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9486 in the collection
Reading Makes Readers
Ohanian Comment: Just skip all the rah-rah for the WASL. The important thing here is that kids who read become better readers. Imagine that! What a revelation!! This is worth trumpeting, particularly since the federal reading cabal's so-called science denies it.
Also noteworthy is the declaration that when kids read, their scores on standardized tests improve. Test prep not only isn't necessary, it's counter-productive. The skills are in the reading. They really are.
SULTAN — Eighty students reading books sit like monks around an empty basketball court, meditating on places far away from this rural, working-class community.
The silence in Sultan Middle School's gym is deafening. At least for the first 20 minutes of the school day.
"As a PE teacher, I didn't have a lot of training in reading," explains Judy Mitchell, who requires students to write "reading logs" on their chosen books. Now, new teachers seek out the physical-education instructor for pointers on reading instruction. And you should see her students' Venn diagrams comparing and contrasting basketball and handball.
As measured by the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), Sultan Middle School boosted its passing rate in reading this year because teachers gave students time in all classes — art, PE, shop, math, science, health, social studies — to practice reading in different contexts.
Led by a dynamic principal, teachers at the 600-student Snohomish County school have spent the past few years mining and analyzing their school's WASL data, then building single-minded teams to ensure that proven methods of reading and math instruction infuse every classroom. So it's likely no accident that Sultan Middle School is emerging as one area school that has made the most improvement over five years on the WASL.
Sultan and its peers across the state face high stakes: The Class of 2008, which took the WASL last spring in seventh grade, will be the first to have to pass the test in high school to graduate. Statewide, only about half of the Class of 2008 seventh-graders met the reading standard and only two in five passed the math standard.
In the Puget Sound region, the percentage of students meeting the standards at each school varies dramatically. Generally, the wealthier the student population, the better the schools do. But a handful of schools where more than one-third of the students are low-income — Sultan Middle, Auburn's Rainier Middle, Seattle's McClure Middle and Mercer Middle — have shown steady, significant progress on the WASL over five years. In Sultan, nearly 40 percent of middle-school students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.
"Let's be honest: Sultan's been at the bottom on performance," admits Principal Robin Briganti.
But after she became its principal in the summer of 1999, Briganti focused her staff on what she hoped would be a few powerful reforms: The entire teaching staff received training in writing in the fall of 1999. The following year, the school began letting sixth-graders switch among slow-, medium- or fast-paced math classes after each study unit, depending on each student's need. And in 2001, nearly half of the staff was trained in reading instruction.
This year, about 60 percent of Sultan seventh-graders met the WASL writing standard, a three-fold increase from five years ago. The school more than doubled its pass rate on the math section to 37 percent. Students' reading scores jumped to 44 percent this year after four consecutive years of being stuck in the low 30s.
Still, the school's math and reading pass rates are below the statewide average. Briganti and her staff admit they have much more work to do.
Accountability
While no single test can measure a student's entire range of skills, lawmakers are using the WASL to hold schools and districts more accountable for all students' performance. The assumption is that if students are taught more effectively, they will perform better on accountability tests.
WASL critics say administering the tests only in the fourth and seventh grades, as is done now, isn't that useful to teachers at those grade levels because each year's results apply to a different group of students.
Gains at the middle-school level could become more apparent in 2006, once schools begin giving the WASL every year from third through eighth grades. A seventh-grade teacher, for example, might be able to assess the quality of her instruction from having WASL data on a student's proficiency in math at the end of sixth grade and again at the end of seventh grade.
"We'll be able to document that kids have made growth" in math, reading and writing, said Cathy Taylor, the state's acting director of assessment. "We've never been able to do that. Even if they haven't made standard, they've made growth, and we'll be able to capture that."
Taylor rejects critics who say that the WASL is dumbing down student learning, or that it encourages teaching to the test.
"It's not possible to teach to the WASL. You can't teach to the test, because the test changes every year," she said. The test, a mix of multiple-choice, short answer and essay questions, requires more critical thinking than traditional standardized tests.
Driven by data
Several middle schools visited by The Seattle Times that have shown improvement on the WASL have formal teams of teachers, by subject or grade level, that deliberately try to align their instruction with the state "content standards."
"We don't feel we teach to the WASL," said Heidi Harder, a Sultan Middle School math teacher. "We feel we are teaching good practices that not only help (students) with the test but for the rest of their lives."
On its Web site, the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction lays out each standard and "strands," describing skills and content by subject for each grade level. The WASL attempts to measure a student's proficiency in these strands.
For example, the reading strands are the ability to comprehend important ideas and details; to analyze, interpret and synthesize ideas; and to think critically, such as applying the text's information to other situations.
After dissecting their WASL scores, Sultan Middle School's staff concluded that their seventh-graders struggle with reading comprehension. The students have been at or below the statewide average on these strands. Because research suggests that individuals who see connections between different subjects and the real world learn more than those who learn subjects as isolated units, Sultan teachers have adapted their instruction accordingly.
Math teacher Betty Donaldson recently led her sixth-graders through a holiday gingerbread-house project. While the assignment was ostensibly about learning units of measurement (a WASL strand), Donaldson asked them to identify the title, key words and main idea on their worksheet.
Hands shot up across the small room divided into clusters of three or four desks.
"Okay, Swifty. Quick! Before you explode!" Donaldson said, then wrote the student's correct answer on the board.
When a student gave a wrong answer, Donaldson explained why the answer wasn't correct before calling on another student. Researchers say that by modeling their own thought processes, teachers can show students how to approach solving problems and avoid common mistakes.
During the class, Briganti, the principal, sat in a desk typing her observations of Donaldson on her laptop. She spends almost seven hours a week in classroom observations, then shares her notes with each teacher.
"I'm not interested in getting people," Briganti said. "I'm interested in students learning and removing barriers for teachers."
Sultan Middle School's focus on strands helps explain the sharp improvement in WASL writing scores, several teachers said.
"We found out kids struggled with writing conventions," such as punctuation, grammar and spelling, Briganti said. "We asked, 'What are the best practices that would strengthen that skill strand for our learners?' And then we stuck to that."
Students don't get the full benefit of such "best practices" if schools ignore them, follow only what's convenient or have only a few teachers adopting them, experts say.
Cultivating leaders
Sultan Middle School teachers took the lead to make sure reforms were carried out schoolwide: They became in-house experts on teaching strategies and formed study teams to tackle improvement in reading, writing and math.
The school's math teachers decided that in sixth grade they would teach the same material but in three differently paced classes.
Another team of teachers focused on school practices, such as giving parents online access to their child's attendance record, due dates for assignments and grades.
An umbrella team monitored and coordinated the other teams' progress.
Al Robinson, Sultan School District superintendent, said the school is proof of what can happen when all teachers make an intentional effort to work in harmony.
"It's really easy to be a math teacher and say, 'I don't care about writing,' " Robinson said. "It's really easy to be a history teacher and say, 'I don't care about math.' When you have a staff that chooses to care about their goals across the board, that's what makes the difference."
Robinson credits Briganti for cultivating leadership in her staff to ensure the reforms are sustainable.
Briganti is proud of the fact that she delegates duties by skill level and interest instead of solely by title.
Unlike some principals, she delegates day-to-day responsibilities, such as minor student-discipline cases, field trips and lunch duty, to her assistant principal. She delegates daily budget management to her administrative secretary and attendance at truancy hearings to her attendance-office assistant.
By choice, Briganti is essentially the school's academic officer. She conducts a minimum of one hour of research on instructional strategies every day and often leads credit courses for teachers in professional development.
Taking risks and trying new research-based reforms also seems key to raising student performance.
At Sultan, the staff ended summer school two years ago after discovering it seemed to have no effect on preventing students from dropping out. Instead, the school gave students at risk of failing classes at the end of a quarter the option of going to an after-school tutoring period. Once students register for this option, they must maintain a 90 percent attendance rate.
And for exceptionally hard-to-teach students, this year the school is assigning them for one quarter to a three-hour block called SkyHawk Academy, where a teacher drills small classes of five students on basic reading, writing and math skills, as well as organizational and social skills.
Briganti said the academy is a "hefty" measure. It's taken only after other interventions fail and the school's teachers have met with the student and parents.
The students in the academy may not pass the WASL, but that's not the point. Ultimately, the WASL is only one indicator of a school's success on a given day.
Sultan Middle School also tries to instill in students a concern for their community, civility toward others and coping constructively with conflict.
Briganti said there are children who begin the year dragging their feet into school, and after being paired with an adult mentor come bouncing in each morning excited about school.
"That's a measurement the WASL isn't going to pick up directly," Briganti said. "I know the child's attendance rate is increasing, connectedness to school is increasing, and overall performance is going up. I live for those turned-around kids."
— Sanjay Bhatt
Teachers' teamwork and tenacity make Sultan scores soar
Seattle Times
2003-12-09
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2001810871_highstakes09m.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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