A few days a go I had a conversation with someone on the topic of race. In this person's opinion, there was far too great of an emphasis on race on the part of the superintendent and other administrators. They cited several things that have been done in the last year or so as evidence that race has entered into the conversation of education far too often. I would like to personally address this concern so that my views on the subject can be understood publicly.
First of all, let me say that I am personally tired of race. As a black man who has lived through the 50's, 60's and up to now, I was hoping that it would no longer be my constant companion. As a child I was hoping that some day I could grow up in a society where race truly did not matter, or have an impact on any aspect of my life. I am sure that this was the hope of many black people of my generation. I am sure, given the conversations that I have had with many colleagues of the lighter persuasion, that they have been able to move on and transcend something as mundane and trivial as the impact of race on this society. After all, we have a black President who was elected by a large number of white people, so aren't we now officially past race? I want to share a few experiences and some data that might make you question whether that assumption is true or not.
Earlier this year, I attended the gathering of the Wisconsin School District Administrators, Business Officials and School Board Members. There were well over a thousand people in attendance. At one point during a keynote address, I surveyed the room. It was a large ballroom at the Midwest Center in downtown Milwaukee. Out of all of the people in that room I noticed that there were not more than a handful (less than 10) people of color. The dearth of superintendents of color did not surprise me. Until the hiring of the new superintendent of Kenosha, I was one of only two black superintendents in the state of Wisconsin. I was the only one in attendance. The sparse number that were there represented all of the current board members and business officials of color in the state. I may be a little sensitive about this but tell me, how does this depict a color blind society that has moved beyond race, when the representation of those who impact education in the highest positions is so lacking in diverse presence? I am a lifelong resident of the state of Wisconsin, having grown up in Racine. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe that at 56 years old I would be one of only two black people running a school district in the state of Wisconsin. What an absolute disappointment, given all of the assistant principals and principals of color that I have known, who labored before me and aspired to have the chance of being a superintendent. The only conclusion that I can come to is that none of them must of been qualified (sarcasm).
The other issue that screams out against our colorblind society is that of student achievement. As I constantly examine the data of my school district the data is inescapable. Students of color have the lowest graduation rates. Their ACT scores, as a group, are at least 5 points lower in each category. They are the fewest in the AP classes but, among the few of those who take those classes, they represent an inordinate amount of D's and F's. These, by the way, are the best of that sub-population. Among freshmen at the high school they rank first in F's. The state of Wisconsin ranks last in the graduation rate of black males. That distinction used to be the domicile of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. When it comes to placement in special education, rate of expulsion and disciplinary statistics, students of color rank first. Again, I can sympathize with those who are tired of an emphasis on race in discussing these facts, but what is the common factor in all of this. For some reason, race will not relinquish its death grip as a factor on the lives of people of color in the United States. Keep in mind that I am writing this from the perspective of one who is a "success story". I am black and have made it. Not a day goes by when I have the luxury of taking a vacation from race. In some places that I travel I am assessed by it. Even in our colorblind society people talk about someone being 'light skinned' and not talking with the usual 'black dialect', as a qualification to be elected to the highest office of the land (see Harry Reid).
You might think that because I am writing these things that I see racists around every corner. I don't. I don't play upon the guilt of liberal people to try to gain some kind of emotional leverage on my viewpoint either. I try to judge people by the content of their character, rather than by the color of their skin. I have friends of every race and ethnicity. All of that doesn't change either the sad personal experiences that I have due to race or the data that seems to endlessly point to the fact that it is far better to grow up white in the United States, than to be either black or hispanic. It greatly increases your likelihood of success. This is not lost on young people as they scan the landscape looking for a representation of role models in their local sphere that give enough evidence of the possibility of success. They have to believe that it is possible. If I had been a high school student attending the conference at the Midwest Center and saw that there was only one black superintendent in attendance out of the hundreds of superintendents there, what would I have believed that my chances were? I guess that when we have colorblind experiences and data, we can move on to a colorblind society.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
What Is Learning and How Do You Catch It?
I had a wonderful discussion with an intelligent group of people last night that started on the subject of grading practices but drifted into a discussion on deeper issues. We were trying to determine how you assess student learning in a manner that indicates growth, improvement and mastery. When the discussion was concluded, I was left with pondering several questions. The first is what is the mark of true intelligence? The second is how do you set up a system of assessing student learning and progress that allows them to intellectually grow during the learning process, and then give them credit for growth?
On the first question there was some concern about establishing a grading system that could penalize the current students who are at the top of their class, This could be an unintended consequence of giving students more opportunities to learn material by changing all learning variables except level of rigor and demand. If these formerly low performing students could attain high levels of performance, through making them redo, retest and resubmit work until it reflected excellence (and perhaps their true potential), wouldn't that cheat the others? This discussion began to explore the nature of how we define learning and intelligence.
For years there has been debate over what intelligence is. Many of our IQ tests have focused on verbal intelligence so that students who come to school from vocabulary rich environments have greatly benefited from this emphasis on knowing the meaning of words. Conversely, students who come from poor or second language backgrounds have rarely been identified as intelligent under this definition. Howard Gardner expanded the discussion of intelligence with his approach of Multiple Intelligences. He said that there are multiple indicators of intelligence and not all of them can be assessed by a student putting pencil to paper. Some are performance based. The educational community has been slow to expand its thinking on this issue. Instead our grading systems reward those who quickly grasp the knowledge that the teacher presents to them. To borrow from Aesop, if you are the hare you always win the race, if you are the tortoise you get a C or worse. Apparently, it isn't really about demonstrating high levels of learning and excellence. It really is about the ability to meet fixed (and some times arbitrary) deadlines.
If the goal was to master predetermined, essential learning outcomes what would it matter if it takes one student a little more time to attain to the same level of excellence. Two geniuses from America's past would certainly be failures under this limited definition of learning and intelligence: Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein. Einstein was considered 'slow' in school. Thomas Edison is well known for his multiple attempts at trying to figure out the problem of the best filament for the electric light bulb. The fact that he had to try time and time again to attain to mastery is admired. They were tortoises, not hares. Why doesn't that kind of persistence in the pursuit of learning get valued and rewarded in our classrooms? If a student takes a test and fails it they are not given the opportunity to study harder and retake it. Even worse is the example of a student who is assigned a paper that is due on Friday, or else. If it is an 'A' paper, but is handed in on Monday, depending upon the teacher, it is now a 'B' paper or worse. Same paper. Somehow the quality was devalued on the weekend. What if instead we focused on the quality of learning and performance and set deadlines that are not completely arbitrary and set by fiat.
The second question is much the same as the first. What if students are made to redo work that does not reach the level of rigor and excellence that we say that we demand? What if we won't default by giving them a low grade? What if the response to poor work is the demand for them to give more effort and to do better? What if true learning is what happens when they have to rethink an idea or edit their first attempt? What if the mark of an intelligent person is that they learn while learning? What if the process of learning and interacting with knowledge is what produces what we call 'intelligence'? In the so called 'real world' that we are preparing students for, problem-solving is said to be treasured. If though, we only reward the student who knows the right answer but didn't have to process knowledge through trial and error to find it, are we preparing them for the real, real world? The discussion from last night boils down to this: Is learning and intelligence the gift of a few talented students or is it gained through percolating and interacting with knowledge.
On the first question there was some concern about establishing a grading system that could penalize the current students who are at the top of their class, This could be an unintended consequence of giving students more opportunities to learn material by changing all learning variables except level of rigor and demand. If these formerly low performing students could attain high levels of performance, through making them redo, retest and resubmit work until it reflected excellence (and perhaps their true potential), wouldn't that cheat the others? This discussion began to explore the nature of how we define learning and intelligence.
For years there has been debate over what intelligence is. Many of our IQ tests have focused on verbal intelligence so that students who come to school from vocabulary rich environments have greatly benefited from this emphasis on knowing the meaning of words. Conversely, students who come from poor or second language backgrounds have rarely been identified as intelligent under this definition. Howard Gardner expanded the discussion of intelligence with his approach of Multiple Intelligences. He said that there are multiple indicators of intelligence and not all of them can be assessed by a student putting pencil to paper. Some are performance based. The educational community has been slow to expand its thinking on this issue. Instead our grading systems reward those who quickly grasp the knowledge that the teacher presents to them. To borrow from Aesop, if you are the hare you always win the race, if you are the tortoise you get a C or worse. Apparently, it isn't really about demonstrating high levels of learning and excellence. It really is about the ability to meet fixed (and some times arbitrary) deadlines.
If the goal was to master predetermined, essential learning outcomes what would it matter if it takes one student a little more time to attain to the same level of excellence. Two geniuses from America's past would certainly be failures under this limited definition of learning and intelligence: Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein. Einstein was considered 'slow' in school. Thomas Edison is well known for his multiple attempts at trying to figure out the problem of the best filament for the electric light bulb. The fact that he had to try time and time again to attain to mastery is admired. They were tortoises, not hares. Why doesn't that kind of persistence in the pursuit of learning get valued and rewarded in our classrooms? If a student takes a test and fails it they are not given the opportunity to study harder and retake it. Even worse is the example of a student who is assigned a paper that is due on Friday, or else. If it is an 'A' paper, but is handed in on Monday, depending upon the teacher, it is now a 'B' paper or worse. Same paper. Somehow the quality was devalued on the weekend. What if instead we focused on the quality of learning and performance and set deadlines that are not completely arbitrary and set by fiat.
The second question is much the same as the first. What if students are made to redo work that does not reach the level of rigor and excellence that we say that we demand? What if we won't default by giving them a low grade? What if the response to poor work is the demand for them to give more effort and to do better? What if true learning is what happens when they have to rethink an idea or edit their first attempt? What if the mark of an intelligent person is that they learn while learning? What if the process of learning and interacting with knowledge is what produces what we call 'intelligence'? In the so called 'real world' that we are preparing students for, problem-solving is said to be treasured. If though, we only reward the student who knows the right answer but didn't have to process knowledge through trial and error to find it, are we preparing them for the real, real world? The discussion from last night boils down to this: Is learning and intelligence the gift of a few talented students or is it gained through percolating and interacting with knowledge.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Amazing Partnerships
Guest Blogger: Melissa Badger, Community & School Relations
Kudos to the Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce for an absolutely spectacular dinner event last week! I have to admit, I’m not much of a trekkie, but the Star Trek theme was undeniably ingenious and irresistibly fun. That kind of creativity, along with the obvious appreciation guests had for others, and the motivation to keep reinventing our image are all reasons our community is the vibrant place to learn, work, live and play that it is.
Dr. Scott Bierman, Beloit College President, gave the keynote speech, and one key message he kept returning to stuck with me: partnerships. Beloit has always been a huge supporter of Beloit College, as well as for our schools. Dr. Bierman, you were absolutely right in quoting a wise proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Our students need to feel valued and an important part of this whole community – from their families, to city residents, to the businesses and organizations that run this fine city.
I can say with strong certainty that Beloit does care! I have the honor of being part of several community committees such as Visit Beloit, United Way, and the Greater Beloit Economic Development Corporation Business-Education Partnership. The amazing activities going on from Lunch-N-Learn and First Impressions to grants that provide the extras that enhance the educational process for our students, and individual acts of goodwill being done every day are such very important contributions to our students.
Of course, our staff and students are excited to take part in opportunities to give back to the community as well: Pennies for Patients, food drives for Caritas, environmental stewardship, volunteerism in city events, and support for United Way….I’m proud of these efforts, and know we’re working with families on preparing another generation of community leaders with vision to keep driving our city towards even more success while caring for others.
This all confirms what I’ve learned through years of kindness from family, schools and this wonderful city I’ve grown up in: relationships are what truly matter. We’ll do our best to live up to the trust given to us by families to help them teach their children by maintaining those relationships and striving to continuously improve.
As noted last night, you can only coast by going downhill. With our strategic planning, research, and cycles of important staff professional development, we plan to keep in step with fellow organizations to keep moving in a positive direction.
What Do You Truly Believe?
In the movie, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", a Nazi sympathizer shoots Dr. Jones' father (Sean Connery). He challenges Indiana to go through a series of impossible tests to get the Holy Grail with the statement, "It's time Dr. Jones to ask yourself what you truly believe?" It is a great line and the subject of today's blog.
There is a lot of dissonance between what many of us say we beleive and what we practice. This is true in most areas of a person's life. We call it hypocrisy when our beliefs and practices are in opposition to each other. In education, it is common for our practices and beliefs to be in opposition to each other. For example, if I ask a room full of high school teachers, "How many of you believe that it is possible for all of your students to earn an A", few hands will go up. Some of these teachers are older teachers, baby boomers. You know, the generation that was committed to changing things and not engaging in old practices that were indefensible. Yet they grade using a practice that seeks to make the normal distribution, otherwise known as the bell curve, a picture of the grade distribution of their classes.
The question that I would ask: "If all students knew what was expected of them and this was clearly laid out in a syllabus and they worked up to the level of high expectation, why couldn't all students earn an 'A'?" The other question that I have is: "When is knowledge valuable and when should mastery be rewarded?" In the current system, prevalent in most of the country, knowledge is only valuable on the due date of a particular assignment. If it is attained a few days later, it is no longer as valuable, depending upon the whims of a particular teacher. It could lose 10% of its value each day. In some classes, it is not worth anything if it's late. From this I would infer that knowledge and mastery have a mysterious 'shelf life'.
If however, it is important to learn something within a more unlimited period of time (a semester perhaps), then it doesn't matter if the assignment is turned in on a particular date. If it shows high levels of mastery the work should receive the same value, since knowledge does not diminish in value. At least that is the message that I think that we want to send to our students, isn't it? What is my point? It is simply that we need to remove artifical systems that have evolved over time and impaired students from attaining true excellence. If a student doesn't do a particular assignment that is necessary to attaining knowledge of the water cycle and the teacher accepts non-performance as a viable outcome, doesn't that cheapen the value of knowledge to the student? What if students' knew that all necessary work had to be completed within a defined period of time (a semester, perhaps) and that it received full value within that period of time? Might they be motivated to complete it? What if non-completed work never went away? What if you still had to complete it in summer school if it was not completed during the school year, and students knew that this was the consequence? No F. No Zero. Work completion alone is acceptable.
Back to my point on a syllabus. A syllabus is a road map to success. All assignments are spelled out with clear directions on how they are to be done. Rubrics that indicate all of the components necessary for excellence would be in the syllabus. Maybe even an exemple or two of what excellent looks like. What if we actually expected students to edit their writing until it became good? What if we expected them to correct their mistakes as an avenue of accurate learning? I think that this is why many of us became teachers. We didn't want to participate in the same 'sort and separate' system that we grew up in. We wanted something more. Are we boomers and non-boomers radical enough to implement this? It's time to ask yourself Dr. (Ms. or Mr.) __________, what you truly believe!
There is a lot of dissonance between what many of us say we beleive and what we practice. This is true in most areas of a person's life. We call it hypocrisy when our beliefs and practices are in opposition to each other. In education, it is common for our practices and beliefs to be in opposition to each other. For example, if I ask a room full of high school teachers, "How many of you believe that it is possible for all of your students to earn an A", few hands will go up. Some of these teachers are older teachers, baby boomers. You know, the generation that was committed to changing things and not engaging in old practices that were indefensible. Yet they grade using a practice that seeks to make the normal distribution, otherwise known as the bell curve, a picture of the grade distribution of their classes.
The question that I would ask: "If all students knew what was expected of them and this was clearly laid out in a syllabus and they worked up to the level of high expectation, why couldn't all students earn an 'A'?" The other question that I have is: "When is knowledge valuable and when should mastery be rewarded?" In the current system, prevalent in most of the country, knowledge is only valuable on the due date of a particular assignment. If it is attained a few days later, it is no longer as valuable, depending upon the whims of a particular teacher. It could lose 10% of its value each day. In some classes, it is not worth anything if it's late. From this I would infer that knowledge and mastery have a mysterious 'shelf life'.
If however, it is important to learn something within a more unlimited period of time (a semester perhaps), then it doesn't matter if the assignment is turned in on a particular date. If it shows high levels of mastery the work should receive the same value, since knowledge does not diminish in value. At least that is the message that I think that we want to send to our students, isn't it? What is my point? It is simply that we need to remove artifical systems that have evolved over time and impaired students from attaining true excellence. If a student doesn't do a particular assignment that is necessary to attaining knowledge of the water cycle and the teacher accepts non-performance as a viable outcome, doesn't that cheapen the value of knowledge to the student? What if students' knew that all necessary work had to be completed within a defined period of time (a semester, perhaps) and that it received full value within that period of time? Might they be motivated to complete it? What if non-completed work never went away? What if you still had to complete it in summer school if it was not completed during the school year, and students knew that this was the consequence? No F. No Zero. Work completion alone is acceptable.
Back to my point on a syllabus. A syllabus is a road map to success. All assignments are spelled out with clear directions on how they are to be done. Rubrics that indicate all of the components necessary for excellence would be in the syllabus. Maybe even an exemple or two of what excellent looks like. What if we actually expected students to edit their writing until it became good? What if we expected them to correct their mistakes as an avenue of accurate learning? I think that this is why many of us became teachers. We didn't want to participate in the same 'sort and separate' system that we grew up in. We wanted something more. Are we boomers and non-boomers radical enough to implement this? It's time to ask yourself Dr. (Ms. or Mr.) __________, what you truly believe!
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