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Suggested Approach. Remind school staff that a school's goal is to help each student reach proficient reading levels if at all possible. Obtaining significant progress toward reading proficiency should be the primary goal. Emphasize that the teaching process should involve more than merely providing students with an opportunity to demonstrate the reading skills that they already know. It must involve the integration of new knowledge with previously learned knowledge.
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The NCLB Act will strengthen Title I accountability by requiring States to implement statewide accountability systems covering all public schools and students. These systems must be based on challenging State standards in reading and mathematics, annual testing for all students in grades 3-8, and annual statewide progress objectives ensuring that all groups of students reach proficiency within 12 years. Assessment results and State progress objectives must be broken out by poverty, race, ethnicity, disability, and limited English proficiency to ensure that no group is left behind. School districts and schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward statewide proficiency goals will, over time, be subject to improvement, corrective action, and restructuring measures aimed at getting them back on course to meet State standards. Schools that meet or exceed AYP objectives or close achievement gaps will be eligible for State Academic Achievement Awards.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 also put the principles of accountability, choice, and flexibility to work in its reauthorization of other major ESEA programs. For example, the new law combines the Eisenhower Professional Development and Class Size Reduction programs into a new Improving Teacher Quality State Grants program that focuses on using practices grounded in scientifically based research to prepare, train, and recruit high-quality teachers. The new program gives States and LEAs flexibility to select the strategies that best meet their particular needs for improved teaching that will help them raise student achievement in the core academic subjects. In return for this flexibility, LEAs are required to demonstrate annual progress in ensuring that all teachers teaching in core academic subjects within the State are highly qualified.
The committee identifies five interdependent components of mathematical proficiency and describes how students develop this proficiency. With examples and illustrations, the book presents a portrait of mathematics learning:
The committee discusses what is known from research about teaching for mathematics proficiency, focusing on the interactions between teachers and students around educational materials and how teachers develop proficiency in teaching mathematics.
In other words, the teacher should keep the perspective of the English learner in mind and ask, "Of all of the skills and functions addressed in my lesson, which is most important for helping students meet the grade-level standard and develop their language proficiency?" These objectives then must be measureable (i.e., can you see or assess the student's mastery of that objective?) and written in language that accounts for the linguistic and cognitive development of the students.
It is also important to not equate low language proficiency with limited cognitive ability. Therefore, teachers will want to make sure that the language objectives they create also reflect tasks that fall on the higher end of Bloom's Taxonomy and use verbs (e.g., orally justify) accordingly.
Although all teachers have students of varying language proficiency and skill levels in their classes, it is not necessary to differentiate language objectives by creating and posting multiple language objectives that reflect these proficiency levels. Rather, teachers should have one language objective that is appropriate for all students to meet. To provide the appropriate differentiation, the teacher would provide different scaffolds (e.g., adapted text, visuals, sentence frames) for students to use in order to reach the objectives.
For example, an appropriate language objective for an upper elementary language arts class might be for the students to be able to orally list text features found in a non-fiction book. For lower proficiency language learners, the teacher may give them a word bank from which to choose the text features; therefore, the students are meeting the same objective but with the appropriate amount of linguistic support from the teacher.
It is also essential that students understand how teachers will measure their progress towards meeting each objective. Towards this aim, teachers must build in multiple comprehension checks throughout the lesson that align to the lesson's objectives. Teachers can:
We have also observed that when teachers consciously plan to meet the academic English needs of their learners, they end up with better planned learner tasks, and students begin to have more ownership of their content area and language learning. When it comes to building proficiency in academic English, as many teachers in our workshops remind us, "If you want to see it, you have to teach it." Therefore, if teachers want to see language development, language objectives are a great first step in helping teachers explicitly teach it.
In order to obtain measures for the indicators in this chapter, the Technology in Schools Task Force has looked for standards that might provide criteria to which behaviors and practices could be compared. Standards for proficiency in the use of technology by students, teachers, and administrators have been mapped through the work of the International Society for Technology in Education and other national groups.
These tests are administered to provide ongoing monitoring of individual, school, district, and state progress. Academic proficiency is more than scores. Competency in all academic areas is the goal for every child. This once a year (summative) test is an important component of the statewide student assessment system as stated in IDAPA 08.02.03.111.06.
Experts agree that children who initially are at risk for failure are saved, in most cases, by instruction that directly teaches the specific foundational language skills on which proficient reading depends.17 Effective teachers of reading raise awareness and proficiency through every layer of language organization, including sounds, syllables, meaningful parts (morphemes), phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and various genres of text. Their teaching strategies are explicit, systematic, and engaging.18 They also balance language skill instruction with its application to purposeful daily writing and reading, no matter what the skill level of the learner. Middle- and upper-grade children who are weak readers can be brought up to grade level with appropriate instruction (although the time, effort, and emotional strain for children and teachers involved is considerably greater than that required to teach younger children, so offering research-based instruction in the early grades must remain a top priority).
Teachers are often not in a position to make decisions regarding school district reading curricula and/or reading texts. Nevertheless, teachers who understand the foundations of reading psychology and development will be better prepared to argue against the adoption of irresponsible fads and countermand the proliferation of appealing but unsupported ideas. Examples of enduring myths and misconceptions that are embedded in popular programs, articles, and textbooks10 include:
Districts may allow certain teachers to attempt to demonstrate knowledge without completing modules first. Individuals with an advanced understanding of the science of teaching reading, a proven track record of consistently high student proficiency, and outstanding performance on teacher evaluations may demonstrate their knowledge and expertise without having completed a full 12-module academy through the new demonstrated proficiency.
3. Will there be an assessment to exempt participants from Reading Academies? There is not currently an exemption available, however, a demonstrated proficiency option will be available beginning in Fall 2022. TEA will offer two windows in 2022 that will allow districts to enroll approved teachers who possess an advanced understanding of the Science of Teaching Reading, a proven track record of consistently high student proficiency, and outstanding performance on teacher evaluations in a demonstrated proficiency course. Districts must submit a written request of recommendation to an Authorized Provider for each individual prospective participant who seeks this option. Each district will be the sole decision-maker for who is qualified to enroll in the option; Authorized Providers are simply responsible for verifying the authenticity of the letter of recommendation.
Effective teachers are lifelong learners who continuously reflect on their own progress and are committed to improving their teaching. They collaborate effectively with colleagues to boost student achievement and communicate frequently with parents.
Jennifer Peters is a middle-level educator with fourteen years experience teaching seventh and eighth grade English in a rural school district. She is currently facilitating a professional learning community for which she developed a process that has been adopted by the district to help teachers effectively plan for student proficiency with identified curriculum standards. She is constantly striving to improve her teaching practice and enjoys helping others do the same. To her, the best reward a teacher can get is to see her students grow and achieve.
To further ensure proper leveling, the books were vetted by a team of experienced classroom teachers, and Heinemann conducted a formal field study of the leveling that involved a broad spectrum of students across the U.S.
The debate that has raged about whether or not school improvement should be top-down and driven by administrative mandates or bottom-up and left to the discretion of individuals or groups of teachers has been resolved. Neither top-down nor bottom-up works. Top-down fails to generate either the deep understanding of or commitment to the improvement initiative that is necessary to sustain it. The laissezfaire bottom-up approach eliminates the press for change and is actually associated with a decrease in student achievement (Marzano & Waters, District Leadership That Works, 2009). High-performing PLCs avoid the too-tight/too-loose trap by engaging educators in an improvement process that empowers them to make decisions at the same time that they demand adherence to core elements of the process (DuFour & Fullan, Cultures Built to Last, 2013). We will reference this simultaneously loose and tight culture throughout this book.