Notes from the Field
Submitted by Frank Murphy, November 23, 2010
Notes from the field have begun to arrive at f@cityschoolstories.com. They have been sent from teachers who work at various schools throughout the district. The frustration and simmering anger of their authors is apparent. The content of these messages paints an interesting picture of the implementation of the reform agenda of the current school administration. There is a great deal of similarity in the stories I have heard.
One teacher recently showed me a copy of a document that was distributed to the staff at a school-based professional development session. It was entitled, High-Poverty Students Excel with Direct Instruction. This article was downloaded from the website of an organization called the Heartland Institute. *
*(Among its other topics of interest, this institute’s website additionally offers a large range of reports that challenge the validity of research on global warning and on the supposed ill effects to individuals who are exposed to second hand smoke.)
The authors of the article promote the position that students taught by teachers who utilize “direct instruction” rather than “student center learning” achieve at higher levels. Unfortunately, the authors do not provide a clear definition of either direct instruction or student centered learning in their discussion. This is just one of several serious flaws in the studies cited that raise questions about the validity of the information presented.
To support its claims about direct instruction, the article sites two recent studies. One was written by the Manhattan Institute. It is titled, What Do Teachers Teach? A survey of America’s Fourth and Eighth Grade. The article describes the results of a phone survey that was conducted on the behalf of this institute, based on interviews with 403 fourth grade teachers and 806 eighth grade teachers. The teachers included in this survey were selected from a proprietary database of known schoolteachers from Survey Sampling, Inc. of Fairfield, Connecticut, rather than a random sampling. The study does not define the qualifications of the teachers interviewed nor does it delineate their understanding of the terms direct instruction or student-centered learning. There is no empirical evidence presented to support the article’s claims other than the opinions provided in the survey results, nor is there a review of other research related to this topic included in this study.
Pacific Research Institute produced the second study, They Have Overcome: High-Poverty, High Performance Schools in California. It weaves into a lengthy narrative the responses of eight elementary principals during interviews conducted by staff from this institute. Principals interviewed were identified by the authors of the study as being from high achieving schools. Interestingly, this document is exclusively devoted to describing the principals’ responses regarding their experiences using the Open Court Reading series at their schools. Principals from other high-performing schools not using Open Court were not interviewed. Empirical evidence and references to other relevant research studies are also absent from this document.
All three of these institutes, Heartland, Manhattan and Pacific Research, are champions of free-market policy solutions in the education arena as well as other areas of public policy. One has to question why a school district would choose materials from one of these organizations for use at a professional development session, rather than from reputable educational research journals. The choice seems to favor the promotion of ideology over legitimate research as it relates to appropriate instructional practices. Apparently the lack of intellectual rigor evident in the scripted instructional programs being forced on our schoolchildren, is also absent in the delivery of the content offered during teacher professional development sessions.
Even more disturbing than the use of questionable reports and ideological propaganda to promote the new instructional materials being deployed in schools, are the administrative tactics utilized to force teacher compliance. Teachers, who are not willing to abandon effective literacy practices and programs in favor of these new materials, are finding themselves in difficult positions. Instead of providing convincing evidence to these teachers of the merits of the new mandated programs, central administration is instead attempting to force their allegiance.
In one school, teachers were called into the assistant principal’s office the day after central office administrative staff conducted a walk through. They were told that they must immediately stop using guided reading in their classrooms. The explanation given for this dictate was that working with a guided reading group is an ineffective instructional practice.
At other schools, teachers have been told to remove classroom libraries that were used to support student choice in selecting independent reading books. They have been directed to rearrange desks into a “U”shape so that students can better see them as they read from an instructional script. Classroom furniture that might be used to conduct small group instructional lessons has been removed from their rooms. The administrative justification for these mandates is that they are necessary safeguards to assure the fidelity of the implementation of the Imagine It! reading series in grades K-6 and Glencoe for grades 7-8.
One of the primary rules of school reform that was established with the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act is that effective practices are to be judged on the basis of scientific evidence. What evidence justifies the abandonment of well-researched literacy practices such as guided reading, independent reading, literacy centers, etc. that have been successfully employed across the country for the last fifteen years?
Since the inception of NCLB, the main indicator of a school’s success has been its scores on the state assessment. In Philadelphia, district test scores have increased every year for the last eight years. For seven years of those eight years, a balanced literacy program was utilized in the majority of our public schools. Teachers in these schools succeeded in helping their students to be more academically successful because they implemented powerful instructional ideas.
It is the responsibility of the leadership of our school district to offer better proof than flimsy reports prepared by ideologically driven think tanks, as justification for the radical changes to the instructional programs being forced on our schools. Using brute force to change instructional practices suggests that the strength of the ideas being put forth will not empower teachers to teach our children well.
What is happening in your school? How well are the children you strive to empower being served by the current reform agenda in Philadelphia? Educators who wish to share their experiences with the implementation of the new scripted literacy and math programs made do so by sending your comments to the link below. mailto:f@cityschoolstories.com.