Dr. Willard Daggett Conference- Reedsburg- Opening Session

Focus on Literacy- November 10, 2006
Dr. Willard Daggett

Opening Session
-Media and politics-beating up on public education
-No nation that would enable all students to be capable of they are being. His daughter has severe CD, has a son that was hit by a drunk driver when he was 11 spent 9 months in a coma and two years on life support. This is the only country that would have allowed him to go to college, have a great life, get married have kids

BOOK Jim Colins- Good to Great
-When you are good why would you change, Why would you take a risk in order to become great
-Good is the enemy of great. None of the greatest schools were found to be in Wisconsin, none of the greatest schools are in suburbia
-Do you want to be great or is good good enough?

American schools are not failing.
-We graduated a greater percentage of 18 year olds than any year in our nation’s history. -More and more minority, more and more disabilities. More diversity=more challenges yet we still have graduation rates going up.
-More requirements than we ever had, lower drop out rates is not a system that is failing.
-Why call for school reform? because the world outside school is changing a lot faster than the school systems. We have an inability to keep up with the rate of change. There is a lack of upward progression.
-Our schools look more like the past than unlike the past. Schools can’t change until there is more passion for change than resistance to change or you’ll never change your schools.

Rigor and Relavance
-Blooms Taxonomy need to operate at the 4th and 5th level (real world predicatble and unpredicatble applications)
-Pressure to raise standards in schools comes from business
-state test questions can only test 1st and 2nd level
-if you don’t use it you lose it. We have not set up situations for real world applications in the important parts of the disciplines
-technology made current English, old English
-literacy isn’t getting less, its getting more

Technology Innovations
-Nano Technology- building from the atom up (reverses the traditional processes) Because we hit a wall in physics using the traditional methods
-SPOT (Smart Personal object technology) Jan 6, 2006, computer in a watch that ises integrated projection and projection keyboard, can put them in pens and more
-New policy? All kids take the test naked. “At least the boys will show up”
-IBM website- language translation chips with nano technology (goggles) Pick up a manuscript in Spanish and you see it in English

What is literacy?
-We need to be proactive and not reactive
-Essential skills and grade equivalent, kids have different size feet and grow at different rates. Don’t have 4th grade shoes, but have 4th grade books. This is a disconnect.
-Norm referenced rigor is not doing our kids justice. Criterion referenced (yard stick)
-? In WI is 4.2 to 5.2 the same amount of improvement in reading as 9.2 to 10.2? Is a grade a grade in the state of Wisconsin. It is norm referenced, not criterion referenced
-This is a uniquely North American concept that there is more growth between 4-5 than 9-10. In older grades we compartmentalize. Teachers need to be taking 20-30% of time in content areas to teach reading. We don’t teach reading by giving reading assignments, They don’t have the skills to teach reading in the content area in a meaningful way.
-What is your definition of excellence? High school text lexile is lower than college, personal reading, military, SAT, etc.
-problems will continue to get worse because technology is driving the reading level higher and higher
-16 career cluster with 3 levels each (entry,intermediate,advanced), research found that the entry level worker needs a higher reading level than the higher two levels, they have to read manuals,16- human services lowest reading level 15-retail services 14-education, 1-scientific and engineering. Education is least impacted by technology which is why the reading is much more difficult. White collar workers read a lot more stuff, but the blue collar work reads very sophisticated even though it is not as much stuff
-Research: Donald Roberts, Jordan Grafman, Hal Pashler, Cheryl Grady
-Kids are wired differently. MULTITASKING Toggling, prefrontal cortex, pew research
-(some of this reminds me of IanJukes)
-Powerpoint is available as long as links to the whitepapers for the research
-today’s youth: digital learners
-need to have a different learning system- have to change HOW you teach
-Arizona Unoin High School had an amazing jumpin AIMS reading. Analyze how they doubled their reading scores. They fundamentally changed how they taught to those kids. They use scholastic Read 180 almost likea computer game and had thempick theirown topics and became very interactive. Very powerfulreading interactive program allows them to read about what they liked.
-don’t work harder, work differently (smarter)
-Achieve 3000 literacy program. Use technology to teach in ways we have never taught before not to change wha twe teach.. Teacher as manager of the instructional process instead of sage on the stage.
-highest performing schools are the lowest perfroming from a decade ago