Pedro Noguera, UCLA
Was once an elected local school board member in Berkley CA.
Didn't particularly like it.
Referred to it as "my sentence".
Thought we were only barely managing a "status quo" that didn't work for most kids.
We were cutting budgets all the time.
So, acknowledge how important this is.
Applaud you for your service.
In Colorado, can't fill many seats, can't get people to run for those offices.
That's a problem.
Democracy depends on people running.
I'm going to say some things to shake you up.
I think that's my job.
Need now for equity and deeper learning: making high standards and powerful learning opportunities available to all teachers and students.
Was in Alaska recently -- school leader there, "We do not know how to educate Alaska-native children".
There's a crisis.
High suicide rates.
Kids barely coming to school.
A failure of reform.
We have focused on the wrong things.
Our education policies have ignored social context and deeper systemic problems, particularly related to poverty.
We have relied on pressure and gimmicks to address chronic failure in schools serving poor children.
The persistence of race/class disparities in achievement is a by-product of social and economic inequality.
Reforms have not been devised or implemented with clear focus on how they will solve the problems schools face.
Reforms have not been implemented with the educators who must implement them.
Raising standards is unlikely to lead to better outcomes unless we improve learning conditions and respond more effectively to student needs.
Poverty is not a learning disability, but, when needs of children are not addressed, made manifest in school.
Not simply hunger, housing, health.
Lots of kids can't read -->because they don't have eyeglasses -->and we don't have a plan to address that.
Children have social and emotional needs that we are only just beginning to recognize.
Bill to address Trauma in California.
We recognize trauma in veterans -- it is a disorder (PTSD); in children, it's chronic.
As a nation, we haven't come to terms with trauma.
Was in Florida -- at a "FFF" school. Principal says, "FFF" means have failed the state exam three times in a row. Will fail it again. State will take over. He's leaving.
Opportunity to utilize higher order thinking skills -- analysis, evaluation, application, creativity.
To undertake and learn through complex tasks and challenging texts.
To acquire skills needed for college -- independent research; critical/analytical thinking.
To produce high-quality work that serves as a reflection of what a student has learned -- mastery.
Time to focus on equity and deeper learning.
Want to focus on learning -- not focus on gimmicks: like, ooh - iPADs. Extended day.
Not just extending the day -->need to improve the day.
Need to focus that all kids are challenged or else the kids fail.
Teachers quit.
Education is one of the first professions where we put the least experienced people in the job.
Access to challenging learning opportunities is an equity issue:
- We have used assessment to rationalize sorting/tracking students and often teachers.
- We have traditionally *dumbed down* the curriculum for students we thought were not *college ready*.
- We have confused academic performance with intellectual ability and potential.
- We have not given teachers sufficient guidance in how to teach a variety of learners.
Gap between ability and performance.
Gotta approach this differently.
Gotta take equity seriously.
NCLB sounded pretty serious but we left lots of children behind.
All kids are different.
Some need more time.
Equity is:
- Addressing the needs of all students
- academic, psychological, emotional
- Recognizing differences, compensating for disadvantages, and mitigating harm, hardships, and risks to all students
State boards must stay foused on outcomes -- academic and developmental, and conditions in schools.
Success is not only about achievement.
Equity is not:
- Lowering standards
- Something only schools serving poor children of color should be concerned about
- Choosing some children over others -- all children must be challenged to reach their potential.
Affluent white children more likely to be stressed out.
Pervasive inequality makes the pursuit of equity difficult, but essential.
Challenges to equity include:
- Out-of-school Factors: poverty, unequal access to basic needs health, housing, transportation, etc.
- Policy Factors: unequal school funding and unequal learning opportunities.
- In-school Practices: disciplining for disadvantages, lack of focus on meeting the needs of all students.
Too often, schools reproduce patterns of privilege and disadvantage.
This achievement gap is a manifestation of privilege and disadvantage.
Alienation starts early.
There's a Trajectory of Marginalization -- the progression of disengagement.
Lots of kids in prison pipeline -- had we intervened early, wouldn't be there.
More than $230K/child per year on juvenile justice system in LA and less than $10,000/person in school-->we're investing at the wrong end.
What we know about child development:
- Student achievement is affected by a variety of social, psychological, emotional, and environmental factors
- Services must be provided in a coordinated manner to counter effects of poverty and improve developmental and learning outcomes
We have proof -- just look at Harlem Children's Zone.
Geoffrey Canada has been at this for 25 years.
Need evidence that fixing your teeth or eyeglasses is a good idea?
We do have evidence what happens when you meet the needs of the Whole Child.
Brockton High on a path for success for 20 years -- then they hit it -- Level 1 school.
High number of Adams Scholarship Winners in 2016.
Worcester Tech -- success.
Success is all around us.
Key Elements of the Brockton Strategy:
- Brockton started with shared leadership -- teachers own the work.
- Concerted effort to obtain buy-in around the strategy
- A coherent strategy focused on student needs
- Differentiated professional development
- Follow through, examining the evidence, sticking with it
Not test prep -- actually have to teach the children.
Differentiated professional development -- not all teachers need the same things.
Creat conditions where all kids can be successful.
If we focus on the right conditions, it is no longer predictable which children will fail.
Students in control of learning-->Hollenbeck Middle School, Los Angeles
Not just learning Math -- learning how to work together.
Differentiated learning for kids.
Teachers are facilitators of learning.
Not about behavior control -- it's about engagement.
The bell rings and they are disturbed -- not packing up 10 mins early.
If you can do that in East Los Angeles, you can do that anywhere.
Hollenbeck is right down the street from [Garfield] High School.
"Stand and Deliver" -- story of Jaime Escalante.
He was teaching the desire to learn.
Come in on Saturdays. Stay late.
Instead of focusing on achivement -- we must focus on engagement.
Get excited about learning.
Pathway to achievement is through engagement:
- Behavioral engagement
- Preparation
- Persistence
- Instrumental Help Seeking
- Cognitive engagement
- Deep Processing
- Meta-Cognition
- Emotional engagement
- Interest
- Value
California County prisons are educating inmates through Project-Based Learning.
Teachers focus on Evidence on Learning:
- Make expectations clear and standards explicit
- Model and expose students to high-quality work
- Utilize diagnostig tools to check for understanding
- Learn about their students' interests in order to make lessons culturally relevant
- Expect students to revise and resubmit work
- Solicit feedback and questions from students
- Analyze student work with a focus on evidence of competence and mastery and with a willingness to reflect on efficacy of methods
Real learning is in the REVISION.
Real teaching is in the FEEDBACK.
Most powerful PD is Teachers coming together to analyze student work.
Social and emotional learning must be integral to effort to increase academic engagement (aka LIFE SKILLS):
- Deferred gratification
- Ability to collaborate
- Impulse control
- Ability to resolve and mediate conflicts
- Empathy
As SBE members, you get to ask questions.
Move away from compliance to capacity building.
Great colleges and universities don't create master teachers; they can create great novices.
State Boards Must Stay Focused on the Five Essential Ingredients:
- A coherent instructional guidance system
- Ongoing development of the professional capacity of staff
- Srtong parent-community-school ties
- A student-centered learning climate
- Shared leadership to drive change
Need a holistic vision to achieve equity in outcomes.
Gotta think about the Whole Child.
Once common for every Kindergarten to have a piano in the classroom and for the K teacher to know how to play it.
People with Alzheimer's -- the last thing to go are the songs and music they learned early in life.
Amundson & Pedro
Amundson: SBEs are policy makers, so how can we ensure that Ts are high-quality?
Pedro: Incentivize to bring master teachers into high-need schools. Residency-mentoring for the first year of teaching. Districts need to write that into policy. Sensible practices into policy. SBEs can create standards by which Ts can become certified and evaluated. Those 5 essential ingredients for schools...the Brockton stragegy...to bring about coherence...need literacy to do math, science and everything else...when we see schools are struggling, see how they are doing on those 5 elements.
Q from DE: Wilmington stuggles like other places. Politics. How can we help them to overcome themselves to affect change?
Pedro: I will leave the politics. I would start positive. Look at Karin Chenoweth's book, "It's being Done" and her next book, "How it's Being Done".
Q from MS: Lots resonated with me. Equity is not about lowering standards. How do I get Principals to understand that so that teachers understand that?
Pedro: TOY in GA -- T was sent to struggling school. Sent a signal: IB programs. Kids will be safe. Kids will be well-served. All the kids. Need to shine the light on high-functioning places where it is working. Should not assign brand new principals to lead struggling schools. We haven't learned from it.
Q from GA Teacher in HE: Equity MUST be central to our work. As a Education Leadership provider, EVALUATION and STANDARDS -- glaring missing link on equity...thoughts on influencing policy?
Pedro: Broadening what we look at. Equity-based accountability system. Schools that are beating the odds. If you don't have the policy guidelines, will never be able to acknowledge. Lots of gaming strategies: yeah, higher grad rates, but remediation in college courses and high percentages of dropping out in first years.
Q from KY: The slide about lowering standards, all means all. Still, some kids have not received anything. Need for targeted strategies? Gives more to what hasn't been done before? Equal access. How to deal with the resource Q?
Pedro: If we're serious about equity, it will be reflected in outcomes. Places are figuring it out. Example: Algebra is a gateway course. Kids who don't have it, get double the time with a master teacher on it. Also less homework. Need to make space for innovation.
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Panel Presentation: Reenvisioning Success for Students and Schools
Presenters
Tim Shriver, Co-Chair, National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development (NCSEAD)
Pedro Noguera, NCSEAD
Gene Wilhoit, NCSEAD
Rachel Wise, Nebraska SBE and NASBE Chair-elect
Jacqueline Jodl, Director NCSEAD (moderator)
Schoolhouse and State House alike have emphasized the academic skills students need to succeed. But overwhelming evidence demands a complementary focus on social and emotional skills and competencies. When somebody is doing it well, we need to stop and pay attention.
Shriver: We have a whole script and I'm going to blow it off -- you can't listen to Pedro and not adjust. Lots of different people have come together to form this work. Grassroots. Roots in 60s, 70s -- some would say even as far back as John Dewey.
Learned to use Jim Comer's framework*: academic, social, emotional.
The social and emotional ARE learning.
Learning is relational.
Lots of attention to academic; almost none to SEL.
Not as a replacement to academics, but to complement, to engage the heart.
Every problem for kids at-risk will eventually be a problem for the other kids.
They are the canary in the coalmine.
Equity = justice.
Cannot dichotomize academic and SEL.
"We don't have time"; "We don't have resources" --- false dichotomy.
Integrate them in a high quality way.
All kids: for stressed-out high wealth kids and low income kids.
(Aaand - this is where I was listening to the panel discussion and not taking notes!)
Q&A
Q: One of the barriers is initiative overload. It overwhelms teachers. Reflections on that?
Shriver: It is THE problem in school reform. Not because it is [teachers'] disposition, it is because it is done poorly. Need a sustainable plan. A change process under one plan. Get out of "check the box". Need systematic, integrated strategy/plan. Otherwise we will alienate teachers, and rightly so.
Pedro: Gates has another new initiative --> hasn't shared the lessons of previous initiatives. An arrogance that creates deep cynicism. He should say, "We wasted a lot of money and this is what we have learned"..."Here's some things we will not do again". Otherwise, not changing the culture of learning.
Shriver: CASEL -- launched collaborating districts. Understood we were in for multiple years. Created contiuous commitment. Ownership has changed. Owning it together.
Q from MI: Structure of learning: first tedium, then enjoyment. Comments on that experience?
Shriver: Learning has emotional underpinings, isn't the only way it plays out. Emotions are the internalization of the learning. Recognizing is the art of teaching. Mystics talk about relationships in community. Solitude, even. Always operating, even when they are not physical. Coping strategies. Mindfulness as a tool for perserverance.
Jodl: Instruction needs to be student-centered; equitable.
Q from Nebraska: Models for scope and sequence? Impact on class, culture, and community?
Pedro: Science is most popular class for students in elementary school. Imagine capitalizing on all of that early learning for science.
Wilhoit: Tools for Students to assess their own learning.
Jodl: Commission will "sunset" in the 4th quarter of 2018. Will issue a report. Change agenda to include: local focus, as well as the practice piece for sustaining the work.
Hull: Legacy Leadership. NCLB result of neglect of leadership. Legacy of SBEs taking advantage now, at this time. Not all means all. All means each.
-- End of Session --
* From Wikipedia: Though a principal-led but shared management framework, organizationally and/or primarily by the school staff, organizational, management, and communication issues are pulled together in a way that promotes collaboration, assessment, capacity building, and a focus on teaching in a way that leads to the integration of student development and academic learning. By minimizing confusion and conflict in the building system through this process, educators can make sound programmatic decisions based on student behavioral, developmental, and learning needs; and intentionally prepare students for school and mainstream life success. Our outcomes suggest that when students are developing well they will learn well.
While the School Development Program helps building level participants bring about change, it has been used as a framework for system-wide reform, providing mechanisms by which school boards and district central administration can coordinate and support the reform work at each school.