Modeling Success in Virginia Schools
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9 responses to “Modeling Success in Virginia Schools”
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I agree with you that many Virginia school divisions are not doing a good job teaching reading. The Success Academy model looks to be a good one. The numbers bear that out. However, comparing the Success Academy curriculum with Virginia’s SOL is comparing apples and oranges. The SOL is intended to set out the goals for reading instruction, not a guide of how to meet those goals, which is what the Success Academy model is. How to meet the SOL goals is up to each teacher in Virginia. There is no model curriculum or guide on how to do that (at least, none that I know about). Maybe that is the problem in Virginia and what was being addressed in the Virginia Literacy Act (HB 319), which the General Assembly has passed. Our friend Matt Hurt from Southwest Virginia has expressed a lot of concern over the state providing a model for teachers to use, however.
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“The SOL is intended to set out the goals for reading instruction, not a guide of how to meet those goals, which is what the Success Academy model is.”
My point is that the results suggest we are not doing it right.
Another observation. I used the literacy SOL and the parallel documentation from S/A. I did not mean to suggest that elementary school literacy is the only subject for which the S/A model is similarly documented and works. They have their own instructions for every class at every level of school from K-12.
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I agree with you that we are not doing it right in some schools. I realize that literacy was only an example and the S/A model applies to other subjects.
By the way, I had a mistake in the passage you quoted (correctly). It should have been “The SOL is intended to set out the goals…” I have made the correction in my original comment.
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Dick, I agree. The SOL is what is to be taught, not curricula of how it will be taught. There are many reading curricula out there. Finding the right one to meet your students needs is difficult as kids all learn differently. Go back and search the now defunct Reading Programs from the federal grants of the 80’s, 90’s, and early 00’s. They all look pretty much the same and much like the Success Academy. We learned a lot from Reading First in the early 00’s. I am not saying that JS is wrong, I am saying that it is apples to oranges.
The program selected has to work for your students and teachers. New teachers like explicit models like Direct Instruction. Say A, then B then C. As a teacher, I wanted more flexibility and would have left if I was told to teach Direct Instruction. Yet, I have actually visited classrooms where it worked well. It really depends on so many things.
I loved teaching reading to K-4, but not so much in Grade 5-6. Just me, not everyone. I had a friend who could make 6th graders recite poetry. Just as kids are different, so are teachers. Different skill sets may require different methods.
Success Academy has been successful because the kids must feel wanted and they are motivated to learn. That is what makes the difference, not the program, the people who teach the kids.
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I very respectfully disagree Kathleen. You are a true expert. But what did you see in Richmond or Petersburg schools that makes you think they will achieve S/A levels of student achievement?
The S/A has been unimaginably successful because it’s methods work in all of the urban S/A schools with all of their thousands of teachers because the principals allow no deviation from the system. The whole system.
Virginia’s glaring failure in k-12 public education is with poor urban and suburban black and brown kids packed into bad schools even in some otherwise high achieving divisions much less Richmond.
S/A educates those kids like no American schoolever.
I suggest we try it their way.
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I agree that we need schools like Success Academy, but outside the realm of school boards that don’t do what is best for kids. If I have a brain tumor, I am not going to a foot doctor. Kids need experts, like Success Academy who know how to teach in ways the kid learns, not more of the same that got them nowhere.
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When Eva Moskowitz, the founder of S/A, was asked why her system works, her short answer was:
“Well, first of all, I would just say America and New York has intellectually underestimated children, and we don’t. We create a culture where we really believe in our kids. And so I would say that one of the things we do is just set incredibly high expectations for our kids. But we also have a fairly rigorous curriculum. You know what we’re doing in third grade math, often other district schools don’t do until fifth or sixth grade. We have extraordinarily high rates of college admissions. It’s a hundred percent, and kids can’t get there without being driven.”
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We are saying the same thing. Some kids can do well in a public school. Some don’t. It is for those kids that Success Academies work. We have to have other options outside of school boards who can make decisions for most kids well, but are podiatrists when neurologists are needed. The boards don’t want to give up the bucks.
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How does the new system pan out with SAT/ACT scores? Are students improving? Where can we find data going back 10+ years? My kids are less challenged and are learning less. Please don’t point out race or financial advantage/disadvantage. Show where kids are improving or getting worse.
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