Group Sessions

 

 

Powerful Purposeful Literacy as a Civil Right for All!

 

What is our unique contribution?

The preparation of English teachers who are able to effectively teach powerful literacies to underserved students

 

The preparation of English teacher educators who are able to effectively help teachers to teach powerful literacies to underserved students

 

Continued vigilance at the levels of district, state, and national levels in support of policies that affirm what we know to be true about effective literacy instruction for underserved students

 

Who are our focused audiences?

- Parents & the general public (website, non-academic paper)

- Preservice and practicing teachers (web-based; story-based CRT)

- Other English Educators (EE, books)

- Policymakers (policy briefs)

 

 

PREAMBLE

When we and others speak of the "achievement gap" we are using the language of accountability that has the insidious power "to sound just enough like common sense not to be recognized as a language meant to reinforce unequal power relations" (McNeil, 2000). 

Q: What do teachers need to know about social, historical, and cultural contexts of schooling?

We need to help teachers to recognize that all students are not playing on a level field.

There are a variety of sociological factors that impact the achievement gap in schools besides kids' "natural ability."

Racial and cultural disparities between teachers and students impact the achievement of students in schools.

Differential resource allocation impacts the achievement of students in schools.

 

CEE is an explicitly antiracist, antioppression organization and, as such we work against stereotypes of all forms.

 

CEE actively works against pre-packaged programs that provide lists of traits of people outside maintstream culture including students living in poverty.

 

CEE opposes misuses of disaggregated achievement data that further stereotypes groups; rather we see uses of these data in pointing out systemic inequities and providing information to teachers that help students to achieve.  Specifically, growth models of assessment give schools credit for student improvment over time, assuming a school's abilty to facilitate progress is a better indicator of its perfomance than measuring achievement at any single point in time ("Growth models: An examination," 2006, p. 1).

 

CEE believes that all students are naturally curious learners who bring into schools and classrooms their funds of knowledge, vibrant language, and literacy practices that can be tapped into to facilitate powerful literacies.

 

CEE helps teachers to understand that naturally gifted and curious students are inhibited by historical and contemporary conditions of racism, classism, and linguistic hegemony that contribute to dehumanization, internalized stereotypes, oppressive classroom practices, and the disinvestment from education that perpetuate the achievement gap.

 

CEE also supports rigor in teacher education by developing standards, practices, supports, and assessments that prepare teachers who are capable of supporting student learning to enable students to meet the literacy demands of the 21st century.

 

CEE believes in placing preservice teachers in high needs schools and providing supports that will help preservice teachers to be successful in these learning environments.

 

CEE identifies knowledge bases, dispositions, and attitudes associated with the developmental continuum of teachers who are able to teach students powerful literacies.

 

CEE develops teacher education practices that enable teachers to move along a developmental continuum that will allow them to teach powerful literacies to students.

 

CEE makes recommendations to English credentialing programs regarding the types of coursework and field experiences that facilitate powerful literacy learning among underserved populations.

 

CEE members, in their roles as teacher educators, facilitate long-term relationships with schools and districts that work toward eliminating the literacy achievement gap.

 

CEE supports, encourages, and engages in research from all traditions to continue to inform our understanding and work toward resolutions of the achievement gap including: rigor in teacher education, powerful literacies, alternate assessments, and descriptions of teachers who resist the trappings of the achievement gap.

 

 

BOLD STATEMENTS ABOUT ACHIEVEMENT GAP

1. What do we mean by achievement? What is happening in our schools is not measurement even though we are using the language of measurement. What are we measuring at that point? Separating achievement, from purposes of schooling from investment in schools. Some kids are achieving who have no investment in schools whatsoever. What we have in schools is an "opportunity gap" [Ladson-Billings] . "In the process of test making, the theory of writing originally intended to account for the universe of discourse is substantially reduced to the point where it deals with only a fraction of that universe" (Hillocks, 2002, p. 70). 

a. We want to reframe conversations about purpose and “achievement” to focus on literacy for engaged citizenship.

b. What does the literate citizen look like? What is she able to do? A literate citizen is able to engage in the discourse of the community in which he or she lives in order to enact positive social change, specifically as it relates to equity in educational practices.

2. Notions of literacies for citizenship have to be rigorous.

a. We can define rigor but there needs to be a definition of rigor. (Rigor with relevance and support)

b. What might we mean by rigor? Excellence; what students work hard and feel confident doing; in what meaningful tasks do they have high levels of competence? How do they read and write?

c. Rigor in teacher education concerns the standards, practices, supports, and assessments that we develop and maintain in preparing teachers who are capable of supporting student learning to enable students to meet the literacy demands of the 21st century. The goal is to "nurture...students into becoming lifelong learners...not lifelong test takers" (Buckner, 2002, pg. 215).

3. Why would we want our children to achieve in school? There is logic to student disinvestment from schooling. Its logical, for instance, for students of color to resist a Eurocentric and oppressive system of education.

4. Differences in achievement do exist. Millions of our students are matriculating through schools without the literacy skills they need to participate meaningfully in our democracy. Parents and communities want more from us as literacy educators and teachers of literacy educators.  Schools need to "Abandon impoversihed assessment systems and support the development of multiple tools that measure the complexity of student literacy learning" (Harris, 2006).

5. Scripted curricula DO NOT WORK!

6. Students can talk about texts that they cannot read. This is a school survival strategy, but they need more than that.  They need to become engaged with texts that are culturally relevant, in order to become aware of inequities in the system that they are capable of balancing.

7. We recognize that there are fluency issues in middle and secondary education that need to be addressed. however, these issues should not be addressed through scripted curricula; rather, through purposeful activities co-constructed with teachers and students to engage minds in questioning, understanding, and thinking about texts of all sorts.  The focus needs to shift "from packaged reading programs to intitiatives that respect teachers' expertise in educating all children to read and write" (Harris, 2006).  

 

PRINCIPLES OF POWERFUL PRACTICE(Teacher Ed)

1. Teacher educators need more “rigor” and higher expectations in teacher education courses.

2. Literacy needs to be a focus of ELA teacher education.

3. Teacher educators need to develop a list of qualities and competencies of effective literacy teachers.

4. Multimodal Textual Production in Teacher education is needed so future teachers feel the power of and know how to engage their students in 21st century multimodal literacies.

5. Teacher educators need to be models of the practices they know work in successful literacy classrooms.  "Knowing how to write persuasivley provides access to power," therefore, "If we teach persuasive writing...we can subvert the current tendency to standardize and stulify education while also preparing...students to succeed in a world of standardized writing tests" (Wollman-Bonilla, 2006, p. 510).

6. In our teacher education classes students need to experience new literacy studies through microethnographies of language and literacy practices in local communities and homes (e.g. immigrant home).  This type of action research by teachers "may be an immediately useful practice that allows teachers to reclaim their authority as instructional planners and facilitators" (Zigo, 2001, p. 228).

a. expose students to experiences with code-switching and the appropriateness of different registers through direct experience, research, and contrastive activities (e.g., body of knowledge, demystifying popular notions, practice as a contrastive activity).

b. students need to practice diverse modes of discourse through writing that they can then practice with their students, recognizing that "students from diverse backgrounds may bring to...writing tests very different cultural assumptions about writing...[contrary to a]...timed essay that emphasizes a specific conception of 'good' writing" ("The impact of timed writing tests," 2005, p. 10).

c.  students need to practice diverse modes of discourse through engagement with diverse literature that they can then practice with their students.

d. encourage the use home and community language resources as a basis for expanding their linguistic repertoires.  For example, the National Indian Education Association suggested an emphasis on Native pedagogy and activities related to culture and language ("Hearings on the NCLB act in Indian country," 2005, p. 10).

e. critical assessments of current classroom practice (e.g., scripted programs, pre-package curricula).

f. understand their curricular and pedagogical options and resources.

g. able to explain their rationale-- why they do and don't do things--through writing, dramatization, planning for supporting and including students who are often left out of the conversataion.

h. activities that develop our students (future teachers) as professionals who have a strong ELA identities as advocates for marginalized students.

i. develop ability to deconstruct literacy events as the means for understanding how to read the classroom context and address the needs of diverse students.

j. develop high expectations for all students and then provide the support they need to succeed.

k. ability to read a school context in light of sociological understanding of the strengths and needs of students, despite the normative practices of schools.

l. teach students to develop a larger community of practice to sustain progressive pedagogies for students of color, even within oppressive schools' normative practices.  Specifically, "Teachers committed to effective writing instruction work hard to develop a 'community of writers' in their classroom" (Sawyer, 2006).

 7.  Teacher educators need to view teacher education as an opportunity to engage in collaborative research with classroom practictioners in diverse contexts.   Collaborative research enables both classroom practictioners and teacher educators to become co-learners and co-researchers in unravelling the complexities of teaching and learning in different communities (Cochran-Smith, 2004).

 

CASES FROM TEACHER ED 

     While working with a group of teachers in a large urban district, I became aware of a very difficult dilemma that teachers were facing.  I was working with these teachers on a large grant funded by the state department of education.  The stated purpose of the grant was to improve teacher quality, in order to improve students' achievement.  This purpose presented a problem from the outset, since it placed the impetus on the teachers, as if "fixing" them would solve the problems in the "high needs districts" on which the funding agency was focusing.  The grant personnel chose to take the role of mentor and guide toward these teachers, rather than to come in as the ones who had all the answers.  We discovered almost immediatley that the assessment practices being advocated by the district were in direct opposition to the assessment practices we were advocating for with the teachers.  The district was most concerned with raising test scores by mandating scripted curricula.  We were concerned with helping teachers to focus on the overarching ideas that students needed to understand, and then creating perfomance assessments that used those ideas as the criteria for evaluation.  Interestingly, whenever decisions about appropriate classroom practice arose, teachers chose to use the types of assessments we advocated for rather than what the district mandated.  So, the dilemma these teachers face, as I imagine many teachers face, is how to meet the expectations of the district and still do what they know works best.  Many times it seemed that teachers opted to develop curricula based on the ideas we were putting forth in their classrooms, and then just doing the minimum to satisfy the district.  I fear that this may become more difficult for them as their jobs become more dependent on how well they follow the district mandates.  One unintended consequence of the district mandates that may work in favor of the teachers in the long run is the fact that none of the mandates seem to correlate.  The state standards do not match the state test, the state test does not match the quarterly benchmarks, and the benchmarks do not match the scripted curricula.  Hopefully, the district will eventually see the folly of their ways and change the expectations based on what teachers know to be best practices.  However, the question becomes, can teachers last that long.

 

 

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACTION

1. CEE needs to actively seek to recruit Teacher Educators of Color to more accurately reflect the diversity in society.

a. develop a mentoring program for graduate students of color (CNV model for teacher educators).

b. pipeline program that intervenes at four levels (coursework, dissertation, job search and pre-tenure survival).

2. English Education Ph.D. Programs need to make a concentrated effort to recruit more students of color into their programs.

a. There needs to be an infrastructure in place to support students of color in Ph.D. programs and new teacher educators

b. Curricula in these Ph.D. programs need to pay more attention to social and cultural factors that impact (positively and negatively) the achievement gap.

3. CEE develops and then supports assessment and mentoring strategies that supports working with students in underserved communities.

4. CEE serves as the primary profcessional development organization that helps English educators to develop strategies to close the achievement gap by developing powerful literacy. CEE provides institutional spaces for these professional development opportunities, such as colloquia, sessions, and summits/spring conferences for supporting teacher educators in supporting teachers to close the achievement gap.

5. CEE will provide promising practices to help close the achievement gap by summarizing the scientifically valid research practices (evidence-based) and learning outcomes that occur as a result.

6. CEE supports teacher educators in supporting teachers as inquirers in their own classrooms in ways that become reflective ways of thinking. By learning to collect evidence of learning, teachers can become professionals in providing rationales for progressive practice that supports all students.

7. CEE supports teacher educators as researchers in classrooms to develop an evidence base for promising practices and to create a culture of research in our own teacher education classrooms. We need to levy evidence and make process transparent (e.g., the process of instructional change, inquiry practices, critical self-reflection).

8. We want teacher educators for the real world who are responsive to the tensions, dilemmas of practice, and the constructs that have to be negotiated in specfic contexts.

9. CEE serves a purpose of renewal for teacher educators who are burned out because of dehumanizing conditions for themselves and the teachers they teach as they attempt to support students who have been marginalized in schools.

10. CEE provides competitive grants for teacher educators partnered with teachers in high needs schools to examine the impacts on students and on teacher-education practice for preparing teachers for high needs schools (participatory research).

11. CEE commissions studies of participatory action research in teacher education classes across the country to aggregate the outcomes. Research questions might be: What did you need to do to get the outcome you got--what resources, what actions, and what collaborations were needed.

 

Feedback from whole group meeting

 

Consider how whole schools and districts are marganilized by comparing one school to another and how this affects the placement of teachers in schools who are fearful of working in a school that is "failing." 

 

 

GOALS FOR NEXT STEPS

 

Brief belief statements by the end of July.

 

1. Stacks of papers, books, journal articles, --put the sources on the wiki or send it to the listserv so someone else can

2. respond to the sources with your comments on--let's really think about what Suzanne said in #3. or put it in the comments

3. write a paragraph with a heading and put it in and see where it fits later--or as a comment

4. add stories or narratives if you think they would help--list on front page and start a new page later once we know what genre/

5. All to lead up to a White paper for CEE website--

2. Article for EE with more elaborated

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buckner, A. (2002). "Teaching in a world focused on testing." Language Arts, 79 (3), 212-215.

Cochran-Smith, M. (2004).  Walking the road.  Race, diversity. and social justice in teacher education.  New York: Teachers College.

Crawford, J. (2006). "No child left behind and the growing divide in how educational equity is understood." A Diminished Vision of Civil Rights, 26 (39), pgs. 31-40.

"Framing statements on assessment." (2004). Revised Report of the Assessment Testing Study Group of the NCTE Executive Committee, November 2004. 8 November 2006 

     <http://www.ncte.org/print.asp?id=118875&node=603>.

"Growth models: An examination within the context of NCLB." (2006). Commission Staff Research Report. August 2006. Commission on No Child Left Behind, The Aspen Institute.

Harris, P. (2006). "NCTE members seek to influence NCLB reauthorization." The Council Chronicle, 15 (3), page 1.

"Hearings on the No Child Left Behind act in Indian country." (2005). NIEA News, 34 (11).

Hillocks, G. (2002). The Testing Trap. New York: Teachers College.

"Joint organizational statement on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act." (2004). Signed by education, civil rights, children's, disabilty, and citizen's organizations 25 October 2006. 26 October

     2006 <http://www.fairtest.org/joint%20statement%20civil%20rights%20grps%2010-21-04.html>.

"Literacy educators and the public deeply concerned about NCLB." (2006). The Council Chronicle Online, 6 September 2006. 26 October 2006 <http://www.ncte.org/print.asp?

     id=125383&node=1312>.

McNeil, L. M. (2000). "Creating new inequalities contradictions of reform."

"Revised report of the assessment and testing group." (2004). Agenda Item #8. 17 November 2004. 

Sawyer, M. (2006). "New York state's ELA standards and assessments: Where are we? why are we? where might we go from here?"

"Standards for the assessment of reading and writing." (1994). Excerpts from the booklet prepared by the International Reading Association and National Council of Teachers of English Joint 

     Task Force on Assessment, 16 April 2005. 8 November 2006 <http://www.ncte.org/print.asp?id=107609&node=603>. 

"State standards: Assessing differences in quality and rigor and how they impact NCLB." (2006). A Hearing at Lesley University Cambridge, Massachusetts. 31 August 2006. Commission on

     No Child Left Behind, The Aspen Institute. 8 November 2006 <http://www.aspeninstitute.org/site/pp.aspx?c=huLWemRKpH&b=2121611&printmode=1>.

"Testing: Making it work for children and schools." (2006). A Hearing at Saint Joseph College, Hartford, CT. 9 May 2006. Commission on No Child Left Behind, The Aspen Institute. 8 November

     2006 <http://www.aspeninstitute.org/site/c.huLWJeMRKpH/b.1709935/k.7A96/Testing_Making....>.

"The impact of the SAT and ACT timed writing tests." (2005). Report from the NCTE Task Force on SAT and ACT Writing Tests. 16 April 2005.

Wollman-Bonilla, J.E. (2004). "Principled teaching to(wards) the test?: Persuasive writing in two classrooms." Language Arts, 81 (6), 502-510.

Zigo, D. (2001). "Constructing firebreaks against high-stakes testing." English Education, 33 (3), 214-232.