Nicole Garcia, MEd’11 (left), Community Development and Action, and Jill Robinson, Community Research and Action PhD candidate

A professor at Peabody once said in class that research is advocacy just as much as handing out a pamphlet is advocacy. On May 26, 2011, we both saw our research turned into advocacy on a scale that few graduate student researchers ever get to experience.

When either of us tells someone the subject we have spent many hours researching and writing about, a puzzled look often appears. For when you bring the issue of human sex trafficking into a conversation, you can’t just brush that aside and then talk about the weather. Some questions that immediately follow include:

Slavery still exists? Sure, maybe at a small scale and in the deepest darkest depths of impoverished countries, or in the backyards of lunatics. But widespread? And that doesn’t happen in the United States, right?

Sex trafficking is a problem that few people want to talk about because everyone thinks that it’s an issue “over there.” It is not, and we were given a great opportunity to work with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) to help prove that it not only happens in the United States, but it also happens in our own backyard.

Jill began researching the topic eight years ago when she first heard about it and was just as perplexed about its existence as many people still are today. She spent much of her master’s program researching the issue and did her thesis on public perceptions of human trafficking in Moldova. Nicole became aware of the issue during her undergraduate study and spent most of her graduate program looking at the issue as it occurs in the United States. She is passionate about the issue as it occurs in the United States, because there are so few resources available for victims to fully recover, largely because people don’t believe it occurs here. For both of us, it is an ultimate form of injustice for one human to exploit and deny the freedom of another.

In the fall of 2010, we were contacted by the TBI to consult on a statewide survey to determine the extent of human sex trafficking in the state. We used the federal definition of human sex trafficking, which is “a for-profit sex act that is induced by force, fraud or coercion OR in which the person performing such an act is under the age of 18 years.” Awareness of the issue has grown nationally and locally, thus prompting the state legislature to pass Public Chapter Number 1023, in order to “study human sex trafficking, the improvements that should be made to existing laws relative to human sex trafficking and the impact of human sex trafficking on children and youth in this state. …”

Throughout several meetings we worked with the TBI in the role of academic researchers to assist with the creation of the survey as well as help edit pieces of the report. The TBI sent out the survey to representatives from law enforcement, social service agencies, district attorneys’ offices and guardian ad-litems. When the surveys were completed, we met again as a team to go through results and organize the report. We were able to contribute our past research experiences to add a literature review for the study. We also compiled a list of non-profit organizations statewide that provide education about and services for victims of human trafficking. The study was released with results that surprised many, showing that there is a great deal of human sex trafficking of both adults and minors in Tennessee. Just a few short weeks after the report was released, the Tennessee legislature revisited the issue, passing HB35/SB64 and HB154/SB69. Essentially, these bills changed state law so that the penalties for the promotion and solicitation of juvenile prostitution are tougher.

It was a pretty easy sell. The sexual exploitation of kids is obviously wrong, however, one of our legislative victories was the decriminalization of juvenile prostitutes. That has created a new challenge. If minors are not held in any kind of custody, where do they go? Presently there are few resources to help victims of human trafficking recover, thus creating a system within which they often return to their pimp/trafficker or the situation that made them vulnerable in the first place. Furthermore, adult victims of sex trafficking were not included in the new legislation. That’s a tougher sell, because of the competing public perceptions of adult prostitution.

Being a part of a major policy change, especially when it comes to changing state law, feels like a career highlight for us action-oriented researchers. It is satisfying to know that the work we put in contributed to a change that is intended to combat, or at least mitigate, a particularly sinister injustice. However, when the dust settles, and the adrenaline has stopped pumping, we are faced with the unintended consequences of our good intentions. Our next challenge? After being a part of this policy change, where do we go from here?

New research from Peabody finds that preschool teachers’ use of sophisticated vocabulary and analytic talk about books, combined with early support for literacy in the home, can predict fourth-grade reading comprehension and word recognition.

The findings, published in Child Development and included in a review article in the August 19, 2011, edition of Science, present evidence that there are lasting, complex and mutually reinforcing effects that flow from strong early childhood classrooms.

“We need to take very seriously the importance of teaching language in the preschool years,” says David Dickinson, author of the study and professor of education.

“It’s easy to look at tangible accomplishments such as counting or letter recognition but much harder to measure richness of vocabulary and language ability. Parents should take a careful look at what is happening in their kids’ preschool classrooms and see if the teacher is engaging the child in conversations that are rich in language.”

This latest research, co-authored by Michelle Porche of Wellesley College, reports results of a longitudinal study that examined in detail language experiences of children from low-income homes when they were in preschool. The authors sought to identify influences of these early experiences on children’s language and literacy at the end of kindergarten and again in fourth grade.

Preschool teachers were audio- and videotaped, teachers were interviewed and classrooms were observed for their support of language and literacy. Children were individually assessed, and parents were interviewed to learn about their education level and income and any family practices that foster language and literacy.

Although the sample was small, the researchers found robust relations between early classroom support for language and later language and reading ability. The authors also found long-term effects of the home, as children whose parents reported providing more support for early literacy had stronger vocabulary scores in fourth grade. Finally, the structural complexity of children’s language at age 3 was associated with fourth-grade vocabulary.

Ginette Cambronero’s preschool class of 3- and 4-year-olds responds to questions she asks during group reading time. Cambronero teaches at the Vanderbilt Child Care Center.

One preschool teacher behavior which predicted children’s growth was the frequency of sophisticated vocabulary use during informal conversations. Such exposure predicted children’s kindergarten vocabulary, which correlated with fourth grade word reading. Teachers’ use of sophisticated vocabulary correlated with children’s kindergarten print ability, and it is through that skill that the early vocabulary exposure indirectly affected grade-four reading comprehension.

Group book reading in preschool also had long-term associations with later reading. Conversations which included analysis of stories and discussion of words and teacher corrections of incorrect responses predicted receptive vocabulary at the end of kindergarten. This enhanced vocabulary ability was associated with better vocabulary in fourth grade. Also, preschool teachers’ efforts to hold a child’s attention was related to fourth-grade comprehension skills.

“While raising the level of interaction in group activities is important, some of my stronger results in this study are seen from informal interactions between teacher and child, showing the importance of elevated language during times such as play and lunch,” Dickinson says.

Dickinson notes that in recent years preschool has become more of an academic setting, where previously the focus was primarily on socialization and kids’ adjustment to groups. He will begin working with Nashville preschool programs to develop an approach that can help provide teachers with skills to effectively build language among their students. Specifically, he will examine how teachers can use discussions surrounding book reading in combination with teacher support for dramatic play to build language abilities.

He suggests that parents carefully examine the nature of interactions happening at their child’s preschool to see if teachers are engaged in conversations that will stretch language and knowledge.

“I would want to know how often the children are read to,” Dickinson says. “What are some of the books read to the children? Are they books that have three words to a page, or are they books that are similar to what you know you can read to them at home?

“And I would want to know what opportunities the children have for play, and what does the teacher do during that time? Does the teacher actively engage small groups in conversation? You want teachers who are actively engaged without taking over the play. Look to see if the teachers engage children in conversations that take on and build their interests.”

Today, once again, teachers find themselves grappling with change, as the nation responds to tough economic times and inadequate student achievement by asking schools to do more and more with strained resources. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 37 states cut their per-student K-12 funding to local districts this year. Teachers face high-stakes testing in the classroom, new evaluation processes, combative public debates on unionization and limits to collective bargaining, a new licensing landscape that can pit traditionally educated teachers against those who have taken alternative routes, and school competition that turns up the heat on underperforming schools. While the potential for positive outcomes is real, in the short term, all this change creates a stressful, unsure environment in which to start a career.

Peabody’s faculty members know the pressure their newly minted teachers will face. Through their work—from innovations in curricula to research on issues such as teacher retention and satisfaction—Peabody responds to the evolving teaching environment and influences the policies that shape it.

Accountability and evaluation

Its vocal opponents notwithstanding, standardized testing is entrenched as the primary method that government officials and the public use to evaluate school and student performance. There are controversies—the federal Department of Education’s decision to grant waivers to districts that won’t meet No Child Left Behind’s 100 percent proficiency target by 2014, for instance—but none that threaten testing’s prominence in the public education system. Teachers who hope to succeed must feel comfortable with the use of metrics as an evaluative tool.

“We at Peabody have an increasing attention to assessment and using data to inform instruction,” says Marcy Singer-Gabella, professor of the practice of education and associate chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning. “We had a diagnostic approach to teaching, but we are expanding out in our use of resources to make sure that candidates are familiar with the tools they’ll find in schools and districts.”

The trick, however, is to use standardized data as a tool without losing sight of what research and experience show to be the most effective teaching methods.

“There is always the concern that tests are not aligned with what we know will sustain good student learning outcomes over time,” Singer-Gabella says. “How do you manage the balance between deep learning and more formulaic learning? We have research that says students who can reason deeply about subject matter and can communicate about it—these are the classrooms in which student achievement scores go up. We try to prepare our students not to narrow curriculum to testing demands.”

An important element of this is subject-specific pedagogy.

“It combines a rich understanding of subject matter with a rich understanding of learners, of what makes the material accessible to learners,” Singer-Gabella says. “We turn people into diagnosticians, so that they carefully evaluate students’ developing understanding.”

Teachers also face increased pressure from new evaluation processes that assess their performance according to their students’ standardized test scores and through direct appraisal in the classroom.

Marcy Singer-Gabella, professor of the practice of education and Peabody’s associate chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning, believes that standardized data can be used without sacrificing what research and experience show to be effective teaching methods.

“In Tennessee this year, stemming from the Race to the Top, we have an accountability system that’s going into place that’s pretty intense,” says Kathy Ganske, professor of the practice of literacy and director of elementary education. “Hopefully the outcome will be exceptional teaching, but it’s not an easy process. There’s a lot of stress over it.”

The process determines teachers’ evaluation scores from three inputs: observation by principals or other instructional leaders (50 percent of score); student growth—i.e. value-added—data (35 percent); and student achievement data (15 percent). Established teachers are observed four times a year; new teachers, classified as apprentice teachers, are observed six times per year. At least half of the observations must be unannounced. Teachers receive a rating on a scale from one to five, and then these scores are applied to personnel decisions, such as professional development, tenure attainment and dismissal. For example, tenure eligibility will require a four- or five-level rating in each of the previous two years.

Fewer than two months into the new school year, complaints surfaced in the press that the new regimen overwhelms principal schedules, causes teachers to shift their focus from their students to their own evaluations, and even leads some teachers to quit.

The Murfreesboro City Schools went so far as to write a letter to the state’s education commissioner asking for relief: “We join your commitment to closing the achievement gap. However, we are having grave difficulty accepting the distraction from student learning that the current evaluation system demands. Therefore, we are asking you to revise the process … .”

Ganske says the teacher performance assessments (TPA) that Peabody students undergo help prepare the school’s licensure candidates for rigorous evaluation. TPA, which evaluates a candidate’s readiness for full-time teaching through an exhaustive set of reviews and self-assessments, was first developed in California in response to state law. Peabody is part of the consortium developing and piloting TPA in Tennessee.

“While it’s somewhat of a grueling process, it’s an excellent assessment,” Ganske says. “It’s scored by reviewers who are specifically trained in TPA. When students do not perform satisfactorily, we provide opportunities for them to remediate.”

Ganske adds, “Because we know they have TPA as part of their student teaching, we’re also threading things into our courses to prepare them, such as collecting video of practicum experiences, which can be looked at with a critical eye.”

There is concern, however, that the state’s evaluation process will make it harder for Peabody to place student teachers.

“Our veteran mentor teachers are still fine with having student teacher and practicum students, but others are nervous,” says Kimberly Paulsen, associate professor of the practice in special education and president-elect of the Tennessee Association for Colleges of Teacher Education. “They’re afraid to have novice teachers coming in, afraid they’re going to be evaluated poorly, or that achievement won’t be where it needs to be.”

Charters: competition and opportunity

High-stakes testing, which identifies weak schools and increases the demand for choice, has steadily ramped up support for charter school alternatives.

Some see charters as siphoning talent, funds and confidence from the wider public systems that they can never fully replace. In this view, the majority of teachers, still at traditional schools, are hurt by the resource drain and by weakened teachers unions that lose membership numbers. Others tout charters as public education’s best hope: they will provide superior schools and improve a district’s existing schools by incentivizing them through competition.

Brooke Fox Allen, BS’09, MEd’10, has taught at both a public special education school as well as a charter school. She is currently director of student supports at Nashville Prep, a new charter school within the Metro Nashville Public School system.

Research suggests the truth lies somewhere between. The best charters do phenomenal work; most have metrics comparable to traditional schools.

“I’m all for charter schools,” says Barbara Stengel, professor of the practice and director of secondary education. “It’s great if you can get people to build schools around a commitment. But the point of charter schools should be places of experimentation, so they can try things out that can come back and be adopted. Take KIPP. [Supporters] want every school to be a KIPP school. But we’re finding that good schools have good instructional leaders, whether they’re public or charter, rich or poor schools.”

For teachers, the charter school environment can be simultaneously invigorating and exhausting. Teacher attrition rates are high.

“I think there’s more freedom in how we implement programs and policies and things that are really good for our students,” says Brooke Fox Allen, BS’09, MEd’10, director of student supports at Nashville Prep. Allen taught for a year at Cora Howe Exceptional School in the Metro Nashville Public Schools before taking on a more administrative role at her charter.

“We are able to do things that are research-based that big districts aren’t able to do, because they don’t have support from the teachers, students, parents, the government,” Allen says. “But we’re governed by our board. We have a longer school day and school year, and our teachers go through so much more of a process. We keep data on everything, and then change policy in response to the data. It’s exciting to be part of a school that can change and improve in response to our students.”

Allen acknowledges, though, why many new teachers do not stay long in the profession. Between the high-stakes testing, the new evaluation system being implemented and the hours, time and energy it takes to be an effective teacher, the profession takes a toll.

“I don’t like that it’s so transitory for our students. It’s becoming a two- or three-year career,” Allen says. “But I can understand it, too, because I’m pretty stressed.”

Chris Barbic, BS’92, has taken a role that puts Tennessee at the forefront of charter school innovation. Barbic founded Houston’s YES Prep Public Schools, now a system of charters on eight campuses. In May 2011, Tennessee hired him as its first Achievement School District (ASD) superintendent. The ASD essentially will function as a district of charter schools spread across the state. School operators had until early October to submit applications to run charters for the ASD in 2012.

Power plays

Of challenges to teachers’ power within the public education status quo, none has erupted more angrily into the public square than efforts to limit collective bargaining by public sector employees. This was on most dramatic display in Wisconsin, where a capitol showdown between union supporters and the governor became a national spectacle. Other states have passed similar measures, or bills aimed specifically at teachers.

For now, the debate on whether unions help or hurt educational quality relies more on ideology than research. The relationship between unions, school policy, teacher performance and student learning is extremely complicated to measure; research thus far remains inadequate to drive decision making.

“There is a long-running narrative that teachers unions are bad for schools,” says Jason Grissom, professor of public policy and education. He notes that on average it suggests negative impact, but that the evidence is mixed, and that the scarcity of empirical data makes conclusions unreliable.

Last year, Grissom co-authored with Katharine Strunk of the University of Southern California a study that found evidence that stronger unions, through their power during collective bargaining, have greater influence over district policy, “negotiating contracts that are more constraining on the authority of administrators.” The study noted the potential implications of this finding, positive and negative. On the one hand were issues commonly associated with union power, such as administrators’ reduced control over personnel decisions. On the other were ways in which union influence might benefit districts. These included “the protection of teacher working conditions, which may decrease teacher turnover and enhance teacher productivity.”

“It is beyond the scope of this work to assess how contract restrictiveness affects student outcomes, although this area clearly deserves further attention,” Grissom wrote.

“One of the real difficulties when you study unionism—say, whether it positively or negatively affects student achievement—is finding your comparison group,” Grissom explains. ”In a lot of states, all the districts are unionized or not. And you can’t compare one state to districts in other states because the systems are so different. Membership gets confounded with so many other things that happen in schools.”

Education schools vs. new licensure paths

Like charter schools, alternative paths to a teaching career offer opportunities for innovation. Around the country, programs such as Teach for America have brought energy, enthusiasm and passion to struggling schools.

Still, conflict can arise when such alternatives serve not as complements to traditional professional training, but as rebuttals or threats.

“Last year, when I was looking for a job, Metro had put a freeze on hiring because they had to hire Teach for America teachers first,” Brooke Allen remembers. “I was livid. I’d been through five years of schooling and had a master’s. I was so frustrated. But then I got hired pretty early once that was lifted, and I didn’t teach with any nontraditionally licensed teachers
last year.”

Since moving to Nashville Prep, Allen has experienced Teach for America from a new perspective.

“I work in a world right now where our music and social studies teachers and I are the only traditionally trained teachers,” Allen says. “If you go into many of the Metro schools, it’s the Teach for America people who are most energetic and dynamic in their jobs and making more gains than many of the teachers who’ve been there for years. But then they leave.”

A study cited by Teach for America found that 61 percent of the program’s surveyed alumni continued teaching for at least a third year. Thirty-six percent taught longer than four years.

“I think Teach for America does some really good things,” Singer-Gabella says. “They recruit great talent, and get people excited about education. But one thing you see in alternative programs is persistence is not strong. Five years out, 70 percent of [Peabody] students who are recommended for licensure are still out teaching or are in masters programs with the desire to go back to the classroom.”

Robert Lundin, EdD ’09, who until recently served as Teach for America’s national vice president for university partnerships and now is a visiting professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, credits the program with changing his professional trajectory.

“I was one of the folks that arrived at Teach for America thinking this was going to be a two-year detour in my life, and education turned out to be my life’s calling. I loved the feeling that I had watching my students progress one by one,” says Lundin, who worked with Barbic at YES Prep after finishing his program commitment.

“In Teach for America, you take these two years and focus yourself laser like on student achievement,” Lundin says. “The organization makes it clear that whether you do this for two or 32 years, you need not only to embrace but fully understand the impact your role as an educator will have on students, schools and the communities you’re serving.”

No end in sight

There is no sign that the pressure on teachers will let up any time soon. Budgets are still tight. Too many schools still fall short on achievement. Socioeconomic policies that might address the conditions that impact students outside the classroom—providing the “wraparound services” that they need—remain political poison.

“As a teacher in this brave new world—highly politicized, contested and controversial—you will not survive unless you can navigate the system,” Stengel says. She tells students that it takes a lot more than expert classroom instruction.

“How do you make your way?” Stengel asks. “You have to be someone who can articulate what you are doing and why. You have to be a community builder, and you have to be an articulate student advocate. You have to identify what is getting in the way of your students getting what they need. You won’t be a good teacher until you can do these things.”

As it turns out, these questions are not just “what ifs” thanks to several groundbreaking education technology platforms under development in labs across the Peabody campus. These innovations allow cutting-edge researchers to harness what Pratim Sengupta, innovator of the technology described, calls “the virtue in virtuality.”

Common among these developing platforms is their commitment to accessibility, focus on efficiency and effectiveness, and an emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) topics. A driving theme is a desire to free teachers up for more instructional time and, ultimately, improve learning outcomes.

Technological innovations always begin with a passion to tackle intransigent problems. Once a problem in need of a solution is identified, “then we ask, ‘To what extent could the use of technology make this more accessible to learners?’ The technology comes in on the back end,” says Andy Van Schaack, assistant professor of the practice of human and organizational development.

Many steps follow prior to implementation—from designing technology to data generation to extensive testing. The ultimate question is always how well the technology works.

“There are a lot of teaching technologies that are worse than nothing,” Van Schaack says. Of utmost import is which strategies provide an edge in the classroom. “I believe that the most effective instructional technologies are the ones that require the fewest changes in behavior on the part of the teachers and the learners,” he says.

A focus on science and math

In the design and testing stage is Sengupta’s Visual Multi-Agent Programming (ViMAP) platform. The idea behind ViMAP is to encourage students to use their intuitive knowledge rather than memorization to grasp complex science concepts through building computer programs that can model real-world phenomena.

Pratim Sengupta, assistant professor of teaching and learning, and Doug Clark, associate professor of science education, work on computer applications that allow students to use their intuitive knowledge rather than memorization to learn complex scientific concepts.

If scientists and mathematicians want to inspire a new generation of students to push the limits of human understanding, then that thrust has to begin in elementary school, according to Sengupta, assistant professor of teaching and learning. His driving passion is his belief that young children can learn difficult concepts.

“Here’s an interesting evolutionary question,” Sengupta says, “What if my fifth graders can learn stuff they are supposed to learn in college? What will the learning progression look like when these students move to advanced grades? These are the questions I want to answer, and I think that’s going to be my life’s work.”

A basic tenet for Sengupta, who also collaborates with Gautam Biswas, professor of computer science and computer engineering, is to begin with simple concepts such as movement and speed before progressing into the more difficult ones rather than teaching formulas right off the bat. “Why are we teaching them formulas when they should be building models, just like real scientists?” Sengupta asks.

Learning with ViMAP takes place on the screen without the need for expensive lab equipment or space. Through using ViMAP, students can also develop computational thinking, a hallmark of modern scientific expertise in almost any domain of science.

ViMAP consists of several modules currently under development in different disciplines, including physics (with a focus on mechanics and electricity), ecology and mathematics. With ViMAP-Mechanics, for example, students begin by exploring the concept of speed.

“We have created a programming toolkit that will allow them to move from a qualitative understanding to a more formal understanding of the equation of motion,” he says. “We are not discarding but leveraging their intuition.”

These new tools allow students to immediately practice the concepts they are learning in the classroom.

One way to increase practice time is to make it a game. Consider that the online computer game “World of Warcraft” attracts 12 million gamers, while only a tiny portion of that number enter STEM disciplines each year, says Doug Clark, associate professor of science education, who works with Sengupta on several grant projects.

Creating a mechanism to channel the teen-age obsession with gaming into an avenue for teaching scientific concepts is behind his work. Results from a fun but educational game he’s developed to teach core physics concepts are extremely encouraging. The game, “Surge,” is funded through a $450,000 National Science Foundation grant.

“Games are becoming a real possible avenue for learning, either in school or out of school,” Clark says. “Kids spend as much time out of school playing games and watching TV as they spend in school. If you can get anything out of those hours, it’s a huge windfall. We’ve helped kids make more progress on some measures in one-and-a-half hours than in a whole semester of college,” he says.

According to Clark, games are ripe for guiding students toward an intuitive understanding of basic physics concepts since many of them are about maneuvering through space, but games rarely allow for learning opportunities.

“What we’re trying to do is connect intuitive ideas to formal ideas so that they can actually learn something,” he says.

The ultimate goal is to help develop a core of students excited about STEM disciplines. “Every kid in the United States needs to learn about force and motion and Newton’s laws. But the way it’s done traditionally, kids just don’t get it,” Clark says. “Schools and traditional teaching tend to focus on abstract but very powerful ideas that are disconnected from students’ experiences.”

Certainly, games are not going to replace teachers, but Clark believes games can augment and reinforce what is happening in the classroom.

The efficiency experts

Saving time in the classroom so that teachers can focus more on instruction is one of the fundamental concepts of a math instruction program under development by Maria Mendiburo, research associate in electrical engineering and computer science, and Ted Hasselbring, research professor of special education. They have found a way to help teachers build deeper understanding in their students with a program using virtual manipulatives to learn fractions.

Ted Hasselbring, research professor of special education, and Maria Mendiburo, research associate in electrical engineering and computer science, are developing a math education computer application to teach fractions using virtual manipulatives.

As a Peabody graduate student, Mendiburo watched a presentation about Hasselbring’s groundbreaking Read 180 program and was inspired to apply the idea to math education and, more specifically, to learning fractions.

“Time’s a huge issue in schools,” says Hasselbring. “We need to maximize the time that kids are engaged in academic pursuits. We found that this methodology actually increased instructional time and the amount of time kids have to respond to the instruction.”

When teaching fractions by using physical manipulatives, there is a significant cost to purchasing the materials for multiple students, and it’s a hassle to store the material between lessons. Further, instructional time is often lost in distributing and collecting manipulatives, not to mention the problems that arise when pieces are lost or misplaced.

The first step, which was part of Mendiburo’s dissertation for her Ph.D. in leadership and policy studies at Peabody, was to find out whether virtual manipulatives actually work. She found a slight edge in the learning process using the virtuals over paper and, more important, greater efficiency.

Through a three-year, $1.5 million development and innovation grant from the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, Mendiburo and Hasselbring are working with Biswas and others to develop a program that is compatible with computers as well as the new iPad. The advantage of iPads is that children can approach them intuitively, using touch rather than clicking and dragging using a mouse, Hasselbring says. It allows virtual manipulatives to emulate physical manipulatives much more closely.

While many computer tutorials are individualized, this one is designed for whole class instruction, although it does allow students to progress at their own pace. It has added value for children who are struggling with learning, a career-long focus for Hasselbring.

The students are monitored and rewarded while immediate feedback on progress is provided to the teacher, allowing the teacher to spend less time on grading and more time on instructing students in areas of difficulty for them.

Learning fractions and many other concepts requires practice. A basic problem to be solved in a classroom is how to provide more practice time for students with feedback from the teacher—since practice is still one of the best ways to learn—without exponentially increasing the workload for the teacher or the cost to the school, Van Schaack says.

He is taking the challenge of finding ways to help teachers provide more and better feedback to their students in multiple subject areas by grading papers faster and more effectively through the use of smart pen technology.

Van Schaack is one of the inventors of a smart pen produced by Livescribe. The pen, called “Echo,” is a computer with built-in microphone, speaker and display. The pen captures everything a user hears or says and synchronizes it with what they write. A student just taps on a word or drawing in a notebook to play back the audio recorded at that moment.

Grading papers is always a huge time management issue for teachers. The smart pen technology could help teachers to provide spoken feedback in tandem with written feedback. This technology has potential applications for grading everything from calculus homework to essays to sheets of music. “When grading papers, I find that many students make the same mistakes. I can speed up grading considerably by copying and pasting 30-second spoken tutorials from a master list into their papers,” Van Schaack says.

Studies conducted by other researchers have found that teachers were able to provide two-and-a-half times more feedback in spoken form than in writing— in one quarter of the time. Students also felt more connected to their teachers.

Van Schaack fervently advocates mining existing research rather than reinventing the wheel at every step. “I’m a pragmatist,” Van Schaack says. “I want to have impact now.”

He tackles problems not just from the education angle but from a scientific and business side as well. He spent time working with Apple in higher education sales and found he couldn’t convincingly sell a product until he was certain that he understood its benefits. That led to an interest in research about technology and in developing new technologies that work to provide real solutions.

The smart pen technology also has the potential to help students who are blind study math and science—subjects that make significant use of equations, diagrams and other visual representations. The pen would be used to create raised line drawings annotated with audio recordings, called “audio-tactile graphics,” that could be accessed by tapping on them. That work is progressing through a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

From the lab to the classroom

There are multiple ways to bring education technology with an edge to the marketplace, and each of the researchers emphasize that no single way is necessarily the best.

Van Schaack was involved in forming a company, Livescribe, to sell and market the smart pen. He is senior science advisor, and Livescribe has a CEO and a team of business experts to manage the business side.
In the case of Sengupta and Clark, their plan is to make the technology available for free through a browser.

Hasselbring and Mendiburo hope to attract a publisher once their project is complete. A publisher has the business-side expertise to manage issues such as marketing and distribution, Hasselbring says.

Another avenue is seeking out investors. Frank Bonsal, MEd’93, MBA‘04, is a venture capitalist who searches out promising, emerging technologies for investment, reviewing “dozens and dozens” of opportunities annually. He sees a potential trend in bringing technologies to market that will provide instructional innovation for STEM disciplines, especially when combining one or more of those topics.

“It’s a newer trend and there aren’t that many people involved in it yet,” he says. No Child Left Behind, he predicts, also will continue to drive solutions.

Andy Van Schaack, assistant professor of the practice of human and organizational development, with the Livescribe smart pen that he helped to invent. The pen is a computer with built-in microphone, speaker and display so that a user can capture what is heard and synchronize it with what is written.

Bonsal spent nearly 15 years teaching and coaching in middle school and high school before joining Bonsal Capital, the venture capital firm founded by his father, Frank Bonsal Jr.

He eventually left the family firm to become a partner in New Market Venture Partners, specializing in information technology, education and healthcare. He also serves on the board of Questar Assessment Inc., which focuses on large-scale K-12 assessment, both from business services and online perspectives and is board observer at Moodlerooms, Inc and Starfish Retention Solutions Inc.

Education technology is still an emerging platform for most investors. Postsecondary platforms currently are the bigger success stories, but Bonsal predicts a brighter future for K-12 technologies in the next decade.

The most successful technologies are the ones that help teachers individualize learning, he says. “I taught in Charlottesville [Va.]. I had kids from a wide spectrum of ability, and I was supposed to teach all of those ranges. It’s pretty hard. You can really add value if you can create a Web medium and allow the user to personalize and individualize the speed with which students learn.”

Hasselbring, who has spent much of his career in education technology innovation, agrees that new instructional technologies must be effective at promoting advances in both teaching and learning.

“My biggest criticism is that a lot of developers of education technology have not paid attention to what we know about human learning,” he says. “What’s different about what we’re doing now is that we focus first on how humans learn. We know technologies can be helpful, but teachers don’t always use them. We’re trying to leverage our understandings and make [technologies] better and more efficient. If we do that, we’re going to have a much better outcome.”

Naomi Tyler, associate professor of the practice of special education, directs Peabody’s IRIS Center, which provides free, Web-based, instructional resources for educators and parents of special needs students.

Among the 23 lively students in Miss Smith’s third-grade class (all names have been changed) are several children with disabilities: Katie, who has dyslexia; Billy, who experiences occasional seizures; John, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and several students with behavioral problems. Meeting the needs of all her students is no small task. Yet at no time during Miss Smith’s college education did she learn about teaching children with disabilities. She is not alone.

In 2008 more than 5.6 million students with disabilities spent a large part of each school day in the nation’s general public school classrooms. But while inclusive classes have improved the education of those students, they also present major challenges for classroom teachers, many of whom receive little or no training in special education during their college careers.

Now a center named for the iris, for many years a symbol of Peabody College, has received national recognition for educating classroom teachers about struggling learners and students with disabilities.

The IRIS Center (an acronym for IDEA’04 and Research for Inclusive Settings) provides free, Web-based, interactive instructional resources for college faculty and other professionals preparing the next generation of educators, says co-director Naomi C. Tyler, associate professor of the practice of special education. IRIS is also used by professional development providers who work with teachers and principals in school settings. Parents also use the site, which had more than one million visitors worldwide last year.

Mary Little, associate professor and coordinator of graduate programs on exceptional students at the University of Central Florida, calls IRIS “a fabulous resource.”

“We use the modules to build collaboration between special education and content faculty across our college of education,” she says.

Last November IRIS was singled out as an exemplary center at the 35th anniversary celebration of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in Washington, D.C. Over the past 10 years, IRIS has been awarded two multiyear grants totaling $11.1 million from the U.S. Department of Education. The center has also received nearly $1.1 million in contracts from several states to develop specific learning materials.

Founded at Peabody in 2001, IRIS has two additional sites: IRIS-West at Claremont Graduate University in California and IRIS-East in Washington, D.C. The Claremont site, directed by Deborah D. Smith, handles dissemination and training components, while Judy Smith Davis at IRIS-East provides liaison with professional groups.

At Peabody’s IRIS-Central, two faculty members, six full-time and two part-time staff members manage the website and develop all instructional materials. The website, which includes interactive modules, case studies, information briefs, activities, podcasts, instructors’ tips and other resources, can be accessed without a login or password. The site contains features such as closed-captioning, transcripts and audio descriptions to make it accessible to individuals with disabilities.

IRIS modules feature the Star Legacy cycle, an instructional tool based on the “How People Learn” framework developed by former Peabody professor John Bransford, who currently holds the Shauna C. Larson Chair of Learning Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, Daniel Schwartz, now at Stanford, and others.

The case-based modules provide information on instructional and behavioral interventions and contain videos, interactive activities, interviews with experts, demonstrations of interventions and suggested resources for further study. Sample topics include behavior and classroom management, school improvement, and reading, literacy and language arts.

“The complexity of the modules has improved over time,” Tyler says. “The level of interactive sophistication has definitely increased since the earlier modules. They contain more video, interactive activities and opportunities for feedback. The technology enables college students and professionals to learn through a variety of formats.”

For example, students can read about how to implement a particular instructional or behavioral strategy, listen to an interview with the researchers who validated that practice, watch a video of a teacher demonstrating the practice in a classroom setting, and then engage in an interactive activity to assess their knowledge about the practice.

The Star Legacy Module is an instructional tool that provides the structure for IRIS training topics.

Kimberly Paulsen, associate professor of the practice of special education at Peabody, uses IRIS in her undergraduate classes and with mentors who supervise Nashville-area student teachers.
“I present two or three modules to the class,” Paulsen explains. “Then I assign a review, have them answer the questions, and write a report on what they learned and how they would use that knowledge in the classroom.”

Kristen Wong, a paraprofessional at a suburban Atlanta elementary school, was introduced to IRIS while an undergraduate at Georgia State University. “I found the modules very helpful,” she says. “I have been able to apply the [module] on the acting-out cycle almost daily in the classroom.”

In addition to training future and current teachers, IRIS also highlights the work of Peabody researchers, who help the staff develop, review and field test the instructional materials.

“IRIS is situated in an ideal location to develop training materials on best practices because we get to collaborate with Peabody’s stellar faculty,” Tyler says. “We are bridging the gap between research and practice by translating the latest research into practical applications that make sense to classroom teachers.”

For more information about IRIS, please go to http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu.

Shelton Quarles, BS’94, helps cut the ribbon on the renovation of Allie and Dawn Lopez’s home. Quarles’ IMPACT Foundation renovates the homes of at-risk, single-parent families in the Tampa area through their Home Blitz program.

Former linebacker Shelton Quarles coordinates pro scouting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Shaiza Rizavi is a New York portfolio manager who previously worked in international aid and development. Entrepreneur Jeremy Werthan runs a granite company in his native Nashville. Ryan Pickens teaches business at a small liberal arts college in North Carolina.

At first glance, these alumni do not seem to share much beyond their undergraduate major, human and organizational development. They came to Vanderbilt from diverse backgrounds and went on to pursue widely divergent careers. The causes that move them vary, but together they show that there are many different ways to serve community.

Shelton Quarles, BS ’94

As a top college athlete headed toward a pro football career, Shelton Quarles learned how to get things done.

“The demands of being a student and being in a sport—they taught me time management, to be efficient,” Quarles says.

Quarles’ pace did not slow during his 10 years as a linebacker for the Buccaneers, which included multiple playoff seasons and a Super Bowl championship in January 2003. Off the field, he found himself increasingly interested in community service.

“Coach [Tony] Dungy encouraged us to get out in the community, because they support us in such a major way,” Quarles says. “I started out doing a lot of different things—Easter egg hunts, events for the American Heart Association, various community-minded activities.”

In 2004, after several years in Tampa Bay, Quarles and his wife, Damaris, decided to focus their volunteer efforts. They established the IMPACT Foundation, which helps at-risk, single-parent families in the Tampa Bay area.

“My foundation is my passion. It’s near and dear to my heart,” says Quarles, who was born at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and grew up in Nashville. He knows first hand the difficulties single-parent families can face. “I was raised by a single parent,” Quarles says. “[My mom] was 15 when I was born. She’s always been supportive, and we have a great relationship.”

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist then tapped Quarles to chair the new Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority (TBARTA), established in 2007 to develop and implement a master plan to modernize the region’s transit system. Quarles had just stopped playing football; he was in his first year as a pro scout for the Buccaneers. Some questioned whether a former football player had the right skills to lead critical transportation policy, but Quarles won over the skeptics. By the end of his two-year tenure, the board had created a master plan and presented it in dozens of public forums. Successfully working across a seven-county region to develop potentially controversial, not to mention costly, transportation policy was no small feat.

“At the time it was the most powerful board formed by the legislature,” Quarles says. “I had four mayors, seven county commissioners and three other gubernatorial appointees under my leadership. It was pretty fun. It was a little bit different, though. It was politics.”

Quarles did not seek re-appointment to TBARTA after his first term. He is now the Buccaneers’ coordinator of pro scouting and concentrates his volunteer energy on his labor of love, the IMPACT Foundation. The organization has raised almost $700,000 for its work.

“One of our big programs is called Home Blitz,” Quarles says. “We find a single mother whose home is in disrepair and take the family out of the home for about a month. We add new floors, walls, roofs, landscaping, kitchens, baths—it’s basically a new house without taking the house down. The week of the reveal, we take them to Disney or Universal Studios, and then we bring them home.”

Quarles has a simple message to students wondering what they can do to get involved in their communities: “Just try it. You can always move on to the next thing if you don’t like it. You have to find your niche. But if you say you don’t know what you want to do, you’ll never do anything.”

Shaiza Rizavi, BS ’91

Shaiza Rizavi, BS’91, a portfolio manager with the New York firm of Gilder Gagnon Howe & Co., was first inspired to community service in her native city of Karachi, Pakistan.

Shaiza Rizavi was only 7 years old when she left Pakistan with her family, but her early memories of Karachi had lasting impact.

“Even in high school, I did a lot of community service, and I think part of the reason is that I came from Karachi,” Rizavi says. “You grow up there, you go into the city and see the poverty, and then you go home and sleep in a nice bed. It’s like the saying goes, ‘from those to whom much is given, much is expected.’”

As a student at Vanderbilt, Rizavi demonstrated her commitment to helping those in need. She worked at public defender’s offices in Nashville and Washington, D.C., with the homeless during Alternative Spring Break, and with a program to improve services for people with family members in prison. After graduation, thinking she might want to become a public defender, she took a job at a New York law firm. It did not suit.

“The work that I’d come from was problem solving: Were people’s needs getting addressed?” Rizavi says. “This job was a lot of paperwork. It wasn’t all that stimulating.”

So Rizavi took a leap. She bought a ticket to Thailand with the intention of finding a job in development once she got there. Soon she was evaluating programs designed to address child labor and prostitution in Thailand, Vietnam and throughout the region.

“So much of life is about risk,” Rizavi says. “It may not be the safest approach, but sometimes you have to explore to get where you’re going. It doesn’t really matter if you get it right or wrong—you can correct things as you go along.”

The work was rewarding, but emotionally difficult. After two years, Rizavi needed a break.

“I was a bit beaten down coming back from Thailand. Seeing life not work out for a lot of those children is hard,” Rizavi says. She returned to New York and entered Columbia Business School.

Today, Rizavi brings her passion for international development to her career as a portfolio manager at Gilder Gagnon Howe & Co., specializing in global securities. The busy mother of four also still finds time for community work. She serves on the advisory board of The Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School and volunteers with several local nonprofits.

Pakistan, the country that first inspired her, still holds a place in Rizavi’s heart. She plans to travel there soon and hopes to visit projects supported by the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit organization that uses investment as an international development tool.

Ryan Pickens, BS ’94

Ryan Pickens, BS’94, has been working on ways to revitalize the small Appalachian town of Mars Hill, N.C., utilizing aspects of social entrepreneurism.

Barely three years after coming to teach business in Mars Hill, N.C.—really a blink of the eye in Appalachian time—Ryan Pickens was coming up with ideas to help revitalize the economically struggling small town.

He bought the empty Mars Hill Theatre on Main Street in 2004. The following year, he purchased the boarding house next door. By 2009, he was running for mayor. He lost the race, 325 votes to 113, but it was a respectable showing considering he does not live in the town full time; he regularly commutes from Asheville.

Pickens, who teaches at Mars Hill College, now is focused on getting financial backing for his theater redevelopment project, which includes plans for restaurant and entertainment space. He hopes to contribute to the downtown’s revival and create new resources for the college and its students. He describes the project in terms of social entrepreneurism, envisioning a business that creates a modest profit, benefits the community and positively impacts the environment.

Pickens also refers to this in terms of a “triple bottom line”: profit, planet and people.

“It ties into the idea of buying local,” Pickens says, citing a study by the state’s commerce department that showed the area around Mars Hill losing tens of millions of retail dollars each year.

“People are driving to spend money. If you look at that from a social aspect, the community is not getting its needs met inside the community,” Pickens says. “If you look at it from an environmental aspect, people are polluting every time they fire up their cars.”

Pickens credits his parents with inspiring his civic involvement.

“I learned a lot about community service with my parents growing up. We were very involved with a shelter in Atlanta, helping people that were homeless. At one point we opened our own house up and had people living with us,” Pickens says. His father, John Pickens, JD‘71, founded the Georgia Justice Project, which provides criminal defense to the indigent, and now heads up the social justice organization Alabama Appleseed.

He also credits his education.

“My education at Vanderbilt and in human and organizational development helped me understand that organization is about helping people and taking care of people,” Pickens says. “My focus in life and business is about creating community.”

Jeremy Werthan, BS ’94

Jeremy Werthan, BS’94, co-founder of Werthan Granite, has taken an active role in community service in Nashville through the United Way and the Middle Tennessee Leadership Council for Youth Villages.

For Jeremy Werthan, philanthropy and service are, quite simply, facts of life. There may be times when you can do more, and times when you can do less, but you always do something.

Werthan learned this from his family, starting as a child.

“You have to get people into this giving philosophy early,” Werthan says. “That’s what happened to me. I learned that it’s just what you do.”

Because he understands the importance of this teaching, Werthan has advocated that Vanderbilt University adopt a service requirement.

“We tried to launch a program, at Peabody especially, that would require community service work,” Werthan says, referring to efforts he made in the late 1990s. “A lot of these people stay here in Nashville. Let’s get them involved. If they don’t get involved now, they won’t. And they have the time now.”

Werthan describes himself as blunt and says nonprofits benefit when people speak up. He points to an experience with the United Way of Metropolitan Nashville as an example.

“I had been giving money to the United Way while I was in college,” Werthan says. “I gave them $500, which was a lot of money to me at the time, and I never heard from them again.”

Werthan thought this was strange. He could not understand why the organization did not take the opportunity to court young donors, as a way of cultivating the next generation of givers. So he called and asked.

In response, the United Way asked if he would help spearhead the creation of what in 1997 became the Sennet Society, which promotes service and giving among young adults interested in community leadership.

“I think it has raised about $5 million,” Werthan says.

Werthan, who has five children and runs his own company, Werthan Granite, has been active in numerous charities over the years. Today he financially supports a range of nonprofits, and sits on the Middle Tennessee Leadership Council for Youth Villages, which provides services for emotionally troubled children and their families. His advice to young people who want to give back to their communities is simple.

“Find what fits for you, what has meaning for you,” Werthan says. “And, unless it will hurt somebody, never hold your tongue.”

Jeremy Kane, MPP’06, and Kristin McGraner, EdD’08

Jeremy Kane’s emergence as a key figure in Nashville’s charter schools movement may well have taken root in seventh grade. That was the year he transferred from a Metro Nashville public school to Montgomery Bell Academy, a private college preparatory school.

“It was the beginning of a conversation that continues to this day,” says Kane, who earned his master’s degree in public policy from Peabody in 2006. “I had to ask why I came through advanced classes and an honors program in a public school only to find myself light years behind folks at a private school.”

Kane’s LEAD Academy, which opened in 2007 as Metro Nashville’s third charter school, has helped the movement gain enough credibility and support that this year saw the next bold step—a grafting of the charter model into an existing public school, in this case Cameron Middle School.

The current year has also seen the approval of STEM Preparatory Academy, a middle school to open in 2011-12 with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. STEM Prep is being founded by Kristin McGraner, EdD’08, whose passion for educational excellence was focused by a student in foster care during her first year as a teacher.

“Her name was Carlissa,” McGraner says. “It was October, and she was in her sixth school. She was an incredibly smart, capable and kind-hearted young person who simply needed stability, validation and a teacher who remained persistent in her belief that every student can excel academically. Through my work with her and other underserved students, I saw firsthand what high expectations, a supportive environment and the relentless pursuit of results can do.”

Kane and McGraner bring noteworthy passion to their roles in expanding the scope of publicly funded, independently run charter schools in Metro Nashville. Both have an enthusiastic and practical champion in Alan Coverstone, Metro’s executive director of charter schools and private schools, who is currently enrolled in Peabody’s Educational Leadership and Policy doctoral program.

“We are seeking to expand our capacity to serve underserved populations,” Coverstone says, “and where we demonstrate shortcomings, we have this burgeoning movement of people who are saying, ‘Throw us at the problems. We’ll deal with them.’ And they’re getting results.”

Kane first saw charter schools as a real solution while he was a speechwriter for the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry. Initially skeptical, he began studying the phenomenon, particularly in the District of Columbia, where the highest per-student expenditures in the nation were funding a failed system, but charter schools were beginning to show impressive results. Similar gains in places like Houston and Memphis convinced him.

“They were taking kids from not being able to read and, over a year or two, with true commitment and hard work, were able to bring these students around,” Kane says. “As they learned more, something amazing was happening in families, and when enough families came around, you started seeing things happening in communities. There was a catalytic effect.”

He came back to Tennessee and took a teaching job at MBA before being named head of the Tennessee Charter Schools Association. While there, he tried unsuccessfully to convince a fellow Vanderbilt grad to return to Nashville to open a charter school.

“At that point,” he says, “I had to make a real decision about whether I was content to be on the sidelines and complain over coffee and drinks or whether I was really serious about doing something.
I knew the only thing to do was to jump in feet first.”

He had enrolled in the master’s program at Peabody, using that experience to fine tune his quest.

“I was researching and writing the application and turning in sections of it as class papers,” he says. He also mortgaged his house so that he could travel to study high-performing schools across the country.

McGraner’s belief in the transformative power of education never wavered as she enrolled in the doctoral program at Peabody.

“This charter school has been in my heart and mind for the last several years,” she says. “Every class I took had something that was integrated into this school design.” Meanwhile, she analyzed the needs of the city’s underserved students.

“We [McGraner and her board] spent quite a bit of time looking at our highest- and lowest-performing schools, understanding the communities in which the achievement gap still persists,” she says. “The community needs high-quality public educational choice, which is particularly salient in southeast Nashville, where students are experiencing a range of challenges—language acquisition, cultural adjustment and preparation for college. That’s why we were drawn to serve this area of Nashville.”

Both faced hurdles as they sought approval for their schools, but for Kane, an early player, they were particularly daunting. Resistance was stiff and widespread among seemingly every constituency, from school board members and administrators to teachers and politicians. Kane sought support in the community as he argued his case.

Support from Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, pressure to improve test scores under No Child Left Behind, and the possibility of a state takeover of Nashville schools were all part of the mix. Relaxed state laws expanded the pool of potential students.

“The process Kristin faced was much fairer and more balanced than what we went through,” Kane says. “It’s based on the merits of the applications and of the people bringing the applications in. There is positive momentum.”

“Both STEM and East End Prep, which was also approved this year, were scrutinized at a really high level,” Coverstone adds, “but these are really excellent applications. They represent more than just excellence on paper. They had teams that were organized and diversified in background, boards that knew how to be involved, and plans for dealing with different levels of students. These were not just laboratories of innovation, but laboratories of excellence.”

He was impressed by the scope of McGraner’s approach.

“Kristin and her board seemed to strike a balance between the need for an exciting and innovative theme to drive achievement while not neglecting the need to take students from where they are to the high level they’re entitled to,” he says. “They’re using STEM to drive high academic achievement rather than as an end in itself.”

Both Kane and McGraner cite the key roles played by their boards, the importance of fully committed teachers and, above all, the need for involving the community.

“We recognize that we have a responsibility not only to our students but also to their families,” says McGraner, “and so we are working deliberately to open the doors, to expand the pathways to participation and collaboration.”

LEAD will oversee fifth grade at Cameron beginning in the 2011-12 school year, extending the school calendar and the school day, raising teacher pay and tying it to performance. It will add sixth, seventh and eighth grades in the coming three years. STEM Prep will begin with a fifth-grade class of 100 students, also adding a grade each year. For both, excellence is the goal.

“You’ve got to have a clear vision for what you want to do,” Kane says. “That has been our saving grace, our strongest foundation. It started with, ‘Why not found a school that can produce 100 percent graduates who go on to college?’ and from there it was just doggedness and perseverance. I believe in the students, our staff, our mission, and we make decisions supporting them. Whether it’s about partnering with someone or hiring a staff member, if it doesn’t help us with our mission to graduate 100 percent of our kids, we don’t do it.”

LEAD has gone from near-universal skepticism to a 300-student waiting list. Hopes for STEM Prep—as well as for the other charter schools on line or about to come on line—run just as high.

“For me,” Coverstone says, “the excitement comes in seeing school leaders and teachers really grow into their ambitions and their goals. These are people who have said, ‘Give us the biggest challenges. We’ll take them to college and prepare them for incredible opportunities in life.’ This process improves our capacity to do right by kids. The future of public education depends on these creative approaches.”

Behind the vision and the extraordinary amounts of day-to-day work entailed in realizing it lie the people and moments that have inspired Kane and McGraner and continue to do so.

“There’s still a picture of Carlissa on my desk,” McGraner says. “She’s a constant reminder of why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

The Peabody Education Fund was established by George Peabody in 1867 to promote and encourage education in the South following the Civil War. It was not until 1907 at the liquidation of the fund that the beginnings of the Peabody we know today—George Peabody College for Teachers—came into being. From that point, and at Peabody’s present location (which was the site of another institution of higher learning, Roger Williams University), the history of Peabody as a highly regarded school of education began to take shape.

Starting from the modern era in 1914, Peabody’s purpose was to serve as an agent for educational reform, particularly in the South, where the infrastructure for education had fallen apart. Peabody worked to train educators who could better the lives of students and their families, using schools as the centerpiece to initiate social reforms and bringing the South to more equal footing with the rest of the country. On the way, innovative new ideas were developed. Peabody’s accomplishments soon took on national and international stature.

Emphasis on putting research into action and theory into practice has always been Peabody’s strength. There have been many educational innovations that have evolved from research done at Peabody. In these few pages, we showcase seven innovative ideas developed at Peabody that continue to leave a mark on the world of education.

President Theodore Roosevelt (standing in automobile) responds to the impressive turnout at Peabody Normal College, soon to become George Peabody College for Teachers, in 1907 at the liquidation of the Peabody Education Fund.

Knapp Farm
In 1915, one year after Peabody welcomed students to its present-day location, its landscape was dotted with chicken coops, a vegetable garden and a barn. The latest in farm equipment was on display in the basement of the Home Economics building and its most eminent professor was the country’s leading horticulturist—all in an effort to live up to the reforms suggested by the Country Life Commission created by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Improving the life of rural Americans, particularly those in the South, became an important mission for Peabody. The hero of this movement was Seaman A. Knapp, a federal appointee charged with promoting Southern agriculture. His work eventually led to the establishment of the Cooperative Extension Service that supported farmers and home demonstration agents.

Knapp Farm students discuss the latest techniques in raising poultry, circa 1916.

Bruce Payne, Peabody’s first president, was an enthusiastic supporter of Knapp’s work and wanted to create a Knapp School of Country Life on the campus. The funds for the school never materialized, but Payne was able to purchase 300 acres east of Nashville (near the present-day Nashville International Airport) for a demonstration farm.

The farm flourished with a 25-acre orchard and fields used to experiment with crops suited to the local climate. The farm’s pride and joy was its dairy and herd of purebred Holsteins.

Visitors flocked to the farm from all over the South. It provided part-time work for students and fresh food for the school cafeteria. However, the farm that was established to honor Knapp fell victim to his vision. As the Cooperative Extension Service grew, the need for the demonstration farm waned. By the 1930s the dairy operation was the only viable part of the farm.

Peabody held on to the herd until 1959 when it was sold. The land was sold in 1965 for $1 million. Though Peabody no longer has any component quite like Knapp Farm, its faculty continues to do important research leading to both rural and urban social reforms.

For more, visit: http://snipurl.com/knappfarm

Lloyd Dunn and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test doesn’t look like a game changer.
It could easily be mistaken for any classroom material—it’s just an easel with a series of pictures, four to a page. But this simple test, developed in 1959 by Peabody’s pioneering Lloyd and Leota M. Dunn, is still used worldwide and is considered the standard bearer for a fast, accurate measure of how well someone understands language.

Because test-takers answer by simply pointing at a picture, the PPVT can be used with children as young as 2 and adults as old as 90. The 15-minute test accurately measures the receptive vocabulary skills of people with reading or speech problems, multiple physical impairments, developmental disabilities and those who are emotionally withdrawn.

Vanderbilt Kennedy Center researcher Tatiana Peredo administers the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test.

“I don’t know of a measure that’s used more than the PPVT,” says Ann Kaiser, a professor of special education and holder of the Susan Gray Chair in Education and Human Development. “We use it to show early growth in children’s vocabulary skills. It’s a good indicator of language ability when they’re young, and it’s an easy test to respond to—they just point to the named picture.”

“The PPVT measures receptive language, which is a person’s ability to comprehend a message,” said Stephen Elliott, Dunn Family Professor in Educational and Psychological Assessment. “It’s also a good proxy for measuring intelligence as commonly defined.”

Lloyd Dunn instructs children with materials from the Peabody Language Development Kits, another product he developed.

Lloyd Dunn was one of the “scholars with a social conscience” who helped found the Kennedy Center in 1965. He established the first doctoral program for special education in the South, and served as its chair from 1953 until 1967. Lloyd Dunn and his wife Leota collaborated on a number of assessment and instructional devices first published in the 1950s and ’60s, including the Peabody Individual Achievement Test, Peabody Language Development Kits and Peabody Early Experience Kits. Their son, Douglas M. Dunn, who was a researcher at Bell Labs and later dean of the Carnegie-Mellon University business school, recently collaborated on the fourth revision of the PPVT test, keeping the 1950s test relevant for the 21st century.

For more, visit: http://snipurl.com/lloyddunn

Susan Gray and Head Start
Susan Gray was a small woman, but her influence on education was huge—spanning decades and affecting not only teaching, but policy and decision-making on a national scale. Perhaps even more important, her work led to programs that improved the lives of millions of underprivileged and underserved children.

Paul R. Dokecki, director of Peabody’s Community Research and Action doctoral program, was a Peabody student when Susan Gray was breaking new ground with the Early Training Project. That project—an early educational intervention program for at-risk preschoolers—grew from an experimental summer program to one of international repute.

In 1965, Gray co-founded the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. Soon after, her work with the Early Training Project caught the eye of Sargent Shriver, head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, a government program started by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to fight the “war on poverty.”

“In the 1960s there was optimism about what education and research could do,” Dokecki says. “Shriver always credited the work of Susan Gray and the Early Training Project as being the intellectual stimulus for the Head Start program.”

Susan Gray, middle, shows a hornet’s nest to preschool children in a classroon in Peabody’s Demonstration and Research Center for Early Education in the late 60s.

In 1970, Gray recruited Dokecki to come back to Peabody as her associate director of the Demonstration and Research Center for Early Education or DARCEE, an extension of the Early Training Project. Dokecki succeeded Gray as director upon her retirement.

“People came from all over the world to our training workshops on campus,” Dokecki says. “This was a major research project. We had more than a hundred staff members and a million-dollar budget, and this was back in the early 1970s. Susan Gray created all that.”

In later years, scholars studied the long-lasting effects on children who had been in the program.

“There was a national effort to see how the children were doing in their 20s,” Dokecki says. “We found that kids who had been in the program were less likely to have been in special education, less likely to have been incarcerated or to have children born out of wedlock.”

For more, visit: http://snipurl.com/susangray

READ 180
Millions of students now call themselves good readers thanks to READ 180, a reading intervention program developed at Peabody. By combining individualized computer-guided instruction, video and sound teaching methodology, READ 180 has proved to be the key for struggling middle- and high-school students across the country.

Ted Hasselbring, Peabody research professor of special education, led the genesis of READ 180 in 1985, when he won a Department of Education grant looking for ways to use technology to help special education students become better readers. Results were so promising that in 1994, the Orange County (Fla.) school district brought Hasselbring and his team down to implement READ 180 in the hopes that helping struggling middle- and high-school students learn to read would lower the district’s battles with behavior problems, truancy and dropout rates.

It worked. By using the READ 180 instruction protocol of 90 minutes a day, five days a week, the school system’s dropout and behavior referral rate fell significantly while reading scores continuously rose. Word of the program’s success spread—students usually improve two to five grade levels in a year—and Hasselbring then partnered with Scholastic in 1999.

Ted Hasselbring

“READ 180 works because it combines Ted’s sound, proven research with our knowledge of technology and what works in the classroom,” says Margery Mayer, president of Scholastic Education. “READ 180 creates a safe place for these kids to learn and grow.”

READ 180, used in 15,000 classrooms across 50 states, is now the gold standard for middle- and high-school reading intervention programs. Hasselbring and Scholastic keep READ 180 up to date and are developing partner programs for students who need support to get to READ 180’s level and for those who are ready for the next step.

Hasselbring keeps a fat ring binder of student success stories on his office shelf. “They tell us that being able to read totally changes their lives,” he said. “It’s amazing to be a part of this.”

For more, visit: http://snipurl.com/sread180

The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury
During a close mayoral race, Jasper Woodbury, a journalist for the Cumberland City Chronicle, covers a story on how nearby Trenton plans to dump its excess garbage in Cumberland City. Two siblings, who are members of their high school’s environmental club, volunteer for the mayoral campaign of their mother, who has a plan for how to deal with the garbage. The day of the election, they must hurriedly fill in for a volunteer who has an emergency appendectomy. They must now figure out the schedule for sending get-out-the-vote vans.

The challenge: Find the best plan for the morning and afternoon rush-hour time slots, including when to tell drivers to be at the rental agency to pick up and return the vans.

This is a synopsis from one of the 12 videos that comprise The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury. Developed at Peabody’s Learning Technology Center in the early ‘90s, the series uses real-world problems and technological interactivity to teach mathematical concepts to middle school students around the United States. In studies of students who have encountered Jasper and his adventures in the classroom, assessments have shown that impressive gains in understanding arithmetic, algebra, geometry and measurement were made in comparison with students who did not work on these concepts using the series. Their abilities to work with others and to communicate design ideas also improved.

In the episode above, students are given information about how long it takes to drive from the rental agency to the polling places, how much gas costs at a certain service station on the way, how much each van costs according to its size (how many can be transported) and how many gallons of gas it holds, and aspects related to the election, such as polling results and how many votes a candidate must gain to win the election.

Students work on various adventures within the series during three to four weeks, and each episode provides material for solving a number of challenges.

Mark F. Klassen, a sixth-grade math teacher at Meigs Magnet Middle School in Nashville, uses the videos in his classes. “I have found that The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury teaches math in authentic settings that support students’ reasoning, problem solving and communication skills. The way that Jasper introduces the ‘challenges’ in conjunction with the story leads students to believe they could encounter and solve these problems in real life.

“Math then becomes a life skill,” Klassen says, “instead of an algorithm to be used to solve a series of problems that only exist in books.”

For more, visit: http://snipurl.com/jasperwoodbury

Responsiveness to Intervention
Forty years ago, a student who experienced severe difficulty in learning to read or in learning math would not have been diagnosed with a learning disability. Today, nearly 50 percent of all students with disabilities are identified as learning disabled. Learning disabilities, which span reading, mathematics and written expression, have traditionally been identified using discrepancies between IQ tests and achievement scores.

Douglas Fuchs and Lynn Fuchs

Douglas Fuchs and Lynn Fuchs, Nicholas Hobbs Professors of Special Education and Human Development, have been instrumental in developing a multitiered approach for identifying students with learning disabilities called responsiveness to intervention or RTI. Using instructional methods of increasing intensity, such as validated small-group tutoring, as well as progress-monitoring methods for indexing a student’s response to that instruction, RTI has gained favor as one of the best methods for identifying students with learning disabilities and for providing preventative education services.

In 2001, the U.S. Department of Education awarded a grant to Doug Fuchs, Lynn Fuchs and Don Compton, associate professor of special education, to establish the National Research Center for Learning Disabilities.

Peer-assisted learning strategies (PALS), in which students alternately tutor each other, is another program developed by Lynn and Douglas Fuchs to help students with learning disabilities.

The center’s focus was to conduct research on RTI and to provide technical assistance to state educational agencies that implement RTI. Researchers have found that among the 20 percent of children at risk for learning disabilities, approximately 15 percent respond to the prevention services incorporated within RTI.

“RTI has been a useful notion to help researchers like myself and my colleagues rethink methods of identifying children at risk for severe reading and math problems,” Lynn Fuchs says. “And if we can identify them more quickly, we can help them sooner.”

For their work, Doug and Lynn Fuchs were named to Forbes magazine’s list of 14 revolutionary educators in December 2009.

For more, visit: www.nrcld.org

The National Center on Performance Incentives
Changing minds that have been made up for more than half a century won’t be easy, but that’s exactly what Matt Springer is trying to do. Springer is the director of the National Center on Performance Incentives and assistant professor of public policy and education at Peabody.

In the 1920s the single salary schedule of teacher compensation was introduced. This method rewards teachers based on their years of experience and degrees held. By the 1950s, more than 90 percent of K-12 public schools in the United States had adopted this policy and that figure is true today as well. However, policymakers and others question whether this is really the best compensation method.

Matt Springer at the September 21 press conference announcing the results of the three-year study conducted by NCPI on pay for performance

“What we’ve found is that experience and degree only account for 3 percent of the variation in teacher effectiveness,” Springer says. “That means that 97 percent of what could explain what makes a teacher effective has nothing to do with how long they’ve been teaching and what degree they’ve obtained.”

The National Center on Performance Incentives is researching an alternative compensation method—one based more on student performance.

“The design of our project is focusing more on an outcome as opposed to rewarding teachers for board certification or earning an advanced degree,” Springer says.

The just-completed three-year study shows, “We tested the most basic and foundational question related to performance incentives—Does bonus pay alone improve student outcomes?—and we found that it does not,” Springer says. “These findings should raise the level of the debate to test more nuanced solutions, many of which are being implemented now across the country, to reform teacher compensation and improve student achievement.

“We need six-figure salaries for our best teachers,” Springer says. “Until we can differentiate pay and until we can begin to recognize the highest performers, we’re not going to change the quality of our teacher workforce. Obviously those top individuals can make a whole lot more money outside of education if we stick with the current model.”

For more, visit: www.performanceincentives.org

Jesse Register, director of schools for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, during a March visit to South China Normal University. In January, a group of Chinese educators journeys to Nashville for a two-week visit that mirrors that of the Nashville group in the summer.

In the movie Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating (played by Robin Williams) asks his students to climb up on the desk and view the world from a different vantage point. Every year, participants in the Educational Leadership Learning Exchange program, more commonly called ELLE, get a chance to climb up on the desk and see the world differently, metaphorically speaking. As a result of this annual exchange, which began in 2005 between educators in Nashville and in China, many Nashville principals and teachers gain a unique perspective and new approaches to curriculum, leadership, assessment and collaboration.

ELLE just completed its sixth principal leadership exchange in June. Each summer a select group of educational leaders from Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools has traveled to Guangzhou, China, for the opportunity to participate in school visits, college classes and cultural activities. The trip is designed to provide a platform for comparison and sharing of educational philosophies and strategies and sponsored by Vanderbilt, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and South China Normal University.

The ELLE platform for comparison of American and Chinese schools is grounded in the six core components used in the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED). These include high standards for student learning, rigorous curriculum, quality instruction, culture of learning and professional behavior, connections to external communities and performance accountability. These components serve as the foundation for daily group reflections and for summary evaluations each participant completes upon returning home. Having this common platform has provided a framework with which to understand more deeply what has been observed. The two-week exchange has three key components: visits to local schools and meetings with principals, teachers, students and parents; lectures and dialogues with researchers on Chinese education, reform policies and implementation challenges; and cultural experiences through sightseeing, events and home visits.

Laurie Smith, principal of Glenview Elementary School, and Julius Turnipseed, science teacher at the Nashville School of the Arts, observe a classroom during their June trip to Guangzhou, China.

Upon their return, the participants do a critical comparison of what they know is happening in their own schools compared to what they experienced in China. Once they have completed their comparisons, they are asked to summarize their conclusion around the six components. This year, summaries emphasized collaboration between teachers as a common point of comparison between their Nashville classrooms and those observed in China, sometimes regarding very specific classroom applications such as curriculum for English language learners or better use of planning time. Debbie McAdams, executive director of exceptional education for Metro Nashville Public Schools wrote, “We need to develop an open classroom model in which teachers can feel comfortable and supported [by] one another. We do not offer enough opportunities for collaboration in our schools.”

Julius Turnipseed, who teaches science at Nashville School of the Arts wrote, “Honest and open discussions among teachers that are holding each other accountable relieves part of that burden from the principal (it’s not just the principal saying improvements are needed). I believe we should not only be doing more to collaborate with each other, but also in reviewing what is being done in the classroom.”

Debbie McAdams, executive director of exceptional education for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, meets with Chinese educators.

The importance of partnering in the community was also addressed in some of the summaries. Angela Carr of Head Middle Magnet School noted that: “Principals [in China] ensure a culture of learning and professional behavior in their schools by requiring high quality instruction. Boarding students who do not live close to the school connect the family [to] the community the student comes from. Family members [are brought] in to volunteer at schools.”

Seeing firsthand how education and learning are viewed in China is also a real eye-opener. Lori Likins, first grade teacher at Glenview Elementary wrote, “I was impressed with the culture of learning in China, from the elementary through the high school. The end goal was understood by all.”

There is so much learning that occurs in an experience like ELLE. The distance traveled and the common experiences provide an opportunity to model what a real learning community can be. Many lessons are personal, but the bonds built by the group last a lifetime.

The school visits, the dragon boat races, the sticky rice, the joy on the faces of the children—all of these encounters in Guangzhou leave deep impressions and changed perspectives. Many participants have remarked that this experience changes their lives forever. They look at education and at their students with a new sense of challenge and expectation.

Thirteen MNPS teachers, principals and administrators and two ELLE staff traveled to China in June.

Currently, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools serve 137 language groups. Diversity has taken on a much broader meaning. Traditionally, professional development can only offer snapshots of varying cultures; there is a great need for educators to experience cross-cultural educational immersion. Betsy Potts, a second grade teacher at Goodlettsville Elementary said, “I think we do many things well, but there are areas where we need to stretch and improve. ELLE is a wonderful platform for sharing ideas across the globe with the ultimate goal being to give students worldwide the best possible education.”

The challenges we face are substantial and very similar. With the world growing more interconnected, the need to build lasting bridges of mutual understanding and cooperation are of increasing importance. Viewing the world of the classroom from a different point of view provides an opportunity for educators to not only experience, but to participate in a significant educational dialogue. That is what ELLE does best.

Tom Ward is director of the Educational Leadership Learning Exchange and a former Metro Nashville principal.

A little confused, Smedley takes the papers and asks, “Is this for me?”

“I’m just showing you what I did,” he tells her.

Smedley realizes that he has handed her not a picture he drew, but a graph of his progress in literacy. The graph shows that every month from September 2009 to February 2010 his scores have improved, rising from a 10 to a 57.

“You’re showing me your progress! Look what you did!” Smedley gushes. “This is amazing! Are you proud of yourself?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answers quietly.

She gives him a big hug and lets him choose a treat from a bag she has on hand for just such occasions.

Clutching his report, the boy walks out of the room—never once having so much as cracked a smile.

Like millions of other at-risk minority children from low-income families, this child understands on some level the seriousness, the gravity, of the spike in his test scores. He, his teachers and his school are swimming against the current, trying their best to narrow the achievement gap in education.

The achievement gap is a hotly debated topic among educational academicians and policymakers. After largely being ignored during the 1990s, it has reared up again in the new millennium when the No Child Left Behind Act forced schools to disaggregate the numbers and analyze standardized test scores of students from different backgrounds and social classes—including white, Asian, African American, Hispanic, Native American and low-income children. Like a mirror reflecting an ominous truth, the numbers show that, on average, poor black and Hispanic children are not performing as well as their white and Asian peers. In some cases, the discrepancies are chilling.

“On average, white children outperform black children on every measure of academic skills,” says Richard Rothstein, research associate at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. “It’s not just in reading and math, but also in science and history, on physical fitness, on behavioral outcomes, and arts and music. And the cognitive gap is as large before children enter kindergarten as it is during their school years. Children from impoverished social and economic communities don’t come to school as prepared to learn as middle-class children. This suggests that factors related to social class, not differences in school quality, are primarily responsible for fostering differences in academic performance between blacks and whites.”

A national test of 15-year-olds conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that black high school sophomores in the United States scored at the 26th percentile in reading, and at the 25th percentile in math and in science, compared to their white peers who scored at the 62nd percentile in each of these subject areas. Sadly, in too many instances, poor and minority children are graduating from high school with no more than an eighth-grade education.

According to Joseph Murphy, Frank W. Mayborn Professor at Peabody, and author of The Educator’s Handbook for Understanding and Closing Achievement Gaps (see right), these children often spend their entire lives trying to overcome what they did not master in school. “If you’re on the wrong side of the gap, you’re more likely to drop out of school, less likely to enroll in college, and more likely to drop out if you do enroll in college,” Murphy says. He is studying any and all issues that might improve educational quality, because not to fix the problem will have unforgivable consequences. “You can’t systematically parcel students into a ‘Kids We Left Behind’ category. That’s reprehensible. It’s a social justice issue, too. You are damning these kids to second-class citizenship in nearly every dimension we have.”

Minority and low-income children are markedly “school-dependent,” meaning that it’s difficult for them to access resources and opportunities outside of school to help them overcome deficiencies in their education. “If you’re a poor kid and you’re in a bad school, you’re in a world of hurt,” Murphy says, “because you don’t have a lot of other support systems that are going to make up for it.”

The Education Equality Project, a bipartisan advocacy group, views the achievement gap not only as an indicator of an ugly underbelly in American society, but also as the most important civil rights challenge facing this generation. Although there are some exceptions, the evidence is clear that, in general, urban families with the lowest income tend to be zoned to schools with the least resources. Teachers are often inexperienced and are quick to transfer or burn out. Students in these schools are disproportionately referred to special education and underreferred to gifted programs. In many of these city schools—Nashville, Cleveland, Indianapolis, to name a few—the high school graduation rate is less than 50 percent. Yet a few miles away in more affluent suburban neighborhoods the graduation rates are above 90 percent.

“What tugs at me is the disparity of public education between schools. They should be equitable,” says Sharon Shields, professor of the practice of health promotion and education. “We are only going to benefit as a society if the opportunity is there for all children to reach their potential. We have to ask ourselves, what are the barriers to achievement?”

Stagnating trends and the summer dip

The achievement gap was first acknowledged in the 1950s, when the federal courts began addressing issues of disparity through its ruling on Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka. From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, the United States made a concerted effort to tackle educational inequality through desegregation policies and social, health and welfare programs. Leaders feared the U.S. was losing its international competitive edge with the rise of the Soviet Union’s space program and Japan’s emergence as an economic power. According to a 2009 Report by the Center on Educational Policy, for 25 years the black-white and Latino-white gap fluctuated but essentially trended upward across all grade levels, hitting its narrowest mark in the late 1980s. Then it began to widen again. The lines have now essentially stagnated. In 2008, the gap was still quite large—ranging from 16 to 29 points on the NAEP 500-point scoring scale.

Experts dispute the causes for this stagnation, although Rothstein blames it on inattention. “The gap narrowing may have slowed because we lost focus on social inequality,” he states. “Our public schools are more racially imbalanced than at any time in this country since desegregation, because our neighborhoods are more hypersegregated than they ever were. Over the past two decades we have actually rolled back social reform.”

His data indicate that family income is only one factor in a myriad of social class issues that are driving down achievement. Rothstein says, “Typically, black and white children, even if they come from families of similar incomes, are not similar in their performance on these measures of achievement. Among black and white families with similar incomes, whites have greater wealth, better housing and better health outcomes. So it’s not surprising that the test scores of white children will be higher, even after controlling for current family income.”

To compound the challenge, disadvantaged schools are trying to hit a moving target. Stagnation in the achievement gap is actually a by-product of shifts among the various groups. In the past decade, minority and low-income students, who started off behind at the beginning of each school year, made significant gains in achievement levels, but so did their white and Asian peers. The result has been a zero-sum gain.

Ellen Goldring, Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Educational Policy and Leadership, uses the analogy of two trains that need to arrive at the same destination at the same time. “If one of the trains gets stuck in the snow and the other train keeps going, then for the one that’s stuck in the snow to reach the end on time, it has to go much faster,” she explains. “So, it’s not just a matter of making up a year’s growth if you’re behind. It’s that you have to learn at a faster rate.”

In many cases over the course of the nine-month school year, these children seem to be learning at a faster rate and making up ground on their more advantaged counterparts. What is pulling them down, researchers now say, is how much they lose over the summer. Some call this phenomenon the “summer dip.” Marc Stein, PhD’09, assistant professor in the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University, studied one of the largest school districts in the Southeast that encompasses a wide range of schools from the most affluent to those with high percentages of children receiving free/reduced lunch to see how the summer dip affected children in grades two through five. He found that, on average, regardless of neighborhood, race or class, all students lost ground during the summer. However, students living in middle and higher socioeconomic status neighborhoods lost much less ground than students in more disadvantaged contexts. One possible explanation is that by living in a more advantaged context, students may be privy to educationally meaningful experiences during the summer that compensate for not being in school. Disadvantaged students may not have these same experiences and exposures.

“The schools are helping disadvantaged students make up ground to close the gap during the school year, then the summer happens and the school has to bring them up again,” Stein says. “By the end of the fifth grade in this district, the achievement gap is wider than it was at the end of second grade.” Cumulatively, poor students are losing more ground over the summers than they are able to make up over the school years. Other research suggests that by the time some students reach high school, they may be at least two academic years behind.

“This really highlights the need to consider summertime in these evaluations when we talk about school effectiveness,” Stein says. “When we only use spring test administration to judge effectiveness, we lose sight of the impact of that intervening summer.”

Certain studies claim that the educational experience of the mother is one of the strongest influences on a child’s school performance. In turn, one of the major causes of the achievement gap is the intellectual environment in the home. Researchers found that children ages 0 to 3 from middle-class families were exposed to much more complex language in their home environments and heard three-and-a-half times more words per hour in their daily backgrounds than preschool-aged children from low-income homes. In short, the education achievement gap arises long before a child ever goes to school.

Parenting styles are also seen as contributing factors. Tish Smedley insists that her inner-city parents care about their children’s future, but many don’t know how to promote early childhood education. Nearly all of her students have at least one working parent, albeit often in low-wage jobs. In many cases, the problem is that these children have spent years in daycare devoid of enrichment. “I have kids who come into pre-K, and they don’t know how to hold a pencil or a crayon. They don’t know how to hold a pair of scissors,” she says. The standards for kindergarten are so high now, that if these children go straight to school without first spending a year in pre-K, she says “then kindergarten just slams them.”

It is unfair, experts argue, to lay the blame at the foot of the schools and expect teachers to remedy all these deep-seated, complex and cumulative ills. “Schools didn’t cause the problem, and we can’t expect schools to fix the problem alone,” Murphy says. “We need a more robust attack on it.”

Yet even if policymakers agree with this data, wholesale social reform will entail a long, hard-fought, multipronged battle. In the meantime, figuring out how to narrow the gap will continue to fall into the lap of school systems.

Charter, magnet, DoDEA schools and parental choice

For decades low-income parents have sought ways for their children to escape traditional inner-city public schools for better educational opportunities. The charter school movement grew out of this desire, allowing individual schools more freedom to implement innovative teaching strategies to help disadvantaged students. Some charter school networks, like the national KIPP Academy, YES Prep Academy in Houston (see Is the Answer YES?), IDEA Public Schools located near the Texas-Mexico border, and Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy in New York have all been recognized for their success in narrowing the achievement gap for at-risk students. Unfortunately, other charter schools have not come close to meeting those goals.

The magnet public school initiative was an even earlier appeal to parental choice. Magnet schools came on the scene in the 1960s to mitigate against “white flight” during the era of integration and busing. Over time, magnet schools began evolving around central academic themes, like math and science, the performing arts or the liberal arts. In this way, city schools could draw students of diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds from a variety of enrollment zones, because they shared specific academic interests. In the United States many more magnet public schools than charter schools are operating today, although charter schools tend to grab the headlines.

Having studied the effect of parental choice on education, Ellen Goldring states that neither traditional public, magnet nor charter schools are panaceas to the achievement gap. However, she says, across all types of schools researchers have found a handful of “enabling conditions” that appear to form the essential ingredients for helping disadvantaged students achieve. First, these schools have strong school leadership, meaning that the principal and administration have a focus on school improvement. Second, they implement the tactic known as professional learning communities, meaning that teachers collaborate on subject matter to help students learn, draw connections and analyze. Third, all school professionals relentlessly focus on the academic achievement of their students, adding rigor to the curriculum. And finally, they prioritize teacher efficacy by giving teachers the tools and support to meet the needs of their students.

Claire Smrekar, associate professor of public policy and education, has studied children educated in the Department of Defense Educational Activity (DoDEA) system, located on the grounds of military posts in the U.S. and overseas. Using evidence that black and Latino children in these schools out-perform nearly all other minority students in the country, she initiated a study to explain the narrower achievement gap among these students—given that white and Asian DoDEA students performed well also. Smrekar discovered that the families of these students had many of the same characteristics of inner-city families: the vast majority of parents were enlisted, rather than officers, and therefore were paid low wages, qualifying the children for free/reduced price lunch; most parents had no more than a high school education; the families tended to be unstable, with high mobility, a high rate of divorce and blended families, and also a high rate of domestic violence; and they lived in military housing, which is similar to public housing in that living spaces tend to be small and cramped.

The differences between the military bases and inner-city conditions were equally notable, however. For example, military neighborhoods were safe, characterized by low crime, areas of green space, playgrounds and recreational facilities. Also, living on the base meant that at least one parent had full and stable employment. Finally, family members had easy access to a medical facility and to quality health care.

In addition, the DoDEA schools met all the criteria listed by Goldring—leadership at the top and high-quality teachers, an emphasis on academic achievement, collaboration among teachers across subject matter, and ample resources so teachers could meet the needs of students dealing with difficult family situations.

“We argue repeatedly that there are important lessons to be learned and models of organizational coherence and continuity that could be adopted from the DoDEA system,” Smrekar says. “While we acknowledge the differences, if you look at the way the school reaches in to families and provides systems of support and a spirit of caring, then it’s clear that there is much to be learned and much to be valued.”

Teachers, gifted students and the role of encouragement

Given that high teacher quality is one of the essential components for narrowing the achievement gap, policymakers have been casting about for ways to find these top-notch individuals. Teach for America, which enlists college graduates to fulfill two-year stints teaching in disadvantaged schools, has been rattling the cages of the traditional recruitment process. With 24,000 recruits, however, TFA is not nearly big enough to meet the need. The American public school system requires almost 4 million teachers to educate all its children.

Ronald F. Ferguson, senior lecturer of public policy and education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, conducted a 2002 study on racial and ethnic disparities where schools were reportedly excellent. He found that when high school students were asked what motivated them to work hard in school, white and Asian students often cited teacher demand. However, minority, and particularly black students, almost always pointed to teacher encouragement as their reason for putting forth extra effort.

Donna Ford, professor of special education, says: “There’s a saying in the black community that goes, ‘Black kids don’t care what you know until they know that you care.’ Research consistently shows that black kids want those relationships with their teachers. Relationships matter.”

Ford’s primary research focus has been on the underrepresentation of African American students in gifted and AP classes. She found that a significant proportion of low-income, black and Hispanic students—including some who defied the odds and scored well on standardized tests—would be better served in gifted programs. According to the Office of Civil Rights data of 2006, more than a quarter of a million black children were not identified as gifted who should have been. Ford argues that this underrepresentation is a symptom of the larger issues of the achievement gap. “We cannot close the achievement gap without addressing inequities and underrepresentation in gifted education. Educators, community leaders, policymakers and other stakeholders must be proactive and aggressive in making change,” she says.

For years, children from the projects were never selected into Metro Nashville’s ENCORE gifted-and-talented program. Teachers like Tish Smedley changed that and began referring their students, and today several of those students have gone on to college and beyond. Almost two decades later, it’s still not easy. Smedley points to a little boy who is sitting cross-legged on the floor, enrapt in a picture book.

“He’s so bright,” she says. She did some assessments early in the year, but he didn’t test out as gifted because he’d had such little exposure to life experiences. “We’re going to test him again,” she asserts. “I feel confident he’ll be placed in gifted, but we’re going to have to give him some experiences so he’ll do well on the assessments.”

Homemade remedies in the absence of a cure

In the absence of a cure for the achievement gap, a number of programs are being tried in a hit-and-miss attempt to transcend the barriers that gave rise to it. Some of these initiatives have truly affected change.

For example, since 1982, Vanderbilt’s Center for Health Services has served more than 12,000 families through the Maternal Infant Health Outreach Worker, or MIHOW, program. MIHOW is a home-visitation and mother-to-mother mentoring network designed to increase the health and parenting skills of women living below the poverty level, and therefore to close on the preschool achievement gap. MIHOW workers continue to mentor the family until the child reaches age 3.

A strong emphasis is placed on reading after the child is born. Recent data show that 58 percent of 2-year-olds in the MIHOW program are read to daily by a parent or family member, compared to 16 percent of 2-year-olds living below poverty in the U.S.; and 100 percent of MIHOW 2-year-olds are read to at least weekly, compared to 81 percent nationally of 2-year-olds living below poverty. Simply hearing those additional words in their daily background can help these children narrow the gap by the time they’re ready for kindergarten.

Meanwhile, inner-city teachers are trying to address the educational imbalance created by the “summer dip.” At the end of each school year, every child finishing pre-K at Ross Elementary receives a “summer bucket.” Tish Smedley and the other pre-K teacher buy sand buckets and fill them with games and activities—color cards, number cards, rhyming cards, letter cards, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, CDs of music they learned in class, and other fun toys for the children to play with over the summer. The teachers pay for these summer buckets largely out of their own pockets. At $15 to $20 per bucket for the 35 children in pre-K, it’s a generous gift. Smedley is not satisfied with how the children have been using the materials in the past, however, so this year she is having a meeting of all parents to show them how to join with their children in the summer bucket activities.

Smedley says, “We’re not saying you have to do everything every day, but just pick one activity every day. And if you don’t do anything else, read to them.”

Some school districts are addressing the summer dip by implementing a year-round school program in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Year-round schools have had uneven results across the country, and there’s no universally effective formula.

Smedley taught in a year-round program for two years until it was canceled. “The teachers were exhausted,” she says. “It was a good program and it kept the gap closed a bit, but we found that the children who needed it the most didn’t come. It started great guns at the beginning of the summer, but then it would dwindle as the summer wore on. My class size dropped from 20 to 13, which wasn’t what Metro wanted. It wasn’t as beneficial as Metro wanted it to be.”

Disparities in health care also reinforce disparities in education. Rothstein’s data indicate that low-income children are absent from school because of illness 30 percent more than middle-income children. “If they’re not in school, they’re not learning,” he says. He believes that equalizing health conditions for children is one of the least expensive ways to move on the gap. He suggests putting full-service health clinics with professional primary care providers on the campuses of low-income schools. This will give students access to preventive health care, such as vaccines and routine medical, dental and vision exams.

In addition to on-site health care, children also need counseling in good nutrition and fitness habits to reach their learning potential, Shields says. One-fourth of American children are either obese or at risk of being obese. “There is more and more evidence that having higher levels of fitness can contribute to your ability to achieve,” she says, adding that in many schools physical education classes are being eliminated to cut costs, “so we’re not making the advances we’d hoped to make on narrowing the gap.”

An underutilized secret weapon

Shields is affiliated with the Community Outreach Partnership Center, a hands-on, collaborative, inner-city advocacy group embarked on a mission of preventing crime, promoting health and enhancing economic opportunities for low-income citizens. In that capacity, she has solicited students from her classes to work with children on the “Veggie Project” and the “Commit to be Fit” nutrition and health programs in underserved neighborhoods.

Importantly, Shields and Peabody professor Carolyn Hughes have tapped into an underutilized secret weapon in addressing the achievement gap—college students. Vanderbilt University received a three-year grant from Tennessee Academic Civic Engagement Program (TACEP) to establish a mentoring and tutoring program in schools the county deemed most at-risk. Each year, between 250 and 315 Vanderbilt students signed up and fanned out into the neighborhood schools to tutor or mentor between 450 and 625 K-12 students. At the end of the grant, says the program’s director Heather Jolly, TACEP evaluations showed an across-the-boards increase of 30 to 40 percent in grades, graduation rates, college applications and college attendance for students at the participating schools.

In grades K-8, the Vanderbilt mentors emphasized reading, because most of the eighth graders who came for help were barely reading at a third-grade level. Once the mentors worked with them on reading and literacy, the students’ scores improved not only in English, but also in math and science. In the high schools, the mentors assisted students not just with their proficiency requirements so they could graduate, but also helped them develop game plans so they could go to college—a feat many of them had never previously considered. In Tennessee, students need to score at least a 21 on the ACT college prep test to qualify for state scholarship funds. Out of 75 students who were mentored, just a few failed to reach that score.

“Most of these schools have at least 800 to 900 students, and we only saw about 75 students in a school each year,” Jolly says. “But we made a small dent.”

Mentoring gives inner-city children a chance to work with and establish relationships with positive role models. “But this is a reciprocity relationship,” Shields says. “It’s not just about a college student going out and ‘helping’ a student in a low-performing school. It’s also about a college student learning about barriers to achievement and the potential of underachieving youth if they are given possibility, opportunity and tools.”

The directors recruited only those Vanderbilt students who would fully commit to the time demands of the program. “I don’t think this program would have been successful if it weren’t for the trust relationship that the Vanderbilt students established with their mentees,” Jolly reflects. “They met people who wanted them to succeed. So many of these kids, particularly the kids who are struggling, don’t feel like they have anybody who wants them to succeed. Vanderbilt mentors told them, ‘I’m here for you. We’re going to get through this together.’”

Some of those mentees are now in college—adding weight to research that low-income, black students work hardest in response to encouragement. Now that the TACEP mentorship grant has ended, Peabody faculty are searching for ways to keep the program running so they can continue to make a difference in the lives of these students who find themselves on the wrong side of the achievement gap.

In a 2003 report, “Closing the Achievement Gap: Rural Schools,” Doris Terry Williams writes that while rural students performed as well as or better on standardized tests than their nonrural peers, white rural students consistently outperformed students of color in measures of achievement. Lower achievement, Williams reported, was most pronounced in rural areas like the Deep South and Southwest and on American Indian reservations where there are large concentrations of people of color. A litany of social issues, many of the same factors affecting urban schools, contribute to this inequity.

An AVID classroom at Runge Independent School in rural south Texas prepares eighth- and ninth-grade students for college.

The achievement gap in these areas is not a function of being remote or rural, but a function of poverty, explains Rachel Tompkins of West Virginia, the founding president and senior fellow of the Rural School and Community Trust. “There are some beautiful rural places in America where kids are doing just fine and achievement scores are very high. In Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, rural kids are doing quite well,” she says. “But if you go to the poorest regions in the South, you find they’re spending half as much on instruction, per pupil, as New York, Connecticut, Washington state or Wisconsin. The inadequacy and inequity of school financing systems, particularly for the poorest rural districts, is a problem.”

Craig Anne Heflinger, professor of human and organizational development, has studied mental health issues confronting “the poorest of the poor” children in rural areas. She has found that two-thirds of people with symptoms of clinical mental illness living in rural counties receive no care at all. In addition, poor children with severe emotional problems and behavioral problems are significantly more likely to also have physical health problems than other poor children without these problems. “So, we’ve got a group of kids with multiple challenges,” Heflinger says. “And there are huge disparities in access. We have lots of ‘invisible’ kids who live way out in the country, who aren’t getting folded into the health care system.” Instead, her research indicates, if rural children and adolescents receive services for mental health and substance abuse problems, they most often do so through the schools.

One way that states have tried to address education equity issues for rural children is to shut down underresourced local schools and instead send them to large consolidated schools, with the intent of raising the tax base and distributing low-income rural children across a school district. Tompkins believes that consolidation has been a disaster for many rural minority students in the Southeast and West, and has led to a disproportionately high dropout rate among students who are bused long distances to large, impersonal suburban schools.

“We think that if we put poor kids in a shiny school by the side of the road they’ll do better,” Tompkins says. However, many of these children feel increasingly lost and disenfranchised, and they quit school altogether.

Particularly for students who are emotionally fragile to begin with, being on a school bus for more than an hour each day is not a good way to help them achieve in school, Heflinger says. “For children who have impulse problems and behavioral difficulties, it just widens the opportunities for them to be in an unsupervised setting where they can get into trouble,” she says. “And if you kick kids off the bus, their parents certainly can’t drive them 60 miles to and from school.”

One advantage of small rural schools, says Tompkins, is that everybody knows everybody, and it’s much harder for students to become disconnected and fall through the cracks. Also, in many of these low-income areas, the school acts as the heart and soul of the community, the hub of social and educational activities.

Small can work

That is certainly the case with Runge Independent School, a designated Title I school serving 300 students in rural south Texas. The school is divided into an elementary school made up of pre-K through sixth grade, and a high school comprising grades seven through 12. Eighty percent of the student body is minority and most qualify for free/reduced price lunch. Located about 70 miles south of San Antonio, the town has a population of about 1,050 residents, with a median family income (and the families tend to be large) of just under $30,000 a year. It is 45 miles to the nearest town of more than 50,000, and almost that same distance in the opposite direction to the nearest movie theater. Runge has a public library, a few gas stations and a convenience store, but no grocery store. Most people work in agriculture or construction, as laborers in the oil fields or on ranches, for the regional prison system, or for local businesses like WalMart in the neighboring town of Kenedy (pop. 3,300). Seventy-five percent of the townspeople are Hispanic, and only 6 percent have a college education or above. Many families live in government housing projects. Largely because of shortages in adequate housing, of the 30 teachers at the school, only five live in Runge, which creates a major hurdle for recruiting highly qualified teachers to the area.

Still, the citizens love their community and they are proud of their school. Nearly everybody in town attends the high school football and basketball games. Each spring, hundreds of people pile into the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall to see the 16 or 18 high school seniors graduate. Runge High School Principal Jo Ann Villareal says that because Runge is such a small school, 90 percent of its students are involved in multiple extracurricular activities. Those include sports, band, cheerleading, academic competitions and Future Farmers of America.

“Our school is really the focal point for all of Runge,” Villareal says. “There are not enough businesses or community organizations to create community involvement.”

Thanks to the benchmarks set by state assessments and funding received through Title I designation and the federal stimulus package, Villareal and her teaching faculty have redoubled their efforts to raise the academic performance of students at Runge High School, primarily by increasing the rigor of the curriculum. Runge now offers its students a chance to participate in Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID), a rigorous college-readiness program for eighth and ninth graders that focuses on student-directed learning and critical thinking. Out of 52 students in those two grades, 28 have joined AVID.

Without the personnel or resources to offer Advanced Placement classes, the high school allows interested students to take online distance-learning classes and/or dual-credit courses at the community college 45 miles away. Out of 35 juniors and seniors in 2009-2010, 14 took distance-learning courses in English and history.

“These kinds of options open up doors for our students,” says Villareal. “The courses are expensive and beyond the means of many of our families, but the district pays the tuition, fees and books through state high-school allotment funds.”

Using stimulus funds, she was also able to purchase Acer laptop computers for every student in seventh through 12th grades to keep throughout their high school careers. These computers have been a tremendous boon to instruction, allowing teachers to incorporate website and database searches into their assignments. Unfortunately, few places in town have Internet access. The school now stays open until 9 p.m., so students can work in the computer lab and use the school’s printers. “It’s not like we have a Starbucks around here,” Villareal says. “Half or more of our students wouldn’t have Internet access otherwise.”

This focused effort on academics has yielded good results. In the past two years, more students completed high school, including those who became pregnant while still in school. Plus, Texas has deemed Runge Elementary School as “exemplary,” and the high school as “recognized” for their students’ performance on the state standardized assessments. “Recognized” status indicates that 80 percent of students are above the passing benchmark in each of the subject areas tested. Runge was also awarded a “Bronze Medal” in the U.S. News & World Report listing of “America’s Best High Schools 2010.” The bronze designation means that the school’s least advantaged students were performing better than average compared to similar students in the state, although they could not demonstrate a high level of college readiness, because students did not have access to Advanced Placement courses.

Which points to Villareal’s next looming hurdle. Even though her students have been performing well on the state tests, this only indicates they’ve reached minimum proficiency in academic subject areas. Most Runge students are not scoring high enough on the ACT and SAT to be accepted into or receive scholarship money for college. Only two students out of 18 who graduated in 2009 went on to a four-year college. The school is now holding ACT-prep courses to help prepare juniors to take the exam. Teachers have also begun arranging more college visits and other trips to expose them to the world outside of their community. They are also encouraging them to go on college visits on their own.

“Right now, we are reaching the minimum standards,” Villareal says, “but we really want to go beyond that so our students are not only prepared to be accepted into four-year colleges, but also will do well once they get into college.”

To meet that goal will require more than intensified efforts by Runge’s handful of teachers. In the truest sense of the word, it will take a village.

Chris Barbic, BS ’92, with students from YES Prep, a charter school system he founded in Houston, Texas.

YES Prep Public Schools is a Houston-based charter school network begun by Chris Barbic, BS’92, in 1998. After he finished his teaching stint through Teach for America, Barbic grew frustrated when he realized that many of the sixth graders he’d worked so hard to boost over the achievement hump were flunking out and dropping out by the time they reached high school. Today seven YES Prep campuses are in operation, with a total enrollment of 3,500 students. Each school opens in the sixth grade and adds a grade a year until they include the full complement through 12th grade. Students do not have to meet any academic criteria to attend, and parents in an enrollment zone apply by blind lottery. Over the years, Barbic and his schools have received numerous awards and recognition for promoting academic excellence among at-risk students. Barbic won Peabody’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2006 for his work with YES Prep.

At the two six-year YES Prep campuses now in operation, 100 percent of the seniors not only apply to but also attend four-year colleges. By contrast, in the rest of the Houston public school system only one in 10 sixth graders finishes college and of the low-income students who do start college, only one in four graduates. By comparison, 84 percent of students who graduated from YES Prep are still enrolled in college or have already received their degrees—a number Barbic finds disappointing.

“We’re not where we want to be on that, even if we’re better than the average,” he says. “We’re looking at that right now—how can we get that 84 percent up to above 90 percent?”

Given their 100 percent graduation rate and “exemplary” status on the Texas state assessment exams, it would seem that the achievement gap is not an issue for YES Prep schools. In fact, it’s a constant issue. Barbic says that the typical sixth-grade student who enters YES Prep is about two years behind those attending the suburban Houston schools. In a push to make sure the gap is closed by the time students reach high school, YES Prep children are in school for longer days (classes end at 4:35 p.m.), and they are in school for an additional 10 days during the summer. They also have weekend community service and enrichment requirements during the school year, and their academic curriculum is uniformly rigorous.

“For a lot of these kids, the middle school years are where they start to fall off the track. The transitions from elementary school to middle school and from middle school to high school are hard ones. So we create an environment where that transition from middle school to high school doesn’t exist anymore, because they’re all under one roof,” Barbic says. “Secondly, we create classes with great teachers and lots of rigor in middle school so that kids are used to doing rigorous work at a fairly young age. If you wait until high school in the neighborhoods we’re in, too many kids will be so far behind at that point that college isn’t a reality for them.”

Barbic goes against conventional wisdom in addressing many of the issues thought to contribute to the achievement gap—class size, for example. “I think class size is overrated,” he states. “What’s more important than class size is grade size, or what I call ‘cohort size.’”

In other words, he caps each grade at around 150 students, and he caps each sixth- through 12th-grade school at around 800 students, unlike the 3,000-plus population of local comprehensive high schools. “At 800 kids it’s big enough so that you can have some extracurricular activities, but it’s also small enough so that no one feels like a number. Kids can build relationships with each other and with their teachers,” he says.

He also establishes an expectation from the beginning that each child is destined for success and sets academic standards at the same level as those of the wealthiest suburban schools. If necessary, children are asked to repeat a grade. About 10 to 15 percent of the younger children are held back each year, usually because of a deficiency in English language and literacy skills.

Most importantly, YES Prep administrators embark on intense searches for the best teachers they can find. Great teachers delivering a quality education, Barbic says, can ameliorate many of the peripheral problems—housing, poverty, crime—that keep these students from learning. The majority of the teachers at his academy are culled from the ranks of Teach for America. Beyond that, however, he and his colleagues have crafted a profile of common traits to identify the kind of teacher who will excel in this environment.

Barbic says, “First, our teachers have what we call a quick rebound time. They hit a skid in the road, an obstacle, and they bounce right back and figure out different solutions to problems. Second, they are not afraid of conflict and they’re not afraid to have a serious conversation with a kid or with a parent. Third, they have high energy and they enjoy being in a leadership position.

“And, finally, one of the most interesting things is that our highest performing teachers are pessimists. It kind of makes sense. Pessimists can’t leave things to chance. They know they are the difference-makers for our kids. If they don’t do their job and do it well, they know there isn’t a bright future for these kids. They understand the gravity of the situation and the importance of education.” Once hired, YES Prep provides a program of training, collaboration and support to ensure its teachers will be successful.

Charter schools, some experts insist, are not the answer to closing the achievement gap, and Barbic agrees that not all charter schools are created equal. In fact, some are no better than the worst public schools. “What the charter school movement has brought to the table is pockets of excellence and proof points around the country for what is possible for low-income kids,” Barbic says. “I think prior to that people didn’t believe it was possible.”

Today, many more adults realize the opportunities that a solid education can provide to even the most disadvantaged child. As evidence, the parents of 5,000 Houston middle-schoolers, who were closed out in the lottery, put their children on the waiting list to get into YES Prep. Such is their faith in the power of possibility.

(See p. 31 for a profile of YES Prep graduate and Peabody undergraduate Stacy Flores.)

Although every situation is different, if Graham and Pérez can serve as examples, certain common factors appear to be crucial for beating the odds of poverty and racial disparities. First, students must have someone in their lives—a parent, a guardian, a relative or a coach—who refuses to give up on them, even when the student makes bad decisions. Second, at various pivotal junctures in their school careers, a mentor, a teacher or a coach steps forward unsolicited and offers to help. Third, these students possess an innate sense of destiny, believing that if given the slightest chance, they will make the effort to succeed. And finally, these students are inherently resilient, so that whenever they get knocked down, they still struggle back up and give life one more try.

Here are two stories:

Jamie Graham leading a class at Pearl-Cohn High School in Nashville. Graham is a special education major at Peabody.

Things to Work For
Jamie Graham, Peabody Class of 2011

Born in a rough neighborhood in East Nashville, Jamie Graham was achingly familiar with tragedy as a young child. He and his younger brother Jamonte were being raised by their single mother, Jamie Denise Graham, when she was killed right before Christmas 1996. Jamie, 8, and Jamonte, a toddler, went to live with their grandmother, Hattie Graham. Jamie’s second-grade class collected money for a few presents so that Jamie would have Christmas that year. “I will always remember the teacher who did that for me,” he says.

Jamie grew into an outstanding athlete and a good student under the watchful eye of his grandmother, who always stressed what she called “the three B’s—Bible, books and ball—in that order,” and he managed to stay on track until he hit high school. In the ninth grade, he received his first D, in geometry, and although he worked hard to bring the grade up to an A by the end of that year, he had begun hanging out with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble. When he was a sophomore, he quit the football team. With only a few games left in the season, football coach Anthony Law tracked Jamie down. “You need to come back and play football,” Coach Law told him. “You’re good enough that this is going to be your ticket to college.” Perhaps because the coach made the effort to seek him out, Jamie took his advice and rejoined the team.

For the next two years, Jamie was a star athlete in both football and basketball at Whites Creek High School, and Law became his mentor, his counselor and his advocate, helping Jamie navigate through life’s rough patches. Although he had several college offers in both sports, he signed with Vanderbilt to play football, the only person from his high school class to go there. He chose Vanderbilt because he felt obligated to stay close to home. His grandmother has health issues, and Jamie has largely taken over responsibility for raising his younger brother. Also, he says: “If I get a degree from Vanderbilt, it means so much—especially in my community.”

The trek has not been easy, however. After being red-shirted his freshman year—meaning he practiced with the football team, but could not play in the games—Jamie was ready to quit school. It seemed like every week another of his East Nashville friends was killed. One year Jamie had 11 friends die, mostly in violent incidents. One of his best neighborhood friends was shot and killed while walking home. He struggled to adjust to the surreal otherworld that is life at a quiet university.

Jamie says, “It just seemed like things were being thrown at me all at the same time, and I was having tough schoolwork to deal with on top of that.” He took time off, regrouped and finally concluded that sticking it out would give Jamonte more options. “I came back, and I dedicated myself to school. I decided I had things to work for,” he says.

During his junior year in 2009, Jamie had a breakout season on the football field and in the classroom. An education major at Peabody, he did a teaching rotation in a special education class in East Nashville. As he began forging bonds with socioeconomically disadvantaged students who also had physical and learning disabilities, behavioral disorders, autism and emotional problems, he realized where his heart was. He switched his major to special education.

Jamie wants to be a role model for children back in his neighborhood, and he wants to pay back those teachers who were there for him. “When you feel like you’re close to a teacher,” he says, “it’s the best feeling in the world.”

He has two more years of eligibility on the football team and is scheduled to graduate in spring 2011. Depending on how football works out, he’ll either try to go pro and play in the NFL, or he might take the extra year of eligibility and get his master’s degree in education.

“I can be the first person in my family to graduate from college, and Jamonte can be the second,” Jamie says. “I want the people in our neighborhood to realize that if the Grahams can do it, and they live right across the street, then we can do it, too.”

David Pérez II, BS’97, MEd’01, is now finishing a Ph.D. in higher education at Pennsylvania State University.

El Logrador
David Pérez II, BS’97, MEd’01

David Pérez II began to drift off track around the time he started high school. Growing up in a low-income district of Brooklyn, N.Y., Pérez began hanging around with the wrong crowd as he reached his midteens. His mother, Enid S. Hernandez, had raised him alone, remarrying when her son was 10, although David says his stepfather did not play a central role in his life. Searching for prestige and credibility, David joined a gang. From that point forward, his life became a perilous tug-of-war between his buddies in the gang and his mother’s determination to free him from their influence.

He got into fights, got arrested for truancy and flunked nearly all his courses. One day, David learned that there had been a fight between two guys. At the end of it, members of his gang had jumped one of the guys and slashed him with box cutters. They had crossed the line, David thought, and he wanted out. However, he soon discovered that joining a gang meant that he couldn’t just leave. His former friends began stalking him, threatening to cut him up, even threatening his family. To dodge them, David would change his routine every day, going to school late and leaving classes early. He carried his own box cutter with him for protection and was expelled twice for taking it to school. He bounced in and out of schools all over New York and eventually was picked up again for truancy.

By this time, David was two academic years behind, and his mother was at her wit’s end. “She decided to pull me out of high school,” David says. “My sister was 6 and my brother was 2, and she said, ‘You’re a bad influence on your siblings. I can’t do this anymore. Go get your GED.’” This was the first time in his life he felt that his mother was giving up on him. “It shattered me,” he says.

But Enid Hernandez did not give up. She continued to search for options for her son. David ultimately wound up at Pacific High School, an alternative school for students who washed out of traditional high schools. The school was underresourced—the encyclopedia set was missing several volumes, the college catalogs were almost a decade old and library books had pages torn out. The school counselor told him: “You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to. But if you want to finish high school, we’re here to help you.”

David recalls, “I made a choice then. I was praying to God to give me one more chance.” At the end of his first semester at Pacific, he made As and Bs. When his mother saw his grades, she called the school to be sure he hadn’t stolen someone else’s report card.

To make up his missed classes and graduate on time, David overloaded on classes, attending Pacific from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m., signing up for extra independent studies and then heading off to night school. As swamped as he was with work, his grades remained excellent. Teachers at the school began to suggest to him that he should go to college, and one teacher told him about The Posse Foundation, a nationally recognized college access and leadership development program that sends diverse groups of students (i.e. posses) to highly selective postsecondary institutions. David applied and was accepted to attend Vanderbilt University. He’d never heard of it before.

Since his mother couldn’t afford to make the trip with him, David boarded a plane alone in the late summer of 1993, carrying a word processor in a box and one suitcase full of clothes.

His arrival in Nashville was marked by culture shock. “I grew up in Brooklyn around a lot of racial and ethnic groups. For me, being Puerto Rican was central to my identity. When I moved onto campus, I felt like an outsider,” he says. “The transition was very difficult. Of all my peers in Posse, I did the worst academically that first semester. I earned a 1.33 GPA, and I was placed on academic probation.”

He was so miserable that after being in college for three months, he hadn’t even unpacked his suitcase. He phoned his mother and told her he was going to leave. He was in over his head. “No,” she answered firmly. “I know you’re going to make it. You can do this.”

One of David’s friends from Posse came over, unpacked his suitcase and put away his clothes, telling him that being at Vanderbilt was rough on all of them, and he would just have to figure it out. Which he did. By the end of his second semester freshman year, his GPA had edged up to a 2.5. Semester by semester, his GPA slowly inched a little higher, by a tenth of a grade point or so each time.

Still, he felt a chronic sense of guilt that his family was sacrificing so much for him to be at Vanderbilt. While the Posse scholarship paid for most of his expenses, he knew that his mother was refusing to take out loans to support his education and was juggling her finances to come up with the needed funds. He worried that she was getting behind on rent and that his younger siblings were being denied things she could no longer afford.

One day late in his sophomore year, when David was feeling conflicted about placing such a burden on his family, he spotted a notice seeking applications for student residence assistants, or RAs, for the upcoming school year. RAs would have their housing paid for by the university and receive a stipend. The deadline was in two days. Fortuitously, the area director for his residence hall, Richard Jones, had left his door open. He noticed David standing there, came out into the hallway and asked, “May I help you?”

After David explained his situation, Jones told him that if he could get him an application and a resume, Jones would guarantee David a spot on his staff. David had never seen a resume, much less created one, so he called his mother. She didn’t know how to write a resume either, but she knew of someone in Brooklyn who might be willing to help. David was hired.

“My junior year I took flight as an RA,” he says. “I loved helping students who needed assistance. And I was the only Latino out of 20 to 25 RAs, so I found I could be a voice in this area of campus life.” Happily engaged in campus life and feeling useful, he continued to work as an RA until he graduated from Peabody in spring 1997. His last semester GPA was a 3.5, and he finally made the dean’s list.

David went on to receive his master’s degree at Peabody, worked for a while, and now is in the final stages to receive a Ph.D. in higher education from Pennsylvania State University. His dissertation research is a study of minority, particularly Latino, males from impoverished communities who have risen above debilitating life circumstances to excel in college. He does not like to speak of “achievement.” Instead he prefers the Spanish term, lograr, which is weightier than “to achieve.” It means to reap the benefits of one’s labor and exertions.

“Lograr implies a struggle or sacrifice, a price that had to be paid to be successful,” David explains. “I paid a tremendous price to be successful. My entire educational career has been a painful process.” He is now a logrador, he says, because Posse gave him immediate access to relationships with friends in similar situations and to faculty who were invested in him, even though he was ill-prepared for college. Somebody always came through for him in the clutch.

“Richard Jones was one person,” he says. “I wasn’t sure I could stay in college. But all I needed was one person to broker the deal.”

For disadvantaged students, the path to success can turn on the gentlest of exchanges—like when an adult rises from his chair, steps into a hallway and asks, “May I help you?”

And a proud, hesitant young man musters up his courage to answer, “Yes, maybe you can.”

Pre-K students at Ross Elementary School in Nashville work with colors and shapes prior to leaving school for the summer break. Research suggests that students from disadvantaged schools are more likely to experience a “summer dip” in achievement that can aggregate so that children can become at least two years behind by the time they reach high school.

A World of Hurt

It’s a gray winter day at Ross Elementary, an inner-city school in East Nashville that serves a high percentage of children who qualify for the free and reduced-priced lunch program, and pre-K teacher Tish Smedley is overseeing the controlled chaos of her 4-year-old students as they prepare for rest period. A slender little boy dressed [...]

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An AVID classroom at Runge Independent School in rural south Texas prepares eighth- and ninth-grade students for college.

Far Away, Distant Learning: The Rural Achievement Gap

Amid all the recent scrutiny of the achievement gap and its effect on urban minority and low-income students, another large subset of disadvantaged American students—those attending poor rural schools—have been largely overlooked and underexamined. More than one in five children in the U.S. live in rural areas, and of these, 20 percent are black or Hispanic.

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Chris Barbic, BS ’92, with students from YES Prep, a charter school system he founded in Houston, Texas.

Is the Answer YES?

Teacher Laureen Wimbley is walking around her classroom at YES Prep Southwest, giving her sixth-grade students instructions on how to complete their science lessons.On paper, this is a classroom that should be a recipe for disaster. Thirty-four Hispanic and black preteens are crammed together, seated shoulder-to-shoulder in a cramped modular building located in a low-income neighborhood in southwest Houston. As Wimbley energetically describes the assignment, the students bend forward intent on their work. There are no disruptions. No shouts or extraneous conversations. Only learning.

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Jamie Graham leading a class at Pearl-Cohn High School in Nashville. Graham is a special education major at Peabody.

Jumping the Gap: Two Success Stories

The achievement gap in education is based on averages—average test scores, average family incomes, average performance based on race and ethnicity. On average, for example, black and Latino men are the lowest performing group on the down side of the achievement gap. Yet not all black and Latino males fall into that category. Some have defied the averages and risen above their circumstances to become successful. Jamie Graham and David Pérez are two such men.

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I have been privileged to serve Peabody as associate dean in two decades: in the 1980s and in the first 10 years of the 21st century (actually, since 1998). Two more disparate decades would be difficult to imagine.

My first decade as a Peabody associate dean began in 1980, a few months after the merger with Vanderbilt. The two-thirds of the Peabody faculty who had survived the merger were fearful about the future, and with good reason—enrollments had plummeted, and the college had no robust and sustaining revenue streams. In the first few years after merger, Peabody’s annual deficit was double the subvention of $750,000 that was to be provided in each of our first 10 years as Vanderbilt’s college of education and human development. Elsewhere in the university many predicted that Peabody would be unable to achieve financial viability. The situation was “touch and go”; many at Peabody feared that someone would touch them on the shoulder and tell them to go.

Peabody’s first regular dean, Willis Hawley, took the helm from Acting Dean Hardy Wilcoxon in 1980 and immediately began recruiting new faculty who would increase Peabody’s research capacity and ability to secure external funding. In addition, he worked with Peabody faculty to develop new and innovative academic programs that would absorb excess faculty and attract new students, especially at the undergraduate level. Peabody’s surviving faculty proved to be admirably adaptable and willing to take on new assignments, with many beginning to teach undergraduates for the first time in years. In this first decade a group of faculty led by Professor Robert Innes established a new program, Human Development, that later was renamed Human and Organizational Development (HOD) and was destined to become Vanderbilt’s most popular undergraduate major. The success of HOD was fundamental to Peabody’s eventual financial viability.

Despite their post-merger anxiety, Peabody’s faculty and students were able to laugh at themselves and their situation. For example, the faculty- and student-produced skits of the “Peabody Follies” early in Dean Hawley’s administration included a “program name generator,” operated by associate deans, that parodied our frantic efforts to rebuild enrollments. In addition, Dean Hawley donned tennis shoes and a cardigan sweater in an impersonation of Mr. Rogers singing “You’ll Never Go Down the Drain.” In that uncertain first post-merger decade all of us needed to reassure each other that Peabody’s survival was possible.

In 1990 I left the dean’s office to resume work as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology and Human Development. Dean Hawley, whose administration ended in 1989, initially was replaced by Acting Dean Joseph Cunningham, who was followed by Dean James Pellegrino. By 1998, the end of Dean Pellegrino’s administration, U.S. News & World Report ranked Peabody 10th in the United States among graduate schools of education. During the 1990s Peabody also began completing fiscal years with surpluses, leading one central administration official to comment that Peabody was no longer viewed as a problem. Instead, it had become “part of the solution.”

I returned to the dean’s office in 1998, when Dean Camilla Benbow began her first appointment as Peabody’s leader. While the survival of Peabody no longer was in doubt, the college was experiencing growing pains and organizational challenges that threatened its financial stability and increasing excellence.

For example, the HOD major’s popularity had begun to imperil its continued success. With more than 700 students and its faculty scattered across several departments, the program had become administratively unwieldy. After considerable discussion, the Department of Human and Organizational Development was created to manage most of the HOD major’s core curriculum, two of its tracks, its required internship and three related graduate programs. The major’s policy-related courses and three of its tracks were lodged in the existing Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations. In addition, department-spanning coordinating committees were created to guarantee program coherence. These changes helped assure the future success of the HOD program.

Early in Dean Benbow’s administration it also became apparent that Peabody needed to restrain expenses—primarily through budgetary adjustments and the achievement of leaner administrative staffing—while diversifying its sources of sustaining revenue. Fifth-year master’s programs were created to make it possible for undergraduates to earn a master’s degree with one additional year of study, master’s programs in additional specialty areas were created, and existing master’s programs were expanded. At the same time, Peabody’s portfolio of externally funded projects was enlarged through continuing recruitment of eminent scholars in all departments. In the same time period, the Kennedy Center was extended from a Peabody-based unit to a transinstitutional research enterprise. And, Peabody’s star continued to rise as promised in our strategic plan.

Dean Benbow arrived as the university was in the midst of strategic academic planning. In 2000, as part of that exercise, the faculty and academic leaders of Peabody College developed a strategic plan that painted a mostly prescient vision of Peabody College in 2010:

… the Peabody College of 2010 will be widely recognized as the place where collaborative, multidisciplinary research involving scholars throughout Vanderbilt University is producing the most exciting discoveries in the areas of how people learn and develop, how teaching at all levels can be made more effective, how education can capitalize to the fullest on emerging technologies, and how social context affects these activities. It also will be recognized as a leader in applying this knowledge to facilitate lifelong learning, optimize human development, prevent or ameliorate developmental disabilities, reform both teacher education and graduate education, and render the institutions of education more effective. As a result of Peabody’s contributions, Vanderbilt University will be well on the way to surpassing such institutions as Harvard and Stanford in being recognized as the university with the very best school of education (and human development) in America.

James Hogge in 1979, at the time of Peabody’s merger with Vanderbilt. In 1980, Hogge began his first decade as associate dean.

Substantial investments in Peabody’s strategic plan, continuing success in the recruitment of nationally prominent faculty who garner ever-increasing external funding, and growing numbers of stellar students have propelled Peabody to the level described in our vision of 10 years ago. In the 2010 U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate schools of education, Peabody was ranked number one for the second year in a row, with Stanford and Harvard tied for number three.

Disparate decades, indeed!

What might the future hold for Peabody? The college’s strong financial position, superb faculty, outstanding students and accomplished alumni portend continued leadership in education and human development. Peabody’s entrepreneurial and adaptive community of scholars will, as in previous years, continue to make important and influential contributions to the knowledge base while pursuing lines of investigation enabled by the emergence of new technical capabilities (e.g., in brain science). At the same time, however, Peabody will maintain the symbiotic linkage of theoretical research and practical application that has distinguished the college for many years. In short, I am confident that the Peabody of the future will remain a source of pride for all of us who have been part of the college.

Innovative developmental cognitive neuroscientist Bruce McCandliss, winner of a presidential early career award and principal investigator for several National Institutes of Health grants, has joined Peabody College to continue his research into educational neuroscience, the study of how a child’s brain might influence educational experience and how educational experiences might influence a child’s brain.

McCandliss joined the Peabody College faculty as Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Psychology and Human Development earlier this year. His specific research focus—looking at how brain mechanisms influence performance and how teaching drives changes in the brain—may have a profound impact on how children, especially struggling learners, are taught.

His appointment complements Peabody’s existing strengths in combining teaching and learning theory with scientific research. “Peabody faculty members have long worked at the forefront of developmental science,” says Camilla Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development. “As researchers increasingly rely on new tools and technologies to advance our understanding about how humans grow and learn, the addition of Bruce McCandliss to our ranks will ensure that Peabody continues to make valuable contributions to the knowledge base. We are delighted to have him with us.”

McCandliss, 43, holds a doctorate in psychology with a special emphasis on cognitive neuroscience. He has also obtained advanced post-doctoral training in the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activity underlying reading and language development in children. He comes to Vanderbilt from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, where he was one of the founding faculty members of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology. For the last decade, he has focused on how children’s brains activate when working on specific tasks, how their brain structures influence their learning and how teaching methods can alter brain function.

As a developmental cognitive neuroscientist, McCandliss focuses his research on how brain development and cognitive development relate to each other. He uses fMRI and diffusion tensor imaging in his research, brain-imaging tools that tell him how individual differences in brain structure impact learning in particular domains, like reading or mathematics.

“Vanderbilt is the ideal place to do this research because here I am at Peabody, the best school of education in the United States, and the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science—this amazing place with state-of-the-art imaging science and faculty—is right across the street,” he says. “It’s the ideal opportunity to bring together research on education and neuroscience.”

McCandliss has applied a scientific approach to measuring mental ability since his early years as an undergraduate honors student in the late 1980s. “I’m interested in how individual differences in brain structure impact learning in particular domains, like reading or mathematics,” he says. “We must keep in mind that it was only 5,000 years ago that humans started connecting language to letters, and this transformed our world as well as our minds.

“Creating new abilities such as reading and mathematics in a child’s mind and brain via education may be one of the most fundamental enhancements of intellectual activity and capacity and has a profound impact on how the brain organizes language and thought. We are now able to study this by combining social science (psychology and education) with natural science (biology and physics that enable brain imaging). Together these create a new field of educational neuroscience.”

His work was recognized in 2006 when he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor given by the U.S. government to outstanding researchers in the early part of their independent careers. The award recognized McCandliss’s research into the biological basis for language development, developmental disorders such as dyslexia, and his approach to using insights of cognitive neuroscience, including brain imaging, to help develop methods to alleviate reading disabilities.

His research shows that tailored educational techniques can improve reading skills in children, and his laboratory research with adults shows how different teaching strategies can lead to different patterns in brain activity. He collaborated with educational researchers to co-develop a software program called Reading Works that helped struggling young readers in Pittsburgh and New York City inner-city public schools jump more than a grade level in reading ability in just a few months. His more recent work has begun to unravel how we can understand the remarkable differences that exist in how easily children learn to read through understanding the differences in how children’s brains are wired.

By using MRI scans to measure “white matter tracts”—the large masses of fibers that connect one part of the brain to another—he is able to relate anatomical differences that exist in specific brain structures to differences in how well children progress through the task of learning to read. His future research directly examines a question he is quite excited to learn the answer to: How does the process of educating the brain, via schooling activities, change the structure of the brain?

In addition to the PECASE project, McCandliss brings to Vanderbilt several million dollars in federally funded research projects from NIH, as well as a recently awarded $1 million NSF study into how first-graders learn math.

“My most recent project is looking at brain-based research focused on understanding how children differ in math-related skills before school entry and how these skills change as the results of schooling activities,” he said. “The three-year study will focus on first graders and how they learn math during this critical year.”

Why first graders? Because first grade is a year of incredible growth in students’ classroom engagement in reading, math skills and writing. McCandliss is in the process of working with Nashville-area schools to recruit students for the study.

In a paper by McCandliss and several other scientists published in Developmental Science in 2006, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were used to illustrate that among children of equivalent phonological skill, yet diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, a child’s experience affects the relationship between language skills and reading-related brain activity.

The main question in the grant is: How do individual differences in children’s brain mechanisms for number abilities relate to gains in learning first-grade mathematics, and how might first-grade instruction drive changes in such brain mechanisms? It’s the duality of that question that interests McCandliss.

“I want to look at how the process of learning and using symbols such as numbers and letters changes the white matter tracts in their brains and to explore how brain activity reorganizes over the course of learning,” he says. “Children are so incredibly variable, both in terms of how quickly they come to master educational material such as math and reading and in their brain structures. My new research will try to measure these differences at the beginning and end of the school year to predict outcomes and also capture the impact of learning experiences on brain structures.

“Are we talking about a future in which every single child gets a brain scan?” he continues. “No, of course not. We hope to use this research to gain basic insights into principles of learning and what encourages learning, and hopefully we can apply those insights to enhance education to help all children develop skills in these key areas of mathematics and reading and help them perform these key skills even better.”

The overall goal of McCandliss’ research is to understand how reading and math skills develop and also how children develop the ability to pay attention so that they can learn.

“I have three overall goals in trying to bring together research on education and neuroscience,” McCandliss says. “The first is to understand the development of reading skills from the basics to full content comprehension. Second, I want to study how we learn math, which is a culturally developed system to understand numbers, space and time. How does learning this system lead to changes in specific brain structures and expand our mental abilities? We don’t really know that yet.

“Third, I want to learn about children’s general attention skills and how these play out in learning and education. We need to understand attention as a basic cognitive skill that differs from child to child, and is engaged differently by different educational approaches and activities. Attention is the gateway to learning, as generally, we learn most effectively those things that we pay attention to.”

Across each of these domains, a key aspect of this research is understanding why children differ and for McCandliss, educational neuroscience gets at the heart of this question by bringing natural science observations of brain mechanisms into the mix.

“We’re starting to learn how children differ within particular educational domains, such as reading and mathematics, and how such differences may be linked to variation in brain structures and patterns of brain activation,” he says. “The chance to explore these topics in children as they progress through education is a really exciting opportunity, and a really exciting time in science.

“The hope here is that we will be able to adapt our educational approaches to these new insights about the individual needs of students. For example, for a struggling reader who is having problems decoding and mapping words, we can use brain imaging to help answer the question, ‘Why do they struggle?’ And in answering this question we can focus new research on strategies to help them overcome that struggle.”

Her findings helped lead to the establishment of Head Start, a national school readiness program.

Today, language development for preschoolers is once again making national headlines with President Obama pledging to devote billions of dollars to early childhood education. It would be the largest federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965, according to The New York Times.

Many states are putting money into pre-K education as well. Tennessee’s Gov. Phil Bredesen instituted voluntary pre-K in 2005, channeling $213 million into a program that serves 18,000 young children with thousands more on the waiting list.

Current research by early language development specialists at Peabody into curricula, programs and methods that work continues to provide a vital foundation for educators and decision makers.

Gray, a developmental psychologist and Peabody professor for whom Peabody College’s Susan Gray School is named, focused on children at risk for school failure because of poverty, and that effort continues among Peabody
researchers such as Dale Farran.

Other early childhood education researchers at Peabody search for new ways to help children with motor or cognitive delays, autism, congenital defects such as cleft palates, children who learned another language first, and typically developing children who have slipped through the cracks.

There are ongoing large-scale outcome studies involving multiple school systems and smaller scale experiments designed to find out how children learn language and why and what works best. All are equally important to informing future public policy decisions, researchers say.

“Sometimes research does not uphold what you might advocate,” said Farran, professor of education and psychology. “That doesn’t mean that we stop advocating ways to treat children well or stop caring about children and thinking about how to make their lives better.”

Starting young

Baby instructional videos are a good example of a well-intentioned teaching tool aimed at young children that doesn’t pan out.

In Georgene Troseth’s lab, a toddler watches a video of Troseth hiding Pooh Bear under a table. But when led into the same room, configured in exactly the same way, he can’t find the stuffed animal.

That was an early example of groundbreaking research findings by Troseth, associate professor of psychology, and others showing that while television shows and videos can serve an educational function for children older than three, those aimed at children younger than three are not effective teaching tools. Babies and toddlers don’t understand that what they see in a video represents something in real life.

“What I’m looking at is how and under what conditions very young children begin to realize that nonlinguistic symbols represent something else,” Troseth said.

Troseth’s current research explores whether videos are effective teaching tools for children with autism. She has ongoing research to find out how videos might better be used for instruction, such as training parents and teachers to stop videos to ask questions and launch discussions, much as they would when reading a book.

For children under three, parents provide critical feedback and narration as children develop early language skills, say Troseth and others at Peabody.

“Parents are children’s first language teachers and most parents are very good teachers,” said Ann Kaiser, professor of special education and Susan Gray Professor of Education and Human Development. “When parents’ teaching doesn’t work, it’s usually because the child needs a different kind of teaching or more support to learn language.”

Kaiser directs several projects aimed at teaching strategies to parents to help support their children’s language development. She also is interested in finding ways to identify and help children with potential language learning difficulties before they reach kindergarten. Kaiser’s new research project targets children in the 24- to 36-month age range who are typically developing cognitively but have delayed language production and comprehension.

“This is a population of kids who don’t qualify for early intervention because they only have language delays. The usual prescription is: Wait and see. Some of those kids will be just fine, and some will not be just fine,” Kaiser said.

Generally, children who enter school with lower language abilities don’t do as well in school as their peers with typical language—but that’s not true for every child, Kaiser said. Some catch up to their peers after a period of time because they learn from the language-rich environment. Identification of those who won’t catch up without systematic early intervention is critical.

“Persistent low-language kids over time are more likely to have reading problems,” Kaiser said. “So we want to figure out: Who are these children? How can we predict which kids will have persistent language problems over time? And how can we get intervention for them earlier?”

“It’s all about efficiency,” Kaiser said. “How can we, in a way that’s developmentally appropriate, accelerate development for these kids? Can we get them back on a trajectory that looks like typical development by the time they get to kindergarten so they can take advantage of the learning environment and run with it?”

Language talk

In one project, Kaiser and David Dickinson, professor of education and chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning, are following 445 children in the Head Start program in Birmingham, Ala.

Some of those classrooms have implemented a curriculum co-authored by Dickinson called Opening the World of Learning (OWL), which provides guidance to teachers helping children build vocabulary and basic literacy skills.

Some of the classrooms that used the OWL curriculum also use Kaiser’s Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT) for children with lower language abilities. EMT was developed primarily for children with significant language delays such as children with autism and Down syndrome. It has been used in other studies with children at risk for language delays.

“One interesting thing that we’re doing is seeing if we can identify critical ingredients in classroom interactions that relate to children’s growth” with a focus on what teachers are doing that works well, Dickinson said.

The researchers have found that explicit talk about vocabulary is associated with faster learning. He noted, “Getting teachers to talk explicitly about language requires a real shift in the standard ways of teaching and interacting with young children.”

While it can be challenging to demonstrate that a particular program substantially affects children’s language learning, Dickinson said new findings from a study combining results from eight different programs that served more than 3,000 children and used OWL have shown evidence for the first time that specific conceptual teaching practices aimed at 4-year-olds have measurable impact on language skills by the end of fourth grade.

An increased impact

Debbie Rowe, associate professor of early childhood education, and others have been studying ways to help preschool children learn language and master other tasks by developing better writing skills, which some research has shown are just as important to school success as early reading skills.

Rowe and Dickinson are co-investigators on a project for Early Reading First (ERF), a Bush administration initiative designed to create “spires
of excellence” in preschool classrooms. The project uses both the OWL curriculum and strategies for integrating writing experiences into the children’s daily work and play. A third component targets

English language learners, who make up about a third of the classroom population of the study. That project, in partnership with the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, the Nashville Public Library and the YMCA, involves 13 preschool classes.

The graduates of the preschool classroom attend a summer camp at the Y designed to provide fun social interactions and re-expose them to learning opportunities before they begin kindergarten (see “Project Lift Off,” p.16). This is an important component for children heading to kindergarten from homes where English is not the primary language.

As part of the project, parents are provided with materials to help enrich learning at home. The project also shares critical data regarding the students’ progress with teachers on an ongoing basis. It is the kind of data that has been used to evaluate the OWL curriculum in at least nine other programs.

“We have seen very encouraging patterns of increasing impact across the range of language and literacy,” Dickinson said. “This doesn’t mean this curriculum is what’s critical. It is part of the picture of adequate funding for sustained coaching and attention to quality as well as ongoing evaluation and assessment as part of the whole ERF approach.”

Carin Neitzel, assistant professor of early childhood education, has worked with Rowe and Dickinson on the ERF project and with Rowe in conducting a three-year longitudinal study of children ages 2 to 5. The study aims to find ways to engage children in writing at an earlier age.

While the conventional wisdom is that children learn to read first and then write, contemporary research shows that preschoolers can learn “in a much more holistic way,” Rowe said.

“Kids learn how to write the same way they learn to talk,” Rowe said. “If we invite children to write words and respond to their meanings, they make amazing discoveries about how print works.”

Tools and training are key

Training teachers and providing them with tools, such as curricula, is critical to the success of any pre-K program, Farran said. “These curricula provide a way of organizing the year and making it logical for children,” Farran said

Farran and Neitzel both are interested in whether children taught to be self-regulated learners in preschool fare better later on, with more success in learning language and other skills. There is a growing body of research about children who are self-regulated learners, who tend to know when it’s appropriate to ask for help and are able to follow directions and sustain attention Farran said. She and her colleague, Mark Lipsey of the Peabody Research Institute, have launched a study in some Tennessee and North Carolina preschools that seeks to determine how to encourage that style of learning.

“Those skills are almost as predictive as early reading,” Farran said. But better outcome measures are needed as well as stricter measurement guidelines, which are part of the current study.

Farran is among researchers at Peabody who welcome the renewed emphasis on pre-K education. But she approaches the subject with caution.

“As popular as universal pre-K is, we have very little in the way of longitudinal studies,” she said. “A lot of what we rely on for informing legislation came from small studies in the 60s. The issue is how you go to scale once we find things that work in very small environments. We have a lot of scaling up going on right now.”

Farran and Lipsey directed a recently completed study that followed pre-K children in six rural Middle Tennessee counties through the third grade to find out if children using specialized language learning curriculums scored higher on standardized tests. The children were taught in public schools by licensed teachers in quality facilities using three different groupings of materials: a literacy-based curriculum, a development-based curriculum and what Farran termed “business as usual.”

Farran found that children provided the literacy or development curricula by teachers trained to use them fared better than those exposed to more traditional preschool methods. Rural children, even from poor families, tend to have better “entering skills” than children in cities. The next step is to carefully look at urban school systems, she said, where the poverty, overstimulation, grit and chaos of cities creates a more challenging learning environment for young children.

Lipsey and Farran have received funding to evaluate Tennessee’s pre-K system longitudinally to determine whether quality preschool curricula have an effect on standardized testing by third grade (see sidebar, right).

“This is very hard to do. Tennessee’s system is not universal and there are fewer preschools than children who want them,” she said, adding that enlisting local school systems in randomized studies is difficult.

The study has two parts, one of which relates to practices in the classroom and the other to literacy education.

Farran said it’s important not to commit to one kind of research, curriculum or technique. She holds up Susan Gray as a model of someone who cared about children and constantly thought about ways to make their lives better.

“When you go back to Susan Gray and the work that she did in the ’60s here, there’s a long, stellar history that we need to maintain,” Farran said. “She was an incredible combination of a serious researcher and a staunch advocate.”

“The theme running through a lot of social media is the idea of a conversation,” says Melanie Moran, associate director of the Vanderbilt News Service and director of Web communications at Vanderbilt. “Professional communication no longer exists in the form of an organization putting out news and just expecting people to eat it up. It is now two-way; audiences expect to be able to share their thoughts.

“Every student, faculty member, staff and neighbor of the university now can report about what we’re doing,” Moran says. “Conversations about Vanderbilt are taking place all the time online, which is different from the past, because these conversations are viewable, searchable, dynamic and ongoing.”

Tweet, tweet

Associate Dean for Professional Education and External Relations Timothy Caboni sees the power of social media in its ability to “provide us with opportunities to develop deeper relationships with our alumni and friends that otherwise would be impossible or highly unlikely.”

Current and former students are a large part of the more than 1,300 people following Caboni’s Twitter feed, which he uses to maintain relationships and share information among professional colleagues.

“I think it is remarkable that my former students are able to share with me—in real time—the things they are experiencing in their administrative positions at colleges and universities across the nation. It is humbling and rewarding to watch them make use of what they learned during their time here,” Caboni says.

“For prospective and current students who follow me on Twitter, I think it gives them a unique window into the daily life of an academic administrator and faculty member. Additionally, it demonstrates in a tangible way what is so unique about faculty/student interactions at Peabody and what makes us different from our competitor institutions.

“In addition to sharing with students articles I come across in my daily reading that I might not otherwise bring into the classroom,” Caboni says, “Twitter enables me to interact informally with advancement and fundraising practitioners at many other institutions who can use the resources I reference.”

Open face

Once a student-oriented social networking site, Facebook is now open to everyone. The site claims to have more than 250 million active users and is the most active social networking site. The fastest growing group of Facebook users is people 35 years and older.

The Peabody Facebook page was launched in January and is a place for communicating news stories and events to alumni, current students and anyone interested in following Peabody. Alumni can post responses or simply become a fan and receive updates.

Later this year, Peabody Career Development plans to offer special networking pages for alumni of specific programs such as organizational leadership and human resource development on LinkedIn, a social media site for professionals. These groups are planned to be a place where current students can contact and interact with program alumni.

“We believe that employers and Vanderbilt alumni want to connect with the well-educated graduate students of Peabody, and the LinkedIn groups are a central part of our strategy to get them together,” says Jeff Henley, director of Peabody Career Development.

Web users are not only interested in making connections, of course. Many want access to the intellectual content generated by colleges and universities. Alumni long used to attending lectures or panel discussions during reunions or at Homecoming can now access presentations by faculty or guest speakers whenever they wish.

Vanderbilt was one of the first universities in the nation to launch its own branded YouTube channel to present videos of significant events, and Peabody College has a section for its own faculty and guest speaker videos within the channel.

“YouTube has been really fantastic for getting our content out to a broad audience,” Moran says. “People share what they find with friends and colleagues.

“YouTube is easy to use, free, and it enables us to be creative in producing videos about things that are happening on campus, telling stories that might not otherwise be told.”

An avid user of social media, Caboni acknowledges that it has both benefits and limits. “As the audience for Peabody’s social media presence grows, we’ll be trying more ways to increase interactions and outreach with alumni,” he says. “But we don’t think it will ever take the place of tailgating at Homecoming.”

Rodes Hart and Orrin Ingram are leading Vanderbilt’s Shape the Future campaign.

Rodes Hart and Orrin Ingram believe in Vanderbilt. As alumni, trustees, philanthropists and visionaries, they reflect on the opportunities—and challenges—of eliminating need-based loans and increasing scholarship endowment.

Rodes Hart, who graduated from the College of Arts and Science in 1954 and now serves as chair of Vanderbilt’s $1.75 billion Shape the Future campaign, joined the Vanderbilt Board of Trust in 1979, becoming trustee emeritus in 2007.

Orrin Ingram received his bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt in 1982. A member of the Board of Trust since 2002, he chairs its Medical Center Affairs Committee and serves as vice chair of the Shape the Future campaign. He also chairs the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center Board of Overseers and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Board.

These two leaders answered questions about Vanderbilt’s commitment to replace need-based undergraduate loans with scholarships and grants—and the $100 million philanthropic effort, Opportunity Vanderbilt, that will sustain this historic expansion of financial aid.

Why is Vanderbilt’s expanded financial aid initiative, with its emphasis on scholarships rather than loans, so important?

Hart: It’s the right thing to do. Scholarships replace the burden of student loans, and those loan obligations can adversely impact students’ career choices or their plans for advanced or professional education. We want to ensure that financial need is not a deterrent for highly qualified students who want to attend Vanderbilt.

Ingram: When a class is made up of individuals of all economic, geographic and cultural backgrounds and experiences, that blend enriches the learning environment for the whole class—and every student.

Opportunity Vanderbilt is seeking $100 million in new gifts to support this financial aid initiative. Why not postpone this, given the current economy?

Ingram: By waiting we could be denying someone who is qualified a chance to attend our university. Though we are certainly mindful of the current economic climate, Vanderbilt’s strategic decisions and philanthropic priorities focus on what’s important to sustain the university’s mission over the long term. And increasing Vanderbilt’s scholarship endowment is crucial to that mission.

What has been Peabody’s progress toward the Opportunity Vanderbilt goal?

Hart: Peabody has set a goal of $6.5 million for new gifts to scholarship endowment for its undergraduates. To date, $3.04 million in gifts and pledges has been made by alumni, parents and friends.

Why not incur student loans in order to receive an education of the caliber Vanderbilt offers?

Hart: The young people Vanderbilt educates will be the leaders who will guide our country and positively influence societies throughout the world. But debt will influence their choices.

Vanderbilt has been addressing the challenge of student debt for many years, and since 2000, students’ loan burdens have been reduced by 17 percent. Scholarship giving to our Shape the Future campaign has had a vital role in those debt-reduction efforts, and Vanderbilt’s expanded financial aid announcement builds directly on the university’s long-term focus on this issue of student debt.

Approximately 54 percent of Peabody’s students receive some sort of financial aid. And it’s important to keep in mind that even as we eliminate loans in our financial aid packages, all families still have an expected financial contribution, and some families will meet that contribution through loans—so this expanded financial aid initiative does not make Vanderbilt cost-free.

How do you think the educational needs of your children and grandchildren are/will be different from those of your generation?

Ingram: Thank goodness I’m not in college right now. When I was in school, I was being prepared to compete with other companies inside the United States. My children are going to have to compete with businesses both within the U.S. and globally.

Hart: When I was in school, we used a slide rule. The tools of today are completely different. To maximize education today and tomorrow, students need a broad educational experience to cope with the fast pace of change and expansion of knowledge.

What makes Vanderbilt an important institution in today’s world?

Hart: There’s no doubt that Vanderbilt is equipping its students for leadership roles in an increasingly complex world—and Vanderbilt does that very well.

Ingram: Vanderbilt recognizes that big, important, game-changing breakthroughs and discoveries typically come at the interdisciplinary crossroads. At Peabody you will find neuroscientists partnering with educators to understand how students learn. Special education researchers combine forces with pediatricians and social psychologists to further discoveries that may help those with developmental disabilities. Students may pursue interdisciplinary majors across departments at Peabody or across departments between Peabody and the Blair School of Music, the College of Arts and Science or the School of Engineering. With this interdisciplinary approach, we’re finding ways to make the world a better place by having such bright students learn and collaborate with a great faculty, across all the arts and sciences.

Some might wonder if Vanderbilt and Peabody really need their support or whether a small gift can make any kind of difference at a big university with a sizable endowment. What do you tell alumni and others when you encounter that?

Ingram: You’d be surprised at what a difference a little can make in somebody’s life. A lot of “littles” can add up to be a lot. Our endowment per student isn’t as large as many other schools’—so every penny counts. Vanderbilt receives more than 85,000 gifts each year from alumni, parents and friends who give in amounts from $10 to $10,000.

Hart: Every gift is important and every gift makes a difference. Of course we need large contributions to reach the Opportunity Vanderbilt goal of $100 million and our overall Shape the Future goal of $1.75 billion—but we need gifts at every level. It will take success at all levels of giving to reach the goal—and I think you would agree with me that this program can reduce concern about affordability, especially for our education students, and make it possible for those who seek to impact others as teachers to receive a great education.

“We use Positive Behavior Support in our school every day,” she says. “It’s real for us. It’s working for us.”

Grace Todd, right, hands a tardy slip to a student while Winston Zuo-yu, center, fills out more tardy slips at Eakin Elementary School. Eakin uses the Positive Behavior System developed by Peabody faculty member and researcher Kathleen Lane. After receiving tickets for positive behavior at school, children qualify to be chosen for responsible positions and other prizes. Zuo-yu and Todd were chosen to help in the school office as morning tardy officers.

Positive Behavior Support is a three-tiered model of prevention used to teach students behaviors that will help them succeed in the various settings of the school day. Its increased popularity can be tracked to the 2001 Surgeon General’s report on youth violence and the 2004 federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Both called for evidence-based approaches to promoting positive behavior. School systems across the country use Positive Behavior Support to help transform their schools into positive learning communities.

Kathleen Lane has witnessed these transformations. As associate professor of special education at Peabody, her research focuses on investigating the relationship between academic achievement and behavior. She is overseeing a private grant geared to implementing  Positive Behavior Support programs and following their progress in Nashville-area public schools, including Eakin Elementary. The project began in 2005 and has goals of helping schools to design and implement comprehensive three-tiered models of prevention to better support all students. Lane’s Positive Behavior Support model is broader than the typical model, including not just behavior goals, but also academic and social goals.

Lane

“Our goal is for students to succeed in school, and they need all three segments to be successful,” she explains. “That’s why my model integrates them.”

What draws Lane to the  Positive Behavior Support philosophy is that it’s proactive. “We don’t have to wait for the children to fail or struggle before we intervene,” she explains. “With Positive Behavior Support , you teach the child what you expect them to do and how you expect them to do it. It’s proactive instead of being reactionary.”

Lane believes that  Positive Behavior Support levels the playing field for kids. “The faculty and staff in each school develop the expectations for their community and then help all the students learn them. All the kids know what is expected of them. We don’t wait for them to fail [misbehave] and then intervene. We tell them up front,” she says. “Of course, there are consequences if they don’t behave appropriately, but we also teach the requested behavior.”

Oddly enough, the goal of Lane’s Positive Behavior Support program is not better-behaved students. “It may look like that’s the goal, but the real goal is to increase the time available for teaching and to make that time as effective as possible.” she says.  Positive Behavior Support helps the teacher have a more focused, disciplined classroom, which gives the students a receptive learning environment.

Lane explains that if a teacher can provide a safe, productive learning environment, a lot more education goes on. “It stands to reason that if you’re spending your class time on discipline problems, you’re not spending it on teaching,” she says. “If I take the time to teach the behavior and then you behave better, I can teach more and I can teach more effectively.”

The  Positive Behavior Support approach uses three levels of prevention, with the interventions increasing with the levels. Lane likens the first, or primary, level to a vaccine, in that it teaches children the desired behavior which prevents, or vaccinates against, the undesired behavior and the associated negative consequences. About 80-85 percent of students respond to this primary intervention level, integrating the message of expected behavior and performing within those parameters. The second level is designed to reverse harm by supporting students who have not responded to the primary level. Lane says about 10-15 percent of students fall into this second level, where small group intervention with social skills or academic support is often effective. “We might work on how to resolve conflicts,” Lane says. “While a student might have learned that aggressive behavior has worked for them elsewhere, we talk about the behaviors that are appropriate in a school setting and practice using them.

“We have to be very careful not to be disrespectful to the rules of their home or their culture,” Lane cautions. “In their world, aggressive behavior may be what works for them. We focus on the concept of ‘while we’re at school, this is how we behave.’ ”

The third, or tertiary, level is for the remaining five percent of students with ongoing behavior that is dangerous, disruptive and deters others from learning. Teachers work one-on-one with these students to understand the trigger for the behavior, provide help to develop better behaviors and keep the student and others safe. “We don’t want to wait for them to fail,” Lane says. “We are looking for an intervention that helps address the problems that the child is facing and find ways to deal with them.”

Essential to all three levels is realizing that all behavior, positive or negative, serves a purpose for that person, and that understanding the reasons for a person’s behavior often uncovers the path for changing that behavior.

Lane cites an example of a young girl who repeatedly acted out during “circle time” and as a result was separated from her peers. The cycle of acting out and being separated from the group was repeated over and over. The girl’s behavior did not improve until the teacher understood that the child was profoundly shy and found circle time uncomfortable. The teacher developed a plan that encouraged a specific amount of participation in the circle, after which the student was allowed to remain in circle time, but without the anxiety or fear that she might be called on to participate.

“The behavior is always telling you something,” Lane says. “You have to ask yourself if the work is too easy or too hard, if the setting is uncomfortable. You look for a pattern of responding. In brief, you are trying to determine what the student is seeking or avoiding.”

To help the teachers identify these patterns, Lane works with them in teams to help identify the reason why students are engaging in the target behavior of interest. “We want to give the student what they need, when they need it,” Lane said. “To do that, we have to understand the function—or reason why—the behavior occurs.”

Lane’s experience as a teacher and researcher has shown her that  Positive Behavior Support is useful throughout the K-12 environment, but in different ways. In elementary school, Lane has found that Positive Behavior Support has proved effective at establishing a framework for behavior that supports learning and helps build the community.

In middle and high school, she cautions, teachers have to be aware that students are faced with rules and expectations that change from teacher to teacher. “What’s OK in one teacher’s classroom may not be OK in the next teacher’s classroom, and that can be confusing to children. This is one of the reasons school site teams need to establish schoolwide expectations,” she says.

Lane says a key part of  Positive Behavior Support is that it must be personalized to the community. The faculty, staff and parents must come together to decide what their culture is, what behavior they want to see and how that will be rewarded. “This doesn’t work if an expert comes in and tells the school community what the desired actions are and what the consequences will be,” she says. “Everybody has to get on board, and then they have to connect with each child.”

At Eakin Elementary, Lane worked with the faculty to help them develop the school’s expectations matrix and other  Positive Behavior Support components to fit their school’s culture. “We had several meetings, and they led us through several exercises to help us develop our plan,” Ross says. “We incorporated our character education virtues into the program.”

At Eakin,  Positive Behavior Support is taught in the classroom starting with the first day of school, when the teachers outline the behavior expected in the school—from the classroom to the hallways to the cafeteria and even when the students are outside on the playground, arriving or leaving school, and riding the bus. The expectations are listed on a matrix that is posted throughout the school and included in the parents’ handbook.

Ross says that with the matrix, teachers look for students who are behaving appropriately and reward them with a ticket. The tickets are redeemable for drawings of special privileges, including “Positive Behavior Support Yoga with Ms. Ross” and eating lunch with friends at a special table in the cafeteria. The  Positive Behavior Support rewards even extend to the teachers. Ross says that teachers earn tickets for using positive language, managing tasks such as turning in report cards before the deadline and being responsible and safe.

Even with the schoolwide embrace of  Positive Behavior Support, Ross acknowledges that she still sees a small percentage of children who aren’t behaving. The secondary- and tertiary-level supports of  Positive Behavior Support give the faculty new lenses for looking at the problem. “Every kid can do better, and the teacher has a role in that,” she says. “When a child is causing a problem, we can sit down and focus on the behavior and come up with a strategy. That encouraging philosophy really affects how we deal with things.”

Professor Sharon Shields, her dad and her dog have found community on campus.

If you think your life is intense, consider this: I live in a house with 150 first-year college students. 

When The Commons, a residential community of students, faculty and professional staff, was introduced for the class of 2012, I jumped at the chance to participate in this innovative venture for a year. In my 34 years as a member of the Vanderbilt faculty, I have always been drawn to the idea of living—and learning–—side by side with students. Seeing the growth, exploration and discovery of every student is inspiring. I’ve picked up a few things, too. Here are my five greatest lessons learned from living for a year in a house of first-year college students.

Stay plugged in

One of the first things I did was to purchase a BlackBerry. To be a valued member of a community, you need to speak the language. I send more text messages in a day than any other 60-year-old I know. The music on my iPod has changed, too. There are more tracks by Beyoncé, Lenka and Yolanda Adams than there were before. Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had with students have been about the Beatles. When I was 18, “Imagine” was a life-changing song. For my students now, some hearing it for the first time, it still is. Students are amazed I saw the Beatles’ first live appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This always leads to discussions about Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement and the role of activism today. 

Be present

I often sit in the Murray House lobby to work. I know the students and they know me—and we can be together. It just so happens they’re writing papers, and I’m grading papers. To them, I have become more than a person who only teaches. Students see me living life—I wear pajamas, I can throw the football, I get up early and go to class, I share friends, family and colleagues with them, and I like my morning coffee on the patio with my dog, Pip, running in the upper quad. My dad, whom the students call “Pop,” lives with me. It’s comforting for them to have a grandpa in the house. I hope they also see how much I truly care about them. 

Pull an all-nighter

Since moving in, my daily clock has changed. For students, midnight to 6 a.m. is a social time to congregate at the campus market for snacks as a study break. The lines are so long, midnight feels like midday. Students ask me to go with them. They get potato chips, popcorn and cereal. I go for iced coffee—decaf. I have also learned that the prime time for students to have house council meetings, staff meetings and committee meetings is at 9:30 at night—this is a big change for me. The campus seems to never sleep.

Engage your community

I respect how these students strive to make a difference. One has a patent for a medical device; another student is a music composer at the Blair School of Music. Not only are they the brightest entering class at Vanderbilt, but they’re also involved in tutoring, working in soup kitchens, serving physically challenged children, mentoring women who are just leaving prison and aiding immigrant communities. I sense this commitment to service is lifelong. How students connect because of these similar—and even different—interests is inspiring. Our house is engaged in service work with Mending Hearts and the Susan Gray School. Remember the first activity you were really passionate about? For me it was working as a tutor with a basketball program in Louisville, Kentucky, for inner city youth. I was convinced I was going to transform the city. I see the same passion here daily. The youthful exuberance and energy we all felt at 18 years old? It is alive and well at Vanderbilt. Trust me.

Always keep learning

Living in a shared community with first-year students has changed my perspective and added depth to my relationship with students. I strive to connect these young people to their university, encourage their enthusiasm and create a shared wisdom. We are all learners and, in a way, traveling on similar arcs in our lives. I have been at Vanderbilt for 34 years and I’m still asking, What’s my purpose? What’s next? So are my students. I’m seeing them at their life’s launching pad. It’s an incredible circle; I feel like I’m 60 years old—going on 18. 

My year living in The Commons has been remarkable. There are plenty more lessons I want to share—even more to learn. My responsibility to our students is to teach, to learn and to improve. Can I become better? I certainly hope so—I just signed up to live here again next year.

It sounds like a laundry list of some of the toughest problems communities encounter today, issues made even more challenging by an economy in turmoil. All are under assault by Peabody faculty actively engaged in research with direct applications to real-world problems. 

 

Saegert

While there are many examples, three recent projects can be singled out for their focus on empowering community partners with information and technology to jump-start ground-breaking programs: 

Murry

Susan Saegert, director of the Center for Community Studies, brings her extensive research background in shared-equity home ownership options to a steering committee of community housing leaders working to find new approaches to affordable housing in Nashville. 

Velma McBride Murry, who holds the Betts Chair of education and human development, is implementing the first family-oriented, technology-based, culturally sensitive preventive intervention program designed to deter high-risk behavior among youths in six rural West Tennessee counties.

Nation

Maury Nation, whose work focuses on violence prevention in schools, is engaged in research to help identify strengths and points of development for at-risk middle schools in Metro Nashville. One of his tasks is develop-ing a strategic plan for each school that empowers educators, administrators, parents, community leaders, businesses and nonprofits to work together to find resources to help those schools become successful.

What stands out is the collaborative nature of these projects, community leaders say. “The great thing about what they’ve done is they’ve said, ‘We’re going to recognize what our strengths are, which is research and analysis, and then turn it over to the people who have experience in implementation,’” says Ted R. Fellman, executive director of the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, part of the steering committee working with Saegert on moderate- to low-income housing options in Nashville.

“That’s what collaboration is all about, and that approach is very well-received,” Fellman says.

Home ownership builds empowerment

When Saegert came to Vanderbilt last year from City University of New York, she found that her colleagues already had laid the groundwork for positive interactions with community partners.

“We have this capacity to work in partnership with different sectors of the community to develop projects, to bring information, and to help them understand national best practices. We can organize information to help them decide how they want to go forward,” Saegert says.

In this case, Saegert was able to apply her extensive research and knowledge of shared-equity housing options to the increasing shortage of affordable housing in Nashville. She and students from her Action Research class studied various shared equity models from around the country and presented several that had the potential for success in Nashville to an informal group looking at affordable housing opportunities in Nashville. The Vanderbilt Legal Clinic provided legal documentation. 

The informal group became a steering committee and, through Saegert, connected with the Ford Foundation. Nashville was chosen as one of three pilot cities for a shared equity housing project, still in the early stages of planning.

Paul Johnson of The Housing Fund says Saegert “took it up a notch” in terms of the collaborative nature of the project. Her involvement came at a critical time and accelerated the group’s efforts. She also organized a two-day conference at Vanderbilt to bring stakeholders together.

“There’s lots of traction now about trying to find different housing models that protect consumers better and that give you more accountability when you’re using public funds as a subsidy.”

—Paul Johnson,, director of regional services, The Housing Fund

“There’s lots of traction now about trying to find different housing models that protect consumers better and that give you more accountability when you’re using public funds as a subsidy,” says Johnson, director of regional services.

Through shared-equity, a state or local government agency combines with financial institutions, the housing sector and nonprofits to help provide funding for purchasing a home or unit in a larger complex. The nonprofit agency or a cooperative formed by the agency shares in any value appreciation and provides “more stable stewardship” for monitoring and supporting the homeowners. That share may either be returned to the agency to be used for another family, or it can stay in the dwelling, reducing the cost to the next family. 

“All of a sudden the notion of equity sharing seems a little better than just giving people money,” Saegert says, referring to the challenges of the current economy. “It’s no longer such an exotic thought.” 

 

While home ownership has long been viewed as an investment vehicle, low-to moderate-income people are more concerned with security, control and quality than making a profit, Saegert has found. Shared equity allows them to get into a more stable home and improves the possibilities for the next stage of ownership.

Saegert began her academic career in New York City soon after the 1970s disinvestment crisis that left many neighborhoods deeply troubled. 

“I was able to be part of a lot of very creative, grass-roots efforts to preserve housing that was inhabited and then abandoned by capital, but not abandoned by residents,” she says. Resident ownership programs that sold buildings to tenants were successful because residents had “more skin in the game.”

“What was really interesting was how the physical environment supported human and social community empowerment,” she says. Saegert clearly revels in engagement in that kind of work—research that is theoretically creative with the practical potential to powerfully and positively impact a community. 

Creating positive parenting models

Velma McBride Murry knows firsthand how a tight-knit community can improve a child’s chance of success as an adult. Murry grew up in rural West Tennessee where almost everyone in her small community was related to her, encouraged her, basked in her achievements and stood ready to correct any backsliding. The question driving Murry’s research today is how that sense of responsibility and cohesion can be harnessed to bolster the lives of rural youths, particularly African Americans.

Murry, director of Peabody’s Center for Research on Rural Families and Communities, is the recipient of a five-year, $3.5 million National Institute of Mental Health grant to develop positive parenting models with the ultimate goal to help stem the spread of HIV/AIDS in the rural African American family.

“There’s a nostalgic view that rural families are doing well because of all the fresh air and farmland,” says Murry, professor of human and organizational development. “But rural areas have high poverty rates and families are experiencing a lot of economic challenges.” 

In addition, rural youths are engaging in substance and drug use and high-risk sexual behaviors at rates equal to or exceeding those in densely populated inner cities, she says.

“Growing up in environments in which youth are less hopeful of attaining their dreams and life goals may cause youth to cope by using substances and engaging in high-risk sexual behavior as a way of dealing with deprivation,” Murry says. Those challenges are sure to be exacerbated by the current economic downturn, she says.

At the University of Georgia, Murry was part of a research team that for more than a decade conducted basic research to identify families whose children were not at the same level of risk as others. They sought to determine factors that were protective and positive methods of intervention that parents used when destructive behavior occurred. The key, Murry says, was to focus on what worked instead of what didn’t work.

A curriculum was developed focused on promoting, among other things, competent parenting. Eight years after implementation, the UGA researchers found that children exposed to the group program were more likely to delay the onset of sexual activity, less likely to drink or use drugs, and had fewer behavioral or emotional problems in school, Murry says. Not insignificantly, families under the greatest stress benefited the most from the program.

The desire to deliver the program to more people and to those at greatest risk led Murry to return to Tennessee to begin implementation of Pathways for African American Success, which will ultimately involve 525 families in West Tennessee. While the research design is similar to the work in Georgia, the focus is now on removing barriers to access by transferring the psychoeducational program into an interactive DVD program. Initially, the program would be delivered on laptops and then through the Web. The DVD interactive mode will be compared with mailing materials and a group-based program.

The additional layer of technology requires social scientists to interact with software developers—two languages and two schools of thought must be meshed for the program to work, Murry says. Her involvement from the ground up allows deep thought about critical issues, such as making sure nonactors who look and sound like rural African Americans perform the role-playing scenarios in the DVDs.

“We’re excited about doing something that has the potential to make a difference in people’s lives,” she says. The question is whether the technology-driven model, which may have the ability to reach more people, will work as effectively as the group method and become more sustainable.

“This is a new way of delivering a family-based intervention, and we are trying to determine what works best, and which is most cost-effective,” Murry says. “True evidence of a successful community-based program is the extent to which it is sustainable in the community.”

Empowering schools

As with his colleagues, engaging community partners is critical to Maury Nation’s recent work in Nashville middle schools through Alignment Nashville. Part of the mayor’s office, Alignment Nashville brings community organizations and resources into alignment to improve school success. Nation’s particular focus is on preventing violence in schools, especially bullying.

Research has shown that bullying leads to long-term problems with aggression for the bullies and other mental health problems for the victims. Creating a positive school environment through violence prevention and positive youth development helps ensure that those children stay in school and have a chance at a quality education, says Nation, assistant professor of human and organizational development.

“Certainly behavior is a component of school success, but we want to see kids do well academically and have productive relationships. That means focusing beyond behavior and looking at the context of the behavior,” he says. 

In his CDC-funded research, Nation studies ways to improve the interface between middle schools and community agencies that provide support to students with needs beyond the scope of the school. Through the study, Alignment Nashville coordinators are placed in middle schools and charged with identifying the strengths and points of development for each of the schools. A strategic plan for each school is then developed with input from teachers and administrators with the goal of engaging nonprofit agencies as well as businesses near the schools in working together on improvements.

David Martin, principal at Jere Baxter Middle School, says there’s no shortage of agencies interested in helping schools. The issue is coordinating that help in a way that meets the long-term goals of the school. 

Through the Alignment Nashville coordinator at Jere Baxter, “we determine which of those agencies meet our needs as opposed to them coming to us with their agenda,” Martin says. 

One of Nation’s roles, in addition to collaborating with the various agencies involved, has been to develop evaluations and program assessments to determine the program’s impact and ultimately create models that can be individualized.

“The needs of each school are pretty distinct depending on where they’re located,” Nation says. Each school has problems as well as points of pride, he says. “We get to recognize and validate those and encourage them to continue to excel.”

One technique that has worked well has been the introduction of an incentive system for children exhibiting positive behaviors (for more information on another positive behavior program, see p. 19). This is especially important for middle school children, Nation says.

Martin says teasing and bullying is common in middle school. It’s a difficult age to reach, yet of critical importance. 

Creating a culture of kindness through the work with Nation and Alignment Nashville at Jere Baxter dramatically decreased the number of suspensions and hallway altercations during this academic year, Martin says. 

“We used to have fights nonstop,” Martin says. “Now the hallways are quiet and clear, and teaching is going on in the classrooms.” 

Nation says he enjoys bringing together community partnerships, but it can be hard to step back and let the main stakeholders direct the outcome. 

“Sometimes I take the lead, other times other members of this collaborative take a larger role. It’s been a learning process as an educator to let go,” Nation says. “I feel good that there are times when I thought it should be done a certain way and various stakeholders felt empowered enough to say, ‘No, that doesn’t serve our purpose very well.’ And then we were able to successfully negotiate something of mutual benefit.” 

Sydney Rogers, executive director of Alignment Nashville, says she often holds up Nation as an example of an educator who enhances the work of everyone around him. “It’s a win-win for everyone,” she says. “It improves his research, and the schools get the benefit.” 

She adds, “He’s one of those people who has the especially helpful ability to move forward our process by being able to see both the research and practical needs clearly.”

“This underscores Vanderbilt’s commitment to the belief that ability, achievement and hard work—not a family’s financial status—should determine access to a great education,” said Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos of the historic move. “When financial barriers to a Vanderbilt education are reduced or eliminated, Vanderbilt becomes a more dynamic environment for everyone. Every student benefits from the enriched community composed of highly talented and qualified students of all economic, cultural and geographic backgrounds.”

Provost Richard McCarty noted that Vanderbilt will continue to be one of only a handful of U.S. universities that employs a “need-blind” admissions approach and additionally guarantees to meet each student’s demonstrated financial need. “We will continue to make admission decisions based on such factors as character, academic strength and leadership skills, but not on a family’s income level or ability to pay,” McCarty said.

No income cap for families

Unlike some other leading universities which have either reduced or eliminated need-based loans solely for low- and/or middle-income families, Vanderbilt will eliminate them for all students who qualify for need-based financial assistance, based on a holistic review of individual family circumstances. In determining a student’s demonstrated financial need, Vanderbilt takes into account each student’s individual family circumstances and all educational costs such as tuition, fees, housing, meals, books and course materials, plus allowances for personal and travel expenses. 

The fall 2009 program will apply to all need-based loans for new and returning undergraduate students. 

Debt reduction a priority 

The university started an initiative to reduce students’ education-related debt approximately seven years ago. That initiative has already resulted in the reduction of average overall indebtedness of graduating seniors by 17 percent. The additional funds needed to fully replace need-based loans will come from institutional reallocations and from philanthropy. This endeavor, called Opportunity Vanderbilt, targets a goal of $100 million in new gifts and pledges for need-based undergraduate scholarship endowment.

In addition to encouraging students to consider Vanderbilt who might not have otherwise, the expanded financial aid initiative will also allow students to pursue further education or career options that they might not have considered if they had need-based student loan debt. 

Reaction on campus and at Peabody was swift and positive.  “Peabody students are some of the most committed and caring in the country,” Dean Benbow said. “Especially for those who want to have an impact on others through education, the prospect of incurring significant debt to prepare for a career with relatively low starting compensation has been an impediment. This new program will reduce or eliminate that concern and make it possible for potentially great educators to receive a great education.”

For more information, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/expandedaidprogram. To learn more about Opportunity Vanderbilt, contact Kerry McCartney, associate dean for development and alumni relations at, kerry.mccartney@vanderbilt.edu or 615/322-8500.

This summer, Peabody students immersed themselves in the far-flung problems of South Africa, working with people to enhance opportunity and taking up the mantle of world citizens.

“These kids are coming back empowered,” says Brian Heuser, lecturer in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organization and a faculty advisor to the effort. 

Three student teams returned from intensive summer experiences in the cultures and politics of three continents, guided by the new Vanderbilt Initiative for Scholarship and Global Engagement (VISAGE). 

VISAGE is a Vanderbilt study-abroad option that is infused with a Peabody-style service-learning dimension, which focuses on service.

The three student teams—35 students, total—got hands-on exposure in South Africa, Nicaragua and Australia after a semester of Vanderbilt study of the unique conditions of their selected nations. The largest team included 18 students, who were led by Heuser on a month-long adventure of teaching and learning in the impoverished township of Manenberg in South Africa, near Capetown.

“We have designed VISAGE in ways that reclaim international education from the ubiquitous ‘tourist disposition’ prevalent in traditional study-abroad,” Heuser says.

“We came up with a study-abroad model that reflects the values that a Peabody education embodies.”

A series of HOD student blogs (posted here) suggests the deep emotions and hopes stirred by the trip, along with new connections made with South African citizens.

“Spending the past four weeks in Manenberg I think I can honestly speak for everyone and say that Manenberg has become a second home to us,” writes Lindsey Smith, an HOD junior from Irvington, N.Y., and an Ingram Scholar. 

“Leaving Manenberg was extremely tough knowing that the likelihood of us seeing our learners and our new community again was pretty minimal. Now we have to ask ourselves, how do we continue this relationship, even though we are miles and miles away from one another?”

HOD majors Christina Cacciatore, left, and Katie Klein with students from Manenburg Primary.

VISAGE students encountered South Africa as guests, friends, learners and teachers. Their mornings centered around hearing lectures or taking field trips that examined the plight of South African women, or the ambitious work of Truth and Reconciliation committees that address the deep wounds that remain after decades of apartheid. 

In the afternoons, the Vanderbilt students became teachers, tutoring adults in computer skills for the first two weeks, then young teens in science, math, and reading the second half of the stay. Their work was coordinated to meet the specific needs of indigenous social service providers there. 

This was true service learning in action, Heuser says.

“VISAGE is unique in that it prioritizes human capital development for both the Vanderbilt students who participate and in the international communities it serves,” he says. “The adult learners opened up a world to my students—the cognitive difficulties that many face, the social dynamics, the struggle of keeping their families safe and food on the table.”

A highlight for Lindsey Smith was working with a woman who had never used a computer before. Within a day or so, Smith’s adult student had command of skills allowing her to write letters and send emails that greatly enhanced her HIV/AIDS advocacy work.

“It was amazing to work with her—and see my service have a long-term effect right in front of me,” Smith recalls. 

The students’ South Africa experience, which included collaborations with University of Cape Town students, did not begin or end with the four-week visit to a nation 10,000 miles away. 

VISAGE students commit to taking a spring semester course on their chosen nation—and also to preparing a research project on their experience in the fall semester after they return. (Two other VISAGE teams went abroad—a School of Engineering team that worked on water resource development in Australia, and an Arts and Science group that focused on family, community and social justice issues in Nicaragua.)

Sarah Russell works on computer skills with an adult learner in Manenberg. The Vanderbilt students taught skills in Microsoft Word and Excel, as well as how to search the Internet and use e-mail for AIDS activism.

The students’ academic efforts before and after travel are designed to overcome two perennial complaints about traditional study-abroad programs. One is that students do not get enough prep time to learn about the country they are poised to visit. The second is, there is often no mechanism, once they return, for integrating what they learned into their on-campus study life or career plans. 

“Perhaps most impressive was our students’ ability to immediately relate to the different contexts of South African society with a superior command of both academics and current affairs,” Heuser says. “I was, to say the least, extremely proud of the ways in which they consistently engaged faculty and civic leaders with great cultural fluency on foreign turf.” 

As further preparation, HOD students taught computer skills at the BetterTomorrows adult education program in Nashville.

“That worked phenomenally well—they hit the ground running in South Africa and knew what they were doing,” Heuser says.

VISAGE’s emergence is evidence of the impact of HOD as Vanderbilt’s largest undergraduate degree program – evidence of a rising expectation among students for a strong service-learning option for study abroad. 

Vanderbilt students tutored children at Manenberg Primary in science and math.

Much of the credit for creating the VISAGE model goes to Marie Martin, assistant director of Vanderbilt’s Global Education Office, which runs the university’s 70-plus study-abroad programs (overall, they’ve drawn about 650 students this year). She is a Peabody graduate (MEd’06 in international education policy and management), a believer in community engagement, global connection and interdisciplinary approaches to learning. 

“I dedicated a lot of time to this model because I believe in it,” says Martin, site director on the South Africa trip. 

“Traditional study abroad will always exist, but we all feel confident that VISAGE is the right model for certain students at Vanderbilt, and our students testify to that.”

That does not mean voters do not care about education. In polls that ask them to assess the importance of various issues in their votes for president—as opposed to those more frequent polls that ask respondents to identify only one issue of top concern—education continues to receive high rankings. Polls conducted by Time and CNN over the summer found that more than 80 percent describe education as “extremely important” or “very important” to their votes, putting it on par with health care and terrorism as issues and beating out such hot-button topics as taxes and immigration.

Still, voters continue to identify the economy, energy and national security as the nation’s top priorities, and that is reflected in the presidential campaigns. Senators John McCain and Barack Obama occasionally devote speeches to education reform, but the issue has trouble breaking through the national media fog, even when the candidates frame it as an economic imperative. On September 9, Obama delivered what he intended to be a major speech on education, but most of the coverage centered on his opening comments regarding the now infamous lipstick and pig metaphor. 

“Education is periodically an important issue, but it hasn’t been a bread and butter issue, like the economy or defense is now,” says John Geer, Distinguished Professor of political science, public policy and education. Geer’s research specialties include presidential politics, negativity in political advertising and public opinion polling.

“One reason is because a lot of education decisions are made at state and local levels. If you go to a gubernatorial or mayoral election, education is a lot more important,” Geer explains. “Also, think about the candidates’ positions. The way issues play a role is not just about what the public finds important. It’s about the differences between candidates, where they can stake out positions. McCain is looking for an issue where he can catapult ahead. He’s going to choose from the economy or Iraq.

“As for Obama, in the primaries he and Clinton talked a lot about education because they were vying for the support of education groups, which they viewed as critical to getting the nomination. But in the general, teachers unions and groups are going to go for Obama, so he doesn’t have to worry about them as much. As the frontrunner, he’s going to be cautious.”

Geer adds: “Political scientists call education a soft issue. Candidates talk about having ‘the best education in the world.’ Nobody’s against education.”

Looking for a Wedge

In keeping with Geer’s analysis, there are few education policy areas in which Obama and McCain have engaged in direct conflict. They tend to talk about their own ideas without hammering away at each other’s differences. School choice has emerged as an exception to this dynamic.

photo credit: Chuck Kennedy/MCT

McCain has made choice—specifically his support for private school voucher programs—central to his educational platform. In a speech to the Urban League in early August, McCain told the audience, speaking of a voucher program in place in Washington, D.C.: “Democrats in Congress, including my opponent, oppose the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. In remarks to the American Federation of Teachers last month, Senator Obama dismissed public support for private school vouchers for low-income Americans as, ‘tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice.’ All of that went over well with the teachers union, but where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools? … [I]f Senator Obama continues to defer to the teachers unions, instead of committing to real reform, then he should start looking for new slogans.”

McCain describes school choice as a tool to achieve the promise of No Child Left Behind. He proposes expanding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program from $13 million to $20 million, and he points approvingly to a new New Orleans voucher program approved in July. He does not explain how a McCain administration would design federal policy to support voucher programs in the states.

Obama opposes voucher programs. He has engaged McCain on choice by emphasizing his support for charter schools, about which McCain has not spoken in detail. In doing this, Obama bucks elements within the Democratic Party and the teachers’ unions who remain skeptical of charter schools.

In a September 9 campaign speech near Dayton, Ohio, Obama outlined a plan for education reform that included doubling federal funding for charter schools, which now stands at approximately $200 million per year.

“Keep in mind that John McCain will say he’s arguing for choice by allowing money and students to drain out of the public schools,” Obama said. “I believe in public schools. But I also believe in fostering competition within the public schools.”

photo credit: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/MCT

Obama added: “I also know you’ve had a tough time with for-profit charter schools here in Ohio … I’ll work with all our nation’s governors to hold all our charter schools accountable. Charter schools that are successful will get the support they need to grow; charters that aren’t will get shut down.”

NCLB’s choice provisions for children in failing schools have played a big role in increasing interest in charters. Mark Berends, director of Peabody College’s National Center on School Choice and associate professor of public policy and education in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations, sees charter schools as opportunities for educational innovation.

“Under NCLB, so many public schools and districts are moving toward mandated curriculum and pacing guides. Charter schools are not subject to that. They are a lot freer,” Berends says. They also, he notes, greatly vary.

“A big part of what we’re trying to do in our research is understand what works and what doesn’t in charters,” Berends explains. “Not all are effective on achievement. My take is that charter schools can be incubators for finding out what works.”

Voucher programs, Berends says, have received a lot of press, but research has found that if they have an effect, it’s typically a small positive one—though it tends to be greater for African American students. These findings are consistent with research showing positive effects for students attending Catholic schools in urban environments.

 As far as Berends is concerned, policymakers need to take a realistic approach that uses choice as a means to an end, not an end in itself.

“If Obama gets elected, I hope there’s allowance for some type of school choice options, such as charter schools,” Berends says. “And I hope that McCain takes a balanced view. I don’t think choice is a panacea—there is no silver bullet—but I also think we should look at innovative ways to use it.”

NCLB Reform and Reauthorization

School choice is just one element being discussed as part of the wider question that looms over the educational landscape: How to reform NCLB? NCLB came up for reauthorization in 2007, but it soon became clear that action would await the next administration.

“There’s going to be modification,” Berends says about NCLB. “They’ll tweak it and revise it. They’re not going to throw it out.” Berends would like to see NCLB accountability measures expanded to include value-added assessment of student progress, as opposed to just proficiency assessment. At the same time, he says, “We have to move beyond a narrow focus on test scores alone.” Berends also supports expanding focus beyond math and reading.

Both McCain and Obama have identified their priorities for NCLB reform. McCain’s focus on choice is not limited to school choice; it is an organizing theme for several proposals regarding tutoring programs and online learning. He also emphasizes giving greater control to school and parental-level agents by distributing funding in ways that bypass federal, state and district bureaucracies.

Obama’s reforms speak more to the issues Berends identifies. Obama calls for new assessment models “that provide educators and students with timely feedback about how to improve student learning; that measure readiness for college and success in an information-age workplace; and that indicate whether individual students are making progress toward reaching high standards. This will include funds for states to implement a broader range of assessments that can evaluate higher-order skills …”

Obama also calls for an “accountability system that supports schools to improve, rather than focuses on punishments,” and he points to a need for English language learner (ELL) and special education appropriate assessments. His plan reads: “Such a system should evaluate continuous progress for students and schools all along the learning continuum and should consider measures beyond reading and math tests. It should also create incentives to keep students in school through graduation, rather than pushing them out to make scores look better.”

Assistant Professor Gilman Whiting teaches at Peabody and serves on the faculty of Vanderbilt’s Program in African American and Diaspora Studies. His research focuses on the achievement gap and on factors that affect minority and low-income boys’ educational behavior.

“When we have high stakes testing, and nothing else matters but the test, no matter how much you push, you end up pushing out a large portion of the population,” Whiting says, noting that these boys start to disengage in late elementary and middle school. Their disengagement is reflected in the widening of the achievement gap during those years. Then, as Obama’s plan acknowledges, assessment scores bump up in the later high school years when these boys drop out of the system.

Issues that Whiting’s research has identified as important to closing the achievement gap and improving the success of minority and low-income boys are touched upon in the details of Obama’s educational policy. These include Obama’s proposals to target at-risk students in middle school by identifying them early, training school leaders and faculty in the needs of diverse learners and strengthening student support systems. Obama also proposes grants for nonprofit and community-based groups to implement programs proven to help students achieve graduation.

photo credit: David Swanson/Philadelphia Inquirer/MCT

The Three R’s

Recruitment, retention and rewards—these three R’s appear in McCain’s and Obama’s rhetoric on improving K–12 teacher quality. The latter tends to attract the most attention, however, because it raises the controversial issue of performance pay.

A McCain press release from July states: “Funds should also be devoted to provide performance bonuses to teachers who raise student achievement and enhance the school-wide learning environment. Principals may also consider other issues in addition to test scores such as peer evaluations, student subgroup improvements, or being removed from the state’s ‘in need of improvement’ list.”

Obama also advocates merit pay for teachers who make strides in classroom achievement, though he more strongly emphasizes using a wider range of metrics than just test scores. In his September 9 speech in Ohio, Obama told the crowd, “When our teachers succeed in making a real difference in our children’s lives, we should reward them for it by finding new ways to increase teachers’ pay across the board, and to find ways to increase teachers’ pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them. We can do this. From Prince George’s County in Maryland to Denver, Colorado, we’re seeing teachers and school boards coming together to design performance pay plans.”

Matt Springer, research assistant professor of public policy and education and director of the National Center on Performance Incentives, in a September interview with NPR’s Larry Abramson said research has yet to prove whether performance pay plans improve student achievement, but he does agree that, without support from teachers, they cannot succeed.

Higher Ed, Lower Access

NCLB has focused much of the public’s attention on federal K–12 policy. However, until Brown v. Board of Education and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965—of which NCLB is the latest incarnation—federal education policy meant higher ed policy. From the Morrill land grant acts of the 1800s to the Depression-era work-study program, the mid-century GI Bill and the creation of the research infrastructure that underwrites the bulk of our nation’s academic and scientific research, the federal government has played an enormous, transformative role in higher education.

“We tend to think of our higher ed system as being autonomous, decentralized. We never think about the crucial role the government actually plays,” says Christopher Loss, an assistant professor of public policy and education at Peabody, and a specialist in the politics of American higher education. “The GI Bill in 1944 was truly one of the greatest social revolutions in history. Before World War II, higher ed was a pretty exclusive club. In 1939, the enrollment level was about a million and a half. By 1950, it was 2.5 million. By 1948, half of all college students were veterans. The GI Bill changed the socioeconomic mix of students in higher ed and increased the number of students. It opened up opportunity in a very permanent way.”

In tough economic times, especially when college graduates earn so much more than those without college educations, issues of affordability and access come to dominate the higher education landscape. The credit crisis has begun to affect the student loan markets at the same time that a weakening economy is hurting families’ ability to pay for school. Loss says this climate may make it easier for the next administration to tackle tough issues.

“If you look historically, turbulent times are the best times to advance novel and far-reaching higher ed policy,” Loss says. “To the extent you tie higher ed policy to external issues like the economy—and foreign policy, in the case of the GI bill—I think you have a better shot at getting them into law.”

McCain’s campaign has announced general higher education priorities such as simplified tax benefits and aid applications, and an expansion of the government’s direct loan program (“lender of last resort”). Obama has announced detailed proposals on financial aid, community college and college readiness. (See sidebar at left.)

Neither candidate’s campaign has emphasized the more complicated aspects of access such as those studied by Stella Flores, assistant professor of public policy and education at Peabody.

“Right now, I’ve been doing work on how in-state resident tuition policy affects access to immigrants,” Flores says. “Another area of research deals with changes in affirmative action laws across the country.”

Flores says that college access policy, at least in the last 10 years, has been dominated by state-level activity. This, in turn, manifests itself in differentiated access by state. If federal policymakers want to address the persistent low rates of access and college completion among low-income, minority and immigrant students, they will need to understand the differences in state conditions and policies, and the interplay between the two. For example, Flores says, two states with identical merit aid programs may have very different results in terms of minority access, based on levels of segregation within their school systems.

“It’s not one size fits all,” Flores says, talking about the impact of changes to affirmative action policy and the effects of aid mechanisms on diversity. “But we have found that none of the current aid plans get you to the level of diversity the affirmative action plans had.”

McCain has announced his support for a referendum in his home state of Arizona that would amend the state constitution to prohibit preferential treatment or discrimination by state government—including state universities—based on race, sex, ethnicity or national origin. Obama, on the other hand, supports affirmative action in admissions.

photo credit: Sarah J. Glover/Philadelphia Inquirer/MCT

Starting at the Beginning

During the Democratic primaries, universal pre-K was one of the beautifully wrapped presents Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton offered voters in a Christmas ad. In the general election, neither candidate offers a universal pre-K plan. 

Dale Farran, professor of education and psychology, thinks that’s just as well.

“There are a lot of advocates for universal pre-K, but I would like to see a much more nuanced discussion about it,” says Farran, who specializes in research on preschool curriculum and outcomes. “I think they need to start thinking about the child from zero on up, as opposed to just pushing elementary education down to include pre-K.”

Farran’s research has found that better preschool curricula can help children perform better in elementary school, but there are many variations in settings and in children’s needs. In some areas, children are coming to kindergarten prepared already. She says it’s unclear whether universal pre-K would help them. She also warns that moving all four-year-olds into public school pre-K programs could have consequences for infant and toddler childcare.

“The phrase ‘universal pre-K’ rolls off the tongue much more easily than it is to implement it,” Farran says. “Things are very uneven across the country. You cannot have a universal solution when the problems are not all the same.”

For more complete information on and updates to the education platforms of the two presidential candidates, please see their Web sites.

Obama: www.barackobama.com

McCain: www.johnmccain.com

Initially a pre-med student at Vanderbilt who soon discovered that “I didn’t like chemistry,” Cate signed up for an education course on the recommendation of her academic advisor. The required practicum at Hillsboro High School was all it took to realize that she wanted to be a teacher. Though she intended to work at the secondary level after graduation, the job fell through, and Cate applied at the last minute for a position at J.T. Moore. Five years later, her enthusiasm for teaching middle school Spanish remains apparent.

“I love having kids [at this level of study] because it’s their first experience with the subject,” she says. “There are no preconceptions—it’s a clean slate—so you can shape their whole opinion about a language.” Cate’s zeal for her work also helps create a positive environment that’s good for both teacher and students. “Kids have to enjoy what they’re doing,” she says. “Happy kids usually tend to learn better.”

The importance of mentoring

Cate cites the continued presence of mentors—a hallmark of Peabody’s teacher training program—as essential to her success as a teacher. “Peabody connected me with people to whom I still look for help today,” she says. In contrast, “Some people I’ve talked to from other [teacher training] programs felt like they had to sink or swim.” She believes the lack of mentoring can deter education students from entering the field.

Cate’s own student teaching, on the other hand, was “a time for real growth,” the culmination of years of practica experiences in the classroom. “I’d been in an ELL class, a pre-K special ed class, an inner city school, a magnet school—I’d had experience in basically every kind of school Nashville offers. Peabody did the best anybody can do, because they put you out there—they don’t just talk about it.”

Opportunities abound

The solid foundation she gained from her training at Peabody allows Cate to continue pursuing goals for both her own practice and for her students. “My view of teaching is that if I can teach a student how to approach a problem, that’s better than teaching just the nuts and bolts,” she says. “Peabody gave me the facts, but also gave me the know-how to approach a problem in the right way.”

Cate is also eager to recreate her positive experiences as a student teacher for current teacher candidates, frequently welcoming groups of students at different levels of education into her classroom. “I love the quote, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected,’” she says. “I received gracious help freely given, and so I feel as though it is my responsibility—and my opportunity—to give the same kind of help to other potential teachers.”