Who Counts

Yesterday morning, I happened to watch a TED talk by Andreas Schleicher from February 2013 about the implications of the international data PISA collects on schools.



This viewing was somewhat fortuitous as I learned later in the day that the news was awash with PISA's most recent findings. To quote NPR yesterday: "International standardized test scores have been released. The test is given to students around the world every three years. It measures their knowledge of reading, mathematics and science literacy. U.S. students usually turn in mediocre performances, and this year's scores were no different." (I should note that not everyone accepts PISA's conclusions or inferences.)

In his TED talk, Dr. Schleicher does an amazing job of explaining PISA's findings with clear examples and readily understandable graphs. Counts of literacy and numeracy scores are plotted and plumbed. But one thing he says perhaps goes by too quickly, and is not accompanied by any chart: "When we asked students what counts for success in mathematics, students in North America would typically tell us, you know, it's all about talent. If I'm not born as a genius in math, I'd better study something else. Nine out of 10 Japanese students say that it depends on my own investment, on my own effort, and that tells you a lot about the system that is around them."

Don't get sidetracked by the finding itself ("...students in North America would typically tell us... Nine out of 10 Japanese students say..."); that's just a chart in words. The critical phrase is: When we asked students what counts...

See the real question is not "What counts?" but "Who counts when we are counting?"

Each time PISA releases its results, the educational pundits, commentators, and blogosphere (here we are) wring their collective hands over the mediocrity of our educational system.  We count test scores and their connection to economic data and teacher expenditure and a half dozen other important things. And all that may be well worth taking account.

But why? Why are our results so mediocre year after year after year? Adults will site poor teaching, a lack of at-home support, and not-high-enough-standards. But to really answer that question we must ask students what counts. And this requires us to believe that their voice counts alongside all the test score data they produce and that we incessantly or, some might say, obsessively measure.

In about a week, QISA will release a national report that will not get nearly the press that PISA's report gets. Every year, we ask students what counts and, like PISA's results, not much changes from year to year. The report represents the voice of students and their thoughts and beliefs about what counts toward academic motivation and success. 56,877 sixth through twelfth graders across the country give a clear account:

• 44% do not feel a sense of self-worth at school
• 40% are not engaged by their learning
• 40% do not feel supported by their teachers
• 58% do not feel supported by their peers

They also point out that these factors have a direct impact on their academic motivation. For example, students who are engaged in school are 15 times more likely to be academically motivated. Students who feel supported by teachers are 7 times more likely to be academically motivated. Those are numbers worth focusing on.

The solution to our middle-of-the-pack problem may not be in higher standards or greater accountability (isn't that the very drum we have been beating even as our results stagnate?), but in realizing that the students themselves count.

An Attitude of Gratitude

One of the topics we discuss in the field and in our writing is how there are non-academic means to academic ends. Of course we all know there are academic means to academic ends: You have to have good reading programs and time on task to teach students to read. And you have to have a good math curriculum to teach students math. Having a solid scope and sequence, clear rubrics and objectives, and valid assessments are critical to any successful effort to support student learning.

Yet, time and time again we see teachers and administrators underestimating the power of the non-academic, not only as something important in its own right (it is), but also as something that brings about desirable academic outcomes. The most obvious example of this is frequently reported in focus groups by students who say they work harder academically for teachers they believe care about them as people. On the flip side of this coin, we also hear that students will withhold their effort in classes taught by teachers who they perceive as uncaring and disrespectful. Though they know they are likely the only ones harmed by this, they refuse to give such a teacher "the
satisfaction."

Among the non-academic sources of positive academic outcomes is thankfulness. In a study of gratitude in adolescents, it was discovered that grateful students achieved a higher grade point average, as well as attained a number of other positive outcomes such as life satisfaction, social integration and absorption, and lower envy and depression. While gratitude is not one of the 8 Conditions, per se, an attitude of gratitude is part of a school environment characterized by Belonging, and in which teachers and students are Heroes to one another.

Consider how you model gratefulness for your students, and expect them to say "thank you" when appropriate.

Don't Judge a Beatbox By Its Cover

Adult Assumption Alert: This blog reveals an unconscious generalization I am not proud to admit.

We are partnering with the organization R.E.A.C.H. Communications for our Stand Up Speak Out (SUSO) middle school leadership conferences, which we are facilitating at six sites in Ohio this fall and winter. At one recent SUSO event, R.E.A.C.H. speaker, Shaun Derik, called for two male and two female volunteers to join him in his presentation.

Four students, ages 12-13, went up to the stage. A petite white girl who said her dream job was to be an actress or a singer. A confident African American boy who said he played sports. A seemingly shy white girl with glasses who giggled that she wanted to be veterinarian. And a tall, lean, lanky hispanic boy who seemed to be participating in "No Shave November."

After pointing out how brave they were for volunteering, Shaun upped the ante by putting them into a dance contest. While Shaun beatboxed, the students shimmied, one at a time, to the applause of 70 of their peers in the audience. After three attempts to break the applause tie between the boys and girls dance team, Shaun decided to jump into the competition. "But I'll need someone to beatbox for me," he said.

Now, if I asked you to put the four students I described in the order you thought they would: 1. be competent to beatbox and 2. volunteer to do so, what would your sequence be? Here was mine: confident athlete, male student on the other side of puberty, self-proclaimed actress and, finally, future veterinarian.

So the giggly, shy veterinarian says to Shaun Derik: "I got this." And you know what? She crushed it! Shaun danced and the last kid on my list popped and clicked and tch'ed into the mic, to my amazement and the rhythmic beat of her clapping peers. It was is if she was born to do it. Shame on me for assuming otherwise.

You know what they say happens when you assume...

What would you learn about your students if you dropped your assumptions?

Who Cares?

Once again I learned something new from a student recently.

Let's start with what I had already learned from students: In the reciprocal relationship that is respect between a teacher and a student - I respect you, if you respect me - the adult has to go first. I have heard teachers say, "I don't give respect until I get respect" or "When kids show me respect, that's when I respect them." I always think they will be waiting a long time. Maybe it's my age, but at 50+ I am not waiting around for some 13 year-old (I have neckties that are older) to respect me before I show them respect. Even students in focus groups get it that the adult has to start.

The fact of the matter is, there is no way to disrespectfully teach someone who is disrespectful to respect you. The only way to teach respect, to get another person who is being disrespectful to respect you, is to respect them in spite of their disrespect. It turns out that when someone treats you respectfully, even if you disrespect them, they come to learn what real respect is and to then treat you with respect. Teacher respect for students must be a constant even in the face of variable respect from students.

But I already knew that.

The other day a student said something similar regarding caring about his education.  In a focus group I had asked what encouraged students to care about their education. After exploring positive answers, I flipped it: What discourages you? A student said, "When a teacher doesn't care about my education." I asked him to explain. He said, "Sometimes you're down on your self and you don't care about school or getting good grades or even finishing school. And so you're not doing well and some teacher says to you, 'Hey, this is your education. I don't care if you do well or not. I get paid either way.' Well, that makes you care even less when they say they don't care."

The fact of the matter is you cannot get a student who doesn't care about school to care by saying you don't care either. Just as with respect, the only way to get a student who doesn't care about school to care is to care in spite of their not caring. Teacher's care for each student's education must be a constant even in the face of their variable care about their own education.

Keeping Schools Weird

Here is something I am not sure we have faced squarely in education: Teachers are weird.  Only about 2% of the population decides that having been through a K-18 schooling experience the best thing they could do with the rest of their lives is go back and work at a school. Think about it, a 47 year-old veteran teacher with 25 years of teaching experience has not not been in a school since she was 5 years old.  That's weird.

Here is another thing that's weird: We have said that one of the main goals of a K-12 education is to prepare students for college.  We've balanced that a little with saying the goal is to get students college-ready and career-ready. But I still hear a lot that getting ready for college is of paramount importance.  But isn't that like saying that the goal of school is more school?  And that's kind of weird, too.  Isn't the goal of all schooling, no matter how long its term: Life?  Shouldn't the purpose of school simply be to get students ready...period.

Actually it might be weird but it's logically consistent. Haven't the weird 2% of people who loved school so much that they made a career out of it, simply set up the whole system to to be self perpetuating?  Should it be surprising that they have made the goal of school more school?

Could that be why schools are so resistant to change?  Because they may not work for almost half the students, but they work for almost all the educators who decide what school should be like and what it should be mainly for: Tests and essays and reading and writing and math, but not creativity and art and socializing and dance and music and physical education.  If that latter set of educable skills is exactly what business leaders and the future seem to say we need, why can't we foster those skills and not simply entrench the status quo?  Weird.

Creating Time

Tick. Tock. Talking with educators about their greatest challenge in school, what tops the list is not unmotivated students, disengaged parents, or a lack of money.  Those consistently make the top ten, but more often than not the number one challenge is a lack of time. I get the feeling that despite all the other issues and pressures schools face, if there were more time administrators and teachers could find solutions.  Administrators seemingly work round the clock and teachers start and end well beyond the scheduled day and students are on task bell to bell.  Yet there is no time.

Part of mastery is being given the freedom to be creative and innovative. And so a result of schools being time-starved is diminished creativity. Not only in the form of cutting art and music to make more time for literacy and numeracy instruction, but also in lessons being rushed to cover material. There is little breathing space to engage material in a way that is creative and so engaging. 

Given that students, as well as teachers and administrators, can be more creative when given the time, how can we alter the hurried pace at which we currently move? If given time enough to be more creative, we might become creative enough to find solutions to other issues--unmotivated students, disengaged parents, lack of money--that would give us more time. 

Fixing Odds Against Idleness

In case you missed it, at the start of this week, Opportunity Nation, a broad-based coalition of over 250 concerned organizations with a mission "to expand economic opportunity and close the opportunity gap in America," released a report stating that 6 million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 are neither in school nor at work. That amounts to 15% of people in that age range - nearly 1 in 7. Imagine that, in the average secondary school of about 700 students, 100 students simply stop showing up one day.

The coalition also reports on underlying factors such as poverty, public safety, lack of social capital, and declining incomes. It is an all too common litany of explanations that sometimes gets captured (as it does in the AP press story) in terms of "zip code." To quote the article, "Their destiny is too often determined by their ZIP code," says Charlie Mangiardi, who works with Year Up, a nonprofit that trains young adults for careers and helps them find jobs.

I have no doubt that where a young person comes from has an influence on where he or she is going. Without advocates, supporters, boosters, mentors, role models, guides, etc. the odds that a 16-year-old will wind up down a blind alley or dead end street surely increases. But  do those factors determine or destine such a dismal outcome? Given how intractable those social conditions can be, and how immune they can prove against our best attempts to solve them, it's no wonder we find the data depressing.

I am not sure why school factors are absent in the coalition's report, but I do know we must consider schools as part of the solution to this problem of unproductive idleness. Recently the Quaglia Institute conducted an odds analysis on a very large data base of surveys of students in grades 6-12. We inquired of the data: What might help predict whether or not a student is academically motivated (and let's assume for the sake of this discussion that academically motivated students stay in school). Two factors stood out:

• Students who are engaged in school are 14 times more likely to be academically motivated than those who are not engaged

• Students who feel they are supported by their teachers are 8 times more likely to be academically motivated than those who do not feel teachers are supportive

It turns out that 40% of students surveyed do not report being engaged and 42% do not feel supported by their teachers. This means if we could "convert" those students, transform their experiences of engagement and teacher support, we could have an enormous impact on academic motivation - and maybe even on how many 16- to 24-year-olds find themselves out of school or out of work. 

Again, I cannot say how malleable poverty is, or quantify how much influence those working in schools have over a student's socio-economic status. What I am certain of is that teachers have a tremendous influence on how engaging their classes are, and how much they convince students that they are supportive. The statistics say that if we improve either one of those factors, the odds go up substantially that a student will stay in school (assuming of course that academically motivated students stay in school). I say let's play the odds.