Wasted Data, Wasted Dolllars & Wasted Lives

 Wasted Data, Wasted Dollars, Wasted Lives: Research indicates not only an assessment system failure in American Public Schools. We have a massive moral failure where private entities are profiting off the misery of our children, teachers, and parents as well. 

We measure what doesn’t matter, and the results come back 6 too late. No one is reading the research, they are reading Influencers, Podcasters, CEOs, Political Think Tank Pundits,  

Who should we listen to? Children, teachers, and parents. These voices remain silenced in education reform research. Keeping them silent keeps profits up and an endless cycle of failure going. 

I invite you to watch the YouTube video Bob Greenberg filmed on Brainwaves Video Anthology of me discussing decades of education reform failures. 

Link to Wasted Data, Wasted Lives: The Missing Link in Assessment (12:56)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLwoXf2ULKc

I am sending out an Assessment SOS. Research paints a massive moral failure of education reform in America. 

Readers, this one needs to go viral. Our Public School Assessment System is broken and unfair and does more harm than good to children, teachers, and the public.

Respectfully,
Dr. Jesse P. Turner
Professor of Literacy, Elementary, and Early Childhood Education
Uniting to Save Our Schools
Badass Teacher of Truth 

Just in case you feel like listening to the tune that inspired my morning walk today it is Barry Lane's More Than a number https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Vf8cwTWRY

Eye On The Prize: Pathway to Transformational Literacy

From the opening of the

“We travel carrying our words.
We arrive at the ocean.
With our words we are able to speak
Of the sounds of thunderous waves.
We speak of how majestic it is,
Of the ocean power that gifts us songs.
We sing of our respect
And call it our relative. ~ Ofelia Zapeda 

From the first book, readers are listeners, immersed in comprehension skills. The skills needed to read/listen to the print are deeply rooted in the transformational potential to find ourselves, and others, and pathways to change our world. In other words, words carried us here and will carry us until we are no more.

We not only find words to decode, but we also find ourselves, our families, our ancestors, and our journeys from there to here in those words. When Dr. Zapeda speaks of words carrying the people, she is referring to language as being something bigger than the structure of their linguistic components. For her words are bigger than the printed page. My Tohono O'odham friend Dr. Angie Listo told me recently "Our ancestors hear us through the words we use. Use words that made them proud."  I see the power, the beauty, the hope, and the story of the Tohono O'odham people in Ofelia's poem above.

Before the first printed word is read, it was spoken, we heard it spoken on the loving lips of parents, grandparents, siblings, trusted elders, and in our sacred temples, mosques, and churches. To ignore the idea that words carry us, that something came before the print, is to miss the greater purpose of becoming literate. I want more than print. I want connections to my people. I find my redemption in the words my people carry. Words are my redemption songs. 

Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist who learned to read, Said, "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." He viewed literacy as the path to freedom from slavery. His view of literacy lives in his mirrors, windows, and sliding doors. His biography is the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”. His words allow us to walk in his shoes. If we sell learning to read as merely correctly reading the words on a page, we risk losing the path to freedom on the journey to becoming literate. The SOR community needs more than decodable books, they need the words that carry the people, and those words are found in literature written by the people. 

Quick review:
Mirrors: books we see ourselves in, decodable books can do this, not nearly as well as authentic literature, but they can do it,

Windows: books we see others in, and like the above decodable books can do this, but not as well as authentic literature. 

Sliding Doors: these are books that let readers walk in the shoes of others, these are transformational. They change the way we see ourselves, others, and the world. 

I have yet to see decodable books that can do this. The danger in not learning to read without understanding the role of Transformational Literacy is to produce readers who cannot see the path to freedom and liberation. 

I chose the above image from "Thank You, Mr. Falker", taken from one of America's most successful and prolific Authors; Patricia Barber Polacco takes us inside her shoes as a young Dyslexic girl struggling to learn to read, and her gifted teacher who knew it is the combination of skills and the magic of transformation pathways that bring struggling readers to be as Frederick Douglas said: " Forever Free". Words are the honey people carry via spoken and written words. Readers need skills to access the written word. To make readers who love books, we must connect to readers who love language, recognize those words that carry them. Dare I say the forbidden word Balanced Literacy. Without balance, there is no pathway to freedom, no way for words to carry the people, and we lose those Sliding Door books that transform us. Readers do not go to Barnes and Noble to buy the latest decodable book. Readers, go to find those Transformative Sliding Door Books.

In Marginalized communities, children and their teachers require not only skills, but a transformative literacy purpose deeply rooted in experiences that offer pathways to freedom, justice, and redemption. To understand that words can carry us, we need to see us in the words on the printed page. 

Respectfully,
Dr. Jesse P. Turner
CCSU Literacy Center Director
Uniting to Save Our Schools
Badass Teacher

If you like to listen to the tune that inspired my morning walk it is Bob Marley's Redemption Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7eXTtNRWHE

Missing Link: Assessment for children learning to read

 
A quick three-minute long explanation of Dynamic Assessment and the missing link in assessing children learning to read by Dr. Turner 

Everyone talks about multiple data points, but most of these data points are formal data sets, they fail to show what children can do with the help of teachers.

Thoughts on Dynamic Assessment, that assessment that tracks the actual learning data between child and teacher in real-time.

Dynamic Assessment is the missing link in Assessment learning to read. It bothers me when you don't find it on any data walls.

 

This data does not only assess the child. Dr. Thomas Gunning, an author who has published dozens of crucial textbooks on teaching children to read over the past three decades, points to assessing our teaching as well. He views Dynamic assessment as assessing both child and teacher effectiveness.

 

Dynamic Assessment data is not soft data, it provides critical missing links collecting multiple data points. The voices of children and teachers give us real data as to how successful teacher instruction is. Yetta Goodman referred to it as Kidwatching. Multiple Data Points without the two most critical stakeholders in learning, (children and teachers) is like Pizza without toppings. 

Can't wait until I see Bob Greenberg. I am going to kick it off. I will give him plenty of others as well to record for this new possible tread on Brainwaves Vido Anthologies.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Dr. Jesse P. Turner

CCSU Literacy Center Director