Is NCLB ever going to be reauthorized?!

Yesterday I received a call from an NCTE member in Colorado who asked,"Is NCLB going to be reauthorized soon? Will it ever be reauthorized?" I understand that member's puzzlement. Each day in Washington, a pronouncement about a probable schedule for voting is heard in the Capitol, in the newspaper, or on the air.

For example, in the middle of October Senators Kennedy and Reid issued language for portions of a possible NCLB bill; they continue to hope for action on a full bill by the end of the year. Since earlier in the summer in the House a full bill draft has been circulating, with a range of responses from enthusiastic endorsement by a number of legislators to President Bush's October 15 statement that he will veto any bill that "weakens" NCLB, including any changes in accountability measures like those in the House bill.

NCTE is keeping close tabs on almost daily statements from legislators, associations, and other groups that have definite stands on what needs to be changed in NCLB. Our organization's own latest action has been to write joint letters with four other subject area associations to both the House and the Senate committees responsible for NCLB to advocate for increased support within the bill for professional development for teachers. Encouraging news is that more and more legislators are talking in public forums about their understanding that teachers are the most important asset in our schools and, therefore, deserve support through professional development.

NCTE members have been wonderfully proactive in sending letters to their legislators when prompted by a call from NCTE or on their own initiative. These letters matter. They matter a great deal right now when legislators need data and experiences from classrooms, districts, and states as they sort out all the calls for changes in NCLB. When NCTE suggests or when you have ideas to share, please continue to write or to visit your legislators. They need to hear the voices of those professionals who count most, teachers who act on behalf of promoting their students' learning.

Our Voice Has Been Heard

"Serious changes" in NCLB must be made before House education committee chairperson George Miller (D-Calif.) will bring the law to the floor for renewal. For example, based on constituent input (including that from NCTE members), Miller insists that multiple measures must be allowed to assess student achievement fairly. Although Republicans like Buck McKeon (Calif) say that attempts to, in his words, "weaken the law" will draw Republican resistance, Miller said in a presentation yesterday that he expects that the House will vote in September on legislation to renew the law and that changes will be included.

With a September vote or not, NCTE member letters to their legislators can be influential in advocating for changes that support student learning. NCTE's recent call for letter writing was highly generative, and second contacts by those writers or first contacts for those who didn't get to write before are still quite important. As shown by Miller's adamant stand about multiple measures, legislators do pay attention.

ACT survey conclusion=More grammar instruction

Today my copy of Aligning Postsecondary Expectations and High School Practice: The Gap Defined arrived in the mail. This ACT analysis of over 35,000 surveys completed by teachers from middle school through post-secondary institutions, including over 7,000 English teachers, yielded ten action steps for policymakers. One flummoxes me:

"Make sure that students attain the skills necessary for effective writing." OK, so far. But here is the next sentence: "The survey responses of post-secondary English/writing instructors suggest that high school language arts teachers should focus more on punctuation and grammar skills to better prepare their students for college-level expectations in college composition courses."

The explanation is that high school teachers ranked topic and idea development higher than postsecondary instructors, who ranked mechanics "more frequently among the most important groups of skills for success in an entry-level, credit-bearing postsecondary English/writing course."

My hope is to better understand this surprising finding by reading ACT National Curriculum Survey: 2005-2006, the booklet that accompanied the policy report. Perhaps I won't be so uneasy after I learn more about the specific survey questions and answers. My second hope, though, is that policy makers will not jump to conclusions based on a single statement that advocates greater focus on grammar and punctuation per se. Policy makers need to be helped to understand the importance of teaching grammar and punctuation in the context of authentic writing.

Ages 0-5: The Crucial Years

Second-grade teacher David Keyes laments in The Washington Post on April 9 that schools with wealthy white students have a "distinct advantage when it comes to testing" under NCLB. "Their students grow up with "the intellectual abundance their wealth provides: books, educational videos and Baby Einstein games, to name a few." Of course, poor and minority children also have rich backgrounds: they "speak foreign languages, make music, tell vivid stories, and have other skills not typical of their peers. Their backgrounds, however, often do not provide them with the academic skills needed to succeed on standardized tests."

The Hamilton Project, situated at The Brookings Institution, (www.hamiltonproject.org) agrees with Keyes: "Before children even start kindergarten, there is already a marked difference in reading and math scores between the most advantaged and least advantaged children. Those who score poorly before entering kindergarten are likely to do less well in school and face an increased probability of being teen parents, engaging in crime, and being unemployed as adults." To address this problem a discussion paper by two researchers, Jens Ludwig and Isabel Sawhill, suggests in its subtitle "Intervening Early, Often, and Effectively in the Education of Young Children."

The authors note that the "largest disparities in cognitive and noncognitive skills are found along race and class lines well before children start school, even before they enroll in the federal Head Start preschool program at age three or four years. Most of America's social policies try to play catch-up against these early advantages--and most disadvantaged children never catch up."

The Success by Ten proposal challenges the country's commitment to young children and to their individual development and the country's future: "The most promising way to improve the learning outcomes of disadvantaged children would be to provide them with five years of high-quality, full-time early education and care outside the home, starting from birth." Yes, that is "starting from birth," so you can imagine the investment needed of resolve and resources. If you are interested in learning the features of such a program and on what bases the program is proposed, explore the report Success by Ten on the Hamilton Project website. Whether or not you agree with this particular program, the goal of supporting children during the crucial first five years of their lives deserves our serious attention.

Increased Literacy in Content Areas-Grades 4-12

In Washington I work on behalf of NCTE with other subject area associations to discover what we can learn from one another about helping teachers to help students learn. Last week when Dr. Joseph Torgesen from the Florida Center of Reading Research and the Center on Instruction at Florida State University reported here on a major study on academic literacy instruction for adolescents, my antennae were up especially for what he had to say about improving literacy-related instruction in all content areas.

The five major recommendations about this topic in the 180-page report are

1. More explicit instruction and guided practice in the use of reading comprehension strategies

2. Increasing the amount of open, sustained discussion of content and ideas from text

3. Maintaining high standards for the level of conversation, questions, and vocabulary that are used in discussions and in assignments

4. Adopting instructional methods that increase student engagement with text and motivation for reading

5. More powerful teaching of content and use of methods that allow all to learn critical content

Do you notice that these recommendations focus a good deal on the use of language in a social context, pedagogical strategies to promote engagement and learning critical content, and high levels of expectation about the quality of discussion? Rather than finding the elements of reading emphasized by the National Reading Panel, this report gleaned through studying other major studies about adolescent literacy that these five strategies contribute in the most effective way to increased literacy among adolescents.

If you can share this report with colleagues in other subject areas, you will have much to talk about together. The report will soon be available in downloadable form at www.centeroninstruction.org. In the meantime, you might think about how the recommendations fit your own work. In answer to a question about English teachers' being responsible for teaching reading, Torgeson replied that ALL teachers are responsible, including English teachers. Using these recommendations in our English classes can make us more credible in talking with teachers in other subject areas--and increase students' desire and ability to read.

Six Challenges of High School Reform

On January 26, 2007 James Kemple of MDRC presented conclusions from a multi-pronged study of talent development high schools, first things first schools, and career academies. The study looked at impact, not outcomes: that is, the study valued incremental change and value added, not simply meeting desired outcomes.

The study has identified six major challenges of high school reform, and I wonder how these six fit the experience of NCTE members who teach high school.

1. Creating a personalized learning environment. When students have a supportive environment and positive relationships, particularly with faculty advisory systems, students do better. This alone, however, does not prevent dropout or raise achievement.

2. Enhancing basic literacy and math skills. The two enhancements studied were sequential transitional courses in 9th grade, which were associated with substantial improvements in performance and promotion to 10th grade, and double-blocked schedules to support the transitional courses. Focusing on the critical 9th year is crucial.

3. Improving instructional content and pedagogy. Because NCTE provides professional development, I was particularly interested in the three conclusions drawn are: (a) "Teachers benefit from well-designed curricula and lesson plans that have already been developed." (b) "Teacher professional development and coaching appear to be necessary for building instructional capacity and responsive teaching." and (c) "Student achievement may be enhanced when teachers work together to make sure that curricula and lessons are engaging, aligned, and rigorous."

4. Preparing students for the world beyond high school. "Career awareness and development activities, in and outside of school, provide effective tools for transitions to employment without limiting access to college."

5. Stimulating change and sustaining high performance. Two pieces of evidence here speak to NCTE activities. (a) "External expertise and intensive support appear to be critical to capacity building." and (b) "District support may not be a necessary condition for intitiating reforms, but is required for scaling up and long-term sustainability."

6. Building knowledge. The most interesting point here is that "a focus on outcomes and not on impact has left a track record of getting the wrong answer to the right question." Kemple believes strongly that "Modest improvements are policy relevant." Sharing progress at conventions, in publications, within schools, with policy makers, and in the media begins to correct the notion that only meeting an outcome is significant. Do you agree that incremental improvement is the reality and a positive reality?

If you are interested in more about this study, it is available in a MDRC publication
titled Meeting Five Critical Challenges of High School Reform. See www.mdrc.org

Today when I read "Hello, Grisham--So Long, Hemingway?" in The Washington Post, my heart sank. The article identifies the following books as being dumped from various branch libraries in Fairfax Virginia because they had not been checked out in the last 24 months: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Wiliams, The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well by Maya Angelou, The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, and The Works of Aristotle. Not to be weeded out are the most checked-out books in December 2006, books by such authors as John Grisham, David Baldacci, James Patterson, Nelson DeMille, and Stephen King.

With more electronics and less shelf space, libraries are "struggling with a new issue: whether the data-driven library of the future should cater to popular tastes or set a cultural standard, even as the demand for the classics wanes." This topic seems ideal for consideration in English classrooms. Students could do original research into the decision making processes at their local public libraries. They could consider what they think about the function of a public library. They might explore the decisions that determine what makes the shelves of their own school libraries. The discussion and debate that revolve around the function of libraries could lead to consideration of the reasons for reading materials in their classes, to their reading choices, to choices of their parents or family members, and to the place of literature in a society.

A number of neighborhood libraries in DC are bolted shut because of lack of funding. Why is that fact appalling to some and of little interest to others? Where do libraries fit in our priorities? If libraries remain open, what should they contain? All important questions.

Barbara Cambridge

What Really Influences Student Writing?

Writing Next, a metastudy of writing in middle schools and high schools released last week, found "eleven elements of effective adolescent writing instruction." They are (1) writing strategies, (2) summarization, (3) collaborative writing, (4) study of models, (5) specific product goals, (6) word processing, (7) sentence combining, (8) writing for content, (9) prewriting,
(10) inquiry activities, and (11) process writing approach learning. Although these elements are familiar to most NCTE teachers, they were presented as revelatory practices which the report writers advocate now be taken up by those making education policy and by teachers to improve writing of middle and high school students.

One researcher of this report funded by the Carnegie Corporation explained that only comparative studies of this kind can yield evidence for policy making and can also influence practice in classrooms across the nation. Former NCTE officers interviewed for the October 19 issue of Education Week disagreed, explaining that inquiry-based teacher research in the classroom generates knowledge that can be applied in teaching and learning and add to the knowledge base in the field. And, if that is the case, this research needs to be available to policy makers in a form that they understand and find useful.

As Writing Next gets taken up by interested policy makers who now primarily value this kind of comparative study, I wonder how we can put classroom-based research on the table as well. We know that single examples of classroom practice can be influential. For example, this morning in The Washington Post, a front-page article claims, "Clauses and Commas Make a Comeback."
Featuring one teacher in a local high school, the article feeds the notions of panelists who responded to the Writing Next release that didn't list grammar as one of the elements that contributes to effective writing instruction. Two panelists, a community college president and a politically well connected attorney, extolled the importance of grammar instruction in the very forum in which the featured publication refuted their ideas based on personal stories. They were convinced by their own life stories of the importance of grammar being taught as a separate subject.

Single examples and stories, however, lack the strength to undergird practice or policy over time. The Washington Post example of a teacher who believes in teaching grammar, augmented by a look at neighboring high schools and reference to NCTE publications about grammar, contains no evidence of the influence of grammar teaching on student learning. Although one student is quoted as having received 11 out of 12 on the SAT writing test, no link is made between instruction in grammar and that testing outcomes.

A position between studies with experimental and comparative groups and stories with no evidence of impact of instructional practices is inquiry-based research. Teachers who design studies of their own practice and communicate findings to others in the field engage in what is now often called the scholarship of teaching and learning. Designed teacher inquiry that yields evidence about student learning needs to be communicated for multiple audiences, including the policy makers for whom Writing Next authors claim only comparative studies analysis will make a difference of for whom newspaper accounts of interesting practice seem instructive.

Do comparative studies influence your own practice? Do you rely on anecdotes, however interesting? Do you do inquire into your own practice, either yourself or with colleagues? Have you thought about putting the findings from your designed inquiry into a form that policy makers could understand and value? What does influence writing instruction for middle and high school students?

Curriculum focal points at the national level

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has just published curriculum focal points for prekindergarten through grade 8 mathematics (www.nctm.org). Focal points are the most important three mathematical topics for each grade level, as determined by teachers in those grade levels. A focal point is a cohesive cluster of related knowledge, skills, and concepts.

Because of the profusion of curricular goals, different within and across states, NCTM decided through a wide vetting process to provide a framework for curricular expectations and assessments that it hopes will prompt dialogue within and across states and school districts about what is important mathematically at different grade levels. NCTM states, "Organizing a curriculum around a set of focal points, with a clear emphasis on the processes of mathematics, as outlined in NCTM's Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (i.e. problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connections, and representation), can provide students with a connected, coherent, ever expanding body of mathematical knowledge and ways of thinking."

What would focal points for English language arts be in each grade from prekindergarten through grade 8? What three focal points would you suggest for the grade level(s) you teach? Would having focal points help your teaching if they were part of a sequence of focal points across grade levels and valued by your school district and state in curriculum design and assessment?

Good News on a National Scale

I don’t know about you, but I become weary with all the negative news that is reported about education on multiple fronts. Katie Couric’s journey across the nation as she prepared for her news anchor position unearthed a widespread craving for positive as well as negative news, so there must be others like me who don’t want to wear rose-colored glasses but do want to hear about what is going well.

Today, August 16, at noon ACT released information about students in the high school graduating class of 2006 who took the ACT test. College readiness improved in all four subject areas with an average national composite score of 21.1, up from 20.9 in the past two years. As ACT reports, “Scores were higher for both males and females and for students across virtually all racial/ethnic groups.” ( policycenter@act.org) The fact that the scores were higher across subgroups in the high school population is particularly heartening.

Of particular interest to NCTE members, nearly 70% of students met or exceeded the college benchmark score for English/composition—much higher than the share achieving the reading (53%), science (27%), or math (42%) benchmarks. This suggests that K-12 teachers are making real progress in teaching English language arts. If you are interested in your own state results, ACT’s website shows complete score information for each state.

Even though the ACT Writing Test is a less authentic writing sample than most NCTE teachers would wish for, that is students write for 30 minutes to a given essay prompt, this first year of the test sets a baseline for the future. Because the writing score is not in the composite, it’s worth noting that students earned an average score of 7.7 (on a scale of 2 to 12) on the exam. “On the combined English Test/Writing Test score, the average score was 22.0 (on a scale of 1 to 36).” Females outscored males on the Writing Test by .5 with racial/ethnic groups having a spread of 6.8 for African Americans to 8.0 for Asian Americans.

Although the ACT report comes with calls for more rigorous requirements for courses and for course taking, the report opens with the good news that “national ACT scores rose significantly in 2006.” It’s encouraging to hear these results about those in our most recent high school graduating class who took the test. Of course, many students did not take the ACT, and we have much work to do to increase college readiness in all subject areas. I am glad, nonetheless, that the public has heard today that the hard work of students and teachers, especially in English language arts, has yielded results in this one of many indicators of educational accomplishment.

Using NCTE Position Papers for Your Own Purposes

On Friday, August 18 representatives from four subject matter associations in Washington-English, science, social studies, and mathematics-will join together for an informal conversation about ways in which we might collaborate. We will use a selection of our associations’ position papers to discover commonalities and differences in perspective and policy.

I got the idea for the position paper agenda for this meeting from a generative session I attended at this year’s Whole Language Umbrella Institute. During this session Caryl Crowell, Yvetta Goodman, and Prisca Martens helped us think about ways to use three NCTE documents: “On Reading, Learning to Read, and Effective Reading Instruction,” “A Call to Action: What We Know about Adolescent Literacy and Ways to Support Teachers,” and “Features of Literacy Programs Decision Making Matrix.” It was encouraging to hear how these papers are already being used out in the field, i.e. for structuring a graduate program for secondary education majors, as a common read for a study group of principals, by literacy coaches working with teachers, as a form of professional development with curriculum developers, and as a way to connect English and science teachers.

Have you used an NCTE policy paper for any of your own purposes? I keep a folder of print copies of some of the papers that I might need the most in conversations with other groups here in Washington. For example, at a meeting of the National Adolescent Literacy Coalition that centered on English Language Learners, I quoted from the April 2006 NCTE Position Paper on the Role of English Teachers in Educating ELLs. With the renewal of the push toward English as a National Language, I could cite a much earlier, 1997 position statement in which NCTE opposed such a move, based on, among other things, research that confirms English language learners acquire English more easily if they are literate in their native language. I used NCTE’s policy paper on multi-modal literacy during an International Society for Technology in Education meeting that explored how best to help teachers integrate technology into instruction.

Although each of us works in different contexts, we all are supported through the official policy statements of NCTE. In high stakes situations, having the backing of our major professional association can boast confidence in taking a stand, upholding an individual voice. Check out NCTE’s policy statements on the NCTE website at http://www.ncte.org/about/over/positions.

If you have used or in the future do use one of NCTE’s official statements in your own context, I’d be interested in hearing how it worked. If you share your experience, I’ll pass it on for others to learn from. Just as the experiences I heard about at the WLU Institute sparked my thinking, your ideas may well benefit others in contexts you can’t even predict.

Off to a Great Start: NCTE/IRA’s Literacy Coaching Clearinghousea

At a session at the International Reading Conference last week Nancy Shanklin, new director of the NCTE/IRA Literacy Coaching Clearinghouse, engaged over fifty people in brainstorming about the clearinghouse’s website and research questions. Participants brainstormed potential users of the website, generating a comprehensive list that included, among others, classroom teachers, literacy coaches, administrators, policy makers, parents, and state education officials. A range of research questions covered such topics as defining essential features of coaching, analyzing the impact of coaching on teacher practice, and describing the effects of changed practice on student learning.

As Shanklin assembles an Advisory Council and a set of fellows to contribute to the establishment of the Center, she is eager to learn what will be most helpful to those who will use the clearinghouse as a source of information and connection with others engaged in the coaching process. cambridge-blog@ncte.orgIf you have suggestions, please respond to this blog. I'll be sure that Nancy receives your ideas.

Recently at the American Educational Research Association, I attended sessions on literacy coaching on behalf of NCTE’s efforts in establishing the clearinghouse. Emily Rogers and Carrie Hung from The Ohio State University reported the dearth of research on what it is that effective literacy coaches do. Their research focused on using an observational rubric with coaches who observed and rated video clips of coaches at work. Basic questions included “How did the coaches analyze teaching?” and “What are literacy coaches’ understandings about quality teaching?” These researchers concluded that (1) Coaches need to lift teachers’ theoretical understandings. (2) Coaches need to be well prepared in the subject matter so they can make decisions on the how, what, and when of teaching,” and “Coaches need a deep theory of literacy learning and knowledge of the teaching standards.”

Three other research/practitioners—Irene Fountas, Gay Su Pinnell, and Emily Rodgers—developed specific rubrics for examining each of the following instructional components: interactive read aloud, shared reading, guided reading, interactive writing, writing workshop, and word study. They concluded from their work that “A many layered rubric offers a look inside the ‘black box’ of instructional approaches, provides concrete language for the professional developer or coach so that practice can be viewed on a continuum, and serves as a ‘map’ for self-reflection on the part of individual teachers.”

David Kerbow and Nicole Pinkard from the University of Chicago presented on “Developing Observational Rubrics for Literacy Coaches: A Tool for Professional Development and Following Teacher Change.” They field tested their rubric with 22 literacy coordinators working with 78 teachers in K-3. Based on an item response theory model, the rubric revealed that “Literacy coaches agree about what they are seeing.” They presented empirical evidence for the construct validity of their rubric and for teacher development.

I mention these three presentations because research is being done on literacy coaching. The problem is that the research is difficult to find and needs to be organized for ready accessibility by people in many roles who can benefit from the research findings. And, that’s one main function of the Literacy Coaching Clearinghouse.

NCTE members will be able in the months ahead to contribute to and to benefit from the clearinghouse. Be on the lookout for the website to be up and running by the end of August. Also as you plan your time at the 2006 NCTE Convention, watch for the workshop that Nancy Shanklin will coordinate on literacy coaching. Beware that her excitement about this subject is catching! You’re likely to go away from the workshop more knowledgable and more enthused than ever about the benefits of effective literacy coaching.

A New Occasion for Educating Your Principal

Teachers in middle grades and high school have a new, special opportunity to engage principals in dialogue about how to improve adolescent literacy. The National Association of Secondary School Principals has published Creating a Culture of Literacy: A Guide for Middle and High School Principals. Because of generous funding from the Gates Foundation, a copy of the guide has been sent to every middle school high school principal in the country.

As we know, however, this publication will mean nothing if it is not read. The NASSP itself recognizes this point: the conclusion says to principals about the material, “Those of you reading this have two choices: put it on the shelf, or begin to act upon it.” Because principals are so busy, often with necessary administrative matters, I think that they will need assistance “to act upon it.” And, that’s where NCTE members come in.

To garner the understanding of and support for what it takes to engage adolescents in learning, you may want to engage in conversation with your principal about the contents of Creating a Culture of Literacy. Chapters in the very readable publication include a focus on leadership, a summary of what is known about adolescent literacy, a positive way of using assessment, the essential ingredients of a literacy program, and ways to meet needs of all students. Appendices offer templates for capacity surveys, a literacy team planning guide, an improvement action plan, and progress monitoring. A literacy bibliography points to other materials that may be useful. The publication is available online for downloading: http://www.nassp.org/s_nassp/sec_news.asp?CID=1&DID=52936.

You will know best how to enter into the conversation in the context of your school and which parts of the publication can spur discussion and action that will benefit your culture. This new publication offers an up-to-date common reading for administrators and teachers. Consider taking advantage of the moment.

Formative Assessment at the Forefront

Last week on behalf of NCTE I attended the ETS Invitational Assessment Conference. I came away heartened by the emphasis of the presentations. The good news is that the focus was squarely on formative assessment, in particular on diagnostic formative assessment.

Formative assessment seeks to find how students are progressing toward learning goals. Diagnostic formative assessment adds the feature of suggesting what needs next to be done by teacher and student to improve that progress. Intelligent systems, for example, are being developed for physics and mathematics to guide students who approach a problem in an ineffective way to use an alternative strategy. More than one speaker cautioned about distinguishing between commercial assessments that claim to be formative but offer only accountability uses, such as for benchmarking, and formative assessments that supply useable information for teaching and learning.

I thought during the conference about the multiple ways that teachers of English use diagnostic assessment all the time, even if we do not use that label. The issue, however, is that the evidence of that diagnostic assessment and of its effects on learning is sometimes implicit rather than explicit and sometimes not traced so that teachers can make claims about the impact of their pedagogies. We have also not yet devised ways in which teacher diagnostic assessment can be scaled for systematic use, with documented results, for public understanding and use in accountability decisions.

As NCTE focuses in the coming year on teacher professional development, teachers will be able to make more visible the ways in which they develop their pedagogical expertise over time. Teachers will be able to document how certain professional development activities contribute to their practice and the impact of that practice on student learning.

I hope that some teachers will choose to document the diagnostic formative assessment practices that they use. For example, if a middle grades teacher used the ReadWriteThink lesson entitled “Reciprocal Revision: Making Peer Feedback Meaningful,” she could trace how peer comments pointed to changes that writers then chose to make in actual pieces of student writing. Students who learn through effective teaching how to ask good questions and make useful comments about writing affirm the pedagogy of peer review.

The issue then becomes documenting the collective effectiveness of this diagnostic practice so that it can be part of the wider teacher capacity building agenda and one aspect of the way that teacher effectiveness and student learning outcomes are assessed. Summative assessments used for accountability purposes need alternatives that are established, documented, and made public in a systematic way. NCTE members may over time become committed to providing knowledge about their diagnostic assessment practices first for the purpose of improved learning in individual classrooms and then for collective action, including influencing the future of both formative and summative assessment. We start where we are, individually in our classrooms, but I believe that we need to continue collectively to influence policies about assessment and accountability.

Acting on What We Know

I was filled with horror at the televised pictures of hurricane victims, both dead and alive. At first, I was appalled at claims by some people that the catastrophe of inadequate response to need was racially based. But, I’ve come to accept with shame that a major reason so many people remained in their homes was that they didn’t have the money to get out. And, poverty brings us back to race.

In The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, Jonathan Kozol, who earlier awoke my consciousness in his searing book about schools in East St. Louis, again exposes what he calls de facto segregation in urban school systems. His descriptions of physical conditions of schools echo what I read each fall in Washington as schools reopen: schools are “buildings where ceilings leak, rats scurry, and toilets don’t flush.” Citing data about significant gaps between per-pupil spending in districts that serve predominantly white students and predominantly students of color, Kozol contends that current conditions expand the “vast divide between two separate worlds of future cognitive activity, political sagacity, social health and economic status, and the capability of children of minorities to thrive.” A Washington Post review on September 4, 2005 applauds Kozol’s book because it “firmly grounds school-reform issues in the thorny context of race and concludes that the nation has failed to deliver the promise of Brown v. Board of Education.”

Another book I’m reading right now is the NCTE publication Teachers Organizing for Change: Making Literacy Learning Everybody’s Business by Cathy Fleischer. Cathy’s book makes sense to me on so many counts, but especially when she suggests that teacher-researchers, who constitute so many NCTE members, need to become teacher-organizers so that they can communicate their understandings to their communities. This spread of information, according to Cathy, “transforms knowledge into language and formats that are appealing and understandable to others who are not in the field—centering that knowledge on the real lives of students.” And, this knowledge must lead to change where it is needed.

The pictures from New Orleans and the stories of victims have spurred many Americans to action, in personal and community acts of kindness and in calls for political changes to be sure delayed response to crisis never happens again. The visual and the narrative are powerful influences that have appeal and can lead to understanding and action based on the real lives of individuals and communities. But, in this situation we are being reactive.

How can we as teachers present images and tell stories that will evoke public action about the horrific conditions of schools in many urban neighborhoods? Are we able to link our images and stories to the underlying reality of the place of poverty and race in creating the state of urban schools? How much responsibility are we who don’t teach in urban schools willing to take before, and not after, the effects of neglect erupt into crises that we then treat with surprise? Tough questions, but ones we can not put off answering.

Affirming What Works

I’m glad to meet you through this blog and look forward to our sharing ideas over the months ahead. One advantage of blogging is that as we discuss forthrightly high priority or emerging issues that affect our teaching and learning, we don’t have to have organized all our thoughts on a topic or settled on solutions for problems. We can think aloud together as we consider matters that count.

One place I read about matters that count in the world is in the newspaper. A joy of living in Washington for me is starting the day by reading The Washington Post. A recent editorial and a recent column both focused on No Child Left Behind. The authors argue that we must look beyond “mere accountability toward the even more difficult, substantive question of how to improve schools.” This call for refocus implies that NCLB does not help improve schools through a focus on testing. NCTE, in fact, agreed with that contention by signing on last October to a statement by multiple organizations calling for fair testing. Indeed, in an Education Week article on August 31, 2005, about the ways in which civil rights groups split over NCLB, that statement is cited. NCTE is on record.

But, in his Post column David Broder contends that no matter the outcome of current legal battles about NCLB between states and the feds, a more productive approach to improvement is to pay attention to recommendations by a task force created by the Center for American Progress and other partners. These organizations found programs across the country that work and could be expanded to national scale -- if the political will and resources were present.

You’ll recognize some of the suggestions because NCTE supports them through its programs and initiatives:

• Strengthen the high school curriculum
• Improve student assessments beyond current tests
• Upgrade teacher training and rewards

The issue is scalability. The Post editorial reports that last spring Rep. George Miller from California put forward a bill that builds on successful state programs. John Boehner, who heads the Committee, has said that he expects some of Miller’s suggestions to be incorporated into legislation this fall. The editorial concludes: “It’s a good start. When Congress comes back to town this fall—and the new school year begins—this debate should begin again in earnest.” Well, that time is now.

As the school year begins, teachers can consciously think about and share with others what works in their classrooms. Even with the negative pressures of NCLB, we all can follow the Post writers’ call to draw attention to programs that improve student learning. NCTE members are at the heart of such programs and need to be heard.