Well, my post on Marva Collins and Carpe Diem didn’t generate a lot of response, but it did generate the following exchange. It ends up dealing with some serious issues with real relevance to our program in Nashville, especially the Enhanced Option Schools. If you make it through it, let me know what you think. Here are the posts, beginning with my correspondents first response to my original post:

Dave,

I appreciate reading more about the Carpe Diem program which Marva Collins began. It was good to learn more about this approach to teaching. It is not an approach that I find appealing pedagogically. And it certainly seems to ignore what we know about developmentally appropriate learning! However, I would be interested in knowing what are the results in terms of student learning? Is there short term and long term evaluation of test scores for students who have completed the entire program?

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Dear ___________,

I don’t know of any test-based data. I’m sure there are some studies, but, since they would not account for the effectiveness of the teachers prior to adopting the Marva Collins approach, the data would be virtually useless.

Have you ready The Marva Collins Way? If so, what is it about the approach that you don’t like, pedagogically speaking? The rich and varied use of literature? The focus on gaining understanding and meaning from texts? Cooperative learning? The refusal to allow 4^th graders to check themselves out of the process through misbehavior? The consequences for failure to perform (an element missing from most educational settings and one strongly supported by the late Al Shanker)? I hope you know me well enough to know I am being serious here. What didn’t you like, and why? What approach would have gotten more of these students to have worked harder and learned more?

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Dave,

I have not read The Marva Collins Way and I am afraid that my comments are not based on a deep understanding of her approach. However, from the information which I read on your web site link, there are several aspects of the approach which I am uncomfortable with.

1) Overall, the emphasis seems to be that education is a vehicle for students to work their way out of poverty and that lazy students deserve their fate. In the information I looked at, there does not seems to be much internalizing of the joy of learning and stretching your own capabilities. Frankly, this approach to learning creates a certain class distinction that I am very uncomfortable with. I do believe that students in these schools are pulled up from failure. But I do not believe that they are well equipped to excel. I think that essentially, this approach to learning is gearing toward low achieving, at-risk students, but would be neither appropriate or effective for higher-achieving students.

2) I was surprised and disappointed by the extremely limited time allocation for science and for social studies. We know that kids who have an opportunity for hands-on science exploration develop a deeper understanding of causality and understand how theoretical concepts can manifest themselves in multiple physical variations.

3) Maybe the article from the Milwaukee Journal overemphasized this element, but its sounds like scholastic purgatory to tell kids who finish their work early, there’s always another worksheet on your desk!

4) Any one with even a little understanding of developmental psychology knows that a day for elementary school children needs to include movement. Whether its "recess", structured physical education, or even movement around the classroom, physical movement for kids (and adults) needs to be consciously built into daily activity.

One extremely positive element of the approach is that there is clearly enormous consistency and dedication by the teaching staff in these schools. Consensus of purpose is an extremely valuable element in creating effective schools.

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Dear __________,

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

Let me go right to what I see as the heart of this matter: Is it ok to teach "at risk" kids differently from those who come to school at a different place. For example, is it ok to suggest to these kids that education can be there ticket to a better life? Do we believe that? If not, then I suppose whatever we do for them is ok, since it won’t make any difference. If, on the other hand, we believe that some of them, at least, can change their fate through hard work and academic achievement, then have we any right to set any lower goal for our work with them?

As another example, what if, as Mary Craighead has described for me, some of these children come to school with no knowledge that the word "bird" applies to the creatures that fly in the sky? What if this is not an isolated instance, but symptomatic of wide and deep verbal deficits. In that case, would it be poor pedagogy to focus, in the early grades, on spending more time on spoken, written, and mathematical language? Especially since, by 6^th grade or so, maybe earlier, Ms. Collins has them reading Shakespeare? Also, I think it should be noted that this story was about a school in its infancy. As the writer noted, things may well be different as students move up who have been in the school for several years.

Finally, who should make these decisions? Let us suppose we have a leader in this system who believes strongly in the MC Way, and wants to implement it in a Nashville School. Let’s suppose she has the credentials and experience to justify principalship, and, through some discussions with like-minded teachers, has indications she can attract a staff willing to learn enough, substantively and pedagogically, to implement this. Whose approval should she have to seek? Helen Brown’s? Bill Wise’s? The Board’s? I think obviously the latter. I’m beginning to wonder if we don’t need to create a method for this type of innovation to be broached, promoted, approved and implemented after clearing only the hurdle of the Board, and then subject only to a requirement that the proposed program have shown success somewhere. The school would be held directly accountable to the Board for meeting our Accountability Framework, modified if appropriate by agreement with the Board to meet unique programmatic components. We certainly couldn’t hold the Director accountable for a school outside his control.

Would something like this be a good thing? How could we implement it? What do you think?

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Dave,

I am strong believer in developmental appropriate education for all children. My concern with Marva Collin’s approach is that its premise is built on external controls of student behavior and motivation and does not help children internalize the motivation to learn. Does the restrictive setting help kids focus on reading and writing? I suspect that in the short run that it does. I am not sure that in the long run it provides students with the capabilities to be independent learners who can synthesize information and apply it to new learning experiences. More to the point, at a time when we are all concerned with equity in schools, I’m very happy that I personally am not responsible for subjecting other people’s children to a learning experience that I would never consider for my own children!

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Dear ______________,

Why is it that it is always those of us whose kids allegedly don’t need such structure who reject it for those who may. Why is it that it is the professionals who are most familiar with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who have to fight against the central office staff, administrators and experts to do what they know is best for the kids they teach? Look at the list:

Gertrude Williams at Barclay School in Baltimore: She fought for years to get the Calvert School (private) curriculum for her kids. Only when a Mayor of Baltimore listened to her did she get the support she needed. (One superintendent told her Calvert was "a rich man’s curriculum," to which she replied, "I wouldn’t look for a poor man’s curriculum."

AFT Research on Barclay

Al Shanker Column on Barclay

Marva Collins: run out of Chicago schools by jealous teachers and inept administrators

Thaddeus Lott and Direct Instruction in Houston: subjected to an investigation for cheating when Direct Instruction produced gains with his inner-city kids which were too high for the central office to swallow.

See William Raspberry’s Column on why teachers don’t like DI and its achievements in Houston

Jaime Escalante: never once the teacher of the year in California because of jealousy and an ideology of instruction that rejected his methods.

Here’s an interview with Escalante that reads, in part:

Jaime Escalante is best known from the 1988 feature film Stand and Deliver,

which chronicled his efforts to raise standards at predominatly Hispanic

Garfield High School in East Los Angeles by training his students to take

the Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus test. Expectations had been very low

for Garfield students, but Escalante changed that. By 1987 Garfield was

ranked fourth in the country in the number of students taking the AP

Calculus test. It wasn’t easy. Escalante was demanding of his students,

abrasive with his colleagues, unrelenting in his insistence that

everyone-including himself-pursue excellence. By 1991, he had been ousted as

chair of the Mathematics Department

Even Mary Craighead at Project Reflect here in Nashville uses a MUCH more

focused, structured approach than our public schools will allow.

So, what’s the bottom line? We don’t care if they don’t learn to read and write, so long as the instructional methodology meets our approval? How are they to become life-long learners if they don’t learn initially? Why is it that those who want children to be joyful learners sometimes fail to understand that they must be learners first? As one commentator put it:

"Despite their unpopularity among education-school faculty, instructivist

methods seem to produce solid results, especially for children who need help

in learning to read, write, and cipher. They start by assuming that the

teacher knows something that children need to learn. They rely on carefully

planned and purposeful teaching. They hinge, above all, on high-quality

instruction by knowledgeable instructors. That’s why we call this philosophy

instructivism."

That author then goes on to list many of the struggles of the schools I’ve noted above. For some reason, public schools seem to have a hard time coming to grips with the success of these approaches and duplicating them.

Finally, from everything I read, it appears most young children enjoy the structured group activity, the questioning for meaning, the stories with morals, and everything else that goes into the Marva Collins approach.

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End of exchange. If you got this far, I’m amazed. Let me know what you think.

Dave Shearon

BOE Member