relating to the sense of touch.  Through a research project at Vanderbilt University, an android app is being developed to help learners who have difficulties with their vision to learn mathematics – a subject where visual data such as graphs, charts, and symbols are relied upon for communication.

Many learn better through doing rather than speaking or hearing. Mathematics can be difficult to teach to these learners.  In addition to assisting the visually impaired, such technology may open the door for the kinesthetic learner.  With handheld devices becoming downright commonplace, this seems like an opportunity with a lot of promise.

As this recent Education Week article, Educators in Search of Common-Core Resources, makes clear, educators are clamoring for resources aligned to the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM).  Many states have already adopted these standards and are currently developing assessments tailored to them.  

Shifting from previous standards to implement the CCSSM in its intended manner is no easy task, particularly at the elementary grades.  The Common Core was developed to move our country’s mathematics curriculum away from breadth and rather, vertically articulate the curriculum from kindergarten through high school to develop depth of understanding.    Developing depth of understanding however, requires an emphasis on the connections between concepts.

The Quanitle® Framework for Mathematics has information to help educators better understand these connections and is also aligned with the CCSSM through its freely accessible website.  Using the Quantile website, www.Quantiles.com and its tools, educators can find thousands of free, web-based resources aligned to the CCSSM.  

The Quantile website tools, the Math Skills Database, and the Quantile Teacher Assistant have a two-fold purpose: 1)  These tools leverage the Quantile Framework’s interconnected web of almost six hundred skills and concepts and align them with the CCSSM.  This taxonomy is also aligned to states’ previous standards, thus helping educators in their transition from one set of standards to the next; and 2)  Each of the skills and concepts delineated by the Quantile Framework is linked to freely-available web resources, providing educators with the much needed resources to implement the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics.

If you haven’t already tried it, be sure to take a look.

There’s a new trend in the world of libraries: the miniature library, DIY reading rooms, and other micro book depots. Built around the idea of readcycling, these miniature libraries offer new methods for obtaining books. The micro library’s system is simple: take a book, return a book. This recycling of books is the foundation to hundreds of “little, free libraries” that exist all over the world—from the streets of New York to the malls and residential areas of Sweden.

Micro libraries can take many forms; old phone booths, miniature houses, and a number of other novel (pardon the pun) constructions. The Book Booth, pictured by the Department of Urban Betterment,is especially popular. Phone booths, no longer relevant for their intended use, offer an ideal micro library for urban areas, such as New York City, where there is an abundance of empty booths. In Sweden there is a book equivalent to Red Box, the well-liked movie rental system in America, called the Bokomaten.  Bokomatens are book-filled, automated machines with the capacity to handle book loans and returns.

Popping up in communities all over the world, micro libraries and readcycling makes books easily accessible. Check out The Atlantic and get the full scoop on micro libraries.

We’ve written before on the amazing success of Capstone Digital’s myON reader.  MyON seamlessly blends assessment and instruction for young readers in a digital environment, allowing students to receive updated Lexile measures through their reading experiences.  Based on those updated Lexile measures, students continue to be presented a wider range of targeted texts.  Not only do students receive targeted text, but they exercise choice as well.  MyON allows students to self-select topics of interest to them and students can choose from a long list of subjects.

Just last month Capstone Digital announced that this targeted reading experience now has even greater flexibility – it can now be experienced in a mobile environment:

The personalized literacy environment that provides access to the largest integrated library of digital books with multimedia supports is now available on Kindle Fire. myON reader users can securely login through myON.com and have full access to the platform using the popular Amazon tablet. This is the first of many mobile initiatives to launch from Capstone Digital in 2012.

It’s great to hear that this is just one of many mobile initiatives set for this year.  As more students have access to mobile devices, like e-readers, smart phones, tablets, and iPads, offering a wide variety of texts in multiple platforms becomes essential.  We applaud Capstone for making the reading experience so accessible for so many young readers.

Uh-oh.  The EPE Research Center is reporting that, of the 46 states and D.C. that have adopted the Common Core State Standards, only seven have fully developed plans to put them into practice in the three key areas of: instructional material, professional development, and teacher evaluation systems.  Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, West Virginia, and New York have reported finalizing plans across all three areas, but other states are reporting only partial completions.  As the report notes, budget cuts and funding issues are most likely the cause of the delay in most states.  With the new assessments scheduled to be released for the 2014-15 school year, let’s hope those plans are implemented soon.

We wrote a while back on ‘The Shadow Scholar’, a piece by academic mercenary, Ed Dante (a pseudonym) detailing his career as a ghost writer for hire:

I’ve gotten pretty good at interpreting this kind of correspondence. The client had attached a document from her professor with details about the paper. She needed the first section in a week. Seventy-five pages.

I told her no problem.

It truly was no problem. In the past year, I’ve written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won’t find my name on a single paper…

I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

You’ve never heard of me, but there’s a good chance that you’ve read some of my work.

This article in Big Think finds interest in Dante’s admission that he’s been able to write on such a wide range of topics without ever setting foot in a library:

I haven’t been to a library once since I started doing this job. Amazon is quite generous about free samples. If I can find a single page from a particular text, I can cobble that into a report, deducing what I don’t know from customer reviews and publisher blurbs. Google Scholar is a great source for material, providing the abstract of nearly any journal article. And of course, there’s Wikipedia, which is often my first stop when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. Naturally one must verify such material elsewhere, but I’ve taken hundreds of crash courses this way.”

The ease by which Dante is able to access large chunks of information and write a passable essay or thesis raises the question of how much of what students write is actually their own.  As Dante argues, accessing a few major sites is all he needs to write a convincing essay – an essay that presumably is able to fool professors, advisers, and committees.  As the Big Think articles makes clear, such easy access to a wide and deep trough of materials means a shift in the way students research and access information.  Research – a process that traditionally involved becoming intimately familiar with the material in question – no longer need involve long nights in the library or months of reading on a specific topic.  Now, just a well executed search is enough to cobble together the bits and pieces necessary to present a well-written and coherent academic paper.  That changes the nature of research altogether.  And while it becomes faster, more convenient, and certainly more efficient, it also makes it less protracted, less involved, less painstaking.  That efficiency comes with a price.  The student-writer is apt to be, well, less of a writer and more of an aggregator, less attuned to the nuances of their chosen topic, less of an expert.

The Shadow Scholar has supposedly induced much hand-wringing among scholarly types and confirmed what many in academia have long-suspected: that many of their students – those students that as Dante points out, are barely able to form a coherent verbal sentence yet turn in a well-written, cogent piece of academic work – are routinely cheating, are passing off a lot of work that is not their own.  Technology has tried to keep up.  There are a menu of programs that promise to detect plagiarism.  But it’s doubtful those programs can keep up with the massive amount of new information that is constantly being added to the web.  As the Big Think articles makes clear, this may mean a return to alternative forms of assessment – like group projects or oral exams.  That’s too bad.  Examining a student’s writing as a window into what they know and have internalized has always been a useful way of assessing knowledge.  That assessment means less when writing is a more of a social process and has little to do with what an individual student has learned.