SBRR

The Perfect and the Good

Eduflack accountability, Arne Duncan, ESEA, NCLB, RTT, SBRR, Spellings, teachers

For much of the last week, Eduflack has been down in New Orleans, living the edu-life.  First stop was the Education Writers Association (EWA), followed by a multi-day play at the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

(As an aside, EWA has to be my favorite conference of the year.  I have to attend A LOT of education events each year, and I thoroughly enjoy EWA.  It is a fantastic opportunity for me to get to know a lot of the reporters and bloggers I know virtually, and I always get a kick when some of the associates consider me a “journalist” because of this little blog.)
At any rate, there was clearly a catch phrase at EWA this year from the policymakers and talking heads trying to influence reporter-think.  “Let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”  While I would argue that none of us in attendance are exactly a 21st century Voltaire, it was an interesting observation heard over multiple days.
EdSec Arne Duncan used it in reference to ESEA reauthorization.  Again stating his belief that we will have reauth done before the start of the school year (and more importantly, noting that we NEED to have it done be by the end of the summer), Duncan made clear that ESEA won’t be perfect (he didn’t quite make Margaret Spellings’ 99.94% pure remarks).  But real improvements must be made to the current law.  We know what those improvements are.  We have some agreement on those improvements.  So let’s move forward now down the good path, knowing ESEA will never be perfect for all comers.
The battle between the perfect and the good was also made with regard to teachers and value-added evaluation.  In discussing the great siege on Los Angeles teachers in 2010 (the LA Times is releasing version two of its teacher database in the next week or two) and similar pending efforts in NYC, the general sense was that revealing such data is a “good thing,” albeit an imperfect thing. 
And similar remarks made testing and assessment blush, particularly on issues like common standards and adequately and fairly measuring student achievement across the nation and around the world.
It is all a subtle shift in rhetoric, but an important one for the school improvement debate.  For about a decade now, we were certain in what we needed to do.  NCLB was perfect (or 99.94% so).  RF was perfect.  SBR was perfect.  AYP was perfect.  And even now, CCSSI is perfect.  But with all of this perfection, we’ve seen little growth in student achievement and little agreement on the paths we should head, the speed we should take, and the ultimate destination we should seek.
So now we are focusing on common sense progress.  What incremental steps can we take?  What promising practices can we follow?  What gets us half of the way forward?  Instead of throwing that Hail Mary we’ve all sought in education for decades, we have made the decided shift to a “three yards and a cloud of dust” approach lately.  (Sorry, Mr. Duncan, they can’t all be basketball metaphors.)
Such a rhetorical adjustment has both its pluses and its negatives.  It is harder for the opposition to remain strong when they aren’t fighting an “all or nothing” approach.  It is more difficult to stand against forward progress, even if it is slow.  But it is also more difficult rally strong support.  For supporters, who wants to go slow or compromise or wait patiently?
Will the education community’s embrace of Voltaire win the day?  The challenge EdSec Duncan and his supporters in the ed space have is a matter of priority.  Championing the good is a fine strategy if we can identity primary and secondary needs at this point.  But with ESEA, a range of funding issues from RttT to SIG, common core standards, revisions to AYP, teacher performance and incentive issues, and a host of other topics, something has to give.  In the pursuit of the good, we have to recognize that even good can be subjective.  We’ll never be perfect, but we still need to determine those one or two issues on which we can be really good this year.
  

It’s Common Core-tastic!?

Eduflack accountability, assessment, ESEA, national standards, NCLB, Reading First, SBRR

As the great Yogi Berra is reported as saying, it’s like deja vu all over again!  

This past weekend, dear ol’ Eduflack was out in San Francisco for the ASCD Annual Conference.  On Saturday, I had the privilege of addressing more than 100 folks who came out on a monsoon-like Saturday morning to learn more about how to build, execute, and measure a successful public engagement campaign in the education space.  A good time, I hope, was had by all.
After the conclusion of that merriment, Eduflack wandered over to the exhibit hall to see what companies, non-profits, IHEs, and government agencies thought ASCD attendees would be most interested in.  It was a full hall, comprised of many of the same organizations that make the rounds during the spring education conferences.
But the one thing that caught my eye was how many booths and vendors bore the supposed blessing of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.  We had “Common Core approved” and “Common Core certified.”  For those not quite willing to go out on the limb, we had even had quite a few “Common Core aligned.”  The label could be found on curriculum and supplemental materials, professional development and assessment tools.  It seemed to be applicable for everything short of the tote bags and candy giveaways.
Yes, I realize that most states have signed onto Common Core and are currently in the process figuring out how to move that adoption to implementation.  Yes, I realize the embrace of Common Core was a requirement of Race to the Top and is likely to play a role in ESEA reauthorization.  And yes, I realize the importance of having a one national yardstick by which we measure all U.S. students.
But we also have to be clear here.  States are adopting relatively general standards in just two subject areas.  We have no curriculum to go with those standards yet.  We have no tests to go with the standards yet.  We have no textbooks or workbooks or cookbooks that go with those standards yet.  in fact, we don’t even have the full standards yet, as all states have the ability to add 15 percent of their own priority standards to the common ELA and math standards currently in play.
So it just seems far too premature for us to be peddling the “Common Core approved” when we still don’t know what Common Core looks like in the schools and THERE IS NO ONE TO APPROVE ANYTHING ON BEHALF OF COMMON CORE!  No one is certifying or approving on behalf of CCSSI.  At a time when states and districts are worried about Common Core (and many at ASCD were), we have vendors marketing their wares to those concerns, promising the magical elixirs that will fix everything.
And that’s where the deja vu comes into play.  It was only seven or eight years ago when we saw the exact same scene unfold around scientifically based research.  In 2002, 2003, 2004, just about anyone who was anyone at an education conference was selling an SBR-based product that was aligned with NCLB.  Didn’t matter if it was true or not, everyone was scientifically based.  Everyone had an evidence-based core.  You could talk to a dozen reading programs on conference row in 2003, and they were all SBR.  Ask them what their research was, and most handed the same document to you — the National Reading Panel report (or the NCLB legislation itself).
The problem here is that people understood the expectation (everything needed to be scientifically based) but they didn’t understand (or didn’t care) what that meant.  The type of research required under the law took four or five years to develop, and the sales cycle didn’t allow for that sort of time.  So take the NRP report, slap a focus group or two together, put together some bar graphs, and there was your research base.  Add a colorful “checklist” aligning your product with the NRP and you were really excelling.
(As an aside, perhaps my favorite vendor at ASCD this weekend was one peddling a product labeled as “scientifically researched based.”  I don’t know what scientifically research is, but I’m guessing that extra “ly” makes the research extra good.)
Here we go again.  We all saw how successful it was to sell vapor and snake oil as SBR in the last decade.  It cost us another generation of students.  It killed a potentially strong program in Reading First and wasted millions (if not billions) of dollars in the process, as we couldn’t distinguish between the real deal and the posers.  
Before we rush to reach for the Common Core label, can we just take a moment to actually digest CCSSI?  Can we let states ID their 15 percent add on?  Can we see how districts apply it to instructional expectations?  Can we see how the assessment consortia begin developing their products?  And can we see, please, if these standards actually move into the classroom or if they just hang out there as a good idea that we agree to, but don’t actually implement?
Of course, there is one difference between SBR and CCSSI.  WIth SBR, the federal government established a new pot of money, $1 billion a year under RF, to help fund the acquisition of those new SBR products and services.  With Common Core, there doesn’t appear to be any new money.  Perhaps, as districts and states are spending their own funds from existing obligations and aren’t playing with house money, that they will scrutinize their purchases a little more, ensuring they are buying the real deal.  
There are some great products and services out there that do match up well with Common Core and can help districts and schools meet their current and future obligations.  But anyone can slap a label on a product.  It is up to educators to discern the strong from the squishy.  
  

Swingin’ for the ESEA Fences

Eduflack accountability, Arne Duncan, assessment, AYP, NCLB, Online Education, RTT, SBRR

In yesterday’s initial analysis of the US Department of Education’s ESEA reauthorization blueprint, I noted I was “whelmed” by the plan as a whole.  (And for the record, I am a strong proponent of using the word whelmed.  If I can be overwhelmed and underwhelmed, I certainly can be whelmed.  It’s not like having to choose between North and South Dakota.)  Since then, I’ve received a number of questions as to why, particularly since so many people seem to see this as a strong step forward in improving No Child Left Behind.

My biggest issue with the blueprint is there is no big, stinkin’, knock-you-off your-seat big idea offered.  When we were introduced to the wonderful world of NCLB a little over nine years ago (can we all believe it has been that long?), we were immediately embraced by some huge ideas that almost immediately changed the education policy landscape.  Before the ink was even dry on the legislative drafts, we all knew what Annual Yearly Progress was (and the potential dangers it offered).  The term “scientifically based research” was quickly added to the vocabulary of wonk and practitioner alike.  And Reading First was a new program where the Administration was putting their proverbial money where their mouths were.  These were all but twinkles in Sandy’s, Margaret’s BethAnn’s, and Reid’s eyes before the reauthorization process began.

But this time around, we have no great new big idea YET.  Part of the problem is that the Duncan regime has been hard at work on ed policy for the past 14 or 15 months, moving ideas well before they moved this blueprint for ESEA reauthorization.  So what were once big ideas — Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, common core standards — are now ingrained as part of the ed reform status quo these days.  We are looking to codify that which we have debated for more than a year now.  We expected all of that in this blueprint, thus it is hardly something designed to knock us off our barstools.

The teacher quality component, which could have provided some real fodder for a sock-knocking idea, seems to be a finetuning and improving over NCLB’s Highly Qualified Teacher effort, former EdSec Margaret Spellings’ Teacher Incentive Fund, and the teacher requirements included in RttT.  Even in addressing the persistent problem with low-performing schools, this blueprint simply evolves from NCLB’s two-tiered evaluation with a new three-tiered system, as reported here by Greg Toppo.  And while that extra tier may really help at addressing those 5,000 lowest-performing schools, it hardly wins hearts and minds.

To be fair, Eduflack realizes you don’t always need some new shiny toy or a jaw-dropping new idea to move forward solid legislation.  In fact, in a perfect world, I would hope we’d never need such gimmicks.  But with short attention spans and even shorter understanding curves, one often needs that hook, that big idea, to help gain attention and start winning over the necessary converts.  When ESEA was reauthorized back in 2001 (and signed into law in early 2002), we not only gave it a new name (NCLB ), but we offered some new ideas and programs to show this was not your father’s version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Working from the existing blueprint, Eduflack sees a few potentials for both some smallball ideas as well as some bases-clearing longballs.  What am I thinking?

* Immediately include strong pieces of congressional legislation in the plan.  I’m thinking things like U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s (WA) LEARN Act focused on K-12 reading instruction, Chairman George Miller’s (CA) plan for high school improvement, or even the recent legislation offered by U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (RI) and U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (CO) establishing a federal definition for teacher professional development.

* Get personal on teacher quality.  Teacher quality is now clearly a central point of the debate, with even Obama calling out the teacher education sector for not living up to expectations.  So let’s get personal here.  As part of your data system work, ensure that we are able to track teachers (both leaders and laggards) back to their originating program, be it a college of education or an alt cert program.  Then be prepared to name names when it comes to those institutions that are not delivering the long-term results sought under the new law. 

* Invest in parents.  The day after Obama was elected, Eduflack opined that the EdSec should establish a family engagement office (at the assistant secretary level) so that the Administration could focus on the role of families in school improvement.  To date, the Administration has talked a good game.  But with the pending elimination of Parent Information Resource Center (PIRC) grants, there is a gaping hole for engaging families.  NCLB tried to do this, with mixed results.  Building off of the Obama campaign’s success in 2008 and recent activities around healthcare reform, one can build a strong, effective multi-touch effort to really involve parents and families in school turnaround and improvement efforts.

* Kill the bubble sheet.  Under ESEA reauthorization, this administration has the power to do away with the dreaded “bubble sheet test.”  Proudly proclaim that new assessments coming out of common core standards will be required to be smart computer-based exams.  Bring testing into the 21st century while allowing for a more-comprehensive assessment than can be captured by guessing which one of five bubbles may be the most correct.

* Require online learning.  I applaud the commitment to improving high schools and working to boost graduation rates.  Let’s add a little 21st century relevancy here.  Learning from states like Florida and Alabama, let’s require that, by 2020, every student in the United States must take at least one virtual course in order to graduate from high school.  Not only does it introduce more relevant coursework into the classroom, it clearly promotes that learning happens beyond what happens between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. behind the traditional schoolhouse doors.

Those are just five ideas to get the discussion started.  The legislative pieces could be endorsed by EdSec Duncan during Wednesday’s hearings.  Teacher quality could be done this summer when NCATE’s anticipated report is released.  A Family Engagement Office could be started immediately.  And killing the bubble sheet and folding virtual education into state requirements can be done now as stimulus money is used to invest in a range of ed reform ideas.  Regardless, we should be taking this opportunity to continue to move forward big, bold thoughts.  Real ed improvement can’t be limited by those ideas moved during year one.  Not to mix my sports metaphors, but this game goes at least four quarters.  We need to maximize all opportunities. 

Calling All Researchers: How Do We Use Class Time?

Eduflack Math, SBRR, Students, teachers

In our continued effort to bring additional perspectives to Eduflack’s discussion of education reform, following is a guest blog post from John Jensen, Ph.D.  We’ll be seeing a few more posts from Dr. Jensen later this week …

There are at least two good reasons for doing research about educational methods. One is for adults to decide whether or not to employ a particular strategy or condition. The other is to motivate students directly to alter what they do. If, for instance, you tell a boy playing basketball “You completed 70% of your passes today. Let’s see how you do tomorrow,” he is likely to think for the entire game about passing accurately so he gets to 80%.

By stimulating this motive, we can engage students in many ways to take objective account of themselves, teaching them communication skills, concentration, and classroom cooperation by means of specific, countable behaviors. I note several in my book (cf. below). To help adults decide what to do with classroom time, however, I’d like to suggest a study that could be valuable to your district.

First you need an idea or hunch to test out that makes theoretical sense. Your selection depends on the limitations you accept in your thinking. For a while after I discovered that the ERIC files contained over a million references, I was overwhelmed at the prospect of research. Then I discovered that it seldom influenced anyone; that instead people usually had an idea about what they wanted to do and chose the research that supported it. I surmised, maybe incorrectly, that we might just cut to the chase and do what we want to in the first place.

But to encourage rationality, I’m moved to welcome research. The fact that education has not yet been transformed despite the million pieces in ERIC hints that the field still awaits a transforming idea.

What theory do we want to test out?

We want something completely under our power and control to alter, first of all. There’s no point in studying the height and weight of our students if there’s nothing we can do about what we find; or their parentage or race or a myriad of other characteristics of students, teachers, and the situation. We want something that we can vary due to the data we get, so we look carefully at our own options, our flexibility of response..

One thing we can vary is our use of classroom time. We can specify so many minutes for this and this, alter the numbers, and see what happens to our results. If more of this and less of that shows different results in learning, then we’d like to be able to tell that to our teachers because, come Monday, they might shift gears that way.

The study I’d like to propose first is about the amount of time students spend recalling what they learn. The outcome can lead directly to something controllable, a specific use of time, this over that. And the conduct of the study can be objective and fair, measured with minutes spent and tallied.

And the theory? Making it a good candidate for a study is a core understanding about skill development: practice makes perfect. And practicing knowledge essentially means calling it up and expressing it. I was impressed many years ago when undergoing training as an ROTC officer. One class concerned how to train recruits in skills they needed. Our instructor passed on to us a statistic developed by the military’s long experience. To train someone in any skill, he said, spend 5% of the time explaining, 10% demonstrating, and 85% practicing. Applying this to a classroom, one uses about five times as much time practicing what’s presented as time spent presenting it. This fit with a report I encountered back in the 1960s in which researchers investigated the uses of time in the classroom leading to the most permanent learning. Their finding was that the most effective means was the effort to recall used with between 40% and 80% of class time. .

Despite the long-established effect of practice (top performers in any field practice more), there appears to have been a decision made decades ago by the teaching profession to avoid it. Its role instead was to present knowledge and it was up to students–if they were so motivated–to practice and learn it through completing the homework assigned (an assumption that has not proven out). Teachers were led to believe that class time was so limited that they could not allocate any significant portion of it just to deepening students’ learning.

So how could you set up a study about practice during class time? A district with two or more of any kind of school could do it this way: Select one school for the study and another with matching characteristics as a control. Pair up classrooms with comparable results, teacher competence, and teaching methods by subject and grade.

Reading. Students in the study school spend half the allotted time explaining to a partner what they just read (a quarter of the total time for each partner), and connecting it to everything they read before. In the control school, all the time is just for reading.

Math. Students in the study school spend 1/3 of the time per hour listening to the teacher explain ideas or reading in order to input definitions, formulas, and explanations; and 2/3 of the time explaining to a partner what they gathered. In the control school, teachers use their customary methods.

Social studies: Students in the study school read or listen to lectures or media presentations and take notes on them in question and answer form for 1/3 of the available time. For 2/3 of the time they ask and answer the questions with each other. In the control school, teachers use their customary methods.

If teachers experience discipline problems and object that they cannot hold their students to specified times at anything, this simply stretches the spectrum of results. Provide all teachers with a kitchen timer and ask them to track to the second the key variable, the amount of time students do spend explaining their learning to a partner. My prediction is that a correlation will hold along the entire spectrum–the less practice time, the less learning.

The district staff may want to assess many outcomes, but the primary one should be the sheer retention of learning. A valid way to do this is, at the end of the study period, with no preparation nor forewarning, to make a single request of students about each subject–reading, math, and social studies: Write down all you can remember about the subject that you have learned since the beginning of the study.

What you will get is a direct report of the conscious, usable knowledge students possess (distinct from their passive knowledge dependent on someone else asking them a question or giving them hints). It can be quantified by (e.g.) their number of lines of writing, the time it takes them to write it, and (if you want to be more particular) the number of points of knowledge their writing contains. A point of knowledge here is a question answered at the level one would put it on a test, essentially one sentence of independent knowledge. The only caveat is to apply the same measure to both the control and study schools.

After such a study, the district should be able to tell its teachers “If you adopt the 1/3-2/3 method, you’ll increase student learning by 50%“ or some such figure. I’m optimistic here, since students retain almost no proactive knowledge without the practice and typically rely on forewarning so they can cram.

If you want to nudge your district in this direction, please let me know. We need more empirical thought in education, and the ERIC database is working on its second million.

(John Jensen is a licensed clini
cal .psychologist and author of The Silver Bullet Easy Learning System: How to Change Classrooms Fast and Energize Students for Success (Xlibris, 2008), which he will email without charge as an ebook to anyone requesting it. He invites comments sent directly to him at jjensen@gci.net.  The opinions are strictly Dr. Jensen’s.)

Reading Gaining Speed as Fed Priority?

Eduflack Achievement gap, AYP, high-stakes testing, NAEP, Reading First, SBRR

With all of the talk about RttT, school turnarounds, and the like, we haven’t spent much time at all talking about core instructional issues.  As many schools continue to struggle reaching AYP and demonstrating the sort of student achievement we all expect (and that the federal law still demands), we just haven’t been focusing on the curricular foundations that help us get to our intended destination.  This is particularly true of reading instruction, which has been a red-headed stepchild in federal education policy for the past few years (ever since Congress defunded the Reading First program short of its intended completion date).

For the past year, those in DC who pay attention to reading instruction issues have been hearing grumblings about the next generations of Reading First, a new federal policy that would provide comprehensive reading instruction across grades kindergarten through 12.  We’ve seen working drafts circulated about town talking about a more “comprehensive” approach to reading, a greater emphasis on teaching techniques (and less so on instructional materials), and the possibility of a new definition of “scientifically based,” the one term that came to define RF, for good or bad.
But all has been quiet on the reading front for the past six months or so.  The closest we’ve gotten to talk about reading has been discussions of common core standards.  But after six years of making reading instruction in the elementary grades priority number one in school improvement, we’ve all but forgotten about reading.  (OK, most have forgotten.  Some of us have continued to tilt at windmills in search RF, the next generation.)
Now we finally have our answer.  Yesterday, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (WA) introduced the Literacy Education for All, Results for the Nation Act, or LEARN.  The bill summary looks remarkably similar to the working drafts being circulated around town earlier this year by folks like the Alliance for Excellent Education, the International Reading Association and others.  Among LEARN’s highlights:
* $2.35 billion in total funding for K-12 literacy instruction, with at least 10 percent going to early childhood education, 40 percent going to K-5 (RF’s sweet spot), and at least 40 percent going to grades 6-12.
* A new rigorous national evaluation of the programs being funded through LEARN (with a particular note of “stringent conflict of interest restrictions for the program’s peer review process,” a direct response to IG investigation into RF)
* A focus on state-based literacy programs (again similar to RF), focusing on leadership teams, a state literacy plan, subgrants to LEAs, focus on struggling schools, and attention to pre-service literacy instruction.  Interestingly, LEARN also includes language to help fund those districts doing well in reading, so they can continue improvements.
The bill summary offered by Senator Murray’s office also sets forward four key goals.  LEARN is intended to “support the creation of local high-quality literacy programs in schools by:

a) providing high-quality professional development for instructional staff that is job-embedded, ongoing, and research-based, providing teachers with expertise in literacy instruction appropriate to specific grade levels, analyzing data to improve student learning, and effective implementation of literacy instruction strategies; 
b) providing students with explicit, systematic, and developmentally appropriate instruction in reading and writing, including but not limited to vocabulary development, phonemic awareness, 
reading comprehension, and the use of diverse texts; 
c) utilizing diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments to inform and improve instruction and student learning at all age levels; and 
d) supporting schoolwide literacy programs and additional literacy supports to address the specific learning needs of struggling readers and writers, including English language learners and students with disabilities.” 


A similar bill is expected to be offered in the U.S. House of Representatives.  RIght now, LEARN is slated to move forward as an independent piece of legislation, not attached as part of ESEA reauthorization or any other similar bill.  Of course, if ESEA reauth does move quickly early next year (a hope Eduflack is quickly losing confidence in) it could easily be rolled into the larger bill.
So what are we to make of all this?  There is much good here, and much still to be determined, including:
* LEARN re-declares a federal commitment to reading instruction, putting billions more into supporting the advances made by many states and school districts under RF;
* It extends our commitment to reading beyond the previous grades K-4 to K-12, ensuring that all of those children who benefited from RF investments in recent years are now seeing similar commitments in middle and high school;
* It recognizes that reading instruction in those middle and secondary grades is essential to our national goals around high school graduation and college-going, and emphasizes that literacy instruction must continue throughout one’s academic career;
LEARN continues to emphasize the importance of professional development, an often overlooked piece of RF (where the law called for up to 25 percent of RF’s $6 billion be directed to PD and teacher training);
* It actually doubles down on the importance of professional development by specifically focusing on the pre-service needs of preparing teachers to teach reading; and
* It continues our emphasis on explicit, systematic, and developmentally appropriate instruction in reading.
And what remains TBD here?
* First and foremost, the money.  RF focused $6 billion on the elementary grades, and many are still questioning the effectiveness of the program and its impact.  As we expand the program to include early childhood education (likely swallowing what was Early Reading First), elementary grades (the old Reading First), and middle and high school grades (currently funded by the meager Struggling Readers program), we are now doing for more in federal reading instruction with significantly less money.  Does the proposed funding get the job done, or does it merely set things in motion, leaving it to SEAs and LEAs to find new funds to enact the comprehensive reading efforts needed.  It is frightening to say, but $2.35 billion, particularly if distributed K-12 to all 50 states, likely won’t be enough.
* It talks about instruction beyond vocabulary and phonemic awareness, but doesn’t specify a specific definition.  Some will read this as a repudiation of RF.  Others can see it as a continuation of those priorities, where phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension were the intended foci.  Both sides in the reading wars will be fighting to “redefine” what LEARN’s instruction is intended to focus on.
* It calls for diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments at all age levels.  An essential piece to education reform in the current era, without doubt.  But do we have such tests?  RF was limited by state assessments in grades 3-8, yes.  But after spending the past decade in the so-called “high stakes testing” era, do we have research-based, accepted diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments that can be used immediately in grades k-12?  Or a better question, do we have such assessments that all parties will agree on and use correctly?
* While there is mention of “research-based,” how will that be defined?  Clearly, the previous SBRR definition is going to be rewritten.  So how do we capture “research-based,” and how do we do it so that it means something, and isn’t merely a consensus definition that is acceptable by all, but loved by none?
* While I understand the reasons behind it, can we successfully use LEARN money to both raise reading achievement in struggling schools while incentivizing high-performing schools to continue their investment in results-based reading instruction?
* Most importantly, what are the intended outcomes?  If all of the points identified in Murray’s summary of LEARN are followed and followed with fidelity, what should we expect to see at the end of three or four years?
These are all questions that Murray and other legislators will be able to answer in the coming months as LEARN moves through the process.  Regardless, LEARN is a good next step for our federal reading instruction efforts.  Will make RF advocates happy?  No.  Will it satisfy RF critics?  Based on the summary, absolutely not.  But it may just have the right combination to continue to improve the acquisition of reading skills among students in grades K-12, while continuing to equip all teachers with the literacy instruction skills they need to lead a successful classroom.  It continues to focus on doing what works in the classroom, pursuing paths that are supported by the research and demonstrate effectiveness.  And it recognizes that school and student success hinges on a child’s ability to read at grade level, regardless of what grade they are in.
In an era where nearly two-thirds of all of our nation’s eighth graders are unable to score proficient or better on the eighth grade reading NAEP, LEARN is clearly much needed legislation.  Here’s hoping it doesn’t get lost in the push for Racing, Innovation, and such.  This is too important an issue not to be at center stage for school improvement efforts.

“A Time to Act”

Eduflack Achievement gap, Reading First, SBRR

This morning, the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy releases its much-anticipated “Time to Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Success.”  For those who have been playing in the literacy game for the past decade or two, we know it has been a game played primarily on the elementary school playgrounds.  Get a student reading proficient by fourth grade, and we have success.  If they don’t make the cut, we hope they will catch up in the later grades, when there are more demands on their literacy skills and less time spent specifically focusing on reading proficiency (particularly reading comprehension, the Holy Grail of reading instruction).  The full report can be found here.

We like talking about teaching young children to read.  But we find it incredibly difficult to wrap our hands around once they hit those ‘tween years.  Other than the Alliance for Excellent Education’s Reading Next report, few have focused on the issue of adolescent literacy.  And even fewer have done it with the passion and pointedness that Carnegie has now done.
Back in the winter, President Obama pledged that the United States would have the highest percentage of college graduates by the year 2020.  We’ve sold virtually every student on the promise that a postsecondary degree equals career success.  School districts across the nation have enacted reform plans to improve high school graduation rates, moving more and more kids to college.  But it is all meaningless if those high school grads don’t possess the learning skills necessary to succeed.  Those students who struggle for reading proficiency in fourth grade rarely find that magic elixir in middle or high school.  They don’t catch up, literacy wise, they fall further and further behind.  And then we wonder why half of those going on to college have to take remedial reading or math courses just to keep up in college-level courses.
Nationally, the statistics haven’t been pretty.  According to NAEP scores, 8th and 12th grade reading proficiency has remained relatively stagnant for decades now.  And they are stagnated on numbers that aren’t very pretty, particularly for historically disadvantaged students.  Clearly, the status quo won’t hold if we are to live up to the promises of college graduation, innovation, races to the top, and opportunity for all.
In Time to Act, Carnegie lays out clear action steps for educators and school leaders to take if they are to improve adolescent literacy and ensure that their students are indeed prepared for college-level work.  But in this era of education reform and intervention, perhaps the most interesting recommendations are the challenges that Carnegie puts forward for federal and state policymakers.
For federal policymakers, the first order of business is to get their hands dirty and get involved in adolescent literacy instruction.  To help them prioritize, Carnegie offers the following reccs: 1) increase Title I support for middle and high schools; 2) adopt the common standards we’ve all be talking about; 3) look at linking NAEP to international literacy tests like PISA and PIRLS; 4) develop middle and high school literacy demonstration sites in high-poverty areas; 5) support states in the development of P-12 literacy plans; 6) develop early warning systems for middle school students; 7) increase funding for the National Writing Project and Struggling Readers program; and 8) increase funding for adolescent literacy research.
Those at the state level aren’t spared any responsibility.  The charge to state leaders includes: 1) aligning state reading standards to other national and international benchmarks, including NAEP; 2) revise teacher certification and professional development standards; 3) define and provide the means for districts to identify and intervene when they see struggling readers; 4) require credit-bearing reading intervention classes for students who are two or more years behind grade level; 5) build the right statewide data systems that will collect comprehensive P-12 literacy data; 6) track RTI efforts; and 7) institutionalize those adolescent reading efforts that have been piloted in recent years.
For some, these federal and state recommendations may seem common sense.  But sometimes (or most of the time) we have to remind ourselves of what we know and why we know it.  Carnegie has done just that, synthesizing the data and providing a clear path to stakeholders as to how we can improve reading proficiency among middle and high school students.  This isn’t just an effort to take what we know about K-4 literacy and applying those lessons to middle and secondary schools.  Carnegie offers a real look at the adolescent literacy field.  And they do so at just the right time.
In all of our zeal and concern over Race to the Top, the soon-to-be-revealed Investing in Innovation Fund, and core standards, we seem to have forgotten that there is a new reading instruction bill circulating around Capitol Hill.  Building off the successes of Reading First, this new bill (Yes, We Can Read, if you will) is being developed to place a far greater emphasis on both adolescent literacy and teacher training and PD in reading instruction.  Couple that with current ED activities around standards and data systems, and we can see how close we can get to Carnegie’s vision for advancing adolescent literacy.  This think piece has a real chance of becoming an actual action statement.  
That would be a real accomplishment, particularly in this environment.  If Carnegie and its advocates can find a way to keep the Time to Act drum beating well beyond today’s report release, we could actually see this research transformed into policy.  It offers a strong enhancement to the current draft of the reading bill, while offering specific action steps that are both realistic and cost-manageable.  Now all they need is a drummer … or an entire corps.

Reading First, Last, and Forever

Eduflack AYP, IES, NAEP, Reading First, SBRR, stimulus

Sometimes, it is just tiring being Eduflack, particularly when it comes to the area of reading instruction.  Time and again, I’ve pledged that I’ve written my last post on Reading First.  Between the IES study and Congress’ dismissal, RF has been written off for dead more times than a cat on her ninth life.  It seems the final nail in the coffin has been hammered time and again over the last year or two.

But then along come a series of actions that just make you see that while the Reading First brand may be dead and buried, its impact and its infrastructure are not going anywhere.  The bright spot is Understanding Reading First, a new white paper from MDRC.  The piece is worth a quick read.  No, there is no groundbreaking data or unread news in the document.  But it is a strong summation of RF, its foundations, and some of the results.
And read in the current context, it also shows that scientifically based reading research may indeed have a longer shelf life than any of us, including those stalwart supporters, ever thought was possible.  Thanks to the economic stimulus money in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, states and school districts are now discovering they can use their newfound education riches to extend RF-based programs for another year or two.  In fact, some could say the spending on reading coaches, scientifically based instructional materials, and professional development for reading teachers is exactly what ARRA is intended for.
Then we have the data, including the state research that has come from bellwether states like California, Texas, Ohio, and others demonstrating the positive impact that RF has had on student achievement.  Couple that with last fall’s RF study from the US Department of Education’s Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development (OPEPD) and there is more than enough strong data to show that the original IES study was flawed and one has to look at its nil finding with skeptical eyes.
Now we can mix in the K-12 reading instruction bill that has been circulating around town, which I am still trying to brand “Yes, We Can Read.”  Thanks to key education groups and key congressional leaders, we are actually working on a literacy bill that will build on RF’s elementary school focus and offer a reading continuum from preschool through high school graduation.  Even more important, the draft language being circulated around Washington, DC reflects a strong crosswalk with the SBRR language in the original Reading First.  An expansion here, some rewording there, but the intent and the embrace of the research is still there.
Hopefully, Understanding Reading First will get more attention and play than those that came before it, particularly the OPEPD study.  There is a growing pool of research demonstrating that RF worked, particularly when you factor in the positive impact it has had on schools and classrooms that didn’t receive specific dollars for Reading First programs.  Across the nation, all schools adopted scientifically based reading instruction and materials.  All teachers were trained in the research methods.  And virtually all kids benefited from it.  And for those who don’t want to listen to the state data, the NAEP results, or the results of other such assessments, MDRC reminds us of that once again.
  

Reading First 2.0

Eduflack Achievement gap, AYP, NAEP, NCLB, Reading First, SBRR

What is the future of the federal investment in reading instruction?  It is a question that many folks are still waiting to answer.  By now, we all realize that Reading First is dead as a doornail.  After billions of dollars of dollars spent, a significant number of research studies demonstrating its effectiveness at the state level, and even a US Department of Education (OPEPD) study highlighting that the program has worked, the fat lady has indeed sung.  The implementation problems, the IG investigation, the Bush-era RF tag, and a recent, yet flawed, IES study have all assured that.

But the federal government has been investing in reading instruction for decades.  RF was just the latest iteration of the effort (and probably the most significant).  But the end of RF doesn’t mean the end of federal reading, does it?  If one looks at the President’s budget, released last week, the answer is a clear “no.”  Buried in the thick volume is approximately $300 million for reading investment, comparable to the last year of RF (though the term Reading First is no where to be found, don’t mistake me).
So I’ll ask again, what is the future of the federal investment in reading instruction?  Eduflack opined on this back in January.  The current buzz around town, four months later, is pretty simple.  Critics of RF believe to this day that it was all about phonics.  It was a drill-and-kill bill designed to prop up programs like Direct Instruction or Open Court, teaching reading in an automaton sort of way.  We forget that the legislation — and the instruction to come from it — was supposed to focus on five key, research-based principles.  It was all about phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, with each component building on the one that came before it.
RF wasn’t a phonics bill, it was a scientifically based reading research bill.  That’s why we saw the “scientifically based” terminology i the NCLB legislation more than 100 times.  Its writers recognized that we have spent billions of dollars in this country trying to get our youngest learners reading.  And despite all of the money and the best of intentions, nearly 40 percent of fourth-graders were still falling below the proficiency mark.  RF was intended to refocus our dollars on what was proven effective.  it was about spending on what works.  It sought to abandon the notion that our classrooms are laboratories to test out the latest and greatest silver bullets, and instead should be centers of excellence where we apply instruction and teacher training that is proven most effective in getting kids to read.
Until I am provided a better name, Eduflack will refer to RF 2.0 as Yes, I Can Read.  So what does Yes, I Can Read look like in 2009?  We know from the buzz that Yes is going to place a stronger emphasis on both vocabulary and reading comprehension, two key components of SBRR.  For well more than a decade now, we have heard about the vocabulary gaps between high-income and low-income students.  Low-income students often enter school having heard thousands fewer words than their counterparts.  One can’t be truly proficient in reading if you don’t know the words.  So yes, vocabulary should be a key component of Yes.
As should comprehension.  All of the work at the beginning of the learning process — that focus on phonics, phonemic awareness, and fluency — is meaningless if a student ultimately doesn’t understand what he or she is reading.  We use the fourth grade measure because that is when students need to start using their reading skills to learn other subjects, like science and social studies.  At the end of the day, comprehension is king.  Without it, all of the previous work was for naught.  So you get Eduflack’s ringing endorsement on that as well.
Third, we have the teacher component.  Although RF provided for up to 25 percent of the dollars to be spent on professional development, it is often a provision that is overlooked.  And that’s a cryin’ shame.  We cannot expect our kids to learn to read if we are not properly supporting and training our teachers to lead the instruction.  It is hard, hard work to teach a child to read.  It’s not just a matter of finding the right button to push or handing out the right workbook.  Teachers need to understand the five core building blocks of reading instruction.  They need to be able to identify where a student’s roadblock may be, using whatever is necessary to increase the application of that principle.  They need to use RtI when appropriate to get students over the hump.  They need to stick the research, but do so in an engaging way with literature that is both relevant and interesting to a student.  They need to become reading wizards, doing the impossible with more than a third of our students — engaging, educating, and inspiring.  They need to do it all.
So obviously, we need to invest more heavily in both the pre-service and in-service teacher training and support for reading instruction. And this isn’t just for ELA teachers, this is for all teachers.  Every educator has a vested interest in a child reading at grade level.  Every teacher pays the price if the child is not.  It is only natural, then, after more so many dollars have been spent in the past six years to get SBRR materials in the classroom, that Yes focuses on equipping teachers with the skills and knowledge to maximize the learning tools they currently have.
The final piece to this equation is recognizing that reading instruction is not simply a K-4 game.  As the Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday, a new NCES study found that 14 percent of Americans over the age of 16 struggle with basic reading and writing.  That’s 30 million adults and young adults!  What does that say?  For Yes, it means that our reading efforts can’t be limited to the elementary grades.  We need to focus on middle and high school reading instruction as well, particularly for our most struggling readers.  We need to take what we know works with younger students, mix in the limited research about middle and secondary school reading, and build an instructional program and the teacher supports that work with these students.  The Alliance for Excellent Education’s Reading Next report gives us a start.  We now need to move those recommendations into practice.
NAEP’s recently released long-term data showed us a couple of things (and no, I’m not going to harp on the achievement gap … this time).  First, it demonstrated that we are on the right track with SBRR.  Reading scores for our elementary grades are on the rise. They are on the rise for white, African-American, and Hispanic students.  And they are on the rise for both rich and poor students.  What this means is the investment in SBRR, and the development of SBRR materials, is working.  All kids are improving reading proficiency, whether they are in a RF school or not.  This is not an indictment of RF, rather it is a vindication of SBRR.  Textbook publishers are not selling one set of texts to RF schools, and another to non-RF schools.  All texts are now aligned with SBRR. Teacher training programs are not offering one set of reading pedagogy to those teachers about to enter RF schools and another to those going into non-RF schools.  All teachers are getting the same basics in the tenets of SBRR (if they are getting any reading at all).  The NAEP data shows it is working, and shows we need to keep at it and redouble it, not change course and try something new … again.
The NAEP data also demonstrates the impact of greater accountability measures.  The implementation of SBRR has come at the same time we were holding our sch
ools to a greater level of accountability through AYP.  Such accountability measures have ensured that all students were served, and we were making no exceptions for such standards.  Yes, it was seen as harsh by some, particularly those who wanted to use their own lenses or sought greater proportionality in how AYP was measured.  Accountability is harsh because it needs to be.  At the end of the day, the rise in NAEP scores over the last decade better aligns with the accountability movement than it does with NCLB.  As some states started to put firm accountability measures into place in late 1990s, we started to see the uptick.  As NCLB nationalized it, the results on NAEP speak for themselves.  When we hold our schools and state accountable, truly accountable, they can rise to the occasion.
Why is this important?  It gets back to the learning needs of our older students.  We don’t have such accountability measures in place for secondary schools, and we really don’t have them in place for our middle schools.  If Yes, I Can Read is going to have real teeth and leave a lasting impact, we need to hold our schools, particularly our secondary schools, accountable for its effective implementation. We need to collect all the data, measure all the students, grades K-12, and report who is doing the job and who isn’t.  Those who are should serve as beacons and exemplars for the nation.  Those who aren’t should be put on notice and should have to take the corrective action to get those students reading.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that there is a correlation between drop-out rates and literacy levels.  Nor does it take a brain surgeon to know that the root of the achievement gap is our reading proficiency gap.
So as we build Yes, I Can Read, we need to make sure we are investing in all five of the core components of SBRR, particularly vocabulary and comprehension.  We need to invest in our teachers, ensuring they have the data, knowledge, and skills to be effective literacy instructors to all students, regardless of age or current reading level.  And we need to hold our K-12 schools accountable for reading proficiency.  
Reading is not mastered at the fourth grade.  Those who are proficient at that stage still have a lot of work to do.  Those who are not need extra work, extra attention, and extra intervention.  SBRR has a lifetime of application.  It has been proven effective.  And as far as I know, no one has offered up a better roadmap to getting virtually all children reading.  Hopefully, just maybe, it will remain the core of Yes, I Can Read.    
   

A Farewell to Niffle?

Eduflack IES, NCLB, Obama, Reading First, SBRR, Workforce

This morning, the Obama Administration released its plans for the FY2010 budget.  Most in the education community have been taken by some of the big items found on the education side of the ledger.  Cuts to Title I.  Significant investments in early childhood education.  Reductions in education technology.  But it was a $6 million line item that caught the eye of Eduflack.

When we’re talking about billions of education dollars, it is hard to get worked up over a couple of million bucks.  In the grand scheme of things, few are going to truly weep over the potential elimination of the National Institute for Literacy.  Other than a small, but loyal, following in the adult literacy community, there are few that even keep track of what NIFL is up to these days.  But the zeroing out of the NIFL budget in the president’s plans speak loudly and clearly.
For years now, NIFL was struggling to figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up.  Originally, NIFL was developed to focus on adult literacy issues.  According to its own materials:
The National Institute for Literacy was established in 1991 by the National Literacy Act (NLA) and reauthorized by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) in 1998. In creating the Institute, the U.S. Congress recognized that building a competitive workforce required a concerted effort to improve adults’ basic skills. Congress tasked the Institute with initiating a coordinated, interagency effort to strengthen and expand adult literacy services. Both laws positioned the Institute as a national leader on adult literacy, a central source of knowledge about research, practice, and policy, and a catalyst for innovation.
A bold mission statement, yes, but some can and do question whether NIFL has actually acted as this rhetoric describes.  After 17 years of operation, how many seriously view it as a central source of knowledge about research or as a catalyst for innovation?  I’m not seeing many hands raised.
In 2002, NIFL took a turn from its core mission to focus on scientifically based reading research and the reading priorities found in No Child Left Behind and Reading First.  The organization focused on research projects, reports, technical assistance, professional development, and even advocacy for K-12 reading instruction.  Eduflack was fortunate enough to lead a communications effort for NIFL’s Partnership for Reading, a collaborative across multiple government agencies to emphasize the importance of scientifically based reading to policymakers, teachers, and families.
At the time, many of NIFL’s early fans and friends thought the NCLB work took away from the Institute’s core mission and unique value proposition.  They thought it distracted NIFL from the business of dealing with literacy issues for those who have left school, including new immigrants and those who were incarcerated.  They thought it was the U.S. Department of Education hijacking a needed lever for helping those adults and non-students who had fallen through the literacy cracks.
Others, Eduflack included, saw reading instruction in the early grades as a necessary, non-negotiable mission for NIFL.  While it may not have been a focus in the early years, one could not dispute that focusing on reading skills with our youngest learners has real and strong impact on our adolescent and adult learners.  The Reading Excellence Act (during the Clinton Administration) opened the door to this focus on the elementary grades.  NCLB merely brightened the spotlight and raised the stakes.
Personally, I like NIFL.  I have respect for the people who have worked there, those who have advised it, and those who have and still do sit on its board.  But the future of NIFL has long been a struggle.  Many felt that adult literacy issues are better served by ED’s Office of Vocational and Adult Education.  And when it came to K-12, there was far more power and effort being exerted by the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and even the Reading First office. 
How much impact can $6 million have, particularly when $3 million of it was being spent on the operational costs of the Institute itself?  We’ve heard for years that NIFL was launching a National Reading Panel, Part 2, but it has never come to fruition.  We’ve had multi-year NIFL research panels undertake work, only to have their final reports blocked by the Institute of Education Studies from final publication.  We had listserves taken down because they were far too critical.  And we had non-governmental groups like the National Center for Family Literacy do a more effective job in actually promoting change and improvement in the literacy community.
Am I sad to see the “Going Out of Business” sign potentially hung on NIFL’s doors?  No, not particularly.  The same issues can be better handled by others.  What I am sad about is the great potential NIFL has had, particularly over the last decade, and its inability to capitalize on that potential.  The organization was almost afraid to take a leadership position in a field where it had every right and responsibility to lead.  It favored inaction over action. It feared rocking the boat or drawing attention.  It wanted to go about its business, without truly integrating and interacting with those government offices and individuals who could help take the $6 million investment in NIFL and exponentially increase the impact of the investment.  No wonder the Obama Administration failed to see the value.
Years ago, Congress debated whether to reauthorize NIFL or not, questioning whether the Institute was a necessary cog in our education improvement efforts.  It was written into NCLB to prove its necessity.  Now, seven years later, we see that NIFL is expendable.  Our focus should not be on saving the Institute, that exercise was undertaken years ago.  Instead, we must now look to how the valuable activities and programs managed by NIFL are continued by others.  What do OVAE and OESE take over?  What moves over to IES?  What goes to NCFL and other non-profits?  
We still have much work to do if we are to improve literacy rates and reading proficiency in this country, from our youngest learners to our most experienced workers.  If not NIFL, someone must step in and lead on this issue.  The stakes are too high not to.
 

Continued Work Under the NAEP Hood

Eduflack Achievement gap, NAEP, NCLB, Reading First, SBRR

Last week, Eduflack opined on the recently released NAEP long-term data.  From my cheap seats, the headlines were relatively simple.  Our Nation’s Report Card demonstrated a couple of key points.  First, Reading First during the NCLB era worked.  Second, our attempts over the past two decades to close the achievement gap have not.  

As is typical with these sort of issues, Eduflack has been accused of giving short shrift to the good and the positive in these data sets.  I looked at the half-empty glass, instead of focusing on the gains we have made in the last decade in reading and math for white, African-American, and Hispanic students.  On this point, I will concede  When it comes to reading and math scores of nine-year-olds, we posted impressive gains across the board.  African-American and Hispanic students made gains similar to their white counterparts.  For a closer look at this side of the debate, take a look at the give-and-take between Dallas Morning News columnist Bill McKenzie and former Bush education advisor Sandy Kress here.  
Whether one wants to accept it or not, the data does seem to indicate that the policies introduced under No Child Left Behind and based on scientifically based research — particularly Reading First — were effective and were effective across all disaggregated groups.  While some critics would say there were similar gains in the decade prior to NCLB, we must note that we not only maintained those previous advances, but we really added to them, at least when it comes to nine-year-olds.
Yes, the NAEP data shows us that, when implemented with fidelity, NCLB instructional policies worked.  The law focuses on the elementary grades, and the elementary grades showed real gains in both reading and math.  And they showed such gains across all demographic groups, not just with white students.  That is an achievement, and is one worth noting.  We have made real gains for elementary school students, and we should be in agreement as to the causes for those gains.
But I am still that glass-is-half-empty sort of guy, and I can’t shake two important takeaways I have with regard to the NAEP data.  The first involves high schools and the achievement gap.  I made this point last week, but it is worth emphasizing again and again and again.  The reading achievement gap between African-American and white 17-year-olds remains 53 points.  Did we expect to make major gains at closing the gap?  No.  We haven’t put in any measurable interventions to focus on the literacy crisis in our middle and high school grades.  But we have to look at this data in the larger picture.  We know that students, particularly those at our nation’s drop-out factories, are leaving high school in the ninth or 10th grades.  We know that in many cities, up to half of African-American students are dropping out of high school, and are usually doing it as early as possible.  The majority of minority students are not in high school long enough to even take the 17-year-old NAEP test.  So when we talk about a 53 point achievement gap, that is AFTER all of these drop-outs have checked out.  The reading performance of our most at-risk students isn’t even factored in here.  This huge gap is just among those minority students who have remained in school and plan to stick around for their diplomas.  Can we even fathom what the number would look like if all of those drop-outs were tested and analyzed too?  We think we have a crisis now.  Then, it would be a downright epidemic.
Second, the data shows that we continue to neglect both our middle and secondary school grades.  Our gains are posted in the elementary years, the same academic time that NCLB focuses on and that garners the vast majority of our accountability and assessment focus.  We don’t have clear expectations of the knowledge and skills are middle schoolers need before entering high school.  And we certainly don’t have such expectations with regard to high school graduates.  As a result, we’ve made no real gains when it comes to our middle and high schoolers.
That shouldn’t be a major surprise.  For the past seven years, we have gone all in, placing all of our chips on elementary school students.  Recognizing you have to start somewhere, we started with those entering the education continuum, seeking to give all new students a full chance and knowing we would have to go back and address those who have already fallen through the cracks later.  From the NAEP scores, some would say the bet has paid off.  The question is what we now do with our winnings.  We can get up from the table, declare mission accomplished, and be satisfied with the progress we have made to date and the notion that such scientifically based instructional methods will continue for years to come.  Or we can double down and use what has worked to focus on the later grades, figuring out ways to help those who have fallen through the cracks.  How do we address the instructional problems in the middle and high school grades?  How do we ensure our nine-year-olds build on their current gains, and don’t merely take an academic step back once they hit middle school?  How do we use the building blocks we have to construct a stronger academic product for all?  What do we do about the millions of kids who have fallen through those cracks and lack the basic proficiencies in middle and high school to maximize their learning experience?
  
In our elementary grades, we now have clear standards and clear assessments to measure against those standards.  We have put in place high-quality instruction and the professional development and teacher supports necessary to deliver that instruction well and with fidelity.  We’ve shown how to do it, now we just need to do it at scale.  We need to apply such standards, assessments, and expectations across K-12.
At the same time, we cannot and must not lost sight of the achievement gap, even among our elementary school learners.  Yes, educators are to be commended for their across-the-board gains in reading and math for nine-year-olds.  We’ve shown that African-American and Hispanic students are just as capable as white students in the classroom, and can demonstrate similar success.  But at this stage of the game, we have to expect far, far more.  In basketball, we know that if you are down by 20 heading into the halftime, you can’t win the game simply by matching your opponent basket for basket.  You need to throw up the three pointers, gaining three points for every two sunk by the opposition.  That (and just downright shutting down your opponent) is the only way to put yourself in a position to win.  Right now, minority and low-income students not only have little chance to win, they are still barely able to keep the game competitive.
We need to find ways to get historically disadvantaged groups back in the game here, giving them real opportunities to close the learning and achievement gaps.  Holding their own is not good enough.  We need to provide the resources, the opportunities,and the results to start cutting into that lead.  Specific efforts to closing the achievement gap in elementary school can reap exponential results in middle and high school.  If we’ve found methods that work in equipping young African-American and Hispanic students with the math and reading skills necessary for success (and the latest NAEP data indicates we have) we need to figure out ways to double or triple the impact of that instruction on such students.  And we need to figure out a way to extend such instruction after those students blow out the candles on their 10th birthday cake.
Is there good to be found in th
e latest NAEP data?  Absolutely.  Should we be satisfied with such gains?  Absolutely not.  The across-the-board elementary school gains demonstrate that we don’t have to accept mediocrity  Every child can succeed with effective instruction, resources, and teachers to deliver it.  But too few of the students who need it the most are getting such instruction, resources, and educators.  Now is not the time to bask in what has been done.  Now is the time to focus on the great amount that  still needs to be done.