I would love to get your feedback on this school year's Marshall Memos. Please click on this Survey Monkey questionnaire - it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to fill out. Thanks for your candid thoughts!
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=laRZGs5_2fd5MmIOUcU_2fUNlw_3d_3d

I'm all caught up on publications!

My summer plan is to produce slightly shorter issues (I'm sure you won't mind!), include some pre-2003 "oldie but goodie" articles when there's space, and take a two-week vacation the last week of July and the first week of August.

All the best for a relaxing vacation!

Kim

Return to headlines

Quotes of the Week

  “We can’t control the world, but we can control how we think about it.”
Walter Mischel (see item #1)

“You see this marshmallow? You don’t have to eat it. You can wait. Here’s how.”
Walter Mischel (ibid.)

“How we feel about a learning situation affects attention and memory more quickly than what we think about it.”
David Sousa (see item #2)

“Francis Bacon said knowledge is power. But real power lies in applying knowledge.”
David Sousa (ibid.)

“We should stop allowing the punitive policy of zero tolerance to co-opt the protective principle of zero tolerance, which is an essential underpinning of safe and supportive schools.”
Rhonda Armistead (see item #4)

Return to headlines

2. How to Make Professional Development Stick

(Originally titled “Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers”)
In this Educational Leadership article, author/consultant David Sousa draws on recent brain research to argue that four factors determine how likely a teacher is to remember and use what’s presented in a PD session:
• Emotions – “How we feel about a learning situation affects attention and memory more quickly than what we think about it,” says Sousa. Teachers who are annoyed at being ordered to attend PD or feel emotionally detached from what’s being presented may conceal their negative feelings, but they won’t get much out of it. To increase the chance that teachers will remember something and put it to use in their classrooms, those who organize and present PD should keep the following precepts in mind:
- Offer learning experiences with some challenge, excitement, creativity, and joy.
- Address problems and concerns that teachers have identified.
- Get teachers excited about the initiative.
- Include opportunities for hands-on participation and involve a variety of learning styles.
- Provide opportunities for teachers to give feedback on the training.
It helps if teachers are involved in planning the PD.
• Application and feedback – “The need to be valued is a potent emotional force,” says Sousa, “and positive feedback fills that need.” Participants in PD should have a chance to try out ideas and get comments and suggestions that are timely, specific, and build on strengths.
• Drawing on past experiences – If professional development links to previous PD experiences that made a positive difference, teachers are much more likely to tune in, says Sousa. The opposite is true of past PD experiences that were unhelpful.
• Meaning – “As a learning episode ends, the brain decides whether to encode the new learning into long-term memory or let it fade away,” explains Sousa. What are the criteria? First, does this make sense? Second, does it have meaning for me personally? When the answer to both questions is yes, there’s a strong likelihood that the learning will be stored in long-term memory. PD presenters maximize the chance of this happening when they:
- Directly connect their content to teachers’ job-related goals.
- Do more than a one-shot workshop; follow-up activities are vital.
- Model strategies.
- Have teachers apply them immediately.
- Get participants involved in action research in which they personally assess the impact of the strategies they are learning.
- Promote in-school study groups to share classroom experiences and explore why, and under what conditions, a new strategy is effective.
“Francis Bacon said knowledge is power,” concludes Sousa. “But real power lies in applying knowledge. Ultimately, we hope teachers will not only retain what they learn in professional development encounters but also transfer that new knowledge into action.”

“Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers” by David Sousa in Educational Leadership, June 2009 (Vol. 66 #9, online only) http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership.aspx
 

Return to headlines

3. The Benefits of Full-Service Community Schools

In this American Educator article, Jane Quinn of the Children’s Aid Society and consultant/author Joy Dryfoos make the case for full-service community schools. These are schools that:
- Are open before and after school hours, evenings, vacations, and over the summer.
- Provide after-school and summer enrichment programs linked to the curriculum.
- Provide access to health, dental, and mental-health services.
- Offer social and educational services for families and community members.
- Have a family resource center that helps parents get involved in the school.
- Help the neighborhood address its problems.
- Are governed by a partnership between the school and community agencies.
Such schools have a strong track record for boosting children’s academic achievement, say Quinn and Dryfoos, because of the following elements:
• Improved school readiness – A consistent theme in full-service community schools is outreach to improve children’s readiness for school, including parenting education and pre-school programs.
• Increased student attendance and reduced student mobility – Teachers report more instructional time and less time catching up students who have been absent or arrive mid-year.
• Increased parent involvement – Teachers in these schools more often reach out to parents, including making home visits, and partner with family-service agencies and YMCAs to do additional outreach. There is more likely to be a two-way street, with parents being asked, “How are you sharing with the school what you know about your child?”
• Greater access to health care – This means that children’s vision and dental issues are dealt with, as well as lead-paint poisoning and mental health problems, helping students be more successful in classrooms.
• Greater access to extended learning opportunities – Time after school and during school vacations is used to provide remedial help and enrichment experiences.
• Enhanced community support for public schools – Only 31 percent of American households have school-age children, which makes it even more critical that schools’ work is visible and known in the community.

“Freeing Teachers to Teach: Students in Full-Service Community Schools Are Ready to Learn” by Jane Quinn and Joy Dryfoos in American Educator, Summer 2009 (Vol. 33, #2, p. 16-21), http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer2009/freeingteachers.pdf
In a sidebar later in this issue of American Educator, “Establishing Your Community School”, there is a list of resources for creating community full-service schools:
• Growing Community Schools: The Role of Cross-Boundary Leadership:
http://www.communityschools.org/CCSDocuments/GrowingCommunitySchools.pdf.
• Community and Family Engagement: Principals Share What Works:
http://www.communityschools.org/CCSDocuments/CommunityAndFamilyEngagement.pdf.
• The Basics: Building, Assessing, Sustaining, and Improving Community Schools:
http://johnwgardnertestsite.pbworks.com.
• The Coalition for Community Schools:
http://www.communityschools.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=33.
• The Finance Project: http://www.financeproject.org/all_pubs.cfm?cat=3&p=1.

Return to headlines

4. Five School-Reform Ideas That Didn’t Work Out

In this American School Board Journal article, editor Lawrence Hardy lists five school reform efforts that ultimately failed – although each seemed like a good idea at the time:
• Open classrooms – The idea was to give students choices of “learning stations” within the classroom based on their interests. “Unfortunately,” says Hardy, “these classrooms were often noisy and chaotic, and teachers weren’t always trained to run them.” As the nation became more conservative and standards became the norm, the open-classroom idea faded.
• Mandated class-size reductions – Smaller classes are a good thing, says Hardy, especially in the lower grades, but when states like California and Florida mandated them, billions of additional dollars were needed for new teachers and classrooms, the supply of good teachers ran low, and in some cases high-achieving and more-affluent students benefited, rather than the disadvantaged students for whom the initiative was designed. A 2008 study showed that class-size reductions had no impact on the achievement gap.
• Privatization – The idea was that private companies could cut schools’ administrative costs, boost student achievement, and make a profit. In practice, this didn’t work, and companies like Education Alternatives Inc. and Edison scaled back their operations.
• Abstinence-only sex education – A 2007 Mathematica Policy Research study found that students enrolled in abstinence-only programs were no more likely to abstain from sexual activity than those who didn’t have the program – and the pregnancy rate for adolescent girls 15-19, after going down for several years, went back up during the heyday of these programs.
• Zero tolerance – Many districts got tough on drugs, weapons, bullying, and even dress-code violations, but common sense was violated in enough instances (for example, a Delaware student getting suspended for bringing a pastry knife to school for a Junior Achievement project) that the idea was discredited. “We should stop allowing the punitive policy of zero tolerance to co-opt the protective principle of zero tolerance, which is an essential underpinning of safe and supportive schools,” wrote Rhonda Armistead of the National Association of School Psychologists.
Hardy goes on to list five reform efforts for which the jury is still out – not enough evidence to proclaim them successes or failures:
- Charter schools
- Mayoral control of schools
- Alternative certification
- Single-gender classrooms and schools
- Performance pay

“5 Reforms That Failed” by Lawrence Hardy in American School Board Journal, July 2009 (Vol. 196, #7, p. 16), no e-link available; Hardy can be reached at lhardy@nsba.org.
 

Return to headlines

5. Is Abolishing Teacher Tenure the Answer?

This American School Board Journal article says it’s “Hogwash” that teacher tenure is a major obstacle to improving the quality of education in U.S. schools because:
• A few bad teachers aren’t the main problem. Ineffective teachers absolutely need to be removed from the classrooms, say the authors, “But the broader, more fundamental issue in American education is the overall quality of instruction available to children.” The priority should be a commitment to train and improve all the “good enough” teachers.
• Don’t give tenure to incompetents. “In many instances, principals lack the training to properly evaluate teachers,” say the authors. Tenure should not be awarded lightly; marginal teachers must be weeded out before they are awarded lifetime tenure.
• Help problem teachers improve. These teachers need mentoring, coaching, professional development, and thorough evaluation, say the authors. In some cases they will improve. If they don’t, principals have a track record of having tried, which makes dismissal that much easier – and also increases the chance that the teacher will see the handwriting on the wall and resign.
• Establish a precedent. Firing a tenured teacher is difficult and time-consuming, but once it’s been done successfully a few times, the word gets out and ineffective teachers are more likely to leave rather than going through an emotionally wrenching experience and having a dismissal on their record.
• Tenure isn’t going away. Efforts to do away with teacher tenure have run into determined opposition from teachers’ unions and failed in state legislatures. Better to use the strategies above to gradually improve the quality of instruction that students experience day to day.

“5 Reasons to Quit Whining About Tenure” in American School Board Journal, July 2009 (Vol. 196, #7, p. 18), no e-link available

Return to headlines

6. The Importance of Phonological Awareness for Spanish ELLs

In this article in NABE News, researchers Jean Mercier Smith, Doris Baker, and Lana Santoro say that teaching phonological awareness to Spanish-speaking English language learners in Spanish is helpful – provided it’s done right. Spanish has much more transparent orthography than English, with a highly consistent grapheme-phoneme correspondence. There are 30 letters and 22-24 phonemes in Spanish (depending on the region); English has 26 letters and 41-44 phonemes, with 29 letter combinations that represent one sound and multiple vowel sounds depending on letter combinations. In Spanish, the most common syllables fall into two categories; in English, there are six. For all these reasons, syllable recognition is easier in Spanish, and Spanish-speaking children acquire phonemic awareness more quickly.
In both Spanish and English, say Smith, Baker, and Santoro, research shows that phonological awareness and beginning decoding skills in Spanish are important steps to learning to read, especially for at-risk ELLs, helping children to make the eventual transition to English more quickly and proficiently. The authors have found that explicit and systematic instruction is key, with a thoughtful progression from simpler to more complex sounds, careful explanations of the purpose of each task, modeling correct responses (watching students’ mouths and having them watch the teacher’s mouth), giving students plenty of opportunities for practice as a whole group and individually, and providing immediate corrective feedback. Phonological awareness instruction for ELLs should take place every day in kindergarten and first grade, they say. Instruction should last only a few minutes, with practice interspersed through the day (for example, while waiting in line).

“Early Intervention in Bilingual Education: Teaching Phonological Awareness in Spanish” by Jean Mercier Smith, Doris Baker, and Lana Santoro in NABE News, January/February 2009 (Vol. 1, #3, p. 5-14, 27-28), no e-link available

Return to headlines

7. Short Items: a. Getty Museum website; b. It helps to be able to see well;

a. Getty Museum website – This site gives access to the J. Paul Getty Museum collection in Los Angeles and has more than 150 lesson plans geared to elementary, middle, and high school. Some examples:
- Who’s Afraid of Contemporary Art?
- Gods, Heroes and Monsters: Mythology in European Art
- Artful Women
- Neoclassicism and the Enlightenment
- Looking at Illuminated Manuscripts
- Historical Witness, Social Messaging
The site is at http://www.gettytrust.us/education/search/curricula.html

“Where Art and History Meet” in American Educator, Summer 2009 (Vol. 33, #2, p. 2)

b. It helps to be able to see well – This Education Gadfly article reports that the Mollie Rae Elementary School in Orlando, Florida arranged for vision testing for all 530 of its students and prescribed glasses for those who couldn’t see the board or read their textbooks. Kathryn Shuler, the principal, says this is an important reason the school went from an F to an A on Florida’s rating scale in just one year.

“Squinting Students” in The Education Gadfly, June 25, 2009; for the full article, see
http://www.clickorlando.com/education/19788688/detail.html
 

Return to headlines