Education Bookcast

Last episode, we saw a meta-analysis of comprehensive school reform (CSR) programmes. The best-performing programmes are Success for All, Direct Instruction, and the Comer School Development Program. The episode in this book concerns the Comer School Development Program (SDP), covering its philosophy and implementation. The focus of the SDP is on two main themes: improving relationships within the school; and thinking of all the ways in which child development can be fostered at school, known as the six developmental pathways (physical, language, ethical, social, psychological, and cognitive). The SDP is based on nine elements, split into three groups. There is the "who", which are the teams that are formed to guide the school and make sure all stakeholders are represented; the "what", which describes the operations that make change and solve problems in the school; and the "how", which are principles that govern the school culture and climate as a whole. The "who" are the School Planning and Management Team (SPMT), the Student Staff Support Team (SSST), and the Parent Team (PT). The "what" are the Comprehensive School Plan, professional development, and assessment & modification. The "how" is consensus, collaboration, and no-fault problem solving. The above nine principles are complex enough for me not to want to describe them in detail in this blurb, but numerous enough for me to want to put them here for reference for those who have already listened to the audio. I would like to thank Linda Darling-Hammond for contacting me to ask me to cover her book (and alerting me to the existence of the Comer SDP in the process), and for providing me with a free copy of her book for me to read. Enjoy the episode.

Comprehensive school reform (CSR) is a name for any set of policies that are simultaneously enacted in (usually a single) school for the purposes of school improvement. There are many different branded types of CSR program, including Core Knowledge, Direct Instruction, Montessori, Roots & Wings, School Development Program, and Success for All. This article is entitled Comprehensive School Reform and Achievement: A Meta-Analysis by Borman et al. It goes through all of the different types of comprehensive school reform programs that have been studied and identifies which ones are the most effective. Spoiler alert! It's the Comer School Development Program, Direct Instruction, and Success for All. For more details, take a listen. Enjoy the episode.

In the past three episodes, we have looked at three great teachers: basketball coach John Wooden, mathematics teacher Jaime Escalante, and primary school teacher Marva Collins. Each has their own domain of expertise (basketball, mathematics, and literature) and age of students (university, high school, and primary school). Are there any ways in which we can generalise about them? A list of features that tend to make teachers likely to be nominated as "favourite" teachers are given in You Haven't Taught Until They've Learned (the book about John Wooden), and they are mostly true of the above three that we've looked at in detail. Here is the list: They make learning engaging; They have a passion for the material; They have deep subject knowledge; They are extremely organised; They are intense; They know students need to be recognised for even small progress; They treat everyone with respect; They are fair; They believe that all students are natural learners; They make it implicitly known that they like being with their students; They place priority on individualised teaching. There are also some notable absences from this list, such as giving students autonomy, focusing on learning styles, teaching generalisable skills rather than content knowledge, and having a student-centred approach. I also made my own list of features that they have in common, as follows: They use drills; They focus on fundamentals; They are highly didactic (rather than using e.g. group work or problem-based learning); They hold power/authority, and lead the class; They show warmth/love to their students; They take responsibility for the students' learning; They are very dedicated; Unfortunately, they are poorly paid; They have long-term effects on their students. Enjoy the episode.

In this final part of the series on legendary teacher Marva Collins, we look at her educational philosophy, i.e. things that she believed and that impacted her decisions and actions in and around the classroom, but that are hard to perceive directly and that are best understood by listening to what she said rather than looking at what she did. The key points concern the idea of relevance, the impact of progressive education, creativity, and the effect and prevalence of labelling children. I hope you've drawn as much inspiration and as many lessons from Marva Collins as I have. She was truly an exceptional teacher who forged her own path, shattered limiting expectations, and changed lives. Enjoy the episode.

In this part of the series on Marva Collins, we look at her curriculum and some elements of the way that she taught. The most surprising thing is the kind of literature that she was presenting to such young children - authors such as Dostoyevsky, Plato, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dante, Tolstoy, Emerson, and Poe. Also, I managed to find a documentary about Marva Collins which shows how some of her students turned out over a decade later. It's on YouTube, here is the link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8b1Behi9FM. Enjoy the episode.

When she was working at Delano Elementary School in Chicago, Marva would often be given the "worst", most disruptive students, and in her 14 years there she developed a way of dealing with them. By the time she set up her own school, she was a master of helping them get out of their destructive cycle and working to achieve their academic and social potential, which was way beyond what anybody had expected. In this episode, we look at several examples of Marva Collins dealing with particularly recalcitrant children. She is the expert here, so it's best to leave the talking to her. Enjoy the episode.

In one chapter of the book Marva Collins' Way, we are treated to a fly-on-the-wall view of Marva Collins' first day with a new class in a new school year. This is such a valuable resource that I've devoted one full part of this episode on Marva Collins to it. It demonstrates how she builds trust, sets the tone, motivates children, and gets them to believe in themselves. It is her school year and her educational philosophy in a nutshell, and therefore very much worth spending some time on. Enjoy the episode.

Marva Collins is the best teacher I have ever seen or heard of. Working in a poor black neighbourhood in Chicago in the 1970s, she took on the worst of the worst - kids described as "unteachable", either actively defiant towards school or considered so learning-disabled as to never be able to learn to read - and within a space of one to two years had them reading and enjoying Shakespeare, Chaucer, Plato, and Dostoyevsky; exhibiting an insatiable thirst for knowledge; and reading ten books each over the summer break. These children were on average around eight years old. Talking about Marva Collins forms the capstone of our biographies of great teachers. I've mentioned Marva Collins many times on the podcast before. The first mention was way back in episode 1, as she appears in the book Mindset. Now I'm finally going into her work in detail. Part of the reason it took me so long to get around to this was that I was simply intimidated by the amount of work that I knew this would take - I've split up this episode into five parts, totalling around four hours of audio. There is just so much to say. In this part, I talk about her background and look at some of her achievements to whet your appetite for a more in-depth look at how she did what she did. Enjoy the episode.

After the events of summer 1982, when Jaime Escalante's Advanced Placement Calculus students were accused of cheating and then vindicated on a re-test, Escalante had become famous first in local and then national news. The original story about an American institution, ETS, allegedly discriminating based on race to accuse the latino students of cheating, turned into a story of surprise and applause as an "academic sinkhole" like Garfield High managed to have such a large number of students taking AP Calculus. The events of 1982 inspired a film about Jaime Escalante, Stand and Deliver, which spread his fame to an even wider audience. But the film came too early. In the years following 1982, calculus at Garfield High continuedto grow with the same momentum, reaching ever greater heights. After the 18 students taking the exam in 1982, there were 33 in 1983, a whopping 68 in 1984 (more than double the previous year!), and two years later, in 1986, a staggering 151 students took the test, more than eight times as many as in the year that brought Escalante fame. While AP Calculus was in overdrive, other AP programs also began to thrive. Garfield High now offered Advanced Placement courses in History, English, Biology, Physics, French, Government, and Computer Science, with a growing number of students taking these year on year. Within twelve years, Garfield High had transformed from a gang-ridden hole on the brink of being shut down, to an academic beacon with a waiting list of 400 students. It is truly a story worth telling. Enjoy the episode.

After a short time working at Garfield High School, Jaime Escalante was asked to take over Advanced Placement calculus. Advanced Placement is a type of examination which offers "college credit", meaning that those who pass have a reduced number of courses that they need to take to get a degree. It's a hard exam, basically. Escalante wasn't sure about the programme at first, but soon became keen to take it over and expand it. He felt that it gives an objective view of his work and that of his students, and gives them something to strive towards and be competitive about. Escalante worked hard to push his students. He used every tactic he could think of, from bribes to threats to guilt trips; and he extended study time to before school, after school, lunchtime, and summer break. He worked so hard that one day he had a heart attack, and worked right through it. This story did much to add to his mystique. The calculus classes expanded: first 5, then 8, then 15, and in 1982 there were 18. That was a fateful year, when his students would be accused of cheating by the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The accusation would draw attention to this burgeoning calculus programme in what all had assumed to be an academic backwater, and national fame followed. But Escalante would not rest on his laurels. Enjoy the episode.