Parents

Maybe We All Just Need a Hug

Eduflack accountability, Parents, Students, teachers

My mother taught at the same high school that I graduated from, in Shenandoah Junction, WV. I was fortunate never to have her as my English teacher (my youngest sister was far less fortunate). As a teacher, my mom was tough. She was a “no excuses” teacher before such a label existed in education reform (though for the record, my mom would never call herself an ed reformer EVER). She held all of her students to high standards, and she expected the best they could bring.

It was true in how she taught American literature, and it was true in the behaviors she expected in her classroom and in the hallways. On more than one occasion, she jumped in the middle of a fight to break it up. On more than one occasion, I saw her, all five-feet-nothing of her, get into the face of a football player or other student who towered over her, demanding said student respect the school and respect the rules.

When she got into the scrum on a fight between a couple of guys, they pically stopped as soon as they saw her in the mix. But at least once, when she tried to break up two fightin’ girls, they weren’t so quick to get to their respective corners. But it never stopped Mrs. Riccards from seeking the discipline her schools demanded. And she taught in all types, urban, rural, and suburban.

So when I read Eva Moskowitz’ piece this week in the Wall Street Journal on changes to the NYC schools’ discipline policies, I was at first amused, and then a little troubled. In it, she writes of the introduction of “restorative circles” as a key component to discipline in our nation’s largest public school system.

And what are “restorative circles?” As Moskowitz writes: “It’s a ‘community process for supporting those in conflict [that] brings together the three parties to a conflict—those who have acted, those directly impacted and the wider community—within an intentional systemic context, to dialogue as equals.'”

Is this really where we have gone, where school discipline has devolved into a group hug, where the person throwing the punch and the person getting hit are considered equals and equally wronged in the process? Where a bully and the bullied need to come together with the larger community to understand why one feels the need to terrorize or attack a fellow student? Where we need to explore, understand, and feel empathetic toward the aggressor?

Shaking my old man fist, in my day, there was no need for restorative circles or kumbaya moments in the disciplinary process. You start a fight or throw a punch, there are consequences. You get caught cheating or skipping school, you get disciplined. There was no “systemic context” to understand. Break the rules, get punished. No excuses, no exceptions.

Should we really be endorsing bad behavior as long as one has a good reason for it? If so, we are telling our kids that our discipline policy is no discipline at all. Forget accountability, all we need a good hug.

Fathers and the Learning Process

Eduflack Dadprovement, Parents, technology

Over at Getting Smart, they are running a new Smart Parents series that looks at parent perspectives on many topics exploring the future of education. One of those topics is what relationships help drive the learning process. And this week, dear ol’ Eduflack has a piece that explores how fathers are an important driver in the learning process. For this piece, I put on my Dadprovement hat, reflecting on some of the parenting lessons that have come as a result of my award-winning Dadprovement book.

As I conclude in the piece:

Last year, there was a study in Psychological Science that found that daughters aspire to greater professional goals when they see their fathers doing tasks such as washing the dishes. Consider that for a moment. A young girl has a better chance of become a CEO or governor of even president if she sees her dad at the sink, scrubbing away at the remnants of dinner.

If that’s true, imagine the possibilities for all of those girls (and boys) who see their dads volunteering in school or visiting the classroom, right alongside all of the moms they come to expect. Imagine how much more interesting that science project looks when dad is in the class to help. Or how intriguing the field trip can be with dad leading a group. Or how that device can be transformed from a Netflix machine to a learning device that opens up new worlds and unlimited possibilities.

I hope you’ll give the full piece a read here. And I really hope you give the #SmartParents series a deeper look. It is definitely worth the time, and provides some interesting perspectives on school improvement and technology in learning.

Imagine What a Father Could Do …

Eduflack Dadprovement, Parents

This week, I was in Austin talking about my Dadprovement book, fatherhood, and parental engagement at #SXSWedu. Had a tremendous time, and met a growing number of folks eager to see dads more involved in their kids’ school lives. 

I’ll reflect more on that over the weekend. But I wanted to share the following. Typically, when I give speeches, I work without text and without notes. Partly due to habit, partly due to dyslexia, it is just easier for me to think in advance about what I want to say and then just let ‘er rip once I get there. 

So I’m thankful for one of the audience members for capturing this nugget from my presentation. I was referencing a recent study ther found the girls who observed their dads washing dishes were ultimately more successful than their peers who did not. 

And special thanks to Ethan Demme from Demme Learning for capturing the photo. 

(Also posted on the Dadprovement blog.)



A Failure to CCSS Communicate?

Eduflack assessment, CCSS, Parents, polls

The Eduflack family lives in a PARCC state. For months, we have heard from our school district about preparing for the upcoming PARCC assessment. This has been a particularly “interesting” time for our house, as it will be the first time one of the edu-kiddos is slated to take a state exam.

In recent weeks, the talk shifted to the edu-son and his plans to take two rounds of PARCC tests this spring. The first will begin in just a few short weeks, and will run through much of March. The second round will come a month or so after completing the first round.

When dear ol’ Eduflack inquired about why the two rounds for a third-grader, he got the most curious of answers. Yes, I am aware that the PARCC test is intended to be offered in two parts, the first being the performance-based component and the second being the end-of-year component. As I understand it, it is two parts to the same exam. Part one looks at “critical-thinking, reasoning and application skills through extended tasks such as reading an excerpt from a book and writing about it.” Part two is designed to “measure concepts and skills.”

But that wasn’t the explanation we received, and I’m guessing it isn’t what our district is telling other parents who may not know better. Instead, the line was “PARCC is both a formative and summative test, so we offer the formative in March and then the summative in late April.”

Granted, I’m no psychometrician, but I’m not quite sure that’s how formative and summative assessments are supposed to work, at least not in the primary grades. And if it is, I don’t see how any schools or classes are going to show student learning outcome gains on a summative test just a few weeks after benchmarking with the formative.

And it should be no surprise that, as we have these confusions on assessment types, that the state teachers’ union is running TV spots on how horrible testing is and how there is nothing a test can tell a parent that a teacher can’t already relay.

To borrow from Cool Hand Luke, what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported on significant parent misperceptions about Common Core State Standards, particularly with regard to the content and subjects covered by the standards. But we have also seen a major assault against the standards because of the tests, with attacks coming on amount of testing time, stress of the test, technology issues, and all points in between. And it is the assault on assessment that has really chipped away at CCSS over the past several years.

Today’s example is just another one of how misperceptions–or lack of understanding–continue to hurt what are intended to be standard instructional guidelines in English and math. It gives one more thing to blame CCSS for, and one more reason to buy into the “over tested, over stressed” argument.

Instead, we should be taking opportunities to educate parents (and teachers and policymakers and just about everyone) on the different types of tests. What are the benefits of a formative assessment versus an interim versus a summative? How are they different? How can we tell when any one of the three is of high quality (as PARCC seems to be) and how can we decide when a test is just crap? And how do we ensure teachers and parents get test data in quick turnaround so it can be used to improve the teaching and learning process?

Until we address these types of questions, it will remain open season on testing in general, and CCSS assessments in particular. And until we ensure high-quality assessments focused on student learning, real efforts to improve public schools and ensure students are college and career ready will struggle to gain the hold they need to succeed.

Engagin’ in Austin

Eduflack Dadprovement, Parents

We’ve talked about SXSWedu in this space before. It is part Woodstock, part prom for all of those who spend their waking hours thinking about education issues and how technology and innovation and social change can influence what is happening at our educational institutions.

Well, I’m thrilled to announce that Eduflack will be speaking at this year’s SXSWedu conference in Austin in March. On Tuesday, March 10, I’ll be leading a solo session on the importance of parental engagement. More specifically, my Forget Leaning In, We Need to Dadprove session looks at how we “need to inspire a generation of men to realize what they can and should do as dads, being active in their children’s lives and involved in their learning processes.”

The presentation will be based on my Dadprovement book, which examined the topic from about as personal a perspective as possible, me and my own family.

We’ve all heard the stories. Women are told they can’t have it all, so they need to “lean in,” and all but forget about families if they want to be successes. Men pretend they have both, but largely go through the motions on the home front (or on forums like Facebook” to appear like the ideal. And what happens when a father falls from a high-profile position? He inevitably announces he is departing for “family reasons,” until we can regroup and get back on that career ladder.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. And it shouldn’t. When we talk achievement gaps and student learning outcomes and college/career ready and our hopes and dreams for our kids, we can only help our children achieve it when we are all truly active and engaged parents. We need to be active, invested participants in the process, recognizing that parenthood is the most important job we will have, or at least the job with the greatest potential impact.

If you’re down in Austin for SXSWedu, be sure to check out my session. I’m the solo act for the 1:10 slot that Tuesday. You’ll never forgive yourself if you miss it. (and I’ll even have some free books for those who check it out)

Continuing to Challenge the Reading Instruction Status Quo

Eduflack NEA, Parents, reading, Reading First, SBRR

As some may know, in 2005 Eduflack was part of a team that was asked to put together a book to help parents and teachers better understand scientifically based reading instruction. This came out of my work with the National Reading Panel, which looked at decades worth of research to determine the best ways to teach young children (those in kindergarten through third grade) how to read and how to read at grade level.

A lot has changed since 2005, both in education in general and with regard to literacy and reading instruction specifically. But the guidance SBRR provides hasn’t changed. We still know what works. We still know what is most effective for teaching kids – particularly those from historically disadvantaged backgrounds – to read. We still know if a child isn’t reading at grade level by the end of third grade, learning in the later grades just becomes harder and harder.

But since Why Kids Can’t Read originally came out, we’ve had knock-down, drag-out fights on everything from Race to the Top to teacher evaluations to new ELA standards under the Common Core. While these debates have garnered all the headlines, they haven’t diminished the importance of doing what works when it comes to teaching literacy skills. And they certainly haven’t reduced the importance of parents in the teaching and learning process.

That’s why I am so excited to announce that Why Kids Can’t Read: Continuing to Challenge the Status Quo in Education, from Rowman & LIttlefield, is now available to help teachers and parents navigate this important subject matter. Done in collaboration with my co-editors Reid Lyon and Phyllis Blaunstein, Why Kids Can’t Read offers personal stories from parents and educators on how they have “beaten the odds” when it comes to teaching kids to read. It also provides a deep understanding of what the research says AND how parents and teachers can use the research to ensure each and every classroom is doing what works when it comes to literacy instruction.

Contributing authors include Teresa Ankney, Diane Lyon, Phyllis Blaunstein, Norma Garza, Marion Joseph, Richard Long, Reid Lyon, Sara Porter, Benjamin Sayeski, Bennett Shaywitz, Sally Shaywitz, and yours truly. It also offers a foreword from Carol Hampton Rasco, the president and CEO of Reading Is Fundamental, and a preface from former U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley.

For those parents with struggling readers at home, it is worth a look. For those seeking a refresher on SBRR, it is work a read. And for those looking for inspiration from parents and educators who are doing extraordinary things, it won’t disappoint.

Of course, I’m biased. As the lead editor, a contributing author, and the father of a struggling reader, this book is quite personal to me. But it should be personal to all of us. We should want every kid reading. We should demand every fourth grade reading at grade level. And we should never make excuses for so many children – particularly kids of color – struggling with reading.

Why Kids Can’t Read is really a story of empowerment, helping parents take an active, positive role in their children’s educational journey. As Bob Chase, a past president of the National Education Association said about the book, “Parents and teachers working together can be an unstoppable force in solving our children’s reading problems. This book will guide all who strive for a nation of readers.”

Couldn’t say it any better myself.

why kids cxant

Parents, School Choice, and More Data Points

Eduflack charter schools, Parents

Parents and school choice. School choice and parents. As the public discussions on charter schools specifically and school choice in general continue to plow forward, there is more and more focus on the role of parents in the process.

This week, the Center on Reinventing Public Education released a new report, How Parents Experience School Choice, that surveyed parents in Baltimore, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. Families in these strong charter cities were queried on their experiences in exercising parental choice when it came to their kids’ schools.

So what, exactly, did CRPE find? Among the toplines from 4,000 parent interviews:

  • In seven of the eight communities, half or more parents chose a non-neighborhood-based schools. In New Orleans, that number rose to 87 percent. In Indy, it dropped to 35 percent.
  • Parental views on the public schools differed greatly, with 60 percent of Denver parents saying they had good public school options available to them, while only 40 percent of Philly parents had the same perspective.
  • In Denver, NoLa, and DC, where choice is growing, more than half of parents said their cities’ schools were getting better. The high-water mark was in DC, where 65 percent of parents reported improvement.
  • While we often hear parents choose charters first and foremost because they are safer, 80 percent of DC parents and 79 percent of New Orleans parents said they chose a school because of academics, choosing over safety or location.
  • Choice isn’t easy. The survey found parents with less education, minority parents, and parents of children with special needs are more likely to have difficulty navigating choice. In DC, African-American and Latino parents were less optimistic about options than their white counterparts. In Baltimore, special ed families were far more likely to report problems finding the proper school than those without special needs.
  • And what does all this tell us? Out of the shoot, we can see this is a far more complicated issue than we may think it is. Even in cities with a history of strong choice and a number of school options, there is no clear path. For every parent choosing academics, there is likely one choosing safety and convenience. For every city saying choice is needed, there may also be a view that traditional public schools are improving.

And for all of the marketing that has gone into selling choice as the magic elixir that heals all in urban public education, parent perception hasn’t caught up to the sales pitch. There may be long wait lists for charters, but the reasons for such lists aren’t as crystal clear as some would like us to believe.

In battles over school choice and charters, proponents often try to make this a fight of statistics, believing they have the facts and figures to demonstrate that school choice is the only choice. But in reading between the lines of this data, we can also see that there is a whole lot of heart in this issue. Parents make choices for very emotional reasons. And those reasons may not be quantified on an Excel sheet or in a sales brochure.

Regardless, we need more data like this from CRPE. Data that forces us to look longer, examine deeper, and question more often.

Maybe Math is Hard

Eduflack 21CS, CCSS, Math, Parents

We often hear the parent horror stories about the homework their children are sent home with. The backpacks packed with books that force kids to tip over. The assignments that require advanced degrees to complete. The hours of work for the youngest of kids.

The stories have gotten worse with the introduction of Common Core State Standards. Now we have parents posting ridiculous student assignments (usually on the math side of the learning equation), blaming Common Core for forcing their kids to focus on everything from the ridiculous to sublime.

Eduflack usually writes off such rantings. Common Core, after all, is all about the standards. Good districts and good schools leave it to the teachers to determine the best ways to actually instruct our kids. And those who complain about the state of homework reflect nostalgically on their own childhoods, forgetting that we all had some pretty bad years and some pretty horrific assignments in the good ol’ days.

And then I saw the homework assignment my second grader brought home this week. Less than a week into the new school year. In a district known as one of the best school districts in the high-achieving state of New Jersey. I get home from work to find my little princesa frustrated with the math assignment of the day.

How hard can second-grade math be, I foolishly think? I take off my suit and tie, change into the fatherly uniform of shorts and a t-shirt and sit down to help my emerging learner.

I find a photocopied sheet of paper that is practically blank. The math assignment has two sentences typed across the top of the page. The remainder of the 8 1/2 by 11″ harbinger of doom is blank. Plenty of room to show your work.

What were those two sentences? How hard could it possibly be to follow such short directions?

The bolded sentence read, “What is mathematics? Use words or pictures to provide your answer.”

Wahhhh?

When did my lovely second grader transform into Euclid or Archimedes?

When did second-grade arithmetic become a Greek philosophy course?

I know I’ve seen more than my share of Big Bang Theory. I remember the episode when Sheldon explains the meaning  and roots of physics. But I seemed to miss the episode explaining the universal meaning of mathematics.

And as someone who once actually studied calculus and took college statistics, I can honestly say this was the first time in my 41-plus years I’ve ever been asked for the meaning of math.

So I did what any caring father did. I faked it. I pulled out of my daughter an answer that I felt would suffice. To her, math was numbers. We through in a some plus, minus, and equal signs as well. She even went on to note how she needed numbers to enter the password on her iPod, to work the TV remote, and to tell time.

I considered the assignment done at that point. She read for 20 minutes, and then I let her go outside to ride her bike until it got dark. The edu-wife thought I should have pulled more meaning out of the edu-princesa for the assignment. But she isn’t even seven years old yet. How much meaning does math truly have for a six-year old?

I refuse to chalk this up to Common Core. Nowhere in the standards do I remember seeing the philosophical implications of math. But it does make me wonder about how we translate what kids are expected to learn into what is actually taught.

I wonder if maybe that mid-1990s Barbie doll is right. Maybe math is hard. 

And I wonder how Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein would answer the question. Or if there is even a right/wrong answer here. Or how many more times will I be stymied by elementary school homework.  

The Ineffectiveness of Spokes-Celebrities

Eduflack Media, Parents, PR

If you’ve been in education advocacy or public engagement long enough, odds are you’ve had this conversation many times.

The discussion starts off with a question. How do we get (parents, teachers, leaders, anyone) to notice what we are doing? How do we really change minds?

Then someone offers up this “golden” solution. We need a celebrity to speak on our behalf. Like Bill Cosby. Or Oprah. Or … who’s that person?

And you venture down that rabbit hole to discuss those spokes-celebrities who could take on your cause. Someone respected. Someone known. Someone you don’t need to worry about being on TMZ in a month. And you usually someone somebody else knows through a friend of a college friend.

If you are lucky, the conversation ends there. If not, you spend weeks trying to get in touch with agents or friends of friends or their accountant’s college roommate’s cousin. Soon, you are back to the drawing board. No spokes-celebrity and just an advocacy effort that must rise or fall on its merits, on the strength of its evidence, and on your ability to convince folks its the right thing to do.

Why is this important? Last week, the Belfast Telegraph ran an article telling us the truth we choose to ignore. Celebrities are not effective in truly representinf non-profits and rallying the public to a cause.

This should really come as no surprise. When the special education movement had its most significant impact, it was because of grassroots efforts, not celebrities. You didn’t see movie stars touting NCLB, and you certainly don’t see pop stars or pseudo-celebs changing any minds when it comes to Common Core, either for or against.

And even while Campbell Brown is raising hackles over teacher tenure or Eduflack’s often cited doppelgänger Louis CK is harping on tests, they aren’t increasing public awareness or converting the unconverted. No, they are preaching to choirs and inspiring the opposition.

So before you go down the spokes-celebrity path, take the time and money and invest in some quality research. Or a solid public engagement campaign. Or a way to better translate complex education data to busy parents. Or even a way to get parents better involved, in a positive way, in their kids’ educations.

Unless you happen to be offering Katy Perry or Salma Hayek or or Gabriele Union or Tina Fey as your spokes-celebrity. Then I’m all for it, and Eduflack will be right there to help you out.

“Why is a 40 Year Old Lady Reading Dadprovement?”

Eduflack Dadprovement, Media, Parents

Over at my Dadprovement blog, I have a post of a recent review for my new book. Just wanted to share:

I am moved every time I hear from folks who tell me how much they enjoyed Dadprovement, how much they learned from it, or how surprising the story was.

I was particularly taken by a blog post Amber Chandler posted on her blog today.

In her post entitled, So why is a 40 year old lady reading Dadprovement?, Amber not only highlighted our family story of infertility, adoption, job loss, and gastric bypass surgery, but she keyed in on part of the tale I particularly enjoy:

ADMIT IT. YOU’RE PROBABLY JUST LIKE ME. EVER READ THOSE FACEBOOK POSTS AND THINK, “CRAP. I THINK I PICKED THE WRONG CAREER (LOCATION, VACATION, SPOUSE, FRIENDS, ETC)”? I THINK POP CULTURE HAS PRETTY MUCH ADMITTED, EVEN TO ITSELF, THAT FB STATUSES AREN’T REAL IN AN AUTHENTIC WAY; HOWEVER, THE FACTS REMAIN, YOU CAN’T POST THE PICTURE OF YOUR BRAND NEW BMW IF YOU DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE ONE. SOME THINGS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. PICTURES FROM THE CARIBBEAN–WITH YOU IN THEM–DO GIVE A PRETTY LOUD SHOUT OUT.

PATRICK RICCARDS, WELL-KNOWN FOR HIS AWARD-WINNING BLOG EDUFLACK, HAS WRITEEN DADPROVEMENT, A BOOK THAT AT FIRST GLANCE MIGHT NOT “APPLY” TO ME. I HAVE TWO CHILDREN OF MY OWN, AND MOTHERHOOD IS PLENTY FOR ME TO CONTEMPLATE. THOUGH FOCUSED IN LARGE WAYS ON HIS JOURNEY TO ADOPT HIS CHILDREN, IT GETS TO THE CORE OF THE VERY 1ST WORLD PROBLEM OF “WHAT AM I GOING TO BE WHEN I GROW UP” AND “WHAT WILL EVERYONE THINK OF ME?” IF YOU LIVE IN AMERICA, AND ARE TAKING TIME TO READ A BLOG, I’M PRETTY CONVINCED YOU’D KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HE MEANS.

Thank you, Amber, for the kind words. And for your commitment as a teacher and edu-twitterer.