Gifted Smifted

TAG (Talented and Gifted, or GAT, Gifted and Talented, or GATE, or just GT, depending on the school) teacher, Tamara Fisher, corrects common misunderstandings in her lengthy and detailed description of what “gifted” is and is not. I have a ton of experience with the gifted issue so I am interested in her take. I can tell you right off the bat that I got sick and tired of the Salem witch trials. Our family moved around a lot and it seemed every GT program was inordinately fond of the Salem witch trials. All told, my own children covered four topics in their years of GT participation: Salem witch trials, bridges, French, and Russian.

GT is NOT a reward for kids who behave well in class and turn in perfect work. Rather it IS an academic necessity for children who learn differently….
GT is NOT a program for kids with exceptional grades...
GT is NOT fun for fun's sake…
GT is NOT extra work to fill extra time…
GT is NOT for kids who are "better" or "more special” than other kids…
GT is NOT about fun and games...
GT is NOT a program only for good kids…
GT is NOT a test of what the kid does know…
GT is NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT a privilege!!!!! Rather, it IS an essential need for children whose pace of learning dramatically out-steps other kids …
GT is NOT a self-esteem booster for children who seem to need one. Rather, it IS a sincere validation of ability(bold added)...
GT is NOT about preparing kids to “save the world” someday..
GT is NOT a “club” to belong to. Rather, it IS a peer group where gifted kids can feel like they actually belong…
GT does NOT address only academic needs. Rather, it ALSO addresses social and emotional needs and validates gifts and talents. (bold added)…
GT is NOT about pressure to fit a label or stereotype…
GT should NOT be an experimental group led by whoever is available….
GT should NOT be an optional offering, if convenient. Rather, it SHOULD BE a high priority because there are kids who need it (bold added)..
GT is NOT an easy A…

I bolded several of the statements because they allude to a very specific issue of academic achievement in our schools. Regardless of all our fine talk about academic achievement, society does not value academic achievement. Students perceive the hypocrisy every day at school. In predominately black schools, classmates often accuse the high achievers of acting white. In some schools, students hide their achievements and engage in theatrical misbehavior in order to protect “street cred.” I have been known to participate in these little conspiracies with some students.

Every state has laws that mandate the education of every child according to the child’s needs. Practically speaking, what really happens is that only children who have been labeled into a specifically funded program get that extra attention. Normally, these special programs are for students who have been deemed “deficient” in some respect.

In my state, where both state law and state accreditation standards mandate that schools identify and provide services for gifted students, only about 40% of schools claim they actually do so. There is no consequence for the schools that do not meet that portion of the accreditation standards. The only consequence falls onto the shoulders of the gifted students who are at the mercy of luck that they will get a teacher who recognizes their learning needs and does something on her own to try to reach them. Educating kids should not be an optional convenience. It should be a high priority. We SAY it is a priority. But when it comes to our nation’s gifted students, are we really educating them if research shows that they already know, on average, about half the year’s material before the school year even begins?

One of my main themes is that US society does not really want a world-class education system. If we did, nothing would stop us. It may be a trivial example, but is there anyone in the US who DOES NOT KNOW that their analog TVs will not work in six months? The point is when we want people to learn something, we make sure they do.

GT is NOT a surplus offering for kids who have surplus knowledge. Rather, it IS an academic intervention...

“Some States Said to Share 'Core' Standards”

So concluded an analysis by Achieve(Aug 13, 2008), an organization dedicated to raising “academic standards and achievement so that all students graduate ready for college, careers, and citizenship.”

The academic standards for secondary English/language arts and math were analyzed for Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and the math standards for Arizona, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Texas.

Achieve found that independently-formulated state standards tend to be more similar than different.

There is a clearly identifiable common core across the states. It’s not that they have identical standards, but there’s a high degree of commonality,” said Michael Cohen, the president of Achieve…

I am not surprised. My undergraduate curriculum students found the same thing five years ago when I assigned them the project of investigating the state standards of at least ten states for one subject in one grade of their choice. Among them all, they managed to cover most of the states, most of the grades and most of the subjects. It was eye-opening for them to realize that no matter how strongly states insist that their standards are somehow better than the standards of other states, overall it simply was not true. The various state standards are more alike than different.
My students guessed at why this might be true. Their hypothesis closely matched that of the president of Achieve:

“The common core reflects the reality of the world—that there is fundamental knowledge in English and mathematics that all graduates must know to succeed…

Such a finding has several implications:
1. A national curriculum is very feasible. In fact, a sort of de facto national curriculum already exists by way of nationally adopted textbooks. Regardless of published standards, the scope and sequence for any particular content area is mostly predetermined by the textbook.

2. States wasted a ton of money hiring high-priced educational consultants to reinvent the standards wheel one state as a time. This money could have been used, for, I don’t know, hiring the proven, competent teaching veterans who are a bit more expensive than the novices schools hire instead.

3. State teacher subject-area tests are another waste of money. The National Teacher Exam (NTE) will suffice for all states. I was surprised when I found out that many states require teachers to take the state’s own tests even if they have scores from the NTE or other state tests. Teachers have to pay for these tests out of their own pocket.

4. States waste a ton of money separately creating high-stakes tests. I remember when many states used the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Now every state thinks they have to have their own test.

5. Probably there is plenty of money for school budgets if special interest, politically-motivated, and, in fact, all expenditures were carefully and impartially scrutinized.

Another Educational Fad Bites the Dust

Funds to continue the once popular “Reading First” are shriveling up.

Timothy Shanahan, a reading researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has worked as a consultant to the Reading First program in several states, called the program “politically toxic.”

“Reading First is dead,” he writes on his blog, www.shanahanonliteracy.com. “It could have withstood the corruption described in the inspector general’s report or the interim impact study—but not both!”

So what went wrong?

Reading First “has been plagued with mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and cronyism, as documented by the inspector general,” Rep. Obey said, referring to a series of reports released by the Department of Education’s inspector general in 2006 and 2007 that suggested some federal officials and contractors involved in implementing the program had conflicts of interest and appeared to favor some commercial products over others.

“Moreover, a scientifically rigorous study released by the Department of Education found that the program has no discernible impact on student reading performance,” Rep. Obey, who is also the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that handles education funding, said in a reference to the evaluation released May 1 by the Institute of Education Sciences, an arm of the department. ("‘Reading First’ Research Offers No Definitive Answers," June 4, 2008.)

Reading First went the way of most fads. What usually happens is something that may have started as a good idea when first implemented by enthusiastic early adopters gets watered down by mediocre professional development training by independent contractors hired to digest and then spit out the training. I know how this works; I have sometimes been one of the independent contractors hired to present someone else’s ideas. I do not do well at this. I usually cannot refrain from incorporating my own ideas, normally because the canned presentations do not respect the intelligence and feelings of the intended audience. Once the special interests get involved, it is generally all over. Besides, later implementations have difficulty replicating the results of the enthusiastic early adopters.

What the most skillful teachers usually do is incorporate the best, or at least the most workable, ideas from any fad into their eclectic bag of tricks. Even without special funding, some aspects of every fad usually survive in some form in the teaching repertoire of some teachers where it becomes impossible to isolate from everything else the most effective teachers do.

Teacher Shortage: Could It Be a Myth?

I wonder because veteran teachers have such a hard time finding work. Are there really so many teacher applicants that districts feel that there is no problem with rejecting competent proven veterans of the classroom?

I appreciate Christine Denman, the district administrator who admitted to what is a dirty secret in districts all over America.

Hi - as a district administrator, I can definitely give you some of the reasons you are not getting interviews. Many districts are not considering anyone with more than 5 years of experience because they have to pay more. I was directed by our school board not to consider anyone with more than 3 years experience! This, in the long run, may not be the best practice because you have to provide alot of inservice training in many cases.

Over the years, many administrators have told me of the same policy, usually in confidence. “Between you and me and the lamppost,” they begin. I first heard of this short-sighted policy 13 years ago from a member of a district hiring committee.

Veteran teachers traditionally have provided most of the inservice training on a daily, informal basis. After years of turning away veteran teachers, schools are realizing their shortsightedness. The baby-boomers begin retiring, some of whom are being encouraged to retire early to make room for cheaper teachers, leaving a gaping hole in the teaching staffs of many schools. There are a lot of novice teachers, the old warhorses are retiring, and there is a shortage of mid-career teachers to carry on the traditional mentoring of novices.

The Importance of Relational Trust

Neither governance, nor money, nor curricula nor any of the other usual elements make the difference. Without a certain element not normally identified or considered in reform studies, the achievement gap will be unlikely to narrow substantially. According to Parker J. Palmer, author of “The Courage to Teach,” education is a perennially tweakable political hot button. Political initiatives equal quick fixes, and quick fixes do not work. Even sincere reform efforts are doomed by the emphasis on symptoms rather than root causes.

Mr. Palmer was the guest on NPR's New Dimensions, July 22, 2008. He described the results of Chicago's education mandate of 1988. The researchers found that deprivation in any of the elements usually targeted for reform did not explain shortcomings in education quality. One element, more than any other, explained and predicted education quality. That element the researchers called “relational trust.”

When I reflect on the various educational settings in which I have taught, I find I agree completely with Mr. Palmer. Settings characterized by trust in the good faith motivations and efforts of all the stakeholders led to high achievement and satisfaction levels. Other types of settings produced less achievement and satisfaction regardless of whether every other element was in place or not.

Relational trust in Japanese and American schools looks a little different, but produces the same high results. Reports comparing the Japanese education system with the American education system typically focus on the same superficial elements with perhaps an analysis of portability. The concept of relational trust integrates what we know, and helps us understand that importing some Japanese ways of doing things, in the absence of relational trust, will likely result in just one more doomed reform effort.

Relational trust clarifies the conundrum of why certain reforms seem to work great in some schools, but fail in other schools. During the 1980’s there was a popular method for organizing and presenting curriculum “Workshop Way.” It is just one example of an implementation that I observed working great in some schools and having no effect in others. Inconsistent results rendered even good ideas mere fads.

According to Mr. Palmer, every interaction asks the question, “Is what I see what I get?” Every relationship, every interaction is about trust. He believes our institutions cannot be changed from the outside, that they must be changed by insiders. I once observed insider change completely transform a school from a low achieving school to a high achieving school in less than two years. The change required no new money, no additional testing, and no new curriculum. The change happened under the nose, but completely out of the radar of the superintendent. If he had known, he would have sabotaged our efforts. By the time he became aware, it was a fait accompli.

So what is relational trust? The "vital signs" of relational trust are respect, competence, personal regard and integrity.

Can excellent work be coerced from principals, teachers, and students simply by withholding diplomas, slashing funds, and publishing embarrassing statistics in the newspaper?...

Bryk and Schneider contend that schools with a high degree of "relational trust," as they call it, are far more likely to make the kinds of changes that help raise student achievement than those where relations are poor. Improvements in such areas as classroom instruction, curriculum, teacher preparation, and professional development have little chance of succeeding without improvements in a school's social climate...

What is relational trust? Bryk and Schneider readily admit it is "an engaging but also somewhat elusive idea" as a foundation for school improvement. But after thousands of hours spent observing schools before, during, and after the school day they suggest four vital signs for identifying and assessing trust in schools:

 Respect. Do we acknowledge one another's dignity and ideas? Do we interact in a courteous way? Do we genuinely talk and listen to each other? Respect is the fundamental ingredient of trust, Bryk and Schneider write.
• Competence. Do we believe in each other's ability and willingness to fulfill our responsibilities effectively? The authors point out that incompetence left unaddressed can corrode schoolwide trust at a devastating rate.
• Personal regard. Do we care about each other both professionally and personally? Are we willing to go beyond our formal roles and responsibilities if needed to go the extra mile?
• Integrity. Can we trust each other to put the interests of children first, especially when tough decisions have to be made? Do we keep our word?

Mr. Palmer integrates human relationships, education, health care, institutions and politics. I invite you to listen to the entire program.

“Ed. Schools Flunking Math Prep”

According to a study released on June 26, 2008 by National Council on Teacher Quality, colleges of education are doing a terrible job of preparing teachers to teach elementary math. In many universities, the professors in the college of education do not teach the math for elementary teachers; usually the professors are from the math department, and those math professors agree that newly-minted elementary teachers are poorly skilled at teaching math.

The report looked at 77 elementary education programs around the country, or roughly 5 percent of the institutions that offer undergraduate elementary teacher certification.

It found the programs, within colleges and universities, spend too little time on elementary math topics.

Author Julie Greenberg said education students should be taking courses that give them a deeper understanding of arithmetic and multiplication. She said the courses should explain how math concepts build upon each other and why certain ideas need to be emphasized in the classroom.

The fact is many education programs already require students to take courses intended to “explain how math concepts build upon each other and why certain idea need to be emphasized in the classroom.” Other researchers (i.e. Liping Ma, James W. Stigler, James Hielbert, Harold W. Stevenson) have found that American teachers compare poorly with teachers of other countries both in their understanding of math and their ability to teach it. So what is the problem?

Any of the math professors could have told you, but a study is more convincing. A PhD candidate at the University of Arizona is working on a dissertation about the attitudes of pre-service elementary teachers in the "math for elementary teachers" course. The candidate video-taped students in their elementary math classes, conducted interviews of students and their math professors, and analyzed the students evaluations of the class. She found that students approach the elementary math courses with one of two attitudes: either they consider themselves a math learner and see the course as an opportunity to learn more, or more commonly, they see the course as a waste of time because they already studied the material in elementary school and think their understanding is already more than sufficient.

The dissertation confirms what professors of these courses have observed again and again. Students tend to be hostile because they believe the courses are nothing but meaningless university hoops. Nevertheless, alarming numbers fail the classes. Some universities have a 50% fail rate. Students retake the course until they barely pass and then they move on, eventually becoming certified teachers, even though their math understanding is still woefully inadequate.

The report also criticized the tests education students take when they complete their coursework, and on which states rely when granting teacher licenses. In many cases, the prospective teachers are judged on the overall score only, meaning they could do badly on the math portion but still pass if they do well in the other areas.

Truth be told, the math professors do play a role in the problem. Many of them do not want to teach this kind of low-level content, deeming it a waste of their expensive and prestigious PhD's. Besides, they know students tend to down-rate the instructors of these courses, hurting the instructor's evaluation mean. Furthermore, math professors often fail to customize the course for education students. One way to motivate the unmotivated is to present the material in the context of anticipating and preventing children's math misconceptions. But since nearly all the math professors have never taught young children, they are unable to provide the information the future teachers want.

Without the misconception frame, students may believe that there is something wrong with them, an idea that is very hard for them to accept after twelve years of gratuitous self-esteem building. Even when a math educator with experience teaching children explicitly teaches the class in terms of children's misconceptions, students often remain hostile and become even more resentful when they perceive that for some reason unknown to them they are not succeeding in what they believe should be a “skate” class. They will often punish the instructor with unfairly harsh evaluations. No worries about the instructor's self esteem.

College students are naive if they believe that a professor cannot match up anonymously written student evaluations to the individuals who wrote the evaluations, especially in a class of around 25 students or less. The dissertation video-taped fraction lessons. Pre-service teachers, even when gently confronted with conceptual errors, grouse, “So what? What difference does it make?” and other similar responses. The same students inexplicably writes in the evaluation that they did not get much out of the class. No wonder, with the bad attitude going in.

American children are especially weak in fractions, so it should come as no surprise that elementary pre-service teachers, given that they are often among the least scholastically able in the university, are especially weak in fractions as well.

"Almost anyone can get in. Compared to the admissions standards found in other countries, American education schools set exceedingly low expectations for the mathematics knowledge that aspiring teachers must demonstrate," said the report.

One of the main reasons American children do poorly in international comparisons is because their teachers are ill-prepared to teach them.

(Francis) Fennell, who instructs teacher candidates in math at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., said a common area of weakness among his students is fractions—the same subject the national math panel described as a weak area for kids. "Part of the reason the kids don't know it is because the teachers aren't transmitting that," he said.

Schools Gotta Meet the Needs First

The bus service in my town is not great. The director of the local transit company said that when the ridership increases, the company will improve the service (i.e. have buses run in both directions). However, the way it works is when the public perceives the bus is meeting their needs, they will ride.

The same is true of public education.

The latest issue (May 2008) of California Educator, published by the California Teachers Association, blames charter schools for many of public school's problems. I want to address some of the claims made in the article:

1. “(The) influx of charter schools is siphoning off what little (revenue) the state gives us.”

Our district even has to pay transportation costs to take children to privatized charter schools.

Actually, in my experience, charter schools increase the revenue of the public schools IF the public school in sponsoring the charter school. Students who leave the public school simply are not there. Usually they are homeschooling or they are going to a private school. Either way the revenue these students represent is not going to the public schools. In many districts, charter schools sponsored by a public school district must give 15 percent of the state revenue they receive to that sponsoring district.

There is a small school district in Northern California with about 125 students. The district sponsors a charter school with about 800 students and receives that 15 percent cut. The reason for the 15 percent is that the sponsoring district usually provides some services to the charter schools even if only payroll service. Normally the cost of the services is far less than the 15 percent extra revenue, resulting in a net gain for the sponsoring district.

2. “The bottom line of privatized education is money...It's not right to look at things in terms of profit and loss when you're dealing with human beings.”

This charge is untrue and unfair. Admittedly, there are some charter school operators motivated by money. Many, many charter schools are started and run by teachers who are fed up with the system and are willing to take significant pay cuts in order to have the opportunity to provide what they believe is a superior educational experience to students.

In fact, early in the charter school movement, studies generally found that charter school students attained greater academic achievement than comparable public school students. As time goes on, charter schools have been regressing toward the mean. Today the studies find mixed results similar to results in public schools. Just as there are strong public schools and weak ones, there are strong charter schools and weak ones.

3. “Charter schools pick and choose students, and tend to take the cream of the crop...”
The student body of many charter schools, such as the EXCEL chain in Arizona, consists of students who have either dropped out or been expelled. Additionally, parents of students with behavior issues often believe the problem is that the public school bores their children, so the children act out.

(Personally, I do not believe that boredom should ever be an acceptable excuse for misbehavior. Children can be bored and well-behaved. If the class material is so easy that it is boring, that child with the A has a far stronger case for claiming boredom than the child with the F and a string of referrals to the principal).

These parents frequently enroll their children in those charter schools which position themselves as somehow better than the public schools. This positioning may be signaled by words in the name of the school such as “accelerated” or “academy” or any number of such glorious terms. It is NOT true charter schools take the cream of the crop.

Even if the charge were true, it would be a silly complaint. Childhood only comes around once. Most kids have only one chance to get educated. Caring parents do not have the time or luxury of sacrificing their own child's education to society. If parents believe the public schools are not providing the education their child needs, for whatever reason, the parent has the duty if they are able, to put their child in a position to get the education that child needs.

One teacher was characterized as pointing to “excessive testing, unrealistic academic content standards, endless assessment and paperwork, 'teacher-proof' scripted instruction, state and federal money for hiring private consultants, and a high school exit exam that tests special education students” as being used as part of a “crusade to portray public schools as failing” and that the crusade has been largely successful. Supporters of public schools, not just crusaders against, have complained loudly about all those problems.

Most parents would rather have their child in a neighborhood school. Getting their children to a charter school can be quite a daily inconvenience. If the public schools want charter schools to go away, they must provide an obviously better service or the parents who are able will vote with their feet. It is backwards for the public school to claim that if the enrollment increases, then education will improve. Once parents perceive that the public school is providing the education their children need, they will enroll their children.

A teacher asks,

When public education fails, what will take its place? ...Will it be the free market system? And if so, will it work better than the privatization of health care? I don't think so.

I agree, but making charter schools the scapegoats is profoundly unhelpful. Getting rid the the scapegoat will not help either. The problems are deeper and more resistant than that.

Another article in the same publication asserts:

While public schools certainly face challenges, they are, in fact, far from failing. A new report from Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) says California's public school children have managed to hold steady or improve across subjects and grade levels, with graduation rates rising (emphasis original).

It reminds me of a school board meeting I attended a while back. The assistant superintendent presented data from a recent round of standardized testing and celebrated the improvement in test scores as proof that our local district was a high performing district. But examining the data as displayed on the screen, I was perplexed how a 3 percent improvement in “proficient” from 25 percent to 28 percent could be construed as good news. Holding steady at low levels is not a cause for celebration and certainly is not “far from failing.” The adults need to raise the bar higher for themselves.