Category Archives: gifted children

April 10, 2010 · 5:22 pm

RESURRECT A DREAM

A new study from the Center for Research and Reform in Education at John Hopkins University has concluded that “Spanish-speaking children learn to read English equally well regardless of whether they are taught primarily in English or in both English and their native language.”

In other words, bilingual instruction does no harm as it relates to the acquisition of English literacy skills; we can reintroduce the goal of bilingualism  and Spanish literacy – without any negative consequences to English reading acquisition.

In still other words… if it does no harm… and thus there is no adverse impact on test scores… then the advantages of bilingual instruction now outweigh the disadvantages… according to the latest research on the topic!

The director of the report, Dr. Robert Slavin, noted that

“Here’s a study that gives more solid information than has existed before that quality of instruction is important. The idea that the language of instruction is going to be decisive just doesn’t come through. You can succeed in either language. You can fail in either language.”

We have always said that it’s the quality of the teaching and the passion for promoting biliteracy that makes the difference!!!

Of course at El Milagro, we have stretched to squeeze every point we can from the California Standards Test.  Our student mobility and the drive to stay out of Program Improvement forced us to abandon dual language instruction.  But next year we are eliminating those external pressures by

• Dramatically increasing the number of multi-age classrooms on our campus

• Developing a rich, integrated curriculum for those multi-age classrooms

• Placing students in grade levels according to their performance level (and not according to their age)

• Promoting students only when they demonstrate mastery of their grade level standards

Not only does this allow us to satisfy all the AYP demands, it will allow us to reintroduce the arts, health and fitness, science and social study.  We can teach children to think again.  We can promote creativity and performance and  problem solving and innovation.  The multiple intelligences!

But it also suggests that it is time to resurrect our dual language program… and our dream of biliteracy for all children.

Joy. Authentic learning.  Dos idiomas.  El Milagro.

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March 27, 2010 · 4:31 pm

Mañana Nunca Viene

What if our curriculum was as rich as it has ever been?  If children learned to think again?  To create and play with ideas and innovate and imagine and stretch their  logic and bring their innate gifts to bear.

What if kids learned science and economics and geography again?  What if they traced the footprints of Monet? Sang like John Legend.  Wondered at the vastness of space.  The mystery of the ocean floor.

What if we switched off the conveyor belt and closed the factory school?  What if we just abandoned the archaic systems altogether?  What if kids had the time they needed to learn the things that you say they need to learn?  The standards.  The important stuff.  What if we quit pushing them forward as if it is some long inexorable march? What if they stayed till they were ready to fly?  Then we gave them wings.  No more grade levels to box them in… no more rigid tracks that consign them to a direction that is pre-determined and pre-ordained.

No more instant promotions to grade levels for which they are not ready.

What if merely staying upright in one’s desk until June was no longer the crietria for promotion, but rather, a clear and thorough demonstration of mastery?  Authentic. Beyond bubbles and the swift utility of a standardized test.

What if we awoke– as if from some long and stubborn nap that is neither refreshing nor productive– awoke in time to remember that children aren’t standardized and neither are their minds?  Nor their hands.  Nor their dreams.  Nor their journeys.

What if we knew it would take a revolution to set our children free of this?  Would we fight?  Would you?

What if we pushed against the stubborn status quo?  I mean… all of us.  All at once. Pillar by pillar piled in mounds of Ephesian dust. Just like this.

We’ll go first.  We’ll go now.  Mañana nunca viene.  El Milagro.

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January 31, 2010 · 6:27 am

STAMPEDE TO THE TOP: A RACE TO RUIN

Several things happened this week that gave me pause:

First I saw on CNN the story about a little fourth grader in Texas who hung himself in the school restroom.  The child psychologists all attributed his death to depression and the economy and the pressure he likely felt as he made his way through school.  But he was nine.  And while depression may be on the rise (like obesity and diabetes and other childhood illnesses) it hardly explains such an extreme response.

I wondered…  what was it about his school that added to his hopelessness?  Or what could have been different for him?  Were his talents and interests nurtured?  Or had he been reduced to a test score and a proficiency level?

Then I started my class at USD on Tuesday.  I am teaching a course on Education Reform.  In an attempt to introduce the students to El Milagro, I shared an I-Photo slide show of our kids over the years.  It captured the spirit of children dancing and singing and celebrating.  Talented.  Diverse.  Exultant.  But there were no pictures from this school year.

So I wondered… what kind of climate have we created for the children of El Milagro lately?  Is it a refuge from the stress of their struggling families? Or have we pushed ourselves too far out on that assessment ledge… and in the name of someone else’s definition of accountability… hung our toes over the brink?

Then I listened to President Obama talk about his vision of education in the State of the Union.  In it he said:

“This year, we have broken through the stalemate between left and right by launching a national competition to improve our schools. The idea here is simple: instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform – reform that raises student achievement, inspires students to excel in math and science, and turns around failing schools that steal the future of too many young Americans, from rural communities to inner-cities.”

I wondered… isn’t that a frighteningly narrow definition of “school success?”

So then I started reading Yong Zhao’s book entitled  “Catching Up or Leading the Way “ where he states that China is going the opposite direction as the US right now.  That they value outputs and student achievement for sure, but they value the inputs too.  Zhao urges American educators (of which he is one) to rethink the preoccupation with testing and national standards:

“America is at a crossroads. We have two choices.  We can destroy our strengths in order to catch up with others on test scores, or we can build on our strengths and remain a leader in innovation and creativity.  The current push for more standardization, centralization, high-stakes testing, and test-based accountability is rushing us down the first path.  What will truly keep America strong and Americans prosperous is the other path because it cherishes individual talents, cultivates creativity, celebrates diversity, and inspires curiosity.”

I wondered…What are we doing for our children?  Are we handing them musical instruments to play their hearts out on, inviting them to dance, coaching their teams, encouraging community service, investing in their health, encouraging them to think, inspiring them to invent and innovate, handing them a camera to capture their youthful energy in photographs?  Or are we drilling them on test taking skills?

The Race to the Top may actually be a stampede over the edge of the cliff.

I wondered… what have we learned from that tragedy in Texas?

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November 20, 2009 · 6:57 pm

ZYDECO HELLRAISERS

What happens to Attention Deficit Disorder when it grows up?

Sometimes it is channeled into extraordinary gifts. So

Michael Phelps

Picasso

JFK

James Carville

Robin Williams… …are all reputed ADHD guys.

This is hardly an exhaustive list but it’s enough to give you a flavor. I think if they named every person ever diagnosed with ADHD we would be surprised by some of the folks that were on the list– and yet not surprised at all. We would recognize the extraordinarily talented individuals who have managed to channel the annoying distractability, the daydreaming, the incessant fingers tapping on the desk, the wild-eye passions that seem fueled by IV bags filled with Red Bull.

Jack Nicholson? Paul McArtney? Ellen?

The names give me pause. And patience. So many extraordinary and talented people that it is less of a pejorative label. Or it should be. But I wonder how we channel the energy of our ADHD kids in the current climate of standardized testing which doesn’t care much about piano players or actors or artists or craftsmen or dancers or point guards or revolutionaries.

Ernest Hemmingway was supposedly an ADHD student who– like Mark Twain and Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein– probably would have tanked on the California Standards Test… right after the whole process tied him in knots and drove him to intentionally fall out of his desk and onto the floor. When the art of writing is reduced to multiple choice writing mechanics… real writers implode.

I notice that every year we seem to have a kid throw up on his California Standards Test. I feel for our students who have to carve what they know about math and language arts into tiny black bubbles at the end of a number 2 pencil– when all the while they are jumping out of their skin. I admire their accidental irreverence. I get it.

As we march toward the steadily unachievable AYP benchmarks established by NCLB, I fear that “school” will get more and more difficult for students whose learning styles and interests and modalities do not lend themselves to test prep; and for students who are not particularly strong in- nor interested in– math and language arts principles that can be freeze-dried into multiple choice questions. I fear that English language learners and children with learning disabilities and learning differences will continue to languish even though they are the very kids we supposedly are trying to not leave behind.

As a school leader, I want to know that we are striking the right balance between excelling on the standardized tests and accelerating authentic learning. I want to match the time we spend conducting formative assessments and spiral reviews and test prep strategies with opportunities for children to play and perform and draw and jump in the air and dive out of their desks.

Kids are good at different things, So at El Milagro we honor what they are good at and try to help them find their way to their innate talents that make them feel whole. Maybe that is why I have such an appreciation for individuals who channel their creative high-energy into gold. In spite of us. Like Alex MacDonald, the washboard player for Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers.

I first saw Alex perform last Spring on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Since then they have traveled throughout Europe bringing their Creole rhythms and uniquely zydeco sounds to bars and blues festivals around the world. They are all wonderful magicians. But Alex is mesmerizing. Electrifying. His non-stop energy reminds us that at one point he must have been very interesting to have sitting in the back row of your third period American History class. Somehow, he seems like the kid that would throw up on his California Standards Test.

His school probably didn’t have a washboard department, so how he found his way to the Zydeco Hellraisers is anybody’s guess. Nor do I know where he gets his stamina or his lightening fast hands. He defies our labels as he should. He is simply a young man that absolutely revels in his very unique gift.

Perhaps it requires some zydeco hellraisers to remind us to find the balance between the core disciplines that matter for standardized test scores… and the multiplicity of intelligences that matter to our students.  Stop and admire their talents even if they struggle with dividing fractions… at least the way we teach it.

Our children learn in different ways. Different styles. They have talents that we can’t even fathom. They will abide our lessons and content standards and standardized test regimes until the moment they are free to dive out of their desk and explode across a zydeco stage.

(Cross-posted on Leadertalk)

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July 28, 2009 · 3:08 am

THE GUNPOWDER CHRONICLES, Part 2: “Balance”

turtle 2-1This is the 2nd in a series about our partnership with the Chula Vista Nature Center at Gunpowder Point. These posts will document our progress as we move our middle school science program off campus– to a satellite classroom called the San Diego Bay!  

DSC_0050It is the first day of school and so our students return.  It is mid-summer… most school districts will not call their students back until after Labor Day.  Not El Milagro, though. We start early. So ready or not, they are are descending– in droves.  Record high enrollment and a long waiting list means business is good.

This year there are some new things, like our Full-Day Kindergarten program.   And there is an automatic back gate in the staff parking lot that allows teachers to drive up and never get out of their cars as the fence opens and closes behind them. But that’s not our best new feature.  This year we are partnering with the Chula Vista Nature Center and moving our middle school science program right into the middle of their facility.

The Nature Center sits on a reserve at the edge of the San Diego Bay, two miles from Mueller Charter School.  There are aquariums and marshes and protected reserves that surround a natural, outdoor classroom.  It will provide  our students with a rare opportunity to learn in a real-life laboratory of interconnected ecosystems… every day.  It is a reminder that we cannot get so preoccupied with standardized testing and teaching the basic skills required to score well– that we forget to create opportunities for authentic learning too.  Opportunities to think, imagine, create, explore, discover, question, use the technology, solve the riddles of the universe and learn to love learning.

box-1The Nature Center is our reminder that we are out of whatever “the box” is and our students could be the beneficiaries.  

Last Friday the whole staff met at the Nature Center for a morning of activities and learning together.  They explored the many exhibits and habitats there.  They created themes around some of the big ideas of life science like adaptation and evolution, scale and structure, systems, the magic of water, color and song, and interconnected relationships in nature.  

And we searched for balance.

Or at least a definition for it.  And we discovered that definition in the very dream of what we think the Nature Center partnership can be for kids.  If we are truly “balanced” we would do all three of these things well:

• FIRST : We would enthusiastically play the testing game and make sure our kids have the basic skills they need to excel in math and reading; that we get the big scores to keep our autonomy and independence– and our charter!  We would also work urgently to achieve all the AYP goals and to assure that that our API is pushing into the stratosphere.

sea turt-1• SECOND: Beyond basic skills, we would work just as hard to provide a more authentic, thinking curriculum that allows children to discover their natural gifts and interests.  A curriculum that features the interesting stuff that engages students every day.  Like the Nature Center and all its wind-framed beauty and ocean air;  its banks of slippery seaweed, its deep fish tanks that stink. Or the tidepools, tucked snugly up against shallow marshes that splash mud and seawater on kid’s school clothes when the tide is up. Or rare creatures on loan from their fragile ecosystems; sometimes strange life-forms that can make  kids smile when they hold them in their hands.

• FINALLY, we would help our students develop as literate, interesting, passionate, connected, people. We help them develop the habits and attitudes of successful learners: Respect. Responsibility. Commitment. Character. And other stuff too.

The Nature Center is more than a metaphor–  it is an authentic learning lab, a model for what schools must do to provide all children with a context for growing up as complete human beings.  So that is the balance that we seek school-wide: 1) the basic skills required to demonstrate mastery on standardized tests, 2) the rich thinking curriculum to engage our students with their world, and 3) an emphasis on nurturing the character traits of successful citizens and learners. 

If we achieve that, it will be a great year!

DSC_0040

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April 20, 2009 · 4:44 pm

HIGH STAKES… All IN

testsWe are two weeks from the 2009 iteration of the California Standards Test.  The clock is ticking. We are prepared.  We are in a zone.  And we better be…considering the high stakes.

High stakes?  Isn’t that just residual hyperbole left over from the NCLB-era politics?  Well let’s check it out.  

Here are a dozen ways that standardized testing has resulted  in high “stakes” outcomes and their unintended consequences:

• High stakes because the results are going to follow every student for the remainder of their school careers.

• High stakes because schools will use the results to determine students’ eligibility for after-school programs and tutoring opportunities and Advanced Placement classes and extracurricular activities. Even for eligibility (and thus in-eligibility) for participation in athletics and the performing arts.

• High stakes because school officials will use the scores as a criteria for classifying children as gifted– public education’s most coveted label.  Similarly, they will cite these scores when diagnosing children as learning disabled.

• High stakes because schools will (illegally) weigh the portents of  these scores before admitting new students.  Or they will consult them– the final straw– before expelling or disenrolling kids; before recommending ‘delinquents’  to a continuation program or independent study or homeschooling or some other version of learning in Siberia.

In high stakes testing, the results matter to everybody. 

board-mtg1

• They are “high stakes” because presidents and governors and mayors run for elected office on the promise of improving local trends in standardized test scores.  School board members too.  And the superintendents that school boards hire will survive on their ability to deliver higher scores on metrics like the Academic Performance Index (API).  Likewise the principals that the superintendents hire will come and go like bad wind and pretty much everybody will feel the pressure when the next wave of leaders are clearing out their desks and insuring their colleagues that they have always wanted to return to the classroom.  

• High stakes because that pressure to raise test scores will drive teachers with the most seniority (and experience) toward the schools with the higher API (800+) and lower stress levels. 

u-haul-1• High stakes because schools with low API’s (<700) will continue to replace those migrating veteran teachers with brand new inexperienced teachers who will take five years to learn their craft… and then they will migrate too.  And while they are learning, those younger teachers will be just starting to raise families of their own.  So you can expect those teachers to be out two to three months on maternity leave and to be temporarily replaced by long-term substitute teachers who have less training and less experience than the inexperienced young teacher they are replacing.

And the community will witness the invisible forces of the high stakes tests in ways they could never imagine.

• High stakes because when educated, upwardly mobile young couples start looking for a suitable neighborhood in which to raise their families they inevitably consider the quality of the schools.   They consult websites like greatschools.net and identify the school districts with the highest test scores.  And that is where they buy their home.  

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• High stakes because when large groups of young, upwardly mobile couples get together to raise their children, they insist on state of the art pre-schools and they start volunteering in the elementary school before their kids are old enough to walk. So a whole community evolves around a culture of high achievement. It becomes pre-ordained and the Academic Performance Index of the schools go even higher.

• High stakes because the schools with low API’s struggle for any organizational momentum at all. They tend to serve families who are less educated and thus less upwardly mobile.  They tend to serve families that are in survival mode. They do not tend to attract the new young families who just moved to town and who are looking for the very best schools.  

• High stakes because the communities with large clusters of well educated and upwardly mobile families experience far fewer home foreclosures than those where families took greater risks with loans.  (In San Diego County, for example, the top five zip codes with the highest number of home foreclosures featured schools with an average API of only 754.) Home foreclosures lead to higher student mobility rates as families migrate toward more affordable housing options.  

High stakes.  

high-stakes2• High stakes because we are all compelled to strike hard against the mountainous challenge of quantifying children’s learning on the basis of  a single standardized test.  We will balance the winners and the losers and the inevitable damage caused when the best of intentions collide with unintentional consequences.  And that is, by definition, high stakes– where our systems align poorly or not at all. And  for that incongruence…our children pay.

In California, there are only two weeks remaining until we administer  the next version of the CST. When it is complete, we will dutifully send our thousand student answer sheets off to Sacramento with a blind faith that they will be accurately scored.  And the cycle of waiting for the results and the early analyses will begin anew.  

Our students are ready to play the game. It is high stakes. We are “all in”.

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July 7, 2008 · 6:34 pm

BOX SCORE

(NOTE: As the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP)  goals continue to accelerate, more and more US schools will be categorized by the pejorative brand: “Program Improvement School”.  NCLB’s kiss of death.  By 2014 as many as 90% of America’s schools could be categorized as underperforming “Program Improvement” schools.  Perhaps it provides a handy label for politicians to rail on public education in general… but inside our schools, where we know our children’s names and faces, it is a different story.

This is the FIRST POST IN A SERIES as Mueller Charter School awaits its test results from the 2007-08 school year.)  

 

I watched Sport Center last night and the announcer declared that the Yankees beat the Red Sox with  5 runs, on 8 hits and 1 error.  The Red Sox had 4 runs on 7 hits and 1 error.  Game over.  Just like that.  Spectacular drama reduced to a box score.

All of the human emotion and energy was drained from the page and forever deposited into the timeless vaults of Major League Baseball.  All that was left behind were shelled peanuts and Bronx beer cups and a lost binocular case: the predictable debris of 55,000 spectators and a national television audience.   Soon all that would be swept away too.  But not the box score.  

 So where in this infinite compression of events does the box score reflect that an  outfielder played the game of his young career or that an old veteran pinch-hit in the  8th and struck out—leaving two runners stranded and causing management to question his future in the game.   Or that a maple bat shattered on a foul ball and flew into the stands just missing an eight year old girl who had turned to look for the vendor selling cotton candy. Or that the pitchers in the bullpen spit sunflower seeds on each other and flirted with the girls in Section 107 and that one of them got a date. Or that an umpire made an embarrassingly bad call on a routine play at second only to stumble as he jogged back out to his position beyond the infield grass.  The fans who were jeering him hesitated long enough to laugh as he nearly face planted within view of a momentarily hostile world. 

55,000 fans left with new memories forever fixed.  “Remember that game we saw at Yankee Stadium just before they tore it down?  When was that… 2007?… 08”    Lives were enriched,  But not the box scores. 

And yes there is a point here.

At Mueller Charter School we await the return of our students’ test scores– now just weeks away. A year’s worth of collaboration, energy, focused effort, commitment, heartbreak, tears, momentary triumphs, wins and losses—will all be reduced to a few lines. A box score. 

“Did you meet your AYP goals?”   

“Did you make significant gains on the Academic Performance Index?”

“Did you go into Program Improvement?”

“Did you prove your worth on the planet as a charter school?”

And we will answer:  “But what about the lives we touched?  The lives we SAVED?  The families we successfully linked with health care insurance… the kids that climbed out of the basement referred to as Far Below Basic… the kids who we sheltered while their father was sent to prison in Central California… the teacher who was ready to quit until she found salvation in her extraordinary students… the strides we made in utilizing formative data to make strategic adjustments…  the hundreds of students who now have enough of a foundation in English to compete academically—even if it wasn’t soon enough to benefit this year’s box score…”

“What about the community of teachers and learners and families who will declare last year a tremendous success, who will return from summer vacation energized regardless of what shows up in the box scores?  What about our indomitable spirit– the “this is our year”, the no quit, no excuses, no turning back– the community invested in the success of their kids?”

Who knows.  When we get our results back at the end of July we may conclude that we have finally overcome the adverse effects of poverty and the economy and family mobility and the challenges of learning English as a second language and that we actually met the AYP and API and PI expectations.  The data may authenticate the most productive year in the 15-year history of Mueller as a charter school.  The Board and media and world community may then suddenly sit up and take notice:  “Wow.  How about that Mueller Charter School.  How did they do it?”  Or not.

In either case we know for certain that a single box score out of context cannot predict whether the Yankees or the Red Sox will win the American League East.  Just as we know that the complex drama of teaching and learning and human relationships and keeping children whole– cannot be meaningfully reduced to a box score. 


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