Teach Effectively!

Over on LD Blog last August I posted a note about how the educational system’s failure by one student serves as an illustration of the refusal to adopt effective teaching practices, favoring ideology instead. I pointed to coverage of a story about a boy named Miguel, a 12-year-old student to whom a local education agency apparently denied appropriate educational services.

The case of Miguel illustrates how educators reject reasonable and evidence-based methods in favor of ideologically driven policies. In place of employing powerful instructional practices and adapting instruction to individuals, schools too often explain away students’ difficulties. They make what amount to excuses!

In contrast to this sorry state of affairs, I was happy to see a post by Pam Wright of Wrightslaw regarding explicit statements about “methodology” in students’ Individual Education Plans.

By including frequent references to the need to use scientific, research based instruction and interventions, Congress clarified that methodology is vitally important. By requiring the child’s IEP to include “a statement of special education, related services and supplementary aids and services, based on peer reviewed research …” (Section 1414(d)(1)(A)) Congress clarified that IEPs must include “research-based methodology.”

Given schools’ failure to adopt evidence-based methods and implement them faithfully, it seems to me increasingly important that those parents who have the clout of an IEP employ that instrument to secure appropriate services for their children. I’ll continue to post entries here on Teach Effectively that identify techniques, procedures, practices, and methods that have strong track records for effectiveness, hoping that parents and advocates can use the contents of these posts to request evidence-based methods for their children.

Link Ms. Wright’s “Methodology in the IEP” from Wrightslaw and to “Miguel might show us what’s wrong” from LD Blog.

Over on CDL there’s a brief explanation about why round-robin reading and silent reading are not effective methods for improving fluency in reading. It’s a summary by Jan Hasbrouck, a consultant who has done a fair bit of work in the area of special education, assessment (e.g., progress monitoring measures), reading, and related aspects of education. The PDF has been available for a while, but it’s worth snagging if you’ve not already found it.

An editorial in the Des Moines (IA, US) Register makes the case that students’ learning outcomes should be employed in the evaluation of teachers’ effectiveness. The focus of the editorial is (of course) local to the state of Iowa, but the implications are relevant for many other geographic regions and governmental entities.

When West Des Moines teachers are evaluated, their students’ progress on standardized tests doesn’t affect their ratings. It may be part of the conversation, but that’s about it. “It’s not something commonly done in Iowa,” said Superintendent Tom Narak.

But the Iowa Legislature should require it.

Today’s students have to be able to compete in a global economy. The role of teachers in the 21st century matters more than ever before. Schools should identify those who improve student achievement, and those who don’

Link to “ Use student achievement to measure teachers.” The editorial writer refers to the McKinsey report on education.

In an article entitled “The Relation Between the Type and Amount of Instruction and Growth in Children’s Reading Competencies” that is slated to appear in American Educational Research Journal, Susan Sonnenschein and colleagues reported that kindergartners who enter school with relatively higher competence in literacy benefit more from instruction that emphasizes extracting meaning from what they read but their counterparts who enter kindergarten with lower literacy competence benefit more from instruction that emphasizes decoding. As children progress through the elementary grades, however, the effects of different instructional emphases lessen.

Although this difference obtained even after the research team took into account other factors (child ethnicity, parents’ education levels), these other factors affect have clear effects on children’s literacy development. African-American children, even those who were reading above average at the end of kindergarten, lost ground compared to their White, non-Hispanic peers in the third and fifth grades. Also, although there were not direct effects for the educational backgrounds of the teachers (number of reading courses teachers reported having taken), third-grade teachers’ background in reading influenced the amount of time they spent on reading.

Sonnenschein and colleagues examined data for over 6000 children, making these findings relatively solid. They argue that their results indicate that teachers may not adapt instruction to fit learners’ level of literacy competence.

However, these results will probably come as little or no surprise to many people. First, we already had a plenty of evidence that (a) high-performers are likely to continue to outperform low-performers over time (“thems that’s gots gets”) and (b) ethnicity matters in reading outcomes. Because we hope that educators adapt instruction to learners’ levels of development, the conclusion that teachers may not be doing so should be moot; however, such a judgment is based on educators’ hopes, and those can easily be dashed.

A latent growth model was used to investigate the longer term efficacy of phonics and integrated language arts instruction as well as amount of such instruction on children’s reading development, using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study data set (kindergarten through fifth grade). Type and amount of instruction were derived from teachers’ ratings. Children’s entry-level skills and ethnicity were predictors of children’s reading scores at the end of kindergarten. Ethnicity and parents’ education level predicted rate of growth. Type and amount of reading instruction predicted children’s reading scores. However, effects for type of instruction were time-sensitive, occurring only in kindergarten and first grade. Although children benefit from instruction in decoding and comprehension skills, instruction may not be optimally tailored to children most at risk.

Sonnenschein, S., Stapleton, L. M., & Benson, A. (2009). The relation between the type and amount of instruction and growth in children’s reading competencies. American Educational Research Journal. Advance online publication. doi: 10.3102/0002831209349215

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced funding of new educational initiatives 19 November 2009. The initiatives focus on creating intensive partnerships with school systems and developing means for measuring effectiveness in teaching.

In “An Effective Teacher in Every Classroom,” Vicki Phillips (Director of the education initiative in the foundation) wrote, “Nothing is as important to a student’s success in school as an effective teacher. You know it, and we know it. That’s why I am so excited about today’s commitment of $335 million to support our vision of putting an effective teacher in every classroom in America.” In announcements of its funding for education, the foundation identified several educational agencies and groups with which it will partner in hopes of improving outcomes.

I call readers’ attention to the second initiative, the one funding a project called “Measures of Effective Teaching.” I am pleased to learn that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working toward measuring effective teaching. The Gates Foundation has repeatedly invested in initiatives to improve education, and it has candidly evaluated those efforts and reported their results to the public. Based on the foundation’s experience with previous projects, it has reshaped and redirected its efforts. I see this as movement in a valuable direction.

An important step toward supporting teachers and ensuring that all students have access to high quality instruction is to develop fairer and more useful measures of teacher effectiveness. This is the goal of the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, which will support independent education researchers–in partnership with school districts, principals, teachers, and unions–to develop objective and reliable measures of effective teaching. Rather than relying solely on how well a teacher’s students do on assessments, the MET project seeks to uncover and develop a set of measures that work together to form a more complete indicator of a teacher’s impact on student achievement.

Researchers will collect data about factors that might reflect effective teaching. These areas include the following (drawn directly from the site):

• Student feedback through surveys
• Student work
• Supplemental student assessments
• Videotaped classroom lessons
• Teacher reflections on their videotaped lessons
• Assessment of teachers’ ability to recognize and diagnose student problems
• Teacher surveys on working conditions

I applaud the effort to include a broad range of measures in the research. This list taps some potentially valuable sources (e.g., recognition and response to student problems), but it lacks clear measures of the critical result: Student learning. Although I think basing measures of effectiveness solely on students’ outcomes is insufficient, I hope that the researchers will ultimately include data from objective assessments of students’ learning. I hope students’ outcomes are still in the mix.

Read the press release announcing about the Gates Foundation committing $335 million to promote effective teaching and raise student achievement. Also visit the foundation’s portal for its education efforts and read Vicki Phillips’ comments.

According to a report from the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), a study examining the benefits of providing pre-kindergarten programs in New Mexico (US) revealed that there were significant and important benefits for children. Jason Hustedt and colleagues found that there were significant improvements in children’s language, literacy, and math competence associated with attending pre-k programs.

[Their] results show that New Mexico PreK produces consistent benefits for children who
participated in PreK, compared to those who did not, across all three years of the study. Positive impacts of PreK were found in each of three content areas important to early academic success – language, literacy, and math. Findings in literacy and mathematics were statistically significant in analyses for each school year of New Mexico PreK. Findings specific to our measure of early language were statistically significant for the first two years of the study, and using a combined, multi‐year data set.

I had to wonder what curriculum the New Mexico pre-k programs followed. It appears that about half of the sites do not report the curriculum they use. However, one uses Bank Street, nine use High Scope, and the remaining 60-some use Creative Curriculum. Imagine what kind of effects these pre-k programs could achieve if they used more effective curricula!

Hustedt, J. T., Barnett, W. S., Jung, K., & Goetze, L. D. (2009). The New Mexico preK evaluation: Results from the initial four years of a new state preschool initiative. New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education Research.

The report is available for free. See the Website for the New Mexico PreK program.

Recently I got a note from a colleague whom I trust for his (it’s a guy) adherence to evidence-based therapy and methods of teaching. He wondered whether it was sensible to devote valuable research funds and time to evaluating interventions that sensible beings would dismiss out of hand. For example, why waste cycles (not his term, but it fits my geekiness) on examining whether hyperbaric oxygen therapy, learning styles, vitamin regimens, facilitated communication, neurological organization therapy, and etc.?

My correspondent’s point is a good one. Instead of debunking bogus therapies, it probably would be more helpful—at least, to those of us who understand the logical-deductive path of science—to devote our efforts to (a) promoting procedures that have been documented to produce benefits for children and youth who have learning and behavior problems or are at risk for developing them and (b) refining promising practices for those individuals.
Continue reading ‘Why examine bogus methods?’

It’s gratifying to know that Teach Effectively has been referred to by other sources on the Internet. Of course, it’s nice to be aggregated by sources such as CVille Blogs, but it is even more encouraging to find references by sites that are addressing topics related to that are likely of interest to readers. Here, for examples, are some sites that have linked to TE:

• Language Fix by Paul Morris;
• All the fine folks who contribute to Kitchen Table Math;
• On Special Ed by Christina Samuels and, currently, Lisa Fine;
• Kylie Sturgess’ PodBlack Cat;
• “Dick Dalton’s” The Life That Chose Me;
• Society for Quality Education;
• Joanne Meier’s Sound it Out;
• Bill Evers’ Ed Policy;
• Cal Teacher Blog from “Mr. Bibo”;
• Lon Thornburg’s No Limits to Learning;
• Rightwing Prof’s Right Wing Nation;
• D-Ed Reckoning by Ken DeDosa;

There are also some mentions of TE elsewhere, too. Examples: “Education Law” by David Ferlinger and “Blogs for innovative educators” from Biomedicine on Display, and “100 Best Blogs and Websites for InnovativeAcademics” from Accredited Online Universities