Friday Musings: Goose Rock Rocks
Transformative Read of the Week: Goose Rocks
You need to read this remarkable case study about Goose Rock Elementary. In 2012, 23% of 3rd graders at Goose Rock were reading proficiently. In 2019, 90% were. What happened? Through a partnership with Elgin Children’s Foundation, Goose Rock’s literacy curriculum was overhauled, its teachers were retrained, and new interventions for students reading two-three levels below grade level were introduced. Notably, these gains came even as the number of students eligible for free or reduced lunch rose from 80% to 85%.
After reading the above case study, I tried to learn everything I could about Goose Rock and the community, even going so far as messaging the former principal on Facebook and some current teachers at the school. I wanted to know why the program worked so effectively at Goose Rock and less effectively at other schools in the program. How were they faring post-pandemic? How did the children at the schools understand this progress? In any case, I stumbled upon this more depth 2016 study from Vanderbilt that explored how Elgin’s literacy program was implemented across all schools, how school culture and student achievement in other domains was or was not impacted, and potential sustainability issues for the program. There’s too much here to summarize, but my big takeaways were that school leadership and teacher buy-in had as much to do with the success of Goose Rock as anything else. In other words, effective instructional materials and teacher training were necessary but not sufficient for progress and growth.
Twitter Insight (oxymoronic?):
I’m attempting to build up my follow-base and network on Twitter, which means I need to start tweeting. This week is the story of two tweets. First:
Pretty good, right? Especially for someone with…um..28 followers. And the responses were diverse and useful. I was excited. But then 24 hours later:
Brutal. Takeaways:
The first tweet got play because it drew on folks’ personal experiences. They wanted to share the questions they asked or wished they asked their children’s teachers. They were excited to give advice. People are still responding to it, in fact.
The second tweet failed because it’s theoretical. No one wants to share or listen to a story about the technical debates in the Science of Reading community. In hindsight, I also think the term “fault line” is confusing. I meant to ask about meaningful disagreements in the Science of Reading community, and I should have done that.
I think asking questions continues to be a great way to engage on Twitter. People like to be asked for and to give advice, to be invited to tell stories, to show off their expertise and knowledge. But the question matters, and I’ll keep that in mind as I continue to develop Goyen’s social media empire.
Resource of the Week:
I spent hours this week playing around and comparing schools with this remarkable tool from Education Consumers Foundation that allows you to track and compare a school’s 3rd-grade reading proficiency mapped against free/reduced lunch eligibility. This week, I was focused on identifying outliers, that is high-income schools whose 3rd graders are not reading as proficiently as you’d expect and lower-income schools whose 3rd graders are reading more proficiently than you’d expect. I will use this tool in my “One School at a Time” Project, and highly recommend you take a look!
