This week's Memo has several articles from a strong issue of Kappan, which just went through a major overhaul under its new editor. If you'd like to take a look at Kappan's Gallup Poll on education, click http://www.pdkpoll.org. Kappan also has a new professional development discussion guide to spark discussions on each month's articles.

All the best,

Kim

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Quotes of the Week

“Educators have a luxury available in few other professions: two new beginnings every year.”
Joan Richardson in her editor’s note, Phi Delta Kappan, Sept. 2009 (Vol. 91, #1, p. 4)

“Checklist approaches to providing feedback to teachers probably don’t enhance pedagogical expertise, particularly when they focus on a narrow list of instructional, management, or assessment strategies. In fact, such practice is antithetical to true reflective practice.”
Robert Marzano (see item #2)

“‘Failure to learn’ is not the correct phrase. ‘Poor fit’ is much more apt.”
Bernard Fryshman in “Not Too Adept at the Monkey Bars” in Education Week, Sept.
16, 2009 (Vol. 29, #3, p. 31) http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/09/16/03fryshman.h29.html

“Let us stipulate that work receiving a D is wretched, and that the failure of a student to submit work at all is abysmal. The use of the zero, however, requires us to defend the proposition that abysmal is six times as bad as wretched.”
Douglas Reeves (see item #3)

“Recognize that knowing a lot of stuff won’t do you much good unless you can do something with what you know by turning it into an argument.”
Gerald Graff (see item #5)

“What they tend to do is give all the reasons supporting their side and absolutely ignore the alternative. They say what they have to say, and then say it louder, and hope the other side will go away.”
Deanna Kuhn on students who need improvement in argumentation skills (ibid.)

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1. The Curious Dynamics of Being New to a Leadership Position

In this thoughtful Kappan article, consultant/author Barry Jentz addresses the fact that some novice school leaders feel uncomfortable with the idea of being the boss. Getting one’s first position of authority is exciting, but new administrators are often on the receiving end of unfamiliar “dynamics of authority”, says Jentz, including colleagues:
- Waiting for you to speak;
- Speaking to you and not to others in a meeting;
- Changing the subject when you walk into a room;
- Talking in a different tone, often about different content than before you were boss;
- Constantly interpreting what you say, often attributing conscious negative intent;
- Scouring your words for inconsistencies, contradictions, double meanings, misstatements, and mistakes;
- Quoting you inaccurately and out of context;
- Giving you feedback that makes no sense and is hurtful;
- Attributing words and ideas to you that you don’t recognize;
- Assuming that you have much more power than you really do;
- Saying “And what are you going to do about that?”
Meanwhile, people who don’t report to you (parents and other members of the community) will sometimes:
- Demand that you do what they want, even if it’s unreasonable;
- Threaten to “go over your head”;
- Invite you to events just because of your role;
- Expect you to be instantly available and accessible;
- Gang up on you to exercise influence;
- Criticize you in public e-mails, letters to the editor, etc.;
- Defer to you in public and work against you in private;
- Say wonderful things about you and give you gifts.
All this causes rookie leaders to feel confused and uncomfortable in the authority role. “Your confusion may be compounded,” says Jentz, “by the unsettling discovery that a position of authority actually leaves you feeling powerless to accomplish the significant things that led you to take the position in the first place.” People who report to you don’t always respond to your good intentions, directives, or attempts to persuade them. And you can’t get the most difficult things done all by yourself. “Use your feelings as a prompt to stop, step back, get feedback, and open yourself to questioning the assumptions that you inevitably bring to your first leadership position,” advises Jentz.
Another common emotion among new leaders is feeling like a fraud. This can happen when you give people directives or advice and they promptly follow up. A new principal may say to himself, Is she really going to do that? I’m not sure I believe what I said! “When people do what you say only because you said it,” writes Jentz, “your emotions can say silently, ‘Hey, it’s just me. You don’t have to take my word for it!’”
A third emotion is a sense of loss and loneliness as you find yourself excluded from certain activities and conversations you were part of when you were a teacher. But I’m the same person I was yesterday, before I took this job! you want to say.
These feelings of confusion, powerlessness, doubt, and loneliness can haunt new leaders and lead them to overcompensate by being too authoritative (I have the answers, follow me) or too collaborative (You have the answers and I’m here to support you). Jentz’s advice is to feel your way toward the right balance and “remind yourself that these internal experiences don’t mean anything is wrong with you. Others have been there before, and still others will be in the future… You must come to terms with the fact that you have moved into an ‘above’ role and have no choice but to learn and grow the internal muscle required to be ‘above.’”
One critical skill is communicating with your colleagues not just to persuade, direct, or inform but also to learn. You can’t see your blind spots yourself, says Jentz. “You must learn with and through others about your own practice, otherwise you can’t make needed adjustments on the authoritative-collaborative dimension of your leadership. Here are Jentz’s suggestions:
- Make it clear to your colleagues that you want feedback.
- Push back against people’s disinclination to give you feedback because you’re the boss.
- Force yourself not to be defensive when you get negative feedback, even if it hurts, and don’t impute negative intent.
- Find a trusted person to help you make sense of feedback and make the adjustments in your leadership.
- Read stories about leaders who get feedback and use it, including “Triumph at Work, Trouble at Home,” “Are You Calling Me a Liar?!” and “They Come Back with the Same Problems!” in Jentz’s book, Talk Sense: Communicating to Lead and Learn (RBT, 2007).
- Work with a leadership coach or join a support group that meets regularly.
- As you start the job, take an imaginary “walk” through your first six months on the job, thinking your way through the kinds of issues you imagine will arise.

“First Time in a Position of Authority” by Barry Jentz in Phi Delta Kappan, September 2009 (Vol. 91, #1, p. 56-60). There are two other articles by Barry Jentz in Marshall Memo #70 and #90. The current article is available for purchase at http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/index.htm

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2. Robert Marzano Sets the Record Straight

In this feisty Kappan article, author/researcher Robert Marzano pushes back on what he believes are three distortions of his work in schools:
• Focusing on a narrow range of strategies – Many teachers have told him that their districts limit themselves to nine teaching strategies described in one of his books (identifying similarities and differences; summarizing and note-taking; reinforcing effort and providing recognition; homework and practice; nonlinguistic recommendations; cooperative learning; setting objectives and providing feedback; generating and testing hypotheses; and cues, questions, and advance organizers). This is poor practice, says Marzano. “Unfortunately,” he writes, “in many schools and districts, walkthroughs have devolved into terse, formulaic feedback to teachers.” He believes that effective teaching is complex and contextual. The nine strategies, along with others recommended in his books, are high-probability approaches, but they aren’t a perfect fit in every situation. Better to start with a comprehensive list of 41 teaching strategies (see below) and decide which are the best match for each situation.
• Assuming that certain strategies must be used in every class – It distresses Marzano that some districts use the same narrow checklist to evaluate many different types of instructional settings and criticize teachers for not using the strategies in every lesson. “A specific instructional strategy is effective only when used in the specific situation for which it was designed,” he says. Summarizing and note-taking, for example, is good when introducing new content but makes no sense in a lesson with cognitively complex tasks that require students to generate and test hypotheses. When administrators make short classroom visits, they should ask themselves, “What am I observing right now?” It could be routine activities (at the beginning and end of a class, for example). It could be the introduction of new content or practicing and deepening content that was previously introduced. It might be relationship-building with students. Or it might be a situation that demands a quick, on-the-spot reaction from the teacher (for example, a disciplinary challenge from a student). Administrators have to tune in to what is happening and adjust their feedback accordingly.
• Assuming that high-yield strategies will always be effective – Marzano says he stopped using the term “high-yield” ten years ago because the classroom strategies he and other researchers have identified don’t always work. Even the best have zero impact or negative impact 20-40 percent of the time. “If a strategy doesn’t appear to be working well,” he says, “educators must adapt the strategy as needed or use other strategies.” No teacher should be required to use specific strategies, he says. “Since none are guaranteed to work, teachers must have the freedom and flexibility to adapt or try something different when student learning isn’t forthcoming.”
Given these cautions, what does Marzano suggest? First, that districts and schools develop a common language of instruction that is comprehensive and robust and encompasses three areas: content lessons, routines, and things that occur in classrooms that must be addressed on the spot. Second, that this common language forms the basis of discussion and feedback with teachers after classroom visits. Those who observe classrooms (hopefully including teachers who take part in “learning walks” or “instructional rounds”) should debrief with each other and gain insights about their own practice as well as sharing their impressions with those they observe.
And third, that student learning is the ultimate test of classroom strategies. This means teachers need to give high-quality interim assessments to figure out what’s working and what isn’t and following up with struggling students. (In addition to interim assessments, a surprisingly effective way to judge the effects of teaching is asking students how much they have learned in a given lesson or unit.) “In terms of providing teachers with feedback,” concludes Marzano, “the focus must always be on student learning and the perspective must always be that instructional strategies are a means to an end. Checklist approaches to providing feedback to teachers probably don’t enhance pedagogical expertise, particularly when they focus on a narrow list of instructional, management, or assessment strategies. In fact, such practice is antithetical to true reflective practice… [and] is profoundly anti-professional.”
Here is Marzano’s comprehensive list of 41 strategies that relate to effective teaching, drawn from his four books:
I. CONTENT
A. Lessons involving new content
- Identifying critical information
- Organizing students to interact with new knowledge
- Previewing new content
- Chunking content into “digestible bites”
- Group processing of new information
- Elaborating on new information
- Recording and representing knowledge
- Reflecting on learning
B. Lessons involving practicing and deepening content that has been previously addressed
- Reviewing content
- Organizing students to practice and deepen knowledge
- Practicing skills, strategies, and processes
- Examining similarities and differences
- Examining errors in reasoning
- Using homework
- Revising knowledge
C. Lessons involving cognitively complex tasks (generating and testing hypotheses)
- Organizing students for cognitively complex tasks
- Engaging students in cognitively complex tasks
- Providing resources and guidance

II. ROUTINE ACTIVITIES
D. Communicating learning goals, tracking student progress, and celebrating success
- Providing clear learning goals and scales to measure those goals
- Tracking student progress
- Celebrating student success
E. Establishing and maintaining classroom rules and procedures
- Establishing classroom routines
- Organizing the physical layout of the classroom for learning

III. BEHAVIORS THAT ARE ENACTED ON THE SPOT AS SITUATIONS OCCUR
F. Engaging Students
- Noticing and reacting when students are not engaged
- Using academic games
- Managing response rates during questioning
- Using physical movement
- Maintaining a lively pace
- Demonstrating intensity and enthusiasm
- Using friendly controversy
- Providing opportunities for students to talk about themselves
- Presenting unusual information
G. Recognizing adherence and lack of adherence to classroom rules and procedures
- Demonstrating “with-it-ness”
- Applying consequences
- Acknowledging adherence to rules and procedures
H. Maintaining effective relationships with students
- Understanding students’ interests and backgrounds
- Using behaviors that indicate affection for students
- Displaying objectivity and control
I. Communicating high expectations
- Demonstrating value and respect for low-expectancy students
- Asking questions of low-expectancy students
- Probing incorrect answers with low-expectancy students

“Setting the Record Straight on ‘High-Yield’ Strategies” by Robert Marzano in Phi Delta Kappan, September 2009 (Vol. 91, #1, p. 30-37); this article is available for purchase at
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/index.htm

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3. Douglas Reeves Fixing Grading Practices

In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, author/consultant Douglas Reeves continues his campaign for grading policies that are accurate, fair, and effective. He starts by asking what final grade we would give a student who received the following marks on ten assignments over the course of a semester: C, C, missed, D, C, B, missed, missed, B, and A. Reeves says he’s posed this question to more than 10,000 educators around the world, and every single time there are people who say the student should receive an A, B, C, D, or F. How is this possible?
- Some averaged the grades, giving zeroes for the missed assignments.
- Some averaged the grades, treating missed assignments more leniently.
- Some gave credit for steadily improving performance over the semester.
- Some considered the final, cumulative assignment as the true measure of achievement for the semester.
Inconsistencies like these mean that students can get honors grades or fail not because of differences in work ethic, organization, class attendance, and the quality of teaching but because of differences in their teacher’s grading policies.
By contrast, Reeves asks us to imagine a school football game in which a pass is thrown and the receiver lunges for the ball and tumbles into the end zone. “One official signals a touchdown, a second official signals an incomplete pass, and the third official scratches his head in bewilderment,” says Reeves. The fans would be enraged at the “unfairness and incompetence of the officials who seem unable to view the same student performance and make a consistent judgment.” So why don’t we have consistent policies for grading classroom work? Reeves says the solutions fit into three areas:
• Accuracy – The biggest problem here is giving missed assignments a zero on 100-point scale. The interval between all the other grades is 10 points (100-90 is an A, 89-80 is a B, 79-70 is a C, 69-60 is a D), but the interval between a D and zero is 60 points, six times larger than the intervals between the other grades. “Let us stipulate that work receiving a D is wretched, and that the failure of a student to submit work at all is abysmal,” says Reeves. “The use of the zero, however, requires us to defend the proposition that abysmal is six times as bad as wretched… [S]hould they lose an entire semester of credit, which can be the ultimate impact of receiving zeros for missing assignments, because of an irrational and mathematically incorrect grading policy? Even Dante’s worst offenders were consigned to the ninth – not the 54th – circle of hell.” A more fitting consequence for missing work is for students to be required to complete the work, have their free time curtailed, or something else that will bring them toward proficiency.
A second way in which grades can be inaccurate, says Reeves, is averaging, which is especially easy (in fact, automatic) in many electronic grading programs. An elementary fact of statistics is that the average is not necessarily the best way to represent a data set; sometimes the mode, median, or a weighted average makes more sense. And then there’s looking at students’ proficiency at the end of a course. The most important goal of instruction is bringing students to an understanding of the material, says Reeves, even if that understanding comes on the last day of the semester and was preceded by a number of mediocre performances.
• Fairness – Teachers often conflate quiet compliance with academic proficiency, says Reeves. He’s noticed that in many high schools, female students outnumber males in the National Honor Society by as much as eight to one. Women may be smarter than men, but are they eight times smarter? The same is true of students who earn honors grades and then fail rigorous external exams: it happens much more frequently with female than male students. Reeves dubs this the “bless her heart” syndrome, as in, “She really isn’t very proficient, but bless her heart, she showed up every day, participated in class, and didn’t give me any trouble.” Any male/female or white/non-white achievement disparity begs the question of whether teachers are being too kind to some students and too harsh on others based on their behavior.
• Effectiveness – The most important question for any grading policy, says Reeves, is whether it helps raise student achievement. Some teachers complain that their students are disrespectful, inattentive, disengaged, and unresponsive – and yet continue to use dysfunctional grading systems that are probably contributing to the problem. Feedback is what really matters, and athletic coaches and school chorus directors give it constantly as they try to improve students’ performance. Kids have a similar experience when they play video games, an environment in which the feedback is “immediate, specific, and brutal,” says Reeves. “They won or else died at the end of each game. For them, the purpose of feedback is not to calculate an average or score a final exam, but to inform them about how they can improve on their next attempt to rule the universe.”

“Remaking the Grade, From A to D” by Douglas Reeves in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 18, 2009 (Vol. LVI, #4, p. A64), no e-link available

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4. What Makes Effective Schools Soar

In this Kappan article, Karin Chenoweth, an author based at the Education Trust, draws on her new book, How It’s Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2009), to zero in on what’s different in a number of highly effective urban schools she’s researched:
• “They ruthlessly organize themselves around one thing: helping students learn a great deal,” says Chenoweth, which means putting in place unconventional structures that support learning.
• These schools don’t assume that students necessarily have certain skills and knowledge. “They begin by figuring out what children need to know and be able to do,” says Chenoweth. “They assess what their students already know and are able to do; they figure out how to move students from where they are to where they need to be; and then they analyze what students have learned and whether they need further instruction. They do this systematically grade by grade, class by class, student by student, month by month, and day by day, carefully and relentlessly.”
• They use the best instructional materials and approaches (including films and field trips), always looking at what’s working to improve learning.
• Teachers in these schools have time blocked out every week for grade-level team meetings in which they map curriculum, look at assessment results, share best practices, and improve their craft. Teaching is public and collaborative, says Chenoweth, and “teachers who don’t contribute or openly sabotage such efforts begin to stand out.”
• They operate as schools, not as a collection of isolated classrooms. “This means, among other things, that they tackle such questions as discipline and teacher quality… with schoolwide responses,” says Chenoweth. For example, if a school decides to have a rule against wearing hats, it’s enforced in all parts of the building.

“It Can Be Done, It’s Being Done, and Here’s How” by Karin Chenoweth in Phi Delta Kappan, September 2009 (Vol. 91, #1, p. 38-43); this article is available for purchase at
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/index.htm

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5. Teaching Students How to Engage in Effective Argumentation

In this Education Week article, Debra Viadero reports on recent research showing that the ability to make a persuasive argument is important to success in college and the workplace. She quotes Gerald Graff, a University of Chicago scholar: “Recognize that knowing a lot of stuff won’t do you much good unless you can do something with what you know by turning it into an argument.”
Most students experience contentious family and peer arguments and haven’t been taught how to recognize and understand an effective argument and construct one of their own. The 2007 NAEP assessment of high-school seniors found that only 26 percent were “excellent” or “skillful” at persuasive writing. Students have trouble identifying the main claims and reasons in an argument, sometimes mistake the counterclaim for the main argument, and often can’t identify the perspective of the other side and marshal evidence for their point of view, exhibiting a “my-side bias” when they argue. “What they tend to do is give all the reasons supporting their side and absolutely ignore the alternative,” says Deanna Kuhn of Teachers College, Columbia. “They say what they have to say, then say it louder, and hope the other side will go away.”
Kuhn believes there are three possible reasons students don’t develop better skills in this area. First, they’ve come to believe that arguing is pointless because others won’t change their minds. Second, they’ve adopted a super-tolerant philosophy: Everyone has a right to think what they want to. Third, they believe the best way out of a practical dilemma is compromising – or deferring to the other person to avoid bad feelings. “Children need to learn that argument is more than something to be avoided,” says Kuhn. “This understanding is not intuitively given.”
“The good news,” says Ann Britt of Northern Illinois University, “is that a little bit of instruction seems to help. It’s not like the problem is so bad that you need drastic measures.” Kuhn and her colleagues are piloting a curriculum in a New York City middle school in which students pair up and argue over an issue – for example, whether China’s one-child policy is a good idea. Students pair up, exchange text messages debating the point, print out their exchanges, work together to prepare for a final, whole-class “showdown” debate, and then study an “argument map” before writing a final position paper. Teachers are quite non-directive, coaching students as they figure out their strategies. Students in this program become significantly better at engaging in an effective argument, and the same is true of a Web-based tutorial program at Northern Illinois University and another pilot program headed up by Richard Anderson at the University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign.

“Researchers Try to Promote Students’ Ability to Argue” by Debra Viadero in Education Week, Sept. 16, 2009 (Vol. 29, #3, p. 14-15)
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/09/16/03argue.h29.html

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6. The Influence of Effective Teachers on Their Colleagues

Good teachers have a positive effect on other teachers who work on the same team with them, says a new study described in this Education Week article by Debra Viadero. Researchers looked at grade 3-5 teacher teams that were joined by a highly effective colleague. The value added in student achievement for the other teachers was significant and long-lasting, especially for rookie teachers. It was more robust than gains from formal mentoring programs. What caused the improvement? The researchers believe it’s because the other teachers learned better pedagogy from their more effective colleague who shared their grade level and curriculum, not because they were motivated by having a star player on the team.
The researchers worry that there weren’t enough expert teachers in many high-poverty schools to have this effect. They also caution that awarding merit pay to exemplary teachers may undercut this peer-learning dynamic. “If you give the reward at the individual level,” says Kirabo Jackson, the lead author, “all of a sudden my peers are no longer my colleagues – they’re my competitors. If you give it at the school level, then you’re going to foster feelings of team membership, and that increases the incentive to work together and help each other out.”

“Effective Teachers Found to Improve Peers’ Performance” by Debra Viadero in Education Week, Sept. 16, 2009 (Vol. 29, #3, p. 12-13); the full study, “Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers”, is available at
http://works.bepress.com/c_kirabo_jackson/13/

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7. What’s Working in Montgomery County, Maryland

In this Education Week commentary article, Harvard Business School lecturer Stacey Childress lists the key factors in Montgomery County’s success raising student achievement and narrowing gaps:
• Implementing its Seven Keys to College Success Readiness framework throughout the district.
• Working backwards from college readiness in 12th grade to map out a rigorous curriculum sequence starting in kindergarten.
• Blurring the lines that normally separate school board members, the leadership team, principals, teachers, and parents to maximize everyone’s ownership of the mission.
• Giving more resources and more effective instruction to schools with lower-SES populations.
• Getting people to act their way into a new way of believing. “I thought I would enter the change process through the culture door and then engage everyone in creating systems and structures,” said superintendent Jerry Weast. “But I couldn’t get traction, so we started to build the systems anyway, and it seemed that the culture started to shift as people saw that the changes worked for kids.” This involved implementing accountability mechanisms, technology tools, and forums for sharing best practices that required educators to behave as if every student could master rigorous content, even if they didn’t believe it at first.
• Openly discussing personal beliefs about the role of race in student achievement. The district has proclaimed, “Student outcomes shall not be predictable by race or ethnicity.”
• Pursuing equity as the right thing to do morally and economically. It’s not enough to just “hire great people,” says Childress. “Like many districts, [Montgomery County] had plenty of great people back when there were 35-point achievement gaps. Great people thrive in healthy organizations that enlist them in the pursuit of ambitious, meaningful goals and provide them with the strategies and support systems necessary to reach them.”

“Moving Beyond the Conventional Wisdom of Whole-District Reform” by Stacey Childress in Education Week, Sept. 16, 2009 (Vol. 29, #3, p. 30-32)
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/09/16/03childress.h29.html

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8. Categories for Evaluating Teaching

This brief summary by Stephen Sawchuk in Education Week highlights the criteria used in a new review of teacher performance measures from the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. They are:
- Attention to standards
- Use of formative assessments
- Differentiation of instruction
- Engaging students
- Using techniques to develop higher-order thinking skills
- Content and pedagogical content knowledge
- Developing personalized relationships with students
- Setting high expectations

“Measuring Teacher Performance” by Stephen Sawchuk in Education Week, Sept. 16, 2009 (Vol. 29, #3, p. 5); the full study, “Review of Teaching Performance Assessments for Use in Human Capital Management” by Anthony Milanowski et al, is available at
http://www.smhc-cpre.org/task-force/task-force-meetings/2009-meeting/

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9. Value-Added Reports for Teachers in New York City

In this New York Times article, Jennifer Medina reports on New York City’s experience with individual teacher value-added data reports. 12,000 reports are distributed each year to grade 4-8 teachers who have taught for at least two years, comparing students’ standardized test results from one year to the next to measure teachers’ impact on overall student achievement and that of various subgroups. The district has promised not to use the reports for teacher evaluation or pay, but hopes they can identify best practices in high-gaining classrooms and provide a wake-up call to teachers whose students are not progressing adequately. About 20 percent of teachers received “low” performance marks, 60 percent “middle” marks, and 20 percent “high.”
Principals are asked to give the reports to teachers, and 80 percent say they have, but some don’t. Odelphia Pierre, a principal in Harlem, worried that the reports would hurt morale and confuse teachers. Some principals have used them to help make teacher placement decisions, and Pierre said that last year she made more classroom visits to teachers who scored low. She told teachers they could have them if they were interested. A teacher in Pierre’s school who received her report (“middle”) was somewhat critical, saying, “I do wish it would tell you where to go from there, but it is what it is.”

“12,000 Teacher Reports, but What to Do With Them?” by Jennifer Medina in the New York Times, Sept 9, 2009 (p. A21)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/nyregion/09teachers.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=12,000%20teacher%20reports,%20but%20what%20to%20do%20with%20them?&st=cse

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