After the Pandemic: Can We Welcome Students Back to Better Schools?

I am writing in March, 2020, at what may be the scariest point in the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. We are just now beginning to understand the potential catastrophe, and also to begin taking actions most likely to reduce the incidence of the disease.

One of the most important preventive measures is school closure. At this writing, thirty entire states have closed their schools, as have many individual districts, including Los Angeles. It is clear that school closures will go far beyond this, both in the U.S. and elsewhere.

I am not an expert on epidemiology, but I did want to make some observations about how widespread school closure could affect education, and (ever the optimist) how this disaster could provide a basis for major improvements in the long run.

Right now, schools are closing for a few weeks, with an expectation that after spring break, all will be well again, and schools might re-open. From what I read, this is unlikely. The virus will continue to spread until it runs out of vulnerable people. The purpose of school closures is to reduce the rate of transmission. Children themselves tend not to get the disease, for some reason, but they do transmit the disease, mostly at school (and then to adults). Only when there are few new cases to transmit can schools be responsibly re-opened. No one knows for sure, but a recent article in Education Week predicted that schools will probably not re-open this school year (Will, 2020). Kansas is the first state to announce that schools will be closed for the rest of the school year, but others will surely follow.

Will students suffer from school closure? There will be lasting damage if students lose parents, grandparents, and other relatives, of course. Their achievement may take a dip, but a remarkable study reported by Ceci (1991) examined the impact of two or more years of school closures in the Netherlands in World War II, and found an initial loss in IQ scores that quickly rebounded after schools re-opened after the war. From an educational perspective, the long-term impact of closure itself may not be so bad. A colleague, Nancy Karweit (1989), studied achievement in districts with long teacher strikes, and did not find much of a lasting impact.

In fact, there is a way in which wise state and local governments might use an opportunity presented by school closures. If schools closing now stay closed through the end of the school year, that could leave large numbers of teachers and administrators with not much to do (assuming they are not furloughed, which could happen). Imagine that, where feasible, this time were used for school leaders to consider how they could welcome students back to much improved schools, and to provide teachers with (electronic) professional development to implement proven programs. This might involve local, regional, or national conversations focused on what strategies are known to be effective for each of the key objectives of schooling. For example, a national series of conversations could take place on proven strategies for beginning reading, for middle school mathematics, for high school science, and so on. By design, the conversations would be focused not just on opinions, but on rigorous evidence of what works. A focus on improving health and disease prevention would be particularly relevant to the current crisis, along with implementing proven academic solutions.

Particular districts might decide to implement proven programs, and then use school closure to provide time for high-quality professional development on instructional strategies that meet the ESSA evidence standards.

Of course, all of the discussion and professional development would have to be done using electronic communications, for obvious reasons of public health. But might it be possible to make wise use of school closure to improve the outcomes of schooling using professional development in proven strategies? With rapid rollout of existing proven programs and dedicated funding, it certainly seems possible.

States and districts are making a wide variety of decisions about what to do during the time that schools are closed. Many are moving to e-learning, but this may be of little help in areas where many students lack computers or access to the internet at home. In some places, a focus on professional development for next school year may be the best way to make the best of a difficult situation.

There have been many times in the past when disasters have led to lasting improvements in health and education. This could be one of these opportunities, if we seize the moment.

Photo credit: Liam Griesacker

References

Ceci, S. J. (1991). How much does schooling influence general intelligence and its cognitive components? A reassessment of the evidence. Developmental Psychology, 27(5), 703–722. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.27.5.703

Karweit, N. (1989). Time and learning: A review. In R. E. Slavin (Ed.), School and Classroom Organization. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Will, M. (2020, March 15). School closure for the coronavirus could extend to the end of the school year, some say. Education Week.

 This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org. 

Programs and Practices

One issue I hear about all the time when I speak about evidence-based reform in education relates to the question of programs vs. practices. A program is a specific set of procedures, usually with materials, software, professional development, and other elements, designed to achieve one or more important outcomes, such as improving reading, math, or science achievement. Programs are typically created by non-profit organizations, though they may be disseminated by for-profits. Almost everything in the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) and Evidence for ESSA is a program.

A practice, on the other hand, is a general principle that a teacher can use. It may not require any particular professional development or materials.  Examples of practices include suggestions to use more feedback, more praise, a faster pace of instruction, more higher-order questions, or more technology.

In general, educators, and especially teachers, love practices, but are not so crazy about programs. Programs have structure, requiring adherence to particular activities and use of particular materials. In contrast, every teacher can use practices as they wish. Educational leaders often say, “We don’t do programs.” What they mean is, “we give our teachers generic professional development and then turn them loose to interpret them.”

One problem with practices is that because they leave the details up to each teacher, teachers are likely to interpret them in a way that conforms to what they are already doing, and then no change happens. As an example of this, I once attended a speech by the late, great Madeline Hunter, extremely popular in the 1970s and ‘80s. She spoke and wrote clearly and excitingly in a very down-to-earth way. The auditorium she spoke to was stuffed to the rafters with teachers, who hung on her every word.

When her speech was over, I was swept out in a throng of happy teachers. They were all saying to each other, “Madeline Hunter supports absolutely everything I’ve ever believed about teaching!”

I love happy teachers, but I was puzzled by their reaction. If all the teachers were already doing the things Madeline Hunter recommended to the best of their ability, then how did her ideas improve their teaching? In actuality, a few studies of Hunters’ principles found no significant effects on student learning, and even more surprising, they found few differences between the teaching behaviors of teachers trained in Hunter’s methods and those who had not been. Essentially, one might argue, Madeline Hunter’s principles were popular precisely because they did not require teachers to change very much, and if teachers do not change their teaching, why would we expect their students’ learning to change?

Another reason that practices rarely change learning is that they are usually small improvements that teachers are expected to assemble to improve their teaching. However, asking teachers to put together many pieces into major improvements is a bit like giving someone the pieces and parts of a lawnmower and asking them to put them together (see picture above). Some mechanically-minded people could do it, but why bother? Why not start with a whole lawnmower?

In the same way, there are gifted teachers who can assemble principles of effective practice into great instruction, but why make it so difficult? Great teachers who could assemble isolated principles into effective teaching strategies are also sure to be able to take a proven program and implement it very well. Why not start with something known to work and then improve it with effective implementation, rather than starting from scratch?

One problem with practices is that most are impossible to evaluate. By definition, everyone has their own interpretation of every practice. If practices become specific, with specific guides, supports, and materials, they become programs. So a practice is a practice exactly because it is too poorly specified to be a program. And practices that are difficult to clearly specify are also unlikely to improve student outcomes.

There are exceptions, where practices can be evaluated. For example, eliminating ability grouping or reducing class size or assigning (or not assigning) homework are practices that can be evaluated, and can be specified. But these are exceptions.

The squishiness of most practices is the reason that they rarely appear in the WWC or Evidence for ESSA. A proper evaluation contrasts one treatment (an experimental group) to a control group continuing current practices. The treatment group almost has to be a program, because otherwise it is impossible to tell what is being evaluated. For example, how can an experiment evaluate “feedback” if teachers make up their own definitions of “feedback”? How about higher-order questions? How about praise? Rapid pace? Use of these practices can be measured using observation, but differences between the treatment and control groups may be hard to detect because in each case teachers in the control group may also be using the same practices. What teacher does not provide feedback? What teacher does not praise children? What teacher does not use higher-order questions? Some may use these practices more than others, but the differences are likely to be subtle. And subtle differences rarely produce important outcomes.

The distinction between programs and practices has a lot to do with the practices (not programs) promoted by John Hattie. He wants to identify practices that can help teachers know about what works in instruction. That’s a noble goal, but it can rarely be done using real classroom research done over real periods of time. In order to isolate particular practices for study, researchers often do very brief, artificial lab studies that have nothing to do with classroom practices.  For example, some lab studies in Hattie’s own review of feedback contrast teachers giving feedback to teachers giving no feedback. What teacher would do that?

It is worthwhile to use what we know from research, experience, program evaluations, and theory to discuss what practices may be most useful for teachers. But claiming particular effect sizes for such studies is rarely justified. The strongest evidence for practical use in schools will almost always come from experiments evaluating programs. Practices have their place, but focusing on exposing teachers to a lot of practices and expecting them to put them together to improve student outcomes is not likely to work.

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

Fads and Evidence in Education

York, England, has a famous racecourse. When I lived there I never saw a horse race, but I did see women in town for the race all dressed up and wearing very strange contraptions in their hair, called fascinators. The picture below shows a couple of examples. They could be twisted pieces of metal or wire or feathers or just about anything as long as they were . . . well, fascinating. The women paraded down Mickelgate, York’s main street, showing off their fancy clothes and especially, I’d guess, their fascinators.

The reason I bring up fascinators is to contrast the world of fashion and the world of science. In fashion, change happens constantly, but it is usually change for the sake of change. Fascinators, I’d assume, derived from hats, which women have been wearing to fancy horse races as long as there have been fancy horse races. Hats themselves change all the time. I’m guessing that what’s fascinating about a fascinator is that it maintains the concept of a racing-day hat in the most minimalist way possible, almost mocking the hat tradition while at the same time honoring it. The point is, fascinators get thinner because hats used to be giant, floral contraptions. In art, there was realism and then there were all sorts of non-realism. In music there was Frank Sinatra and then Elvis and then Beatles and then disco. Eventually there was hip hop. Change happens, but it’s all about taste. People get tired of what once was popular, so something new comes along.

Science-based fields have a totally different pattern of change. In medicine, engineering, agriculture, and other fields, evidence guides changes. These fields are not 100% fad-free, but ultimately, on big issues, evidence wins out. In these fields, there is plenty of high-quality evidence, and there are very serious consequences for making or not making evidence-based policies and practices. If someone develops an artificial heart valve that is 2% more effective than the existing valves, with no more side effects, surgeons will move toward that valve to save lives (and avoid lawsuits).

In education, which model do we follow? Very, very slowly we are beginning to consider evidence. But most often, our model of change is more like the fascinators. New trends in education take the schools by storm, and often a few years later, the opposite policy or practice will become popular. Over long periods, very similar policies and practices keep appearing, disappearing, and reappearing, perhaps under a different name.

It’s not that we don’t have evidence. We do, and more keeps coming every year. Yet our profession, by and large, prefers to rush from one enthusiasm to another, without the slightest interest in evidence.

Here’s an exercise you might enjoy. List the top ten things schools and districts are emphasizing right now. Put your list into a “time capsule” envelope and file it somewhere. Then take it out in five years, and then ten years. Will those same things be the emphasis in schools in districts then? To really punish yourself, write the NAEP reading and math scores overall and by ethnic groups at fourth and eighth grade. Will those scores be a lot better in five or ten years? Will gaps be diminishing? Not if current trends continue and if we continue to give only lip service to evidence.

Change + no evidence = fashion

Change + evidence = systematic improvement

We can make a different choice. But it will take real leadership. Until that leadership appears, we’ll be doing what we’ve always done, and the results will not change.

Isn’t that fascinating?

Photo credit: Both photos by Chris Phutully [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.