As discussed in my last post, well-crafted systems are essential for creating impactful change for our students. However, it is not uncommon to find systems within education that do not work in tandem and can create challenges and cognitive dissonance for teachers. I often liken this to driving a car on triangle wheels. While the car can move forward, it is clunky, slow, and inefficient. Today I will speak to three aspects of education I have seen come together to create a triangle wheel for many educators and students - the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Science of Reading (SoR) based practices, and Special Education academic evaluations.
Released in 2009, the CCSS were an attempt to unify instructional goals for students nationwide. The concept was that this would increase student achievement and ensure college and career readiness. Some of the significant changes educators noticed from implementing the CCSS were an increased focus on informational literacy skills and a call to action to include literacy skills throughout the content areas. One of the motivations for developing the CCSS was students entering college who were not prepared for college-level work. Often they had to take remedial classes before being able to move forward with their college schedule. This drove the push for higher standards to ensure college readiness. For elementary teachers, this increased expectations of students across the board, trickled down most notably to kindergarten and first grade, with the slogan "kindergarten is the new 1st grade" often being shared by teachers and parents. While the standards were well-intentioned, they have delivered little results over ten years later. However, they remain in many NH schools and create tension for educators when implementing SoR-based practices.
For example, let's look at K & 1 CCSS for Reading Literature.
While these are important and relevant standards, they are listed as reading standards, not listening. The CCSS states: "The following standards offer a focus for instruction each year and help ensure that students gain adequate exposure to a range of texts and tasks. Rigor is also
infused through the requirement that students read increasingly complex texts through the grades (emphasis added)." The disconnect for teachers comes when implementing a code-based approach to teaching reading. These teachers are focusing the majority of their direct instruction on phonemic awareness and phonics skills to follow research that demonstrates how important developing these skills to automaticity is. The language development areas of Scarborough's Reading Rope are often addressed through read-alouds that allow teachers to share more complex language and story structure. However, in many schools, teachers are asked to grade using standards-based report cards. They struggle because these goals are listed as reading skills, yet decodable books that students are reading often do not lend themselves to these standards. This creates a stumbling block as teachers diligently work to revamp their instructional practices and realign their curriculums. They struggle with how to implement best practices based on SoR research while being required to report out using these standards. They feel conflicted because while they address these standards, it is typically through other methods that students are able to engage with using speaking and listening skills.
Similarly, another disconnect in our educational system involves the CCSS and our Special Education evaluation system. As mentioned, the CCSS raised the bar with expectations for grade levels down to kindergarten. Students who struggle to meet these higher standards can often be observed in schools across NH. They usually receive intervention support through the school's RTI system or Title 1. The tension comes when RTI systems expect students to "catch up" in 6-8 weeks of additional support. When they do not and go through several rounds of RTI, a decision to move to Special Education referral is often made by the student's educational team and/or parents. The disconnect comes when Special Education academic testing uses tests normed by age. In contrast, the student's struggles to get to this point were created by a CCSS-aligned tier 1 system that measures their progress based on grade level standards. This can result in students who struggle in the classroom yet do not qualify for Special Education. Often these students remain in a school's intervention system. These systems are moving towards more of an MTSS (Mulit-Tiered System of Supports) that casts a broader umbrella over student needs, including SEL factors, curriculum design, and collaboration with families in the problem-solving process. In this system, students can phase in and out of support as necessary when not meeting grade-level standards but also not qualify for Special Education. These are the students I have spent much of my career as a Literacy Specialist working with. Let's be clear: providing these MTSS supports is NOT a wait-to-fail model. A student does not need an IEP to receive the supports they need if a proper MTSS system is in place. But the struggle over when to refer and when a student will qualify for Special Education remains a gray area in most schools and an area that lacks clarity, causing anxiety among both educators and families.
None of these disconnects will be fixed overnight. But they are the current reality that school employees face regularly. We can only start to better align our system once we realize the areas that create the triangle instead of a circular wheel. I would propose the following action steps to address some of these issues:
- If your school used a standards-based report card and is moving to an SoR based approach to teaching literacy, some time needs to be spent aligning SoR practices with the standards and discovering where there is room for clarification (for both educators and families).
- Professional development for regular education teachers about the types of assessments used for special education evaluations. Likewise, time in classrooms and with grade-level teams would help special educators understand the demands in tier 1 to meet CCSS. An understanding that special education cannot fix and tier 1 problem must be acknowledged. However, clearly articulating special education referral systems and rights protected by law is also needed (for both educators and families).
- A school-based team that starts to address some of these disconnects, makes decisions about resolving inconsistencies and communicates to staff to provide clarity and reduce anxiety.
These factors have implications for our students but also for the culture and climate of our buildings. Pretending they are not there doesn't help anyone involved. We need systems that create round wheels for our cars so that we can help guide students through their literacy growth with speed, efficiency, and effectiveness.