I ended my last post in a rather bleak place. To readers who are choosing to fight the good fight in our most difficult schools, I apologize. We can’t give up. We should not give up. Teaching is a calling. Few of us enter teaching for the pay or pleasant working conditions. Those tough, urban classrooms demand dedicated teachers. Schools that crank through four-thousand-some referrals over the course of the year require the best to even function.

That said, I think yesterday’s post reflects a truth. You are unlikely to be rewarded for having chosen to work in America’s war zones. Very few people will look at you and say, “You work in South Chicago? Wonderful!” Some of them will even ask you why you would do such a crazy thing. Then they will ask questions like, “Why don’t you go to work in Hinsdale or Flossmoor?” In other words, why don’t you find a tony suburb that has money? Good friends may even try to help, offering to talk to the Superintendent of their local district who happens to attend the same Cardio III class.

Expect curiosity. Don’t expect support. Don’t even expect support from your administration. The odds are that the people at the top of your school are under so much pressure to increase test scores that they can’t or won’t take a step back to ask themselves about staff morale. Their jobs now often depend on pushing up highly resistant numbers. With mortgages to pay, they may try to root out any weakness they perceive, and they may never find time to check their perceptions.

Stress will be high. I am reminded of Gimli in “Lord of the Rings.” When he says “Certainty of death, *small* chance of success… What are we waiting for?” he captures the feel of our urban and rural drop-out factories.

If you can handle the stress, those kids need you far more than the kids in Hinsdale or Flossmoor. But if you finish this year feeling like the orcs won, get on the internet. First and second year teachers have an easier time finding new positions than most. Districts like to hire people who did those first, underperforming years somewhere else and who now may be ready for primetime. But even older teachers can make changes, especially those who will consider moving to outlying areas. And I’d say let a few steps go if you are feeling extremely stressed. Money should always be secondary to health.

Eduhonesty: If you do decide to seek alternative employment, be ready with a set of questions. You don’t want to jump off the ramparts into a new sea of orcs. Almost the whole country is fighting to push up numbers. That magic school where you don’t spend the week in multiple meetings figuring out how to gather and present multiple new sets of data while learning the four new software programs of the year? Finding that school most likely will become a quest.

I view my last piece of advice as critical to any teachers who do get another, seemingly better offer later this year: Talk to teachers in the school. When trying to fill positions, administrators can seem like the kindest, most supportive bunch of people you ever met. If a Principal’s goal is to add you to a new, stronger team, that Principal may tell you exactly what you want to hear:

♦ “We get together regularly for fun, team-building activities.”
♦ “Yes, we have many professional development opportunities.”
♦ “We want our teachers to have all the planning and preparation time they need.”

Before accepting an offer, check these assertions with rank-and-file teachers in the building. Ask them about meetings and data. Ask them about standardized test prep, benchmark tests and other mandatory testing procedures. Ask them about teacher camaraderie. Where do most people eat lunch? Ask them if they believe their school is well run. Why or why not? How large are classes? Are disciplinary policies effective? What’s the best thing about the district? What’s the worst?

Teachers tend to interview the Principal and administration when seeking a new position. That’s useful, but the people in the know are the teachers in the hallways. At the end of a successful interview, I suggest you ask to talk with members of your prospective department/grade about their curriculum and approaches to that curriculum.

Before you buy that Spanish 1 house, you want to make sure no bodies have been buried in the basement.

(A post for newbies and others.)

The above disciplinary referral form is fairly typical. I stumbled on some numbers from a meeting I attended. These numbers come from a middle-class high school where I taught Spanish. Toward the end of the school year, out of 2084 students, 1,354 had no disciplinary referrals, 322 kids had one referral, 283 kids had 2-5 referrals, 66 kids had 6-8 referrals and 59 kids had 9+ referrals.

In and of themselves, the numbers don’t tell us very much. The referral paper trail depends upon a culture. In a school where referrals result in action, many more referrals may be written, especially when that action is timely. If two weeks normally elapse before any detention or consequence happens, referrals will fall, as teachers opt for immediate, in-class consequences. In a school that requires a great deal of teacher intervention before referrals can be written, fewer referrals will make their way to the Dean’s office. Once a teacher has called parents and held a conference with the student, any extra paperwork may seem like an unnecessary burden given the expected payback from that work. If referrals fall into a black-hole and nothing happens without direct teacher interaction with administration, very few referrals will ever be written. Why bother? I have worked under all these conditions.

Middle schools and high schools may go through thousands of referrals. More than a few times, I have ended up photocopying the front sheet of a referral form while my school waited for new forms to arrive. On top of habitually running out of paper for the copy machines, my last school seemed to have regular referral-form crises.

I’d like to focus on only a few numbers above, though, the 66 kids who earned 6-8 referrals and the 59 kids who earned 9+ referrals. Those numbers ought to give many people pause. Together, these two categories contain 5.9% of the high school’s total population. That’s slightly over 1 in 20 kids. They reflect a daunting and underdiscussed problem within America’s educational system.

Referrals are only written for a fraction of misbehaviors, and I’d say many or most teachers only write up fairly serious misbehaviors. A few teachers burn through referral forms like locusts in a wheat field, but most teachers would rather manage minor infractions themselves. Again, numbers vary by school culture, but experienced teachers often prefer to deal with minor misbehaviors directly, rather than wait for later consequences from an office. If Aaron calls Mark a “shithead” without rancor or any attempt to offend, as a random word choice in a regular conversation, I don’t want to lock into an elaborate disciplinary process. Referrals take time. I don’t want to let the incident go, of course. But making Aaron miss five to ten minutes of lunch while I discuss proper language will often solve my problem. New teachers and teachers under scrutiny may also avoid writing referrals for fear of appearing unable to manage their classes.

That one in twenty kids thus comprise only a fraction of the disciplinary issues teachers encounter during the year, possibly a small fraction. The actual fraction will vary depending on administrative response time and helpfulness. During the year of the black hole, clumps of hair could be seen in the hallway and I am not sure that all those fights were even written up.

Here’s the academic whammy that we too seldom talk about. If 1 in 20 students are getting 6 or more referrals in a year, and about half of those students are getting nine or more referrals that year, actionable misbehavior has become a regular part of classroom life. A teacher with a homeroom of 30 students may easily get two to three regular offenders in that class. In a very unlucky draw, four or more Dean’s office regulars can be placed in the same room.

Eduhonesty: I plan to continue this thread in another post, but I’d like to make a few observations for new teachers to end this post. If you are like many new teachers, you may be starting in an economically or financially-disadvantaged district. These districts tend to have greater disciplinary issues, often spawning many more referrals than academically and financially stronger districts. Unsurprisingly, they also have disproportionately more teaching vacancies. Major urban areas always have openings. Government numbers show that larger schools in urban areas are particularly prone to one category in the statistics: Widespread disorder in classrooms. Larger minority populations and higher poverty rates also tend to be correlated with higher widespread disorder. More information is available at the following site: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/crimeindicators2011/tables/table_07_1.asp.

If disciplinary issues are causing you stress and confusion, please ask colleagues for advice. They have been there. Strict routines help. Clearly defined rules and procedures help. Carefully arranged seating charts help. If the chart is not working, feel free to alter seating arrangements, but you want to avoid making frequent changes. You are striving to create a safe, stable atmosphere.

Ask colleagues about writing referrals. Does this offense merit a referral? How many referrals are too many? Which dean or administrator is most likely to help? What should you do if the referral does not help? How can you write that referral without losing class time? When do you call security? What do you do in a fight? What does the school consider to be excessive tardiness? How disruptive must student behavior be to qualify for a referral? How profane? You need to learn your school’s culture so you don’t seem petty and nitpicky or the opposite, too lenient with disciplinary infractions.

I’m going to give a piece of advice here. Don’t touch anyone in a fight. Aside from the question of getting yourself injured, I saw a colleague sacrifice his job with this move once. The student’s mom complained that my colleague had pulled her son off another student too roughly. One month’s suspension, half of it without pay, and my colleague ended up in a downward spiral with the district. He’s happily teaching in another state now, but once you touch a student, you can end up in a parent’s crosshairs. Don’t be certain that the administration will back you up, especially if you are a new teacher. If the fight starts, call or yell for security immediately while you move students out of the way.

A second piece of advice: If you have a class that has three or more students who are regularly disrupting the class, talk to administration about rearranging student schedules. You will have to do this soon. The later in the semester, the less likely you are to succeed. If you can split your four into two and two, daily life will improve dramatically. You can’t always do this — some schools will not touch established schedules — but when enough learning time is being lost or commandeered by out-of-control adolescents, a desperate roll of the dice to try to separate students can’t hurt. I’d be ready with specific instances where the dynamic between troublemakers has made learning problematic for the rest of the class.

For those new teachers starting in academically- and financially stronger districts, I’ll pass on the same advice but you may be lucky enough to confront these issues far less often. The desire to go to college helps keep students out of the Dean’s office. As free or reduced lunches fall in the government table referenced above, so does widespread disorder in classrooms.

That’s the academic whammy that does not receive enough attention. The teacher who deals with disciplinary issues regularly starts at a disadvantage in terms of academics and test scores. Disciplinary infractions and referrals suck time out of the school day. They take up afterschool time as teachers call home, hold conferences, stay behind for detentions, write up notices, consult social workers and counselors, rearrange seating charts, etc. Most importantly, behaviors that lead to referrals regularly distract classes. In this time when merit pay, evaluation numbers and even retention may hinge on student performance, teachers in financially- and academically disadvantaged districts end up at a disadvantage outside of their control.

I’m sorry to say that my last piece of advice proceeds naturally enough from what I just wrote: Are you working in that large, urban school? Are your students test scores and behavior being used to assess your performance? You ought to try to get out. Come spring, you should explore online postings for new positions. Yes, maybe you love your school. But your odds of succeeding as a teacher will go up as you move up the socioeconomic and academic ladder. When student test scores, behavior and enthusiasm become the major criteria in any teacher’s evaluation, that teacher’s best move will be to strike out to find a district where both test scores and student aspirations run high.

(This will be another practical post mostly for newbies.)

I am a bit late writing this. Districts keep pushing school years back into the summer to allow more time to prepare for that annual state test on which careers may rise and fall. Some schools now start in July. But I hope this proves helpful to a group of readers.

Are you furiously putting up student work in your classroom to get ready for incoming parents? Are you helping students organize their work to show to their parents? At open house and parent-teacher conferences, parents will form their first impression of you. Taking time to create a caring, professional environment can go a long way toward making your year easier.

As parents enter, I recommend getting contact information first so this piece does not get forgotten. If parents say they don’t have a phone or an email address — in financially-disadvantaged districts, especially those with many immigrant parents, this is not uncommon — then try to get a contact phone or email. Somebody’s uncle will do. A few uncles and aunts are better. I suggest buying index cards. On the front of each index card, record a student’s name. Write down any contact information below that name.

I once coined a phrase I still like: Disconnected kids have disconnected phones. Disconnected kids need you to be able to reach parents somehow. The fact that poor behavior or lack of effort can get back to parents definitely improves behavior and effort, at least on the part of some students.

You will want to have folders of student work ready to view. If your class is keeping work in binders, this step should be simple. If you can find time before conferences, I would suggest trying to put sticky notes on binder items you want to share so you can find examples of good or problematic work quickly.

If you have not yet begun making students collect their work and keep that work in binders, I’d suggest starting this week. With luck, your school provides binders. If not, you can tell students to bring in binders, but that may prove frustrating as the excuses pile up and the days go by. I suggest going out and buying cheap binders. Let students purchase them at cost or below cost. I usually quietly give a few away.

Tell students that parents will see their binders. Help students by allowing time to put classwork and homework in binders. Regular reminders that these binders are for parents helps to get best student efforts.

Walk around to assist with organization as students file away their work. Teaching students to think about how to organize their papers does them a great service. By middle school, organizational deficits can sink less methodical kids as they try to keep track of six classes and six teachers. Sixth and seventh grade teachers — the best gift you can give your students will be the ability to create a system that will allow them to keep track of their work and their future responsibilities.

Oops! How did this post become, “Our Friend the Binder”?

Back to conferences. You have your organized, alphabetized binders. You have your parents and their contact information. You have any other forms the school wants them to sign while they are there, such as school handbooks, for example. Now what?

Some teachers prepare a PowerPoint on classroom plans and expectations, especially for open house events. Open house is not intended to be a time for one-on-one teacher conferences. Parents will try to engage you in these conferences anyway. If that happens, say something short to indicate you are available to talk about Mary, but you can’t have that conversation during open house. I’d suggest being prepared with a list of times for possible parent meetings later.

For parent-teacher conferences, you will want access to student work, grades and other data, such as test scores and attendance. The data’s not the conversation, however. It’s too easy to get lost in a data dump nowadays because we have so much data. If you find yourself doing all the talking, as you explain scores and percentages, please take a step back.

It’s important to remember that conferences are a two-way conversation. Show that you care by asking questions and listening to answers. While parents are learning how their children are progressing in school, you want to learn about their home and community lives. Parents often know student strengths and weaknesses, and learning styles. They can identify possible future problems. When mom says, “Don’t let her sit next to Marisol,” that’s good advice. While the emphasis of a conference should be on learning, social and home factors affect learning at all levels, and parents know your students’ lives. If Mary seems distracted, explore the problem with her parent(s). Is she sleeping enough? Is she having social difficulties? Has she seemed more distracted lately? How much time does she spend gaming in the evening?

The tone of parent–teacher conferences should be determined by students’ needs. In all cases, you will want to lead with the positive, whether that’s a well-done assignment or a funny story. For students who are doing well academically, you will wish to point out areas where they might strengthen performance. What can Jimmy do to become even better in math? The Jimmy conferences tend to be fun and easy.

The real challenge of conferences rests in discussions with parents of struggling students. I have always had trouble striking the right balance when talking about these students. If you are like me, you will want to be optimistic about Nolan’s behavior or Mary’s academics. You will want to emphasize the positives. For students who are genuinely struggling, you must take a more somber tone. I have sometimes downplayed my problems, spinning them for myself and for parents. I should not have done so.

While parents should hear the good, they also deserve to get the full picture. I suggest a “just the facts ma’am” approach. Instead of saying, “I know Mary has been distracted by her new baby brother, but she is not turning in some of her assignments,” eliminate any excuses, explanations or rationalizations you might be about to offer. Instead simply say, “Mary has not turned in six of the last ten assignments.” Then go from there to create a plan to fix Mary’s problem(s). Softening the blow does Mary no good.

Excuses, explanations and rationalizations never helped anyone get ahead in work or life in the long-run. Mary needs to do her work. Her parents need to understand that she is in trouble.

Some teachers naturally know how to handle the difficult conference. I had to work at that skill. If you tend to err often on the side of kindness, please keep in mind that parents may take you at your word. If you say, “Nolan will probably grow out of it,” those parents may wait for Nolan to grow out of “it” when they should be aggressively working on changing a behavior or finding him a tutor.

Other tidbits:

♦ Bring granola bars or snacks for yourself. You may be running for thirteen hours straight through.

♦ Dress professionally. Some teachers go for business casual, but I’d suggest notching it up a bit. On this one day, put on heels. (Unless you are a guy, although if you are a guy who wants to wear heels, that’s certainly your business.) Throw some tailoring into whatever you decide to wear. You are probably making a first impression.

♦ Bring crayons and toys for little brothers and sisters. Have books or magazines handy for older siblings. You might lay in chips and snacks for the kids.

♦ Try to stay on schedule. Some parents have multiple conferences to attend or evening jobs. Those parents may not have an extra fifteen minutes to wait in the hall.

♦ Be ready with advice. If Mary seems distracted, be ready with suggestions that may help her. Tell parents you will try moving her away from kids who distract her. Ask if parents could put her to bed earlier. Suggest shutting down the gaming system at a certain hour or not allowing gaming until all homework has been finished.

♦ Be Prepared for Surprises. Parents say the darnedest things. A mom I knew once said, “Maybe she’s just dumb. Her dad was dumb as a post.” Uhhh… It’s hard to know where to go after a comment like that. How do you respond? I’d say stick to the positives. Steer mom toward tutoring while observing that her daughter works diligently in class.

Eduhonesty: Do you have enough to do now? Are you thinking there may still be time to go into accounting or banking? I have one last piece of advice.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, Mr. or Ms. Hunt, Phelps, Briggs etc., is to call or write home. If you want to raise parental attendance, a personal invitation works wonders. In districts where parental attendance is light, this one step can cause the number of parents at open houses and conferences to skyrocket. I know this may all sound like a mountain of work, but getting parents in for conferences will help you all year long. If you do have to call home later because of academic or behavior issues, that personal relationship goes a long way towards helping you to help your students.

California has instituted a new state test based on the Common Core. Results are in and results were predictable, in my view. Scores fell as scores are beginning to fall across the country. If we keep making the tests harder, scores will go down. I’d suggest that’s common sense, although I am afraid that if I do, someone will demand my research. Common sense doesn’t get much respect nowadays.

I would like readers to follow me down my path, starting by reading the following article:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-achievement-gaps-widen-20150911-story.html, although the below quote on the new test’s results covers the issue that spawned this post. The article’s a good read if you have time. If not, fine.

“This is going to show the real achievement gap,” said Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. “We are asking more out of our kids and I think that’s a good thing.”

At the same time, he added, “there’s no question that when we raised the bar for students that we’re going to have to support our lower-achieving students even more so than we are now.”

Although scores declined for all students, blacks and Latinos saw significantly greater drops than whites and Asians, widening the already large gap that was evident in results from earlier years, according to a Times analysis.

Under the previous test, last given to public school students two years ago, the gap separating Asian and black students was 35 percentage points in English. The gap increased to 44 percentage points under the new test. Asian students’ results dropped the least on the new tests, which widened the gap between them and those who are white, black or Latino, the analysis showed.

White students also maintained higher relative scores than their black and Latino peers.

A similar pattern occurred with students from low-income families. Their scores in math, for example, declined at a steeper rate (51%) than those of students from more affluent backgrounds (16%). In the last decade, all ethnic groups made significant academic gains compared to where their scores started. But the gap separating the scores of blacks and Latinos from whites and Asians changed little.

Eduhonesty: This widened gap between subgroups taking our standardized tests does not surprise me. When we make the test harder, some of those kids who are already at a disadvantage will fall farther than academically stronger counterparts. Why? I’m sure there are many factors, but one leaps out at me immediately. In the classroom, on harder tests, some kids at the bottom tend to give up. Many adolescents especially will quit working if they don’t believe they can succeed. If they think they might manage to get lucky by eliminating one or two wrong answers on each question, they often hang in, hoping to reason/luck their way into a decent grade. But at a certain level of difficulty — at the point where they don’t believe they can identify most or any wrong answers — students begin guessing without trying.

In a nutshell, as the test gets harder, stronger students begin to have to eliminate answers and guess between what remains, while weaker students lose that ability to eliminate answers and begin to do almost nothing except guess. This one fact explains the widening gap. The stronger students may be missing more problems as they eliminate wrong answers and then choose between what remains. But those students will get more right than students who are purely guessing. I know this guessing happens. One big clue: When a student fills in 50 bubbles on a 40 question section.

The much larger issue here of racial and income inequities I will have to save for later. Those inequities are a book, not a blog post. They are also proving remarkably resistant to attempts to level the academic playing field.

(A post for newbies and those teachers who are sometimes taken by surprise by events in their classrooms.)

A definition taken from the Urban Dictionary, a great source for clearing up mysterious classroom expressions:

Cop eyes:
“The ability to see cop cars and police officers from such a distance that you remain “under the radar”.

Andrew(on the phone to Chris): “Hey, man. I got out of work late, but I’m gonna fly to meet you at that party asap.”
Chris: “Alright. Just don’t get pulled over; make sure you got Sam with you. That girl’s got mad cop eyes.”

The best cops have their own version of cop eyes, the ability to notice atypical behavior on the street, to feel when a scene is not right. They hear unnatural quiet. They see arms that fall oddly in wrong directions.

If you have cop eyes, count yourself lucky. Teachers with cop eyes enter the classroom carrying a large, natural advantage. If any rational discipline plan has been put in place, students will behave under those watchful eyes. Trouble seldom even starts.

“She knows. Somehow she always know when you are going to do something,” students tell each other.

I never had those eyes. While I am explaining polynomials to one student, other students will often fade out of view even when they are right beside me. My classes and I have almost always gotten along very well, so that lack of peripheral awareness has mostly not caused me grief. But in the wrong class, at the wrong time, students who are “under the radar” can be real trouble — for themselves, for you and for others.

What can you do? I suggest that you practice developing your own set of cop eyes. At first, you might set alarms to remind yourself to practice. Otherwise, your efforts are likely to become an afterthought. This one skill has the potential to make your whole teaching career easier, every day of every year.

Take 5 minutes in every class to use your peripheral vision. What is happening? Where is it happening? How does the room feel? Is the room messy? Where is it messy? How did it get that way? Who is on task? Who is drifting? Don’t react right away to what you see. If you start to pull in that kid who is drifting, you may lose your focus, and cop eyes are all about focus. Your goal is to develop that peripheral vision, to learn to sense the class mood and to stop trouble before it starts.

Some people naturally scan the room around them, others not so much so. This topic seldom hits the educational school radar, no doubt because it’s impossible to quantify. We have no Cop Eye Scale where a teacher can measure an average of 42% alertness in the morning, falling to 27.5% by late afternoon. (Thank goodness! If we did, somebody would be making us record these numbers in another spreadsheet somewhere.) But if you are one of those teachers who is taken by surprise by events in the classroom, this post is for you.

I once turned down a job offer from two of the nicest guys I’d met in the education world when I was in my third year teaching. The district was obviously well-run and had surprisingly good test scores given its poverty rate. But class sizes were large, and explaining my choice, I said, “I never know where that paperwad came from.” I moved into bilingual education instead, opting for smaller class sizes.

I got better. Each year, I became more able to see the whole of my classroom, rather than just part.

To some extent anyway, cop eyes can be learned. I suggest taking time to deliberately practice if you are not a natural. One other tip on this topic: Sleep helps enormously. That mysterious peripheral view that you are striving for will come more easily when you are rested.

Optional observation from the blogger: I have told readers I am ADHD. ADHD runs heavily through the maternal side of my family and I’ve passed it on. My oldest fits all the classic lists of ADHD characteristics and the youngest one struggled at times in elementary school with attention issues. One characteristic associated with ADHD is hyperfocus. From “Learn About ADHD: Focus on Hyperfocus,” at http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/612.html:

“What you might not know about ADHD is that there’s another side: the tendency for children and adults with attention deficit disorder to focus very intently on things that do interest them. At times, the focus is so strong that they become oblivious to the world around them.”

This trait makes teaching tougher sometimes.

(To young, new teachers especially. Readers, please share this post with new colleagues.)

I messaged a friend tonight warning her about her recent Facebook posts. If you are a recent graduate in your first teaching position, you may be relaxing your social media caution. Please don’t. Even the tenured can be fired for speaking negatively about their students. Don’t assume no one will be checking now for scenes of riotous partying or zombie dissection videos. If no one else is checking, your students will be. That sea of faces that walks into your room? They are curious about you. Some of them are tech savvy and, especially if you live in a smaller town, may know younger sisters and brothers of friends of yours.

Social media can ambush you. After a long day, vent to friends in the teacher’s lounge or at the local pub, but don’t vent over the internet. Don’t share too many details from the big party last Saturday night, either.

Eduhonesty: I know many teachers. My feed is filled with recipes and pleas to rescue puppies. If you come across great ideas to help in the classroom, those make fine shares, too.

But view Facebook and social media as part of your job application package. Even if you are doing an excellent job, you may find yourself on the market next year. I have been riffed three (four?) times as part of reductions in force. I was always recalled, but I was looking for work those years to hedge my bets.

True or not true: “Leveled reading is intuitive and smartly packaged (who wants kids to read “frustration level” books?), but its evidence base is remarkably thin. There is much stronger research support for teaching reading with complex texts.” (http://edexcellence.net/articles/leveled-reading-the-making-of-a-literacy-myth)

I strongly suggest readers tackle the URL above. Leveled reading has been considered a best practice for years now. What is the evidence for this belief? Apparently, evidence is thin on the ground. What evidence there is supports leveled reading during the earliest school years. Beyond that, the weight of evidence falls behind more demanding material. At least, so the above article claims, and I have been blindsided by so many dubious interpretations of shoddy studies by now that I am willing to consider the above contention not only possible, but likely. What is the research-based support for leveled reading? More importantly, has that support been unjustifiably used to choke off the reading of more demanding texts?

My husband and I were discussing the fact that we both read “Silas Marner” in middle school. I read “Moby Dick” in middle school. He is rereading Silas Marner now. Here is part of a paragraph from page 31, a paragraph that extends 39 lines down the page:

“That, at least, was the condition of Godfrey Cass in this six-and-twentieth year of his life. A movement of compunction, helped by those small indefinable influences which every personal relation exerts on a pliant nature, had urged him into a secret marriage, which was a blight on his life. It was an ugly story of low passion, delusion and waking from delusion, which needs not to be dragged from the privacy of Godfrey’s bitter memory. He had long known that the delusion was partly due to a trap laid for him by Dunstan, who saw in his brother’s degrading marriage the means of gratifying at once his jealous hate and his cupidity. And if Godfrey could have felt himself simply a victim, the iron bit that destiny had put into his mouth would have chafed him less intolerably.”

Both my husband and I waded through that vocabulary in our early teens. We are agreed that “Silas Marner” is probably an inappropriate middle school choice, but not because of the verbiage. A great deal of life experience is needed to understand Silas Marner. Still, I suspect we were both the better for the literature choices of our time. As the article referenced above observes, selecting dense and complex texts, as well as leveled reading, may be a better best practice than endlessly protecting our students from “excessively difficult” material. Who decides when material is too difficult? Too often, I believe we are being presumptuous when we assume we know what a student ought to read.

I remember a student of mine who came to me in middle school reading at a first grade level. At one point during the year, she picked up Twilight. Day after day, she picked up Twilight. Twilight represented a giant leap for my girl, but she persisted. She wanted to know every detail of Edward and Bella’s romance. Nothing I did that year probably helped that girl as much as her tenacious attack on the prose in Twilight. Sentence by sentence, she fought through that book.

While I support Pondiscio and Mahnken’s article, I do want to pull out one paragraph, feeling the need to add my own caveat.

“By marked contrast, Common Core asks teachers to think carefully about what children read and choose grade-level texts that use sophisticated language or make significant knowledge demands of the reader (teachers should also be prepared, of course, to offer students support as they grapple with challenging books). Instead of asking, “Can the child read this?” the question might be, ‘Is this worth reading?'”

That one line inside the parentheses above represents a big whammy. Yes, teachers will need to offer support. I’m sure many of my middle school peers had no chance of getting through Silas Marner without support. We spent weeks on that book. We may have spent a month on Moby Dick. A problem with Common Core demands in this time of nonstop testing rests in the pace expected from teachers. If we try to teach these rich, complex texts too quickly, we will be wasting our students’ time. Rich, complex texts cannot be batted out in a few days. The discussion necessary to understand texts and subtexts, especially in an unfamiliar historical context, demands weeks of work. A shallow reading of a deep book will provide little benefit and may do harm. We need to encourage reading. Spending a week ploughing through incomprehensible pages will certainly discourage reading.

That said, Alfred Tatum, Dean of the College of Education and director of the UIC Reading Clinic, said, “Leveled texts lead to leveled lives.”

Eduhonesty: He may be right about that.

In the last 10 years, I have worked under 10 different principals, one for 3 1/2 years. They come, they go. When scores don’t improve, they get moved to another school or let go. In one school, two retired guys were filling in for a year, each trying to stay under the maximum number of days that a retired principal can work in public schools under the current pension system. One principal lost her job and was replaced by two consultants. One principal pleaded with teachers to help her raise scores since her job might be on the line. She was replaced the following year. My favorite principal was shifted to another school within his district because of a government grant: Strings attached to that grant required the replacement of the school’s administration. Another principal and assistant principal were fired in February to be replaced with an interim principal whose evaluation of me that year never made it to my permanent file. Or the original principal’s evaluation never made the file. Who knows? The district office asked me and other teachers if we could provide them with copies of our evaluations since the district seemed to have lost a number of these. Chaos ruled that year.*

Eduhonesty: Other teachers and I have discussed this. In our view, part of the Principal Problem stems from frantic efforts to boost test scores. Many of these Principals had put good systems into place. They had instituted clever ideas and were tracking progress. But if the scores don’t immediately go up in Year One, too often Principals don’t get to see Year Two or Three.

Struggling districts, like oceanliners, cannot turn on a dime. Especially by middle school and high school, no quick fixes exist for the knowledge deficits that lead to low scores. Yet fixes that take time may never have a chance. Former Principal Fred’s longer reading blocks and afternoon phonics program fall victim to replacement Principal Sally’s new, computer-based reading intervention. Either one of these plans might yield the desired results, given time, but that time does not happen. Teachers and administrators spend Year One learning the new phonics program. During Year Two, the longer reading block is shortened to make room for the new computer-based intervention, rendering all the hours spent in the now-abandoned phonics meetings and professional development (PD) useless, even as the new computer intervention spawns its own set of meetings and PDs.

*Did an angry or frustrated person deliberately lose those forms? I don’t think it’s inconceivable.

My last post sits uneasily on the post before it. I have been offering suggestions for new teachers interspersed with commentary. The character of that commentary varies and I acknowledge that yesterday’s post represents a type of post that has led me to nickname this blog “The Blog of Gloom and Doom.”

I recognize that many teachers will not see themselves in that post. Where I live, schools are cranking out scholars who are ready to take on any university in the nation. I have taught in a very different location, though. In that place, the poverty level ran above 90% and the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations on the last ISAT ran below 25%. Only 2% exceeded expectations in reading in 8th grade, only 3% in 7th grade. We were locked in academic battle in my school and I can’t begin to tell readers how many best practices and other practices I tried in order to improve the situation. My life was action research. I lived action research. I managed to put together some wins, too.

My frustration especially spills out when I think of all the unreadable books that my district obliged me to hand out to those students who could not meet or who barely met expectations. If those books had only been slightly unreadable, I would not be this angry. I can work with slightly unreadable. With a great deal of extra tutoring, slightly unreadable becomes a nut that can be cracked. But when my Assistant Superintendent picked a new math book based on its greater rigor, I wanted to tear my hair out. (Or his, especially since the math teachers on the committee to help pick the textbook had picked a more readable and therefore approachable, textbook.)

I am not against rigor. I am not against richer, denser, more complex text. I am against books that are pitched years above students’ documented reading levels.

They don’t work well. Students give up. Students leave them in lockers and never look back. It is as simple as that.

(A post for all.)

What is happening in education today? Essentially, we are threatening people from the top down. “Get those test scores up! Do it or else!” I have been known to glibly assert that if more people in education actually knew what they were doing, this management-by-threat system might work. “Do it or else!” has been used effectively in private industry for years.

I doubt the truth of my assertion, though. “Do it or else!” has been in place since 2003 when No Child Left Behind first bared its teeth. Yet schools in many areas show scant improvement and much of that improvement probably results from teaching directly to specific tests, narrowing academic content in an effort to push up scores with little regard for the long-term usefulness of abandoned content.

“Do it or else!” will not work when “it” is undoable. The boards in a Home Depot store cannot be used to build a skyscraper. I can say “Put a colony on Mars or else!” I might even be the President of the United States talking to NASA’s leaders. My threats will not necessarily result in a Martian colony. Budgetary, technological, supply and personnel issues are in play.

Threats have not produced the desired results in education today and at least part of the problem has to be our attempts to regard children as fungible goods. Back when I was studying for my Masters Degree in Business and Public Management at Rice University, we discussed fungibility. Fungible goods are goods that are interchangeable, possessing essentially identical characteristics. For example, if you and a friend go shopping together and you both buy 10 pound bags of Pillsbury flour, you won’t care who gets which bag when you split up later. Sugar is a fungible good. Depending on your needs, refrigerators may be fungible goods.

Children are virtually never fungible goods. Sam is not Abby is not Emma is not Joel is not Danielle is not Max and so on across the planet. You can’t exchange Joel for Max. And you can’t come up with a one-size-fits-all educational program that will meet Sam, Abby, Emma, Joel, Danielle and Max’s needs.

Since No Child Left Behind, however, we often appear to be trying to do exactly that. In effect, what happens today is simply silly. Administrators buy 7th grade math and science textbooks specifically written to a test – without regard for how well their students can read the books. They know the bulk of their students are reading at a 5th, 4th or even 3rd grade level, but they can’t buy the 6th grade book. That book doesn’t have “the right material.” It’s not geared to the 7th grade test. So they hand the kids a book that many can’t read, instead.

The phrase, “You can’t get there from here,” comes to mind.

A few years ago, I asked both my Assistant Principal and the Bilingual Director for my district for help getting reading-level appropriate Illinois State Achievement Test (ISAT) prep booklets to use in my afterschool ISAT tutoring classes. As usual, I had received books based on grade level rather than reading ability. The 8th graders were hanging in with their 8th grade books, challenged but not lost. The 7th graders might as well have received instructional materials written in hieroglyphics.

My 7th graders were reading sections about marathoners without knowing what a marathon was, and without enough English vocabulary to use context clues to figure that out. They would laboriously translate words in the reading sections. Translating one three paragraph section could take one-half hour for some of them. They were frequently totally missing the point of passages. These students were in the bilingual program because they could not pass a fairly easy English-language learning test that indicated they were ready for regular, English-language classes. They were going to have to take the ISAT along with everyone else.

My Assistant Principal told me he could not get 5th grade books, but he would see about 6th grade books. He knew what I was asking and why I wanted those materials. He also knew he risked upsetting multiple higher-ups by admitting to the need for these books. For political reasons, we had to be studying “appropriate” material. I need to note that my now-former Assistant Principal is a bright, savvy man who keeps up-to-date on best practices in education.

The Bilingual Director said, “But how will those books help get them ready for the ISATs?”

I simply pointed out that material in the 5th and 6th grade books contained numerous items that were repeated in some form on the 7th grade test. There seemed little point in continuing the discussion. When administrators think that students who are challenged by some of the vocabulary in “Clifford the Big Red Dog” are somehow going to pass the middle-school ISATs – well, the zombies are nearing the gates in my view. In fairness to my Bilingual Director, her focus on seventh grade ISATs was entirely understandable; her job potentially depended on student scores.

I never got any new books.

Handing those students grade-level prep books was not useless. They learned many new vocabulary words. They devoted hours each week to academic English, frequently picking the wrong answer at first, but then adding to their knowledge base while I patiently explained that the answer was not “B” but “C” and they needed to pick “C” for a set of reasons I carefully broke down for them.

But the prep books were still the wrong books. Handing a student in Physics 101 the textbook for Physics 102 or 103 will sink most students. In a small group, with my attention, these prep books weren’t sinking my seventh grade students, but they weren’t preparing them for the Illinois State Achievement Test either. When a student doesn’t know the majority of the relevant vocabulary in a passage, answering questions on that passage provides little test preparation. Fifth grade books would have taught my students considerably more English by virtue of being much closer to their understanding level. They would have been able to put much more material in context — a critical aspect for learning. Those fifth grade readers needed fifth or sixth grade books, books that would have allowed them to use context clues to figure out unfamiliar vocabulary.

In terms of the larger educational agenda, easier books would also have encouraged my seventh grade students to keep reading. If our goal is to foster independent reading, reading has to be fun sometimes. Enjoyment of a book depends heavily on reading speed. When a page takes too long to read, kids become bored. For many kids, too-challenging equals too-discouraging. For my seventh grade tutoring group, the ISAT prep books I had been given were nothing but exhausting and scary.

Common core proponents advocate for more complex, demanding literature and reading materials in the classroom, arguing that America’s students should be given the opportunity to read rich, complex text. I don’t disagree with that position. But not all books and not all materials are appropriate. My tutoring group never read those ISAT prep books: They deciphered them instead, almost as if they were scholars interpreting hieroglyphics.

Eduhonesty: Can we raise standardized test scores? I am sure we can, but I do not believe we can do so without radically overhauling education as we currently practice it. In particular, we should exempt students are going to get completely clobbered by those tests and put them into a longer school year with a longer school day, emphasizing the math and vocabulary they need in a rational, linear fashion. If the book matches the test, but the test does not match the student, we are wasting an opportunity and may even be wasting our student’s time.