Students work together to inventory classroom materials

In second grade we have been using questioning as a means to activate our students' higher-order thinking skills.  For the past three weeks, our students have been engaged in an investigation into place value.  They were asked to take an inventory of our classroom materials and then told to organize their materials in efficient ways.  Through this work, students began to see the need for a five and tens structure to keep track of their inventory by using packs of ten and loose ones.  For example, several students discovered that organizing materials by tens allowed them to more efficiently count and keep track of their inventory. 

Throughout this investigative process we have used our math congress, a time period in which children can share their strategies for counting and organizing, to build on the students' understanding.  As the teacher, I devise questions that will

Students use an array strategy to make counting more efficient

enhance the students' critical thinking skills by asking them to think carefully about their strategies and to see how deeply they understand the concepts they explored.  As a follow-up to their investigation, they also learned to play different math games that supported place-value concepts.  For example, scholars played Collecting Stickers, a game that gave them the opportunity to look for patterns in place value. 

At Harlem Link students see the real-world use of mathematics instruction

Harlem Link's first graduating class left with a flourish in July 2010, its members heading off to a variety of high- caliber middle schools in Manhattan and the Bronx.  As promised, the school has kept in touch with its alumni and will continue to follow their progress through college.  Alumni already have come back to visit the school and are looking forward to their first reunion (scheduled for October 2012). 

Meanwhile, the start of a new school year on Sept. 1 brought a new group of seniors, including students from Harlem Link's first kindergarten class, who enrolled when the school opened in 2005.  While the school's 2010 alumni were the first pupils to graduate from the school, some of this year's seniors will be the first students to go through all of Harlem Link's grades.  They will graduate from college in 2022. 

Many of the readers of this newsletter met 2010's seniors through the Fifth Grade Friday feature on Harlem Link's Facebook page.  Those students offered social commentary and told of hopes and dreams ranging from ending world poverty as diplomats to saving animals as veterinarians.  This year's seniors are no less dynamic and diverse in their interests.

Among this group is Awa, photo above at left, a three-time Spelling Bee champion at Harlem Link and one of the highest achieving students on standardized exams in the city.  Another original Linkster (and, like Awa, the child of an immigrant family) is Dontay, pictured at right, who says he lost a bit of focus in fourth grade but is back on track and aiming to receive the high grades he was accustomed to in third grade.  Also getting ready to graduate is Raqelle, below left, who has markedly improved her attendance in the first term of 2010 after struggling with it in some other years.  Raqelle's mother, Contena Davis, says of her young scholar, "She's picking up her work habits, she's catching up, she's on point.  I stay on top her and I'm very proud of her work."

Harlem Link families and staff members know that, as far as formal education is concerned, the road to college doesn't begin in high school or middle school; it begins in elementary school.   Accordingly, this year Harlem Link is stepping up the emphasis on setting the goals of college enrollment and graduation for its senior class.  Fourth-grade students are assigned continents as group names in their classes; in fifth grade, the groups will be named after U.S. colleges This winter, the school will hold its first College Day, in which friends of Harlem Link will visit and talk about their college experiences with small groups of fifth graders. They will tell how their middle and high school experience prepared them for college, and how their college experience prepared them for their careers.  (If you would like to participate, please contact Steven Evangelista.)  Visits to colleges are planned as well.

Watch out world.  Here come the senior Linksters, ready to do big things!

The sky is falling!

That's what some observers would have you believe after the scores students around New York State attained in standardized tests plummeted this year. At Harlem Link we do not want to confuse a sense of urgency with a counterproductive panic. We know that only long-term and comprehensive solutions are going to fix the problems that have plagued our schools for generations.

Speaking of race, are you worried about a racial achievement gap? (I am.) In my office I have a 1950 issue of Life magazine, on which a white girl graces the cover with the headline "U.S. Schools: They Face a Crisis." Sixty years later, we've had wave after wave of educational reform driven by panic and hyperbolic assessment of this "crisis." 

Reflecting on these facts has helped me put the change in the state test scores this summer in their proper context.  In  sum, New York State Education Department (SED) commissioner David Steiner and Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch acted with a courage and an integrity rare among public officals when they decided to ratchet down scores that had been demonstrably inflated over the past five to 10 years. They noted in a July press conference that the state tests had become increasingly predictable and unchallenging. The announcement included a promise to overhaul the state exams and make them more rigorous in coming years. Moreover, the Regents and SED would be holding all students to a higher standard for tests already taken this year. 

In recent years, New York City's racial achievement gap had appeared to be steadily closing, at least if you believed the test scores, but overnight that gulf re-appeared in force. Suddenly there were heated reactions in the state educational community about the tests and what they had to say about student achievement. Did anyone really think that things had gotten much better?

The critics were merciless.  Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute was quoted in The New York Times the day after the press conference as saying, "The state test is completely unreliable." Aaron Pallas, a Columbia Teachers College professor, said in a Times article the next day, "We just really can't trust the state tests for judging whether the quality of education in New York City has really improved." New York City Mayor Bloomberg appeared ruffled by the sudden drop in scores.  "Everybody can have their definition of what it means," he said. Later, he infamously added: "The last time I checked, Lady Gaga is doing fine with just a year of college."

The furor reached a head at the August meeting of the city Department of Education's Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), during which parents protested the drop in test scores and the previously inflated scores so vociferously, bullhorns and all, that the meeting was shut down early.

My view is that for all the reforms, all the changes ebbing and flowing in curriculum and  assessment of student achievement, all the fads and the gimmicks, things have not changed all that much since the "crisis" of 1950. Proficiency rates on state tests should not be the goal; student independence and success in higher education and in life ought to be the goal.  So I see this drop in test scores as just the popping of another bubble - not unlike the home run bubble created by steroid proliferation in baseball and the stock market bubble created by an unsustainable housing boom. Do these two graphs appear to have anything in common?

Down, up, down again, WAY up, and then, BUST!  If I were a betting man, I would bet that the New York City proficiency scores on 4^th and 8^th grade tests, if plotted over time, would show the same pattern. (I have searched the Internet, but this data is demonstrably harder to find than baseball and Dow Jones statistics.)

As with the dreadful state of the economy, panicking in the face of these test scores will get us nowhere. If we are going to have lasting change, we need to ignore fads and focus on what will bring long-term improvement. In the wake of the housing meltdown, hucksters sprung up to "rescue" defaulting homeowners from their crushing debt, only to be prove to be just another bunch of scam artists. There are no quick fixes.  There are no shortcuts. 

In education, we know what works.  School by school, change is possible with a committed group of competent educators focused on a clear and compelling mission, a shared community emphasis on student goals, robust home-school communication and, finally, a clear vision to which everyone subscribes to make those elements come to life. Everything else - all the bells and whistles and promises and panics - is just another manifestation of the crisis thinking that, if obeyed, will send us back into yet another false boom and bust cycle.

-Steven Evangelista