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MAAP Con 2012 - Final Thoughts
I went to last week's Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference not knowing what to expect beyond an interesting list of presentation topics made stronger by the classroom ties of the people doing the presenting. I left the conference tired but with a head full of interesting thoughts.
In case it wasn't clear in past posts, most of the schools in MAAP are working almost exclusively with students who have had little to no success in more conventional school settings. As a result, they face enormous pressure to do things differently and find, well, alternative programs to encourage student learning and prepare students for a rapidly approaching future outside of school.
To characterize these students as “at-risk” is to understate the situation. These students are post-risk, and on the losing side of that risk. This is part of what drives the sense of urgency around developing new approaches to teaching them, and it's a shame that we're resistant to that same mindset with most of our other students.
Perhaps one of the most refreshing things about the conference was seeing how clearly committed these educators were to student learning and how clearly irrelevant they found our current “measures” of student learning (i.e. test scores). We've allowed ourselves to slip into a mindset that decides the most worthwhile thing about a school are the MCA scores it produces once a year.
This (a symptom of the larger attempt to turn education into a marketplace) means that other attempts to encourage innovation struggle. Charter schools were supposed to be about teachers developing new programs to help students learn. Too often, however, we lavish the most praise on schools that, according to their conservative boosters, “[use] 'drill and kill' methods that would drive most education professors shrieking from the room.”
We aspire to more than that, or at least we ought to. The people at the MAAP conference are developing the substance under the shiny surface of online learning (facilitated by an in-person instructor). They're figuring out how to get students learning beyond the classroom. They're getting their students plugged into the generations of wisdom in their communities. There are plenty of teachers in more conventional schools doing the same, but they aren't getting enough credit for that work.
It's time to give credit where it's due and make it easier to build new programs without obsessing over what it means for test scores.
Full MAAP Con Coverage:
- Treasure MAAP?
- Teacher Evaluation
- Expeditions at Northwest Passage
- Online/Hybrid Learning
- Intergenerational Learning
- Expecting Knowledge Mastery
- The Keynotes
Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education Achievement Gap Charter Schools Classroom Methods
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MAAP Con 2012 - The Keynotes
Last week's Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference featured three keynote speakers: the thought-provoking Marion Brady, rabble-rousing Kirsten Olson, and gleefully iconoclastic Don Glines. While most of the conference's presentations came from people in the classroom, the keynotes gave a chance to zoom out and ask the big picture questions about what really drives learning and what that means for schools.
Brady – an education scholar and commentator – challenged the audience to rethink how we categorize learning in schools. He argued that much of what we debate now aims to wring the last bits of productivity from language arts, math, science, social studies, world language, physical education, and the arts as separate disciplines. Rather than pursue that course, he suggested a new aim: Teaching students how to make sense of experience. Brady believes that by reframing learning around investigations that develop a mental organization system built around who, what, where, when, and why, we can better prepare students for dealing with new situations and experiences.
Olson zoomed out even further. A researcher and consultant, her focus has been more about figuring out why students disengage from school and the connection between school experiences and learning. She found that many people who have succeeded at learning did so primarily outside of (or in spite of) their schooling. Her primary concerns were about how our prescriptive approach that assumes one “right” way of teaching and learning actually damages many students' relationship with learning.
Glines, the former head of the Wilson Campus School in Mankato, would probably have been up for leading a march from the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester all the way up to the capitol building in Saint Paul. In by far the most charged keynote, he exhorted the group to challenge pretty much everything about the current policy structure for schools. He believes that categorizing the kinds of programs represented at the MAAP conference as “alternative programs” pushes them aside and attaches stigma for being different from more conventional approaches to school. He'd much rather fling open the doors to a wide variety of programs within traditional public school districts.
The bottom line here is that there are people putting out serious thoughts that challenge much of the current mindset dominating education discussions these days. They are deeply committed to genuine learning and truly believe that what we're doing isn't working for most of our students.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education
MAAP Con 2012 - Expecting Knowledge Mastery
For the last few days, I've been covering the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference in Rochester and passing on some of the most interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking concepts.
The final presentation I attended was given late on Friday morning by a teacher from the Wayzata Focus Program, which is an alternative program aimed at helping students build the skills for success in a more conventional classroom environment. His focus was on a grading philosophy that expects knowledge mastery from all students. It was a powerful reminder that, though the conference was organized around “alternative” programs, “alternative” doesn't mean weak standards or low expectations.
The Wayzata Focus Program grading policy requires students to score 70% proficiency or higher on all assignments and assessments in a given term. If a student scores less than 70% on an item, the student must revise or correct it in order for it to count as complete. During the first two terms, students must have all work completed, thereby earning a minimum grade of C-. Students who with incomplete work receive an “I” course grade (for “Incomplete”) and have two weeks to complete all work at 70% or higher. Students who do not complete all work during those two weeks see that “I” become an “F”.
During the second two terms, the policy toughens up. 70% is still the minimum for each assignment, but students now have only one week from when an assignment was due to complete or revise the work. An assignment that is still missing or incomplete after that week receives a zero.
What has this grading policy done for the program's students? The first class of students to finish the program while this policy was in effect saw assignment completion rates in the 85-95% range depending on the term. These, again, are students who have traditionally struggled with skills like work completion in more conventional classrooms.
The Focus Program is still working to improve the consistency of the policy – some subsequent classes saw completion rates around 75% – and this policy wouldn't work for all students. The real point here is that increasing the variety of programming in the public school system and creating interventions for struggling students doesn't have to mean lowering standards.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education Classroom Methods Student Assessment
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MAAP Con 2012 - Intergenerational Learning
For the next few days, I'll be covering the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference in Rochester and passing on some of the most interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking concepts.
A teacher from the Owatonna Options Program (a student-directed learning community inside Owatonna High School) gave the second presentation I attended on Thursday morning. His focus was on intergenerational learning though the incorporation of senior members of a school's local community.
When we do talk about schools connecting with their surrounding communities (which we don't do often enough), we often talk about connecting schools with local businesses to arrange for mentorships, supervised work experiences, or technical trainings. Beyond this strictly econo-centric domain, the conversation dries up.
This can be a loss for our students and teachers, as local seniors can often prove to be an invaluable resource for academics and student sense of connection to a broader world. Too often, school becomes a clearly artificial, constructed experience. For students that don't buy into the worth of that experience, this is a recipe for checking out of school (mentally if not physically). By tying school into the reality of the local community, students can feel a more immediate connection to what they're learning.
Seniors can be one route to this connection. While Google might be able to point students to a list of events that occurred during the 1960's, Mr. and Mrs. Larson from Beech Street can talk about what the civil rights movement looked like up here (Did you know that we used to have an active chapter of the KKK in town?), and Ms. Glenn – who was a Freedom Rider and marched with Dr. King – can talk about being in the movement.
Will this directly impact test scores? I don't know. Will this give students a better grounding in their community? If it's done correctly, yes. And that's worth fighting for, too.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education Classroom Methods Senior Issues
MAAP Con 2012 - Online/Hybrid Learning
For the next few days, I'll be covering the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference in Rochester and passing on some of the most interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking concepts.
My first presentation on Thursday afternoon was about online/hybrid learning, presented by a teacher from District 287. The main thrust of the presentation, in Star Trek Ed terms, was about moving past the shiny factor to the substance factor of online-facilitated learning.
An interesting point about framing came up early in the presentation: the presenter noted that we should stop talking about “online learning” as wholly distinct from “learning.” As we get better and better at using online tools to help learning happen, more and more learning will take place online. In other words, it'll stop being a separate kind of learning and just be learning.
Another interesting story to come out of the presentation was that the presenter was able to increase his class sizes without a drop in learning by using online units he'd designed using Moodle. This particular tool allows students to work with a variety of texts organized around a particular set of skills, get feedback on assessments of those skills, and advance through the teacher's pre-approved sequence of learning for the unit at their own pace.
Allowing students to pick units increases their buy-in at the beginning of the unit, and structuring the unit to give them a significant sense of progress early on turns that buy-in into positive momentum. For students who have struggled with more traditional classroom environments, this can be a major factor in keeping them learning.
This doesn't mean that teachers sit back and watch students stare at glowing screens. Instead, teachers move between the unit groups to provide context and push students to think deeper.
The bottom line for this presentation is that we're getting better at using technology to make learning happen, but that progress on this front requires teachers to rethink how they teach. Instead of replicating traditional lectures, packets, and worksheets, learning can now be about structuring the sequence of independent activities to build the desired skills. There's still a lot of work yet to do to realize the biggest dreams of the techno-advocates, but it's good to know it's not all about the shiny.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education Classroom Methods Technology
MAAP Con 2012 - Expeditions at Northwest Passage
For the next few days, I'll be covering the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference in Rochester and passing on some of the most interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking concepts.
My first presentation on Thursday came from two teachers at Northwest Passage High School. They described their school's use of “expeditions,” which are less metaphorical than they sound. Several times a year, the teachers take students outside the "normal" school environment to encourage team-building, problem solving, and navigating relationships with peers and adults.
The expeditions are broken up into three different levels that increase in duration and intensity. Low-level expeditions could be a night or two spent close to home. At their most intense, students spend a week or more backpacking in Texas, exploring Mammoth Cave, or adventuring in other ways and locations. These highest level expeditions usually require students to meet certain physical fitness standards and often result in intense personal discoveries.
Roughly thirty-five trips are offered in a given year, with six over the summer. The 180-student school can afford this by asking a lot of their 15 member staff. In addition to being teachers, staff are also licensed bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and pretty much all of the other work of keeping the school functioning.
Of course, this approach will not work for all students. Part of the point of this conference is that no approach works for all students. Programs like Northwest Passage are aimed at students who have struggled in more traditional school settings, though one could argue that there are plenty of students that merely get by in traditional settings who would thrive in a school more like Northwest Passage.
What was missing from this presentation? Any discussion of test scores. The teachers clearly have a different definition of what is worth aiming for in terms of student success. The kinds of outcomes that motivate these teachers – increased self-confidence (distinct from typical teenage bravado), better coping skills, improved relationship-building abilities – are critical to students' lifelong success and impossible to measure on the MCAs. It's worth reminding ourselves from time to time that there's more to school than a particular subset of math and reading comprehension skills.
P.S. Those who are interested in learning more about Northwest Passage's work can see more at http://fieldnotes.nwphs.org, which features pictures and reflections from the expeditions.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education Classroom Methods
MAAP Con 2012: Teacher Evaluation
For the next few days, I'll be covering the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference in Rochester and passing on some of the most interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking concepts.
The first presentation I attended, presented by two administrators from White Bear Lake, offered perspectives on teacher evaluation that higher level policy discussions often overlook.
The presenters cautioned against “the widget effect” that treats teachers as interchangeable widgets rather than individuals with multiple routes to effectiveness. They also encouraged a mindset organized around growth rather than judgment or punishment. One further point they raised was about the importance of differentiating formative assessment -- aimed at improving or shaping skills -- from summative assessment -- aimed at providing quality assurance -- which is an important distinction when too many of our policymakers seem fixated solely on summative quality assurance when most of our focus should be on formative skill development.
The presentation also listed five questions we should ask about all teacher evaluation systems (including the statewide system currently in development). The five questions are:
- Do the criteria and tools cover the classroom performance areas most connected to student outcomes?
- Do the criteria and tools set high performance expectations for teachers, or do they settle for minimally acceptable performance?
- Are the performance expectations for teachers clear and precise?
- Are the criteria and tools student-centered, requiring evaluators to look for direct evidence of student engagement and learning?
- Are the criteria and tools concise enough for teachers and evaluators to understand thoroughly and use easily?
These questions combine fairness to teachers with a persistent focus on relevant student outcomes. It should be noted that even an evaluation system that satisfactorily answers all of these questions depends on competent evaluators to be effective. There's a lot more to talk about with regard to teacher evaluation, and we'll have more on teacher evaluation next week. Stay tuned!
Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education Teacher Assessment
Treasure MAAP?
For the next few days, I'll be covering the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference in Rochester and passing on some of the most interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking concepts.
The second presentation I attended was a big-picture description by Bob Wedl, the executive director of Innovative Quality Schools, of what 21st century education will end up looking like. Being more of a zoomed-out, where-we're-going session, it raised a lot of different ideas that may seem weird or out there to those of us who obsessively focus on wringing the last bit of productivity out of the 20th century school system.
A few dominant themes connected the different parts of the presentation. One is that technology is going to keep changing education until it looks very different from the teacher-lecture model that is the mental picture many of us have of “what school looks like”. It's still tricky to tell what's shiny and what's substantive, but the overall momentum is towards technology creating more opportunities for individualization of instructional techniques and learning opportunities.
Another theme was increasing the connection between secondary education and students' post-secondary lives. This means creating opportunities for high school students to participate in supervised work experiences and get more technical training. Especially in the last couple years of high school, students are figuring out which paths they're likely to take, and making the workplace, technical college, and four-year university experiences more accessible will not only help a student figure out the best path for him or herself, but also help make sure the last couple years of high school are as productive as possible for that student.
One final point that is interesting, especially in younger grades, is the increasing potential of game-ified education [starts video]. There's still a lot of work yet to be done to make reliably effective educational games (especially on the computer), but a few teachers are already developing ways to create classrooms that almost entirely revolve around games.
Again, there was a lot of big picture dreaming going on in this session, but it did make some good points about the need for an educational system that's a good fit for the United States in the 21st century.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education Education Administration
Five Tough Questions for the Test Score Crowd
While the battle over teacher seniority continues in the state legislature, one giant question mark remains: What will replace it? We don't actually know, since a statewide teacher evaluation system is still in development and won't go public until after seniority's already faced its vote. The only thing we do know about the statewide evaluation system is that it's required to base at least 35% of a teacher's evaluation on “value-added assessments,” which will most often be translated to mean “test scores.”
In light of this, here are some questions for the people pushing for a heavier weight on test scores.
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How do we account for a teacher changing grade levels or classes from one year to the next? Third grade is different from fifth grade, and regular ninth grade English is different from advanced tenth grade English.
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What about grades and subjects that aren't tested? We don't test K-2 or twelfth grade at all, and it seems ridiculous to base an eleventh grade social studies teacher's retention on math scores...but the only thing we test in eleventh grade is math.
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How do we adjust for students that change classes mid-year? It'll be hard to determine how much of Anthony's tenth grade reading score was due to spending September to January with Ms. Larson and how much was due to spending February to April with Mr. duBois.
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And what about student mobility? Attributing Juanita's test scores to the one week she spent in Ms. Acker's class could be good or bad for Ms. Acker (depending on how Juanita did), but it wouldn't reflect much on Ms. Acker's teaching either way.
- Are we talking about mastery or growth? The MCAs right now only measure mastery, which means Will's awesome two years of reading growth in eight months thanks to the hard work of his special education case manager, his English teacher, and his family (not to mention his own effort) will get discounted if he's “only” moved from reading at the fourth grade level to the sixth grade level in eighth grade.
Can these questions be answered? Of course. Have they been answered yet? No. Until we have satisfactory answers to these questions, we shouldn't throw out the system we have for one we don't know.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: Student Assessment
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Not Roy’s Trigger
There's a restaurant in Mantorville called the Hubbell House with quite the guest book. Presidents have signed it, along with local notables and a fair passel of celebrities. The two that stand out best in my memory belong to Roy Rogers and his horse, Trigger. Sure, Mr. Ed's talking is impressive, but can he sign a guest book?
Unfortunately, there's a less good-humored trigger making its way through the Minnesota education discussion. The fight over seniority will keep drawing attention (including mine), but it's by no means the only education debate worth having this cycle. “Parent triggers” definitely deserve serious discussion in the sunlight.
One of three items on StudentsFirst's Minnesota agenda, the push for parent triggers has “suddenly” cropped up in a dozen states after appearing for the first time two years ago in California. Does that timing – a dozen states looking at the same new idea – seem incredibly coincidental? Well, sometimes there's coincidence, and sometimes they really are out to get you.
So what is a parent trigger? It's a mechanism for undermining public schools cloaked in the rhetoric of parent empowerment. Basically, it gives parents at public schools the power to close, change, or charterize their school given a majority vote. Like a lot of reform proposals, it sounds good at first, but scrape the surface and real questions crop up.
For example, if this is so good for parents, why does Florida's PTA oppose it? They're worried that it will throw communities into turmoil and expose parents to for-profit operators looking to manipulate them and exploit the opportunity to take over a school.
This leads to further questions. Who, exactly, will take over these schools that parents vote to dissolve? I have plenty of issues with our current batch of charter schools, but the vast majority of them are led by people with a clear vision for their students and a desire to do what's best (even if the results don't always play out as hoped). This is not the same mentality as the people who would step in to charterize a triggered public school.
In any case, the next wave of attempts to deconstruct traditional public education has clearly begun. While there are some problems with some of our public schools, we shouldn't just throw open the gates to anything and everything that's different. Not all triggers are as appealing as Roy's buddy.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education