A great deal of time is being spent on the notion of making higher education more accessible to Americans. That has led to new provisions regarding the repayment of federal loans (undertaken prior to Obama taking office) and to a proposed overhaul of the financial aid application form, the FAFSA.

But while those steps are significant, none are likely to be as critical for education as the administration’s recent push to overhaul how public school teachers are paid. In a major speech to the members of the National Education Association today, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insisted it was time to not only rethink teacher seniority and tenure, it was time to tie those elements and pay to teacher performance.

Federal Funding Behind the Changes

While the emphasis on performance pay is not new, Duncan’s speech today provided clear indication that the U.S. Department of Education will likely continue to put federal money on the line as part of the process for fueling changes. In a move that is actually reminiscent of past Republican party planks on education, Duncan today indicated that it was time to use accountability measures such as student data as part of the teacher evaluation process.

Duncan spoke of the need to improve the quality of the teaching in America and insisted that it was time to eliminate the prior practices that treated teachers “like interchangeable widgets.” More importantly, Duncan alluded to the current seniority and tenure rules as a system design that puts adults ahead of children.

Said Duncan of the format: “We are not only putting kids at risk, we’re putting the entire education system at risk.”

Much as those in the healthcare profession are not enamored by the recent proposals to that industry, the calls for compensation and evaluation changes for teachers were not entirely welcomed by NEA members in attendance today. According to reports, those members booed and hissed when Duncan addressed those topics during his speech.

A Major Shift for Democratic Party

In an effort to appease those members, Duncan insisted that he would seek these reforms in a collaborative way, working with teachers to implement the structural changes. That stands in stark contrast to the Bush administration and Secretary of Education Rod Paige’s, my way or the highway approach, during the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Yet the uproar may be just as strong especially since the proposed changes represent a significant shift for the party that has traditionally been most in line with educators in the past. Current teacher payment and retention policies, all previously supported by Democratic leadership, focus strictly on years of service and degree status earned. The only bonuses currently going to teachers go to those who have earned National Board certification.

And in reality, over time, Obama and Duncan may soon find they have a bigger fight on their hands as Democrats in Congress begin pushing back, taking more traditional positions on the teacher pay issue as they hear from those outraged NEA members. However, there is no doubt where Duncan and Obama are drawing the line at this point.

Both insist it is time education found ways to reward teachers according to the quality of the instruction they deliver and not the credentials they have earned.

Flickr photos courtesy of House Committee on Education and Labor and House Committee on Education and Labor.

For years the standard for school officials has been to support reasonable suspicion for searches based on the need to protect students from harm. Strip searching a 13-year-old girl who may or may not have been sharing ibuprofen with fellow students certainly does not conjure up images of extensive risk to students.

Of course, the naysayers are already posturing that today’s ruling will simply lead more youngsters to hide drugs and drug paraphernalia in their inner clothing and underwear. And that action will only make it more difficult for school officials to enforce fundamental levels of discipline in the school setting.

But asking a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes in the presence of strange adults goes far beyond the enforcement of fundamental levels of discipline in the school setting. Therefore, based on today’s ruling, nothing has ultimately changed for school administrators moving forward.

The Ruling

In ruling that the school acted illegally, Justice David Souter offered the following assessment:

…. “there were no reasons to suspect the drugs presented a danger or were concealed in her underwear” …. and so therefore “we hold that the search did violate the Constitution.”

Pundits were quick to point out that the ruling speaks specifically to the drug involved, a painkiller. Clearly, the idea of a strip search for painkillers does seem to be a bit over the top. The Supreme Court agreed with that notion while still seemingly noting that schools could take such actions when more serious drugs or weapons were involved. Of course, critics will wonder aloud, which drugs would be needed for school officials to act in such a way.

In addition, the Court noted that there had to be some information that the drugs might have been concealed in the student’s underwear. In simplest terms, the concept of reasonable dictates that such an intrusive step must be warranted. Searching a backpack or a student’s jacket is one thing, moving to their inner person simply because you did not find what you were looking for is certainly a step that would not necessarily be deemed reasonable.

In other words, strip searching is incredibly far more intrusive than searching a backpack or coat. This line is so clear that many schools and entire states have banned such searches completely, insisting they are never reasonable in the school setting.

The Opposing View

Surprisingly, one Justice, Clarence Thomas, dissented making the ruling one short of unanimous. It seems that Justice Thomas saw the ruling as a deep intrusion into the administration of public schools. Instead, school administrators and teachers should be allowed to set and enforce rules that maintain order.

Critics pointed out that Justice Thomas essentially believes that students should not have any rights in school. Those same critics noted that a strip search is actually a tad beyond the routine business of school administration despite Thomas’ contention otherwise.

Still, Thomas asserted that a “search of a student by a teacher or other school official will be ‘justified at its inception’ when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.”

For Thomas, under such criteria, the search would be considered justified because there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Redding had violated school rules. In this case, it would seem that the term reasonable, in Justice Thomas’ eyes, must only be applied minimally.

In his view, if there is reasonable suspicion that warrants a search, then any type of search should be permitted. Accordingly, providing students fundamental protection against excessive humiliation apparently is not part of Justice Thomas’ belief.

While Thomas seems lost on the distinction between painkillers and say a drug like crack cocaine, he does rightly note that parents do have the right to petition school boards regarding search policies. Ultimately, parents could take the step of approaching the school board so as to do what seven other states have done, outlaw such searches in their entirety.

Attentive Students

The real key aspect of the ruling is the impact it will have on student actions moving forward. Clearly, students now understand that they have been granted certain protections regarding searches and therefore can more safely carry contraband simply by placing it in their underwear.

That said, little has ultimately changed. School administrators must have reasonable suspicion to search a student and such suspicion also includes a reasonable assessment as how far to go with that search.

Lastly, one final, simple distinction is the school safety element. If weapons are involved, then administration is in a different position than when the matter involves drugs, especially when the issue involves misusing drugs that are legal.

Alarming statistics have been put forward showing the increased rate of college dropouts. Back in the 1960s college dropout rates were as low as one (1) in every five (5) students, this shifted to one (1) in every three (3) in the 1990s. Figures from the Department of Education for 2000 through 2008 show that 30% of students enrolled in schools leave in their first year and a shocking 50% never graduate.

We have spent countless words noting that higher education, often held up as an example to the world, actually may be the weakest strand of the educational process, K-16. Everything from their poor graduation rates to their ability to be relevant to today’s tech savvy world raises questions about America’s system of higher education.

At the same time, we have never extolled the common mantra that college is right for every student. We tend to side with Charles Murray and have indicated our lack of support for the notion of college for everyone.

Key Discussion Point Currently

None of this relates to the current educational discussion point that has become a fundamental focus of the Obama administration. Their push is entirely on student access by finding ways to help students address the staggering costs associated with higher education.

It is interesting to see this idea against the view expressed by some older Americans. They hold fast to the notion that college, unlike K-12 public education, should not simply be made available to anyone who wants it. They see this as just one more government entitlement, akin to welfare.

However, to get another viewpoint, we turn to Tolu Olorundawith who offers some very interesting thoughts in “When your college education is a bridge to nowhere.” She first notes renowned educators Henry Giroux and Susan Giroux tackled the notion as to why not all Black and Brown students see college as a “good thing.”

“Since their appearance in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, American colleges followed the traditions established by Oxford, Cambridge, and the continental universities in the preparation of their overwhelmingly white male student body for law, ministry, medicine, and politics.” [Giroux, Henry; Giroux, Susan. Take Back Higher Education: Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004 (1st ed.), p. 144.]

Obama Is Right

Olorundawith moves on to then quote the work of Andy Kroll. His piece on Alternet, “A Crisis of Affordability: How Our Public Colleges Are Turning into Gated Communities for the Wealthy” directly tackles the Obama notion, the need for greater affordability.

In addressing the growing disparities in college affordability for Black and Brown students, Kroll contends that the recent spike in college costs nationally has been done precisely to ensure that the white male of affluence becomes the only group able to attend institutions of higher learning. Olorundawith summarizes Kroll thus:

Big businesses, Andy argues, have no problem aiding and abetting the rich in reaching their goals of transforming Colleges into educational “gated communities”–reserved only for the privileged, elite, and powerful.

In his piece, Kroll does offer some incredible statistics from “The Education Trust” related to college affordability for those most in need of support.

In the past several decades, the cost of higher education has climbed at an astounding pace — faster than the Consumer Price Index, faster even than the cost of medical care. Over the past 30 years, the average cost of college tuition, fees, and room and board has increased nearly 100%, from $7,857 in 1977-1978 to $15,665 in 2007-2008 (in constant 2006-2007 dollars). Median household income, on the other hand, has risen a mere 18% over that same period, from about $42,500 to just over $50,000. College costs, in other words, have gone up at more than five times the rate of incomes.

… state flagship universities and a group of other major research universities spent $257 million in 2003 on financial aid for students from families earning more than $100,000 a year. Those same universities spent only $171 million on aid to students from families who made less than $20,000 a year. Similarly, between 1995 and 2003, according to the report, grant aid from the same public universities to students from families making $80,000 or more increased 533%, while grant aid to families making less than $40,000 increased only 120%.

Simply to ensure that a child attends a four-year public university, a family in the country’s lowest-income bracket now has to pay, on average, 55% of total income (up from 39% in 2000); for a middle-income family, the average is 25% (up from 18% in 2000); and for an upper-income family, 9% (up from 7%), according to “Measuring Up 2008: The National Report Card on Higher Education” by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Not a Ticket, Just a Chance

It is important to realize that a college education is not going to be the answer for everyone. Even Olorundawith notes that in tougher economic times, that degree may not mean a whole lot irrespective of color:

Of course, in any dialogue concerning the merits and benefits of a College degree, the impact of the current economic crisis must be addressed. With unemployment skyrocketing in communities of color, students with Bachelor’s can often be found working shifts at Burger King, with those earning their Master’s managing at McDonald’s, and even Ph.D.s confirming your Papa John’s Pineapple Pizza order.

But if education is considered the great equalizer and a college degree is generally deemed a strong positive step towards a more viable job future, the opportunity should be available for every one who wants it and is willing to put in the time and effort.

While we are not so inclined to support the conspiracy theory postulated by Kroll, we do believe it is essential for America to begin reducing its incredible economic stratification. And one aspect towards shrinking the gap between the haves and the have nots is to ensure that college is not available solely to those of means.

Today there is great debate as to why the drop out rate is so significant. Many elementary folks insist that schools at the upper grade levels tend to put curriculum ahead of students. In contrast, folks at the secondary level insist that students all too often arrive at high school without the requisite skills needed to handle more challenging academic materials.

In a recent Associated Press piece that discussed this issue, Lynne Strathman, director of Lydia Urban Academy in Rockford, Ill., was quoted as offering one of the most troubling assessments imaginable. Strathman indicated that for many students the final year of school where a significant majority of students felt successful was in fourth grade.

Yes, fourth grade.

School Not the Solution

In fact, regardless of when students chose to drop out, the consensus is that the drop out group gave up on school long ago. Simply stated, for this segment of the population, school is the biggest problem they face in life.

Facing a number of potential issues, everything from learning disabilities to mental and physical health problems, the potential drop-out crowd soon learns that school has little to offer them. The suggestion that schools might not be responsive to students with learning disabilities certainly would rankle those who work in special education.

But the fact is that these children all too often grow frustrated when they cannot match the success level of their peers. Soon, as they begin to understand that their lower achievement level falls far short of their peers, these lower achievers begin to demonstrate behavioral issues.

It is easy to understand why. Rather than have people think of them as stupid or lazy or incapable, these children realize the only way to save face is to act out. They can then hide behind their behaviors, their actions more palatable to them then being seen as deeply academically-challenged.

Their inability to match the performance of their peers also soon leads to another major problem, truancy. Here again, the basic premise is the same. Who wants to spend time in a setting where they feel unsuccessful?

Meanwhile, the recent push to raise standards has only exacerbated the problem. Schools all across America have been identified as failing schools simply by virtue of the substandard performance of their special education students.

Add to the fact that those students who represent America’s ELL group, those for whom English is not their native language, and the percentage of drop outs from the group that struggles to learn is extremely alarming.

Not Just Ability

Though the vast majority of drop outs fit a “learning-challenged” label, according to the AP folks there is also a large segment of students from affluent, educated families that fall by the wayside. While the immediate response is to blame the student for lack of effort, it turns out that many of the drop outs from this group suffer from issues other than those related to academic ability.

Instead, they come from families where chaos is the norm and divorce common place. Often times, there are alcohol or drug related issues that begin within the family then travel on to the students themselves.

Ironically, for many of the more intellectual, the same school setting that is proving too taxing for one segment of learners is simply too easy for another group. Here boredom prevails and very quickly school becomes essentially irrelevant.

Need for Alternatives

We have noted many times that our current one-size-fits-all approach to education is detrimental to children as a whole. We have indicated the need for nonacademic paths for those who struggle with the traditional school approach that teaches primarily through reading and writing.

It also means providing students adequate mental health services. Often times, in tough budget cycles, this is the first level of support to be cut. And today we are facing some of our toughest budget cycles ever.

Ultimately, we can only hope the recent revelations that children start to see school as a problem as early as elementary school might lead to a reconsideration of our current approach to education. It is high time we took the drop out issue seriously enough to begin developing school programs that truly seek to address the needs of our kids.

While he does offers some concrete steps to combat the issue, we could not help but think about the ramifications of the assertions for urban children and the schools they attend.

Interesting Notion

Lehrer offers one of the longstanding assertions of society, that city life “has always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-century coffeehouses of London … to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris. Without the metropolis, we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare or James Joyce; even Einstein was inspired by commuter trains.”

But of late, scientists have begun examining how city life affects the brain of the average citizen living within the city itself. The results according to Lehrer “are chastening.”

He goes on to note that “just being in an urban environment … impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street,” he writes of the latest research, “the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control.”

In addition to the noise and the bustle, the city fails to deliver one of the brain’s most beneficial elements, the force of nature upon cognitive development. We have traded quiet, wide-open spaces for crowded concrete jungles. Instead of mother nature and its ability to soothe, we are “surrounded by taxis, traffic, and millions of strangers.”

The research comes forward at a critical time in world history. According to Lehrer, the majority of people across the world now live in cities.

Recent Study

Central to Lehrer’s notion is the result of a study published last month involving some young adults. Outfitted with GPS receivers, undergraduates at the University of Michigan, were asked to take a walk. Some were tasked with taking a leisurely stroll within an arboretum. The others were tasked with walking around the streets of bustling Ann Arbor.

Later the two groups were given a battery of psychological tests. Not too surprisingly, the people who had spent time walking the hectic city streets were in a more negative mood. But more importantly, they scored significantly lower on a test of attention and working memory.

According to the study, “just glancing at a photograph of urban scenes” can lead to measurable impairments. The conclusion is that we are hard-wired to be wary of danger, a trait that we have been handed by our ancestors.

And according to the latest research, the danger that currently lurks in many urban areas has most of our brain power focused on being ready for potential threats. Add in the over-stimulation that is embedded in the urban setting and it is easy to see why urbanites’ brain power is consumed by tasks that consumes much of the their intellectual processing power.

Urban Design

The notion that natural settings require less cognitive effort has even been assigned a name, attention restoration theory, or ART. Developed by Stephen Kaplan, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, one central notion is that human attention is a scarce resource. Essentially each of us has within us only so much attentiveness without some action that restores our capacity to pay further attention.

Given our desire to improve inner city schools and the performance of the students attending those schools, this news represents an important element to consider. In fact, it is an element seldom considered within the complex equation that represents the cognitive development of urban children.

Certainly, urban school design should take into account this new research. If the mind needs nature, then urban schools must be designed in a way that contrasts vividly with the crowded concrete jungle that currently forms a child’s home environment.

Of course, the notion demands a rethinking of the construction of the very neighborhoods these kids grow up in as well. The need for tree-lined streets and parks is critical.

Yet, city life apparently offers other elements that cannot be offset simply by incorporating a few more trees or green space. Because our inner city streets offer everything from caramel lattes to iPods, self-control is tested regularly.

Resisting those temptations taxes our brain and further reduces our ability to be attentive. Therefore, the city “subverts our ability to resist temptation even as it surrounds us with it.”

Taking Learning for Granted

With each new brain study it is clear that we still know very little about the various impacts of our society on enhancing learning in children. All too often the focus is simply upon the role of the school to overcome societal issues.

Studies clearly indicate that growing up in poverty has an enormous impact on the cognitive development of children. Now we can add to that the simple notion that living in heavily populated urban area is also a hindrance to the development of our youngest learners.

Unfortunately, these varied issues are simply not being addressed in a cohesive manner. And while everyone focuses on the schools and the teachers delivering instruction within their buildings, perhaps these external issues are at the heart of the problem.

That would certainly explain why the intense school reform efforts over the last couple of decades have produced such limited results.

While books seem to gather the most interest, perhaps a more important and certainly more sophisticated notion is to examine what it will mean to be called a writer/author in the age of new media.

Current Status

Tim O’Reilly of RadarOReilly.com describes the idea of putting a book on an electronic device as analogous to “pointing a camera at a stage play, and calling it a movie.”

While that might have been the initial thrust of Hollywood, O’Reilly points out that the “tools of production and consumption actually changed the format of what was produced and consumed. Camera angles, pacing, editing techniques, lighting, location shooting, special effects: all these innovations make the movies (and television) of today very different from the earliest movies.”

Likewise, we are in the early stages of a new world, one that is shifting to an online medium featuring greater and greater portability. The question thus arises, how will books change in the digital age?

To get a sense of the basics, we turn back to the latest version of the Kindle. The device features the ability to display a wealth of different document styles and formats. As one would expect, the Kindle 2 provides access to and readily displays books, newspapers, and magazines. However, the latest version also displays a vast array of other document formats: Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PRC and MOBI files. Therefore the Kindle now has the potential to be a document repository and full-fledged library.

Perhaps an even more exciting option, albeit still in its infancy as a polished product, is that the Kindle 2 can turn a traditional book into an audiobook. There is still much work to be done before the device can be considered a perfect swap for the audio created by a soothing and polished human voice, but the device offers an amazing step forward in the overall reading process.

As proponents tout, one can use the Kindle as an ebook reader on a train or airplane just as you could pull out a book to read. But then later, the earbuds can be connected and you can continue to read (as in listen to the audio production) as you walk through the station or airport.

Of course, the new ereader means that no book has to be printed and therefore there is no such thing as a truly finished product. The ereader concept certainly makes nonfiction works more practical as updates can be easily uploaded to ensure that the book available for purchase always represents the latest edition.

Mixing Platforms

Of course, one of the beauties of the internet and thus the Kindle is the ability to provide documents that then hyperlink immediately to provide a relevant citation or reference. Perhaps even more importantly, nonfiction works can consist of fewer collected chapters as some of the text that would normally be incorporated to build upon or explain certain concepts can instead be simply linked to.

Readers without expertise can peruse the linked material at their leisure while those who have a grasp may forgo those links and delve directly into the new material.

According to O’Reilly, such a concept likely means we will need to develop useful modular formats. In such cases, many books could become more of a collection of loosely-related pages allowing for greater depth and breadth of issue exploration.

Therein comes the real challenge: how does one actually write material for the potential to cross platforms? How can the author ensure her book translates well to an ereader or iPhone application?

As but one example, what happens if a writer uses hyperlinks instead of footnotes but the reader doesn’t have internet access? And even when the reader does have such access, how can writers ensure such cross-referencing links are still active and reliable at the the time the reader examines the link?

Scott Meyers, an independent author and consultant, examines the notion of cross-platforming in “Authoring Challenges in a Multiplatform World.” To the right we present a visual of one of his slides that depicts some of the existing challenges (click to enlarge).

Currently, the conventional manuscript from an author is often designed for the traditional book format. Later, that document is translated where it is viewed on a computer or laptop, an ereader, or PDA or listened to on one of those same devices.

While most everything that works in printed form will work on these devices, simply translating existing documents fails to take advantage of the new technology available. As Meyer notes, text, diagrams, tables, photographs, etc. all work with new media, they just might not work as well.

At the same time, new media offers so much more: color, video/animations and audio are what make the newer platforms so enticing. It is truly as O’Reilly notes, the stage when movies were simply still films of stage plays.

Author Issues

Meyer notes that effective multi-platform publication will require greater author cooperation. It will also mean that writers may well need to develop additional skills if they are to ensure the portability of their work to different platforms.

As it is currently constructed, the idea of designing and writing for traditional print formats then attempting to translate or port that work to other new media platforms makes little sense. Instead, according to Meyer, we will soon see the adoption of new expository and software tools that allow for the construction of documents that are easily ported among devices.

It will also demand new writing skills and that authors understand two relatively new concepts: how to properly express capability-dependent content (eg., displaying a table on devices that have limited viewing screen sizes) and how to apply capability-dependent formatting (eg. including colors when such an option is available, falling back to black and white when color is not present). And as we noted, there will need to be careful consideration for how cross-references and links are utilized, especially given that documents and web sites will not remain static over time.

Teachers are fond of saying that we are educating students for jobs that do not even exist today. Thanks to ereaders and other portable electronic devices, one of the world’s greatest inventions, the book, is undergoing a major review.

At the same time, the notion of what it means to be a writer or author is also undergoing a thorough look. Perhaps it will give rise to a new descriptor or title.

And to a wealth of new career options, much as we saw with the development of the movie industry.

Keep working.

According to recent research, it turns out that the solution to preventing dementia might well be the very same one proffered to help our underfunded social security system remain solvent.

Yes, it might be time to forget about retiring early. Heck, it might just be time to forget about retiring period.

Mental Activity Is Critical

It has long been suspected that those who remain mentally active later in life may be able to postpone and/or lessen the effects of Alzheimer’s. While that notion has spawned a whole industry devoted to brain fitness, it turns out that simply working later in life might be that ticket to warding off the effects of the debilitating disease.

That fact came as a result of the research of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. Experts took a look at more than 1,320 dementia patients, approximately 30% of them men.

Those who retired later in life developed Alzheimer’s at a later stage. As a simple association, for each additional year of employment there was about a six week later age of onset of the disease.

Use It or Lose It

There is a growing body of evidence pointing to the concept of cognitive reserve. For example, research shows that a quality education correlates to a reduced risk of dementia.

What is still unknown is whether we can continue to create cognitive reserve later in life or if by remaining mentally active we are able to preserve that brain status for a longer period. But the new philosophy of use it or lose it has moved from the world of physical fitness into the mental health field.

The study reveals that brain fitness may be maintained simply by the stimulation of the work environment.

Still, there were no findings to suggest that working longer would end the risk of Alzheimer’s. And others, like Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, noted that the study’s small sample size minimizes the ability to draw firm conclusions.

“There could be a number of reasons why later retirement in men is linked with later onset of dementia,” Sorenson told the BBC. “Men who retire early often do so because of health conditions, such as hypertension or diabetes, which increase your risk of dementia.”

Time to Keep Working?

Sorenson went on to add that working helps keep your body active as well, another key factor to reducing the risk of dementia.

One aspect that was mentioned but received little discussion is that it might well be time to put an end to the notion of working full time until that one magic day when a person draws the retirement line. Currently, for many the process is a precipice that marks the end of the world of work and the start of the retirement years.

It would stand to reason that for a vast array of reasons, financial, societal (social security and medical impact), as well as mental, the shift away from the work world should be more gradual. Instead of calling it quits one day, older workers should be able to reduce both their weekly and their yearly number of hours on the job in a more gradual manner.

Brain images courtesy of jj_judes and Institut Douglas.

Fountas and Pinnell

When it comes to reading instruction in the early grades, the names Fountas and Pinnell are likely the two most referenced authors in the country. Fountas is currently a professor in the School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The former classroom teacher, language arts specialist, and consultant currently directs the Literacy Collaborative within the School of Education at Lesley.

Pinnell, professor emeritus at The Ohio State University, is the recipient of the International Reading Association’s Albert J. Harris Award for research and the Charles A. Dana Foundation Award for contributions to the field of education. Generally considered the catalyst for bringing Reading Recovery to schools in the US, she too has an extensive background in classroom teaching and the development of comprehensive approaches to literacy education.

In 1996, the two reading experts revolutionized classroom teaching with their systematic approach to small-group reading instruction. Today, the concept of Guided Reading is a featured technique in nearly every elementary school in America.

Their latest efforts, the Leveled Literacy Intervention program was created in response to the demands of teachers and administrators for a scientifically-based, early intervention program for struggling readers. Utilizing a comprehensive anchoring text, “When Readers Struggle: Teaching that Works,” the program focuses on preventing difficulties before they become long-term educational challenges.

Featuring an A–Z Text Gradient, “Benchmark Assessment System,” LLI provides teachers critical feedback on both the strengths and the needs of readers in kindergarten through Grade 3. While some aspects involve support within the whole class settings, a critical component of the program involves small group intervention and individual one-on-one sessions.

Response to Intervention

The new work from Fountas and Pinnell comes on the heels of a new educational term causing great consternation in many corners, Response to Intervention (RTI). The phrase is a result of
recent legal language changes in special education law that have resulted in a renewed focus on learners who struggle in the early grades.

There is growing body of evidence regarding the importance of reading at or above grade level in early childhood. One of the most sobering of educational research elements is the revelation that a child not reading on grade level by the third grade will in most cases be destined for significant educational challenges for the remainder of their schooling years.

In its simplest terms, “response to intervention” is a multi-step approach to providing children who struggle with learning additional educational instruction. The process involves teachers making specific teaching adjustments to help struggling students be more successful.

Such steps differ significantly from taking a student aside and simply offering more time utilizing the same instructional techniques. RTI features a fundamental tenet that if students struggle with the initial instruction, teachers must use differentiated teaching practices for the additional sessions.

Those adjustments, referred to as specific intervention techniques, are then closely monitored to determine the effectiveness of each practice. Because the interventions are graduated and vary in intensity, teachers then have a much larger tool box for helping students master specific concepts.

The ongoing assessment process, referred to as progress monitoring, involves scientifically-validated measurement tools. Frequent and regular assessment of students helps teachers identify specific learning goals for those students.

Ultimately, the philosophy ensures that students who are struggling with learning are not doing so because they have been exposed to just one teaching technique that simply did not work for those students.

Most importantly, considering a child for special education services is postponed until such interventions have been used. At the same time, these practices can lead to an earlier identification of those children who have real disabilities and therefore require special education services.

Program Predates Current Stimulus Funding Measures

Begun entirely outside of the RTI push, Fountas and Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention program is a small group, intensive, supplementary intervention system designed specifically to help struggling readers and writers. In direct response to the urgency to have students on grade level in the early years, LLI seeks to bring each student to grade-level competency in just 14-18 weeks.

Under President Barack Obama, federal officials continue to focus on accountability measures such as test scores and the use of scientifically-based research learning tools. This push towards “outcome based” education, backed now by federal stimulus funds, has many companies hard at work developing new products to fit updated literacy theories and match the Response to Intervention concept.

However, well before funds were to become available from the federal government, Fountas and Pinnell were at work on their intervention program for students and teachers. The authors clearly understood one key issue early on. For as long as educators can remember, there have been few options available for struggling students unless they were referred for special education services.

Placing a learning disability or other special education label on a six year old has always been a concern for educators. By the same token, elementary teachers, reluctant to refer a child to special education, had little in the way of proven strategies to work with students who were performing below grade level.

Most importantly, the program focuses on the students within the teacher’s classroom, not the instructional materials.

“It’s about teaching children,” states Fountas. “It is about teachers becoming better observers of the learners.”

Uniqueness of LLI

Unfortunately, the over-arching issue of greater accountability is leading towards entire canned, intervention programs that are extremely expensive. Schools seeking grant money to tackle this important issue are often required to adopt one of these specific programs.

However, with Fountas and Pinnell, the approach is more of a two-fold process focusing on teacher actions that are known to garner proven results. It begins with a focus on high-quality instructional practices that ensure teachers utilize time-tested, proven first teaching techniques.

LLI features a fairly tight framework of 300 lessons based on 300 separate reading texts that give educators an arsenal of effective tools. Those reading materials include fiction, non-fiction, story series featuring recurring characters and some classic tales.

It follows with timely and developmentally appropriate intervention techniques based on the feedback obtained from progress-monitoring students. Therefore the program is less about purchasing a canned package of materials and more about developing sound teaching practices.

Fundamental of Physical Science

According to the one site that students are not supposed to turn to for research, Wikipedia offers that gravitation is the “natural phenomenon by which objects with mass attract one another.” Without taking that sentence too much further, it is quite evident that if an object has mass (we will skip the debate that an object by definition must have mass) then it will attract other objects.

In physical science, students learn that in order for this attraction to be noticeable, we need a substantially massive object, like the earth or the sun (or, yes, like the moon). In physics, we might take this a bit further to note that the so-called force of gravity exerted on an object by the earth just so happens to be equal and opposite to the attractive force that the object exerts on the earth.

We further reveal that smaller objects fall to the earth because that force of attraction is able to move the very wimpy smaller object easily but is not large enough to reveal any perceptive movement by the more massive earth.

With that in mind, we turn to Detweiler’s post, where it seems that a teaching assistant in a philosophy class at the University of Wisconsin, Madison was explaining Descartes. According to the tale, the TA was trying to create an example that would back the notion that things don’t always happen the way we think they will.

For his concrete example, the TA chose this beauty:

“…..while a pen always falls when you drop it on Earth, it would just float away if you let go of it on the Moon.”

The storyteller goes on to note his incredulity at the TA’s false assertion, but that his disbelief was not shared by the majority of the other students in the room.

The storyteller goes on to protest.

“But a pen would fall if you dropped it on the Moon, just more slowly.”

To which the TA responds.

“No it wouldn’t, because you’re too far away from the Earth’s gravity,” says the TA who then asks, “You saw the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the Moon, didn’t you?”

To which the storyteller responds, “why didn’t they float away?”

“Because they were wearing heavy boots,” asserted the TA.

Is This for Real?

My first thought when I heard the story was, no sir, no way. This guy had to be making this up.

But then he insists that he went back to his dorm room and began randomly selecting names from the campus phone book, calling 30 people and asking a two part question, if they could not in fact answer the first one.

He began:

If you’re standing on the Moon holding a pen, and you let go, will it
a) float away,
b) float where it is,
c) fall to the ground?

According to the storyteller, just 47 percent got the question correct. Of the other 53%, he asked this second follow up:

You’ve seen films of the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the Moon, why didn’t they fall off?

According to the storyteller, about 20 percent of the people decided at that point that they would change their answer. But according to the legendary story, about half of those getting wrong explained:

“Because they were wearing heavy boots.”

Huh?

Story Continues

If you’re like me, you like this clever little piece that demonstrates just how scientifically illiterate our people are but are still wondering, could this be for real?

It is certainly not likely that he could have randomly called eight of the students who had happened to be in the TA’s classroom that day. And it would seem unlikely that Wisconsin had had done that bad of a job teaching science to its citizens.

Yet, later, one begins to think there just might be some merit here as the story continues to the physics classroom one day where two multiple choice questions were placed on a Physics test right after the class had finished the study of elementary mechanics and gravity.

Question one:

If you are standing on the Moon, and holding a rock, and you let it go, it will:
(a) float away
(b) float where it is
(c) move sideways
(d) fall to the ground
(e) none of the above

Question 2:

When the Apollo astronauts were on the Moon, they did not fall off because:
(a) the Earth’s gravity extends to the Moon
(b) the Moon has gravity
(c) they wore heavy boots
(d) they had safety ropes
(e) they had spiked shoes

While the first question was generally considered by the tester as being of average difficulty (especially with the more robust questions that had to have been posed), just 57% of the students got it right. The second proved much easier as 73% went on to get it right.

But guess what? When it comes to the notion of heavy boots, well it still seems to be a tough one for even physics students, at least the weaker ones. Those who scored in the lowest quartile on the entire test actually selected heavy boots as their answer most often.

Then there comes the ultimate sign, the one certifying piece that ensures that the story must be on the up and up.

It seems that after the exam, two students reportedly asked if the professor was going to continue asking “questions about things they had never studied in the class.”

Student:

If something as vast as mathematics or science or history can pass through your brain without even scraping the sides on the way through, that’s a pretty big hole. Are you sure it’s the course that doesn’t relate to anything?

Educational Theory

As we move towards greater use of technology within education, there is a push away from the traditional, teacher-centered classroom to one that is student-centered. While offering some very interesting potential for teachers, one element that appears to be taken for granted as we seek to make a student-centered classroom work is the need for a motivated learner.

One of the most significant criticisms leveled against teacher-centered classrooms is that such an environment actually fosters a level of student passivity over time. The belief is that using more of a “guide on the side” or a discovery-learning approach featuring essential question formats would be far superior to our current practice of a set curricula driving classroom instruction.

That belief is founded in great part on the notion that curiosity is an innate characteristic in children. Therefore, in teacher preparation programs, the focus should be on developing a teaching arsenal that unleashes this fundamental human trait.

Such a belief has lead to a discussion that we should replace traditional pedagogical or “child-leading” teaching strategies with andragogical or “man-leading” approaches. The shift is seen as moving away from “taught” education to learning that is self-directed.

But as we noted earlier, such a shift is dependent upon a certain level of motivation from the learner as well as the notion that curiosity is innate.

Sir Ken Robinson

In June of 2006, Ted.com posted a presentation from Sir Ken Robinson. That video soon made its way around the internet, especially within the educational community.

Robinson insists that we do not get the best out of people because we educate our children to become good workers instead of creative thinkers. According to Robinson, students come with restless minds and bodies. But instead of cultivating this energy and a child’s natural curiosity, Robinson insists that schools either ignore or even stigmatize children.

“We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says.

As others have suggested, Robinson sees curiosity as an innate trait. He also postures that creativity is similarly embedded within us. These thoughts or beliefs are gradually seeping into our educational culture and are forming the basis for a strong shift in teaching practices.

An Invalid Assumption?

In his article, “Why is there Anti-Intellectualism?,” Professor Steven Dutch takes very strong exception to the assumption that curiosity is innate.

Dutch calls the idea that “humans are intrinsically curious, with an inborn love of learning” the Standard Model. He includes in that standard model the fundamental notion espoused by many that “children are insatiably curious about their world, but by the time they are adults, a stifling educational system has beaten it out of them.”

To say Dutch disagrees with this position would be a simple understatement. Dutch begins by offering some questions of the rhetorical kind.

If we humans were in fact innately curious, “Why should it be possible to stifle these qualities at all?” asks Dutch. “Assuming that there are people with a vested interest in stifling curiosity and creativity, why should they be able to prevail over those members of society who value curiosity and creativity?

“If curiosity and creativity are general traits of human beings, anti-intellectualism should be a rare and aberrant phenomenon,” offers Dutch. “It should be regarded as a variety of mental retardation, or a condition as undesirable as impotence.”

Instead, Dutch offers a different rationale. Instead, “curiosity and creativity collide headlong with another trait deeply rooted in biology, the desire to minimize effort and expenditure of energy.”

Dutch believes that curiosity and creativity most likely evolve as offshoots of play. In comparing human actions to that of animals, Dutch notes that “even in species whose young are noted for playfulness and inquisitiveness, adults do not exhibit the same level or kind of play.”

The reason:

“They don’t need to - they have already learned their environment, and play both takes energy and may distract them from necessary vigilance.”

Therefore, far from being beaten out of the young, we “should probably expect curiosity to decline as humans get older, just in the natural order of things. It’s ridiculous to expect adults to grow physically at the same rate as babies, and probably as silly to expect them to grow intellectually at the same rate.”

Dutch goes on to examine a magazine article subtitled, “Should Learning Be Its Own Reward?”

Turning the question a tad, Dutch asks: “Why isn’t learning a sufficient reward? You don’t have to offer people incentives to have sex, or eat strawberry shortcake, or go to Disneyland. For most people those activities are their own reward. Why isn’t learning in the same class?”

Within his article, Dutch offers numerous examples that contradict the notion that humans are fundamentally creative and curious. To which Dutch goes on to formulate his conclusion, “that there is something fundamentally wrong with” the standard model of human nature.

Curiosity and Creativity, Acquired Tastes

Dutch insists that curiosity and creativity are acquired adult tastes.

“Some people naturally enjoy running, and some people naturally enjoy creating,” writes Dutch, “but it is probably equally futile to expect either to become widely popular among the general population. Couch potatoes may enjoy an occasional bout of physical activity and normally incurious people may enjoy an occasional challenge, but neither can be cited as evidence that humans in general have an innate love of physical or mental activity.”

And as for children and innate creativity, Dutch insists we must “distinguish between tinkering and creativity.” He explains:

“Tinkering consists of exploring relatively minor variations on known themes, or subjecting new stimuli to an array of already known techniques. Babies tinker constantly. They put every new object in their mouth. Eventually they figure out that most things are not good to eat.”

This isn’t real curiosity according to Dutch. Instead, serious curiosity “consists of actively seeking new kinds of stimuli.” And as for creativity, well children are not exactly “juxtaposing objects and ideas in new ways, and having a sound intuition for separating the significant result from the trivial.”

In his eyes children are not innately curious. Instead, they are tinkerers with generally short attention spans.

As an example he turns to Mozart who actually began composing music at age three. Dutch notes that “none of his juvenile pieces are played today except as musical curiosities” as they are nothing more than variations based on existing musical patterns.

“As a child, he was a tinkerer,” writes Dutch. “A very bright one, to be sure - he was Mozart after all - but still only a tinkerer. His adult creativity vastly exceeded his creativity as a child, and even as an adult, his last few years vastly outshone his earlier period. We also should note that his childhood achievements were hyped, and in some cases assisted, by his father.”

And almost as if he were setting out to respond directly to Sir Ken Robinson, Dutch adds:

“I’ve heard people claim they have never seen a child who wasn’t curious and couldn’t be motivated to learn.” But the problem is that “they fail to distinguish between tinkering and real curiosity and creativity. All children are tinkerers; it does not follow that all can or will develop curiosity and creativity in any profound sense.”

Ultimately, Dutch insists, “the curiosity and creativity of children is very superficial.”

And as for we humans being innately curious, “it is mostly a low order curiosity concerned with immediate gratification of a particular desire to know, and mostly oriented toward immediate practical results. There is no persuasive evidence that any societies have ever had a high proportion of people who were deeply curious in a systematic, disciplined way.”

Resisting Innovation

As but another specific point in the matter, Dutch notes the propensity for individuals and entire societies to resist innovation. If we were in fact, innately curious and creative, innovation should not only be welcomed, it should be our fundamental norm.

Such is simply not the case. Instead, historically we have craved certainty and operated, all too often from the perspective, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

As a total human species, we have not demonstrated the propensity to be either curious or creative. Such behaviors appear to exist more in isolation, very much in line with Dutch’s assertion, “some people enjoy running and some enjoy creating.”

While Sir Ken Robinson’s video offers great food for thought, it just might not be as on target as first suggested. It seems terribly cynical to say, but perhaps, as Dutch notes, the assertion that our institutions are “directed toward making us conform and stifling inquisitiveness and creativity” may be nothing more than our convenient excuse for the fact that so many “bright, inquisitive children” grow up to be nothing more than “shallow and jaded adults.”