Monday, January 28, 2019

Teacher’s fired for giving zeros to students who didn’t turn in work – leaves goodbye note on board

It has been decided, I'm not sure by whom, but it has been decided in some school districts, including the one I retired from, that no zeros should ever be given on any assignment, ever. Even the assignments that aren't turned in should be given 50%. Our online grade book was set up to handle this requirement.

Unlike the Florida teacher in the article, we all mostly went along with it eventually. I didn't at first, because it is stupid, and because we were never trained on how to make it work in our grade book. Eventually I figured it out.

Part of the rationale for this practice is that it makes it harder for the student who has a bunch of zeros to their grade up once they decide to start doing the work. Or, if they have a bunch of scores below 50% that on work that they did turn in, it makes it hard for them to raise their grades once they understand the concepts and start getting better grades on things.

The problem is that most of the students who turn in little or no work don't care, and they continue to not to most of the work. Yes, there are exceptions, but very few of them. There are ways to work with those students in order to raise their grades to an acceptable level. And the students who continually score very poorly do so because they don't do the class work. And again, most of them never will.

Another part of the rationale for not giving zeros is based on the mathematical difference between a percentage scale, and the four point scale. Yes, there is a difference, and yes it is harder to raise one's grade from a zero than it is from a 50%. But it's also true that in order to show understanding of a concept, knowing something to less than 50% accuracy is not really knowing the concept. The percentage scale, including a zero for not turning the work in, gives the teacher that more accurate picture of a student's abilities and needs.

Then there is the matter or personal responsibility. At some time, in order to become a functioning adult, one must learn and adapt to this concept.
When it comes right down to it, however, she does not regret stand up for what she believes in. 
"A grade in Mrs. Tirado's class is earned," she said. 
"I'm so upset because we have a nation of kids that are expecting to get paid and live their life just for showing up and it's not real," she added. 
If we are concerned with motivating students, we need to concentrate on using more effective teaching strategies (phonics and beginning with basic skills) so that students can actually learn the material. Once they know they can learn and that they are learning, they will be less apt to give up, thinking that's it's all just too hard.

This controversy is just another dodge to avoid addressing the curriculum issue.

Thursday, January 3, 2019

NPR Gets It Mostly Right

In the long ago days when I first learned to teach reading phonetically, I truly did not know what to expect. I know what I hoped for, but with phonics being frowned up in favor of "whole language," I thought that maybe there was a good reason. Before that, when I first began teaching and became aware of the controversy, I naively assumed that the educational experts had the best interests of children at heart. I thought that the only reason for teaching children was because one truly wanted students to learn. I was not aware of the political and economic considerations, and over the years, I've discovered that I was wrong in my assessment. There is too much money to be made and too much political advantage to be made in educational failure. People and companies make bundles of cash on remedial education and on NEW! and IMPROVED! reading programs. Politicians and reading "experts" become heroes, riding to the school districts' rescue - again.

There isn't much money to be made with pencil and paper. There's even less to be made when students are proficient readers and don't need extra reading programs.

NPR has profiled a Bethlehem PA school district in which a school official has decided to do his own research to figure out why so many students can't read, and why the failure in reading instruction is so wide-spread. The answer has nothing to do with adding technology to the classroom, or increased use of "leveled books," or self esteem, or more student-centered learning. It's got to do with learning what sounds the letters make. In some of the new basal reading programs, a token amount of phonetic instruction has been added to the curriculum, but not enough to insure that students become proficient readers. And teachers still aren't learning the phonetic structure of English. Teacher instruction is still based on methods that have failed for generations.

This was a class on the science of reading. The Bethlehem district has invested approximately $3 million since 2015 on training, materials and support to help its early elementary teachers and principals learn the science of how reading works and how children should be taught.
In the class, teachers spent a lot of time going over the sound structure of the English language.
Since the starting point for reading is sound, it's critical for teachers to have a deep understanding of this. But research shows they don't. Michelle Bosak, who teaches English as a second language in Bethlehem, said that when she was in college learning to be a teacher, she was taught almost nothing about how kids learn to read.
"It was very broad classes, vague classes and like a children's literature class," she said. "I did not feel prepared to teach children how to read."

Even though NPR doesn't use the word, perhaps fearing that it is still a word of ill repute, the teachers are learning phonics, how to teach reading phonetically, the way it should be taught if students are to learn. But, as teachers can't teach what they don't know, teachers must first learn the letter sounds. From the article, it's not clear as to whether students are explicitly and systematically taught the letter sounds and then led to practice them, but-

At the end of each school year, the Bethlehem school district gives kindergartners a test to assess early reading skills.
In 2015, before the new training began, more than half of the kindergartners in the district tested below the benchmark score, meaning most of them were heading into first grade at risk of reading failure. At the end of the 2018 school year, after the science-based training, 84 percent of kindergartners met or exceeded the benchmark score. At three schools, it was 100 percent.
Silva says he is thrilled with the results, but cautious. He is eager to see how the kindergartners do when they get to the state reading test in third grade.
"We may have hit a home run in the first inning. But there's a lot of game left here," he says.

Since they've made such huge investments in technology, and since standardized testing is now done on computers, I fear that most districts will still cling to the vain hope that laptops, tablets, and smart boards will save the educational day.

They won't. Explicit phonics instruction will.