When we imagine the typical school, at least one from the pre-pandemic era, generally the first thing that comes to mind is a teacher instructing a classroom full of students. But the scene can be quite different for California’s 190,000-plus students who attend charter schools where at least 20 percent of their instruction takes place outside of this traditional setting. The state calls these “nonclassroom-based” (NCB) schools, and they include full-time virtual schools, independent-study charters, and supported homeschooling. According to Caprice Young, leader of the Learn4Life charter network:

The biggest misunderstanding is that NCB schools are all online schools. Some are and some are not, but the term NCB refers to the way the schools are reimbursed for services, not their instructional context. Traditional schools earn state dollars based on enrollment calculated based on student seat-time in a classroom, whereas NCBs are reimbursed based on the amount of academic school work the students do. In this manner, NCBs (which include both charter and non-charter public schools) are closer to the new proficiency-based funding models many innovators are calling for post-pandemic.

Sometimes these schools get a bad rap. But a new report issued by the California Charter Schools Association attempts to clear up some misconceptions, and argues that these schools meet the needs of many California students and families.

The report emphasizes that the wide variety of school types under the umbrella of “Nonclassroom-based” allows students and families to make schooling choices tailored to their needs. Many schools offer a career-focus or engage in some form of personalized learning, for example, while others offer college-readiness programs. Still others are oriented around particular pedagogical perspectives, such as those with constructivist, content-focused, or twenty-first-century-skills offerings. The sector also particularly caters to students who are credit-deficient or who have otherwise had difficulty in traditional schools. Approximately one-third of NCB schools serve such a high proportion of high-risk students that they qualify for “dashboard alternative school status” and are evaluated according to an alternative accountability model. These programs, in particular, serve a high proportion of low-income and highly mobile students.

Furthermore, over the many years that they have been in operation, NCB schools have developed distinct forms of expertise in meeting students’ learning needs. The report identifies eight common best practices that NCB leaders view as critical to their schools’ success:

1. Personalized Learning. Many NCB programs tailor their instructional programs to students’ unique needs, interests, and situations. Students and families have more flexibility and choice when selecting curriculum, learning environments, and pacing.


2. Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning. Flexibility is extended by a combination of live and asynchronous learning opportunities that students may opt to attend in order to receive additional support from trained educators.


3. Strong Teacher and Student Relationships. NCB teachers have clearly delineated responsibilities for connecting individually with students and families, and frequently engage in personalize check-ins with students.


4. Flexibility of Instruction Timing and Style. Students can engage in instruction at the time, place, and in the format that best works for them. This is particularly of benefit to at-risk students, who may work or have care-taking responsibilities that preclude their ability to engage on the typical 8 a.m.–3 p.m. schooling schedule.


5. Parents/Guardians are Active Participants in Students’ Learning. Schools host frequent trainings for parents on how to support their students and view parents as important participants in their students’ learning journey.


6. Emphasis on Students’ Responsibility. Without the structure of the traditional classroom, students take on greater responsibility for regulating their own schedules and learning. While NCB teachers provide appropriate support and accountability structures, many schools aim to cultivate student responsibility and ownership of their own learning.


7. Adapted to Meet Diverse Student Needs. In addition to meeting the needs of many at-risk students, NCBs often work well for high-performing athletes, accelerated learners, students with medical conditions, and many who have experienced bullying or emotional distress in previous school settings.


8. Providing Needed Educational Options. NCB leaders viewed their programs as serving an important function for students whose needs are suited to the unique environment these schools offer and for school districts that may otherwise have limited resources.

The California Charter Schools Association’s report contributes much-needed nuance to the debate around NCB schools by emphasizing the variation within this sector. Policy that blanket-regulates NCB schools may unnecessarily hinder students and families from accessing widely-appreciated programs that accommodate atypical needs and lifestyles. Nonetheless, California will do well to evaluate how to appropriately hold these schools accountable for producing positive learning outcomes and ensure that they are responsible stewards of public funds. But this can surely happen without further inhibition of the expansion of NCB educational opportunities.

SOURCE: Slakey, J. (2021) Serving Diverse Student Needs in the Golden State: Practices and Programs of Nonclassroom-based Charter Public Schools. California Charter Schools Association.

• Seventy years ago, Prince Edward County closed public schools to deny Black students an education. Fixing inequities worsened by pandemic closures is this generation’s civil rights crisis. —Washington Post
• “Biden…is expected to propose a half dozen education programs that would constitute the largest federal investment in education in at least a half century.” —Washington Post
• How to practice band music safely in reopened schools. —Wall Street Journal
• Black students in South Florida are failing state tests but graduating anyway. —Miami Herald
• With students returning to classrooms, learning pods are dwindling. —We Are Iowa Local 5 News
• Public schools should not continue remote learning in the fall based on groundless safety concerns, especially not synchronously with in-person instruction. It will only incur unnecessary staffing and logistics costs. —New York Magazine

Cheers

• David McCollough’s American Exchange Project is bringing together young Americans from different regions and backgrounds during the pandemic. —BBC
• “Patriotism is a contested concept. But it shouldn’t fade to something only dimly remembered.” —George F. Will
• Atlanta will be adding half an hour to elementary students’ school day in the fall to address unfinished learning. —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Jeers

• Howard University’s dissolution of its classics department is “a sign of spiritual decay...running amok in American culture.” —Cornel West and Jeremy Tate
• Teacher training and licensure programs are spreading forms of progressive pedagogy that are ruining education. —National Review
• Pitting excellence against equity, Massachusetts schools chief Jeff Riley wants to replace rigorous, statewide admissions criteria for vocational schools, and instead let them use their own requirements that focus on diversity. —Boston Globe
• The U.S. Department of Education’s new grant rules for history and civics programs cite the controversial 1619 Project and the far-left Ibram X. Kendi, inflaming the culture wars. —EdWeek

A new report from the Journal of Chemical Education takes a look—pre-pandemic—at the ways in which college students benefited from a new opportunity to participate remotely in their education.

In this study, college juniors taking a core course in chemical engineering at the University of Michigan were required to complete a nine-week team-based project on the topic of mass and heat transfer. They had to identify a relevant problem they wanted to tackle, develop a solution via experimentation, and then present their findings in various forms both written and visual to an audience. Traditionally, the visual presentation consisted of an in-person replication of the team’s experiment in front of the class. But in 2017, an option was added for students to create a video presentation instead.

The researchers used this change to test whether the video presentation option had an effect on students’ engaged-learning outcomes. Specifically, the analysts were looking to see the effect of the presentation modality on students’ perceptions of their creativity, innovation and risk taking, social responsibility (for addressing social and ethical issues and for public outreach), teamwork, confidence in their ability to apply engineering concepts and to tackle future challenges, and communication for written and oral presentations.

A total of 248 students completed the course project in the fall semesters of 2017 and 2018, with 137 choosing an in-person presentation and 111 choosing to create a video. Multiple surveys and focus groups were conducted with participants throughout the semester, including a pre-project questionnaire to obtain baseline data. Slightly less than 60 percent of students reported ever creating a similar video presentation before, but the students’ reported comfort score was nearly identical for both video and in-person presentations, indicating a familiarity with non-academic presentations such as YouTube videos or Vines.

A post-project survey showed that students who created a video presentation experienced significantly greater impact on their perceived creativity (mean score: 8.9/10) as compared to those who delivered an in-person presentation (mean score: 7.7/10). This is consistent with the pre-project survey findings. Similarly, video creators reported experiencing a higher impact on risk taking (mean score: 7.7/10) compared to their in-person peers (mean score: 6.1/10), as the pre-project data suggested.

As an example of this, the researchers cite focus group data which specifically noted the time constraints on the in-person presentation. A handful of students reported creatively condensing their in-person presentations, but a majority responding said they chose shorter options that could be completed within the 10 to 15 minutes allotted, thus limiting their choice of problem and solution. By contrast, a majority of students opting to create a video reported conducting experiments that took far longer than 15 minutes to complete, editing hours or even days of data/footage into short and illustrative bites.

The impact of the presentation modality on teamwork, self-confidence, and communication was not significant, perhaps indicating that these learning outcome areas were more strongly influenced by the research phases of the project—which were largely similar regardless of ultimate presentation type.

The upshot is that video presentations built on the strengths of the other aspects of the project and helped students in this class be more creative and take more risks in pursuit of their education. However, video creators reported a much lower impact on social responsibility than their in-person peers, entirely attributed to the lack of in-person communication with the audience. In-person presenters reported that a live Q & A session boosted understanding of the subject matter for both the audience and themselves, while video creators received feedback only from their instructors and reported no additional a lack of engagement beyond the completion of the work itself.

Over the last year, pandemic-related disruptions of traditional education models have led to a greater reliance on digital teaching and learning in both K–12 and higher education. While the preference of many is to return to a fully in-person model, some students and teachers managed to adapt quite well to various aspects of the virtual and hybrid models. Live, synchronous interaction is important, but we have evidence that subject matter knowledge, individual and group creativity, and personal self-confidence can also be boosted by thoughtful and well-designed remote learning experiences as well.

SOURCE: Andrew J. Zak, Luke F. Bugada, Xiao Yin Ma, and Fei Wen, “Virtual versus In-Person Presentation as a Project Deliverable Differentially Impacts Student Engaged-Learning Outcomes in a Chemical Engineering Core Course,” Journal of Chemical Education (March 2021).

1. Fordham’s Chad Aldis provided opponent testimony on HB 200 in committee yesterday. The coverage focused on the proposed switch away from A-F grades on school and district report cards—in line with the few questions he and others received—but  Chad’s full testimony covered a lot more than that. (Gongwer Ohio, 4/20/21)
    
2. I am always a little skeptical when school districts’ planning docs adopt some “clever” acronym by which to sell them. Ditto for when Covid-remediation planning docs extend for two or three years. Double ditto for such a plan that seems to encompass less than 24 hours of additional work to make up what could be a year or more of “suspended schooling” or whatever we’re calling it today. (Cleveland.com, 4/19/21)
   
   

3. On Monday, we discussed a pilot program being run in Montgomery County right now in which the county ESC provides the fully-remote education for a member district who opts to buy in. How that would work in practical terms: Who hires the teachers? To whom would a parent address FAPE concerns? Where do kids go for in-person testing? Would the ESC get a report card? Etc. And while I was left with more questions than answers, the enthusiastic response of one district supe for adopting the pilot model next fall led me to believe that someone had those answers even if we in the general public did not. Here is a piece which, in discussing the rather stringent limits being placed on fully-remote learning by West Branch Local Schools in Mahoning County next fall, gives us a hint that the Ohio Department of Education has all of those answers and that districts have been apprised with the requisite detail. They have four options for acceptable non-traditional learning models, per ODE, and they have until July 1 to apprise the department as to which they are choosing. More on this to come, I should imagine. (Morning Journal-News, 4/21/21)

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We’re more than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, and finally, thanks to the power of science, vaccines are now widely available. But to reach herd immunity—which scientists say requires having 70–85 percent of the population vaccinated—we need to recalibrate our country’s vaccination strategy.

At present, too many people are reluctant to get vaccinated, and too many people still lack access to quality information and healthcare. This is the greatest public health campaign of our generation, and our country needs a vaccine strategy that enlists trusted local leaders and institutions to get more Americans vaccinated.

Public schools can help. With deep reach into local communities, and trusted community leaders who want to keep people safe, our country’s schools can help understand and address the concerns that are preventing people from getting vaccines. Schools can also provide the physical location for vaccines, which is particularly important for populations who lack the time to travel to health clinics. Both of these efforts can advance vaccine equity.

Moreover, schools need vaccines. A successful, sustained reopening of schools hinges on whether the nation’s vaccine campaign succeeds in achieving herd immunity. Schools are not only significantly contribute to this effort, they must.

Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools, where I’m co-founder and executive director, and EquitybyDesign.org have created a new resource to help schools do this. Our guide explores ten tips school leaders, teachers, and staff can apply to help their community overcome vaccine hesitancy and support efforts to put remote operation behind us.

1. Listen to and understand vaccine hesitancy: The first step in educating communities and building confidence in the Covid-19 vaccines is to listen, without judgment, to people’s concerns and fears. The reasons for vaccine hesitancy are as diverse as Americans themselves, and school leaders can use their proximity and close relationships with people in their community to listen empathetically and respond in a personal way to address concerns, misinformation, complacency, fear, and distrust.

2. Pair access and strong relationships with a high-quality curriculum on vaccination: Schools can use high-quality curriculum in science, math, and even the humanities to help students understand what’s happening today with Covid-19 and the vaccination effort. Not only does this inform students, it can empower them to become ambassadors for vaccination, starting meaningful conversations with friends and loved ones who may be hesitant to get their shots.

3. Use quality, vetted resources and set up systems to share timely information: Schools can address misinformation by curating and sharing timely, credible, high-quality information with their community. Schools also should make these resources available in multiple languages to ensure equitable access to health information. If schools don’t have the time to set this up themselves, they can use the School Vaccine Hub, a repository that offers credible vaccine information and curriculum for schools.

4. Run campaigns promoting vaccination for school communities: Schools can create their own campaigns, tailored to local needs, to share important information about vaccines and to combat misinformation. Schools know their communities well and can present critical information in the form of an easy-to-follow campaign that makes the data more accessible for community members of all ages.

5. Use school buildings and campuses as community vaccination centers: To meet President Biden’s goal to get everyone vaccinated over the immediate term, we need to make vaccines more accessible. Schools are convenient places to do this, allowing community members to get shots in places they know and trust. Schools can pair this access with a campaign encouraging their community to make vaccination a family event.

6. Encourage, mandate, and incentivize vaccines for employees: Schools and businesses are experimenting with different ways to encourage their staff to get vaccinated, including through incentives or even mandates. It’s important to remember that mandates may lower morale, so schools should think of ways to make vaccines a positive experience. If possible, offer an incentive payment or gift card, in addition to paid time off, and make logistics easy by providing transport or offering vaccines at school. And don’t forget to thank employees and celebrate those who are getting their vaccines and helping safeguard the health of their community.

7. Form partnerships to address equity concerns: Covid-19 has had a disproportionate impact on certain communities, and it’s imperative that vaccines are distributed equitably. To guarantee this, schools should look for partners who can help make sure vaccines and vaccine information are available to hard-to-reach populations and communities most at risk for Covid-19—many of whom are people of color. Partners can include municipal governments and local healthcare providers, as well as local businesses, churches, sports teams, community-based organizations, unions, and media companies.

8. Embrace science, inside and outside the school community: Schools have a role to play in privileging science and evidence. This effort can take place inside and outside the classroom, in the form of an expanded science curriculum, as well as an effort to get students to follow scientific research in the daily paper and discuss the subject with family members over meals. Schools should also recognize that some people are skeptical of science. To address this, schools must acknowledge the shortcomings of the past, and listen to the concerns of people who might be hesitant.

9. Continue Covid-19 prevention practices: Even as the country ramps up vaccinations, schools must continue to practice and promote virus-mitigation strategies such as physical distancing, mask-wearing, hand hygiene, air circulation, and regular testing. Schools should also ensure faculty, staff, and students have access to regular, reliable, and free Covid-19 testing. This approach complies with CDC recommendations for everyone—people who have been fully vaccinated and those who have not yet received a complete dosage.

10. Protect vulnerable people in the community: The people who are most vulnerable to Covid-19 have been older Americans, those with pre-existing conditions, and people of color. Schools can help protect these populations by using local demographic and school data to understand who is at risk in their community. They can then tailor campaigns to promote the protection of those populations, and also offer specific support those populations need, such as mobile vaccination clinics. By taking a lead on this, schools can institutionalize a culture of community care—which will help us get through Covid-19 and build resilience for the future.

We will not be able to repair and heal from this pandemic without participation from every arena in society. And schools have an opportunity to play a leading role in the vaccination effort by supporting the needs and addressing the concerns of local communities. Together, we can help the country overcome this virus so that our school communities can get back to the important work of educating young people for the future.

To learn more, read our recent report, A 10-Point Guide for Schools to Promote Equitable COVID-19 Vaccination.

NOTE: Today, the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee heard testimony on HB 200, one of several legislative efforts underway to revamp Ohio’s school and district report cards. Fordham’s Chad Aldis presented opponent testimony to the bill. These are his written remarks.

My name is Chad Aldis, and I am the Vice President for Ohio Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The Fordham Institute is an education-focused nonprofit that conducts research, analysis, and policy advocacy with offices in Columbus, Dayton, and Washington, D.C.

While I stand before you to provide opponent testimony, I’d like to begin my commending you and the bill sponsors for tackling an important and incredibly complex issue. School and district report cards perform a variety of critical functions. For parents, the report cards offer objective information as they search for schools that can help their children grow academically. For citizens, they remain an important check on whether their schools are thriving and contributing to the well-being of their community. For governing authorities, such as school boards and charter sponsors, the report card shines a light on the strengths and weaknesses of the schools they are responsible for overseeing. And, finally, as we are reminded during challenging times like this, it can help officials identify schools in need of extra help and resources.

Because of the many roles it plays, it’s essential that Ohio get it right when designing a report card. The current report card has some important strengths and has even drawn national praise from the Data Quality Campaign and the Education Commission of the States. Nevertheless, there are facets of the report card that can and should be improved. Fordham published a report in 2017, Back to the Basics, calling for a variety of reforms to Ohio’s report card framework including simplifying it and making it fairer to schools serving high percentages of economically disadvantaged students.

And yet, you’re probably wondering why this is opponent testimony. We strongly believe that any report card must adhere to four critical principles. First, it must support equity and ensure high expectations for all students and that each student counts. Second, it must advance transparency and offer parents and communities clear, simple, honest information about school performance. Third, it should be fair and give every school the opportunity to demonstrate growth and improvement. And, fourth, it must be accurate and ensure components are measuring what is intended.

In analyzing HB 200 against these principles, we have serious concerns. For ease of consideration and discussion, this testimony will attempt to be specific and identify issues one at a time.

• Switching to a rating system based on descriptors: Moving from A to F grades to using words reduces transparency. While other rating systems like stars or a 1 to 100 scale could work, the labels adopted in HB 200 either have no meaning to regular families or in the case of “making moderate progress toward expectations” are actively misleading. This could also create a challenge in some of our most diverse districts. In Columbus, for example, families speak more than 100 languages. The text descriptors proposed would be a nightmare for families to navigate and greatly reduce transparency.

• Eliminating the overall rating: This is another change that would negatively impact transparency. Akin to a GPA, an overall rating offers a broad sense of performance by combining results from disparate report card measures. It focuses public attention on the general academic quality of a school. In contrast, a system without a final rating risks misinterpretation. It would enable users to “cherry pick” high or low component ratings that, when considered in isolation, could misrepresent the broader performance of a district or school.

• Changing value-added (student growth): The bill makes a couple of changes to the value-added report card component that would have a negative impact. First, it allows a school or district to choose the higher of its one year or three-year growth data. This reduces transparency by hiding critical information. A well-constructed system should never simply allow a school to choose the rating that makes it look better. Second, it eliminates subgroup demotion without incorporating it elsewhere on the state report card, significantly damaging equity. It would allow the growth of a variety of student groups to simply not be considered when a school’s impact on student learning was examined. It would set Ohio back 20 years to a time when the academic achievement of the state’s historically disadvantaged student groups could more easily be swept under the rug.

• Modifying the gap closing component: HB 200 increases the number of students, or n-size, from 15 to 20 for the performance of a group of students to be reported on and considered in the ratings system. This would greatly impact both transparency and equity. As a part of its ESSA application, the Ohio Department of Education calculated the number of students that would be included in calculations under various n-sizes.[1] A move from 15 to 20 would remove 4 percent of students with disabilities, 8 percent of Hispanic students, and more than 12 percent of multiracial students from reporting requirements. Academic performance for these students would be out-of-sight and that, in the long term, could exacerbate opportunity and achievement gaps. Finally, HB 200 also continues the current practice of letting schools choose between being judged on performance index or value-added measures when evaluating gap closing. This could again fail to shine a light on student groups that aren’t getting the supports and resources they deserve to make strong academic progress. In the end, both achievement and growth matter, not one or the other.

• Diminishing the value of the third grade literacy measure: The proposed legislation would essentially render meaningless the third-grade literacy rating and impact both accuracy and equity. Measuring the promotion rate, as HB 200 does, doesn’t accurately measure what’s relevant. Ohio has a promotion rate under the third-grade guarantee of 95 percent but a proficiency rate of only 67 percent. The proposed change doesn’t align with the research which clearly delineates the long-term challenges faced by students who are unable to read at grade level in third grade. It’s essential that we measure what matters—and that’s whether children are proficient readers, not just promoted to the next grade. The equity implications are even more profound. HB 200 would only use results based on students who had been in the school or district from kindergarten through the third-grade state assessment. Given what we know about student mobility, low-income students—statistically, those least likely to read on grade level in third grade—will be systematically excluded from the calculations as they tend to be far more mobile than middle and upper income students. This change would be putting the interests of adults in school systems ahead of Ohio children and should not be adopted.

• Jettisoning prepared for success: This component is the only measure that looks entirely beyond state test scores to determine how ready young adults are when they leave K-12. Unfortunately, it was constructed too narrowly and had an overly ambitious—perhaps even unrealistic—grading scale attached to it. The result has been a roundly hated measure that nevertheless is arguably the most important measure of student success. For transparency and accuracy purposes, this component should be reformed. But it shouldn’t be abandoned. Let’s continue to recognize students who are college ready, but also begin recognizing those who are ready to successfully enter the workforce or the military.

Report cards are a balancing act. Ohio’s current state report card can and should be improved, but it’s critical that any changes ensure that the report card supports equity, transparency, fairness, and accuracy. As introduced, HB 200 falls short—especially in regards to equity and transparency. We urge this committee to continue its efforts to ensure that the report card is consistent with our state’s priorities and beliefs. Namely, that all students—given the proper support—can learn and achieve at high levels.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony.

NOTE: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute occasionally publishes guest commentaries on its blogs. The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of Fordham.

Favoritism. Unfairness. Inequity. Even the most generous interpretation of these words would carry negative connotations. Generally, it’s not good when one sibling is favored over another.

But this is exactly what Ohio’s funding currently does–students who attend certain types of public schools benefit more than students who attend other types of public schools. “Surely not!” you may say. “Why would Ohio ever favor some public-school students over others? Are some public school students worth less than others? That’s not fair.” You’re right. That would not be fair, and it would be a serious allegation that requires clear evidence of inequitable treatment.

Today, ExcelinEd is releasing evidence that indicates the state of Ohio values some public school students more than others. In fact, this report finds an overall funding gap of $121.2 million, or about $1,452 per student. It’s a specific gap related to facilities–a need for which only 18.1 percent is met by Ohio’s existing policies. Stated a bit differently, if this gap were closed, then the average charter school could hire an additional seven teachers, or it could give current classroom teachers a 39 percent raise. The state’s traditional school districts, on the other hand, have received tens of billions in state funding for school construction on top of the local tax revenue they generate to support facility needs.

This facility gap comes on top of a large disparity in the funding Ohio’s charter schools face in meeting their regular operational needs. In other words, to meet facility needs, charter schools must dip significantly into operating funds, which are already much lower than those received by traditional public schools.

More than 83,000 students attend brick and mortar charter schools in Ohio. More than 8 in 10 of those students are economically disadvantaged, and 2 of 3 identify as students of color. Also, 94 percent of these schools are located in urban areas where the cost of facilities can be high and options scarce. But charter schools don’t have the ability to levy taxes or issue bonds–only traditional public schools can do that. That means charter schools heavily rely on state policy and state funding for facilities.

It does not have to be this way. ExcelinEd has released a report and tool that can serve as a resource to policymakers as they make decisions that will balance the needs of charter school students and the potential cost to the state.

In some cases, pulling a certain policy lever may impose minimal to the state but have a large positive impact for charter schools. For example, if the state were to pass legislation that required districts to share bond revenues with public charter schools based on the proportion of students attending, then that one policy change would mean 82 percent of charter facility needs are met rather than 18.1 percent.

But that is not the only policy lever that can be pulled. Another lever would allow charter schools to access under-used district buildings at no or low cost. If one-third of charter schools were able to take advantage of a policy like this in Ohio, then the amount of need met by the state would nearly double from 18.1 percent to about 38.8 percent. This Charter School Facility Index Tool outlines 7 levers that can be used to increase the fairness and equity of Ohio’s state funding. It’s designed so that policymakers and other stakeholders can plug and play.

Just because things are unfair now, doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. We hope this report and tool will be a resource for state leaders as they aim to expand opportunities for every young Buckeye in the state.

This piece was originally posted on the blog of ExcelinEd.

Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year. It comprises four chapters split into nineteen individual topics. Over the coming weeks, we will publish each of these as a standalone blog post. This is the seventh. Read the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth.

Literacy is the bedrock of every elementary school and should be the number-one priority for post-pandemic educational recovery. A high-quality elementary curriculum imparts essential foundational skills in early reading and uses rich, engaging, and culturally responsive literary and informational texts. This allows students to build background knowledge of the world as they learn to read and draw meaning from print—a critical component of literacy instruction. Students need systematic foundational skills instruction, as well as a strong vocabulary and wide exposure to academic content.

However, identifying such curricula can be difficult, as research identifying the effectiveness of specific programs is fraught with challenges. For example, the fidelity of implementation varies, and comparisons with control groups are hard to come by. Still, the best English language arts (ELA) curricula embed practices that have been validated by rigorous research and are grounded in the science of reading. In addition, independent curriculum reviews such as those by EdReports, which rates quality based on alignment to college- and career-ready standards, can provide important information about a variety of programs.

In the discussion below, we focus on three considerations for elementary ELA curriculum selection and implementation: the science of reading, standards alignment, and design that gives all students access to grade-level content. We explore how this can be done, and these high-impact elements play out in an exemplar curriculum from EL Education.

Recommendations

• Select and implement a high-quality, comprehensive curriculum that is grounded in the science of reading, rich in content, rigorous, culturally relevant, and includes strong teacher-facing materials. We are particularly fond of EL Education, which has earned high ratings from EdReports in grades K–8 and was found effective in a 2013 Mathematica study.


• Give all students the good stuff—appropriately complex texts that align to grade-level standards, by providing struggling readers with the necessary scaffolding and supports.


• Invest staff in the adaptation and roll out of new curricula, including any modifications needed to address learning loss.


• Build in regular time for teachers to engage in curriculum study as part of collaborative planning and professional learning.

Rationale

The Science of Reading

The “science of reading” is a relatively new buzz phrase for a body of research that has existed for decades. In 2000, the National Reading Panel reviewed the evidence and identified five elements of effective reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics skills, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Despite the panel’s clear consensus that systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics for all children was the most effective approach to teaching word-level reading, resistance to that message has continued among many educators and within teacher-training programs. Meanwhile, fluency has often been misinterpreted to simply mean speed, when in fact it refers to reading at a grade-appropriate pace and with appropriate expression. Lack of fluency, which has been called the “bridge” between foundational skills and comprehension, is often the hidden cause of reading difficulties at upper grade levels.

The remaining two elements—vocabulary and comprehension—depend largely on the expansion of children’s knowledge. Direct vocabulary instruction is important, especially with regard to words that appear frequently in academic writing, but it can’t provide children with all the words they need to become competent readers. The vast majority of working vocabulary comes not from explicit word study or memorization, but repeated exposure to new words in print or spoken language. “Almost all the word meanings that we know are acquired indirectly by intuitively guessing new meanings as we get the overall gist of what we’re hearing or reading,” E.D. Hirsch, Jr. has observed. Broad general knowledge across subjects provides the “gist” to which Hirsch refers. It’s the key to vocabulary growth and language proficiency, and particularly critical for disadvantaged children and English learners.

With comprehension, the National Reading Panel discussed only the evidence supporting instruction in certain strategies, omitting any mention of the voluminous evidence that knowledge of the topic is a key factor in comprehension. As a result, many educators wrongly concluded that instructing students in “skills and strategies” was sufficient to build their comprehension.

Alignment to College- and Career-Ready Standards

At their core, college- and career-ready ELA standards require:

• Strong grounding in foundational reading skills—phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency.


• Exposing all students to increasingly complex texts.


• Close reading of these complex texts.


• Reading more informational texts.


• Building background knowledge by reading broadly and diving more deeply into content.


• Growing academic vocabulary and syntax.


• Speaking and writing grounded in evidence from texts.

While there are curricula specifically developed with these elements in mind, a 2019 report by the nonprofit organization EdReports estimated that only 16 percent of school districts are using such ELA curricula in their elementary schools.

Research demonstrates the imperative for building students’ background knowledge and vocabulary. Elementary schools’ ELA curricula should work to systematically build knowledge and vocabulary across a wide variety of high-interest, culturally relevant texts, including those about history, geography, science, the arts, and more.

At lower grade levels, as students practice and build early reading skills and vocabulary, whether they know something about the topics in their ELA assignments can accelerate or slow their development. Children tasked with unfamiliar topics may experience early failure and learn to dislike reading, leading them to practice less and develop more slowly than their peers. This can determine how the “Matthew Effect,” the name used by cognitive scientist Keith Stanovich to describe the phenomenon wherein “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” in vocabulary and knowledge, plays out for them later on in school. This hazard looms even larger now, when so many students in poverty have not had access to in-person instruction or have struggled to learn remotely since school closures began.

Expanding Access to Challenging Material

Every student, including those with gaps in background knowledge or decoding skills, should be engaged with the curriculum’s rich, grade-level texts with appropriate scaffolding and support. This differs from the common practice of assigning struggling readers to “just right” texts, which limits their exposure to grade-level content. A commitment to this principle will not only build the knowledge and vocabulary so vital to literacy success, but also will communicate the high expectations we have for all students. And it will begin to inculcate the growth mindset and student agency that characterizes excellent elementary schools.

Providing all students with access to the same knowledge also promotes social-emotional well-being. It enables children who would otherwise be relegated to lower-level reading groups to contribute their insights to discussions, demonstrate their capabilities to their peers, and feel that they are full members of the classroom community.

Identifying Comprehensive, High-Quality Curriculum

When making a curriculum selection, a key priority should be on the comprehensiveness of the instructional materials. This suggests several things, including:

• There is a distinct strand of the curriculum focused on explicit and systematic instruction in foundational reading skills.


• The curriculum valorizes both text complexity, predominantly through read-aloud in the primary grades, and volume of reading, such as through extended independent reading time, to build knowledge and vocabulary.


• There is coherence in the presentation of topics in order to grow content knowledge. Units are organized by topic, and topics are explored deeply and build on one another sequentially over the school year and across grades. Reading and writing are integrated into science, social studies, music, and other content areas, rather than presented as atomized, skills-based activities.


• On-the-spot assessments and end-of-unit performance assessments are part of the curriculum and grounded in its content.


• Student-facing and teacher-facing materials are included.

Example: EL Education

EdReports has identified a handful of comprehensive, high-quality, knowledge-building, standards-aligned ELA curricula. We are particularly enthusiastic about EL English Language Arts, which was found to be effective in a 2013 study by Mathematica Policy Research. We hold this curriculum in high regard for the following reasons:

• Its structure builds domain-specific vocabulary and Tier 2 academic vocabulary. Each grade is organized into four modules lasting eight weeks, organized around topics like water conservation, ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment, or athletes leading social change. These topics are highly appealing and use rich and engaging texts. Each module contains three units that focus first on knowledge building, then on reading, and then on writing.


• A separate “Skills Block” provides a complete foundational skills program using decodable texts and an aligned suite of assessments.


• It is specifically developed to support social-emotional learning and to meet the needs of English Learners.


• It is free and open source. While there are materials costs in implementation, including purchasing the trade books it uses, the curriculum can be accessed free of charge through many different online platforms, including EL Education, Open Up Resources, LearnZillion, and modEL Detroit, which provides school users lots of flexibility.


• The curriculum is highly educative. It explains pedagogical decisions throughout the materials, and includes strong teacher training content through a resource called “your curriculum companion.” Topics range from, “what makes a text worthy and compelling?” to “how will the curriculum empower my students to own their learning?”


• In 2019, EL Education entered into a partnership with CenterPoint Education Solutions to develop web-based, curriculum-aligned, K–8 interim assessments to mirror the curriculum’s scope and sequence and complement the existing formative assessments embedded in the curriculum. This allows teachers to clearly see what concepts students have mastered and which concepts require additional instruction or student practice.

Reading List

ACT. (2006). “Reading between the lines: What the ACT reveals about college readiness in reading.”

• The ability to handle complex text is the distinguishing characteristic between students who go on to do well in college and work and those who don’t.

Adams, M., Wong Fillmore, L., Goldenberg, C., Oakhill, J., Paige, D., Rasinski, T., Shanahan, T. (2020). “Comparing Reading Research to Program Design: An Examination of Teachers College Units of Study.” Student Achievement Partners.

• Outlines how the Teachers College Units of Study ELA curriculum is not aligned to the Common Core, in particular due to its lack of attention to knowledge-building.

EdReports. (2019). “The State of the Instructional Materials Market – 2019 Report.”

Hanford, E. “Hard Words: Why Aren't Kids Being Taught to Read?” APM Reports, September 10, 2018.

Hanford, E. “At a Loss for Words: What’s Wrong with How Schools Teach Reading?” APM Reports, August 22, 2019.

Hanford, E. “What the Words Say: Many kids struggle with reading – and children of color are far less likely to get the help they need.” APM Reports, August 6, 2020.

• These radio documentaries explore why schools have not embraced the science of reading, the ways in which pseudoscientific ideas about literacy have influenced instruction, and the impact on disadvantaged students.

Hempenstall, K. (2003). The three-cueing system: Trojan horse? Australian Journal of Learning Disabilities. 8(2), 15-23.

• This study outlines a common yet non-research-backed instructional technique from Australia. The paper points to the pitfalls of how “unfounded but passionately held belief[s]” can have a detrimental impact on the teaching of reading.

Hirsch, E.D. (2006). The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children. Houghton Mifflin.

Kaufman, J., Thompson, L., and Opfer, V. D. (2016). “Creating a Coherent System to Support Instruction Aligned with State Standards: Promising Practices of the Louisiana Department of Education.” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

• Describes the successes of the Louisiana Department of Education in promoting the use of high quality (and therefore content-rich) ELA materials.

Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. John Wiley & Sons.

• Describes the “three-cueing” system and paints a picture of how pseudoscience can come to take hold in educational practices.

Moats, L. (2000). “Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of ‘Balanced’ Reading Instruction.” Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

• Critiques the whole language and balanced literacy approach to teaching reading, and argues that the science around teaching reading points to systematic phonics instruction.

National Reading Panel. (2000). “Teaching Children To Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction.”

Nichols-Barrer, I. and Haimson, J. (2013). "Impacts of Five Expeditionary Learning Middle Schools on Academic Achievement," Mathematica Policy Research, Cambridge MA.

• Mathematica found stronger academic results in ELA (and also Math) for schools using EL Education’s (then called Expeditionary Learning) curricula.

Pikulski, J. and Chard, D. (2011). Fluency: Bridge Between Decoding and Reading Comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 58(6), 510-519.

Pimentel, Susan. “Why Doesn't Every Teacher Know the Research on Reading Instruction?” Education Week, October 26, 2018.

• Outlines the crucial role that building content knowledge plays in building literacy.

Polikoff, M., Wang, E., Haderlein, S., Kaufman, J., Woo, A., Silver, D., and Opfer, V.D. (2020). “Exploring Coherence in English Language Arts Instructional Systems in the Common Core Era.” Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.

Rasinski, T. “Readers Who Struggle: Why Many Struggle and a Modest Proposal for Improving Their Reading.” The Reading Teacher, 70(5), 519-524.

Shanahan, T. (2019). Why Children Should be Taught to Read With More Challenging Texts. Perspectives on Language, Fall 2019.

• Debunks the research on the incorrect idea that children should be taught to read with leveled readers.

Shanahan, T. “New Evidence on Teaching Reading at Frustration Levels.” Shanahan on Literacy, May 28, 2017.

• Students make more progress in reading achievement when they read texts that are considered to be above their grade level.

Stanovich, K. (1986). Matthew Effects in Reading: Some Consequences of Individual Differences in the Acquisition of Literacy. Reading Research Quarterly. 21(4), 360-407.

• Spells out the impact of the Matthew Effect on literacy acquisition. There are big implications for students’ long-term ELA achievement based on how much knowledge is or is not taught throughout their education.

Wexler, N. (2019). The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—And How to Fix It. Avery.

Willingham, D. “The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies,” American Educator, Winter 2006-07.

• Teaching reading comprehension strategies can be effective for literacy skills if they are taught briefly, with diminishing achievement returns for curricula that overplay the their importance.

Wren, S. (2002). “Ten Myths of Reading Instruction.” SEDL Letter. Southwest Educational Development Lab.

• Describes more ways in which non-evidence-backed ideas about teaching reading can have damaging effects.

1. Here is a look at more “summer school” pandemic remediation plans in school districts across central Ohio. But don’t call it that. Enrollment is expected to be high across the board, whether it looks like summer camp or it’s some program called “Express your Mess”. I’m hoping that last one is an art class rather than English. (Columbus Dispatch, 4/19/21)
    
2. Looking ahead, here is a detailed and interesting look at the future of fully-remote learning in a number of Montgomery County school districts. “We’ve learned through our hybrid model that there is a model of remote learning that can be very effective,” said the superintendent of Mad River Local Schools, high on the idea. “But that model needs to have a classroom teacher engaged with students,” which he said is difficult for districts to do when the number of users is small. Turns out that the local Education Service Center (ESC) is already running a pilot program in another county district that is expected to form the basis of a come-one, come-all remote learning group model for any district that wants to buy in. I think you can count Mad River in: “When I found out that the ESC was going to do that…it was really a natural fit for us.” Interestingly, we don’t hear from Dayton City Schools (whose supe said outright that fully-remote learning was a disaster for their students) or from Jefferson Township Local Schools (the only district in the state remaining on a fully-remote model for all students for the rest of this school year). We also don’t learn here whether state law will have to change to allow the ESC to actually execute its plan for next fall. (Dayton Daily News, 4/17/21)

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