What if adults took standardized tests?

Al,

Read this yet? Really well done article from Wash Po about the irrelevancy of Standardized exams,
Enjoy!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/when-an-adult-took-standardized-tests-forced-on-kids/2011/12/05/gIQApTDuUO_blog.html

Manhattan-Bronx

Al- Interesting take on our conversation about Manhattan and The Bronx. This was from Deb Meier, she mentions Fannie Lou at the end. (I will not address my absence from the blog, I've been busy)
love ya
Jeff

Concerns about the Bronx are not new, as you know. But Bloomberg deserves blame not mostly for the state of the schools but the state of the Bronx writ large, which has produced catastrophes in the schools which have not been tackled. Or even focused on!!!

Bx high school have failed for decades - and decades. This is essential to remember, and that nothing was done for them. It's the response to failure--that's the crime. But doing something is much harder than labeling. They serve one of the poorest, if not poorest, cities in America if we thought of the Bronx as a city in itself. The politics of the Bx has not typically been helpful to schools. Or to anything else. When my colleague Marcia Brevot and I checked out data on the Bronx in the early 90's there was no Bronx high school in which more than a third of the entering freshman class went on to graduate high school--a fact disguised by their weird way of keeping graduation dates (based on % of midyear seniors who graduated) and amusing (weep weep) ways of explaining the data (kids often transferred schools or went back to PR) When we met the then borough leader he seemed unimpressed. Attendance rates were far worse than the official tallies--easy enough to do--and we found--by visiting schools--that far less than half the kids attended afternoon classes, somewhat more in the a.m., especially the class just before lunch hour. In fact, on paper, most schools were overcrowded. If there weren't so many "no shows" they'd have ha to confront the physical plant shortage.

As we have gentrified Manhattan I would imagine places like the Bronx have gotten poorer. I don't actually keep up on it. What we need is not either so-called "school improvement" or just closing them one by one and intensifying the problems in the remaining schools--or hiding them. We did have an idea--and were partners in the plan for breaking James Monroe HS into smaller schools while also starting a few others in renovated spaces in the early 90s. It may or may not have been a wise strategy, although it did create two longterm successes with the same kids Monroe high school serves including plenty of special ed etc. I still keep in touch with one--Fannie Lou Hammer. But it ended up having no impact on Monroe high school nor the Bronx's dramatic problems.

Deb

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Deborah Meier

Calling you out!

Jeff!

Find a minute and post, will you! Your last post was at the beginning of August! I'm starting to feel like I'm sitting by the phone, waiting for a call.

Here is my FOURTH post since your last. I've been asked to write a small piece in the network newsletter. I've decided to call it "iCorner." Kinda corny, I know, but it suites me. Here's the latest edition:

iCorner

Hello Bridges of Learning!

I’m Al, the network’s new Innovation Coach, and I’ll be stopping by the newsletter every once in a while to give you a small look into Bridges for Learning’s iZone work.

What is the iZone? Great question, and one that I’m asked often, so don’t feel alone in the asking. iZone is a project housed in the Office of Innovation at Tweed whose mission is to facilitate the design and implementation of innovative instructional practices in schools. iZone engages school communities (on a variety of levels) to develop or engage new systems, practices, schedules, assessments, uses of technology (or any other part of the learning process) with the big goal of personalizing learning for New York City kids.

There are three initiatives within iZone and communicating what it means to be an “iZone School” can get kind of funky. You see, the three initiatives are different and distinct, yet schools working within them all call themselves “iZone Schools.” Here are the three:

iZone360 – this is the initiative that six schools in our network are involved in (Global Tech Prep, IS289, School of the Future, Tompkins Square Middle School, The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria, and West Side Collaborative). iZone360 works with schools to develop and initiate their own innovative systems and practices. Each of our schools, with the help of an external design partner, has developed a set of initiatives aimed at personalizing learning. I’ll be writing about how some of those initiatives are going in future. Check back to this space in the newsletter.

iLearnNYC – this initiative is product driven. iLearn’s goal is to help schools implement NYC’s customized online learning platform, Desire2Learn (D2L). D2L allows teachers to create online learning courses that guide students through their own development of academic skills and content knowledge. Theses course can be used for a variety of purposes (from building background knowledge in middle school, to credit recovery in or Advanced Placement courses high school). D2L comes with a plethora of resources and, when completely built out, will offer teachers the ability to create any kind of middle or high school course.

InnovateNYC – this initiative is project driven. Innovate develops projects within the DoE that pilot, evaluate and scale instructional innovations. The School of One project is the best known example of Innovate’s work.

For the official line on each of the initiatives, click here to visit the iZone’s space on the NYCDoE websites.

Any of this sound interesting? Drop me a line at asylvia@schools.nyc.gov. As you may know, we’ll be looking for new schools to join the iZone later this year. Stay tuned (in future newletters) for more about what’s happening in each of our BfL iZone schools.

Peace,
Al

Off this long ish...

Can you tell the school year has started? We're both struggling to put stuff up here. The bolg is the first to go.

So I'm going to micro-blog a bit here -- keeping things short and to a quick point as a way of keeping this going.

Paul Facteau, a really talented Apple technology expert and staff development guy, was working with the staff of West Side Collaborative this week. What he was doing was trying to get the staff to decide on and design what the skills are that teachers should track to determine if a student is making progress in a class. His goal was to help them develop a data tracking system for that skills acquisition. It's heady stuff. But my first (and lasting) impression was that this stuff has already been done. That the Common Core has done that already, in some pretty useful and articulate ways. For instance, one of the CC 9th grade reading standards is "Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text." In other words, a student can use the evidence in a text to say what it's about (both on the surface and what the deeper meanings might be).

Why is it so hard to get teachers to pay attention to skill acquisition? Why do teachers resist tracking their students' growth? You look at a student's work and you determine if the student can use evidence to support an interpretation of a text. Why is this so hard?

Am I just being a simplistic moron? Or isn't this just knowing your kids and teaching them what they can't do, yet?

Get back to me on this, willya? I'd really like to get this solved and put behind me.

Peace,
Al

The Earth, moving

Hey Jeff,

I know you're in F-L-A visiting Mickey and I hope you and the family are having a great time. Did you guys have a good earthquake? It was interesting here yesterday. That's kind of my inspiration for writing today. Beside the fact that you've been much more prolific with your posts and the competitor in me wants to keep up, if not outright beat you.

This will be a weird post. I had a number of experiences yesterday that kept bringing one thought over and over into my head. And the recognition of that thought was a little jarring, a bit sad and something of a revelation. So I thought I'd share.

So I had three meetings and a mixer yesterday. Two of the meetings were at Tompkins Squrare Middle School, one at IS289 and the mixer was at the High Line. My first stop, TSMS, was the first meeting of a new committee charged with engaging students and parents of the school in the iZone work. The work itself isn't incredibly complex (switching to a competency based assessment system). But it'll involve a restructuring of their report cards and transcripts, so they are reaching out to parents in some pretty proactive ways. On my way into the school, I got stuck at the security desk. As I'm standing there watching the guard sign me in, two teachers walk through and said good morning to her. They complimented her hair. So I start chatting with her about the style, asking her name and had a pleasant talk with her. She was nice and, after lunch, she didn't make me sign back in, she just waved me through. When I went back to the school today, she recognized me and didn't make me sign in at all. All thanks to a little chat. I realized yesterday I learned that "be nice to people and talk to them" from you. So, Thanks Jeff.

Later in the day the earthquake hit. I was still in TSMS, meeting with the AP, Eric, the Principal, Sonhando, and the technology support guy, Justin, from ImpactEd. When the quake hit we all stood up and went over to the window for a better view. As the earth was shaking (it really wasn't that bad) I look up. Suspended in the window above the four of us, shaking with the window frame, is this big air conditioner (you know, like the ones in the Guild). It spooked me. But instead of shouting out, I say, as calm as you please, "uhhh, guys, maybe it's not the BEST idea for us to be watching the window shake directly under this big, heavy, metal box." We all chuckle and move into the room. Suddenly, all of them are riffing off my joke. Eric came up with a headline detailing our deaths, Sonhando quipped a quick obiturary for himself. The jokes broke the tension (if not outright fright) of the situation. I used humor to relieve a tense situation. You taught me that. Thanks again, Jeff.

So I left the building; Justin and I had another school to go to and we ended up traveling together. The trip involved over a 1/2 mile walk (from 6th street to Delancy street). A long time to walk and fill up the silence. So I started asking Justin about his story, how he had come to develop this grade book software and how he had ended up in New York. He told me about his love-hate relationship with Engineering school (that aligned almost exactly with my own). Before I knew it we were off the subway and standing on Warren St. heading toward the school. Awkwardness over, no hitch in the conversation, no strange pauses, just a nice exchange of stories to get to know each other and the use of a shared experience to connect. Hmmmm. Who did I learn that from? Thanks, once more, Jeff.

Then, I had to pick something up at Tweed and the whole building population is out on the steps -- they had been evacuated and were being let back into the building. In the crowd, I was able to say hello to Alex Shub, Corey Beder, Melissa Silberman and Lynette Lauretig. Those names sound familiar? And why do I know those people? Who (either directly or indirectly) facilitated my meeting of all those folk? Who taught me to keep those contacts in a way that I could access them and connect with them on the steps of Tweed? Thanks, Jeff.

You figure out my repeating thought, yet?

So the last happening was the mixer at the High Line. In case you don't know, the High Line is an old elevated railway in Chelsea that has been converted to a park. If you haven't gone, yet, I highly recommend it. There was a mixer there of all the iZone teams (from iLearnNYC, iZone360, and InnovateNYC). After the tour we all had dinner and drinks at The Lot, under the High Line at 30th street. So there I was with my self-bought beer, standing alone watching the crowd (as I am want to do). I'm a bit intimidated (there's a deputy chancellor in the crowd) and feeling anxious -- you know me at parties. But as I'm standing there, I recognize that unless I work this crowd, I'm never going to make the connections I need to dig into this work. So what should I do? The answer I came up with was to sit down with one of the top guys and make a joke. So I sit down at Tomas Hanna's table (Chief of Innovation) and told them that there weren't enough fat, bald guys sitting with them and I was here to even things out. Corny? You bet. Did it get a laugh? You bet. The rest of the night passed quickly with me making the right connections and sharing enough stories to make my work that much easier.

So who did I learn that from?

Listen, I've spent a good deal of time talking and thinking (and even writing) about the debt of gratitude that I owe Michael. I feel like he recognized something in me and drew it out in a way that I hadn't been able to do before. This is what was jarring to me, and a bit of a revelation: what I haven’t thought about (or talked about or written about) is what I owe you. Yesterday brought this into focus for me, man: the skill set I'm called upon to use to further my current work is populated mostly by skills I learned from you – either directly taught or picked up working by your side. You've taught me to be curious about people and to make them feel special, even if just for a 2 minute conversation. I can use corny humor to break tension. You taught me to question people to help them tell their stories and connect with them through shared experience. I can create and use a professional network to further professional goals and create opportunities for me and the kids that I work for. And I can use personal attributes to endear myself to those who populate my network. That's all you, man. That's all from you.

So this post is one big, long, wordy, elongated thank you. I wanted you to know that I'm owing a great big chunk of my current success in this new job to you. I am so thankful that our paths crossed; I’m so much the better person for it.

Thanks, man. I'm missing ya a lot.

Peace,
Al

Do what we do (not say what we do)

Hey Jeff,

What awesome video from Arenessa and Alex! Thanks so much for posting them! Miss those kids...

Another whirlwind couple of weeks in the world of innovation (or innovation according to NYC) for me. I want to tell a demoralizing and heartening (all at the same time) story of a PD session gone horribly wrong. I also want to comment on your cool and fascinating policy paper. Which one do you wanna hear first?

Yeah, I thought so...

I loved your analysis of Hess and Rothstein's opinion and prescription for narrowing the achievement gap. I particularly enjoyed your nod to objectivism while putting in nice little textual hints to your feelings about both plans. And, of course, I agree -- particularly in your assessment of Hess. It always makes me wonder, when I read simple-plan advocates like Hess, why they refuse to see some pretty big problems with their proposals (like, as you so-well point out, the cost of an effective testing regime or the difficulties in replacing the ailing teacher-prep programs). But then, given what's been happening in Washington over the past decade, it's easy to believe that our society is ready to be swayed by such sloppy thinking.

What interests me most about your paper, though, are your three remedies. You know that I would whole-heartedly agree with each of your initiatives (especially the fair and appropriate teacher performance assessment system). I believe that each of those initiatives would go a long way toward closing the gap. I'm wondering, though, about the absence of some of the staples of our work. No performance-based academic assessments for students based in real-world work? No real-world internship requirements? No replacing of the current diploma system with a certification-based achievement system? Hmmmm... I hope Fannie Lou hasn't swallowed up your ideas of real education.

:)

Let me take that smiley as an opportunity to change the subject. I want to relate to you the demoralizing and heartening PD experience of last week. I'm sure you remember me texting you during this time, ranting about the delivery methods of the presenters. Here's a little background. Last Friday, I went to a roll-out of iLearnNYC's chosen online platform, Desire2Learn. This was a PD targeted at principals with the goal of introducing them to the platform. The Desire2Learn (D2L) platform is an online-learning site with enough resources to develop online-courses for just about any credit-bearing course (from remedial courses and credit recovery to advance placement calculus). So what would have been a good way of teaching the platform to principals? I know, how about an online course that allows them to wrestle with the platform and shows them the potential? How about a scheduled time with computer access and experts around who can help? How about grouping principals together so they can work on the course at their own pace, but still have others around them who are trying to do the same thing to share tips and tricks? Sounds like a good session, right?

If only that had been the plan. Instead, they made the principals sit at computers in a hot (hot, hot) tech center (air conditioning was broken). Then they sent speaker after speaker (5 before lunch) to the lectern each with their own powerpoint with little or no real information for using the platform. One guy talked how D2L was chosen, one guy talked about how tech support would be given, one guy talked about why the content partners were chosen. One guy even talked about how what he is doing is NOT what we want teachers doing! It was miserable. Utterly miserable. After lunch, there were more speakers and finally, at around 2, they "allowed" the principals into the platform (I hear, I left right after lunch when it was clear we weren't getting real access to the platform). I sent a series of emails to the folks who were responsible for the presentation (as well as to executive director of my program) trying to get them to understand that as long as WE continue to use traditional methods to impart information, we will have one HELL of a time changing instructional practice.

So that's the demoralizing part. The heartening part was that the online course that I wanted -- well, it HAD been created. I was given access to it and it's a thing of beauty. So I am getting my teachers to learn the platform by wrestling with THAT course, rather than go to the trainings that are TELLING them what to do instead of SHOWING them what to do.

My take-aways from this experience?

1. Even the people who are in charge of innovation do NOT, themselves, default to innovative practices.
   
2. That there needs to be many, many minds examining each aspect of the change and vetting each experience through the lens of the vision.
   
3. The people who are envisioning this change might not have enough knowledge of the work and practice of the people accomplishing the change.
   

All that sound familiar?

Ok, that's it for this week. Hope all is well with you!

Peace,
Al

AYV student created video

Al,

Here is the video that Alex and Arenesssa worked on at AYV summit. As you can tell, Alex created the music and raps in it. Good stuff.

http://youthvoices.adobe.com/galleries/events/24-2011-adobe-youth-voices-summit/media/360?page=1

Hope things are going well.
Best,
Jeff