Maine ASCD Weblog

Reflections on School Reform in Maine

Given the events of the past several months one can only be confused as to where the efforts to reform - and transform Maine’s schools currently reside.

Judging by the conversations I have been hearing among and between educators around the state, there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding the future of the reform efforts and concerns that the so-called moratorium may be viewed by some as a victory of sorts. There is a deep sense that battle lines have been formed and that the moratorium is nothing more than a temporary cease fire.

As most of you know, the Maine Department of Education has turned to the eminent scholar and researcher Dr. Michael Fullan from the OISE at the University of Toronto for guidance and insight into what to do about this issue. Fullan was in Maine last month meeting with a variety of constituent groups around the state and also made a presentation of his initial observations. Fortunately for us, the event was recorded and made available as a “podcast.” I just listened to the hour-long presentation and made some notes that I thought I’d share.

Fullan spends a good deal of the time discussing various theoretical and empirical findings related to the process of change and school reform. Much of it is in his various books, particularly “Leading in a Culture of Change” (which by the way is on sale in the Maine ASCD Bookstore). So if you want more information, you may turn there, and to his website which has the handouts that were used in the presentation.

However, it was some of the comments he made about the situation in Maine that seemed particularly important to me.

Fullan describes a paradigm in which he believes three “capacities” need to be developed to ensure smooth transformation and change. He noted that there is a need for all three of these capacities and that Maine has made a fair amount of progress on one and less or no progress on the others. The three capacities were described as:

1. The capacity to do the assessment: This involves the development of the standards, the performance indicators and the actual assessments, as well as the collection of data
2. The capacity to link assessment data "to very particular changes in instruction: the instructional capacity to really act on what those data are saying or to act on it in other ways. That’s the assessment for literacy informing instruction."
3. The culture of the school: "You either have a collaborative culture or you don’t."

Clearly, there have been opportunities for schools and districts to work on the second capacity. Alone, Maine ASCD had hosted several professional development programs that deal with data-based decision making and how to take data and make decisions about instruction. Indeed, a number of school districts around the state have achieved this capacity and are doing this work right now which is why some educators are confused by the moratorium and plan to move ahead regardless.

As for fault, we can quickly look at the fact that the Maine Department of Education simply does not have the capacity to support schools with the technical assistance to develop this capacity in schools.

But it is the third capacity that struck me as being the most important – and not surprisingly, this is the one that Fullan stressed the most.

He noted:

“To get change to happen you really have to have a strategy that empowers and gets at the hearts and minds of principals and teachers….”

“…the key to change is ownership - shared-vision…That’s true but it begs the question…if you don’t have ownership, how do you get it?”

“Shared vision or ownership is more an outcome of a quality process, than it is a precondition. In other words you produce (ownership) through the interaction…the quality of the process produces ownership…“

“The other research that is important is how people change their behaviors and their beliefs. It turns out again that people change their behavior before, or a little bit before they are in a position to change their beliefs. So, new experiences lead to new beliefs. Not the other way around.”

“Most of our strategies attack the belief system head on …that’s not how change works. It works because people experience something that has some legs, something that brings about results …”

So the notion that we are in a battle and that sides have been drawn is far from the reality that Fullan would recommend if you want to move forward. He too must have some concern about this as he stated this regarding the governor’s decision for a moratorium on some of the assessment:

“This is not an invitation to stop going down this path. It’s not saying – ‘it didn’t work so let’s forget about it and do something else.’ This rather is an invitation to reposition assessment in relation to the other concepts that I described. “

“We have to shift out of the mind-set, if you are a superintendent or principal or teacher, that you are involved in implementing someone else’s reform; the state reform, the federal reform. That’s the mind-shift we have to get rid of. Instead of that say, ‘What reform are we creating?’ You need to find some things that are helpful and (identify) some of the things that are not….”

“It is critical that in the next six months you don’t go backwards and say this has been a total mistake, let’s wipe the slate clear. But instead reposition... work on the capacity building”

We can only hope that this happens.

~John Brandt

Can K-12 Be Far Behind?

The eSchool News website is reporting a story about how colleges and universities around the country are abandoning the wired phone in campus dorms since nearly all students these days “come equipped” with cell phones.

“With nine out of 10 college students carrying cell phones these days, a growing number of schools are pulling traditional telephone landlines from dormitories, setting up special cellular service, and providing college-specific cell phones.”

eSchool News also reports on a survey of 1,200 students in 100 U.S. universities by Student Monitor LLC. Some of the numbers are amazing:

• Ninety-two percent of undergraduates have a cell phone (95 percent among students living on campus).
• Eighty-five percent of these students used their cell phone to send or receive a text message in the past month (averaging 115 messages). Among the 15 percent who have not used their cell phone to send or receive a text message in the last month, 26 percent of those students are interested in using their cell phone to send or receive text messages.
• Sixty percent of students with cell phones are enrolled in family plans, while the remaining 40 percent have their own plans with shared minutes.
• The three most important factors when selecting a cellular provider are cost of minutes (53 percent), free long distance (27 percent), and free mobile-to-mobile (25 percent).
• Among students with a cell phone, 39 percent have had their phone for four years or longer. The average length of time students have had their phones was 37 months, and students have had an average of 1.5 providers.
• The average monthly cell bill is $69.

While the number of cell phone among our K-6 students may be significantly lower (I hope), I think the 7-12 student population is probably quite similar to college students.

What’s most interesting about this story is how the colleges and universities are using this to their benefit. Unlike K-12 where a number of districts have banned cell phones altogether (see the furor in New York City), these institutions appear to embrace this new technology revolution and take it all in stride – and in some cases, see it as a way to make a few bucks!

I guess K-12’s aversion to cell phones and new technologies is to be expected. As Alan November is fond of reminding us, our public schools gave teachers computers in their classrooms before they gave them telephones!

~John Brandt

Assessment and Accountability Systems to Transform Maine’s Schools

I would have preferred blogging this while attending Ted Hershberg’s presentation at our Spring Conference on May 12th, but Ted was using my laptop to run his PowerPoint. I struggled to scribble down as many notes as possible, but that’s always pretty dangerous these days. If I don’t go back to check and edit these within 24 hours I have pretty much lost it; a fatal combination of bad handwriting and middle age.

There were many powerful messages promoted at our Spring Conference and although the group attending was relatively small, many folks noted that this was the most provocative and impassioned Maine ASCD event in some time.

So here are some of my notes from the conference. Please note that all of Ted’s handouts and PowerPoint slides are posted on our website.

And if you attended and have notes or observations you’d like to share, please feel free to respond to this blog or to the discussion forum that we’ve set up.

One of the most important messages in the early part of Ted's presentation is one which I have been squawking about for 20 years after I first heard it from Tom Skrtic at a CEC conference in Portland. That is simply the understanding that the current system of schooling in this country, built during the height of the Industrial Revolution was perfect for its time, but grossly out of touch with the needs of today's economy. Skrtic referred to school culture, particularly with regard to special education, as a "machine bureauacracy," noting its emphasis on uniformity and throughput. Indeed, many special educators have understood the need for serious school reform for many years.

As Ted Hershberg describes it, “The American economy and American school system were perfectly aligned.” The “Old System taught basic literacy, socialized Americans for the manufacturing workforce and identified and sorted the top fifth” of the population. The old system focused on “quantity” not “quality;” on “cohorts, volume, and throughput.” I see this whenever I receive my old high school alumni newsletter. We still refer to people as being from the “Class of…” – we were part of a mass, not seen as individuals.

The new skills and knowledge for the 21st Century are almost diametrically opposite from the traditions of the past. The message here was completely consistent with that given to the kids at the MSWDA by Donnie O’Quinn and by our four eminent speakers at last year’s conference, “Education, Technology and the Future of Maine’s Economy.” The new system is student-centered, reliant upon clear standards, rewarding real effort, and heavily focused on teaching and supporting students to learn good problem solving skills. The while teachers in the old system used anecdotal information (and perhaps intuition) to inform instruction, the new system demands data-driven decision making.

One of the comments Ted made was to frame how people’s political ideology affect their beliefs and values regarding schooling.

Those on the Right (Conservatives) believe that reasons public schools fail is due to the fixed and inborn weaknesses of the masses that attend these schools. The notion of “bad genes” is commonly viewed as the cause, and being a “nature” argument, it is believed that this is irreversible.

Those on the Left (Liberals) believe that the reasons for failing schools are the deplorable living and social conditions the masses experience. How can students be expected to achieve when they live in such squalid conditions? This notion of "bad environment" is commonly viewed as the cause, and being a "nurture" argument, it is believed to be completely reversible, but only if we pour tons of money in to it.

This message, consistent with that presented by Richard Rothstein last year at the ASCD LEAP Institute and by Nel Noddings at the ASCD Annual Conference, is equally wrong. Hershberg notes that much of this sentiment comes from the research of James Coleman (1966) and Christopher Jencks (1972) which both concluded that “family background was more important than schooling in explaining achievement.” But those researchers did not have access to complete or individual student data and modern technology to analyze the results. And when they did see the occasional school where these “poor kids” were achieving, dismissed it as an outlier.

Hershberg concludes, as have others, that neither position is correct, or for that matter useful. And lest we not forget the Rosenthal’s Pygmalion Effect that we all learned (or should have learned in Psychology 101), we are doomed to failure if we believe either extreme position.

I’ll speak more in another blog entry about Value-Added Assessment and how it plays a very important part in changing these mindsets.

~John Brandt

Student Web Awards

I just returned from Bowdoin College where this year's winners of the Maine Student Web Design Awards were announced. I was there as a "judge" and as a representative of ACTEM and Maine CITE, two of the co-sponsors. In my other life, when I'm not at Maine ASCD, I do web design and consulation work. Because there were students involved, I felt it appropriate to post this in the Maine ASCD weblog.

The purpose of the contest is to support students who have made designing websites a aspiration or hobby. It appears from the entries that there are quite a few Maine students who are choosing the former, and that's a good thing.

One of the goals of our January 2005 Conference, "Education, Technology and the Future of Maine's Economy," was to help develop a 21st Century educational system capable of preparing Maine students for the economy they will be living in. If the entries in this year's contest provide a small sample of some of the competenties Maine students are developing, I think we are doing a good job. Unfortunately, this was probably not a representative sample of Maine students, and so we likely still have a ways to go. But contests like the MSWDA are the kind of activities that will encourage students to work in the right direction.

One of the speakers Donnie O'Quinn, who is a Maine-based consultation and graphic designer, gave a brief and inspired talk about how some of the "myths" out there. It was an wonderful message of hope and commitment very consistent with the message coming from the speakers at our January Conference.

He talked about focusing on the skill of "problem solving" noting that all the work he does can fundamentally be described as such. He emphasized the point that technology is a tool and that getting to the solution to the problem is the goal. He talked about the importance of teaming and group work and how you have to cull out your specialty at the same time remaining flexible and always learning new things and new skills. And he finished by saying you can, with passion and perseverence, make a good living doing these things in Maine.

Good message.

~John Brandt

Needs Improvement

The Public Education Network (PEN) recently released a new report which detailed public concern over implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Entitled  "Open to the Public: The Public Speaks out on No Child Left Behind," the report, “identifies specific concerns voiced by more than 1500 parents, students, taxpayers, and community leaders at open public hearings from September 2005 to January 2006.”

Among the more poignant findings were:

• the public rejected a single test as an accurate measure of school improvement
• Parents and community leaders indicated that discrepancies between state and federal measures of school progress have created a deep mistrust of high-stakes tests and other NCLB indicators as accurate assessments of school performance.
• Respondents believe that accountability must be expanded to include additional measures of school and student progress, developed with the input of local educators, parents, and the community.

And perhaps most important:

Americans are also angered by the labeling of schools as "in need of improvement" because they say that this label erodes public support for these schools. Rather than increasing the public’s sense of responsibility for demanding additional support and resources, ‘in need of improvement’ labels are perceived as punitive and can result in student, teacher, and community abandonment of the very schools most in need of support.

Sounds like NCLB needs improvement

Read the whole report "Open to the Public: The Public Speaks out on No Child Left Behind."

~John Brandt

Bouncy Balls

The buzz last week was regarding a front page story in the Portland Press Herald about an incident of misbehavior on the part of a large number of seniors at Cheverus High School, the private “Jesuit College Preparatory School of Maine.” The incident in question involved a group of senior student throwing “bouncy balls” at freshmen student over the heads of faculty and administration who had counseled them against the action. The incident resulted in a decision by the administration to cancel the senior prom.

The newspaper article provided a generally even-handed description of what occurred and what followed. Predictably there were many students and parents who felt this was entirely unfair and expressed opinions ranging from this was a simple prank to, this was a tradition to, outrage at the economic loss to the students for the cancellation of the prom. Those taking the side of the administration expressed equally strong sentiments regarding the need for consequences and discipline, and citing the fact that a senior prom was a privilege and not a right.

Also predictably, the letters to the editor (and blog entries) in the days that followed appeared to mirror the sentiments expressed in the article. In a second article on the topic, Principal John Mullen defended his decision and provided a copy of the letter sent to parents regarding the incident and justifying his decision.

Of course I had my own personal reaction to this event. My first reaction was that the issue was not deserving of front page new coverage in the state’s largest newspaper. This was a private school affair, and had no place in the public discussion. I’m sure the PPH editors tossed this around a bit, at least I hope so.

My second reaction was to reflect on my own Catholic high school experience and to wonder what would have happened if something like this had happened there. I quickly realized that the consequences at my high school would have been more severe and the support from parents would have been universal. In fact, I would expect that any parent who had protested the principal’s decision would have been quietly told to find another school for their son since he was no longer welcome.

My last reaction was regarding society in general and how in fact this story had made it to the front page of the local paper. It speaks volumes about the nature of public sentiment about education. I am frankly surprised that no one made it a point to note that this was a “non-public school” or to suggest that had this happened at Portland or Deering high schools, it would have been a non-event. I expect there is/was that sentiment and am glad it did not make it into the news. I thought that it was sad that this article did appear as it demonstrated the general lack of confidence in and respect for educators.

Today, I found a nice short piece in the latest Educational Leadership which I think puts some things into perspective. And, the operant word in this article is respect; respect for faculty, respect for students, and respect for oneself. In the article by Joanne Rooney, she describes how a school where she was principal had to choose its battles with student misbehavior carefully.

We posted these rules, simple but reflective of our deepest beliefs, in every classroom:

• Show respect for all people in the school community.
• Keep hands, feet, and all other objects to ourselves.
• Finish classwork and all homework.
• Read.
• Learn as much as we are able.

This list was narrowed through good-faith debate about wording, number of rules needed, and what observing these rules would look like in practice. This conversation led to rich dialogue about what teachers really cared about for students. Some teachers were less comfortable than others with the simplicity of the rules, but few disagreed with their broad intent. Everyone appreciated the consistency. Staff members found it easier to address the behavior of students from other teachers' classrooms. The mentality of “your kids/my kids” morphed into one of “our kids.”

I think the faculty and administration at Cheverus probably already had a list like this. And, maybe in the long run, the PPH did us a favor by making us think a little more critically about “our kids,” and make us learn as much as we are able.

~John Brandt