How to Make a Failing School Over-Achieve

In an inner-city school where bullying and gangs are typically a large concern--even in an elementary school--Plummer Elementary has been able to turn the entire direction of the school around.

The school was once performing at 405 on a California AYP scale where 800 was the target. And the scores were only getting worse each year. The vast majority--79%--of the students were English-language learners, making standardized test score benchmarks even harder to reach.

But it didn't matter. Watch how Plummer Elementary School came to consistently surpass California AYP guidelines when all the odds are stacked against them as they create the school where you would want to send your child.

Speech-Language Achievement Best Practices

Finding the True Potential of Language-Impaired Students

 by Peg Marshall, Speech-Language Pathologist

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image courtesy of sciencebuddies.org

As a speech-language pathologist, my students face a variety of challenges in the classroom.  Language deficits can affect every subject and every grade level.  There are many valuable strategies that teachers can use to build the confidence of language impaired students in their classrooms through achievement.  The key to student achievement best practices for my students is to continually look at the many aspects of language and find the ones that the student excels in. 

Art work can be a fun way for the student to express complex thoughts and ideas with simple drawings. It is also a valuable tool for the classroom teacher to check student understanding when the student may not have the vocabulary skills to express their ideas.  Students can learn language structures such as sequencing and quotations by sketching their answers in comic strip style.  A teacher wanting to reinforce idioms, similes and metaphors might encourage students to draw humorous pictures of the language structure to reinforce learning.

Knock, knock.  Who’s there? Figurative language! Using humor in the classroom is another fun way to build vocabulary skills for language impaired students.  Homophones are frequently used in jokes to grab the listener’s attention.  Teachers can get a quick check of comprehension by noting which students laugh at the joke.  Expand the activity to include an explanation of the reason the joke is funny to incorporate the link between receptive and expressive language.

Timing is everything for language impaired students. Some students are impulsive and quickly shout out the first word they think of. These students are better at games like ‘Around the World’.  Others prefer to take their time and practice their response in their head. These students prefer small group activities and skits that have a script to follow. Teachers should try to take note of the timing style of the student and gradually try to move them toward the middle so they are able to find success in both types of responding. 

Technology is a comfortable form of expression for many students.  Teachers – don’t let it scare you off, but move beyond video games and text messages to stretch language skills.   Allow the students the opportunity to give detailed directions as they teach you how to use a new app.  The less you know about the activity, the more teaching they will have to do, and the greater variety of language structures they will be forced to use.  Podcasting, tablets, video-cameras, WIKI and apps are valuable language tools in our digital world.  Let the students show you what potential they truly have!

As Winston Churchill said, “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.”  In speech-language pathology, we try everything to help our students communicate, because language is everywhere!

Peg Marshall has practiced speech-language pathology in a variety of settings; including schools, medical clinics, hospitals, home health and skilled nursing facilities.  She is passionate about helping students achieve in the classroom and advocates for inclusion in special education.  She is married and has two children.  She enjoys music, sewing and writing in her free time.

Peg Marshall is a speech-language pathologist at Lake Asbury Elementary School in Clay County, Florida.

Play to Win! - Ideas on Student Achievement Best Practices

A Post on Student Achievement Best Practices

by Susan Varner, Media Coordinator

image courtesy of freewebphoto.com

Most of the students in our upper elementary school play recreational ball of some form, and, like generations before them, dream of being a pro athlete. After flashing photos of current faces in the sports world - Manning, O'Neal, etc., I ask the kids "do you think that these guys played rec ball when they were 10 ?" After the realization that they probably did, I move onto "Do you think that, between seasons, they watched tv, played video games, & ate lots of junk food ? Or do they practice the skills that they are missing, and keep their bodies in shape? " Then, we go on to talk about playing ball for the school team, getting into college, - increasing skills through practice, keeping in shape, etc. - ending up in the pros as a great success -  all the while keeping the focus on these world class athletes who the kids see as the ultimate success stories.

After the kids  are really "into" the discussion, I stop and pick up an easy reader. The kids are RIGHT THERE, and I tell them that, after learning to read in first grade, they had just stopped practicing, content with the basic skills, then they would still be reading first grade books. And, at this age, if they don't try new words, find new skills, don't read during the "off' season, don't keep up with their 'teammates',  then eventually, they will lose their skills and fall so far behind that they will never make it past this level of reading. Just as if Michael Jordan had stopped practicing after learning how to make a free throw in rec ball - would he NOW be MICHAEL JORDAN ?

It is a awesome discussion, and the faces of the kids are the proverbial "lightbulb". Each year, after this discussion, the students bombard me with requests for books that are "a little bit hard" - and this, after all, is exactly what I want them to do !

I hope that you will try this with your kids and let me know how it turns out !

Making Use of My Time for Student Achievement

A Post on Student Achievement Best Practices

By Milissa Meyer-Hanna, 4th Grade Reading Teacher

image courtesy of steppingstonetutors.com

Education is my 2nd career. Previously, I was a graphic artist and had the pleasure of working with a variety of businesses and clients. Some clients’ needs were relatively straight forward, while others presented unique challenges. From time to time, a specific set of criteria was set up by the client that seemed highly improbable to achieve. But no matter what was needed, the goal was to ALWAYS find what worked for that client – giving up was not an option. Early on in that career, I had the great luck to be mentored by a sage advertising rep/artist with many years of experience. He shared one nugget of wisdom which he admonished my to care enough to always apply to every person I came in contact – to anyone, anywhere, at any time: Treat the person you are with as if they are the most important person in your life at that moment in time.

Now, 14+ years into the education field, as a teacher, that adage is even more apropos. A core strategy and one of my student achievement best practices that I strive to use in each of my classes is to make time to have individual student conferences with as many children as possible on a daily basis. During the time I meet with each child, I stress the point that the conference time we are having is all about them – NOT the class, NOT the student sitting next to them, but about THAT specific student. During those few moments, I tell students that I am THEIR individual tutor – this time belongs to them exclusively.

So, how are this many conferences organized in a way that provides “equal time” to all students? Students don’t sign up for conferences, and conferences are not a prescribed amount of time. Instead, students earn conference time – these conferences are a privilege of one-to-one tutoring earned as the result of their on-going work effort. As students are working, either independently or cooperatively, I fit in few moments here and there to interact with them individually. I always start by asking that child to point out a specific success pattern that they are having for a specific skill (what they’re doing right), and we both ponder a specific error pattern (a bug-a-boo skill area that presents difficulty for them), then set a mini goal which we’ll discuss the very next time we meet. Do I always have time to speak with each child individually every day in a conference? Sometimes yes, other times no – it all depends on what each child needs. Whichever child I end with today, I start with the next one tomorrow. And after meeting with everyone, we begin a new round of conferences. Some days I can meet with many students twice - if it’s a quick conference venue. The amount of time isn’t of key significance. Whether or not that student feels like the most important person in the room during their individual conference - & we are working together to meet their specific needs as fully as possible - is my primary objective.

And what about the student who chooses to be off-task? Or who hasn’t met his/her goal from our previous individual conference time? I teach students that our time together in the classroom is valuable to everyone in the room. If a child is not prepared for his/her conference (ie: has not had time to finish a certain portion of an activity, or has chosen not to attempt an activity, or maybe has demonstrated negative behavior that required my intervention, etc.), then they will be able to have a conference with me at a later time when they are more prepared. For this conference time to be as productive as possible for them – and to allow everyone to have the maximum amount of time with me, conference time is not spent coaxing students to work. Rather, it’s to be spent discussing work accomplished, or setting future mini-goals. I guarantee them my undivided attention (with the understanding that they will receive as much of my attention as possible, while I’m monitoring the rest of the class), and they are responsible for bringing their best effort/work to the table for us to discuss. Students are also taught to be respectful of others’ individual tutoring time with me – if someone has a question while I’m conferencing/tutoring, they can either ask another student in their group (if work is being done cooperatively), or they can put a “dot” next to a question they’re having difficulty with, and we’ll discuss it when I meet with them.

The value these conferences add to students’ experiences in the classroom is measurable & highly necessary. This time allows me to monitor progress continually, addressing needs as they come up, rather than waiting for a test to measure student growth individually or collectively.

The best measure of success for incorporating daily tutoring conferences? Student responses – their comments either to me, or as retold by their parents when we speak together about their student’s progress, about the one-to-one instruction their child frequently receives. Every child receives this same opportunity, and is required to share responsibility for his/her own learning.

How to Make a Game of History

A Post on Student Achievement Best Practices

by Taylor Nix, World History Teacher

image courtesy of en.wikibooks.org

My 1st hour World History class was struggling at the beginning of the year. I teach in a very low income area that is plagued with utter apathy. My 1st hour was by far the worst of my classes. Getting a single student to raise their head from the desk to even look in my general direction was difficult. No lie. As I listened to them in the hallways between classes I began to hear that many of my students were gamers. I have a decent amount of experience as a gamer and so  I decided that I would turn my classroom into an adventure role playing game.

I enacted my plan at the beginning of the 3rd quarter after Christmas break. Each of my students was no longer an ordinary student at a desk, they were world explorers of their own choosing. The first stage was creating their characters. They picked a name, a class (a specific role a character fills), and even wrote short background stories that explained who they are and where they came from. We decided to split into two teams which would work to compete against each other in classroom activities.

From now on I was Mstrnix, the leader of a group of data gathering soldiers bound and determined to gather and collect information about different civilizations throughout history. Each day in class they would be given a different quest to venture on and experience. Some days both teams would work towards one goal, some days they would do solo quests, and others would be team oriented. Turning in work that was done in class would yield them experience points, also called XP. The xp would be added up in order to cause their character to “level up”.  In the gaming world leveling a character can allow you to use better items, go to new places, and learn new abilities. Each player (student) would start out at level 1 and by doing quests would increase their levels allowing them to use new items, attend parties, and learn abilities that they would not previously have.

I pointed to the back of the room where there was a brand new bulletin board with 8 sheets of paper on it. I explained that every Tuesday I would post 8 new quests on the board for them to complete. They would have from Tuesday to Tuesday to complete them and they have to complete at least 4 of them each week. Five of the quests were for individual completion, while the other three were designed to be completed with either a partner or a member of their team.

Loot, as it is called in the game-o-sphere, is what drives most players to continue to play the game, the idea that you can make your character more super awesome than it already is, and most importantly to increase your stats. All of their loot was designed to fit one of the three categories. I made it extremely simple in that students only have two stats, attack and defense. The heavy class was designed to buff up their defense stat, the medium to be an equal balance of attack and defense, while the light class was to build up the attack stat.

At the end of each chapter I would use a jeopardy type of template to create what I call a “raid”. In the gaming world the most challenging play comes from battling extremely difficult opponents in an attempt to get rare and powerful items. The same was true in my class version. To review for the test we split into teams and using my template would simulate this. I would have five categories on the board that represented different hallways for the raid. Once a group chose a hallway they would attempt to go through five doors of increasing difficulty to get to the boss at the end of the hall. They would first choose a door, I would ask them a question, if they got it right they would go through the door. On the other side of the door was a culturally or area specific creature or monster which would have its own attack and defense stat. The students would roll a dice to determine if their attacks were successful and whether or not they survived. If they defeated their foe they would receive a number of items to split up amongst their team. The day after the raid they would individually fill out a “field report” that documented their encounters in the raid. If you didn’t catch on the field report is just a standard test that covers the chapter or section that we have completed.

I would love to continue explaining some of the other workings and ideas that I have implemented in this hour, but I feel that I am getting a bit off subject a little bit. The key point that I want to drive home to you fellow educators is to embrace your student’s interests. I do not believe that what I have created is in any way a cure all for every class. That being said, I have found a way to inspire and motivate kids to do quality work by using their own creativity and interests in a positive way. They show up to my class ready to succeed and more importantly ready to play. I won’t lie and tell you that it is easy to plan because it’s not. It is almost life consuming to plan just this one class, but I can’t stop. If there was ever any evidence for why I became a teacher it is because of what I have seen in this class.

Education's Final Frontier

In the 21st Century there is no such thing as a "final frontier," but our education system and national pessimism are keeping us grounded.

A Post on Student Achievement Best Practices

By Jordan Wilson, 9th Grade History Teacher

image courtesy of spacetelescope.org

The national debate right now is asking the question that we need to be asking in our education system and in our schools.  Do we continue with ambitious, future-searching goals that were embodied by Eisenhower and Kennedy in their dreams of conquering space, or do we let large national research projects like NASA die in order to hunker down and improve our dire economy?  Many argue that unless we sort our economy out now through austerity, America will run itself into a fiscal crisis that can only lead to national demise.  Others believe that investing large-scale in an ambitious future through public projects is the means to solving America’s fiscal problems.  Both arguments hold water and their debate in the public forum should seek to raise concern about America’s fiscal stability and its role in the future.

In our schools we need to be asking the same question.  The school where I teach 9th Grade World History, Anacostia Senior High School, is on record as one of Washington D.C.’s lowest performing public high schools because only 13% of 10th Grade students were measured proficient in reading on last year’s state assessment, with 9% proficient in math.  Even in one of the District’s higher performing public schools, reading and math proficiency rates were at 66% and 52% respectively.  In the face of such numbers, the natural tendency is to problem solve how we can get our kids to read and calculate numbers at somewhere close to grade level.  However, the danger with this response is that it forces educators to think small and lower the bar for student performance.  It’s a sad day in America when our expectations for High School students end at ‘can read’.

So the question for our school system is are we going to dream big dreams for these students, or are we going to become so mired by low reading and numeracy scores that our energies focus purely on the basics at the behest of more advanced goals that our students could and should be achieving?  Choosing the latter ignores the legacy of our mid-Century Presidents for what made the space race so great was not that man walked on the moon, for that had only symbolic importance.  The space race was significant because of the technologies that we stumbled across in the process – satellite technologies that have changed how we live, from GPS systems to telecommunications; and new materials that were built for astronauts but have everyday use in our kitchens and in our sports equipment.

It’s the same for our kids.  If we set them ridiculously ambitious goals, students will learn to overcome obstacles and defeat challenges, to pull new ideas seemingly out of thin air in order to continue their progress forward.  Ultimately, when we set ambitious goals, we do not know what our students will achieve.  That is the risk, but also the glorious reward as they will have the opportunity to create ideas, solutions and products that our generation cannot even fathom.    Just as we did as a country, our students can exceed our expectations.  We just have to let them try.

Just to be clear, this is not to say that improving literacy and numeracy scores is unimportant, far from it.  But the argument of this article is that in a very short period of time, no-one is going to be looking at these statistics for high school students because students are going to be measured using far greater metrics – computer literacy and programming proficiency, conversational and written fluency in foreign languages to name just a few likely examples.  Basic reading and numeracy skills are going to be considered a given for students in middle school and above, indeed in many school districts around the world they already are.  Therefore we must not let current deficits in these areas prevent us from challenging students to achieve even greater goals.  The ability to read is not an ambitious goal for the vast majority of American youth and treating it as such is underselling them and our national future. 

Walking on the moon was a bold idea for Kennedy to float in 1960, but its vocalization changed America for the better.  Restoring America to the top of education tables may be just as ambitious, if not more so, but we have to give our students the chance to get there.  Indeed, the quality of our national future is dependent on it.

Jordan Wilson is a 9th Grade World History Teacher at Anacostia Senior High School in Washington, D.C.  He was a 2009 Teach For America corps member in the D.C. metro region.

I Taught ESL; They Learned Self-Confidence: A Job-Embedded PD Story

Hey there, readers. It's Jared Heath here, and I am going to talk to you about job-embedded professional development for teachers.

Job-Embedded PD for Teachers--I Had a Problem

Image courtesy of certificationmap.com

I loved teaching English as a second language. And as I've already discussed with you, my students loved it, too.

That's how, in the first few months as a teacher, I found myself delivering a professional development session at one of our training meetings. We typically had the same two coaches giving us work sheets and asking us self-answering questions that induced sleep more often than they encouraged improvement. You know the drill. If these job-embedded professional development sessions for our teachers weren't considered paid time, my attendance would have been highly questionable. Then one day I got a call from my department head asking me to teach at our next staff meeting.

Now my less-than-favorable attitude toward these PD sessions was coming back to haunt me, because I now had to teach these teachers--many of whom had been at the game much longer than me and were undoubtedly better at their jobs than I. So what do I, a green teacher full of ideas but little else, teach veteran ESL teachers that they will actually take back to their classroom? I had one wild card up my sleeve.

I Had to Take Them Out of Their Comfort Zones

Staff meetings had heretofore been filled with discussions about "the students," always referring to how "they" learn English, how "they" perceive teaching styles, etc. I had spent several years becoming conversational in French, Mandarin Chinese, and German, so I always felt more like "them" with the students than "we" with the teachers. If I had anything to teach these teachers, it was how the teachers themselves learn a second language.

How often do we as teachers forget that we are students? We have to be students. The learning process never ends, and we (should) always push forward in our fields. I had a very solid academic background in phonology, syntax, and lexicon of the English language, but these teachers didn't need a lecture. They needed an experience.

So I Taught Them Mandarin

Most of our teachers had learned a second language, typically Spanish, but it had been a long time since they had lived the excruciating experiences of translating every sentence in their heads before spitting it out in an awful accent.

I took 30 minutes and taught the teachers to count to 10, introduce themselves, ask for directions to the bathroom, write a few Chinese characters, and more. We had so much fun, and the teachers were amazed at what they were able to pick up and retain. These teachers remembered what it was like to be the students again--and in the process, I demonstrated some of my strategies for helping students feel comfortable in the very awkward setting of trying something new.

The next 15 minutes, we discussed the mechanics of the lesson--the kind of questions the audience had, the explanations I gave that helped them see things a little differently, and the strategies that didn't work in that setting or maybe wouldn't work for one of their classrooms.

In that setting, we became the classroom example. But we could never imitate every classroom setting, and we certainly had more questions than an 45-minute session twice a month could answer. We needed something on-demand to carry us through.

I Taught ESL. They Learned Self-Confidence.

I realized that the same self-confidence that I wanted my students to gain was exactly what my co-workers needed in a job-embedded professional development session for teachers. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we can do hard things. Successful PD sessions aren't sessions that teach us lock-step drills for grammar, history, math, or science instruction. We as teachers are trying to change a student's way of thinking about the world and about themselves, and we can't do that until we learn to change our own perspective. Sometimes we forget that this is the most important lesson of all.

Cincinnati Closing Achievement Gap and Increasing Graduation Rates

For years, leaders in education have worked hard to close the achievement gap between white students and African American students. While many schools and districts are still pushing forward in this effort, Cincinnati, Ohio Public Schools (CPS) has managed to close the gap with their high school graduation rates.

For over a decade, CPS has involved coordinated, research-based strategies towards closing the gap, but without the creative and courageous work by those actually in the schools, such an ambitious goal could not have been realized. So how did they do it? Is there a way other districts can repeat such success?

Cincinnati, Ohio Public Schools used several strategies including:

• Focusing on just a few goals (increasing overall graduation rates and reducing the high school graduation gap).

• Taking educators, parents, community leaders and students to visit some of the nation’s most effective urban district and charter public schools.

• Focusing staff development on a few key areas: literacy, numeracy and learning to work more effectively with today’s urban youth.

• Increasing youth/community service so students learned they are capable of more than they thought.

• Positive ongoing leadership from the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers

• Holding principals accountable and replacing some in schools where there was not much progress.

To read the full article and see the full list of strategies, click here.

New Federal Data Reveal Educational Inequities

“Transparency is the path to reform,” said Russlynn Ali, the Department of Education’s assistant secretary for civil rights. New federal statistics shared Thursday revealed the level of equity in schools and districts across the United States.

Ali commented, “These data are incredible and revelatory. They paint a portrait of a sad truth in American schools: Fundamental fairness hasn’t reached whole groups of students.”

“For a long time, we have fallen short on why the achievement gap exists,” she said. But the data collected show “gaps in opportunity, in access to courses and other resources that continue to hobble students across the country.”

Although the data online isn’t aggregated by state, the numbers offer a glimpse into the educational inequities at the national level:

• Some 3,000 schools serving about 500,000 high school students weren’t offering Algebra II classes last school year, and more than 2 million students in 7,300 schools did not offer calculus.

• At schools where the majority of students were African-American, teachers were twice as likely to have only one or two years of experience compared with schools within the same district that had a majority-white student body.

Read the full article and learn more about the national inequities here.

Virginia School District Attributes 80% of Equity Gains to Use of PD 360

PD 360 is the leading on-demand professional learning resource for schools and districts. After two years with PD 360 Loudoun County Virginia Schools English achievement among economically disadvantaged students improved 15%, raising them from the 68th percentile to the 81st percentile. Among ESL students, scores improved by 18%, taking them from the 61st percentile to the 79th percentile.

To find out more about how Loudoun's economically disadvantaged students also saw improved math scores read the full article HERE.

Closing the Achievement Gap in Santa Clara County

According to test scores released today in California, the achievement gap is starting to narrow in Santa Clara County between Latino students and white students. Despite staff cuts and other adverse economic times, the achievement gap narrowed in English, Math, and Science.



Full Article at Mercury News



To learn more about closing the achievement gap see Equity 101 Session 5