Retention on Repeat

A seventh grade student mistaken for a parent by a staff member. A 13-year-old in fourth grade. A first grader a two heads taller and more developed than all her classmates. An eighth grade student able to drive to school. Sound nonplausible? I have them all in my school.

Retention is an epidemic in my building and district. The district has pass/fail guidelines, and if a student does not meet them, chances are they will be retained and repeat the grade. Give them an extra year to make up what they didn't learn the first time through, and they're on their way. Since I recently found out that my school is in the lowest 5% of schools in the entire state, and our graduation rate hovers around 50% district-wide, my Spidey senses tell me there's a hole in that logic.

We could go on and on about the research regarding retention, but in short: retention doesn't work. Kids that are retained can lose their achievement gains from repeating within 2-3 years, are more likely to be unemployed, on public assistance, or in jail as an adult, may have negative social/emotional adjustment, are more likely to have negative social outcomes as adults (drug use, low self-esteem, emotional distress), and are 5-11x more likely to drop out of school or not achieve a diploma by age 20. In an urban setting with many of these problems already present in the community, retention is just one more strike against getting students prepared for a productive life in a post-school world.

Are there instances where retention is a good option? Sure, but educators must look at it on a kid-by-kid basis and consider the whole child (academics, social/emotional development, maturity, physical development, etc)--not use blanket guidelines or benchmarks.

Since we can't change the system, we need to work at a building and classroom level. What are some other options for educators, aside from retention? NASP has some great ideas in this excellent article. A sampling of some that would work within an urban education framework, for the short attention-spanned :) :

• "Early developmental programs and preschool programs to enhance language and social skills. Implementing prevention and early intervention programs is more promising than waiting for learning difficulties to accumulate.
• Early reading programs: developmentally appropriate, intensive, direct instruction strategies have been effective in promoting the reading skills of low-performing students. 
• Systematic assessment strategies, including continuous progress monitoring and formative evaluation, to enable ongoing modification of instructional efforts.
• Student support teams with appropriate professionals to assess and identify specific learning or behavior problems, design interventions to address those problems, and evaluate the efficacy of those interventions.
• Extended year, extended day, and summer school programs that focus on facilitating the development of academic skills.
• Tutoring and mentoring programs with peers, crossage, or adult tutors focusing on promoting specific academic or social skills."

Here are two other article resources from NASP:

1. Grade Retention and Promotion: Information for Parents
2. Grade Retention: Achievement and Mental Health Outcomes

How does retention look in your building? Does your district have academic benchmarks for students to meet in order to be promoted to the next grade? What do you do instead of retaining/repeating students?

Don't forget to check out and "Like" my Facebook page!

Putting People First

One of our district special education supervisors recently forwarded some information to the Committee on Special Education staff on People First Language, asking that we share it with our special education teachers. Seriously? Let's share that with EVERYONE! General education, special education, teacher aides, teacher assistants, engineering staff, cafeteria monitors, secretaries, parent volunteers... EVERYONE works with students with disabilities, and EVERYONE should be thoughtful of how they are reacting to those with differing abilities.

It's a simple concept really--putting a person before their disability--but the implications are great. By using People First Language, we are describing what the person has, and not who the person is. Kathie Snow at Disability is Natural has great resources regarding People First Language. This PDF gives a great overview of People First Language, and was the one that I shared with my entire building. This PDF is a great supplement as it provides examples of how we can turn phrases into People First Language.

Are you mindful of using People First Language?

Don't forget to check out and "Like" my Facebook page!

Making Response to Intervention More Accessible

I always have such great conversations and idea-bouncing with my email buddy, a school psychologist in Ohio. She emailed me today with a question/query/frustration that I'm sure TONS of us, including myself deal with: teacher push-back and reluctance to adopt the Response to Intervention (RTI) model. Here's some of what she had to say:

"Myself and another psych in the district are trying to create a framework and/or standard protocol model for the RtI process... [T]here is a great deal of talk about the resistance we are facing in developing an intervention framework... My frustration is trying to foster teacher buy in.... I want to move towards identifying students area of weakness, developing a student specific goal and then selecting the appropriate intervention for said deficit... Right now, the IAT type meetings {student support team meetings, I imagine} we have involve the teacher complaining, the Interv. Spec. doing a small reading group and DIBELS and in 4-6 weeks saying no progress-evaluate. UGH!"

Agreed, agreed, 100%! With RTI now the legal requirement for eligibility, the mode into special education is going to be changing a lot, potentially without a lot of support to the people who have to do and/or monitor the interventions: the teachers! No wonder they fight back... they don't have the support, training, time, or understanding of the model in order to implement RTI the way it's "supposed" to be done. It's much easier to stand by the old "test and place" or "discrepancy" models, which are not as fair to the child as RTI is.

My district is huge and there's no guidelines or mandates about how RTI should be done or what it's expected to look like, only that we have to be doing it. We have no specific intervention building staff, and some of our reading/math support staff don't work with the kids, only coach the teachers. We do have a lot of tutors come in from local colleges, and are putting before and after school tutoring/homework help in place, but it's hard to monitor.

I try to be basic with RTI for my teachers, and think about it more like differentiation than a separate intervention... I think people get scared by the term "intervention." What I've found in requiring academic RTI data is that teachers are doing way more differentiation than you and they realize, and when you're trying to scrounge things together, many things can be recorded as intervention. For instance: pre-teaching vocab, re-teaching lessons, shortened assignments, reduced items per page, graphic organizers/outlines, visual aids (i.e. a reminder card on the desk of steps for writing a paragraph), specially spaced lined paper, practice writing sight words in sentences, math manipulatives (tiles, cubes, counters, charts), etc. These are things teachers typically do in a classroom, but if only a few kids are getting it, it's an intervention. Sure, there are bigger things too, like special tutoring, small groups, individual pull-out, etc, but those are often too cumbersome, time-consuming, and disruptive for teachers to wrap their heads around.

My biggest obstacle is getting good, sold, appropriate data. I can get beautiful narratives and excellent information to fill into Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), but if I don't have the numbers, it's less than useful. We use the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELs) pretty extensively for reading assessment. Every kiddo gets a quarterly progress monitoring, and those who are at the strategic (1 year behind) or intensive (2+ years behind) level get monitoring much more often. Usually, I have to rely on DIBELs and reading program lesson tests (pre- and post-) for my data. What I found from past experiences is that you don't have to have nationally normed, well-known sources of data for it to be useful and meaningful. Using things like the Dolch word lists, Fry's high frequency words, and other DIBELs measures aside from Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) are useful too [Letter Naming Fluency (LNF), Initial Sound Fluency (ISF), Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF), and Phonemic Segmentation Fluency (PSF) are good for the little kiddos, especially to measure decoding interventions].

In short, I try to remember that teachers are limited in their time, resources, and ability to conduct interventions. Make it as simple yet effective as possible for them and give them easy data tracking ideas. Meet them where they are. Remind them of all the differentiation they actually do, and find away to quantify it.

Readers, please share how your school/district manages RTI! How do you get teachers to "buy in"? What do you do to help/field/alleviate their frustrations? What sources of data have you found to be easy yet effective to implement?

Don't forget to check out and "Like" my Facebook page!

Trouble with a Capital "T" and that Stands for Removing Psychs from the CSE

If you're from New York and are a member of the New York Association of School Psychologists (NYASP), your email has been all abuzz lately regarding mandate relief. Earlier this year, the NYS Educational Dept (NYSED) was asked to make "mandate relief and flexibility" recommendations to the Governor's Office to see where they could find money in the budget. Preliminary recommendations included a proposal to remove the mandate for school psychologists to be part of the Committee on Special Education (CSE) and other recommendations related to psychological assessments.

NYASP has been working throughout the year with legislators in NYS to not allow such proposals to be accepted by the Board of Regents. Local and statewide legislators advocated heavily for NYASP and school psychologists across the state, citing the vast mental health knowledge and expertise of school psychologists in making determinations regarding the welfare of students. Over the summer, there was a public comment period, where psychologists, parents, legislators, school staff, and other supporters could comment on the proposals. The support for school psychologists was huge, coming from organizations such as NYSUT, the UFT, NYS PTA, and the NYS Psychological Association and everywhere in between.

At the Board of Regents meeting this month, they voted to remove the school psychologist as a mandated member of the CSE with the exception of initial eligibility determination meetings. They also voted to remove the additional parent member and physician/school nurse. Finally, they voted to repeal the psychologist's ability to determine the need for additional data during reevaluations. This is a huge, degrading blow to the profession. School psychologists, parents, teachers, administrators, and related services personnel are outraged. Thankfully, no changes will be made immediately. Any change like this requires a change in the law, which could take a long time due to the need for action of the NYS Legislature. NYASP is planning an all-out  assault (of the email, rally, phone call, and visits with legislators variety) to try and deter these decisions from become law.

I'd love to hear what my gentle readers think about the decision to remove school psychologists from the CSE and limit their say in evaluations. Like most others, I am outraged, nervous, and offended by the decision made by a few people not in the profession over budgetary concerns, which will affect thousands of psychologists and tens of thousands of children. Is this an issue that has come up in other states? Are psychologists mandated members of the CSE where you work? Are there limitations on your job responsibilities and how you conduct your evaluations?

School psychologists who would like to contact our legislators regarding mandate relief are encouraged to check out The New York State Assembly website and The New York State Senate website. Heck, even if you're not a New Yorker, we could use your support!

Don't forget to check out and "Like" my Facebook page!

"Too Important to Fail"

If you missed this PBS special when it aired, you totally need to check out School Counselor Blog's post about Too Important to Fail, a PBS special discussing how schools are failing African American youth, particularly boys. I haven't had time to watch the entire video yet, but I watched about 10 minutes and it was wonderful (not the issue, but the content). If you work in an urban district, it's a must watch.

 Don't forget to check out and "Like" my Facebook page!

Awesome Bullying Resource for Staff & Students

My building, like so many others, faces a big problem: bullying. Most of it is verbal, done online, or done on the sly during the day. Most of it doesn't get reported. When it does, action is taken, but is it ever enough? Can bullying ever truly be eradicated from a school building, or any other establishment or workspace? I could blog on this forever, it's a never-ending battle. Last year I attended a two day training on today's bullying, bullying theory, the district's anti-bullying policy, and the severe negative effects of bullying.

We watched a video that I HIGHLY recommend you both view and purchase for your school. The 40-minute documentary is called Bullied: A Student, a School, and a Case That Made History and it is absolutely free through the Teaching Tolerance website. Bullied tells the inspirational and eye-opening story of Jamie Nabozny, a young gay man who was severely bullied in school. From the website blurb:

"Bullied is designed to help administrators, teachers and counselors create a safer school environment for all students, not just those who are gay and lesbian. It is also intended to help all students understand the terrible toll bullying can take on its victims, and to encourage students to stand up for their classmates who are being harassed."

 

I can't speak highly enough about this excellent documentary. It is SO powerful. Aside from the fact that it is free to order (why haven't you ordered it yet, you've had a whole paragraph!), it comes with a great viewer's guide with lesson plans, quizzes, and facts for both staff development and student discussion. There are "school climate" surveys for both teachers and students, to gauge how safe invested parties view the school. There are talking points and activities to address empathy, discrimination, courage, and justice when showing Bullied to students (I would recommend it for the 7th grade+ crowd). There's also information specifically targeted towards bullying and LBGTQ youth.

Go now! Order it for your school! Use it for staff development or in classrooms and to start the discussion about bullying at your building. A "zero tolerance" policy is only as good as the universal enforcement behind it. To quote the sign on my door: "Bullying: Confront it. Report it. End it."

Don't forget to check out and "Like" my Facebook page!

Professionally Proactive

This weekend, I attended the New York Association of School Psychologists (NYASP) executive board meeting in Albany. Wow, what an experience! We covered so many topics and I haven't totally processed everything yet. There were about 40 attendees from all over the state, representing NYASP's public relations, legislative involvement, budgeting and accounting, the newsletter, the awards committee, continuing professional development, conference committees, and of course, local chapter representatives, which is were I fell.

I have to admit, I was wary of attending the board meeting. I wasn't sure what to expect, but only heard great things when I asked colleagues in the area that I traveled with. While my co-representative is a newer member, the other three ladies are seasoned practitioners in the field and with NYASP, so they took us under their wings, which we needed and appreciated! Once the board meeting got going, it was quite enjoyable to discuss issues in the field with like-minded professionals. Mostly, I just sat back and took it in, or chatted with my co-rep. The other board members know their stuff and care so much about the field of school psychology, our interests and expertise, and of course, the kids. It was so great to be with people who "get it" and are working to make sure that other stakeholders do too.

My co-rep and I left with tons of ideas and things to plan for our chapter in the coming year. The first step towards reaching that goal of being more involved in the profession is complete!

 

Don't forget to check out and "Like" my Facebook page!

Goal Setting

Well, with Labor Day tomorrow, the summer truly is coming to an end. Boyfriend and I are having a family get -together tomorrow with our parents, my grandpa, my future step-brother, and Boyfriend's niece (referenced in this blog entry).

 

Tuesday is the first day back at my building, staff only. I'll be leading much of the opening day activities for the staff, as my colleague and CSE chairperson recently had surgery and will be out until at least October. I'll be discussing new Positive Behavior Intervention Support (PBIS) initiatives for the year, the upcoming Response to Intervention (RTI) regulations, new Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) expectations, and other tidbits. Hopefully I won't be a snooze! Wednesday the kiddos return. I have to be honest, I really haven't been excited to return to school since I spent almost the whole summer working, but I am really looking forward to seeing my munchkins! My running friend S, Squirmy McAntsypants, and other blog stars will be returning, but others have moved on. D, the kiddo who Hulked out and threw a chair across my office, was placed in an agency program due to extreme unsafe behaviors, and A was placed at a different school in a class for students with Autism.

As I start the new year, I want to go back to my roots. Every year during my graduate program, we had to update a portfolio of our experiences, case studies, reports, and other important work samples. It mostly was the bane of everyone's "busy work" existence, but once we graduated, it ended up being a comprehensive testament to our Master's degrees (see me being glass half full). One document that was constantly tweaked was our "role reflection," where we had to outline three goals we had for ourselves for the coming year. Here's some new goals for the 2011-2012 school year:

1. Be more visible. As a school psychologist, I spend an insane amount of time testing, writing reports, and developing IEPs. Sometimes I don't notice I've wasted half a day at my desk until it's 1:00pm. This year, I want to be in classrooms more, whether it's assisting with a lesson, observing, doing whole class interventions, or catching kids "being good." I want to have a positive image for myself not only with the kids, but with the staff. Since I've been in the building for a year, I want to end the adjustment period and make solid, positive relationships with my staff.
2. Keep better data. Our district was evaluated by the state this year with regards to our BIPs, and only one school passed (not mine, but thankfully the school of one of my Master's cohort friends). I'm going to be a stickler this year both for myself and my staff about BIPs, hence our opening day discussion. I'm a total data nerd, so I'm going to work on getting better, more consistent progress-monitoring data for the behavior plans in our building. It requires a lot of time and energy, and often gets pushed by the way-side when other more critical things come up, unfortunately. Data will be useful not only to monitor student growth, but also for reporting out to parents and administration, and at the CSE table.
3. Be more involved in the profession. Sure, I'm a member of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), the New York Association of School Psychologists (NYASP), and my regional school psych organization, but that doesn't necessarily mean I do much more than pay dues. I recently became the co-chair representative of my NYASP chapter and am on the planning committee for the 2012 NYASP Conference, which will be held in my area. Next weekend, I'll be attending the NYASP Executive Board meeting in Albany, NY (which I'm sure to blog about), and later this month, will be enjoying a regional luncheon conference. I would love to attend the 2012 NASP Conference in February in Philadelphia, PA, which will be dependent on funds. Professional organizations can be hugely important and beneficial for your career, so I'm looking forward to cultivating those relationships.

What are your goals for the upcoming school year? T-Minus 3 days folks...

Don't forget to check out and "Like" my new Facebook page!

Not Acceptable

(Warning for language in the video)

While I have previously posted regarding my thoughts on the use of "mental retardation" in the educational system, I in no way endorse it's casual use as a derogatory term intended to demean people. This video sums up why the "r-word" is totally not acceptable.

Plus, who doesn't love Jane Lynch?

What Do You Make?

For anyone who hasn't seen Taylor Mali's defense of teachers yet, you simply must.

Praise: Making You Wonder Why There's a Gold Star on Your Paper

While powering it out on the elliptical at the gym one day last week, I read the National Education Association's (NEA) most recent publication. Before you make a face, yes I read while working out (makes the time go by much faster... extended cardio workouts = sad face), and yes I actually read professional publications. Remember all those times I said I was a nerd?

There were two articles about praise in the educational system. The essential message was that students do not benefit from praise that is given regarding their intelligence. The authors discussed research that showed a positive correlation between praise for a student's effort and performance. They reported that:

"Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control... They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control.... [those] who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort."- Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

As educators, we need to be aware of the kind of feedback we give and message we are sending to students. Saying "You did a great job" or "You're so smart" really means nothing to a kid. Nonspecific feedback is not very useful to anyone. Think about if you handed in a week's worth of lesson plans to your principal and when they were returned, she said, "Nice work." Wait... what part did she like? Was it the group gross-motor activity in Monday's math lesson to demonstrate regrouping when adding? Did she like the time set aside for differentiated instruction on fluency during reading block on Wednesday? Or maybe it was nature walk on the playground to investigate types of rocks for Friday's Science lesson?

Do you want a kid to be wondering what exactly they did to constitute a "great job" or why they're "smart"? Specific, skill directed feedback is much more useful, and will help kids to understand exactly what they did well and how they can do it again. It gives them the control to make the "right" choices and leaves no question as to the teacher's expectations. And when it comes down to it, don't we want kids to be doing the "right thing" more often?

So what is "specific, skill directed feedback"? It's things like:

• "Azir, I love how you raised your hand when you needed help and quietly waited for me to come over" instead of "Nice job following the classroom rules."
• "You did the first two steps of this problem correctly, Antoinette" rather than a smiley face or gold star on a worksheet (although who can say no to a shiny gold star? Not me!)
• "Thank you for using your manners and holding the door open for the girl's line, Eduard" instead of "You're a good line leader."
• "Dalisha, I can tell you understand this math lesson because you followed the steps on the board and got the correct answer" rather than "You're so smart at math."
• "I'm proud of how you gave Willis a hug when he was upset, George" instead of "What a good friend you are."

Make sense? Good. One further example, for extra credit:

I'm proud of you for taking your time and reading this blog post thoroughly, Gentle Reader! I can tell you really paid attention by the well-written and thoughtful comment you left. (we've learned that specific praise is designed to make you perform the behavior more often, right? Right?? =D )

Go to the Office!

I've spent the majority of my week attending in-service trainings. Boyfriend summed it up best: "I bet you're thrilled to be sitting through more courses after graduating, huh?" You have no idea. I went into the week with a rather whiny, grumpy attitude, but in actuality, the in-services have not only been useful, but interesting.

The major themes of the trainings were cultural awareness/sensitivity, academic trending, and disproportionality in education and discipline. We discussed a lot of issues regarding race and ethnicity, and how it affects how we interact with/teach our students and how the students learn.

Before we broke for lunch today, we had "Team Time" where we discussed Patterns in Office Referral Data by Grade, Race/Ethnicity, and Gender by Kaufman, Jaser, Vaughan, Reyonds, et. al. (2010). The authors examined the office referral data for an urban school district. All males were found to be written up more than females, especially for external behaviors, such as physical aggression. Females have their own relational aggression that's going on, of course, but because males behaviors are more observable (i.e. more fighting and less bullying), they tend to be written up more often than females. The article also reiterated the disproportionality that black males experience when being written-up for behavior problems.

The most interesting and important part of the article, personally, was that the results showed a pattern in types of office discipline referrals across grade levels that related highly to the developmental level of the students being referred. Huh? What does that mean you ask?

• Elementary school students had more referrals for acts of aggression (fighting, verbal, and physical threats). This is the developmental time that students are trying to make friendships and establish relationships.
• Middle school students had more referrals for acts of disrespect (use of profanity and disrespect towards adults). This is the developmental time that students are working toward identity development and autonomy.
• High school students had more referrals for attendance issues (skipping class and leaving the building without permission). This is the developmental time that students are trying to increase their independence.

I definitely see this pattern in my building. Although we only have students PreK-8, I definitely see more referrals for younger students getting into physical altercations (biting, hitting, slapping) and for middle school students mouthing off or using severe inappropriate language towards staff. I think that more research needs to be done to establish if this pattern is being seen elsewhere in the nation, but it's an interesting theory!

Cool, so what do we do with that? As a table, we discussed the need for teachers to be re-taught about children's developmental levels and what's "going on" at each age. If you're like me, you had that information in Psych 101 or in a child development class, frantically memorized all of Erikson's Developmental Stages, Freud's Psychosexual Stages, etc, and either filed it into the dark recesses of your mind or promptly forgot it. Having a booster review for staff will be the first step in helping them to effectively address the behaviors. The mantra in my building, and probably in others, is that the staff needs to both be taught how to deal with problem behaviors effectively (instead of just sending the student to the principal--real effective), but also how to teach the student to perform correct behaviors.

The Semantics of Stigma

I read a blurb not long ago that President Obama signed Rosa's Law, which will replace the terms "mental retardation" in Federal law with "intellectual disability."

We all know the stigma of the "mentally retarded." Unfortunately, society has given those words a very negative, disrespectful, and disempowering connotation. But if we actually look at the words themselves, it paints a somewhat different picture. "Retarded," when it isn't being used as a derogatory slang term, means "slow," or "hinder." Let's look at "intellectual disability." A synonym for "disability" is "incapability," which makes the whole switch-er-oo misleading. If we were to say that a student has an intellectual disability, we are saying that they have an intellectual incapability, while a mental retardation implies intellectual slowness.

Of course, we're all talking in semantics. Words have meaning because of what we assign their meaning to be. That's why "mental retardation" evokes such a bad reponse in common conversation. However, when you use those words, you understand exactly the kind of case being described (for better or for worse). I think that, at it's most basic level, it calls a spade a spade. And honestly, parents have enough trouble understanding their child's handicapping condition and the implications it has for their educational future without being unable to understand their child's difficulties in the first place.

Personally, I have nothing against "mental retardation." Like I said, it makes language very plain for those trying to understand and help a student in need. Moreover, I think that it would be a disservice to students with mental retardation to call them anything else. In order to adequately describe why a student receives special education services and to meet diverse and intensive needs, I think a powerful, understandable term like "mental retardation" is useful.

I understand that it's hard to see the positive in something as negative as the word "retarded." It is a very serious term, but I really think that if it's possible to remove the social connotation and look at the words themselves, it helps us to understand that "mental retardation" has its use in the school system, especially if it helps students to receive the services they need.

.... and this is me stepping off my soapbox! =D