{"id":2812,"date":"2023-01-01T04:32:35","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T10:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/?p=2812"},"modified":"2023-05-01T08:57:12","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T13:57:12","slug":"canwemoneyballeducationpart2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/blog\/2023\/01\/01\/canwemoneyballeducationpart2\/","title":{"rendered":"Can We ‘Moneyball’ Education? — Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Part 1<\/a>, we explored how we might ‘moneyball’ education — apply some of the systematic, data driven principles pioneered by the Oakland A’s baseball team to maximize their ability to win in the face of budget constraints.\u00a0 The system required using objective means rather than human perception and tradition to make decisions that improved the team’s performance over the course of the season. Today’s post is a continuation of that exploration.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

image via usnews.com<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Now that we’ve looked at gifted practices, let’s turn our attention to the other end of the spectrum to apply another ‘moneyball’ strategy:\u00a0 accelerate rather than remediate<\/strong><\/a> kids who are behind.\u00a0 Remediation comes with a host of problems.<\/a> It keeps the student working on below-grade level concepts and skills as their classmates continue to make progress. Sometimes this logic is applied to whole groups of students, especially when someone has decided that they need \u201cthe basics\u201d before they can progress to higher level thinking.\u00a0 This has the effect of increasing the gap between the student and their grade level peers and \u2013 often \u2013 of condemning them to the least engaging and challenging types of work. The goal needs to be bringing the student up to grade level as quickly as possible. And it requires intensive intervention as early as possible while gaps are small<\/strong><\/a>. This is accomplished by having them do grade level work with extensive tutoring and other supports to be successful and by helping them do work requiring higher order thought. \u00a0I say it often but it bears repeating: students don\u2019t need the basics to do higher order challenging work.\u00a0 At CMSi, we’ve seen examples of meaningful writing done in Kindergarten before children can actually write, and we’ve observed teachers leading students — even very young students — through the reasoning process to develop their analytical skills using hands-on, engaging activities to anchor concepts.\u00a0 Identify the critical prerequisite skills, teach them concurrently with engaging, challenging grade level content, and find ways in every content area to help children with higher order thinking skills when other skills aren’t quite there yet.<\/p>\n

Since tradition often gets in the way of best practice, I’m proposing two additional ways to moneyball education. The first is to move back to direct phonics instruction in reading.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong> Because of space concerns I can’t go deep on this one other than to say that there is a veritable avalanche of data going back decades — decades<\/em> —\u00a0 demonstrating that “balanced literacy” programs aren’t very balanced<\/a> and may actually harm students’ ability to learn to read.\u00a0 They are particularly damaging for poor students.\u00a0 These programs are beloved by teachers and have had a death grip on the reading program marketplace since the early aughts.\u00a0 It’s time to follow the research and get back to sound-letter correspondence, spelling patterns, and decoding, no matter how warm and fuzzy those other programs make people feel.*\u00a0 Balanced literacy needs to be just that: a balance of direct phonics instruction and engaging reading activities that help children make meaning of what they are reading.\u00a0 The second way is to deploy the most experienced staff in the areas of greatest need<\/strong>.\u00a0 Traditionally, the most experienced teachers end up in the schools with the least need<\/a> \u2013 students are performing well, discipline issues are minimal, parents are involved, funding is usually ample.\u00a0 Placing the best teachers in at-risk schools flies in the face of how we\u2019ve done things in education for decades. But rather than treating these schools or classes as a reward for experience and competence, we need to use those skills to address the greater learning needs in schools with more economic disadvantage, more achievement gaps, and more discipline issues. After all, it doesn\u2019t make sense to put your at-risk staff (new, inexperienced teachers) with your most at-risk students. And the kids in the higher-achieving schools will be fine; kids with more parental income and parental educational attainment have multiple redundant systems for getting content and concepts through curated experiences and tutoring and more concentrated parental assistance with homework. It\u2019s the kids in the poor schools that need the best teaching available to them because they don\u2019t have those external resources.\u00a0 If they don\u2019t get it in school, they often don\u2019t get it at all. Studies have shown that just having an experienced kindergarten teacher can increase a student\u2019s total career earnings by $300,000<\/a> and improve overall health, relationship stability, job quality, and even their chances of owning a home in a safe, economically stable neighborhood. These are not inconsiderable things. Now imagine the effects if all<\/em> the teachers a disadvantaged child encountered were experienced and competent\u2026.the potential for eradicating generational poverty and improving a child\u2019s lifetime standard of living goes through the roof.<\/p>\n

\"\"

image via educationnorthwest.org<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Lastly, in our moneyball quest, we need to work harder to attract and retain high quality staff<\/strong>.\u00a0 In the past, conventional wisdom said that if good teachers want to go, let them go; after all, we had an almost inexhaustible pool of new and inexperienced teachers waiting in the wings to fill the void.\u00a0 No more.\u00a0 Covid 19 and a raft of new, teacher-hostile legislation, coupled with contentious school boards and parents, have decimated the ranks of teachers<\/a> and greatly reduced the numbers of those entering the profession. \u00a0Many, many districts began 2022 with a staffing deficit and some states have scrambled to reduce requirements just to put bodies in classrooms.\u00a0 It is what it is for now, but long-term there will be consequences for children\u2019s learning.\u00a0 Instead of treating teachers as either an unlimited resource or teaching as a job anyone can do, it\u2019s time to recognized that teaching is a skilled profession that requires extensive training and practice, deep understanding of the content being delivered, and support from the district that allows them to do their best work.\u00a0 We need to pull out all the stops to keep good teachers in the classroom<\/a> because their effect on learning is powerful<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the Oakland A\u2019s, the moneyball system worked. They didn\u2019t make it to the World Series, but they did make it to the playoffs multiple times, something that should not have been possible given their budget. \u00a0This, to me, is key.\u00a0 Many times teachers and administrators look at populations of kids or even individual kids and decide that they\u2019re not going to make it; the obstacles are too great and there’s no budget.\u00a0 The A\u2019s proved that by stepping out of the boxes of assumption and the-way-it\u2019s-always-been, success was possible, even predictable, over the long term.**\u00a0 Another team that applied this system did<\/em> make it to the World Series and win \u2013 the Boston Red Sox won their first championship in 86 years in 2004. For education, if we stop blindly following conventional wisdom, stop slavishly following traditional practices, and stop relying on human perception and opinion to identify potential, we might see a lot more kids making it to the playoffs \u00a0— and even the championship — than we ever thought possible.<\/p>\n

That’s what I want for 2023.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*Look for more on this in upcoming posts.<\/p>\n

**This isn’t a throwaway comment; changes need time to take effect and are going to be the most powerful with the youngest students because while they aren’t blank slates, their gaps are smaller. It’s no accident that Moneyball worked so well in baseball and less well in football; baseball has the longest season of any sport and so has far more time for changes to work.\u00a0 We\u00a0 have to commit to the long haul.<\/p>\n

If your district would like help assessing practices and performance in your schools, Contact Us<\/a>!\u00a0 We would love to help you improve learning for all students.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Part 1, we explored how we might ‘moneyball’ education — apply some of the systematic, data driven principles pioneered by the Oakland A’s baseball team to maximize their ability to win in the face of budget constraints.\u00a0 The system required using objective means rather than human perception and tradition to make decisions that improved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2812"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2955,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions\/2955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}