The new Common Core State Standards and related assessments such as Smarter Balance have been commended for the depth of critical thinking required to show mastery. That level of achievement is a great goal for students with an IQ in the normal range, but it sets others up for failure. Asking a person with an IQ between 70-79 to answer an abstract question about literature or algebra on a test would be like asking a blind person to read a book that is not written in Braille. So why are the new state standards and the related assessments asking 7-14 percent of our students to perform this way?

Just because a person has a lower than average IQ doesn’t mean they can’t succeed in our world. Instead, we need to reconsider our definition of success. The Common Core State Standards, presented by The Governor’s Council, redefined academic standards. The implication is that if a student can master these Common Core State Standards, they will be christened as being successful. By default, a student who cannot master these standards is a failure. A significant portion of the population will not be able to master the Common Core State Standards due to limitations beyond anyone’s control, therefore a large segment of people will feel, “You are not good enough.” Why is it that only measures set by the Common Core State Standards determine whether or not individual students are successful?

Every educator can remember the informational charts from their child development classes. Physiologically, some people won’t develop the brain synapses necessary for critical thinking until their 20s. Other people won’t develop them at all. Yet, that cognitive ability is essential for demonstrating success according to the Common Core. When those students fail, they will feel like they are not good enough.  Their parents and teachers will feel like they did not do enough.

The answer is not a lowering of our standards and expectations. The answer lies in the process of testing itself. The field of education can learn a lot about learning from the field of neuropsychology. A person with a borderline functional intelligence may never grasp that y=mx+b, but if they were placed into a curriculum that supplied them with concrete real world experience, they could thrive. The key word here is concrete, because these kids are concrete thinkers.

Students in this category are often those same students who try desperately to succeed.  They may not become the next Warren Buffet or Steven Hawkings, but they can contribute in many positive ways to their community through trades-based professions – the backbone of the United States – given the right support. These students have to work two or three times harder than their peers and often demonstrate half the ability due to limitations nobody can control.

Issues like this often don’t show up until sixth, seventh, or eighth grade. Why?  That’s when the curriculum really starts to demand students to think abstractly. Once these adolescents consistently get the message they are not good enough, they shut down, disengage, or drop out completely.

What is the solution? That’s the challenge in education. We have to redefine success. Are we going to continue to tell these hard working kids they are not good enough because they cannot meet the demands of a rigorous curriculum? There are multiple measures that would identify the talents and limitations of students at an earlier age if cognitive diagnostic assessments were given to everyone. In a society that has become so data driven, we might be missing the most important data of all.

Rich data from cognitive diagnostic assessments would help educators to truly reach a child where they are and set them upon a path for lifelong success in various ways – gainfully employed, in any way, as a contributing, productive member of society.

Lesley Hagelgans teaches Language Arts at Marshall Middle School in Marshall, Mich. She was a member of the National VIVA Task Force.

In a recent post on gettingsmart.com, Powering Lifelong Learning Relationships, Tom Vander Ark, extolled some of the technological innovations that are promoting lifelong learning strategies.

The swift and exponential development and implementation of countless technological applications have created more efficient productivity possibilities, personalized learning opportunities, and instant social connectivity.  Technology is now a part of all of us, whether we are ready for it or not.  So, what will separate the trends of today from the revolutionary, culture-shaping movements of tomorrow?  It starts with how we, the lifelong learners, stay motivated, and what solutions we adapt to, embrace, and ultimately share. As the present culture has shown us, shaping a trend into a necessity of daily life is the first step toward creating a phenomenon that is truly irresistible.

Vander Ark points to what he calls “emerging solutions” for lifelong learning such as Bloomboard.com for individual learning plans and learning records and Edmodo for social learning opportunities. If they are to be successful, he says they must be properly “assembled and marketed coherently in the learning space.” Like most people today who are spoiled by a life of instant-everything, I would hope for and expect a quick rollout of professional development and learning systems like these to appear overnight.

Unfortunately, to the contrary, the only way to make a large-scale rollout more feasible is if each solution mentioned is the collective offspring of what makes our country great.  This collective consists of several education-based for-profit and non-profit innovators and entrepreneurs that share a vision of universal progress and a strong desire and ability to make it happen.  These change agents share a vision and imagination for endless possibilities like the creation of partners in learning.  Their ideas are the foundation for a network of technological and social systems that can help those who are willing succeed in their jobs today, provide attainable possibilities for their future, and ultimately guide them toward the loftiest of their personal and professional goals.

From a macro view of emerging solutions that build lifelong learning relationships, I am selfishly pondering how this intriguing, all-inclusive collective will empower others in education careers to continually develop professionally.   The empowered who choose to learn and seek out new ideas on their own, are and will always be the early adopters of movements such as this; I know because I am usually first in line.  However, it is the other faction of our teaching corps and various levels of educational administration that are not always as willing to try something new. How can they be equally encouraged?  This will be the true marketing and design challenge of this concept of partnerships in lifelong learning and the solutions proposed here — “selling” an entire legion of educators on these optimistic dreams and ideas.  It will take not only the innovators and early adopters, but those change agents who take action to shift the professional learning paradigm toward a necessity of growth and the desire to continue learning.  If we can do this, imagine the possibilities ahead of us.

Jim Szewc teaches 4th grade reading in Florida’s Hillsborough County Public Schools.

We want all of our children to be successful in school. As a parent, I want that for my own children. As a teacher, I know the parents and families I work with want that for their children. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposed budget, along with two bills recently introduced in the State House (HF105 and HF821), would help our state’s students reach that goal by providing funding for all-day, every-day kindergarten.

As committed as parents are to their children, some students don’t enter school with the tools they need to be successful in the classroom. They may not have the exposure to language and literacy that children in homes with highly educated parents have. One thing we can do to counteract their lack of readiness is to provide students with a literacy-rich environment in preschool and kindergarten. And while pre-school programs are important, Minnesota needs to start by fully funding all-day, every-day kindergarten.

Currently, our districts are only reimbursed for a half day of kindergarten. This lack of funding means that districts generally have three options: 1) offer only half-day kindergarten (or full-day, every-other-day kindergarten); 2) offer full-day kindergarten but use part of the general-education fund to pay for it; or 3) offer both full-day and half-time kindergarten and charge for the second half of a full-day program.

All of these are problematic and only serve to perpetuate the achievement gap. Many districts in high-poverty areas choose to offer full-day kindergarten at no charge to parents, but they are reimbursed by the state for only about half of the cost. Imagine what they could do if the state fully funded kindergarten and they could reallocate those funds.

Five years ago when my son was four, we began looking at kindergarten programs and found that the district we lived in would charge us for a full-day program. Yet, even if we were willing to pay for it, there was no guarantee of admittance. All parents who willing to pay the fee were entered into a lottery, making the fee and the lottery barriers to educational opportunity and steeping the system in inequality.

As a working mother, I wanted my child in a high-quality, full-day kindergarten program. To make that happen, I ended up driving him 30 miles away to a district where we didn’t live. The long car ride through traffic to a place without his neighborhood friends was difficult, but I believe the academic and social benefits of the full-day kindergarten program were worth it.

Full-day kindergarten options should be the norm for all students. According to the Children’s Defense Fund, full-day kindergarten has numerous benefits, including better attendance, higher academic achievement, enhanced behavioral and social development, and an easier transition to first grade. Minnesota can and should provide those benefits to its students.

Most of us think of the K-12 experience as beginning at age 5, but the truth is it begins in unequal opportunity without a full-day experience for every child. We need our legislators to take another step towards equal educational opportunity: Fully fund all-day, every-day kindergarten for all students.

Beth Hillerns teaches Title I at East Central Elementary School near Sandstone, Minn. She has taught for the past 10 years in urban, suburban, and rural schools in Texas and Minnesota.

Teaching is challenging, rewarding, exciting, exhausting, and never boring. Actually, every day is a new adventure. Lately, I’ve been struggling; Not with teaching students, but with everything else that goes along with being a teacher in a needy urban district where resources are stretched thin.

I am struggling with teaching well over 100 children a day while wearing so many other hats. Our students walk through our doors saddled with burdens. Some children are from difficult home lives, some are homeless. Others have arrived on our doorstep from war-torn nations, refugee camps, or from countries of sheer chaos. Students often show up hungry. Others are in need of shoes and clothes. Some are grieving the loss of a parent, which vary from parents who have no contact with their children, to parents who have died or been killed, to parents who have been lost to addiction, mental illness, or incarceration.

Even so, teaching is easy compared to the mental anguish and emotional drain of serving as counselor to children who are emotionally scarred. Our social worker/adjustment counselor oversees 600 students four days a week. She has a consistent caseload of 40 students, and an additional 10 plus extra students each day to tend to as each daily crisis arises. If you do the math, you will understand that teachers absorb much of the pain and agony some students bring to school with them each day.

In addition to students in crisis, we are also teaching students with intellectual, emotional and mental disorders with limited special education support in our classrooms. I love my job, I love my students, but I am exhausted and drained. If teachers are to prevail at making every child successful, we need help in our classrooms. We need help to meet the needs of our kids who are experiencing personal and emotional crisis. We need special education assistance for our students who need individual support.

When I think about what our struggling students lack, I have come to realize that no matter what their burdens are, they are each lacking consistency. School is their safety net. School is their refuge. Each day, for eight hours, they are safe. They have structure and they are surrounded by people who want them to grow into productive, conscientious, caring adults. For our students to succeed, they need assistance within the walls of that refuge.

Teachers will teach all students. Teachers will accommodate workloads and differentiate instruction to reach all types of learners. We will provide kindness, empathy, and respect. We step in when counselors are not readily available to children in crisis. When special education students are not getting enough individual attention, teachers spend extra time to meet the needs of these students and give them the academic support they need to make gains. How do we continue to spread ourselves to meet the needs of all our students?

Should we invest in staffing counseling within our schools so that counselors have reasonable caseloads of students and teachers can teach? Should we rethink how special education services are delivered by special education teachers so that students are properly supported, and budget appropriately?  Should we have additional staff to teach and support the large number of English language learners so that they are successful in meeting standards?

The answer is yes. We need to invest in our kids by providing them with access to counseling. We need to invest in our kids by providing our special needs students with specialized teachers working alongside general education teachers in their classrooms. All children can learn with the proper emotional and academic support no matter what their challenges. Some may learn differently, at a slower pace, or at different levels, but they can achieve if we provide the proper support.  We must support our students.

Kathleen Sullivan teaches 5th grade science at a public school in Malden, Massachusetts.

Download Full Report as a PDF

The VIVA NEA Idea Exchange invited all members of the National Education Association in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, and Virginia to share their ideas about creating a positive learning environment and safety in classrooms and school buildings. This VIVA Idea Exchange occurred during a pivotal time in the United States, just two months after the horrific shooting tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Conn. took the lives of 26 people and touched off a national debate on school violence and safety.

Download a copy of Sensible Solutions for Safer Schools: An Educators’ Vision for Positive Learning Environments

Download Full Report as a PDF

Broadly, our advice comes in the form of five key recommendations:

1. Help Schools Define and Build Cultures that Develop Non-Cognitive Skills, Then Assess Those Skills
2. Establish Shared Vocabulary and Meaning that Fosters Character Development and Student Accountability from Preschool through High School and Beyond
3. Develop Students’ and Teachers’ Ability to Navigate in a Diverse Society with Cultural Proficiency
4. Reinvent School Discipline as an Opportunity to Build Character
5. Design Opportunities for Students to Demonstrate Character in Student-Centered, Student-Led Initiatives

In each section, we have taken care to frame our ideas in a policy context. But, we also provide bite-sized action steps schools and districts can use to implement these ideas in the manner that best suits their needs, capacity, and context. Ultimately, policies will be most effective at driving successful practice when they begin with excellent practice. We hope that our work will prompt more conversation between educators and administrators and more discussion between policy makers and teachers. We publish these suggestions just as the conversation about college persistence and noncognitive skills is beginning to take hold. Indeed, if we are looking to integrate non-cognitive skill instruction as a key component of successful schools, the wind is at our backs. It is our hope that the recommendations in this report can help to speed that journey for our schools and our kids.

Download a copy of Character 2.0: The Value of Taking a School-Wide View Toward Students’ Life-long Success

Download a copy of VIVA MET: Reflections from the Classroom – Measures of Effective Teaching

Download Full Report as a PDF

Generally speaking, teachers are visionaries. They work with the belief that they can make a difference in the lives of others. And they give time and energies endlessly into changing what exists today; molding students and the world into something better for tomorrow. Ten of us came together through the MET Project in the last few months to reflect on how our experience changed our own practices and what steps could capitalize on the MET research for all teachers and their students.

We envision a national network of teachers and education professionals that will focus on creating tools and guidance for implementation norms in four major areas: 1) transparency, reliability and alignment of measures of teacher effectiveness/student achievement; 2) increasing teachers’ ability to use data for instruction; 3) financial incentives that reward excellence and 4) dramatically increasing the use of technology for instruction and supporting teaching.

Our reflections are deeply rooted in what we learned about our own effectiveness as teachers. The changes we’ve made in our practices will change the lives of our students today and tomorrow. But as visionaries, the goal is bigger: changing the future. For all teachers and students.

Crossposted from her Notes from MC blog

So I guess the NRA says the answer to stop school shootings is more guns, joining the smattering of elected officials who recently have promoted the idea of arming teachers and principals. This approach is wrong.

If a place like Ft. Hood, TX which has some of our planet’s most deadly weapons carried by some of our planet’s most deadly professional soldiers, can be reduced to carnage by a single armed assassin, then what makes The NRA think that arming a nation of just-right-book loving, denim jumper wearing, wooden apple bead necklace creating, white board marker toting school teachers (and the rest of us) will be effective?

You want to arm me? Good. Then arm me with a school psychologist at my school who has time to do more than test and sit in meetings about testing.

Arm me with enough counselors so we can build skills to prevent violence, have meaningful discussions with students about their future and not merely frantically adjust student schedules like a Jenga game.

Arm me with social workers who can thoughtfully attend to a student’s and her family’s needs so I. Can. Teach.

Arm me with enough school nurses so that they are accessible to every child and can work as a team with me rather than operate their offices as de facto urgent care centers.

Arm me with more days on the calendar for teaching and learning and fewer days for standardized testing.

Arm me with class sizes that allow my colleagues and me to know both our students and their families well.

Arm my colleagues and me with the time it takes to improve together and the time it takes to give great feedback to students about their work and progress.

Until you arm me to the hilt with what it will take to meet the needs of an increasingly vulnerable student population, I respectfully request you keep your opinions on schools and our safety to yourself NRA. Knock it off.

Mary Cathryn Ricker is the St.Paul Teachers Union President, and was an English and History teacher. This piece was featured on the MoveOn.org Facebook page.  To read Mary Cathryn Ricker’s personal blog, Notes from MC, click here.

“The mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates, and the great teacher inspires …”
Tim Daly, actor and president of the Creative Coalition at a recent Sundance Film Festival luncheon.

I’d like to ask Daly, our communities and policy makers, what does a teacher with a gun do?

To me and to most of the colleagues I’ve spoken with, the idea of a teacher with a gun in the presence of students violates our educator code of ethics.

In the forlorn aftermath of the Newtown shooting in CT, we teachers have been on edge. Approximately 2 months ago, teachers were praised all over the media for their bravery, hard work and commitment to education. The media was plastered with signs supporting the work of teachers in the classroom and in life-threatening situations. Today, those same signs of support have a lethal weapon attached to them.

The reality of our urban school systems in the United States is that guns are already very much present within our youth. So are gangs, knives, brass knuckles and just about every other attack weapon a person can think of when violence and hatred are on the agenda.

I’ve been teaching in urban schools systems since 2009. The first 3 years of my career were spent in the Springfield Public Schools System in the state
of Massachusetts. Numbers from FBI data suggest the city of Springfield to be among the top 12 most dangerous cities in the nation, according to the
Republican Newspaper’s article in May of 2011. A 2010 Northeastern University study, ranked Springfield, MA as the second most segregated city in the nation for Hispanics, trailing behind only Los Angeles.

These statistics only hint at how grim and challenging the situation is for teachers in the area where I teach. The reality behind the statistics is this:
In my second year of teaching the 4th grade at a local elementary school, I had 2 of my students bring deadly weapons into my classroom and threaten to use them lethally against another peer. The first weapon was a set of adult- sized brass knuckles. The second was a blade the student used to threaten to kill another of my students while flailing and lunging upon him, and was provided by his father. Both students were 8 years old.

Now let’s fast forward to the middle and high school levels in the same district. There you will find gangs that have overtaken schools with their power and influence and have made the metal detector an archaic monument. My mother, a veteran teacher of almost 30 years in this school system, has been approached by her student gang members offering her protection from any imminent danger. This is the reality of the America’s urban classrooms. The students are experts at violence, guns and hatred. How wise does it make us to propose more violence and inexperienced teachers with guns as a solution to the problem?

Instead of more violence and less education, here’s a thought: let’s educate ourselves on the reason and solution for the increased violence, suicide and
mental health problems prevalent in our youth today. The questions should be: why are these shootings on the rise? Why is the suicide rate among our
young also escalating? And why is cutting back on educational programs and professional staff such as school psychologists the go-to answer if we want positive results?

The federal government didn’t trust teachers to just teach, thus the new teacher evaluation systems became a federal mandate in order to ensure that every educator was proficient in their craft. In addition to the Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees most teachers possess, teacher evaluation systems also encompass a plethora of data, performance notes and evidence-based on administrative observations of the educator to ensure a qualified and proficient teacher in the classroom. Yet, some states and their legislation are giving teachers the green light to hold a lethal weapon and to bring it into their classrooms after a miniscule 3-day training? How will I be proficient at handling a lethal weapon in a high-stress and emotional environment with only 3 days of training under my belt?

I believe in protecting our schools. Yet I believe that protection should be provided by highly trained staff capable of using weapons effectively on a daily basis. I also believe in changing the world for the better, preferably by non violence and by imbuing ignorant, violent minds with education.

Melody Rivera is a World Language Teacher in the Chicopee, MA school district.

If you are a member of the National Education Association, please visit http://bit.ly/VivaNEA to share your thoughts on school safety!

Let’s drop our assumptions about the nature of teaching jobs, and imagine something different

Sometimes we become so accustomed to the way things are, we cannot imagine a different way of doing things. In 1927 one of the Warner Brothers made a famously wrong prediction, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” When it comes to systems vital for our future, like K-12 public schools, this myopia can be disastrous.

Even some teachers who are working to imagine a better future for K-12 schools get stuck in the assumption that the ways in which they currently operate are “givens.” Many educators accept that the role of a teacher is to instruct, and that a teacher’s management domain is the classroom. They accept that teachers need a boss to guide their culture and activities, and that only administrators are qualified to conduct evaluations and judge a teacher’s quality. They accept that “achievement” is defined outside of schools, and believe that teachers lose their power without tenure.

These assumptions are not givens! These are just perceived as givens. Some teachers are tackling the job of school improvement without assuming any of them, keeping only the practices that they deem best for their schools. You could, too.

There are more than 50 groups of teachers across the United States with collective authority to make decisions influencing the success of their entire schools. Some of the schools they serve are district schools, and others are chartered schools. Some work as members of the union local, and others do not. The schools are in urban, rural and suburban settings, and serve students from preschool through age 21.

My colleagues and I studied 11 of these teacher groups in depth. They have a mix of full and partial autonomy to collectively make decisions in an average of 7.71 out of ten possible areas.

• Selecting colleagues
• Transferring and dismissing colleagues
• Evaluating colleagues
• Setting staff pattern (e.g., determining who is full-time and who is part-time, allowing teachers to take on teaching and administrative tasks, and choosing the ratio of aides to teachers)
• Selecting leaders
• Determining budget
• Determining salaries
• Determining the learning program
• Setting the schedule (e.g., calendar year and daily schedules)
• Setting school level policy (e.g., homework and discipline approaches)

These teachers use their authority to create different types of jobs for teachers and learning opportunities for students. Their management domain is the whole school. They individualize learning and use assessment tools to improve their practice. They put students in the position to be active (not passive) learners. They expect students to develop both academic and life skills.

Autonomous teachers also create school cultures that are similar to those in high-performing organizations. They accept accountability, innovate, and make efficient use of resources. They select leaders to handle aspects of management, but these leaders are accountable to them (not vice versa). Teacher quality is most often judged by peers, who are expected to coach and mentor one another.

Teachers with full budget autonomy even go so far as to reject the idea of tenure and automatic raises. Instead they choose one-year, at-will contracts because, in their view, they need budget flexibility and the ability to control the quality of the workers who affect their success as a team. These teachers see job protections as necessary when other people control their work, but not when teachers call the shots.

My colleagues and I described all of these choices in detail in Trusting Teachers with School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots.
Is calling the shots easy? No! Pioneering is intense and difficult work, especially in a K-12 education culture that values “sameness.” Also, these teacher groups are not interconnected. Many feel they are islands without a system of support. Still, pioneers are known for their willingness to take on hardships for the promise of something greater. And the support can be developed as more teachers secure autonomy and cultivate their craft.

As with anything new, there will need to be early adaptors willing to commit to the idea, face any challenges that arise, and give it a serious try. Ultimately, the success of collective teacher autonomy as a strategy for K-12 improvement is dependent on whether groups of teachers seek the opportunity, face its challenges, and use it to advance teaching and learning. Until a large number of success stories demonstrate, on balance, an improvement over the current situation with our K-12 schools, teacher autonomy will remain largely a theoretical idea.

So, if you are a teacher and find the idea attractive, consider rounding up a group of colleagues and asking for autonomy to run a school or group of schools. Learn all you can from those who have gone before you, especially about how they secured autonomy. The “right” autonomy arrangement for your group will depend on many factors including state and local politics as well as your school board or charter school authorizer and the teachers’ union’s tolerance for “trying things”. It will also depend on the personal preferences of teachers in your group.

If at first you don’t succeed in securing autonomy, look for another path. And once you have autonomy, take care not to limit yourselves to any perceived givens, including any best practices from conventional schooling. Think creatively. Innovate. Change your jobs. Improve learning.

Just like actors proved Mr. Warner wrong, teachers could prove wrong all of the people who advocate for controlling teachers to produce better public schools. Teachers could be the social entrepreneurs we need to improve K-12, public schools. But not necessarily in the confines of the jobs you have now.
Maybe it’s time to drop our assumptions about the nature of teaching and imagine something different.

Kim Farris-Berg is lead author of Trusting Teachers with School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots. She lives in Orange County, California. She is a Senior Associate with Education Evolving, a policy design shop based in St. Paul, Minnesota, and an independent education policy strategist. Her Twitter handle is @farrisberg.