Comments on: Catch kids before they fall

By: Eileen Lucas

Eileen Lucas — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 14:06:20 +0000

Laurie and I thank each of you for your thoughtful comments in response to Laurie’s blog post and our paper, “How to Catch Kids Before They Fall.” We heartily agree that catching—and supporting—kids with low math skills (as well as low reading skills) at an early stage, is very important. We are working on providing additional resources for those of you working with struggling math students. We’re also working diligently on ways to support educators in best practices and fidelity of implementation with Renaissance Learning programs to make the best use of the data. Please keep the comments coming!

By: Karen Clingman

Karen Clingman — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 00:28:49 +0000

As a teacher in a priority school in a large urban school district, we are continually trying to build and maintain a solid instructional foundation for our students. As I read the 6 essential and critical components of a system of support, we utilize and practice 5 of the 6 components. Engaging the parents is a component that I believe is important and necessary to the academic growth and success of students. We have a great parent group that provides a wealth and variety of volunteer services to the school and teachers. Biweekly sessions meetings are held which provide school information and life resources to the parents. As a school, we need to step up our rigor and engage our parents with strategies and resources that will help their kids to be successful students and grow to be successful adults. Also providing them with parent friendly communications that gives assessment results will give them a clearer focus and understanding on what their child knows or needs intervention with. This is a very powerful article that all educators should read and discuss in their Professional Learning Communities.

By: Mike Ward

Mike Ward — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 12:35:09 +0000

This is a powerful post. I particularly like the focus. Of course the wise use of data and the right types of supports for young students are foundational to helping kids become colleage and career ready. But these measures are, as Laurie notes, also fundamental to social justice. Thanks for these insights!

By: West Walker

West Walker — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 00:39:28 +0000

Chaundra Oden hits the nail on the head! Increased “rigor” with the CCS is needed and, as Chaundra puts it, “the larger issue is that there seems to be a lack of consistent comprehensive teacher training for those standards. Teachers need to be taught how to teach for the new standards. It is one thing to create them. It is another to have a teacher know how to change what they’ve been doing for years to an entirely new way of teaching.” This view ESPECIALLY relates to the need for Reading Rigor and Text Complexity as described in the Reading Standard 10, Appendix A (http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_A.pdf). Does anyone have a state, district, or site that is indeed monitoring the grade level bands, or have devised a way they are going to meet that challenge!?I Are they going to rely on the publishers to formulate independent reading plans? So many districts purchase RL products, yet don’t implement them. With ATOS being approved for the CCS one must therefore ponder: what are they waiting for? Further, with easy reports such as the College and Career Readiness Report, why is there a delay in this rigor, training, and implementation?!? …Gets me a bit upset, sorry. lol

By: Chaundra Oden

Chaundra Oden — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 12:09:32 +0000

I believe in the increased rigor of the new national standards. I also think it is good to have national standards as other better performing countries do. However, the larger issue is that there seems to be a lack of consistent comprehensive teacher training for those standards. Teachers need to be taught how to teach for the new standards. It is one thing to create them. It is another to have a teacher know how to change what they’ve been doing for years to an entirely new way of teaching.

By: C A Beverforden

C A Beverforden — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 19:01:35 +0000

Reading comprehension is so important and so are basic math skills. Teaching Mathematics at the secondary level I knew students were struggling. It was the basic 3rd-4th grade knowledge that they lacked. This ultimately lead to behavior problems. It was a tough job to bring them up academically and behaviorally so that they could graduate on time.

By: Doug Turner

Doug Turner — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 18:14:30 +0000

I work as a Academic Math Coach and we also do data meetings for math. I plan on investigating the other resources in this article to see if what we are doing is similar.

By: Brittany Rives

Brittany Rives — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 16:50:35 +0000

GREAT post!