Lots of talk about school reform continuing, in spite of the huge column inches devoted to health care (where medical care is feeling the pinch of data driven reform), and the economy (making me wonder why if “market based solutions are still the answer for education, why were they so bad in the financial industry). I guess I’m just looking in all the right places to find stories. First, NPR is doing a series on what makes a teacher qualified. It’s interesting, pointing out that the only reason programs like TFA may show promise is because traditional teacher education programs are so bad. OUCH

In More Thoughtful: My Senator Died: What Ted Kennedy Meant to an Educator we go back in time to the era before NCLB to see what made it seem like such a good idea. It is important to remember that for urban school districts serving poor/minority students, there was no magic nirvana before NCLB, and there was a reason that it looked good. As dessert on this topic, Tom Hoffman does a beautiful job of summing up the history of alliances in urban school reform in a nice little post that says a lot in just a few words.

Some interesting reading on the policy front, The School Issue – Preschool – Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control? – NYTimes.com, which shows how the theories of Lev Vygotsky, a favorite in my school of ed, are being used to teach students life and school skills in the early years. I’ve taken Larry’s advice and started to follow some blogs at EdWeek, and inaugurated this by leaving comments at Learning the Language: Resource: Research Brief on RTI for ELLs, and Inside School Research: Making Education Policy: Is Research in the Mix?, where I opine on why many educators don’t have a lot of faith in research studies.

Two different ed bloggers on two very different topics at almost the opposite ends of the political spectrum had me scratching my head. Both used volume to make their point devoting a series of posts, some of them lengthy, to the topic at hand. I’m wondering if it hurt or helped their point.

First, Scott McLeod looked at research from Moe and Cubb on his blog Dangerously Irrelevant about implementing technology in education (pro), and some posts pointing out that teachers unions maybe slowing this process. By the last post, Larry Ferlazzo pointed out that the authors are well known for studies hostile to public education and in favor of vouchers. The conversation became interesting at that point. I understand why Scott did a whole series of posts, he does that when he is trying to feature a particular book, but I thought it was too much space on a topic that I tune out on. If I’m going to read something from someone I disagree with in general, at least make it short, and pithy.

Next, Tom Hoffiman did a whole series of posts on Common Core standards and how they did not compare well to international ones (which they were supposed to be benchmarked to). I get his point, but I’ll admit to skipping through a lot of those posts. I bring it up here, because Tom did solict  feedback on his approach. One of the things I love about reading Tom’s blog is how it goes from topic to topic, like useful tech info,  Tuttle SVC: How To Not Get Your Blog Hacked, to commentary on school reform, Tuttle SVC: The Wacky Broad Prize. This last one was really short and sweet. The length of his pieces also varies quite a bit. I normally love when he digs in on a topic, but this series was just too much for me in total.  I did have my favorites in the series which were the final summation, and a shorter one wickedly titled, Let’s Run this One Through the Deflavorizer.

Another interesting piece on so-called “learning styles” and how they are hogwash came from The Answer Sheet – Willingham: Student “Learning Styles” Theory Is Bunk in the Washington Post (which I got from Learning Styles Theory Is Bunk (Education – Change.org)). The comments were turned off there, but I’ll add my two-cents worth here.

The article is largely about what doesn’t work about “learning styles”, but Willingham’s comments seem to suggest that using what is often referred to as “multiple modalities” still may be a good idea (for a variety of other reasons). Summarizing:

1. There is no one to one correspondence of a student to one learning style, students have a variety of preferences that are influenced by a number of factors, like background, interest, etc.

2. Learning styles are promoted as celebrating differences, but instead attempt to place students into easily dealt with categories.

3. There is benefit to varying delivery of instruction

I think he did a good job in the article in making a potential difficult subject comprehensible to a lay person like myself. But, he got some really rude comments. I think this is because teachers prefer to read about “actionable” research, in other words, how does this work in my classroom. Because he was not clear until the comments section that delivery instruction in a variety of ways is still a good idea (for different reasons), reading the article alone, a teacher is left to ponder, “well, should I just do lecture and written tests then?” I think this is why learning styles became popular. It gave people a concrete approach, and all you needed to do was fit the kids in a pigeon hole. I know of a number of other reasons to use visual and auditory support in my class, over half my students are language learners (the sort of background issue alluded to). I also appreciate that this is a complex process that is not easily reduced to slotting students and going through a check list of activities.

All the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival can be found here.

Once again, thanks to all of you who participated!

BUT, there is still time to add your submissions to the next edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival is coming up on May 31st, so don’t delay, get those submissions now before you miss your chance!

We are looking for posts related to the teaching or learning of English, including examples of student work. Need an example? Check out the latest edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival, which was hosted by Nik Peachey.

Photo Credit: Dead End Black and White on flickr.

We are looking for posts related to the teaching or learning of English, including examples of student work. Need an example? Check out the latest edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival, which was hosted by Nik Peachey.

All the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival can be found here.

When she arrived from Ecuador two years ago, Juanita, who barely spoke ten words of English, was placed in a special education class. Today she is a sixth grader who speaks English well but she is still in a special education class. Her teacher and I are wondering why.

Juanita is a real person, though that is not her real name. She is charming, funny, friendly and hard working. Aside from the remnants of her accent she seems like any number of other girls in our inner city middle school. Juanita smiles easily, tells a good joke and occasionally gets a little cranky. Her classwork and grades are not spectacular, but they are not terrible either. They are on the level of a middling general education student.

A month after he came to the US with his parents Robert was enrolled in kindergarten in a multi-ethnic, mixed income suburban district. This district has a policy that all students born outside the US must be placed in ELL classes, no exceptions.

Blanket policies are rarely a good idea, even if that policy would have helped Juanita. Here’s why.
Robert was born in South Africa to British parents. English is not only his native language, it is his only language. He speaks it with better enunciation and grammar than the school aid who insisted she had to enroll him in the ELL class.

I wanted him to share because I’ve had the opposite situation come up where students who are ELLs are not tested for Special Education services because we want to give them time, but what happens when you wait too long, which I shared in a comment at Education – Change.org: Arne Duncan to 8-Year-Old Woodrow Wilson: “No College for You”:

Clay, I’m usually with you on this, but I’m sorry, when my students end up coming out of second and third grade not reading, they’re screwed. We have a sixth grader like this, cannot read, and is working on decoding at age 12. He should have been identified LONG ago for services. He may go to college one day, but it’ll be a minor miracle if he does.

What’s all that other stuff about where I’m disagreeing with Clay? Well, actually when you get down to it, I wasn’t. Clay was discussing how Arne Duncan had said there was no chance for a kid who can’t read at 8 years old going to college, to which Clay pointed out President Woodrow Wilson (and a President of Princeton) did not learn to read until he was 12 years old. But, at the heart of Clay’s post (and the really good comments there) and what Deven says clearly is that you really can’t use the same yard stick to measure all kids and blanket policies that do NOT treat our kids as individuals will fail them in the end.

My proposal would be that you use what data you have (which will include both summative testing, and observation) to help these kids, but ask questions, and try to get quality data (not like testing a student new to the country in English as happened to Juanita). I have found EL students muddling along through school at the two lowest proficiency levels (we have five in California with the top two being passing) on state testing. Sometimes the adults in charge take a look at the kid and just say, well that’s because he is learning English, just give him time. While it is true that not all kids learn at the same speed, sometimes that is a sign that more is needed and it doesn’t take much to figure out if you have a problem that needs to be addressed.

Sitting on our school’s student study team (the team tasked with looking at individual students who are struggling), the test scores can tell us a bit, but it’s the questions we ask each other about the individual child that tell us more. If an ELL child has low test scores, the next thing to look at is to look at their CELDT scores (a test of English acquisition that all California students take to see how they are progressing). If they start out behind on the standards test, they could be progressing in knowledge, but it won’t show because they are still behind grade level. The CELDT tells us some more about how they are doing on things like listening and speaking in English. The test stays the same for a 2-3 years, so a flatline score is a sign that something is not going right. Ask yourself, are they getting English Language services that are addressing their specific deficit, or are they learning something they have already mastered.

But, it’s the subtle questions that can really point to a problem. California’s default model for ELLs is to put them in a Sheltered English program. Parents are asked once a year what how they would like their children to be educated, in a bilingual or sheltered program. Most opt for sheltered. This means that we are not doing assessment in the child’s home language if they’ve been in the country for more than a year or so. One of the most important questions to ask a parent when we have a student who is not progressing both in academic testing and in English acquisition is  are they maintaining or losing their knowledge of their home language. If they aren’t learning English, and they are losing their home language, they are, overall, losing language. This is not a good thing. Do the kids have signs of attention problems like a wandering focus? Do they have an inability to retain information after it is taught to them? Is this true in BOTH English and their home language? If you are answering yes to these questions, they could have a processing disorder, and should be tested. If they are in primary, and they have few home language skills along with below age-level English, that can be a sign of a language disorder (like PDD-NOS or Austism Spectrum Disorder). ASD is really hard to spot in Language Learners, but it happens.

I think all these cases teach us the danger of making assumptions where we either ignore data, over-rely on data, or look at the wrong data, instead of looking at the total picture, and the total child.

We are looking for posts related to the teaching or learning of English, including examples of student work. We know there are lots of great examples out there, so don’t hide your light under the bushel!

Need an example? Check out the latest edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival, which was hosted by Nik Peachey.

All the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival can be found here.

What are we looking for? Posts related to the teaching or learning of English, including examples of student work, are welcome.

Need an example? Check out the latest edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival, which was hosted by Nik Peachey.

All the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival can be found here.