Ah, August. The month of AYP results, legislative actions, and a new school year. What a busy month.

 In Texas (TEA News Releases Online), more students took AP exams with a higher rate of success than last year; SAT math scores improved, but reading and writing scores declined; ACT composite scores increased along with the subtests scores; and, we are behind on NCLB’s goal for meeting highly qualified teacher requirements.

The Center for Desease Control predicts an increase in Swine flu cases this year, especially on school campuses. TEA willl continue to offer waivers for high absentee flu-related days, but “school closures will no longer be recommended to limiting transmission.”  Super-size me with anti-bacterial hand soap, please.

TEA also released its 2009-2010 Minimum Salary Schedule. AFT’s Survey and Analysis of Salary Trends 2007 ranked Texas at 29th, up from 36th in the nation. However, that’s not the point just yet. The point is the language of the law that stipulates how to calculate teacher pay. It seems to shift the burden of increase from the state to the Local Education Agency. Sorry, I cannot explain something that I don’t understand.

The state Legislative Budget Board announced that $2 billion of the Stimulus money earmarked for education will go to recurring expenses. That means the next legislative session will have to get real creative with educational funding. Perhaps they can leave that to the LEAs as well.

Several school districts are now requring new substitutes to show teaching certification as a requirement of employment. In a sluggish economy, the substitute teacher pool rises. Some districts see the new screening process as a way of moderating an influx of applicants.

The August 30, 2009 issue of the Las Vegas Sun ran a great interview conversation with Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education. Here are some select quotes of what may be things to come.

The process is broken for every teacher at every ability level, and if it’s broken for each of them, it’s broken for every student, too. Good teachers don’t get recognized and rewarded. We don’t learn from them. Teachers in the middle don’t get the support they need. And teachers in the bottom who, frankly, shouldn’t be teaching, don’t get identified.


Schools being open six hours per day, five days per week, nine months per year is an outdated model. It’s based on an agrarian calendar. Our kids aren’t working in the fields anymore.

We’re challenging districts and states to talk about common standards that demonstrate our students are ready for college, career and to compete internationally.

Finally, we say farewell to one of education’s strongest allies, Senator Edward Kennedy. During his tenure he impacted educational policy with his unique input from the Higher Education Act of 1965 through Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. We can only pray for others to fill his shoes.

Is this for a grade?

We begin a new school year with guess what, a new grading policy. Let’s face it, grading is an art, not a science. Sure, you can do the math, calculate the curves, and post the numbers. The question, however, is, “how meaningful is that grade to the students, the parents, the administration?” The answer depends, of course, on who answers.

How important are grades? Well, we use them to determine class rank, GPA, UIL eligibility, scholarship awards, school club membership, at-risk identification, school rank, and a plethora of other school and non-school judgments. We grade for responsibility (doing it reliably) and processibility (doing it gradually) and mastery (doing it correctly). (I won’t even address the impact of the behavioral grades that we all give.)

The grade for responsibility is based on quantity, how much of the assignment did the student complete? This is appropriate if your objective is to teach the student the consequences of not doing the job. It does little for content mastery other than encourage practice. Grading for processibility, the formative assessment, provides your students with a idea of where they are in the learning process for that lesson, unit, project. We call these quizzes, notebook checks, labs, workbook exercises, and other process controls. Grading for mastery, the summative assessment, is the mother lode of learning feedback. It lets your student know if she got it and how well. We call these major tests, six-week tests, semester projects, term papers, and other assignments that arrange the building blocks of the lesson into a completed structure.

I wrestle with testing every year. I adjust and re-adjust my assessments to match ability, differentiate, accommodate, and evaluate in a meaningful manner to communicate to the student where he or she is at that given moment. Currently, I am reading Ken O’Connor’s How to Grade for Learning. (For his latest, A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades, Anne Keith offers a good overview.) Rick Wormeli’s Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessing & Grading in the Differentiated Classroom is next on my list. Some day, if I am up to it, I might tackle Robert Marzano’s Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work (Still, anyone who remixes and updates Bloom’s Taxonomy on a scholarly level intimidates me a bit.). And, I’m not even ready to approach Alphie Kohn.

So, how well does your grading policy, whether personal, departmental, and/or district, give meaningful feedback to the student? Can you defend your assessments to a disgruntled parent? Are you in sync with the latest directive from administration? Are you personally satisfied that your grading methodology is the best that it can be?

First Day Back

Well, it’s almost here: The First Day of School. All of you seasoned teachers have developed a first day/week routine. All of you new teachers, here’s some help.

My first day includes:
Greeting students at the door with a warm hello.
Starting the class on time with a warm-up activity.
Calling roll with a personalized greeting to each student.
Beginning class with a classmates icebreaker.
Sharing something personal about myself.
Giving an assignment to be reviewed at the next meeting.
Keeping it light; I don’t want to scare them off the first day.

My first week includes:
Completing any administration mandated assignments.
Detailing my classroom management philosophy.
Discussing the class rules.
Distributing and reviewing the course syllabus.
Painting a mental picture of what an “A” student looks like.
Introducing the textbook front to back.
Assigning the first six-weeks project.
Beginning the first lesson.

In case you need some details, here are a couple of my favorite lists of hints, ideas, and activities. Education World and A to Z Teacher Stuff®

Anyone want to share their personal secrets? Comments are always welcomed.

Do Your Research!

I just completed a professional development course on research methodology using the Independent Investigation Method (IIM®) from Active Learning Systems, LLC. Our facilitator, Melanie, did a great job of covering a usually two-day class in one day.

The authors, Cindy Nottage and Virginia Morse, begin IIM® with a deceptively simple philosophical statement, “All students can do research.” To the best of my recollection, I learned the how-to of research, the methodology, through the dreaded high school social studies or English term paper. That consisted of a trip to the school library where we trudged through the Dewey Decimal System. That’s kind of like running in sand. You can do it, but it is really not fun. We never thought about the actions of research, much less learned a system.

Along comes IIM® with a simple 7-step process of research that all K-12 student, individually or collectively, can use in any class. It’s simple, easy to learn, and easy to use. Best of all, once learned in the early grades, a student’s research efficacy and efficiency increases through her school career. She simply produces more sophisticated quality research through adherence to the steps. So, from Kindergarten TEKS through the Social Studies Research Methods course, we are not just required by law, but obligated as educators, to provide our students with an understanding of the how-to of research.

Now, where is the district administration direction to mandate a standardized research methodologies system, like IIM® ? LEAs need to step up with local funding, development, training, and implementation of a system that will carry its students from K-12 into a guided approach to critical thinking, reasoning, and subsequent intelligent action throughout life.

As a side note, I promised to link Diigo in this post. Diigo advertises itself as offering two services in one, “it is a research and collaborative research tool on the one hand, and a knowledge-sharing community and social content site on the other.” On the research side it offers is a bookmark organizer and text highlighter where the researcher can add notes, tags, send info, filter, search keywords, create lists, and more. As a knowledge-sharing community it offers a social/professional network where one can invite friends/colleagues, create groups by topic for discussion, search & explore established groups, create lists, search & explore others lists, and still more.

I keep the Diigo toolbar resident everytime I go on-line. Try it and pass it along to your students.

Monthly Happenings

Farewell, Frank McCourt. Becky and I listened to him read his Teacher Man book as we raced across the West Texas desert between El Paso and Ft. Stockton. If you have not read his book, don’t. Listen to him read it. Then, go to Only A Teacher for his frank responses about teaching.

The feds approved $2 billion of ARRA funds for Texas educational use, primarily funding pay raises. I’ll leave my thoughts in the words of Frank McCourt when he said, “We know that surgeons are well paid… It should be the same way with teachers. They're the single most important profession in the country because they're shaping the future.” Who’s listening?

Speaking of the feds, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke to the National Council of La Raza re-stating several statistics about the Latino drop-out rate. The answer, according to the administration, is the Race to the Top program initiated with $4.35 billion from ARRA. If you don’t know about our Race to the Top, go to this page at ED.gov

Finally, speaking of the drop-out rate, TEA announced its annual school ratings. Due to rules changes the number of exemplary schools doubled, but nearly matching that is the increase in academically unacceptable ratings. It’s all a matter of crunching the numbers. I predict a record increase of appeals from borderline school districts in the lower ratings.

Hope you had a great July. Wishing you a cooler August with anticipation of a new school year.