Category Archives: Curriculum and Instruction

The California Context: How the CA Reading Wars Got Resolved: A Personal Story

The California Context
How the California Reading Wars Got Resolved: A Personal Story

by Bill Honig

Too many children in the United States do not learn to read well in their early years, and that failure damages them in their future school careers. Yet the research and evidence on how best to teach beginning reading is largely settled. (For a summary of foundational reading research and best practice, see the section below “The Role of Foundational Reading Skills.”) There is no excuse for any youngsters beyond a very small number to fail to learn to read. Our most successful districts incorporate these ideas in instruction, but we still have a major problem in this country. Many less successful districts do not use this evidence-based approach, and a growing number have adopted alternative, discredited strategies such as “balanced literacy” programs that teach beginning readers to sound out only the first letter of a word (rather than all the letters) and use context clues to guess what the word is. Many of the students in these schools and districts never learn to decode properly and, as a result, are destined to remain weak readers. This situation is much like the case of military doctors who fail to put into practice the lessons learned in recent wars on how to minimize battlefield deaths from injuries.
I devoted a substantial part of my educational career to advocate for improved reading instruction based on the most potent research. I founded a group to promulgate these ideas (CORE) and wrote a book on the subject. The following is the story of that effort.

The Rise of Whole Language

Back in the 1970s when I was a member of the California State Board of Education, I wrote a pamphlet on reading instruction with JoEllen Taylor from Far West (now WestEd) entitled Planning an Effective Reading Program and published by them. We integrated using a skills approach to teach decoding and phonics with literature and writing-based strategies—a consensus that was blown apart in the late 1980s by the whole language movement’s opposition to phonics instruction.

During my tenure as California’s superintendent of public instruction, in the late ’80s we developed the Reading and Literature Framework, which stressed the importance of students being well read and encountering and discussing rich, varied literature. The framework mentioned phonics, but as it turned out not forcefully enough to withstand the whole language movement, which was then gathering steam.

The proponents of whole language believe that teaching skills such as phonics hurts children. Instead, they advocate an alternative approach that stresses reading together and using pictures, syntax, and context to guess the meaning of words instead of learning how letters map to sounds to sound out the words on a page in a linguistically justified sequence of instruction. When they do use word attack skills they suggest students sound out the first letter and then use context to guess the word. They provide “leveled readers” that are not designed to practice letter/sound correspondences students have learned and don’t distinguish between the sequence of letter/sound correspondences already taught and the more complex ones still to be addressed. Since English is complex linguistically such a strategy leaves many children confused and frustrated. Their position is based on the mistaken belief that learning to read is like learning to speak—a natural, unconscious process that is hindered by organized skill instruction. It isn’t.

I had seen the deleterious effects of this approach 20 years before when it became widespread in the ’60s as part of the free school movement. As a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher, I noticed that many of my entering students were never taught to read. Sitting them on a couch and giving them a book to read just didn’t cut it.

Because of my work with JoEllen Taylor, I made the mistake of assuming that stressing the importance of literature and rich content would not detract from the necessity of teaching phonics. At the time, I had not yet even heard of the whole language movement and was not aware of its growing strength among educators so I was oblivious to the need to include in the framework very clear and detailed guidance about the importance of phonics.

Jeanne Chall had published the definitive study on teaching children to read, which demonstrated that teaching phonics produced much better readers than the looser strategy being pushed by an unfounded belief system like whole language. I had met and respected Jeanne, and when she saw a draft of the framework she called and warned me that people would use it to stop teaching phonics. I didn’t believe her and assured her that educators would never make such a ridiculous mistake. It turned out she was right and I was wrong because that’s exactly what happened. The framework was hijacked by the whole language movement.

It took a few years to realize what had happened. In one of his more destructive acts, Governor George Deukmejian eliminated the testing program in California in 1990, after a long campaign against me personally and public education in general. The long-standing California Assessment Program (CAP) was one of the best in the nation. We only tested at three grades. We used matrix sampling, which meant that each child only took a portion of the test. This allowed more thorough questions in less testing time and avoided the negative consequences of attaching tests to accountability. The current well-regarded National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is patterned after CAP.

In the ’80s, CAP scores, including reading, were improving substantially—proof that our efforts were working. Reading scores leveled off at the end of the decade, but we didn’t yet detect a trend to worry about. The governor claimed he abolished the program as a cost-cutting measure, but no one believed him. The result was a calamity. We were flying blind precisely when whole language started to significantly impair reading instruction. Thus, we made no course correction.

Persuasive Reading Research

In my years as superintendent, I had to think about a broad array of educational issues. When I left office in 1993, I felt it would be a welcome change to concentrate on just one educational area and get deeply involved in it. I picked beginning reading because I felt responsible for the way our framework was used by the whole language movement with such damaging results. So I started reading in depth and talking to experts about how children learn to read. In 1990, Marilyn Adams had published her groundbreaking work, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. It was based on extensive research confirming and extending Jeanne Chall’s previous work on the processes children need to master to learn to read. I had not had time to read Marilyn’s book because of an all-encompassing political conflict with the governor and legal proceedings stemming from that fight, but now tackled the book. The tome was hard for me to understand. I had to read it three times before I could comprehend all of what she was saying. Luckily, I knew Marilyn, and over the course of many phone calls, she graciously played the role of tutor, answering all my questions.

She then invited me to the 1995 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, which had been formed two years before. At the meeting Marilyn introduced me to the top reading researchers in the country. For several years Reid Lyon, who was head of the Behavior and Development branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, had made large grants to a network of research projects investigating why some children learn to read so easily and why others have great difficulty. The studies delved into how children learn to read, identified the difficulties many encounter, provided a broader definition of requisite foundational skills, and confirmed the importance of an organized, structured program for teaching beginning readers.

For those who are interested, what follows is a short description of their research: why, contrary to the claims of whole language advocates, most children do not learn to read naturally in the same way they learn to speak (especially in English, which is linguistically complex) and why children need to be taught in an organized fashion.

The Role of Foundational Reading Skills

First, these researchers examined speaking since print represents spoken words. When we listen to someone speak, a stream of sounds like the phonemes /m/ and /a/ /n/ all run together and we hear the word man. We have been programmed to recognize this sequence of sounds as a word and immediately connect that spoken cluster of sounds to the concept or meaning underlying it. For the process to be rapid, we have learned not to pay attention to or even discern the individual phonemes that make up a word but to perceive groups of these sounds as words. The process is very fast, unconscious, and efficient; otherwise we wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the meaning of what the speaker is saying.

Initially, reading for understanding depends on recognizing the symbols on a page set off with spaces as a word that’s part of our speaking vocabulary—sounding out the letters in the word until it is recognized as if it were being spoken (assuring that students are familiar with the meaning of the word being decoded at the start is crucial especially for English-language learners and low-income children). Later, meaning also comes from more sophisticated strategies that require recognizing syllables and morphemes, navigating complex syntax and text structures, extensively developing vocabulary, connecting to what you know and drawing inferences, and extending meaning by writing or discussing what you read.

So reading initially is a double code. The printed word stands for the spoken sounds of the word, which in turn represent the meaning behind that spoken word. Luckily, English uses the alphabetic system to represent spoken words in print. That system was invented eons ago by some unsung geniuses who figured out that spoken words in a language are made up of a limited number of discrete sounds (about 44 in English), which allowed for millions of potential combinations or words to represent concepts. Crucially, these prodigies also determined that one could represent those sounds by symbols (letters or combinations of letters), which when decoded and combined would generate the spoken word. The catch was how to make the process as rapid, automatic, and unconscious as speech so that a reader could concentrate on thinking about what was being read. Complicating the task of understanding what one reads is evidence that comprehending meaning suffers if more than about five percent of the words are not known automatically. The same is true of speech. It doesn’t take many words that you don’t hear or don’t understand to stop you from comprehending what’s being said.

The research community, relying on the latest brain research, discovered how good readers do it. The secret is to develop a growing corpus of automatically recognized words so that a word instantly pops into your head by just looking at it. Then students can read material with large numbers of automatically recognized words and keep growing their lexicon by reading new text, sounding out or decoding (eventually assisted by pattern recognition, as explained below) the few previously unencountered printed words found there.

What did these researchers discover about how people learn to automatically recognize a word? One of the most important findings was that both sounds (phonemes) and symbols (graphemes, or letters and letter combinations) were crucial to rapid retrieval of words. Hearing-impaired children, for example, usually read several grades below expected levels because their information about a word is limited to its letters. When they are taught to substitute signing for the sound information they reach grade level.

To make use of the full bundle of necessary information for rapid retrieval, a student must initially read through the whole word (sounding it out), which requires attending to all of the letters, connecting the letters and letter combinations to the sounds they represent, blending the sounds together, and linking the sounds to the meaning of the word in the context. When this process is successfully repeated several times, the student forms a neural model of that specific word in the brain that gets automatically activated upon seeing the word in print. The sounds of the word are stored in one part of the brain, the symbols connected to those sounds in another, and both are connected to the meaning stored in the frontal cortex. After a student has analyzed and correctly read a word several times, a neural model with all the information necessary for rapid retrieval is formed. (Some reading-disabled youngsters need focused interventions to succeed because they have brain-processing issues that make creating these connections or retrieving the information difficult.)

Thus, the royal road to master beginning reading is to develop the decoding tool—the ability to sound out words thoroughly so that they can eventually be stored and retrieved rapidly. As more and more words become automatic, students can read increasingly difficult text.

After a time, when students have mastered enough letter/sound correspondences, pattern recognition speeds up the decoding process. For example, if a student has learned to automatically recognize the word weight, by using analogy the student can more easily read and create a neural model for the word freight. This can only take place after the spelling pattern eight and its corresponding sounds were initially sounded out, practiced several times, and stored in permanent memory.

A critical piece of eye research demonstrated that effective readers see every letter in a word as they scan it, which activates the exact spelling and associated sounds stored in memory. I’m getting older now and sometimes catch myself misreading an i for an e in a word, which changes the meaning and makes me stop but proves I’m seeing each letter.

When teachers shortchange the process by teaching students guessing strategies such as looking only at the first letter and using context to “infer” what the word is, the full package of information never gets stored and quick retrieval is hampered the next time the student encounters the word (unless after guessing, the student uses phonics to sound out the word and confirm it’s correct and then has enough practice to store the word—a process the whole language advocates discourage). Repeating the guessing strategy each time a word is encountered is far too cumbersome and error prone for efficient reading.

Most importantly, guessing from context, even if given the first letter of a word, doesn’t work that well. In our Consortium on Reaching Excellence trainings (more about CORE later) we show a paragraph from Jack London’s Call of the Wild, with every fifth word redacted except for the first letter. We then ask teachers who believe context can help them decode words to read the passage. In hundreds of trainings, not one person could read and understand the excerpt until, finally, one teacher read the entire passage fluently. I was amazed and asked her how she did it. It turns out she has a photographic memory and had stored the passage in her brain from previous readings. It is important to note that context clues are useful to determine if a word has been correctly decoded and makes sense in the context. There are also occasions when context clues can help readers figure out a word that is not yet in their vocabulary, but context strategies can’t replace decoding. Finally, students need enough flexibility in decoding to try out various potential solutions to generating and combining sounds until they hit on a word that makes sense. For example, trying to break a word into syllables in different ways with different vowel sounds—“Is it re•cent or rec•ent?”

Alternatively, memorization strategies don’t work either. If students try to memorize the unique configuration of each word they quickly are overwhelmed. There are just too many words in English for that approach to be successful, and children who rely on memorizing words without learning phonics flame out quickly.

As a caution, when educators use the word decoding, they may be referring to two distinct ideas, which is confusing. First, there is the automatic recognition of words that are stored for rapid and unconscious retrieval. Second, there is the conscious, effortful process of sounding out the word that must occur several times before it becomes automatic.

So why is this latter process difficult to master for many students? One complicating factor with learning to read in English is the linguistic complexity of the language. Learning to read in Spanish is much easier than learning to read in English because Spanish is almost completely transparent—there is nearly a one-to-one correspondence between the 22 phonemes in the Spanish spoken in the Americas and the 29 letters that represent those sounds. What you see is what you get. English, on the other hand, is all over the map reflecting the various historical contributions to the language—Anglo-Saxon, Danish, Norman French, Spanish, and so on, each with different linguistic patterns.

As a result, there are 44 sounds in English but only 26 letters, so some sounds are spelled with letter combinations. A student has to decide whether to look at one letter or a combination to generate the correct sound. Second, in English, unlike Spanish and other more transparent languages, there are many individual letters that stand for more than one sound. The letter a, for example, represents different sounds in the words cake, hat, and along. Conversely, many sounds are represented in several ways such as the long-a sound, which is spelled a in basin, a with silent e in late, ai in paid, ay in day, and so on. This lack of regularity confuses many children when they are first learning to read. Many get so frustrated they give up.

One major breakthrough in teaching reading in English was to structure the sequence of initial instruction to make it more like the transparent languages so that children aren’t overwhelmed by the multiple ways sounds are represented in English—that is, make it more like Spanish. Beginning instruction should focus on the highest-frequency sound/spelling correspondences (single consonants and short vowels) and avoid multiple representations of sounds until students begin to understand how the alphabetic system works and get the hang of sounding out words. Then the less frequent and more complex combinations can be added without causing as much confusion.

That’s why experienced researchers and practitioners advocate a sequenced rolling out of sound/spellings—from simple to complex—and teaching children how to read through, or sound out words thoroughly so the words are stored and can be automatically retrieved. It takes some time and practice for most children to master this skill, while others learn it without much effort. To support beginning readers, teachers must also provide reading materials that are made up primarily of words containing the sound/spelling relationships they have taught (decodable text). The materials should also include some irregular high-frequency words such as was and of, which must be memorized with the help of explicit instruction. Carefully selecting materials for decoding practice avoids overwhelming students with multiple sound/spellings they have not yet encountered.

Learning to sound out words in late kindergarten and early first grade—the tool a student needs to become automatic with a growing number of words—depends on the acquisition of several key precursor concepts and skills. Students must know print concepts (e.g., English text is read from left to right), be fluent in recognizing letters, be able to name letters and connect them with sounds, and extremely important, be able to hear the discrete sounds in spoken words (phonemic awareness), beginning, ending, and medial. In this last task, students must unlearn what has become second nature in understanding speech—they have learned to ignore the discrete sounds in words and just hear the whole word. Now we are asking them to reinstate their ability to hear the discrete sounds. For some that takes a bit of work. In fact, many adults, including teachers, have difficulty identifying the discrete sounds in words. For example, how many sounds do you hear in the word French? (There are five: /f/ /r/ /e/ /n/ /ch/.)

Most students can identify beginning sounds by mid-kindergarten and ending and medial sounds by the conclusion of kindergarten. Playing sound games especially with kids who haven’t developed these abilities can help them master the technique. Many finally nail the skill of hearing discrete sounds as they learn to match sounds with letters in the course of phonics instruction.

Researchers also found that if students fail to master decoding by late kindergarten to mid–first grade to sound out and recognize simple words they haven’t seen, their chances of ever becoming on-grade readers rapidly diminish. Since they don’t have a workable method for automatically recognizing a growing number of words, they fall further and further behind. Many become confused or frustrated with the complexities of English and eventually give up or become alienated from reading. That is why Response to Instruction (RtI) strategies are found to be so effective. Good initial reading instruction teaches most to decode early, and the teacher intervenes rapidly when a student is not catching on. Giving students “the gift of time” by waiting to assist under the mistaken belief that they will eventually understand the process when they are more “developmentally ready” condemns large numbers of faltering readers to a lifetime of grief. Of course, teaching phonics and decoding must be accompanied by a rich oral language, literature, writing, discussing, and vocabulary development program as described in the California ELA/ELD Framework, explicated below.

One of the more unfortunate developments currently is the tendency in many schools and districts to ignore the significant number of students not mastering beginning reading because of the absence of a research-based beginning reading program and then assigning them to intervention groups when they are not making progress. A much better strategy is to teach them well initially and support those students who are confused immediately and not wait until the damage is done and they have become frustrated.

In later grades, students are taught how to decode multisyllabic words by recognizing syllable types and division patterns; using prefixes, suffixes, and knowledge of root words; and identifying larger patterns, or chunks, encountered in similar words already learned to help them decode new words. For more about multisyllabic word instruction and assessment, see Word ID: Assessment Across the Content Areas.

Also children should receive fluency instruction, if needed, to smooth out and speed up their oral reading. All these efforts should be accompanied by extensive reading of good stories and literature by and to kids, discussing stories, a good spelling or encoding program aligned with the sound/spelling instructional sequence, assigned writing, and the buildup of content knowledge.

Three Important Decisions

Reading researchers were reporting on exciting stuff, which explained a great deal about how best to teach our children. What they were saying was powerful, but it was presented in fairly esoteric technical language. I thought there might be a needed role for a translator—to put the research findings in a form that practitioners could readily understand and to work with schools to promulgate their ideas. So I made three important decisions. I started the Consortium on Reading Excellence (CORE) with Linda Diamond, Sheila Mandel, Ann Cunningham, and Ruth Nathan to work with teachers and administrators on incorporating this powerful research into practice. I also I wrote a succinct book published in 1996, Teaching Our Children to Read: The Role of Skills in a Comprehensive Reading Program. Here is the dedication:

This book is dedicated to those teachers, researchers, and leaders who have kept their common sense and are beseeching the educational community to reach an effective, working consensus on how best to teach our children to read. I hope the information provided here—which summarizes and highlights a tremendous amount of research and thinking by the leading experts in the literacy field—will help them achieve this laudable goal.

The third decision was to lobby at the state level for policies reflecting this new research. After leaving the state superintendent’s office, I teamed up with Marion Joseph, a true force of nature, who had become convinced that the whole language movement was ruining the teaching of reading to California’s children. I met Marion in 1965 when I was working for Pat Brown, then California governor, and she was working with Wilson Riles, then state superintendent. We became close (she always said she viewed me as her younger brother) but fell out when I ran against her boss in 1982. After I won, she withdrew from education and we lost contact. When I was the subject of a lawsuit brought by the state, she came to see me to find out if there was anything she could do to help. After the Language Arts Framework was disseminated, Marion noticed her granddaughter was not learning to read. After hearing gobbledygook from the teacher, she checked with her extensive school contacts. Marion was horrified at what she discovered about how reading instruction was being conducted under the influence of whole language.

Together we started lobbying key people in the state to change direction. The legislature, the new superintendent Delaine Eastin, Governor Wilson, and subsequently Governor Gray Davis got behind the effort. Marion was appointed to the State Board of Education, along with other phonics advocates, the legislature passed phonics bills and appropriated funds for professional development, and new textbooks were eventually adopted that were based on the new compelling research. An engrossing account of this effort was written by the well-respected Nicholas Lemann, published in The Atlantic magazine in 1997. The article captures how heated the controversy was during that decade.

The research findings on teaching reading I discovered in 1995, incorporated in my book which was used to start CORE, were the basis for the lobbying effort in California and were eventually enshrined in the 2000 National Reading Panel report, which was developed by some of the country’s leading reading experts. The panel reviewed more than 100,000 studies and recommended the explicit and systematic teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics, a guided oral reading strategy, and fluency and comprehension strategies. A recent neuroscience research project from Stanford confirmed the earlier findings that supported the role of phonics and decoding. For a current summary of the latest research, see Linnea Ehri’s article in the 2014 issue of Scientific Studies of Reading. The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles: A Blueprint for Solving Reading Problems by Louise Spear-Swerling and Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties by David Kilpatrick are among the best research-based books on how to teach children to read and explain some current misguided reading approaches that are still in widespread use. For an article featuring top educators affirming that almost all students can learn to read if they are initially taught correctly, see Liana Heitin’s post in Education Week.

For a useful compendium on research-based reading instruction and strategies, see Honig, Diamond, and Gutlohn’s Teaching Reading Sourcebook, Updated Second Edition, and its companion book, Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures, 2nd Edition. Both books were produced by CORE, where I am president. The Sourcebook was one of only 10 publications endorsed by the National Council on Teacher Quality to cover beginning reading adequately. Of the 10, it was the fourth most used publication for preservice teachers.

The same ideas were incorporated in the recently developed Common Core State Standards and in the new California ELA/ELD Framework based on those standards, which also stressed wide reading and the importance of a systematic buildup of content knowledge in the major disciplines. For a useful executive summary on the California ELA/ELD standards, go to this website.

Here is a short quote from a 2014 article authored by Jo Ann Isken, Carol Jago, and myself, which explains the ideas behind the framework:

The outer ring of the graphic [a symbol used in the framework] identifies the overarching goals of ELA/ELD literacy and instruction. By the time California’s students complete high school, they should have developed readiness for college, career, and we added civic life; attained the capacities of literate individuals; become broadly literate; and acquired the skills for living and learning in the twenty-first century.

California has grounded the framework in these broader purposes of the language arts. We want students to be able to understand complex text and ideas as well as reason, analyze, persuade, and problem solve. We also wish them to encounter a rich liberal arts education—learning about the world, civic life, and the human heart, being well-read, and helping them reach their potential. We would like our youngsters to encounter a significant representation of the best classic and contemporary literature including novels, biographies, essays and plays as well as coherent content informational text in science, history, and the humanities. We would like them to experience the joy of reading engrossing stories and fascinating material.

So the ELA/ELD framework is about two main thrusts: First, attention to the totality of what students read both on their own in independent reading and in school in their liberal arts disciplines (including literature) during their school years, and second, the analytical, reasoning and literacy skills necessary to comprehend and apply knowledge gleaned from a variety of text structures. Both ideas are stressed in the multi-state Common Core ELA standards. To this end, the framework also recommends an organized independent reading program for each student to supplement what is read in school and provides advice on how to implement such a strategy in Chapter 2.

The developers of the ELD standards made a crucial decision from the start. They designed the standards to aid the large number of English-language learners in mastering the California Common Core Standards, which greatly facilitated the integration of the two sets of standards. They organized the ELD standards around five overarching themes—foundational skills, language, written and oral expression, content knowledge, and meaning-making strategies such as drawing inferences and making connections. The integrated ELA/ELD Framework adopted this architecture. All five themes work together to develop student comprehension.

The first strand is foundational skills. To understand the ideas in a text, the reader needs to automatically recognize almost all the words. For words already in the reader’s speaking vocabulary, that is the role of foundational skills—to teach them a process for becoming automatic with a growing number of words. Foundational skills address how to teach them these skills and include phonics, word attack skills (learning how to sound out new words, handle multisyllabic words, and recognize word structures such as prefixes, suffixes, and root words), and fluency instruction. The foundational skills in the California framework are summarized in an extremely well written resource guide by Hallie Yopp, one of the authors of the framework.

The second theme, language, deals with the crucial topic of vocabulary, text structure and syntax, and academic language—all critical to understanding text. Academic texts in English contain a large number of words that appear infrequently but are essential to understanding. To successfully complete high school, students need to understand approximately 65,000 words, although some words are members of the same word family. Consequently, from the outset, there must be a rich vocabulary development strand coupled with an extensive independent reading program. This is particularly crucial for the large numbers of low-income or ELL students who start school knowing far fewer words than their middle-class and English-speaking peers. For a valuable resource, see the Vocabulary Handbook and CORE’s Word Intelligence, which is a vocabulary program for middle-grade students. In addition, as material and sentence structure become more complex and demanding in upper elementary, students must learn to handle challenging elements such as complex sentences with multiple dependent clauses. Finally, different disciplines such as history and science organize information in different ways and students need help in navigating these varied text structures.

The third theme enhances comprehension by concentrating on a student’s ability to express ideas in writing and speaking. This strand also includes spelling and writing conventions such as grammar. Often, until you have tried to explain something, you really don’t know it.

The fourth theme deals with the vital role content knowledge plays in comprehension and the importance of a systematic buildup of disciplinary and cultural knowledge through organized class work and independent reading. See the vast work on this subject at Core Knowledge and “For Reading, Knowledge Matters More Than Strategies, Some Experts Say.” See also “Why Reading to Learn Is Seldom Taught.” And, finally, meaning making addresses the meta-cognitive skills of self-monitoring, drawing inferences, and thinking about what is being read.

For ELD students, the frameworks recommend that these strands be integrated into the regular instruction program (integrated instruction) and that schools provide a designated time for supportive instruction tailored to the language needs of the students (designated instruction).

Similar to math, English language arts shifts to a more active instructional program including book discussions, projects, research, and making arguments and taking positions in both writing and speaking.

I believe we have reached a broad-based consensus in California on the elements of good reading instruction and how best to deal with our large numbers of second-language learners. The frameworks are widely supported by educators and policymakers, although there are still too many schools and classrooms that have not yet incorporated the breadth of what these well-researched documents are recommending.

Reference Notes

Phillips, M. M. (2016, Jan 7). Military Doctors Fault Pentagon on Battlefield Casualty Care. The Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles/military-doctors-fault-pentagon-over-battlefield-casualty-care-1452194963

The Rise of Whole Language
Chall, J. S. (1983). Stages of Reading Development. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Persuasive Reading Research
Adams, M. J. (1996). Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The Role of Foundational Reading Skills
Gutlohn, L., & Bessellieu, F. (2014). Word ID: Assessment Across the Content Areas. Novato, CA: Arena Press. http://www.wordidassessment.com

Three Important Decisions
Consortium on Reaching Excellence (CORE). http://www.corelearn.com/

Honig, B. (1996). Teaching Our Children to Read: The Role of Skills in a Comprehensive Reading Program. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. https://us.corwin.com/en-us/nam/teaching-our-children-to-read/book7412

Lemann, N. (1997, Nov). The Reading Wars. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/the-reading-wars/376990/

National Reading Panel, & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction: Reports of the subgroups. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/pages/smallbook.aspx

Yoncheva, Y. N., Wise, J., & McCandliss, B. (2015). Hemispheric Specialization for Visual Words Is Shaped by Attention to Sublexical Units During Initial Learning. Brain and Language. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X15000772

Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition of Sight Word Reading, Spelling Memory, and Vocabulary Learning. Scientific Studies of Reading. http://eric.ed.gov/?q=%22%22&ff1=subVocabulary+Development&id=EJ1027413

Spear-Swerling, L. (2015). The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles: A Blueprint for Solving Reading Problems. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (Essentials of Psychological Assessment). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Heitin, L. (2015, Jun 12). Can Most Kindergartners Really Tackle ‘Emergent-Reader Texts?’ Coaches Say Yes. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/06/can_kindergartners_tackle_emer.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters

Honig, B., Diamond, L., & Gutlohn, L. (2013). Teaching Reading Sourcebook, Updated Second Edition. Novato, CA: Arena Press. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/ – Teaching-Reading-Sourcebook-Updated-2nd-Edition

Diamond, L., & Thorsnes, B. J. (Eds.). Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures. 2nd Edition. Novato, CA: Arena Press. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/ – Assessing-Reading-Multiple-Measures-2nd-Edition

National Council on Teacher Quality. (2014). Standard 2: Early Reading: What Consumers Need to Know About Teacher Preparation. http://www.nctq.org/dmsView/Teacher_Prep_Review_2014_Std2

California Department of Education. (2015, Jul). English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools: K–12. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/elaeldfrmwrksbeadopted.asp

Slowik, H. Y., & Brynelson, N. (2015). Executive Summary: English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools: K–12. California Department of Education. http://www.scoe.net/castandards/

Isken, J. A., Honig, B., & Jago, C. (2015, Oct 15). California’s Recently Adopted English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework: Translating the Common Core State Standards to a Coherent and Sequenced Curriculum for All Students. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/documents/elaeldfwsummaryoct15.pdf

Yopp, H. (2015). Resource Guide to the Foundational Skills of the California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/search/searchresults.asp?cx=001779225245372747843%3Agpfwm5rhxiw&output=xml_no_dtd&filter=1&num=20&start=0&q=Resource+Guide+to+the+Foundational+Skills+of+the+California+Common+Core+State+Standards+for+English+

Diamond, L., & Gutlohn, L. (2006). Vocabulary Handbook. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/ – Vocabulary-Handbook

Word Intelligence. http://www.wordintelligence.net/

Core Knowledge. www.coreknowledge.org

Heitin, L. (2015, Oct 29). For Reading, Knowledge Matters More Than Strategies, Some Experts Say. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/10/for_reading_knowledge_matters_more_than_strategies.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters

Cobb, V. (2015, Jul 21). Why Reading to Learn Is Seldom Taught. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-cobb/why-reading-to-learn-is-s_b_7841040.html

How Top Performers Build-and-Support: Provide High-Quality Instruction

How Top Performers Build-and-Support
Provide High-Quality Instruction

by Bill Honig

Good teachers combine several qualities that are not usually found in the same individual. They love and respect children, but many who enter the profession thinking that caring is enough don’t last. Competent teachers are knowledgeable and passionate about the subjects they teach, but as new teachers quickly discover, they cannot survive on knowledge and passion alone. Capable teachers perceive the promise in every child and have the sturdy resolve to insist that all students reach their potential. Every day in classrooms across the country, good teachers are changing students’ lives—inspiring them to become engaged, work hard, and raise their sights.
In addition, practitioners need enough strength of character and technique to ensure an orderly, friendly, and productive classroom. Teachers need to be willing to continuously improve their practice by building their content and pedagogical knowledge. They must also be open to exploring how to use effective materials and how to work productively with their colleagues to that end. Proficient teachers accomplish these goals in a variety of ways, depending on their unique personalities and approaches, but most successful practitioners have mastered the entire range of skills.

A Personal Perspective

Teaching is not a trivial pursuit. Most people who haven’t taught fail to appreciate how difficult it is to teach. Teachers need to possess a deep knowledge of the subjects they teach and know how students best learn those subjects. They need to recognize when a student is having difficulty and what to do about it. Teachers need to create an engaging, motivating classroom and establish positive relationships with their students. They have to make split-second decisions constantly. At the beginning of every school year, they must create a functioning class from a variety of distinct individuals. Even if successful, a class of 20–30 youngsters is a potential emotional powder keg, capable of exploding at any time without the teacher’s constant vigilance. Most non-teachers have trouble controlling and engaging even three children at a time. Adding to the challenge is the fact that students continually make emotional demands. Often there are a host of time-consuming and often arbitrary demands and interruptions by administrators. The specifics of the craft of teaching are discussed in detail in the rest of this piece.

Of all the positions I have held in my life—attorney, district and state superintendent, president of a teaching company, and consultant—the experience of being a fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade classroom teacher was the most exhausting. Many outspoken critics of teachers and schools would greatly benefit from trying to teach a class for a whole day. Similar comments are shared in “What Really Makes Teaching Hard.” Ray Bacchetti taught fourth grade for one year in Palo Alto before he became a vice president at Stanford University and a program officer at the Hewlett Foundation. He described teaching as “the most challenging job I ever had,” “a daily miracle,” and the “most exciting thing in the world.” I would second Ray’s comments.

To the list of attributes I previously mentioned, I would add another important quality of a good teacher—a basic sense of fairness. Children acutely perceive injustice. We all have our stories of being treated unfairly. One that stands out for me occurred in eighth-grade PE class. I was an outfielder in a baseball game, a ball was hit over the fence, and it was my responsibility to retrieve it. It happened that some girls were standing across the street, and two teammates, spying the girls, also rushed to recover the ball. We all were punished, and no adult heeded my plea that it was legitimate for me to chase the ball. As a teacher, I always tried to determine what really happened and to act accordingly. It used to frost me when one child would try to steal a ball from another who would resist, and the teacher on duty would punish them both for fighting at recess.

Some prospective teachers possess a natural presence and others need to learn their craft. Usually the learning curve is sharp for the first three years, but almost all effective teachers eventually convey a confident, professional demeanor. Students sense that these pros know their field and believe in it, care about them, and expect them to learn.

One of the best examples of this phenomenon I witnessed did not occur in a public school, but in a traffic school for adults some 50 years ago. At that time, anti-authority attitudes were endemic. I arrived early, with a book I planned to read during the class. The traffic violators who trickled in were a tough bunch—bikers, hippies, stoners, ex-cons, military types, bored housewives, and gym rats. No one wanted to be there, and the atmosphere was tense. I thought to myself, “These ‘students’ are going to demolish the person they send to teach us.” At precisely the scheduled hour, a diminutive woman entered, strode purposefully to the podium, and began. I waited for the fireworks.

Her first action was to point to me, saying: “Put that book away. This class is serious, and I need everybody’s full attention.” I noticed that the class immediately became still and attentive. From that point on, not one person caused any trouble. Docile and compliant, we all did what she requested. We remained engaged for the entire session. I think it was her businesslike manner, her evident belief in the importance of what she was doing, and her confidence that won the class over. For most teachers, it takes a few years to develop that type of demeanor.

Many Factors Influence the Quality of Instruction

Teaching is a complex activity requiring skills on many fronts, and teaching to help students achieve the Common Core State Standards is even more challenging. There are no simple silver bullets; success depends on developing a long-range, comprehensive, strategic effort. Current research shows that several in-school dimensions determine student learning and teacher effectiveness. A well-functioning classroom is proficient in each area since shortcomings in any one element can sabotage classroom learning. Thus, teachers and schools must examine the totality of what influences learning, and teachers must master them all to be proficient. Struggling teachers may not produce results owing to a weak curriculum, lax classroom management, rigidly passive instruction, or inefficient classroom organization. Successful teachers weave these facets into an effective system in their own unique way, reflecting their talents and personality.

In Student and Teacher Evaluation: Moving Beyond the Failure of School Reform, Lavigne and Good devote an entire chapter to a detailed review of teacher effectiveness research—“How Teachers Influence Student Learning.” On page 78, they list 13 categories of the most important components:

Four pertain to curriculum:

  • Adequate subject matter knowledge;
  • Coherent curriculum and sequence;
  • Opportunity to learn; and
  • Balanced procedural and conceptual knowledge

Seven relate to instruction:

  • Appropriate expectations and grouping;
  • Effective use of time;
  • Active teaching;
  • Teacher clarity and enthusiasm;
  • Instructional and curricular pace;
  • Teaching to mastery; and
  • Effective review and feedback

Two relate to classroom management:

  • Proactive management; and
  • Supportive and fair classrooms

I would add to this list the ability to motivate and engage all students and build positive human relationships with them.

What Is Effective Teaching?

Renowned teacher-educator Deborah Loewenberg Ball is dean of education at the University of Michigan. She has led a research group that delineated 19 high-leverage teacher practices. These are practices that every teacher should eventually master or at least become more and more adept in. Ball reinforces the point that good teaching means knowing content, how best to teach it, and what to do when students have difficulty in learning.

The following list of high-leverage practices appears on University of Michigan’s TeachingWorks website, a group that creates performance assessments of practice based on Ball’s high-leverage practices. The list is quite detailed, and readers may want to skim. But proficient teachers do not have the luxury of neglecting any of these elements of skillful teaching. Notice that the breadth of these 19 high-leverage practices goes far beyond what most evaluation schemes examine.

TeachingWorks High-Leverage Practices

  1. Leading a group discussion
  2. Explaining and modeling content, practices, and strategies
  3. Eliciting and interpreting individual students’ thinking
  4. Diagnosing particular common patterns of student thinking and development in a subject-matter domain
  5. Implementing norms and routines for classroom discourse and work
  6. Coordinating and adjusting instruction during a lesson
  7. Specifying and reinforcing productive student behavior
  8. Implementing organizational routines
  9. Setting up and managing small group work
  10. Building respectful relationships with students
  11. Talking about a student with parents or other caregivers
  12. Learning about students’ cultural, religious, family, intellectual, and personal experiences and resources for use in instruction
  13. Setting long- and short-term learning goals for students
  14. Designing single lessons and sequences of lessons
  15. Checking student understanding during and at the conclusion of lessons
  16. Selecting and designing formal assessments of student learning
  17. Interpreting the results of student work, including routine assignments, quizzes, tests, projects, and standardized assessments
  18. Providing oral and written feedback to students
  19. Analyzing instruction for the purpose of improving it

I would add that teachers also need to know how to encourage student self-assessment.

For a good summary of Ball’s work on core teaching competencies, see “What Core Skills Do Teachers Need to Be Effective?” California has embodied these ideas in its document California Standards for the Teaching Profession. See also the articles in the Deeper Learning research series published by Jobs for the Future. For a perceptive comment on the need for focused professional development, see “It’s Time to Restructure Teacher Professional Development” by Mike Schmoker.

Taking all the anecdotal evidence and research findings into account, it is apparent that teaching is extremely complex. Becoming a skilled teacher proficient in each of the essential skills requires years of individual work and practice, assistance from colleagues, and support from administrators. That effort should be a major driver of all school improvement endeavors.

Reference Notes

A Personal Perspective
Tschwertley, T. D. (2015, Mar 21). What Really Makes Teaching Hard. https://tschwertley.wordpress.com/2015/03/21/why-teaching-is-hard/

Many Factors Influence the Quality of Instruction
Hansel, L. (2015, Jul 9). Seeking Confirmation. http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2015/07/09/seeking-confirmation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCoreKnowledgeBlog+%28The+Core+Knowledge+Blog%29

Lavigne A. L., & Good, T. L. (2014). Teacher and Student Evaluation: Moving Beyond the Failure of School Reform. New York: Routledge.

What Is Effective Teaching?
TeachingWorks. High-Leverage Practices. University of Michigan. http://www.teachingworks.org/work-of-teaching/high-leverage-practices

Zubrzycki, J. (2015, Nov 9). Students ‘Self-Assess’ Their Way to Learning. Education Week. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/11/11/students-self-assess-their-way-to-learning.html

Hanford, E. (2015, Oct 20). What Core Skills Do Teachers Need to Be Effective? http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/10/20/what-core-skills-do-teachers-need-to-be-effective/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29

Commission on Teacher Credentialing. (2009). California Standards for the Teaching Profession. http://www.ctc.ca.gov/educator-prep/standards/cstp-2009.pdf

Jobs for the Future. (2016). Students at the Center: Deeper Learning Research Series. http://www.jff.org/initiatives/students-center/deeper-learning

Schmoker, M. (2015, Oct 20). It’s Time to Restructure Teacher Professional Development. Education Week. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/10/21/its-time-to-restructure-teacher-professional-development.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news2-RM

How Top Performers Build-and-Support: Provide an Engaging Broad-Based Liberal Arts Curriculum

How Top Performers Build-and-Support
Provide an Engaging Broad-Based Liberal Arts Curriculum

by Bill Honig

A major component of every successful educational improvement effort is addressing the issue of what will be taught. Specifically, world-class educational performers provide all students with a challenging and engaging broad liberal arts curriculum—precisely the type of curriculum envisioned by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which have been adopted by more than 40 states. Many conventional reformers have supported the CCSS, seeing them as a mechanism for their high-stakes accountability agenda. Their position has been to establish national standards, assess performance against those standards, and attach consequences to low performance—the Test-and-Punish approach. I stand with a vast number of educators who, while rejecting an emphasis on test-based accountability, support the CCSS and the promise they hold for improving curriculum and instruction. The standards are consistent with what our most knowledgeable teachers and researchers have been advocating for years.

Why the Common Core State Standards Are So Important

The California Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts & Literacy (which almost identical to the national Common Core Standards) and the state’s framework explicating them (listed below) are based on the deeper learning that is taking place in our best schools and classrooms—reading, writing, and discussing literature and complex text and ideas; synthesizing those texts and ideas to construct arguments; reading widely; and mastering core academic content in history, science, civics, and humanities to enhance comprehension and better understand the world.

Deeper learning entails mastering more complex thinking and applying twenty-first-century skills. Deeper learning also produces higher learning. For a scholarly treatment of the concept of deeper learning, see the work of Maggie Lampert, the Learning Deeply blog, and Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine.

Mehta and Fine define the term this way:

There is no consensus on exactly how to define deeper learning. For example, it has often been described as the integration of academic, inter-, and intrapersonal skills and knowledge. Recent research findings strongly suggest that in order to succeed in college, careers, and all aspects of adult life, young people require more than just a command of academic content. They also need to be able to solve complex real world problems, collaborate, communicate effectively, monitor and direct their own learning, and develop an academic mindset.

Among many cognitive psychologists, however, deep learning—or what they might call learning for understanding—refers to the ability to transfer knowledge. The idea is that knowledge becomes deeper when one can use it not only to address a problem in the context in which it has been taught, but also to understand or explain something in a different but related context. Rather than seeing isolated facts, deep learners see patterns and connections because they understand the underlying structures of what they’re exploring.

The authors of this paper suggest that deeper learning requires the ability to transfer knowledge, and more. It often emerges at the intersection of mastery (knowledge of substantive content, including the ability to transfer), identity (driven by relevance to the learner), and creativity (the ability to act or make something from the knowledge).

However one defines it, though, deeper learning poses a multipronged challenge to current classroom practice and educational systems. It will require a major increase in the cognitive demand of the tasks that most students, particularly in high-poverty schools, are asked to complete.

The Common Core State Standards and the frameworks explicating them envision a substantial instructional shift to this type of enriched learning. (These frameworks are discussed in greater depth later in this article.)

I caught a glimpse of the future back in 1985, when I was California superintendent of public instruction and visited a seventh-grade classroom in Santa Barbara. The students were presenting research papers on college-level questions such as “What effect did the Galileo trial have on scientific investigation in southern and northern Europe?” I was amazed as teams of students presented their papers and then engaged in a sophisticated discussion with the rest of the class. Almost every student contributed. Discussants were serious, used sophisticated language, asked perceptive questions, and responded appropriately to what was being said. Afterward, when I met with their superb teacher, Naomi Johnson, it became apparent how much work had gone into creating the conditions that allowed the students to successfully participate in such an erudite academic discussion. She assured me that these advanced behaviors and abilities were also the result of several years of sustained learning in previous grades and tremendous efforts by the entire faculty at the middle school to assure that each class reinforced the skills students need to conduct research and actively contribute to academic discussions.

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics are also internationally benchmarked—reflecting what math educators have been recommending: go deeper into fewer topics, incorporate practices such as modeling, discussion both in class and with peers, problem solving, and a greater emphasis on procedural skills, conceptual understanding, and application to increasingly complex situations. Both sets of standards, English language arts (ELA) and mathematics, build on existing best practices but demand significant changes in instruction. In addition, California combined the ELA Common Core Standards with state-adopted English Language Development (ELD) standards to create a framework that integrates both sets of standards, the ELA/ELD Framework.

The recently developed Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) offer similar pedagogical approaches in science, combining content and practices. These science standards have also been adopted by numerous states.

Similar documents have been developed to create national standards for history-social science such as the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. In addition, many states have drafted and implemented their own standards for history-social science. The importance of science and history-social science content is also emphasized in Common Core’s ELA and mathematics standards.

Why Support the Common Core State Standards?

Most teachers in California are excited by the educational promise of providing an active, engaging curriculum, as called for in the new standards. They have long believed in and have expressed a strong interest in bringing the ideas to fruition. One of the most exciting aspects of the CCSS is that they incorporate the complex instructional expertise and practices that make up effective teaching. This means that implementing the CCSS can become the catalyst for every school to address each of the crucial components of effective instruction. It has been shown that failure in any one component affects successful practice and outcomes. Moreover, the shift to the more complex and active instruction envisioned by the CCSS requires schools to build collaborative teams and provide the support needed for continuous improvement in individual teacher and school performance. Each school can decide how to tailor its implementation strategy based on the needs of its staff. Depending on the teacher or school program, some proficiencies will become second nature while others may need constant attention. For more on the topic of effective teaching, see the companion article Provide High-Quality Instruction. For more about team building, see the companion article Build Teams and Focus on Continuous Improvement.

I know that the CCSS are controversial and that many people strongly object to various aspects of the standards. Some concerns do not relate to the standards themselves but to unwarranted classroom practices and misguided implementation policies. Examples include over-scripted instruction, assigning inappropriate activities to kindergarteners, or abuses at the state level such as New York State’s decision to arbitrarily set cut levels so high that huge numbers of students failed the tests. Criticisms of the standards are often based on a misinterpretation or misreading of what they actually say. For example, many people decry the devaluation of literature, basing their objections on the standards’ recommendation that 70% of high school reading materials should be informational text. However, a closer reading of the language in the standards reveals that the 70% refers to all high school reading, which means there would still be plenty of time in English classrooms for a full literature program. At the same time, incorporating some powerful essays, biographies, and nonfiction books such as The Double Helix into the English curriculum promotes the deeper learning educators seek.

I should mention that not all of my fellow Build-and-Support advocates believe in the value of the CCSS, as I do. In addition to opposing the Test-and-Punish approach, “market-based reform efforts,” privatization of schools, and corporate overreach, Anthony Cody, Diane Ravitch, and a few other respected thought leaders reject the Common Core State Standards themselves. They think the standards are so entwined with high-stakes accountability that they are unsalvageable and not educationally warranted or legitimate. I disagree on both counts. Diane graciously allowed me to plead my case on her blog. I began my post with “Common Core Standards, YES. High-stakes Testing, Rewards and Punishments, and Market-based Reforms, NO. The California Story.” My comments engendered quite the discussion.

For an intelligent critique of the Common Core State Standards, see also Thomas Newkirk’s Postscript: Speaking Back to the Common Core. California made a concerted effort to address many of his criticisms in its adoption of the Common Core Standards, in the frameworks based on them, and in its implementation strategies, which divorced the Common Core rollout from test-driven high-stakes accountability. For more on this topic, see the companion articles in The California Context.

The Crucial Role of Content Frameworks

In California and other states, content frameworks translate the CCSS into guides for curriculum, instruction, professional development, and adoption of materials. They are critical in turning the standards into a workable curriculum. Ideally, the effort of schools across this country to implement a curriculum that reflects the content frameworks aligned with the CCSS or other comparably ambitious standards can be the centerpiece of an alternative Build-and-Support reform movement. The key is to detach implementation of the Common Core Standards from the high-stakes, test-based punitive measures too often linked with them. This is what California and a few other states have done.

Useful California Content Frameworks and Support Documents

The Common Core State Standards Are Not a Curriculum

Before I discuss the California mathematics and ELA/ELD standards as examples of the complexity of curriculum and the discipline-based instruction proposed, one clarification is needed. The most successful districts spend time, effort, and thought in translating standards into a coherent and sequenced curriculum and thus avoid the trap of thinking that standards alone will improve educational performance.

The CCSS delineate what students should master, but they are not a curriculum. Jumping from the standards to create lesson plans misses the crucial middle step of developing a sequenced, coherent curriculum. Creating a local curricular framework for the district or utilizing one from the state informs the sequence and breadth of instruction. Developing this “scope & sequence” is complex. And without it, implementation of the CCSS is destined to fail.

For example, one of the seventh-grade math standards is to use proportional thinking and percentage to solve problems such as “If $50 is 20% of your total funds, how much do you have?” The standard does not say how much instructional time should be invested in helping students master the requisite skills (actually quite a lot) nor does it list which strategies will be effective, recommend a progression of learning, or explain how instruction should correlate with previous units.

The same is true of Common Core’s ELA & Literacy Standards. They stress the need for a coherent curriculum and a systematic buildup of knowledge through broadly defined literature and the disciplines. But the standards do not specify the actual content that should be used to reach those goals.

Unfortunately, many districts have not undertaken this crucial work. The Common Core State Standards Implementation Survey surveyed 818 districts in California, which represent 83% of state public school enrollment. In late 2013, only about one-third of the districts had created a scope and sequence for the CCSS in either English-language arts or mathematics for at least some grades. More than one-third of the districts reported that this work is planned “for the future,” and about one-quarter reported that they are not planning to engage in this work at all. At the same time, only about half the districts were creating units or lessons, or aligning existing units or lessons with the new standards. The situation has improved since 2013, but many districts still have not adopted a coherent standards-based curriculum including essential materials.

Resources for Developing a Coherent Scope & Sequence

First, existing framework documents such as the one developed by California provide essential advice on how to structure the curriculum, including the order in which standards should be taught; how much time should be spent on each standard; how a standard fits in the larger context of the grade-to-grade buildup of knowledge; strategies for instruction, intervention, and assessment; links to resources; and illuminating vignettes. Teachers need this broader context to maximize the effect of adopted or available materials.

Second, many proprietary core reading and math programs offer a well-constructed scope & sequence. Among them are those adopted in California in mathematics and in ELA/ELD. Some open-source education materials also have sound scope and sequences. All materials have undergone extensive reviews and have translated the CCSS and state frameworks into a serviceable curriculum for teachers. The programs also allow flexibility so that our best teachers and districts can enhance their materials with a variety of open-source educational materials such as those listed by ISKME—a mix-and-match strategy. Also see a network of states devoted to sharing open-source material.

Third, many of the nation’s best districts have developed their own scope and sequences, although many still incorporate basal texts in many disciplines based on their criteria. For example, Long Beach’s scope and sequence documents provide a comprehensive “blueprint” for strategically sequencing and operationalizing the grade level/course standards in ELA and mathematics. The critical attributes of each document are units laid out in sequence by theme/title; an indication of how much time to spend on each unit; a narrative description of each unit explaining its focus and purpose; a description of the standards to be assessed for each unit; an assessment narrative detailing the formative assessment strategies and practices included in each unit so teachers can monitor how well the students are learning; a notation of formative assessment lessons to be included in each unit during the second half of the unit with time allowed for reteach/review; an explanation of the structure and purpose of the interim or end-of-unit assessment; a list of item types that may be included, along with the rationale; and finally the reading-level range of the texts used in each ELA unit. Long Beach provides very detailed advice. Other districts may wish to offer more general guidelines.

Fourth, many websites offer progressions and scope and sequences for instruction such as Achieve the Core and Illustrative Mathematics. A November 2013 report by Hanover Research contained an exhaustive list of Common Core curricular resources and planning tools that are used by various states. Another list of resources is available at the California Department of Education (CDE) website, and a national open resources list aligned to the Common Core can be found at OER Commons. Finally, an online Internet tool for California educator collaboration and resource sharing, My Digital Chalkboard, contains supporting links and resources. Many states have also produced curricular planning guides. For example, the Colorado Department of Education has posted its own guide (Colorado’s District Sample Curriculum Project), as has New York. Many district scope and sequence efforts and units of instruction for standards implementation are available at the CDE, California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSESA), and county office of education websites. Most districts are willing to share their work.

The Role of Core Basal Programs

One question that is troubling educators is how much they should rely on traditional prepackaged, comprehensive basal programs. With the availability of online and open-source materials, some people are predicting the demise of these programs. We are not quite there yet. Textbooks can be very useful in certain instructional areas, if they are part of a broader curricular approach and supplemented by digital or niche resources. For example, in addition to oral language development and reading books aloud, teaching beginning reading in English requires an organized, systematic presentation of letter/sound correspondences, progressing from the easier to the more difficult. Children need practice reading “decodable text,” or material that follows the letter/sound correspondences they have been taught. Designing such materials is complex, time consuming, and usually better left to knowledgeable sources.

Many textbooks have become too hefty—emphasizing coverage of content over depth. The new CCSS and corresponding frameworks propose deep learning, in which students learn how to read, evaluate, and create a range of multimedia. This requires differently designed materials. For example, Asian math textbooks are thinner and organized around challenging questions. In the US, publishers are creating hybrid programs that use both print and digital supporting materials. The recently adopted ELA/ELD materials in California are of high quality and reflect the values of the Common Core State Standards and California’s 2014 English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework.

While relying only on traditional basal programs would be a mistake and deprive teachers of engaging, effective options, refusing to take advantage of some organized materials would limit and diminish instruction for most teachers. The vast majority of teachers resist demands that they develop a full curriculum on their own—they have neither the time, expertise, nor inclination. Striking the proper balance with a mix-and-match strategy offers the best approach.

Unfortunately, reformers have neglected the crucial role of curriculum and instructional materials in improving educational performance. Linda Diamond, one of finest reading educators in the country, uses the metaphor of a three-legged stool. Teacher’s content and pedagogical knowledge of a strong, liberal arts curriculum is the first leg. Excellent instructional materials are the second leg. Doctors need the best tools, and so do teachers. Effective teams, support structures, and leadership are the third leg.

Improved Mathematics Instruction

As an example of the Common Core’s consistency with powerful research, the mathematics standards aim for deep content understanding—both procedural and conceptual—and the ability to apply such knowledge in increasingly complex situations. Instruction envisions a more interactive classroom that marries content with practice standards such as asking yourself if the answer makes sense, modeling, questioning, and explaining.

While delving into each discipline in detail is not the purview of this article, I will attempt to provide the flavor of the changes in each discipline. As an example of an instructional shift in mathematics, Jo Boaler proposes that students work on provocative questions. In What’s Math Got to Do With It?, she provides this example for third graders: “How would you solve 15 times 6 without pencil and paper?” This type of question stimulates a deeper understanding of the number system before students learn the algorithm and become procedurally fluent. Students can work in groups or individually to develop multiple ways of solving the problem and report back to the class for discussion of the pros and cons of each approach, all of which advance number sense.

Students might come up with these ideas: 6 times 10 and then add 6 times 5; 2 x 15, 3 times; 6 times 30 and divide by 2; 5 times 6, 3 times, and so on. Boaler challenges sixth graders with this math problem: A man on a diet can only eat ¼ of a pound of turkey a day. The market only sells packages of three slices, which is ⅓ of a pound. What fraction of the three slices can he eat? This question takes some thought, and there are several ways to solve it. (Spoiler hint: How many slices in a pound?) Or, a large cube that is painted on the outside that comprises smaller cubes of equal size, 10 by 10 by 10. How many cubes have one side painted, two sides, and three? Professor Boaler has collected scores of these engaging questions on her website. A steady diet of working on such problems produces deeper understanding and problem-solving abilities. For more on this topic, see “Not a Math Person: How to Remove Obstacles to Learning Math.”

I would add another example. Most adults have difficulty with proportional thinking, especially percentage. Many try to solve problems by rote application of the cross-multiplication rule, which is complex, prone to error, and precludes thinking about the underlying relationships. If you give students a problem such as “2 is to 3 as what is to 9?” (in the form of a 2-inch-high stick casting a 3-inch shadow, and a tree casting a 9-foot shadow—what is the height of the tree?) and ask them to figure out as many ways to solve it as they can, they will develop a deeper understanding of proportional relationships. Students could approach the problem as:

  • 2 is ⅔ of 3, so what number is ⅔ of 9?, or conversely
  • 3 is 1½ times 2, so 9 is 1½ times what number?, or
  • 9 is 3 times 3, so what number is 3 times 2?, or
  • the standard cross-multiplication procedure 2:3=x:9, so set up the equation 2/3=x/9, solve by cross-multiplying: 3x = 2 x 9 or 3x=18, 18 ÷ 3 = x, which leaves x alone and the answer is 6.

All of these methods work; each develops an understanding of proportional relationships. Outside the classroom no one proficient in mathematics would use the more complicated formulae in this situation. Instead, they would think about what is being asked and use one of the simpler relationships to determine the answer. Vignettes demonstrating examples of active classroom instruction are included in the California mathematics framework, and videos and grade-level content are available from numerous sites.

I know some people will question this approach, asking “Why waste all this time: Why not just teach students the most efficient procedure first?” Eventually, they need to learn to be automatic with a procedure so they can think about new material, but initially the opportunity to struggle with a question, to think about the relationships and concepts, and to communicate and listen to ideas is too beneficial to miss. Ask the Japanese who have perfected this method and lead the world in math performance. Often, learning to rely exclusively on applying a rule or procedure precludes deeper thinking about the problem: Which procedure makes the most sense?; which data is important or superfluous?; and does the solution comply with a reasonable estimate? Of course, some procedures just need to be eventually memorized such as multiplication facts. This is what the California Mathematics Framework advocates, although even in this case, there are proven strategies and patterns to facilitate the effort.

Jo Boaler argues that the way math has been taught in the US as a set of rules to apply—show a procedure, work a problem in front of the class, have students practice and do homework, and then test—is ineffective for many students. They forget the steps, plug in the wrong numbers to the formula, and don’t know which procedures to use when they encounter a more complex problem, which is key to being able to use numbers. Classroom instruction usually masks this point by making it obvious which procedure to apply (a student will know that all of the day’s problems are about multiplying fractions). For many students, when they encounter a problem without the clue they are stumped. Instead the CCSS standards of content and practice emphasize conceptual understanding in addition to procedural knowledge and application. Finally, a steady diet of a rigid instructional routine—get the answer by following the rules—alienates many students.

Facility with percentage provides a perfect illustration of the problem. Percentage is probably one of the most useful mathematical tools in everyday life. Yet only about 45% of the US population can use percentage effectively. Sal Khan has commented that Khan Academy collects data from millions of people around the world. They have discovered that percentage problems rank among the most difficult for large numbers of adults. This finding was explained years ago by Parker and Leinhardt in a 90-page article entitledPercentage: A Privileged Proportion.

According to these and later researchers such as Susan Lamon, fourth graders are better at solving percentage problems than sixth graders. Since they have not been taught the algorithm, they think creatively using benchmarks. For example, when asked “What is 60% of 40?,” fourth graders think: “I know 50% of 40 is 20, and 10% is 4, so it must be 24.” Many students in later grades stop thinking and just attempt to apply a rule. (Witness the difficulty people have with tipping 15%.)

What is hard about percentage is that the tool is actually shorthand for conceptually complex relationships and meanings tied to a 100th scale, which was historically developed over thousands of years. The key issue is determining the base for comparison and the ability to flexibly shift bases. For example, imagine that your boss tells you that owing to financial difficulties, she has to cut your monthly salary of $1,000 by 10% for one month, but she will raise it 10% after the month is over. You won’t be back to your previous level because the first base for the cut is $1,000, while the second base for the increase is $900. Or, a more common situation: The graduation rate in your school is 50% and increases to 60%. Is that a 10% increase or 20%? It is both, depending on what you are attempting to communicate. Ten percent more than 50% is a 10% increase compared to 100% (entire student body)—a standard way of evaluating schools, but the pool of graduates (represented by 50%) rose 20% (10/50). Tricky.

In middle grades, solving percentage problems is usually taught procedurally in a few lessons using the cross-multiplication rule. This results in massive failure rates. On assessments, significant numbers of eighth graders could not answer the question “What is 100% of 8?” If five to six weeks of class time are invested with heavy language mediation and numerous examples of comparing this to that and that to this, about 95% of students will become proficient in using percentage. This is an example of the CCSS approach—fewer topics taught more in depth.

Many students want to know why a procedure works and desire to tackle more complex problems using the practices delineated in the new standards. Direct instruction definitely has its place, and many successful teachers use it predominately and still manage to encourage deeper student thinking. But for most practitioners, posing complex questions and providing open-ended tasks should be added to their teaching routines. The California mathematics framework calls for teachers to determine a proper balance between direct instruction and more engaging activities.

What is mathematically most useful for the vast majority of people is the ability to figure out how to set up a problem and decide which data are relevant and which procedures to use—a skill that is developed through practice by encountering large numbers of problems and completing activities that require thinking. This idea was brought home to me when I was participating in a review of potential test questions for the CCSS-aligned Smarter Balanced assessments. At my table was Mike Kirst, president of the California State Board of Education and a professor from Stanford. Also present was the then chair of the University of California’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) committee who was an engineering professor at one of the UC campuses. We were given several questions to rank for difficulty. The one we all agreed was the hardest required only adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing but was challenging to think through, set up, and decide which procedures and practices to use and when.

The math used by most adults except for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations is the application of math learned through eighth grade such as fractions, rates, proportions, and percentage applied to complex or unique situations. Also important is the ability to reason quantitatively such as reading charts and extrapolating data. Andrew Hacker maintains that that ability is missing from most secondary math courses.

A 2016 study from OECD sheds some interesting light on strategies that help low-performing math students. The authors found that students don’t necessarily hate math but have high levels of anxiety. Extracurricular activities, which don’t need to be math based, help. A major finding is that the right amount of homework is crucial. Six hours of math homework a week reduces the odds of becoming a low performer—a whopping 70% compared to those doing little or no homework. Beyond six hours, homework becomes stressful and further results stall. Finally, in a controversial finding, in the US and a few other countries, ability grouping actually increased performance of struggling students.

For an in-depth analysis of implementation issues, see the reports produced by the Math in Common (MIC) network, which is devoted to the successful execution of the California Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. Owing to the complexity of this more demanding math instruction, many districts are shifting to have upper-elementary math taught by math specialists.

More Comprehensive and Engaging Language Arts

Reading, writing, discussing, and analyzing text in a more active manner are hallmarks of the English Language Arts (ELA) Standards. The California ELA/ELD Framework integrates two sets of standards: state Common Core English Language Arts (ELA) Standards and state English Language Development (ELD) Standards.

Following is a short excerpt from a 2014 summary of the ELA/ELD Framework authored by JoAnn Isken, Carol Jago, and me, which explains the ideas behind the framework:

The outer ring of the graphic identifies the overarching goals of ELA/ELD literacy and instruction. By the time California’s students complete high school, they should have developed readiness for college, career, and we added civic life; attained the capacities of literate individuals; become broadly literate; and acquired the skills for living and learning in the twenty-first century.

California has grounded the framework in these broader purposes of the language arts. We want students to be able to understand complex text and ideas as well as reason, analyze, persuade, and problem solve. We also wish them to encounter a rich liberal arts education—learning about the world, civic life, and the human heart, being well read, and helping them reach their potential. We would like our youngsters to encounter a significant representation of the best classic and contemporary literature including novels, biographies, essays and plays as well as coherent content informational text in science, history, and the humanities. We would like them to experience the joy of reading engrossing stories and fascinating material.

So the ELA/ELD framework is about two main thrusts: First, attention to the totality of what students read both on their own in independent reading and in school in their liberal arts disciplines (including literature) during their school years, and second, the analytical, reasoning and literacy skills necessary to comprehend and apply knowledge gleaned from a variety of text structures. Both ideas are stressed in the multi-state Common Core ELA standards. To this end, the framework also recommends an organized independent reading program for each student to supplement what is read in school and provides advice on how to implement such a strategy in Chapter 2.

The developers of the ELD standards made a crucial decision from the start. They designed the standards to aid the large number of English-language learners (ELLs) in mastering the CCSS, which greatly facilitated the integration of the two sets of standards. They organized the ELD standards around five overarching themes—foundational skills, language, written and oral expression, content knowledge, and meaning-making strategies such as drawing inferences and making connections. The integrated ELA/ELD Framework adopted this architecture. All five themes work together to develop student comprehension.

The first strand is foundational skills. To understand the ideas in a text, the reader needs to automatically recognize almost all the words. For words already in the reader’s speaking vocabulary, that is the role of foundational skills—to teach them a process for becoming automatic with a growing number of words. Foundational skills address how to teach them these skills and include phonics, word attack skills (learning how to sound out new words, handle multisyllabic words, and recognize word structures such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots), and fluency instruction (the rationale and more details are covered in the companion articles The California Context). The foundational skills in the California framework are summarized in an extremely well-written white paper by Hallie Yopp, one of the authors of the framework.

For a useful compendium on research-based reading instruction and strategies, see Honig, Diamond, and Gutlohn’s Teaching Reading Sourcebook, Updated 2nd Edition and its companion book Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures, 2nd Edition. Both books were produced by the Consortium on Reaching Excellence (CORE), where I am president. The Sourcebook was one of only 10 publications endorsed by the National Council on Teacher Quality to cover beginning reading adequately. Of the 10, it was the fourth most used publication for preservice teachers.

In 2015, Louise Spear-Swerling wrote The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles and David Kilpatrick wrote Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Along with the Sourcebook, these two books are among the best research-based books on how to teach children to read. They also explain some current misguided reading approaches that are still in widespread use. The companion article How the California Reading Wars Got Resolved: A Personal Story goes into further detail on the issue of the importance of foundational skills.

The second theme, language, deals with the crucial topic of vocabulary, text structure and syntax, and academic language—all critical to understanding text. Academic texts in English contain a large number of words that appear infrequently but are essential to understanding. To successfully complete high school, students need to understand approximately 65,000 words, although some words are members of the same word family. Consequently, from the outset, there must be a rich vocabulary development strand coupled with an extensive independent reading program. This is particularly crucial for the large numbers of low-income or ELL students who start school knowing far fewer words than their middle-class and English-speaking peers. For a valuable resource, see CORE’s Vocabulary Handbook and Word Intelligence, which is a vocabulary program for middle-grade students. In addition, as material and sentence structure become more complex and demanding in upper elementary, students must learn to handle challenging elements such as complex sentences with multiple dependent clauses. Finally, different disciplines such as history and science organize information in different ways and students need help in navigating these varied text structures.

The third theme enhances comprehension by concentrating on a student’s ability to express ideas in writing and speaking. This strand also includes spelling and writing conventions such as grammar. Often, until you have tried to explain something, you really don’t know it.

The fourth theme deals with the vital role content knowledge plays in comprehension and the importance of a systematic buildup of disciplinary and cultural knowledge through organized class work and independent reading. See the vast work on this subject at Core Knowledge and Liana Heitin’s blog “For Reading, Knowledge Matters More Than Strategies, Some Experts Say.” See also Vicki Cobb’s article “Why Reading to Learn Is Seldom Taught.”

And, finally, meaning making addresses the meta-cognitive skills of self-monitoring, drawing inferences, and thinking about what is being read.

Similar to math, English-language arts shifts to a more active instructional program including book discussions, projects, research, and making arguments and taking positions both in writing and speaking.

History, Civics, Economics, Geography, Humanities, and the Fine Arts

Changes in history/social science instruction follow a similar pattern as math and English language arts. The new California History-Social Science Framework and the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards encourage a more active curriculum. For example, in sixth grade, instead of marching through the growth of empires in Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, India, China, Africa, and Mesoamerica, teams of students may be assigned a particular area. Groups then investigate the history of their area, report to the class, and discuss the similarities and differences. Or, a teacher may pose the question: “Why did the Industrial Revolution start in England?” As in the other subject areas, understanding a combination of factual, conceptual, and historical processes seems the best mix, supported by powerful motivational content such as stories, narratives, historical fiction, biographies, projects, and performances.

Science

Similar to the other disciplines, the new Next Generation Science Standards and the new California Science Framework elucidating them stress the marriage of content in physics, chemistry, life, and earth sciences, including health; evolution and human origins; practices such as modeling, explaining, and observing; active investigations and hypotheses generation; understanding historical science; the incorporation of larger cross-cutting themes such as energy; and motivational efforts such as biographies of leading scientists and stories of the fight to conquer various diseases. For a wonderful compilation of engaging and motivating stories of scientists, see Joy Hakim’s Science Stories: Proof That Informative Can Be Engaging.

Other Crucial Student Learning

Similarly, teachers need to know the latest research and best practice related to how students learn and retain knowledge. Many of the works cited above will help. In addition, I recommend:

  • Building Blocks for Learning: A Framework for Comprehensive Student Development
  • How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, which discusses the importance of personal and relational skills
  • Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, which covers the importance of self-monitoring and self-testing strategies
  • Mindset, which explains the importance of students believing that effort will lead to their success
  • Teacher and Student Evaluation: Moving Beyond the Failure of School Reform
  • Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning, which reviews the research on which strategies produce the largest effect size such as just-in-time intervention and actively involving students in the educational process

Practitioners should know where to go to obtain answers to key questions that arise from their efforts to improve instruction. High on the educational agenda should be making pedagogical wisdom available in a usable format to the professional learning teams at each site. School teams could then adapt those ideas to their individual students.

This article has dealt with the what of teaching and learning—the curriculum. See also the companion article, Provide High-Quality Instruction, which explores how teachers can best deliver that curriculum in the classroom.

BBS Companion Articles

How Top Performers Build-and-Support
Ground Efforts on Unassailable Research
Provide High-Quality Instruction
Build Teams and Focus on Continuous Improvement
The California Context
California Policymakers and Educators Shift from Test-and-Punish to Build-and-Support
How the California Reading Wars Got Resolved: A Personal Story

Reference Notes

Why the Common Core State Standards Are So Important
Bitter, C., & Loney, E. (2015, Aug). Deeper Learning: Improving Student Outcomes for College, Career, and Civic Life. http://educationpolicy.air.org/publications/deeper-learning-improving-student-outcomes-college-career-and-civic-life

Lampert, M. (2015). Deeper Teaching. Students at the Center: Deeper Learning Research Series. Boston, MA: Jobs for the Future. http://www.studentsatthecenter.org/topics/deeper-teaching

Amarillas, M. (2016, Feb 4). Deeper Learning, Metacognition and Presentations of Learning. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning_deeply/2016/02/deeper_learning_metacognition_and_presentations_of_learning.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campdfaign=learningdeeply

Mehta, J., & Fine, S. (2015, Dec). The Why, What, Were, and How of Deeper Learning in American Secondary Schools. Jobs for the Future. http://www.jff.org/publications/why-what-where-and-how-deeper-learning-american-secondary-schools

NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next Generation Science Standards: For States, By States. http://www.nextgenscience.org/

Heitin, L. (2016, Feb 23). Curriculum Matters: Eight Things to Know About the Next Generation Science Standards. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2016/02/next_generation_science_standards_8_things_to_know.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters

California Department of Education (CDE). (2013). Next Generation Science Standards for California Public Schools: K–12. http://www.cde.ca.gov/pd/ca/sc/ngssstandards.asp

National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). (2013). College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K–12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History. Silver Spring, MD: NCSS. http://www.socialstudies.org/c3

California State Board of Education. Content Standards. http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/

Why Support the Common Core State Standards?
Ravitch, D. (2014, Jan 7). Bill Honig: Why California Likes the Common Core. http://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/07/bill-honig-why-california-likes-the-common-core-standards/

Newkirk, T. (2013). Postscript: Speaking Back to the Common Core. https://www.heinemann.com/shared/onlineresources/E02123/Newkirk_Speaking_Back_to_the_Common_Core.pdf

The Common Core State Standards Are Not a Curriculum
Honig, B. (2014, Jan 29). Coherent and Sequenced Curriculum Key to Implementing Common Core Standards. http://edsource.org/2014/coherent-and-sequenced-curriculum-key-to-implementing-common-core-standards/56704 See also Tucker, M. (2016, Feb 11). Building a Powerful State Instructional System for All Students. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2016/02/building_a_powerful_state_instructional_system_for_all_students.html

California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSEA). (2013). Common Core State Standards Implementation Survey: Statewide Summary of Results. http://ccsesa.org/common-core-implementation-california-status-report/

Resources for Developing a Coherent Scope & Sequence
California Department of Education. (2014, Jan 15). 2014 Mathematics Adoption. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/im/sbeadopted2014mathprgms.asp

California Department of Education. (2015, Nov 4). 2015 ELA/ELD Adoption. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/im/sbeadoptedelaeldprogs.asp

OER Services. http://www.iskme.org/services/oer-support

Zubrzycki, J. (2026, Feb 26). 13 States Join Federal Open Resource Initiative. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2016/02/open_educational_resources.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters

Long Beach Unified School District. Scope and Sequence Documents. http://www.lbusd.k12.ca.us/Departments/Curriculum/ELA/curriculum_docs.cfm

Achieve the Core. www.achievethecore.org

Illustrative Mathematics. https://www.illustrativemathematics.org/

Hanover Research. (2013, Nov). Final Report–Common Core Implementation Tools. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1009965-commoncore-implementationtools-gates1113.html

California Department of Education. All Curriculum Frameworks. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/allfwks.asp

OER Commons. https://www.oercommons.org/

My Digital Chalkboard. https://www.mydigitalchalkboard.org

Colorado Department of Education. Colorado’s District Sample Curriculum Project: Introduction. https://www.cde.state.co.us/standardsandinstruction/samplecurriculumproject

New York State Education Department. New York State Learning Standards and Core Curriculum. http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/cores.html

California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/

California County Superintendents Educational Services Association. http://ccsesa.org/

The Role of Core Basal Programs
Dobo, N. (2015, Nov 4). The Federal Government Urges K–12 Schools to Try Open Educational Resources. http://hechingerreport.org/the-federal-government-urges-k-12-schools-to-try-open-educational-resources/

California Department of Education. (2015). English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools: K–12. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/elaeldfrmwrksbeadopted.asp

Boser, U. (2015, Oct 14). The Hidden Value of Curriculum Reform: Do States and Districts Receive the Most Bang for Their Curriculum Buck? https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2015/10/14/122810/the-hidden-value-of-curriculum-reform/

Consortium on Reaching Excellence (CORE). The CORE Approach to Building and Sustaining Lasting Academic Excellence. https://www.corelearn.com/About-Us/Our-Approach.html

Improved Mathematics Instruction
Boaler, J. (2015). What’s Math Got to Do With It? How Teachers and Parents Can Transform Mathematics Learning and Inspire Success. New York: Penguin Books.

YouCubed. https://www.youcubed.org/

Schwartz, K. (2015, Nov 30). “Not a Math Person”: How to Remove Obstacles to Learning Math. http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/11/30/not-a-math-person-how-to-remove-obstacles-to-learning-math/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29

Heitin, L. (2015, Aug 13). Common Core’s Focus on Concepts Is Key to Improving Math Education, Report Says. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/08/common_cores_focus_on_concepts_key_to_improving_math_education.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters

Parker, M., & Leinhardt, G. (1995). Percent: A Privileged Proportion. Review of Educational Research Winter 65. http://rer.sagepub.com/content/65/4/421.abstract

Hacker, A. (2016, Feb 27). The Wrong Way to Teach Math. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/opinion/sunday/the-wrong-way-to-teach-math.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Cuban, L. (2016, Mar 10). The Wrong Way to Teach Math (Andrew Hacker). https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2016/03/10/the-wrong-way-to-teach-math-andrew-hacker/

Heitin, L. (2016, Feb 11). What We Know About Struggling Math Students According to PISA Results. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2016/02/what_we_know_about_students_who_struggle_international_math_test.html?r=1820170230&utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters See also OECD. (2016, Feb 10). Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed. http://www.oecd.org/edu/low-performing-students-9789264250246-en.htm

WestEd. Math in Common Evaluation. https://www.wested.org/project/math-in-common-evaluation/ See also Fong, T., Perry, R., Reade, F., Klarin, B., & Jaquet, K. (2016, Jan). Many Pathways to Student Success in Mathematics: Middle and High School Math Course Sequences and Placement Decisions in Math in Common Districts. https://www.wested.org/resources/many-pathways-to-student-success-in-mathematics/ and Perry, R, Finkelstein, N., Seago N., Heredia, A., Sobolew-Shubin, S., & Carroll, C. (2016, Jul). Taking Stock of Common Core Math Implementation: Supporting Teachers to Shift Instruction Insights from the Math in Common 2015 Baseline Survey of Teachers and Administrators. https://www.wested.org/resources/taking-stock-common-core-math-implementation/ and Flaherty Jr., J., Sobolew-Shubin, A., Heredia, A., Chen-Gaddini, M., Klarin, B., & Finkelstein, N. (2016, Sep 26). Under Construction: Benchmark Assessments and Common Core Math Implementation in Grades K–8. https://www.wested.org/resources/under-construction-benchmark-assessments-and-common-core-math-implementation-in-grades-k-8/ and Perry, R. R., Seago, N., Burr, E., Broek, M., Finkelstein, N. (2015, Jan 26). Classroom Observations: Documenting Shifts in Instruction for Districtwide Improvement. https://www.wested.org/resources/documenting-shifts-in-instruction/

Disare M. (2016, Feb 16). 75 Schools Will Overhaul Math Teaching, a Move Fariña Says Will Reduce Inequity. http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2016/02/16/75-schools-will-overhaul-math-teaching-a-move-farina-says-will-reduce-inequity/#.VsYgQ4-cE2w

More Comprehensive and Engaging Language Arts
Isken, J. A., Honig, B., & Jago, C. (2014, Nov 15). California’s Recently Adopted English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework: Translating the Common Core State Standards to a Coherent and Sequenced Curriculum for All Students. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/resourceselaeld2016.asp

Yopp, H. (2015). Resource Guide to the Foundational Skills of the California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/documents/foundskillswhitepaper.pdf – search=Yopp 2015 Resource guide&view=FitH&pagemode=none

Honig, B., Diamond, L., & Gutlohn, L. (2013). Teaching Reading Sourcebook, Updated Second Edition. Novato, CA: Arena Press. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/

Diamond, L., & Thorsnes, B. J. (Eds.). (2008). Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures. 2nd Edition. Novato, CA: Arena Press. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/

Consortium on Reaching Excellence (CORE). http://www.corelearn.com/

National Council on Teacher Quality. (2014). Standard 2: Early Reading. What Consumers Need to Know About Teacher Preparation. http://www.nctq.org/dmsView/Teacher_Prep_Review_2014_Std2

Spear-Swerling, L. (2015). The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles: A Blueprint for Solving Reading Problems. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Diamond, L. & Gutlohn, L. (2006). Vocabulary Handbook. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes. http://www.corelearn.com/Products/Publications/

CORE. Word Intelligence. http://www.corelearn.com/word-intelligence.html

Core Knowledge. www.coreknowledge.org

Heitin, L. (2015, Oct 29). For Reading, Knowledge Matters More Than Strategies, Some Experts Say. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/10/for_reading_knowledge_matters_more_than_strategies.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=curriculummatters

Cobb, V. (2015, Jul 21). Why Reading to Learn Is Seldom Taught. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-cobb/why-reading-to-learn-is-s_b_7841040.html

History, Civics, Economics, Geography, Humanities, and the Fine Arts
National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). (2013). College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. http://www.socialstudies.org/c3

Science
NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next Generation Science Standards: For States, By States. http://www.nextgenscience.org/

Hansel, L. (2015, Aug 27). Joy Hakim’s Science Stories: Proof that Informative Can Be Engaging. http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2015/08/27/joy-hakims-science-stories-proof-that-informative-can-be-engaging/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCoreKnowledgeBlog+%28The+Core+Knowledge+Blog%29

Other Crucial Student Learning
Stafford-Brizard, K. (2016). Building Blocks for Learning: A Framework for Comprehensive Student Development. Turnaround for Children. http://www.turnaroundusa.org/what-we-do/tools/

Tough, P. (2013). How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., III, & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House.

Lavigne, A. L., & Good, T. L. (2014). Teacher and Student Evaluation: Moving Beyond the Failure of School Reform. New York: Routledge.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning. New York and London: Routledge.

How Top Performers Build-and-Support: Ground Efforts in Unassailable Research

How Top Performers Build-and-Support
Ground Efforts in Unassailable Research

by Bill Honig

The failure of the reform movement could have been easily predicted. Reformers’ solutions are inconsistent with research findings on the best ways to build high-performing schools, and fly in the face of modern management theory. Unfortunately, policymakers continue to ignore what the most successful schools, districts, states, and nations have actually done. In becoming world-class institutions, none of the top performers used a fire-the-worst-teachers-and-reward-the-best strategy. Nor did they rely on the pressure of test-driven, high-stakes accountability, competition, privatization, and choice as the centerpiece of their improvement initiatives.

A Blueprint for Success

Over the past 30 years, a widespread consensus has emerged in the educational community on the best ways to improve school quality and student performance. These educators do not deny that large numbers of schools and classrooms need to greatly upgrade learning, but they believe that with the proper leadership, social and educational resources, and organizational support, most failing schools have the potential to succeed. The advocates of this Build-and-Support approach base their efforts on an overwhelming body of impeccable scholarship, indisputable evidence, and compelling experience.

This powerful consensus supports placing instruction at the center of improvement efforts, with a rigorous and active liberal arts curriculum. It recognizes the need to build teachers’ content and pedagogical knowledge and to provide effective instructional materials and tools. It emphasizes strategic long-term efforts aimed at building capacity and continuous improvement systems to support enriching instruction and focuses on the interaction of all these elements.

These measures also aim to improve working conditions by developing school, district, parent, and community social capital and teamwork. They base accountability on respect for the professionals at the school, and they connect school and district improvement efforts to usable information about best practice. This Build-and-Support approach recognizes the need for districts and states to reorient from a top-down command-and-control compliance mentality to a field-facing support approach based on dialogue and discussion of needed improvements.

Prominent Experts and Authors

An enormous and powerful cadre of respected researchers, educators, and practitioners has forcefully advocated and implemented the positive Build-and-Support strategy. The following pages present a few of those whose work has deeply influenced the positions and policies promoted on this Building Better Schools site. We will begin with Michael Fullan and Linda Darling-Hammond.

Michael Fullan is professor emeritus of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. He is one of the prominent researchers and policy experts who promote building continuous improvement capacities around powerful instruction. He has been the intellectual godfather of Ontario, Canada’s successful rise from mediocre to world-class education. Fullan is currently advising many districts and states, including California, as well as other countries. For an example of his thinking, see Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform. He recently coauthored Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems (2015) with Joanne Quinn.

A seminal thinker of the Build-and-Support approach, Fullan examines policy and strategy levers that drive reform. He has found that the four “drivers” now in favor in the US are inadequate and often counterproductive. He offers an alternative four that have proved to be more effective at improving student performance and closing the gap for lower-performing groups relative to higher-order skills and competencies. Fullan says these successful drivers foster intrinsic motivation of teachers and students, engage educators and students in continuous improvement of instruction and learning, inspire collective or team work, and affect all teachers and students 100%.

In Fullan’s view, the key to systemwide success is to appeal to the energy and dedication of educators and students, aligning the goals of reform with the intrinsic motivation of participants. Though superficially compelling, the prevailing drivers do not work. According to Fullan, these are the four “wrong” drivers:

  • accountability—using test results and teacher appraisal to reward or punish teachers and schools (vs. capacity building and continuous improvement)
  • individual teacher and leadership quality—promoting individuals (vs. collaboration and group solutions)
  • technology—investing in computer systems and digital media assuming they will be a quick fix to low performance (vs. using the best of a blended learning approach with a variety of educational media)
  • piecemeal reform measures (vs. integrated or systemic strategies)

Although each of these “wrong” components may be useful at times, they can never be successful drivers. In fact, Fullan notes that none of the top-performing countries in the world led their reforms with the four drivers that are the current favorites in the US.

Another way to describe Fullan’s more positive effort is “building a teaching profession around effective instruction.” A 2010 McKinsey report, How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better, supports his position. The report concludes that improving system performance “ultimately comes down to improving the learning experience of students in their classroom” and that systems achieve the best results when they “change their processes by modifying curriculum and improving the way that teachers instruct and principals lead.”

Linda Darling-Hammond is faculty director of Stanford University’s Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCORE). She is one of the most respected school improvement researchers in the country and a true national treasure. Darling-Hammond has been a tireless advocate of the Build-and-Support approach and an outspoken critic of the dangers of Test-and-Punish strategies. She has published hundreds of books and articles on these issues. Her book The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future received the coveted Grawemeyer Award in 2012. Among her most recent books are Getting Teacher Evaluation Right: What Really Matters for Effectiveness and Improvement and Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning. She also wrote an article that appeared in American Educator (2010, Winter) about what it takes to build an effective teaching profession, citing examples from this country and abroad.

In 2012, California superintendent of public instruction Tom Torlakson created a prestigious commission chaired by Darling-Hammond and Chris Steinhauser, superintendent of Long Beach, which was designated one of the top districts in the world. The commission produced Greatness by Design: Supporting Outstanding Teaching to Sustain a Golden State, a superb road map for the Build-and-Support strategy, as it applies to supporting and improving teachers. California has used it to guide statewide improvement efforts. This document should greatly assist other states as they shape educational policy under the new powers given them in the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

Greatness by Design delineates many of the key components of the Build-and-Support strategy:

  • a strong liberal arts curriculum and active instruction envisioned by the Common Core standards as the driver of improvement efforts
  • a focus on team building and capacity for continuous improvement with the structures to support those efforts
  • attracting, training, induction, effective individual and team professional development, evaluation geared to program improvement, and career opportunities for our best teachers to remain in the classroom but also to become master teachers with additional responsibilities as peer mentors

Professor Darling-Hammond also coauthored an excellent guide pertaining to professional learning, the Learning Policy Institute’s publication Maximizing the Use of New State Professional Learning Investments to Support Student, Educator, and School System Growth. This topic will be further explored in the companion article Build Teams and Focus on Continuous Improvement.

Lee Shulman, also of Stanford University, is president emeritus of the respected Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching, an organization that champions the Build-and-Support strategy. Throughout his career, he has championed the importance of craft knowledge and pedagogical practice in improving schools.

Michael Kirst, whose authorship has bolstered the Build-and-Support position, is president of the California State Board of Education and has led the charge for a more supportive strategy in California. Kirst was coauthor of an EdSource report that examined middle school math programs. It found that what distinguished high-performers from laggards was the extent to which the schools organized and collaborated around how best to teach a strong instructional program with district support.

Edward Haertel is professor emeritus of education at Stanford University and one of the top psychometricians in the country. He has persistently warned of the dangers of misusing tests for evaluation schemes.

Richard F. Elmore has also written extensively on the Build-and-Support approach. For example, he authored the chapter “Leadership as the Practice of Improvement” in Improving School Leadership, Volume 2.

Jal Mehta, a strong advocate for instruction-driven reform and capacity building, edited The Futures of School Reform. Mehta coauthors Learning Deeply, an influential blog, with Richard Rothman, a perceptive opinion leader.

Andy Hargreaves, of Boston College, is a policy expert who has supported and consulted on the positive Build-and-Support approach. Like Mehta and Rothman, he has written extensively about the importance of building social and professional capital and teacher engagement aimed at deeper learning for students. He coauthored Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School with Michael Fullan.

David Cohen is an important researcher who with coauthor Susan L. Moffitt wrote about the missing ingredient in federal policy—building capacity—in The Ordeal of Equality: Did Federal Regulation Fix the Schools?

Marshall Smith is the former dean of the Stanford School of Education and was undersecretary at the federal Department of Education during the Clinton years and program officer at the Hewlett Foundation. He has ceaselessly lobbied for a course correction of federal policy along the lines I have discussed. Smith was one of the first policy experts to encourage the feds to look at Massachusetts as a model rather than to pursue the Test-and-Punish approach.

Anthony Bryk is the president of the prestigious Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In 2010, it published a study examining the reform efforts that actually worked in the Chicago schools, which were in stark contrast to those undertaken by Arne Duncan when he was Chicago’s superintendent. Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago stresses school collaboration, along with strong curricular and instructional focus, principal leadership, community involvement, and student service support as the critical elements that characterized successful schools. Bryk’s team recently authored the superb book Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better.

Marc Tucker is president of the National Center for Education and the Economy. He authored Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform and an EdWeek article, “Creating Education Success at Home.” In 2011, Tucker published Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems, which advocated the Build-and-Support approach. Tucker’s extremely informative blog Top Performers is an excellent source of information about positive strategies being used worldwide.

In one of his blog posts, Tucker pointed readers to Is School Reform Working?, a must-read document bolstering the more constructive and effective measures. The author is Geoff Masters, chief executive officer of the Australian Council for Educational Research and one of the brightest educational theorists. Masters was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia, the highest honor the Australian government can bestow on its citizens. No slouch.

In his paper, Masters contrasts two improvement strategies. The first is incentive driven, using rewards, punishments, and competition—the familiar Test-and-Punish strategy. The second strategy focuses on building the capacity of teachers and educators to deliver high-quality instruction for all students and to continuously improve—the Build-and-Support approach. He found that the countries with falling scores on international assessments such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) are those that adopted the Test-and-Punish approach, including Australia, New Zealand, England, and the United States. The countries that experienced improved results are those that followed the Build-and-Support strategy.

Master’s paper also provides one of the best descriptions of what successful nations do to support school improvement, specifically:

  • attracting and retaining high-quality teachers
  • ensuring that teachers know subject matter content and pedagogy
  • developing and supporting the capacity of teachers and leaders to work together toward improving teaching and instruction; and
  • guaranteeing that talent is widely distributed

Is School Reform Working? has a detailed description of the measures that school leaders should follow if they want results—measures that are completely aligned with the Build-and-Support approach proposed on this website.

Diane Ravitch has written extensively about the failures of the reform strategies, the widespread collateral damage to public schools, and the threat to the existence of public education by the “privatization” movement. Diane is the author of two recent books sounding the alarm about the punitive and privatization approaches being foisted on schools: Reign of Terror: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools and The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. She also edits one of the most influential blogs in the country, mentioned below.

Greg Anrig Jr. from the Century Foundation wrote Beyond the Education Wars, an important book about the importance of building social capital.

E. D. Hirsch, the founder of Core Knowledge, has advocated tirelessly for building students’ content knowledge and content’s role in comprehension. Core Knowledge promotes the steady buildup of knowledge. Schools using Core Knowledge materials have done spectacularly well.

Lisa Hansel is a perceptive commentator on the Core Knowledge blog.

David C. Berliner and Gene V. Glass cowrote 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education.

Pedro Noguera is the author of excellent books and articles. He contributes to the Bridging Differences blog, focusing on the dangers of the “reform agenda” and the importance of funding student support efforts and involving communities.

Two experts from management science have also made important contributions to our understanding of schools as complex, dynamic institutions:

Carrie Leana is George H. Love Professor of Organizations and Management at the University of Pittsburgh. She argues that collaboration at the school site is the most powerful strategy for improving instruction. Her research found that instructional conversation and help from fellow teachers outweigh all other improvement initiatives. Professor Leana calls into question reforms that pursue test-driven rewards and punishments. Since, according to her estimates, only about five percent of US schools are actually managed this way, the unrealized potential in expanding this approach far outweighs other strategies. Team building around powerful instruction and curriculum should be one of our major priorities.

Professor Leana emphasizes that this approach requires the following:

  • training principals how to promote collaboration and holding them accountable for it
  • building the infrastructure to support instructional improvement and team building
  • striving to get more talented people into our schools
  • avoiding rhetoric and policies that make collaboration more difficult

Writing for the Albert Shanker Institute blog, Esther Quintero has published a series of articles on the crucial importance of building social capital.

Content and Pedagogy Advocates

To build teacher’s content knowledge and pedagogy in mathematics, we can turn to several expert content specialists:

Deborah Ball from the University of Michigan is one of the foremost authorities on teacher knowledge necessary to teach mathematics and ascertain what students actually know. There are also Phil Daro, Jason Zimba from Student Achievement Partners, and Bill McCallum, who has developed the progressions tools and the fantastically helpful, illustrative math blog, Tools for the Common Core Standards. Daro, Zimba, and McCallum were primary authors of the Common Core Mathematics Standards that call for a more active classroom combining procedural, conceptual, and application instructional practices. Each is extremely active in Common Core implementation.

Other content experts include Karen Fuson from Northwestern University, one of the top researchers and experts on elementary mathematics, and Jo Boaler from Stanford, author of What’s Math Got to Do With It?, a book every teacher of math should read. Boaler is a strong advocate for the shift to more active and engaging instruction and a leading proponent of problem-driven and project-based instruction. She taught a widely popular MOOC course on the subject, and thousands of followers visit her website, Youcubed.

Also of note is Alan Schoenfeld from the University of California, Berkeley, whose writings on conceptual understanding, problem solving, and performance assessments have been very influential.

Professor Boaler has been an effective disciple of Carol Dweck, who wrote Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. The breakthrough book demonstrated the power of teacher attitude and active instruction in persuading all students that they can be proficient at math if they work at it. This is very different from the prevailing view of most teachers, students, and US citizens that math ability is fixed—you’re either good at it or not. Finally, there are the contributors to the Second Handbook of Research on Mathematics Teaching and Learning whose writings address necessary teacher knowledge in math. Ensuring that their ideas, which are incorporated in the Common Core Standards, become standard practice should drive improvement efforts.

To build teacher’s content knowledge and pedagogy in language arts, we can turn to the work of these authorities:

Timothy Shanahan, distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Illinois; Linnea Ehri of the City University of New York (CUNY), one of the most respected theoreticians of beginning reading; Louisa Moats, contributing writer of the Common Core State Standards, Foundational Reading Skills; Louise Spear-Swerling, whose 2015 book The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles: A Blueprint for Solving Reading Problems is one of the best summaries of how best to teach children to read; Kenji Hakuta of Stanford University and one of the architects of the English Language Development Standards adopted in California that are now incorporated in a powerful ELA/ELD Framework; the writers of the California ELA/ELD Framework, Hallie Yopp Slowik, Nancy Brynelson, and Pam Spycher; Susan Pimentel and David and Meredith Liben from Student Achievement Partners; and Linda Diamond from the Consortium for Reaching Excellence in language arts.

In other disciplines, outstanding educational leaders include the following:

In science—Helen Quinn, a world-famous physicist from Stanford, wrote the national science framework on which the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) was based and co-chaired the California Science Curriculum Framework Committee.

In history/social sciences—Michelle Herzog is president of the National Council for the Social Studies, which produced the C3 Framework for Social Studies, and Nancy McTygue, from the University of California, Davis, directed the writing of the History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools.

In music, the arts and humanities, and physical education—Kristine Alexander is from the California Arts Project, and Diane Wilson-Graham is from the Physical Education-Health Project. Lynne Munson leads Great Minds, which brings schoolteachers together in collaboration with scholars to craft exemplary instructional materials and share them with the field.

Finally, under the leadership of Michael Cohen, the Achieve organization has been a major force for implementing the deeper learning envisioned by the CCSS.

Website Contributors and Bloggers

A number of influential bloggers and authors promote the Build-and-Support approach and caution against relying on more punitive measures:

Diane Ravitch, mentioned above, is one of the country’s most prominent educational historians. Her blog has a huge number of followers. A great deal of the content of Building Better Schools has relied on the extensive articles and authors she has published.

In addition to Marc Tucker, also mentioned above, there is Matthew Di Carlo a capable and fair researcher who writes on Albert Shanker Institute’s blog. He has written many pieces on the issues raised in this article. He also authored and sponsored a series on the importance of social capital, featuring Esther Quintero whom I have also mentioned previously.

Carrie Leana and Frits Pit contribute to the excellent Albert Shanker Institute blog. See, for example, “A New Focus on Social Capital in School Reform Efforts.”

For another preeminent authority, see Stephanie Hirsh’s website Learning Forward. It is one of the best sources of advice and protocols for building collaborative efforts at school sites.

Since 2012, Jennifer Berkshire has relentlessly and with great humor unmasked deceptive reform claims and practices on her blog, EduShyster.

Jeff Bryant writes for Salon and the Education Opportunity Network about the benefits of the more supportive option.

On his blog, Living in Dialogue, Anthony Cody writes about punitive reform measures and corporate overreach in schools.

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley critiques VAMs on her blog VAMboozled.

Lisa Hansel writes for the Core Knowledge blog. Her post “Seeking Confirmation” explains the complex nature of school improvement and investigative pitfalls.

On his blog, Dan Willingham gives commonsense advice and published a powerful series of articles on instruction.

David Kirp, of the University of California, Berkeley, wrote the recent book Improbable Scholars. It chronicles how Union City, New Jersey, and two other districts rose to excellence by following a supportive approach to reform.

Charles Kerchner writes an Education Week blog about California’s exceptional path.

Robert Pondiscio writes for Flypaper at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Educational Excellence Network.

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at California State University, Sacramento. His Cloaking Inequity blog examines the inequities of the reform agenda.

Mercedes Schneider is a Louisiana-based researcher who brilliantly refutes many of the reformers’ excessive claims on her blog, deutsch29.

Bruce Baker is professor of education finance and policy at Rutgers University. His website, School Finance 101, debunks many of the “reformers” arguments.

John Thompson is a historian who became an award-winning inner-city teacher. Writing for the Huffington Post, he deflates reform rhetoric.

The blogger Jersey Jazzman (Mark Weber) provides in-depth analysis of reform nostrums and the value of the alternative Build-and-Support approach.

KQED, a public TV station in the San Francisco Bay Area, has an excellent blog, MindShift, which is a fount of valuable educational ideas.

One of the best places to find theoretical support and practical advice related to the Build-and-Support philosophy is American Educator, the American Federation of Teachers magazine available online. Issued quarterly, it has been a consistent vehicle for top-notch scholarship in this area.

State and Local Leaders

As commissioner of education in the 2000s, David P. Driscoll helped lead Massachusetts to greatness. Tom Torlakson, California’s current superintendent of public instruction, has been a strong voice for the more collaborative approach centered on improving instruction.

Local leaders of exemplary California school districts successfully translated these supportive ideas into practice. Among them are Chris Steinhauser and Carl Cohn from Long Beach, Ronald Johnson from Sanger, Gabriela Mafi and Laura Shwalm from Garden Grove, Sandra Thorstenson from the Whittier High School District, Michael Hanson from Fresno whose attention to the potentially college bound has almost doubled the number of students who actually enroll in college, Dave Gordon and Sue Stickel from the Sacramento County Office of Education, Tom Adams from the California Department of Education, Joshua Starr and Jerry Weast from Montgomery County in Maryland, and Donald Shalvey, who previously ran the Aspire Public Schools, a charter school network. I must also acknowledge the many extremely capable administrators and teachers who work for and with these educational leaders. (Be sure to look at Turning Around a High-Poverty District: Learning from Sanger by Joan Talbert from Stanford and Jane David, a fascinating description of Sanger’s success story published by S. H. Cowell Foundation.

Successful districts have enjoyed the support of networks such as Jennifer O’Day’s California Collaborative on District Reform, which has sponsored scores of meetings between large districts and researchers in California to advance a Build-and-Support strategy and provides reports on major issues discussed. Rick Miller from the California Office to Reform Education (CORE), which comprises some of the largest districts in the state, is examining broader assessment alternatives, and the New York City Collaborative on Performance-Based Assessment is offering replacements for fill-in-the-bubble tests. Also see the list of networks compiled by the Carnegie Foundation.

In addition, David Plank from Policy Analysis for California Education has provided very helpful reports on implementation of Common Core issues. Three advocacy group leaders—Ted Lempert from Children Now, Ryan Smith from Education Trust West, and Arun Ramanathan from Pivot Learning—have supported Common Core because of the potential of those standards to improve the performance of low-income students and students of color.

The expert advocates I have named in these pages make up an impressive list of Build-and-Support proponents. I offer my apologies to the countless others who have also contributed to redirecting reform on a positive path but are not included here. The list could go on, but the main point is that there is extensive and unassailable backing for a supportive approach and validation of the dangers of the punitive strategies that are being promoted and implemented throughout our country.

In summary, the experts cited have found that all successful schools, districts, states, and nations have framed their initiatives around respect and trust. They eschewed short-term “silver bullet” approaches. Instead, they focused on long-term, comprehensive measures and adequate resources to encourage engagement, cooperative effort, relational trust, and continuous improvement. All efforts were aimed at improving the quality of instruction of individual teachers centered on a broad, liberal arts curriculum as well as developing the capacities of the whole school staff—the building of social capital. These strategies are emphasized in business and management schools, are widely used in industry, and are especially appropriate for high-performing professional enterprises. Such organizations are staffed by professionals who deal with complicated and difficult problems on a daily basis and require skilled practitioners to repeatedly adapt craft knowledge to complex situations.

Highly productive schools and districts understand that the secret to top performance is participation and teamwork. Only by unleashing their power can institutions improve and enhance the performance of each individual. To that end, they devote significant efforts to helping teachers trapped in isolated classrooms learn how to work together in becoming better at what they do. These exemplary districts understand that punitive, high-stakes schemes often undermine engagement and cooperative effort.

BBS Companion Articles

How Top Performers Build-and-Support
Build Teams and Focus on Continuous Improvement

Reference Notes

A Blueprint for Success
Tucker, M. (2016, Mar 3). Why the Common Core Will Be Declared a Failure. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2016/03/why_the_common_core_will_be_declared_a_failure_and_why_that_will_be_dead_wrong.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=top_performers

Prominent Experts and Authors
Fullan, M. (2011, May). Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform. Centre for Strategic Education. www.janhylen.se/wp-content/uploads/…/Fullan-Wrong-Drivers-Paper.pdf

Fullan, M., & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Mourshed, M., Chijioke, C., & Barber, M. (2010, Nov). How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better. http://mckinseyonsociety.com/how-the-worlds-most-improved-school-systems-keep-getting-better/ See also Paine, S. L., & Schleicher, A. (2011, Mar). What the U.S. Can Learn from the World’s Most Successful Education Reform Efforts. McGraw-Hill Research Foundation. http://hub.mspnet.org/index.cfm/22436

Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Linda Darling-Hammond. https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/node/46

Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future. New York: Teachers College Press.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2013). Getting Teacher Evaluation Right: What Really Matters for Effectiveness and Improvement. New York: Teachers College Press.

Darling-Hammond, L., & Adamson, F. (2014). Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass.

Tom Torlakson’s Task Force on Educator Excellence. (2012, Sep 17). Greatness by Design: Supporting Outstanding Teaching to Sustain a Golden State. California Department of Education. http://www.cde.ca.gov/eo/in/ee.asp

Bishop, J., Darling-Hammond, L., & Jaquith, A. (2015, Nov). Maximizing the Use of New State Professional Learning Investments to Support Student, Educator, and School System Growth. https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/publications/pubs/1394

Williams, T., Haertel, E., Kirst, M. W., Rosin, M., & Perry, M. (2011, Feb). Preparation, Placement, Proficiency: Improving Middle Grades Math Performance. EdSource. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED516660

Haertel, E. (2013, Oct 21). The Flaws of Using Value-Added Models for Teacher Assessment. https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/multimedia/video/1033

Elmore, R. F. (2008, Jul 31). Leadership as the Practice of Improvement. OECD. http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/improving-school-leadership/leadership-as-the-practice-of-improvement_9789264039551-4-en

Learning Deeply. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning_deeply

Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School. New York: Teachers College Press.

Cohen, D. K., & Moffitt, S. L. (2009). The Ordeal of Equality: Did Federal Regulation Fix the Schools? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Tucker, M. S. (2011, May 24). Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform. National Center for Education and the Economy. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED522108

Tucker, M. (2011, Oct 17). Creating Education Success at Home. Education Week. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/19/08tucker_ep.h31.html

Tucker, M. Top Performers. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/

Tucker, M. (2015, Mar 19). Why Is Achievement Rising in Some Countries, Going Down in Others? http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2015/03/why_is_achievement_rising_in_some_countries_going_down_in_others.html

Masters, G. N. (2014, Dec). Is School Reform Working? Policy Insights, Issue 1. ACER. http://research.acer.edu.au/policyinsights/1/

Ravitch, D. (2014). Reign of Terror: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. New York: Vintage Books.

Ravitch, D. (2011). The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. New York: Basic Books.

Diane Ravitch’s Blog. https://dianeravitch.net/

Anrig, G. (2013). Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence That Collaboration Builds Effective Schools. New York: The Century Foundation Press.

Core Knowledge. http://www.coreknowledge.org

Berliner D. C., Glass, G. V., & Associates. (2014). 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Noguera, P. (2012, Sep 25). The Origins of My Views on Education. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2012/09/i_have_been_in_the.html

Leana, C. R. (2011, Fall). The Missing Link in School Reform. Stanford Social Innovation Review. http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_missing_link_in_school_reform/

Quintero, E. (2015, May 21). Trust: The Foundation of Student Achievement. http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/trust-foundation-student-achievement

Content and Pedagogy Advocates
Tools for the Common Core Standards. http://commoncoretools.me/author/wgmccallum/

Boaler, J. (2015). What’s Math Got to Do with It? New York: Penguin Books.

Youcubed. https://www.youcubed.org/

Dweck, C. (2007). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House.

Lester, F. K., Jr., (Ed.). (2007). Second Handbook of Research on Mathematics Teaching and Learning. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Shanahan on Literacy. http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/

Spear-Swerling, L. (2015). The Power of RTI and Reading Profiles: A Blueprint for Solving Reading Problems. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brooks.

California Department of Education. (2014, Jul 9). English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools: K–12. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/elaeldfrmwrksbeadopted.asp

Consortium for Reaching Excellence. www.corelearn.com

Great Minds. (2015). Lynne Munson. http://greatminds.net/board-of-trustees/lynne-munson

Achieve. http://www.achieve.org/

Website Contributors and Bloggers
Diane Ravitch’s Blog. www.dianeravitch.net

Albert Shanker Institute. Matthew Di Carlo. http://www.shankerinstitute.org/author/matthew-di-carlo

Quintero, E. (2015, May 21). Trust: The Foundation of Student Achievement. http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/trust-foundation-student-achievement See also Quintero, E. (2014, Jul 17). Do Students Learn More When Their Teachers Work Together? http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/do-students-learn-more-when-their-teachers-work-together

Leana, C. R. & Pil, F. K. (2014, Oct 14). A New Focus on Social Capital in School Reform Efforts. http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/new-focus-social-capital-school-reform-efforts

Learning Forward. www.learningforward.org

EduShyster. www.edushyster.com

Education Opportunity Network. http://educationopportunitynetwork.org

Living in Dialogue. http://www.livingindialogue.com/

VAMboozled. http://vamboozled.com/

Hansel, L. (2015, Jul 9). Seeking Confirmation. http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2015/07/09/seeking-confirmation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCoreKnowledgeBlog+%28The+Core+Knowledge+Blog%29

Daniel Willingham. http://www.danielwillingham.com/articles.html

Kirp, D. L. (2013). Improbable Scholars. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kerchner, C.T. (2016, May 24). On California: Analyzing K-12 Politics and Policies in the Golden State. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/on_california/

Thomas Fordham Institute. Robert Pondiscio. http://edexcellence.net/about-us/fordham-staff/robert-pondiscio

Cloaking Inequity. http://cloakinginequity.com/

deutsch29. https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/

School Finance 101. https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/

The Huffington Post. John Thompson. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-thompson/

Jersey Jazzman. http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/

MindShift. http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/

American Educator. http://www.aft.org/our-news/periodicals/american-educator

State and Local Leaders
David, J. L., & Talbert, J. E. (2012). Turning Around a High-Poverty District: Learning from Sanger. S.H. Cowell Foundation. http://www.smcoe.org/assets/files/about-smcoe/superintendents-office/Sanger%20Turnaround%20.pdf

California Collaborative on District Reform. www.cacollaborative.org

California Office to Reform Education. www.coredistricts.org

New York City Collaborative on Performance Based Assessment. http://performanceassessment.org/

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. (2016, Feb 4). Organizing a Network for Collective Action. http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/organizing-a-network-for-collective-action/

Policy Analysis for California Education. www.edpolicyinca.org

Children Now. www.childrennow.org

The Education Trust West. https://west.edtrust.org/

Pivot Learning. http://www.pivotlearning.org/

BBS Talking Points

BBS Talking Points

Under each talking point is a tweet sized comment with a link to the appropriate article either stand-alone or headed by a bullet. If you like the tweet, please retweet it to your followers or networks.

Test-and-Punish Has Not Produced Results but Build-and-Support Has

  1. Conventional reforms such as test-and-punish (e.g., high-stakes, test-based teacher and school evaluations) and privatization through market-driven competition have not produced results. Since 2009, when the harshest “reforms” were implemented, NAEP scores have been flat or down. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2    
    • Since 2009, when the harshest “reforms” were implemented for schools, national scores have been flat or down. http://ow.ly/Z2rN303kxn2
    • High-stakes, test-based evaluations, privatization, & market-driven competition have not produced higher performance. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
  2. Performance improved substantially in states and districts such as Massachusetts, Long Beach Unified, and Garden Grove. They avoided punitive “reform” measures and instead pursued a build-and-support strategy. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2/
    • Big gains in states and districts which avoided punitive “reform” measures & instead     pursued build-and-support ways. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
    • The state of Mass. & the districts of Long Beach & Garden Grove exemplify successful build-and-support strategies. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
  3. Newark, NJ, and Union City, NJ, offer a perfect example of the contrast between “build and support” and “test and punish”. Newark forcefully pursued a flashy, conventional test and punish and choice reform package. The results were minimal, morale plummeted, segregation increased, and communities were devastated. Union City followed a build-and-support strategy. Results were spectacular and the district is now a leader in the nation of districts which substantially beat the socio-economic odds. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2/
    • Newark schools adopted test & punish & choice. Miserable results. Union City adopted build & support. Huge success. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
  4. Build-and-support strategies include adequate funding; implementing a broad liberal arts curriculum; placing instructional improvement as the main driver for increasing student performance; engaging teachers, parents, and communities; building school capacity and teamwork to foster continuous improvement of curriculum and instruction; initiating comprehensive human development programs; and shifting district administration and leadership from compliance to support. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2/
    • Build & support includes adequate funding, making instruction central, & engaging teachers through team building. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
  5. . Build-and-support districts and states primarily use accountability measures to feedback useful information on school improvement efforts and minimize their use for high-stakes personnel and school closure decisions. These districts and states examine test-score data but as only one measure (and one of the weakest) of quality and growth. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2/
    • Successful districts use accountability to assist improvement efforts & minimize their use in evaluation decisions. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
  6. In the public debate about school improvement, we rarely step back to consider a crucial underlying question: What do we want for our children? There is a tendency among reformers to view job preparation as the primary goal of education, ignoring the vital role schools play in promoting democracy and developing well-rounded individuals. Obviously, career readiness is important, but we should adopt two other central goals in educating young people: to spur their active civic participation and to enable them to lead full lives made rich by learning. All three of these goals are equally valid. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/the-three-goals-of-public-education/
    • Schools’ goals should include civic participation & maximizing student potential in addition to job preparation. http://ow.ly/YWaE303l23g
  7. Test-and-punish strategies and choice, competition, and large-scale charter expansion measures are based on several faulty assumptions: accountability pressure produces results, test scores alone are the best way of measuring school or teacher performance, high-stakes teacher and school evaluation is accurate and improves achievement, turnaround strategies and portfolio districts work, and massive charter school expansion improves overall performance.http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/why-have-conventional-school-reforms-failed/
    • Test-and-punish strategies & large-scale charter expansion measures are based on several faulty assumptions. http://ow.ly/O99U303kxNk
  8. Conventional reform nostrums such as using Teach for America’s raw recruits, using incentive schemes such as merit pay, holding students back based on test scores, and using technology to replace teachers have also been shown to produce little or negative results. See http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/four-nostrums-of-conventional-school-reform/
    • Using TFA’s raw recruits, merit pay, student retention, & hoping technology will replace teachers have been a bust http://ow.ly/38U7303kyav
  9. . Conventional reforms aim at the wrong leverage points, such as external accountability and governance change, when they should use drivers that develop the internal capacity of schools and districts to improve. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/why-have-conventional-school-reforms-failed/
    • Top-down accountability & governance change are far less effective than building the capacity of schools to improve http://ow.ly/O99U303kxNk
  10. Conventional reforms such as test-and-punish and large-scale charter expansion not only fail to produce improved performance but they cause considerable collateral damage to schools, teachers, students, and communities.  http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2/
    • Test-and-punish measures fail to produce results & cause considerable collateral damage to schools and communities. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
  11. A MetLife survey found that in the face of ill-conceived reforms and political and societal censure, the percentage of teachers who were “very satisfied” dropped dramatically from 62% in 2008 to 39% in 2012. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/four-nostrums-of-conventional-school-reform/
    • Enduring ill-conceived reforms, surveyed teachers who were “ very satisfied” fell from 62% in 2008 to 39% in 2012  http://ow.ly/38U7303kyav
  12. Instead of a pursuing broader goals for students—job preparation, civic participation, and reaching individual potential—conventional reforms have narrowed instruction at the expense of deeper learning by focusing only on math and reading scores. High-stakes accountability has encouraged extensive test preparation, gaming the system, and disincentives for teachers to collaborate. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/why-have-conventional-school-reforms-failed/
    • Conventional reforms narrowed instruction at the expense of deeper learning focusing only on math and reading scores http://ow.ly/O99U303kxNkHigh-stakes accountability encouraged extensive test preparation, gaming & disincentives for teachers to collaborate http://ow.ly/O99U303kxNk
  13. Many schools in the US need to improve—we fare badly in international comparisons, but the conventional reform program is not the right remedy. Successful, world-class educational institutions follow a Build- and-Support approach and eschew high-stakes Test-and-Punish and privatization and market-based competition strategies. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2
    • World-class educational institutions eschew high-stakes accountability, privatization & market-based strategies. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
    • Many US schools must improve, but test & punish & market-based reforms aren’t the right remedy; build & support is. http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
  14. The teacher pay penalty is bigger than ever. In 2015, public school teachers’ weekly wages were 17.0 percent lower than those of comparable workers—compared with just 1.8 percent lower in 1994. http://www.epi.org/publication/the-teacher-pay-gap-is-wider-than-ever-teachers-pay-continues-to-fall-further-behind-pay-of-comparable-workers/
    • Teachers’ pay is falling further behind what other professionals earn & stands 17%  behind comparable workers now. http://ow.ly/fNx2303l7lN

15. Evaluations of the main conventional reform policies show nonexistent or trivial results and often cause substantial harm to school capacity, teacher morale, and the health of communities. Build-and-Support measures demonstrate results several multiples higher. They improve engagement and morale instead of causing collateral damage.  http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/have-high-stakes-testing-and-privatization-been-effective-2

  • Conventional reform policies show nonexistent or trivial results and often cause substantial harm to schools.  http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd
  • Build-and-support measures perform several multiples higher than conventional reforms with no collateral damage.  http://ow.ly/iaLk303dhzd

High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation Based on Test Scores Is a Bad Idea

  1. Making firing the lowest performing teachers based on test scores the center of reform efforts has not worked. That approach also detracts from efforts to raise the performance of all teachers. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
    • A central plank in the reform agenda is firing the lowest performing teachers using test scores. It hasn’t worked. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
  2. Current measures of teacher performance based on student test scores, including value-added measures (VAMs), are unreliable and result in misidentification of teachers. . http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
    • Measures of teacher performance based on test scores are unreliable & result in misidentification of teachers. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
  3. Relying on multiple classroom visits by principals to correct the deficiencies in test-based teacher evaluation has proven problematical. A more productive use of a principal’s time would be in building effective teams and organizing the school as a learning institution. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
    • Using classroom visits by principals to correct the deficiencies in test-based teacher evaluation has not worked. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
    • Building effective teams & organizing the school as a learning institution are the best use of a principal’s time. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
  4. Teachers only account for about 10% of school performance. To single them out as those primarily responsible for low-performance is unfair. Out-of-school measures such as socio-economic levels and parenting affect student learning much more. In-school measures such as leadership by principal, curriculum, adequacy of resources, and wraparound services are also important determinants of student achievement. These measures often get neglected in the exclusive attention given to teachers. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
    • Teachers account for 10% of school quality; labeling them as primarily responsible for low-performance is unfair. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
  5. Incompetent teachers should be let go if, and only if, credible and fair methods are used. Personnel changes must be part of a broader push for instructional improvement efforts to raise the performance of all personnel. These efforts will produce much higher effects on student achievement. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
    • Incompetent teachers should be let go if credible & fair methods are used & embedded in broader efforts to improve. http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi
  6. Many “reformers” are now shifting from approaches emphasizing “fire the worst teachers” strategies to approaches stressing the improvement of all teachers through team-building, focusing on instruction, providing helpful structures and information for continuous improvement, and enhancing site leadership. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/teacher-and-school-evaluations-are-based-on-test-scores-3/
    • Many reformers are shifting from emphasizing “fire the worst teachers” to stressing the improvement of all teachers.  http://ow.ly/lUHd303kAGi

Charter Schools Are Not the Key to Improving Education

  1. Charter schools are not the key to improving education. There are some excellent charters and some terrible ones, but most offer an education no better than their public school counterparts. Too much emphasis on charters detracts from improving non-charter public schools—and in many cases causes harm to the remaining schools and communities. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • Charters aren’t the key to improving education. Some excel, some lag but most are no better than other schools. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
    • Overemphasizing charter schools detracts from improving the remaining public schools & often causes them harm. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  2. When charters enroll more than about 20% of a district’s students, a tipping point occurs causing substantial harm to the district. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • If about 20% of a district’s students enroll in charters, a tipping point occurs causing substantial district harm. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  3. About 6% of students attend 6,500 charter schools. Many states have drastically cut funds for the other 94% of students attending regular public schools, diverting education dollars to the small number of students attending charters. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • States have severely cut funds to the 94% of students at regular public schools while increasing funds to charters. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  4. Only about one-quarter of charter schools score better than non-charter public schools, one-quarter score worse, and most score the same—even assuming test scores are the best measure of quality. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • About 25% of charter schools score better than non-charter public schools, 25% score worse, & most score the same.  http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  5. Charter schools should be scoring much higher than regular public schools. They have the built-in advantage of more motivated parents and a more supportive peer group of students associated with more motivated parents. Magnet public schools in Los Angeles, which also benefit from more highly motivated students and parents, significantly outscore charter schools. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • Charters should score higher than public schools. They have the advantage of more motivated parents and students. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  6. Many charter schools have artificially raised test scores by being extremely selective in who they admit, by eliminating low-scoring students, and by not back-filling empty slots. It is not unusual for a beginning class of 100 students to fall to 30 students a few grades later. The charter school then unfairly touts the scores of this more rarified group compared to regular school students. Public schools must take all comers and can’t refuse to fill a vacancy. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • Charters artificially raise scores by selective admissions, eliminating low-scoring students & not back-filling.  http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  7. Studies have shown that a focus on market-based competition—instead of school improvement—often causes educational harm. Many charters concentrate too heavily on the test scores needed to attract and hold students to the detriment of deeper learning. Many spend inordinate amount of funds on marketing the school and paying their top administrators large salaries. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • Market-based competition often harms schools by forcing heavy marketing costs & a focus on raising test scores. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  8. Charter schools have increased segregation and, when coupled with the closing of a neighborhood public school, cause substantial harm to the local community. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • Charters have increased segregation & when paired with closing a neighborhood public school harm the community.  http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  9. Charter schools can drain funds from the remaining public schools. If too many charter schools are opened, it can cause major financial problems for the local public school district.  http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • If too many charters are opened, it can cause major financial problems for the local public school district. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  10. Most states have weak financial accountability for charter schools causing rampant fraud, embezzlement, and misappropriation of public funds. Most low-performing charter schools are never closed. Charter advocates estimate that over 1,000 low-performing charter schools out of the 6,500 existing charter schools should be closed. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
  11. Many states have offered charter schools sweetheart deals in which they profit greatly or convert public funds to private use. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • Many states have offered charter schools sweetheart deals in which they profit greatly or convert public funds to private use. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  12. Many charter schools have created a harsh, no-excuses educational program with a prison-like atmosphere that harms children. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • Many charter schools use a harsh, no-excuses educational program with a prison-like atmosphere that harms children. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  13. Many charter schools concentrate on producing high test scores to the detriment of deeper learning. Charter school students fare poorly when other measures of quality are used and when they get to high school or college. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • Many charters so focus on high test scores that deeper learning is neglected & their students fare poorly in college http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  14. The charter school movement is based in part on an erroneous theory that public schools cannot work because they are monopolies and private institutions can work because of competition and choice. This theory ignores the many public school examples of success. To debunk this private-choice theory, private school scores, when adjusted for the socio-economics, are actually worse than public school scores. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • Contrary to conventional wisdom private school scores, are worse than public school scores for comparable students. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  15. Virtual charters have been a disaster—on average students lose about a year’s worth of instruction in them. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
    • Virtual charters have been a disaster—on average students lose about a year’s worth of instruction in them. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  16. For-profit charter schools should be forbidden. For non-profit charters, states should enact financial and performance accountability and transparency comparable to that of public schools. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • For-profit charters should be forbidden–too much chance of diverting public funds and getting off mission. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
    • Non-profit charters should be held to the same financial &performance accountability as public schools. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  17. Vouchers do not improve student performance. They also drain funds from public schools (in part by providing public funds to some families who were previously paying private school tuition and in part by diverting funds from public schools). Finally, vouchers may support religious or other schools that have highly questionable curriculums. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
  18. Charters claim to give parents a choice, but often the one choice not available to parents is to concentrate on improving their existing public school. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
    • Charters claim to give parents a choice, but often no choice is offered to improve their existing public school. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq
  19. Charters should revert to their original mission—clusters of excellence, which along with the best non-charter public schools should be beacons for all. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
    • Charters should revert to their original mission—being beacons of excellence along with our best public schools. http://ow.ly/YaY8303cdYq

 

Privatization Forces Have Hijacked the Reform Movement

  1. Anti-public school forces have used harsh reform rhetoric demonizing teachers and schools to justify huge cuts in public education, eliminate teacher protections, and enact punitive reform policies in such states as Louisiana, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/reformers-allowed-their-rhetoric-to-be-hijacked/
    • Anti-public school forces used harsh reform rhetoric demonizing teachers to justify huge cuts to our schools. http://ow.ly/xojE303cYwp
  2. Some charter-school advocates have successfully convinced governors or mayors to close large numbers of public schools have them converted to charters. This has happened in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia. In New Orleans, just about the whole public school district was eliminated. These closures have not improved educational performance. They have resulted in two-tiered, segregated school systems and devastated local communities. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/reformers-allowed-their-rhetoric-to-be-hijacked/
    • Reformers have convinced some politicians to close large numbers of public schools and convert them to charters. http://ow.ly/xojE303cYwp
  3. Many conventional reform advocates have shifted from a severe reform agenda. They now promote a more balanced approach concentrating on supporting instructional improvement, team building, adequate funding, charter accountability and transparency, improving site leadership, and progressive personnel policies. Some are now seeking cooperative efforts with  Build-and-Support advocates. http://ow.ly/xojE303cYwp
    • Many conventional reform advocates have shifted from a severe reform agenda to a more build and support approach. http://ow.ly/xojE303cYwp

Components of Build-and-Support

  1. Components of the Build-and-Support approach include a broad based liberal arts curriculum, engaging and active instruction, team building and collaboration around teaching curriculum and instruction, district leadership, and adequate funding. http://ow.ly/dhMd303d0t4
    • Build-and-support includes engaging liberal arts, school team building, supportive leadership & and adequate funding http://ow.ly/dhMd303d0t4
  2. The Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics hold the promise of improving curriculum and instruction and encouraging deeper learning. The standards are consistent with what our most knowledgeable teachers and researchers have been advocating for years. Similar standards have been produced for Science (NGSS), and History-Social Science. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-an-engaging-broad-based-liberal-arts-curriculum/
    Common Core Standards are consistent with what our best teachers and researchers have been advocating for years http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH

    Similar standards & frameworks explicating them have been produced for Science (NGSS), and History-Social Science. http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH

    California has produced subject-matter frameworks explicating the promising Common Core and other standards. http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH

  3. The secret of successful implementation of the ambitious Common Core is to divorce these educationally sound standards from high-stakes accountability schemes and provide both time and resources for translating the standards into successful classroom and district practices. States such as California have pursued this path. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-an-engaging-broad-based-liberal-arts-curriculum/
  4. Implementing these standards and the frameworks based on them could be the needed catalyst for building teams, fostering collaboration, and creating the capacity for continuous improvement at each school. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-an-engaging-broad-based-liberal-arts-curriculum/
    • Implementing standards could be the catalyst for building teams and the capacity for continuous school improvement. http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH
  5. Standards aren’t a curriculum. States and districts need to develop frameworks and scope and sequences to assist in translating standards into a workable curriculum, effective instructional materials, and, successful professional learning. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-an-engaging-broad-based-liberal-arts-curriculum/
    • Translating standards into effective practice requires a workable curriculum, materials, & professional learning. http://ow.ly/niQ8303deiH
  6. Teaching is not a trivial pursuit. According to one formulation by Danielson, high-level instruction is a combination of proficiency in delivering content, using best practices, creating safe and effective learning environments, managing classrooms, engaging students, producing learning by all students, and being able to work with other staff and develop professionally. Good teachers become effective in each of these domains. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-high-quality-instruction/
  7. At a school, building effective teams that continually try to improve staff performance is the most powerful method of increasing student performance. Individual efforts such as self-study are important, but team efforts such as discussing how to ameliorate deficiencies in the school program or encouraging peer classroom visits with debriefings are even more powerful. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/build-teams-and-focus-on-continuous-improvement/
    • Building effective school teams that continually try to improve is the best method of increasing student performance http://ow.ly/V25c303dgou
  8. Contrary to much “reform” rhetoric, money to pay for build and support efforts makes a difference. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/provide-adequate-school-funding/
    • Contrary to much “reform” rhetoric, money to pay for build and support efforts makes a difference. http://ow.ly/xkxa303dgWY
  9. Districts play a crucial role in creating the supportive structure for continuous improvement. Improving leadership by principals, creating opportunities for teacher leadership, establishing structures, providing time for collaboration, developing effective systems for gathering useful information, building progressive human resources systems, designing wraparound services with other local agencies, and engaging teachers, administrators, students, parents, and community members in joint improvement efforts. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/lessons-learned-from-successful-districts/
    • Districts play a crucial role in creating the supportive structure for continuous improvement. http://ow.ly/NpkI303dgNx
  10. Successful districts demonstrate how build and support works. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/lessons-learned-from-successful-districts/
  11. Models of exemplary build and support districts. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/exemplary-models/

The California Context

  1. California, following Massachusetts’s approach, is implementing a build-and-support strategy with increased funding and a strong liberal arts curriculum as envisioned by the Common Core Standards, other applicable standards, and the frameworks explicating them. California is also giving responsibility to local districts, designing accountability to assist improving instruction, enacting multiple measures for accountability, and encouraging engagement and collaboration. http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/ca-policymakers-and-educators-shift-from-test-punish-to-build-support/
  2. California has differed somewhat from the Common Core Standards. It has combined its English language arts (ELA) standards with its English language development (ELD) standards to accommodate the large number of English language learners. It wants to not only maximize the number of students prepared for four-year colleges but also to increase the number of students in rigorous career-tech pathways—a way to truly implement the “college and career” language in the standards.  http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/ca-policymakers-and-educators-shift-from-test-punish-to-build-support/CA’s ELA/ELD framework combines both sets of standards to accommodate its large number of English language learners http://ow.ly/hGFv303dhqo

    Maximize students prepared for 4yr colleges but also assure that the rest qualify for rigorous career-tech pathways http://ow.ly/hGFv303dhqo

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