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It's Never Too Late to Join the Conversation on Professional Capital by Hargreaves/Fullan
Join us in the discussion on our website around the book,  Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School. Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan strive to equip teachers and those who work with them with insights, ideas, and actions that will dramatically improve their effectiveness, which in turn will improve societies and generations to come.
Hargreaves and Fullan's latest book is "about a collective transformation of public education achieved by all teachers and leaders in every school. And it's about how to secure this through a new strategy that harnesses the commitments and capabilities of the many: the power of professional capital."
Join us as we "seize the moment, confront the core problems, present and develop clear alternatives, and turn those alternatives into an energizing reality."
Post your thinking and challenge ours on the Iowa ASCD web site. The plan is to address questions around the following:
- October 17 - October 23 Chapter 5, Professional Capital
- What does it take to assure we have a high-performing school system?
- What does "being professional" mean? How does it compare to "being a professional"? How do they connect with "teaching like a pro"?
- Status and quality - how do we reunite them? What conditions are necessary?
- Share how human, social, and decisional capitals are alike? Different?
- Reflect on your own practice: which of the three capitals are strong in your experiences? Which are not? Why do you think this is so?
- October 24 - October 30 Chapter 6, Professional Culture and Communities
- What are the key attributes of a culture? Which one is easiest to change? What impact could that change have on the culture?
- Individualism vs Collaborative Culture: What are the common/different attributes? What impact does/could each have on our organization?
- How has balkanization impacted the culture of your school/district/organization? What steps should be considered to minimize its impact?
- October 31 - November 6 Chapter 7, Enacting Change
- What do you see as the key factors in your educational setting to achieve the professional capital agenda? What are the barriers of which you must be aware?
- "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." So "now what"?
Additional Information: You can view a 90-minute presentation by Andy Hargreaves at http://education.washington.edu/news/video/hargreaves-2012.html.
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International Reading Association Releases Guidance for Common Core Standards
The International Reading Association offers detailed guidance on seven issues that have proven enormously challenging to teachers, principals, administrators, and others who are charged with implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts. Find below a summary of the recommendations for the seven issues. Find the complete report on the
- Use of Challenging Texts - Recommendations
* Do not increase levels of texts used in reading lessons in Kindergarten and Grade 1.
* Instruction across the school year needs to involve students in the reading of texts written at a variety levels.
* Teachers need professional learning opportunities to be able to provide adequate scaffolding and support for student reading of complex texts in Grades 2-12 and listening to complex texts in Kindergarten and Grade 1. - Foundational Skills - Recommendations:
* Early, systematic, and explicit teaching of the foundational reading skills is required.
* During the K-2 years, teaching of all aspects of the English Language Arts should take place simultaneously and be coordinated - Comprehension - Recommendations:
* Engage students in reading high-quality texts closely and critically.
* Teach research-proven reading comprehension strategies using gradual release of responsibility approaches.
* Guide students to apply strategies when reading particularly challenging texts.
4. Vocabulary - Recommendations:
* Study all strands of the Standards for references to vocabulary development.
* Plan for vocabulary development across the school day in all subjects.
* Provide instruction in word-solving strategies as well as teaching individual words.
5. Writing - Recommendations: * Provide opportunities for students to write in response to reading across the curriculum.
* Provide research opportunities that involve reading both print and digital texts, and that require writing in response to reading.
* Teachers will need professional development in teaching students how to write the types of texts required in the Core Standards. This professional development should include teachers doing their own writing, as well as analyzing annotated student writing.
6. Disciplinary Literacy - Recommendations: * Involve content area teachers in teaching the disciplinary literacy standards.
* Teach students the literacy strategies that are pertinent to each discipline.
* Provide appropriate professional learning opportunities for teachers in the literacy practices appropriate for their disciplines.
7. Diverse Learners - Recommendations: * The Core Stanards require equal outcomes for all students, but they do not require equal inputs. Vary the amounts and types of instruction provided to students to ensure high rates of success.
* Monitor student learning and provide adjustments and supplements based on that information.
Check out the details at Iowa ASCD website for IRA's guidance.
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Education Week's Vander Ark and Cargill Identify Open Educational Resources (OER) for High Schools
Are you looking for high-quality open educational resources (OER) for your high schoolers? Check out these digital resources identified by Tom Vander Ark and Sarah Cargill of Education Week: Science and Mathematics - CK12.org is a pioneer in open resources providing secondary math and science Flexbooks including Flexmath content originally developed at Leadership Public Schools.
- National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) provides an online library of OER high school and AP courses at HippoCampus.org. You'll find solid courseware available in modules with voice over text. It is easy to create media playlists, find track high-trending learning materials, and share learning content with students. You can find their next gen content at NROCmath.org including a great Hewlett Foundation-funded open Algebra 1 course and a developmental math sequence.
- Educurious is Gates-funded OER and project-based learning (PBL) curriculum designed to align with Common Core State Standards and reduce high school dropout.
- Khan Academy has a library of more than 3,000 math, science, history lesson delivered in easy-to-understand videos.
Comprehensive Modular Resources - The Gateway to 21st Century Skills is one of the oldest repositories of education resources online, providing a variety of activities, lessons plans, projects, and assessments.
- Curriki.org is a big library of shared courses and content.
- OERcommons.org offers free-to-use teaching and learning content and a long list of content providers .
Grade-Level Collections - Gooru Learning curates the Web's best resources, compiling them into collections and attaching quizzes.
- Power My Learning provides math, Language Arts, science, social studies, art/music, computer programing, and more educational activities for parents and teachers.
History - Big History Project is a Gates-funded thematic interdisciplinary project.
- Muzzylane transforms history into a game - Making History. They also have resources for science, language-learning, health education, business, and urban planning
Mostly Higher Education - Connexions provides a platform for learning modules and content creation that can be compiled into courses, books, reports, and more.
- Open Courseware Consortium provides free and open college- and university-level educational materials online, anytime.
- The Saylor Foundation provides free and open college-level courses to students without registrations or fees. Several districts are using Saylor.org courses in high school. Watch for more Common Core aligned resources.
Additional Free Resources - Google in Education and Google Course Builder provide great professional dvelopment and learning resources for educators to create and collaborate in the classroom.
- iTunesU has tons of mostly post-secondary content.
- YouTube EDU has more than 1,000 educational channels.
- PBS LearningMedia provides tens of thousands of digital resources for educators and is especially valuable to the flipped classroom.
- National Geographic has a longstanding reputation of supporting learning with valuable multimedia resources for any classroom.
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Iowa ASCD seeks to keep you informed abut webinars for your learning and the learning of those with whom you work. Check out the following as you prepare for a great start of the 2012-2013 school year. Many of these support the work in your collaborative time and definitely help with implementation of The Core!
- Title: English Language Arts and Literacy and the Common Core State Standards
- Presenter: Sue Beers
- Provider: ASCD
- Date: October 31, 2012, 2:00 P.M. CST
- Register Free
- Title: Mathematics and the Common Core State Standards
- Presenter: Nanci Smith
- Provider: Iowa ASCD
- Date: November 5, 2012, 2:00 P.M. CST
- Register Free
- Title: Critical Strategies for Empowering 21st Century Teachers with Coaching and Capacity Building
- Presenter: Andrew Miller
- Provider: ASCD
- Date: November 14, 2012, 2:00 P.M. CST
- Register Free
Access ASCD's archieved webinars here.
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What Constitutes Strong Evidence of Program Effectiveness?
Jon Baron, President of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, and former Chairman of the National Board for Education Sciences, recently was guest blogger in Educational Week's Sputnik: Advancing Education through Innovation and evidence. His post sought to address the question: What constitutes strong evidence of effectiveness? Strong evidence was defined as the proof that provides confidence that a program would improve important educational outcomes if implemented faithfully in a similar population. He noted that strong evidence usually requires well-conducted randomized controlled trials. Even then, he noted that the findings depend on factors such as the following: - The studies demonstrate effects on final, policy-important outcomes and not just intermediate outcomes that may or may not lead to final outcomes. The non-example he shared addressed preschool Education. Head Start found a sizable effect on the program goal of increasing preschoolers' ability to identify letters and words (an intermediate outcome), but no significant effects on their actual reading ability or other educational outcomes at the end of first grade (the more final, important outcomes).
- The studies show that effects are sustained long enough to constitute meaningful improvement in educational or other key outcomes. The non-example he shared addressed work-force development when federal Job Corps program - which provides education and job training to disadvantaged youth - was prematurely declared a success based on results from a large, randomized trial showing an 8% increase in earnings at the three-year follow-up, and a projection that such effects would continue over time. A later follow-up found that the earnings effects did not persist, and instead had faded to zero at the five-year point and thereafter. As a result, the program's cost was found to greatly exceed its benefits.
- The studies show that the effects are sizable (and not just statistically significant). Baron shared provided results from an early childhood home visiting study, Healthy Steps, which provides home visiting services to families with a newborn child. It was found in a large randomized trial to produce a statistically-significant increase in the percent of mothers bringing their child to a well-child doctor visit at one month of age. However, the effect size was small: 97% of mothers receiving Healthy Steps did a one-month doctor visit, versus 95% of control group mothers. The effect reached statistical significance only because the study had a very large sample - over 2100 mothers. (Large samples are capable of detecting small effects that may not be of practical importance.)
- The effects have been replicated across different studies and/or study sites, and in real-world educational settings. Project CRISS, a teacher professional development program for improving adolescent reading, was considered highly promising based on a small randomized trial that met What Works Clearinghouse standards, and was therefore selected by IES (Institute of Educational Sciences) for a replication trial. The initial study found a large increase in students' reading comprehension as measured on a researcher-designed test (36 percentile points). By contrast, the more definitive, IES-sponsored replication trial - conducted in 38 high-poverty public schools, with a student sample 10 times as large as the initial study - found no effect on reading comprehension as measured on a well-established, standardized test. (This example is one of many in which IES-sponsored trials have overturned initial findings of effectiveness in small randomized trials or quasi-experiments.)
As you seek a program or determine impact of programs you have implemented, ask yourself, - Is there strong evidence that this program has effects on final, policy-important outcomes and not just intermediate outcomes that may or may not lead to final outcomes?
- Is there strong evidence that this program has effects that have been sustained long enough to constitute meaningful improvement in educational or other key outcomes?
- Is there strong evidence that this program has had effects that are sizable (and not just statistically significant).
- Is there strong evidence that this program has demonstrated effects that have been replicated across different studies and/or study sites, and in real-world educational settings?
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Iowa ASCD Is Recipient of ASCD's Advocacy and influence Grant
Iowa ASCD has been awarded a $2,500 ASCD Influence Grant for On-the-Hill training and corresponding Day at the Capital. ASCD Public Policy Director David Griffith will lead the training for our members and directors on February 5 (evening reception) and February 6. Mark your calendars now for this great opportunity in Des Moines.
Director Griffith and the selection committee "found your proposed activities worthwhile . . . and commends you for the progress your affiliate has made in advocacy and for the ambitious ideas outlined in your proposal to expand your influence even further."
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You Ought to Know That . . .
- Vice Principal David Truss shares 7 ways to transform your classroom - through inquiry, voice, audience, community, leadership, play, and networking.
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The online educational video game site iCivics, created in 2009 by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor that features civics curriculum, has partnered with EverFi, an ed-tech company focused on K-12 and higher ed. And through the partnership comes a new initiative Commons - Digital Town Square, offered free to all K-12 schools. The focus of Commons - Digital Town Square is to provide schools with standards-based educational gaming, aligned to the Common Core, with social components.
- LearningScience.org is a free and open learning community for sharing newer and emerging tools to teach science. And you can access other resources for science on Iowa ASCD's All about the Content - Science.
- In this powerful video by Edutopia, we learn how a public school in Annapolis, Maryland, has found a way to integrate the arts into every aspect of school life. Using the lens of art to ask critical thinking questions, students from all backgrounds have blossomed as a result.
- Iowa ASCD really appreciates your membership. Let us know how we can best serve you!
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Noteworthy Perspectives: High Reliability Organizations in Education (McREL)
Check out the document, High Reliability Organizations in Education, recently published by McREL and featured on our website under Especially for You. The authors of this monograph assert that by assisting school systems to more closely resemble "high reliability" organizations (HROs) that already exist in other industries and benchmarking against top-performing education systems from around the globe, America's school systems can transform themselves from compliance-driven bureaucracies to world-class organizations. Key Ideas: This issue of Noteworthy explains that providing a "best in the world" education involves knowing "what works extremely well" and delivering it with remarkable reliability. Stringfield, Reynolds, and Schaffer focus on methods for improving the reliability of educational reform efforts. Bellamy describes the distinctive organizational accomplishments of HROs, the two modes in which successful HRO leaders operate, and the areas where HRO principles do and do not transfer well to education practice and leadership. |
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Iowa ASCD - Twitter!
Stay current with learning! Follow Iowa ASCD on Twitter! http://twitter.com/#!/IowaASCD |
 Iowa ASCD is the source for developing instructional leadership and translating research into daily practice. Serving more than 850 educators - teachers, principals, superintendents, directors of curriculum, technology specialists, college professors, AEA staff - Iowa ASCD strives to develop the collaborative capacity to impact the learning of each and every student in Iowa. |
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Iowa ASCD Contacts President Jason Ellingson Past-President Leslie Moore President-Elect Allan Eckelman Membership Information Bridget Arrasmith Secretary Marcia Tweeten Treasurer Lou Howell
Members-at-Large Julie Grotewold Ottie Maxey Becky Martin Kevin Vidergar DE Liaison Tina Ross Higher Education Jan Beatty-Westerman Elaine Smith-Bright Advocacy and Influence Pam Armstrong-Vogel Susan Pecinovsky Curriculum Leadership Academy Sue Wood Fall Institute Kelly Adams Summer Institutes and Grade-Level Conferences Kym Stein Planning Chair Cindy Swanson Technology Chris Welch Membership Relations and E-Learning Amy Wichman Executive Director Lou Howell |
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with Iowa ASCD
- February 5-6, 2013
- "Advocating for Students and Their Learning"
- Presenter: ASCD Director of Public Policy David Griffith
- February 5: 5:30 - 7:30 P.M., Savory Hotel
- February 6: 8:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M., Historical Building and the Capitol
- Focus: training on advocacy "on the hill" as well as update on national and state agendas and tips for influencing your legislators
- April 10 - 11, 2013
- Iowa ASCD Leadership Academy
- 8:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M. daily
- Hilton Garden Inn, Urbandale/Johnston
- $250 for members; $295 for non-members
- Focus: strategies and best practices around Iowa Core and RTI for curriculum leads
- Get The Source the first and third Friday of each month.
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