How to Fix Our City Schools
Practice Makes Perfect (Reading/Math Proverb)
We celebrate one and two point gains as if they are major achievements. The truth is we must demand 10 and 20 point gains. I am a 100% enthusiastic supporter of the Science of Reading “revolution” taking place around the country. But, if we want more than one and two point gains, just implementing a better program will not get us there — even if it is a much better program.
In a recent Tissot watch commercial, the viewer sees NBA star Damian Lillard practicing his shot while Lillard’s voice-over says, “Before it becomes a highlight, it is done over and over again.” He then concludes, “Your time defines your greatness.” In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell argues that "Ten thousand hours (of practice) is the magic number of greatness."
I don’t know the magic number – but I know the “magic” of practice AND the consequences of failing to practice. As a young child, my parents owned a small luncheonette. In addition to milk shakes and sandwiches, we sold a variety of things including newspapers, magazines, and comic books. My parents rarely took a day off and worked long hours. To entertain myself, I spent literally thousands of hours throwing a pink rubber ball against the wall behind our store. The “Pensie Pinkies” my parents sold were light and lively and would fly off the wall. The better I got, the harder I threw. Over the thousands of hours of simply “entertaining myself,” I became very good at throwing and catching anything resembling a baseball.
Unfortunately, during those same early years, I rarely looked at the newspapers, magazines, and comic books literally right under my nose every day. It wasn’t until years later, as I struggled mightily to comprehend a first-year college Humanities 101 book, that I understood what a terrible choice I had made.
As I have noted in earlier newsletters, we can argue about the exact size of the “word gap” between kids from poor families and kids from more affluent ones. Perhaps, it is less than the 32 million words (by age 4) reported by Hart and Risley[1] but there is little doubt the gap is very large.
Why is there a large gap? Not because affluent kids have extraordinary talents but because some children have the opportunity to hear and speak words and develop their language many thousands of hours more than other kids.
It is not any more complicated than that!
As Damian Lillard says, “Your time defines your greatness.” To become a great talker, reader, writer, or basketball player requires practicing “over and over again.”
Given this reality, what do our urban elementary schools do? Virtually every elementary school asks students to learn common words (e.g., Dolch word lists). Many schools devote time to phonics (“the relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language)… and decoding (“where we use letter-sound relationships to translate a printed word into speech”).[2] Of course, every child is taught vocabulary words and spelling and every elementary teacher allocates time for various types of “reading” practice. Many schools have implemented writing workshops and so on.
Yet, for at least half the children in our urban schools, the playing field is never level. They start far behind and stay far behind. Why?
Because the “practice” does not meet the size of the challenge.
If you are a novice five-year-old basketball player and practice one hour per day, you will never be as great as the experienced five-year-old player who practices two hours per day. How is learning to read any different? The strong readers are able to fully participate in the curriculum – so they learn more every day – while the students with poor reading and language skills benefit less from daily instruction and fall further and further behind.
Again, many kids start kindergarten tens of millions of words behind their peers. Half-way measures will not overcome this challenge! Wasting time on read-aloud and round-robin reading will not overcome this challenge. Whole group instruction and weak differentiation strategies will not overcome this challenge. A new reading program, no matter how good, will not overcome this challenge!
Implementing a “science of reading” program is a great step in the right direction BUT it is just one step.
An old friend (and principal of an award-winning National Blue Ribbon School) has told me 1000 times that students’ access to the 1000 most common English words must be “automatic.” For children to be competent readers who can fluently build meaning from text, they must have “automatic” access to the most common words in the language.
Attacking the “word gap” must start in kindergarten so that, by fifth grade, every child has “automatic” access to the 1000 most common English words. This will require “spaced repetition,” cycles of very brief formative assessments to ensure mastery, integration of phonics and phonemic awareness strategies with word study, guided novel studies, and writing workshops, and effective reading activities. “Independent” reading and non-negotiable daily reading homework must include some forms of accountability (even if very brief) to ensure the materials are actually read and understood.
Why must these activities be integrated? Because very few people learn anything new with only one practice. In order for students to use words and language over and over – for a large percentage of the common words to become automatically available to them – lesson components must be integrated. Only then is there enough repetition (practice) for every child to be successful.
During my career, a frequent demand from district leaders (who, of course, had never taught at the elementary level and had no experience with speech and language disorders) was for teachers to “keep moving.” Sure, teachers should try to address students’ deficits but “cover” the grade level curriculum at all costs – because it will be tested at the end of the year. How can that possibly work? How do you teach the grade-level curriculum to all children at the same pace and with the same approach when half the kids do not have the prerequisite reading or math skills?
So, as promising as the Science of Reading “revolution” may be, urban primary teachers must first address their students’ language deficits and close the “word gap.” This will require targeted, sustained, repetitive, and carefully monitored and managed practice. Former Blue Ribbon School (Title I) principal and national expert Blaine Helwig calls this critical work “stop-gap” measures.[3]
In addition, every educator knows that some children learn more slowly and need more repetition — as in practice — and that some children are further along while others inevitably begin to fall behind. In fact, as Helwig points out, “skills gaps” lead to achievement gaps. As a result, throughout the grades and curriculum, schools must solve the ongoing issues of insufficient time, weak differentiation strategies, and wasteful and ineffective practices. If they don’t, no reading program – even the “Science of Reading” – will be good enough and half of the children in our city schools will continue to read at the lowest reading level… and only one in five will continue to graduate from college.
Dear Subscribers,
I hope you find the information and ideas in my newsletters compelling and useful. They are informed by over 40 years of experience working with twenty superintendents, dozens of future superintendents, hundreds of senior administrators, and thousands of principals. On almost a daily basis, I listened to their hopes, doubts, complaints, excuses, and promises… and discussed and debated priorities, philosophies, theories, programs, and plans. (A short Bio is provided below.)
If you find the newsletters valuable, please share them with friends and colleagues. Only by informing school board members, educators, parents, and community leaders can we finally create the great schools every child and family deserves. If you have questions or comments, those are also very welcome.
Best Regards!
Bill Caritj
President and CEO
Capital Schools Consulting (CSC)
billcaritj@gmail.com
https://www.capitalschoolsconsultinggroup.com/
Links to recent newsletters:
Mental Health, Safety, and School Culture
Part 2: Keeping kids in school… at all costs!
https://substack.com/inbox/post/114614033 (April 13, 2023)
Mental Health, Safety, and School Culture
Part 1: The New Normal
https://williamcaritj.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-our-city-schools-2a0 (April 6, 2023)
“Practical” turn-around strategies
https://williamcaritj.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-our-city-schools-9bb (March 6, 2023)
The Most Important Things I learned in 2022
https://williamcaritj.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-our-city-schools-bd6 (January 26, 2023)
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize!
https://williamcaritj.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-our-city-schools-439 (December 27, 2022)
The Answer is… In Your Own Backyard!
https://williamcaritj.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-our-city-schools-d9c (December 8, 2022)
Where is the Outrage?
https://williamcaritj.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-our-city-schools-061 (November 8, 2022)
Bio/Introduction
For forty years, I was fortunate to lead the assessment, evaluation, and accountability departments of nine public school districts, including six of the largest in the nation – Washington, DC, Baltimore, St. Louis, Austin, Atlanta, and the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA). In almost every instance, my position was relatively independent of the internal and external “politics.” As a result, I am not biased toward or against any particular specialty, theory, philosophy, or program. My only bias is to results.
Over the years, I have had a wide range of responsibilities including state and local test development, accountability, research and evaluation, standards alignment, school improvement, information technology, and instructional technology. From 2014-2021, I supervised the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) Information Technology, Instructional Technology, Assessment, Research, Evaluation, and Data and Information divisions. Over that period, our teams were credited with restoring the integrity and public trust in the district’s assessment, accountability, and data and information systems after the cheating scandal of 2008. During the COVID pandemic, these outstanding teams also did amazing work to enable and support (and, in many cases, develop) the high-quality virtual programs provided each day to over 50,000 students who were forced to receive their daily instruction at home.
Since “retiring” from the Atlanta Public Schools, I’ve been very busy – working on a book, How to Fix Our City Schools, publishing a monthly newsletter (of the same name), and launching the Capital Schools Consulting Group (CSCG). CSCG services include executive coaching, training, evaluation, and data analytic services to district leaders and school boards. How to Fix Our City Schools is a brief how-to handbook and while I am happy to have completing a final draft, the process has made me even more acutely aware of the disappointment I feel about the missed opportunities and failures of the last forty years and my fear that they will continue indefinitely for future generations of poor and disadvantaged children. As a result, I have set the book aside for now and am totally focused on helping school district improve.
Capital Schools Consulting (CSC)
https://www.capitalschoolsconsultinggroup.com/
· Data analysis and reporting
· Board training – data analytics, planning, and goal setting
· Executive coaching for new school board members
· Executive coaching and support for new superintendents’ transition teams
· Planning and monitoring district reforms
· Logic model and strategy map development
· Major program implementation audits
[1] Conor Williams, October 13, 2020, New Research Ignites Debate on the “30 Million Word Gap,”
https://www.edutopia.org/article/new-research-ignites-debate-30-million-word-gap.
[2] https://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading-basics/phonics (2023).
[3] Blaine Helwig, Academic Stop-Gap Measures, https://www.thenew3rseducationconsulting.com/blog and https://nationalblueribbonschools.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Academic-Stop-Gap-Measures.pdf