Rennie Center "Conditions of Education in the Commonwealth"

I'm posting this morning from the Rennie Center's "Condition of Education in Commonwealth" at which it seems they're going to make a pitch for social-emotional learning as something schools are evaluated on. You can find the data report that they're releasing today here and the resource guide is here; the report on social and emotional learning is here. Posting as we go...the Twitter hashtag is #COE2016

d'Entremont (Rennie Center) Have wrestled more directly with moving ideas to action
invite open dialogue and critique
use knowledge gains to build capacity for reform


Chester: comprehensive look at education
"would be remiss if I didn't take a chance to tout how well we're doing" in the K-12 sector, cites EdWeek
doing better at hanging onto our kids (dropout and graduation rates out next week; update: they were released this afternoon)
still work to do
1993 act, 2011 act, revisiting standards and accountability system, testing system
mentions Lawrence, Holyoke, recommendation on Southbridge for receivership
now need to address "if our students are leaving high school prepared for success"
what's happening on federal level
"Continues Congress's commitment to" "most vulnerable" students
testing, targets, goals for schools and districts
how groups of students are doing
requires groups that are farthest behind make greatest progress
state intervention in lowest performing schools
"good news for Massachusetts is we can build on the system we've been running for a number of years"
"my read on this is we can continue to do what we've done"
introduces a non-cognitive measure
"imploring that if this is not on your radar, I'd ask you to put it on your radar": ballot initiative "require us to go back to pre-2010 standards" (the anti-Common Core initiative)

Ron Ferguson, keynote today
influence of teaching: tripod education "latent potential"
achievement gaps by race, gender, socio-economic differences are stark by the age of 2
tested outcomes but also "agency-related factors"
"other stuff" growth mindset, future orientation, social emotional skills, interpersonal/ intrapersonal
"There are other things employers pay for, too...what we aspire to produce in our students"
agency: connotes the outcome we want: some sense of students' ability to control their lives
students have agency have punctuality, good conduct, growth mindset, sense of purpose, seek help when needed, mastery orientation and effort
"but his teachers helped him to overcome that" (the kid who didn't have agency to begin with)
Tripod 7Cs: care confer, captivate, clarify, consolidate, challenge, classroom management
higher numbers of low income kids and students of color: greater gap in orderly classroom
distinguish between development of success "in this class we learn to..." not just the type of person "I am the type of person who"
developing "I am the type of person who" from classrooms that inculcate particular ways of being
selected statements of agency
stability among groups of students who are surveyed about same teachers
teaching components most important for predicting leading are different than predicting happiness and inspiration
test score gains are not the same things that produce happiness and long-term success; "should do both"
should agency be promoted actively as an explicit goal of teaching and learning?
"get on the same page as what the semantics mean"
"huge potential to help students with things beyond standardized test measures, even though standardized test measures are really important"
Boston Basics initiative

"how do we take the big thoughts...and put them into practices and policies that are concrete and can be implimented by state and local leaders?"
one of the pitfalls of being really good on something is you may not challenge how you are doing on other things
"but if you look at the data, some folks will say, there's too much that hasn't changed"
"is expanding our notion of what's essential to the development and growth of students"
"all of these data points are linked"
places where people are actively to address social and emotional domains
linkages between activites and policy solutions
education encompasses more than academic learning
"schools cannot--should not--work in isolation"
"done well, social and emotional is integrated into academic learning"
"the challenge is how to make it explicit"
..to effectively challenge their students
focus on the Boston Summer Learning Project for presentation
others discussed in report are New Bedford birth to age 3; Newton social-emotional response; LEAP education in Salem, Gloucester, and Peabody; Chelsea's growth midset
"to provide structure that allows students to be successful to achieve"


panel:
Chair of Early Ed Lesaux
Vice-Chair of K-12 Morton
Chair of Higher Ed Gabrieli
moderated by Jackie Jenkins-Scott, president of Wheelock College
Gabrieli: Massachusetts well positioned to take advantage of this research and other
Higher ed board focused on remedial instruction
experiment to let different campuses take different approaches to how students are placed in math
"what exactly is Accuplacer measuring and not measuring?"
students who wouldn't have made it into math courses first place are passing at same rates that kids who did
grades better predictor of college success than standardized tests
grades take cognative and non-cognative
"this isn't about test anxiety; this is about success in life"
Morton: need for a common language that will guide our work
success of students in the out-of-school time
"not to make this an add-on...not to make an additional thing for teachers...integrate it into the work that those people do each and every day"
Lesaux: integrated into early ed
"what happens if you look at the research on young children...you can't actual separate those outcomes from the quality of the settings they are learning and growing every day"
start with adults: managing stress
think about how to go deeper both on the measurement and the development of social emotional skills among both the educators and the children
Jenkins-Scott: have spent last couple of decades making huge improvements in our test scores
how can we make this balance, make this shift?
Morton: "don't want to throw out the academics, but...best ability to make sure our students are succeeding academically is intimately linked to what it takes to succeed in life"
social-emotional development does work for them, does enhance their academics
Lesaux: measure quality of interaction
"opportunity for assessment and measurement"
Gabrieli: intrapersonal and interpersonal
"good news is, it's not an either/or"
interpersonal skills and collaboration highest rated things that employers are looking for
assists in classroom managment; instrumental in having a classroom that is orderly
great thing about having early ed "when they aren't yet focused on test scores"
executive function: hierarchy of development
"this area is rich and a lot to sort through"
Jenkins-Scott: why teachers leave the system, one thing they tell us is the focus on test scores
professional development and support for educators
"reality is we're still looking at test scores as the indicators for success"
Gabrieli: question of how to succeed at that is much less clear
"how to really change self-control"
"how do we make sure we're telling folks stuff that actually works"
Lesaux: really about process
curriculum, then this overlay of how to deliver instruction each day, then have a coaching implement
"design and deliver a higher quality learning environment"
Morton; Level 5 and turnaround schools embedding this in their work and seeing success
Jenkins-Scott: Walsh at State of the City spent time on early education: how to leverage this now?
Lesaux: tremendous activity around preK
not just about access, but about quality
advocating for high-quality preK: how to think through the kind of expansion that folks are calling for "which is only the expansion of high-quality preK"
Jenkins-Scott: how to expand and sustain models cited in report?
Morton: common themes: private public partnerships
making sure community based organizations are providing the high quality services
Jenkins-Scott: next steps to tackle?
Gabrieli: belonging uncertainty
kids who assume they belong on a college v those who aren't so sure
"you didn't do well on your first test, you don't belong there"
what can we do to let kids know that they belong there?
what we can do about how students succeed, not how institutions succeed
Jenkins-Scott: students should be visiting colleges all throughout their school career; get them onto college campuses
Morton: proud of best K-12 education system; not satisfied
successful community programs, using them as an example of what can be accomplished in communities
"do it with intentionality"
summer learning loss: develop their academic skills, develop their agency
"we believe it's an opportunity gap" not an achievement gap
Lesaux: cannot argue with data on longterm effect of quality preK
most promising work is two generational: not just children, but their families

d'Entremont "real steps we can take on social emotional learning"
family engagement, classroom design, summer learning, teacher preparation
"we need a common language...to use that language to talk about the same thing"
"people who have been working in (this field) for years"
"These folks are just getting started...we think they're on the right tack."
"need to create a safe space in education where it's okay to experiment"

I didn't take notes on Senator Warren's greeting in here.

Secretary Peyser: ideas for further inquiry and further discussion
consider myself a neophyte in this area, learning
"how better to apply these lessons to the education of our children"
Peyser speaks of charter schools finding student completion rates much lower than expected
people not graduating with the skills they needed when they were outside of the schools from which they came
students with trauma struggling to keep up with their peers
students and classrooms are part of a school and a school culture
"not just classroom practice and school culture"
"higher level aspirations for who we want to be as human beings"