The Sky Isn’t Falling

QuoteJuly 11, 2017July 16, 2017Dianna Terrell Leave a comment

As if teachers in the Granite State didn’t already have enough demands to respond to, following the 2016 election teachers have been increasingly the scapegoats for nothing less than the death of democracy.*

Recently, an important leader in the state, and champion of historical education jumped into the fray in a letter to the editor, where he maligned the “alarming history deficit” present in the thousands of students who visit the New Hampshire Historical Society each year. As I have done in other blog posts in the past, I find myself in a position of wanting to defend public school teachers and, more generally, the quality of public schooling in the United States. I am compelled to disagree with this and similar narratives of crisis that tinge statements about education in our country.

It’s important to acknowledge first that I share Mr. Dunlap’s concern about the lack of time spent on historic and civic education in public education in the elementary years. No Child Left Behind yielded a hyper focus on math, reading and high stakes assessments like the NECAP (and now the SBAC). Something had to give, and this meant many schools devoted disproportionate amounts of instructional time to those subjects typically to the detriment of social studies and the arts (among other things like recess, by the way!). In many ways, he is quite right to highlight this as a negative consequence of the Accountability Movement. Yet, while I agree that things aren’t great, I disagree that things are getting worse.

In fact, evidence suggests when it comes to both civic and historic knowledge nationwide things are actually improving significantly.

Evidence suggests when it comes to BOTH civic and historic knowledge nationwide things are actually improving significantly.

Since 1998, eighth grade student performance on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) civic literacy and historic literacy test has risen.
Score gains for Hispanic-American eighth graders have narrowed what was once an intractable “achievement gap” by 14 percentage points since 1998.
White children, Asian American children, children enrolled in Free-and-Reduced Lunch programs (a proxy for childhood poverty), non-English speakers and children with disabilities have also seen a significant improvement in scores since 1998. This data can be accessed on the NAEP website.
In NAEP history assessment, the percentage of children scoring at or above the “proficient” category in history rose significantly since 1994. (Recall, “Proficient” and “Advanced” are the top two categories of the NAEP. This would be similar to scoring 3 or 4 out of four possible points on the Smarter Balanced Assessment.)
Regarding the sudden drop in civic and historical knowledge, the data does not appear to bear this out with no decline in civic knowledge or historical knowledge on the NAEP.
In both civics and history, New Hampshire does significantly better than the national population. How do we know that when the data isn’t disaggregated for these tests at the state level? The data show that English-native speakers, white children, children living in homes with a college graduate and children being raised outside of poverty perform much better than the national average – a phenomenon called “the Achievement Gap.” Similar to all of New England, New Hampshire’s über-homogeneous, English speaking, college-educated population generally does exceptionally well on these measures of academic success. In fact, the New England states – and NH in particular — perform equivalently to the highest performing nations globally.

While there is reason to take heart, there is not yet reason to celebrate.

Civic and historical awareness in our children and adolescents can still improve. While the average scores on civic knowledge nationwide are consistently well above the “basic” level, only 23% of our nation’s children score in the proficient or advanced range.

Despite these clear shortcomings, I caution Granite Staters against adopting the tone of crisis in our state’s public schools. This is because in my work with Granite State teachers, I have become acutely aware of the fact that this narrative of crisis, and “lack of knowledge “of our children, unfairly maligns and shames an already battered profession.

The narrative of failure and crisis in our schools unfairly maligns and shames an already battered profession.

While it’s tempting to adopt the narrative of crisis, where we express shock, alarm and even disgust with what our children don’t know, Granite Staters must work productively and positively to continue to improve the outlook for civic health in New Hampshire.

So, instead of shaming students and their teachers for what they don’t know, we might focus on the many successes in our education system that reflect the hard work and dedication of our state’s public teaching force. When looking for outliers and success stories, it’s easy to identify high-leverage, promising practices that yield results and use that to our advantage for teaching children how to engage. So what are some of the success stories?

Between 2013 and 2015, the state of New Hampshire’s 4^th, 8^th and 12^th graders ranked the first, second and third in the nation on math, reading and science. In other words for the last seven years, New Hampshire public schools have outperformed more than 47 other states in our scores on these tests.
Nationwide scores are improving in math and literacy. Some academics and researchers have credited the shift to the Common Core State Standards, and the massive push in professional development and training for teachers to support it – as the underlying cause. Civics and Social Studies advocates must leverage the social studies literacy standards embedded in the Common Core State Standards to assure that more time is spent in these areas including non-fiction “informational text” literacy and writing. Informing oneself is a civic virtue and connecting these dots takes very little effort.
One highly-regarded academic, Diane Ravitch, an active public school advocate, former Deputy Secretary of Education during the Bush administration, and researcher at New York University, has frequently highlighted data showing the improvement of our nation’s school children on multiple measures of academic success – besides the high-stakes tests on which many middle and high school students exert questionable effort.

Finally, we must understand:

There has simply never been a “golden era” of historical knowledge.

This is a bitter pill to swallow for college educated Baby Boomers and those from the Greatest Generation, but these are the facts. It’s likely that rather than our kids getting dumber, the nature of knowledge, the patterns of behavior, and the skills of engagement look differently when viewed through the generational lens.

We have many assets working to our advantage here in New Hampshire beginning with our talented and dedicated teaching profession who have put New Hampshire consistently at the top. We need to stop asking why our kids don’t know “basic facts” and begin to ask how we can transfer our state’s children’s abundant talents and passions for other subjects into history and civics. We have an excellent foundation to make this happen, it’s a matter of framing the challenge appropriately and directing our energy for positive change.

*See, for example, this article (https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2016-11-22/donald-trumps-election-is-civic-educations-gut-check) which makes the case that most civics teachers’ lack of content expertise is to blame. The author goes on to claim (without providing any numbers to substantiate the claim) that civics teachers are all primarily athletic coaches

Posts in the cooker… Bringing research to the foreground

July 16, 2015July 21, 2015Dianna Terrell Leave a comment

I have scores of ideas of things I’d like to blog about, but here’s the shortlist. If you’re interested in knowing the history behind features of schools, or what the “research says” about schools, please comment with your suggestions!

Cheers – Dianna

What does it mean to “Opt-Out” of a standardized test, and should I do it?
How do schools in different states stack up?
Louis C.K. broke my heart when he called out the Common Core
Is homework for kids or their parents?
LGBTQ kids ARE our kids
What’s the deal with 7 AM start times?
Is there really a teacher shortage?
My child’s report card makes no sense to me (& competency based grading)
What’s the point of “group work?”
Why is the site called “Our Kids?”
Calling a truce in the mommy wars.
Talking about American race relations with kids – a white momma’s work.
The manner in which teachers are portrayed in the media is killing the profession.
My friend says her kids are “totally average,” and I admire that attitude.
The shocking reality about how few kids finish college.
College shouldn’t be “four years at Hogwarts” (truthfully put by Martin O’Malley)
The U.S. is actually not doing badly in international ratings – it just depends on how you slice the data.
Should we lengthen the school year?
Reforms that might work in our schools.
How parents can support schools.
Things *not* to say at the parent-teacher conference & questions to ask.
Decoding the standardized test report
The obesity epidemic and school lunch programs.
The anti-Vax movement and CA’s new mandate for measles vaccine.

Common Core is NOT a Test

June 29, 2015June 30, 2015Dianna Terrell Leave a comment

One thing that has made me crazy(er) in all of the media frenzy around Common Core is when media outlets refer to “Common Core Tests.” This is fundamental misdirection.

The Common Core State Standards are standards. Standards are guidelines that most districts and states develop to guide teachers and administrators in what should be taught during the school year. Standards focus on skills and content and are usually divided by grade levels. In other words, they list out what skills and content each child in that grade should be able to “show mastery of” by the end of that academic year.

Standards are listed by grade, and then they are often listed within disciplinary level. So, for example, in most states you could find list of grade level standards for math, English language arts (ELA), science and social studies. Less frequently you can also find grade level standards for language, art, music and other “extra curriculars.”

What media outlets have taken to refer to in shorthand as “the Common Core Tests” are a series of standardized assessments, often created by for-profit companies (others include Pearson and ETS) to assess, score, test or evaluate how well schools are meeting the Common Core State Standards. These tests are the subject of significant controversy across the nation. Two of the biggest standardized tests meant to evaluate whether the Common Core State Standards are being met are called PARCC and Smarter Balanced.

Now, to be clear, many folks have taken some issue with the Common Core State Standards. However, it’s the Common Core-based tests, like Smarter Balanced and PARCC, which are being piloted and administered in schools throughout the nation in Spring 2015 that are causing the biggest stir.

Parents complain that their kids should not be sent to school to take hours and hours of tests. Their children are stressed out. The tests are hard. The teachers and building principals are putting massive emphasis on the tests and often setting aside huge chunks of time to administer them. The results will take several weeks to compile and release and then it is unclear what actions the outcomes the results will bring. In other words, parents are worried that the test results will show their child is “behind.” School leaders might worry that test results will show their whole school is “behind.”

What no one seems to be worried about is why we’re so worried when it’s unclear if there will be any “real” repercussion in terms of funding loss for schools (there won’t be), or long term repercussions for students (there could be).

The point here is that when discussing whether you support or oppose these new Common Core State Standards, it’s worth separating the standards from the tests that are meant to assess whether the standards are being met.

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What led to Common Core Standards?

June 27, 2015June 30, 2015Dianna Terrell Leave a comment

The Common Core State Standards have a lot more going for them than most people realize. Surely school administrators, state commissioners and secretaries of education, state boards of education and professional associations including the National Governor’s Association and the National Council of Chief State School Officers in the 45 states that have adopted the standards cannot all be delusional. There must be some reason to support the standards.

The CCSS are only one of a host of guidelines school administrators and faculty consult to inform curriculum, instruction and assessment.

In 1983, the Regan administration funded a research initiative which generated a report titled, “A Nation at Risk.” The report cautioned Americans that education in the United States was lacking compared to other nations such that “if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” The repercussions of this report have reverberated in education policy and school reform since.

Thirty years on, the results of international assessments (e.g. “PISA,” “PIRLS” and “TIMSS”) have consistently demonstrated the accuracy and the stubborn tenacity of the “Nation at Risk” findings. For example, studies released following the 2009 PISA test asserted that “out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math” (NCES).

Subsequent research since 1983 has clarified the fact that this poor testing performance is not present in all our nation’s nearly 100,000 public schools. That is to say, poor results on standardized tests occur in pockets, not throughout the nation.

In studies of nations where schools have gone from mediocre to excellent (as in the case of Finland), school reformers found that high quality teacher training and setting high standards are among the common factors that turn school systems around. Yet, studies have also shown state generated standards can be woefully unequal state-to-state. For example, a 2004 study published jointly by the Fordham Foundation and Accountability Works called “Grading the Systems,” the authors found that many states “did dismally and the averages can most charitably be termed ‘fair’ to ‘poor.’” In other words, after decades of standards writing, many states were still working to get it right.

The CCSS are an attempt to provide a quality set of standards. These standards are not imposed by the national government, but in some cases they are tied to Title I funding. States may adopt these standards or not. New Hampshire education officials (some elected, some appointed), have chosen to adopt the standards.

These standards are not perfect, but they are for the most part reasonable. So, I’d like to reiterate the point of my earlier letter: In the interest of balanced fact-finding, please take a look at the Common Core State Standards on your own.