From the Bell Curve to the Mountain Top

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From the Bell Curve tothe Mountain Top

• Dr. Doug Reeves
• Middle School Inservice
• August 25, 2004

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Why are we here?

• What is the best predictor of 4th grade reading
  success?
• A.
• B.
• C.
• D.

3
Reading and Rigor Matter

• Reading readiness in kindergarten is the key
  indicator of 4th grade success.
• Of non proficient readers in 8th grade, 85 stay
  non proficient.
• The 15 who make it, make it because of a
  rigorous academic curriculum in high school.
• Intensive academic intervention matters!

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Time and Differentiation Matter

• Math and language arts improve without special
  programs, but with more time with a quality
  instructor.
• Differentiate instruction.
• Dont track.
• All kids need high quality instruction.
• ALL MEANS ALL!

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The Big Ideas

• Academic standards are essential for successful
  differentiation
• Standards are not the same as standardized tests
  and standardized instruction.
• Standards represent common expectations, not
  common teaching and leadership strategies
• The use of the Bell Curve will destroy successful
  differentiation of instruction

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Isnt the Bell Curve Dead?

• Grades remain unsystematic and unrelated to
  student performance
• Proficiency remains a concept determined by
  personal judgment and taste
• Student are compared to each other rather than to
  a standard.

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Is it your job to sort and select?

• If you reject the bell curve, what is the
  alternative?
• Too many standards!
• If you hate standards, you must love the bell
  curve!
• Either standards or the bell curve no middle
  ground.
• If there is not a clear, consistent, coherent
  method of evaluating schools and students, you
  are using the Bell Curve.

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Overview

• Three telltale signs of the bell curve.
• Four reasons the bell curve is inaccurate and
  dangerous.
• Five traits of a Mountain Leader.
• Six steps to move from the Bell Curve to the
  Mountain Top

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The telltale signs of Bell Curve thinking

• She just doing the best she can.
• She did pretty good for a ________.
• I cant hurt her self-esteem.
• She is just working to her potential.

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The Opposite of the Bell Curve

• Compare students to standards, not to each other.
• Success comes from work, not from solving a
  mystery.
• Self-esteem comes from achievement of standards,
  not from bigotry of low expectations.

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Four Reasons the Bell Curve is Inaccurate and
Dangerous

• The Bell Curve is bad logic.
• Evaluative, not constructive.
• Creates losers and winners.
• Learning is irrelevant

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Bad Logic

• If all your students get something wrong , is
  that important information?
• If all your students get something right, is that
  important information?
• If you get results that you dont expect, is that
  important information?

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Circular Reasoning of the Bell Curve

• If all the students get an item right or all of
  them get an item wrong, we wont have enough
  variation in scores so we throw out those items
  that too many kids get right or too many get
  wrong
• Whats left? Only the items that prove the
  bell curve.

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Why does the bell curve distort reliability?

• What does reliability mean?
• Right The pound of bananas test consistent
  measurement!
• Wrong An item is only reliable if it has high
  degrees of variation and dispersion among items.

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The bell curve is evaluative, not constructive.

• The purpose of testing is to sort and select -
  WRONG!
• The fundamental purpose of student assessment is
  the improvement of student achievement through
  better teaching and learning.

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The Bell Curve creates losers and winners.

• The bell curve depends on losers
• The bell Curve can only tolerate a very few
  winners
• The value of winning depends on losing.

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Its a competitive world out there

• True!
• Therefore, kids need skills to be competitive!

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The bell curve makes learning irrelevant

• The average is a moving target
• The Bell Curve hurts the above average students
  as much as the disadvantaged students.

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Facts based on a mountain of data

• The 90-90-90 Schools
• www.makingstandardswork.com
• Carter Studies
• www.heritage.org
• Haycock, Ingersoll, and Darling-Hammond Survey of
  Studies
• Edtrust.org and edweek.org

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All three studies

• High poverty, high minority enrollment, and high
  achievement coincide frequently.
• Yes, poverty matters.
• Yes, language matters.
• Yes, deprivation matters.
• But the above are not determinative!
• Teaching effectiveness is more important than
  demographics twice the impact of the above

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90-90-90- Studies

• 90 or more at poverty level
• 90 or more minority enrollment
• 90 or more are academically successful

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Four common characteristics of 90-90-90-90 schools

• Laser like focus on academic achievement!
  Celebration and recognition of academic
  achievement.
• Frequent non-fiction writing.
• Multiple opportunities for success!
• One shot assessments do not give you the chance
  for students to respect and respond to your
  feedback
• Collaborative scoring

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The Power of Collaboration

• Teacher with teacher
• School with school
• Principal with teachers and students

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Teachers within a school

• Should agree on what good work looks like
• Should have samples of good work for students
• Should expect all students to perform to the
  standard

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90-90-90 Techniques Are Effective Over Time

• 90-90-90 strategies have district-wide influence
• 90-90-90 strategies have multidisciplinary impact
• 90-90-90 strategies are effective with ESL
  populations
• 90-90-90 strategies are effective in high
  mobility schools

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Criticisms of Research of Successful High-Poverty
Schools

• 1. Its just an isolated study.
• 2. Our kids are different.
• 3. It only happened one year.
• 4. They were only successful in reading and
  math.

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From the Bell Curve

• F D C B
  A

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To the Mountain Top
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Getting up the mountain . . .

• Means giving time and multiple opportunities to
  get it right
• Acknowledges, even values, diversity among
  students
• Does not depend upon the average
• Deliberately skewed to the right in favor of
  higher student achievement
• Differences narrower focus is on real
  achievement, not preexisting conditions

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Five traits of a mountain leader (YOU!)

• Focus
• Inquiry
• Generosity
• High Expectations
• Team orientation

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Focus

• Faculty meetings and job alike meetings
• Professional development
• Conversations with each other and parents
• Classrooms with rigor, engagement, standards,
  creativity, writing,

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Where do you focus?

• Writing
• Thinking
• Analysis

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Overwhelming Evidence

• Writing frequency related to higher scores in
  reading, math, social studies , science
• Writing gives teachers valuable feedback
• Writing offers emotionally safe method of
  expression
• Writing builds thinking, reasoning and analysis

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What kind of writing?

• Writing to a prompt
• Writing assessed with a scoring guide (rubric)
• Students respect teacher feedback
• Editing and rewriting

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The Cumulative Weight of Writing Evidence

• Relationships hold across grades, state, and
  curriculum areas
• Relationships may not prove that more writing of
  performance assessments causes improvements in
  achievement, BUT . . .

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The Evidence is Clear

• The assertion that spending time writing hurts
  multiple choice test scores is WRONG
• Writing performance assessments even if it
  takes away time form covering curriculum and
  standards - does NOT hurt student achievement in
  other subjects or on multiple choice tests

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Why is Writing Assessment So Powerful?

• Cognitive effect
• Teaching effect - valuable diagnostic information
• The Case of writing disability skill
  development is essential
• Students need practice, not avoidance
• Connections to other subjects

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Impact of Writing on Science Achievement

• Four year study of the impact of writing in
  science
• Participants received extensive writing and
  in-depth study of science
• Non-participants had traditional textbook-based
  curriculum

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Focus

• Writing is not necessarily the only focus
• Chose wisely you cannot focus on everything
• If you have more than 5 areas of focus, then you
  are not focusing on anything
• Example of 5 focus areas Writing,
  problem-solving, reading, safety, parent
  involvement

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Inquiry

• The hypothesis testing model for educational
  policy discussions
• If my hypothesis were true, then what would the
  data look like?
• Compare the actual results to your hypothesis and
  let the data speak
• Move away from a debate of personalities

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Generosity

• World of winners and losers militates against
  generosity
• The mountain suggests that we are all enriched
  when we all succeed
• The sprit of generosity benefits both the
  recipient and the givers

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High Expectations

• The Bell Curve dooms high expectations by
  definition, only 2 can be in the top two
  percent
• The Mountain Curve validates high expectations
  for all
• The Mountain Curve is skewed to the right

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Fill in the blanks

• You expect more and you get ______
• You expect less and you get ________

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Team orientation

• The Mountain curve assumes that success occurs at
  different rates
• The Mountain Curve focuses upon a singular
  objective 100 of students meet or exceed
  standards
• Mutual encouragement and the success of the team
  is the ultimate result
• Time and opportunity to redo!

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Summary Five Traits of a Mountain Leader

• Focus
• Inquiry
• Generosity
• High Expectations
• Team Orientation

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From the Bell Curve to the Mountain

• Listen and collaborate
• Evaluate Strategies and results
• Assess a few key standards frequently
• Design specific strategies
• Eliminate distractions
• Recognize incremental progress

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L Listen and Collaborate

• Collaboration is hard work
• Collaboration is learned
• Collaboration skills can be measured
• Time to achieve consensus
• Percentage of agreement on proficient and
  non-proficient student work

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The Power of Teacher Collaboration at xxx School

• At first only 19 agreement on proficient
• As more time spent on collaboration, greater
  consensus on proficient
• 19 to 80 agreement in just 4 quarters

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The Power of Teacher Collaboration

• More time on collaboration meant
• Less time on consensus and to score student work

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Collaborative is NOT Capitulation

• Devote all day to HOW to improve achievement
• Devote not a single second to WHETHER TO IMPROVE
  ACHIEVEMENT (It is hate speech when we debate
  whether or not certain kids can improve.)

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Doug Reeves hate speech

• Low expectations for kids of color
• Low expectations for the poor
• Low expectations for those with accents
• Low expectations for those who appear unable

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The New Hate Speech

• Its the best they can do
• Sure they didnt meet the standards, but they
  did better than their predicted score
• They really did pretty well, considering. . . .
• Of course we are not proficient, but were
  better than that other school

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E - Evaluate Strategies and Results

• Results are not enough!
• Standards for grownups what are the measurable
  professional practices of educators and school
  leaders that are associated with improved student
  achievement?
• Accountability is more than test scores

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A Assess a Few Key Standards Frequently

• Cardinal principal of measurement it is better
  to measure a few standards frequently than many
  standards once a year
• Identify those standards with leverage and
  endurance those that are absolutely necessary
  for success in the next level of instruction
• Fore every staff development program ask, What
  are the measurable skills that educators and
  school leaders will have as a result of the
  investment?

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D Design Specific Strategies

• Strategies the ADULT actions that promote
  student success
• Goals, strategies, indicators stop the
  confusion
• Goal what the kids do
• Strategies what the grownups are doing
• Indicator Percent of students proficient or
  better on monthly writing assessment

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E Eliminate Distractions

• Dont tell teachers to do more unless you are
  also willing to them what they can stop doing
• Start at the top announcements, interruptions,
  assemblies
• Garden parties Pull the weeds before you plant
  the flowers.

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R Recognize Incremental progress

• Celebrate small wins
• Do not wait for next years test results
• Document success stories
• Have a staff journalist to catch people doing
  great things Page and a picture.

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The Arguments Against . .

• Its too fast we should take a more gradual
  approach
• The federal government will take over every other
  aspect of education and remove local control
• Things are just fine as they are students and
  parents are happy, so why change it?
• Were not going to change and you cant make us

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Brown vs. the Board of EducationArgument of the
Defendants

• If the appellants construction of the
  Fourteenth Amendment should prevail here, there
  is no doubt in my mind that it would catch the
  Indian with its grasp just as much as the Negro.
  If it should prevail, I am unable to see why a
  state would have any further right to segregate
  its pupils on the ground of sex or on the mental
  capacity.

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The Courts Response

• Attitudes in this world are not changes
  abstractly, as it were, by reading something.
• Attitudes are rarely the result of action . .
  . You do not fold your hands and wait for
  attitude to change by itself.
• Justice Frankfurter, responding to oral argument
  by the defendant in Brown vs the Board of
  Education

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Washoe County School District

• Middle school educators are
• MOUNTAIN CLIMBERS!