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November 2008 | Volume 66 | Number 3
Giving Students Ownership of Learning

Adam Fletcher

Any conversation about student ownership in education would be incomplete without mention of John Dewey. It was his Democracy and Education (1916) that helped me see the connection between student involvement and student ownership. According to Dewey, the type of activities that stimulate real involvement "give pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results" (p. 181).

Patterns of Involvement

Throughout my career in educational administration in Washington's state government and as a private consultant, I have talked with hundreds of students and educators, learning about how schools have enabled students to get involved in the kinds of activities that Dewey advocates. In these conversations, certain patterns of encouraging true involvement have emerged.

Every time students talk about meaningful activities, they specifically identify either the type of activity they are involved in or the issue they are addressing. Students consistently identify school-focused issues as important, even as their interests in community-based issues wax and wane.

Another consistent theme is relevance: Students feel connected, engaged, and meaningfully involved when they are addressing relevant issues that reflect their interests, their passions, and their identities. Whether they are related to curriculum, leadership activities, or extracurricular programs, roles that students consistently identify as meaningful enable them to participate in design, facilitation, and assessment, with the goal of improving their schools and enhancing learning for all students.

I brought these lessons together as the basis for my Frameworks for Meaningful Student Involvement. Drawing from such pedagogues as Dewey, Myles Horton, and Paulo Freire, I have defined meaningful student involvement as "the process of engaging students as partners in every facet of school change for the purpose of strengthening their commitment to education, community, and democracy" (Fletcher, 2005, p. 5).

The Building Blocks

Activities that fully embody meaningful student involvement are what I like to call the "architecture for ownership." Strong learning is the foundation of the building. Without learning, students who are involved are at best underinformed, naive posers; at worst, they are likely to misrepresent their needs and those of their peers.

The following examples demonstrate how schools can involve students in building an architecture of ownership.

Students as Planners

In a number of schools, students are involved in selecting textbooks, creating classroom behavior guidelines, and designing new buildings. The individual student who makes the plans may be the only person affected by student planning, or student planning may affect the entire student body. Either can be meaningful; it is the conditions and the applications of the activities are what matter.

Washington's Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) provides a student-driven educational planning program for schools called Navigation 101. In this program, students connect coursework in the school to their life goals. They research "dream" careers, study high school graduation requirements, and select the courses they want to take. Schools may adjust their course offerings to meet the interests of students. Identifying students' lifelong learning goals encourages teachers to meet the learning ambitions of particular students, offering a clear route for academic assistance and giving students the opportunity to share their dreams with supportive adults.

Members of the Student Engagement Team at the Black Hills High School in Tumwater, Washington, have gotten involved by conducting buildingwide surveys and testifying before the Education Committee of the Washington State House of Representatives. They have also planned schoolwide forums for the 2008-09 school year. Team membership is open to all students at the school.

In the 2007-08 school year, the team participated in the hiring of their future principal. Meeting after school, students told district hiring officials exactly what they wanted in their future building leader. They respectfully and deliberately pressed the officials about potential principals' attitudes toward standardized tests, student-principal interactions, and community building within the school.

Toward the end of the school year, final candidates for the principal position answered students' questions directly, and a student from the team was included on the panel that interviewed candidates. Bob Kuehl, the human resource director for the school district, said of the participants in the Student Engagement Team,

They're very insightful of the needs of a school from a student's perspective and they're very candid about their opinions and thoughts. ... They have a lot of strong feelings that need to be heard and used.

This type of commitment is exactly what meaningful student involvement can-and should-foster among all partners throughout a school.

Students as Teachers

Several national programs recognize the potential of students as teachers. In the 1990s, Dennis Harper, a longtime proponent of the student-as-teacher model and founder of Generation YES, developed a program for the Olympia School District in Washington State that actively engaged students in teaching teachers how to use technology in their classrooms. According to Harper, 40,000 teachers have benefited from technology training offered by Generation YES students since 1995 (Cruickshank, 2008).

Through the GenYES curriculum, students have participated in a sort of learning exchange. While they help teachers understand Web page development, Internet search tools, or how to scan pictures and create PowerPoint presentations, students learn about every topic in the school curriculum.

As Harper describes it, engaging students' innate interest in technology enables teachers to contextualize technology. In turn, this encourages students to become literate in areas they are interested in, as well as the subject areas they study. Combining student ownership and literacy leads directly to meaningful student involvement.

Students as Professional Development Partners

P.S. 205, a K-5 school in the Bronx, New York, has sought to develop new approaches to school improvement. Working with Communities for Learning in Floral Park, New York, students became meaningfully involved in a learning community that included multiple students, teachers, parents, and administrators.

Through a series of guided critical reflection and development sessions for all team members, including students as partners, the team transformed its own expectations and those of the school at large. Students took part in the data collection and analysis that led the learning community to identify differentiation as a focus for the 2007-08 school year. Together, team members are developing an understanding of how differentiation may be used to promote learning.

According to Martin-Kniep (2007), such research projects can be a core of learning communities, ultimately influencing practice throughout the learning environment. She writes,

Students possess tremendous experience and expertise in the areas of teaching and learning. Their experiences as learners in schools are far more grounded in reality than are those of most adults. ... They live teaching and learning every day. (p. 88)

At P.S. 205, students were full members of the learning community focused on school improvement. The group prepared for student participation with the careful leadership of Communities for Learning staff members, each of whom are trained in how to meaningfully involve students. Guided deliberation, constant check-ins, and reflection during and after their involvement allowed students and educators on the team to consider the effects of student ownership in the learning community. The students' insights were incorporated into school improvement plans along with those of other team members.

Students as Decision Makers

Pushing paper across tables and going through the motions of decision making without practical, meaningful applications is no one's idea of a good time-or good learning. Yet many schools actively promote this approach in their student governments, allowing students to choose the themes for school dances year or the colors on this year's yearbook cover, but not giving them any say in decisions that have more serious implications. School curriculum, policy, and climate are more meaningful leadership areas for students. In addition to making decisions that affect themselves and their immediate peers, students can participate in boards of education, grant making, and school assessment at the district and state levels.

Massachusetts and California are the vanguard of state school boards in terms of providing full student membership, and dozens of districts and state agencies across the United States are increasing student involvement in a variety of ways.

The Boston Student Advisory Council has engaged students in effective efforts to help develop, form, and implement districtwide policies in Boston Public Schools. A Boston-based national nonprofit organization called Youth On Board helped the district redesign the program, creating new mechanisms that actively engage students in decision making. Since the 2006-07 school year, the council has met twice monthly, regularly shared its perspectives on high school renewal efforts with the superintendent and members of the school committee, and informed its schools about issues affecting the entire city. The recent addition of a student representative on the Boston School Committee has increased the group's profile as well. The Advisory Council's decision making has led to a variety of policy changes affecting schools across the city. Its leadership guided a new cell phone policy and a "lockout policy" affecting truancy, and their newest efforts have focused further on school attendance.

These activities represent the cusp of what meaningful student involvement truly looks like. Students advocating for educational improvement, researching classroom climate, and leading new approaches to learning and teaching stand together in the architecture of involvement, effectively demonstrating what school change looks like when the hearts, heads, and hands of students are infused throughout the process. But just as in building houses, no one builder works alone: Adults, including teachers, administrators, counselors, and support staff, must join students on the building crew.

In 1995, Dick Corbett and Bruce Wilson wrote an article titled "Make a Difference With, Not For, Students" in which they offered this sage warning:

Our proposition is that student role redefinition is a critical linchpin between adult reform and student success, and that failing to acknowledge this connection is a potentially fatal flaw in promoting our understanding of reform and in creating effective change initiatives. (p. 17)

Corbett and Wilson rang the alarm that we would fail miserably if we did not seriously consider the very people who are most affected. Now, 13 years after their warning, we sit in the ruins of many failed attempts at improving schools, blaming others without often considering our own complicity. Corbett and Wilson's ongoing studies about the perspectives and roles of students in school improvement were perhaps best elaborated on in the findings from their comprehensive study of Philadelphia schools, published in Listening to Urban Kids: School Reform and the Teachers They Want (2001).

There are many reasons schools must live up to the challenge that students present, not the least of which being that students are more than the future: They are the present, urgently pressing teachers, administrators, and school leaders to respond to the challenges in our schools right now. Let's make meaningful student involvement a reality for every student in every school today.

References

Corbett, D., & Wilson, B. (1995). Make a difference with, not for, students: A plea to researchers and reformers. Educational Researcher, 24(5), 12-17.

Corbett, D., & Wilson, B. (2001). Listening to urban kids: School reform and the teachers they want. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Cruickshank, D. (2008, April). Dennis Harper: Harnessing student-led tech support: Tech-savvy students help teachers get up to speed. Edutopia. Available: www.edutopia.org/dennis-harper.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.

Fletcher, A. (2005). Meaningful student involvement: Guide to students as partners in school change. Bothell, WA: HumanLinks Foundation. Available: www.soundout.org/MSIGuide.pdf

Martin-Kniep, G. (2007). Communities that learn, lead and last: Building and sustaining educational expertise. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Adam Fletcher is the author of several publications about student involvement and has provided training for K-12 schools and community-based organizations. He is currently the Coordinated School Health Program manager at the Washington State Department of Health; adam.fletcher@doh.wa.gov.

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November 2008 | Volume 66 | Number 3 Giving Students Ownership of Learning Adam Fletcher Any conversation about student ownership in education would be incomplete without mention of John Dewey. It was his Democracy and Education (1916) that helped me see the connection between student involvement and student ownership.

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Challenging students to dig in and achieve their potential during instructional hours confronts a mighty obstacle: the principle of least effort, the idea that people apply nominal effort to achieve a basically acceptable result instead of pushing themselves in pursuit of greatness.

We might be tempted to conflate low effort with laziness, but that misses an important physiological point: To conserve finite attention funds, our brains are designed to avoid tasks that are cognitively demanding. Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, describes two modes of thinking. The efficient and fairly unconscious mode is System 1. Involuntarily reading a Wheaties box, scorning new "athleisure" clothes, and opening a combination lock are all System 1 mental events.

In contrast, System 2 mental activities are things like solving quadratic equations or summarizing why the Kurdish people don't occupy a permanent nation-state. System 2 is attention-hungry and physically straining. Your eyes dilate, your breath becomes shallow, your blood pressure quickens, and your muscles bunch.

We shouldn't fault children for conserving mental energy (and even daydreaming in class enables information processing). However, when we reward Jane Doe for submitting all her classwork and ignore her minimal effort, we reinforce compliant mediocrity.

In order to rewrite the minimum standards in-class playbook, every classroom should include some System 1 work but also System 2, in the form of high-intensity in-class activities (HIICA) to encourage deep learning.

How to Intensify In-Class Activities

You needn't invent brand-new activities to increase in-class challenges. Simply add HIICA elements to your regularly scheduled assignments. The magic is in the setup.

For example, imagine a whole-class discussion of Henry James's What Maisie Knew that begins with the question, "Who is the hero?" A studious extrovert will present her argument. If her claim sounds good, the rest of the class will nod their heads in agreement-simple concurrence aligns with the principle of least effort. To alter this scenario in a way that fires up System 2 for the entire class, ask your students to free write an answer to the question before starting the discussion. That way, there is no way for students to escape the cognitive challenge.
7 More Ways to Integrate High-Intensity In-Class Activities

1. Writing: During in-class writing, direct students to experiment with the powerful sentence patterns of expert writers. Randy Rambo's collection has 16 diverse examples, including this lilting one from essayist and science fiction author Scott Russell Sanders: "Unlike novelists and playwrights, who lurk behind the scenes while distracting our attention with the puppet show of imaginary characters, unlike scholars and journalists, who quote the opinions of others and shelter behind the hedges of neutrality, the essayist has nowhere to hide."

2. Oral arguments: In addition to traditional speech expectations, ask presenters to emulate the five rhetorical tactics Elon Musk uses to make pitches magical and compelling. The point is to activate communication skills that can one day empower your graduates to transform the world.

3. Reading: Speed up students' words-per-minute (WPM) reading rate. When learners paste content-related text into AccelaReader, the free online tool flashes the words at a user-identified pace. After students determine their most comfortable reading speeds, have them increase the WPM by 25 each subsequent session​.

4. Group work: Direct student teams to use reflective listening strategies. Assess performance after 10 minutes and then encourage the teams to apply what they learned during the rest of the activity.

5. Research: As they submit drafts of their research papers, students can also turn in researcher journals that narrate their experiences with databases, websites, and search terms as well as any epiphanies and/or obstacles they experienced. Or teach students to format their inquiry as a "multigenre research paper."

6. Discussions: Assigning roles encourages learners to take risks they wouldn't otherwise attempt. In her classes, Sheila Valencia implements panel discussions on the previous night's reading. Three student panelists are randomly chosen to comment for two minutes each on important, interesting, or controversial ideas in the text. And two student interviewers are selected to ask the panelists questions. All students are forewarned to prepare statements and questions in advance in case their names are drawn.

7. Review: Add competition to intensify in-class reviews. Try Cult of Pedagogy's Crumple & Shoot competition and inform the class that an individual assessment will follow the game.

More Strategies for Intensifying Common In-Class Activities

Facilitate what Dave Stuart Jr. calls pop-up debates.

Play "beat the clock" by providing less processing time.

Ask students to find answers from primary and secondary sources-not just the textbook.

Direct learners to highlight elements in their essays that align with SOAPSTone (Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, Tone).

Dare kids to be so creative that they blow your hair back.

Tips for Creating Successful High-Intensity In-Class Activities

In the absence of concrete performance criteria, kids often coast. Therefore, keep in-class assignments unambiguous (an exception is project-based learning, wherein students benefit from solving fuzzy, real-life problems).

Anticipate bottlenecks. For example, when children are solving a difficult problem, having to remember multiple assignment steps can create cognitive overload and turn their working memory into slush. Solution: Supply a checklist of steps to free up working RAM.

Pushback from students reluctant to shift into System 2 is likely. Less resistance will occur, however, if you articulate the purpose of high-intensity in-class activities: to accelerate learning through productive struggle-similar to high-intensity interval training at the gym. Just ensure that your HIICA align with content objectives. The ultimate goal isn't to callously slam kids with impossible class activities-it's to have them reach into their deepest selves and meet the day's challenges like champions.

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Overcoming the Principle of Least Effort

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Challenging students to dig in and achieve their potential during instructional hours confronts a mighty obstacle: the principle of least effort, the idea that people apply nominal effort to achieve a basically acceptable result instead of pushing themselves in pursuit of greatness.

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Student ownership is the level of investment a learner has in learning, teaching and leadership anywhere throughout the education system.

Increasingly popular within classroom teaching and curriculum, student ownership can also be a significant factor in school improvement, district school boards, and state agencies, as well as other education programs and activities.

What It Is

Student ownership is often mistaken for student empowerment, student voice and student engagement. They are not synonyms. Instead, student ownership is the amount of investment learners have in the topics they are learning, the methods they are learning through and the places where learning happens. Student ownership does not automatically happen through any specific method. It can be fostered through many different approaches, when done right.

Students and adults acknowledge their mutual investment, dedication, and benefit, visible in learning, relationships, practices, policies, school culture, and many other ways. Meaningful Student Involvement is not just about students themselves; rather, it insists that from the time of their pre-service education, teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, counselors, and others see students as substantive, powerful, and significant partners in all the different machinations of schools. When they have this commitment every person will actively seek nothing other than to fully integrate students at every turn.

How It Happens

If teachers, principals, counselors or other adults throughout schools want to support students to actually own their learning, they should:

Be a learning partner, not a provider. Student/adult partnerships are key for fostering student ownership of learning, teaching and leadership.

Dedicate classroom time to self-discovery. At all ages, students must have a sense of who they are, how they learn, what they want to learn, and why they want to learn what they want to learn.

Provide supports for pursuing passion. From cross-checking student interests against state standards to using curricular approaches that foster curiosity, students should be encouraged to follow their interests.

Create space for mistakes. Teach students the success of failure, support their grasps for the unknown and allow room for error. Students feel comfortable messing up when they know they won't be punished for it.

What It Looks Like

When done right, student ownership looks like:

Internal student motivation-Students feel compelled towards accomplishing a goal of their own.

Shared learning goals-All grades of students and their teachers share the purposes of classroom time as a common task.

Identified relevance-Students see and understand how, why and what makes learning matter to them.

Demonstrable outcomes-Learning is evident in products, portfolios and other evidence of classroom time.

Self-driven applications-Lessons from student learning are applied to daily activities as frequent, obvious and applied learning.

There are many different strategies and activities that can lead towards ownership. However, there are many characteristics that can be fostered by educators in order to foster ownership.

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Student Ownership and Meaningful Student Involvement

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Increasingly popular within classroom teaching and curriculum, student ownership can also be a significant factor in school improvement, district school boards, and state agencies, as well as other education programs and activities. Student ownership is often mistaken for student empowerment, student voice and student engagement.

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When a New Hampshire district found itself struggling with low test scores and high turnover, it made a radical decision: Flip the traditional model and let kids take over the classrooms.

In an 11th-grade English class at Pittsfield Middle High School in rural New Hampshire, Jenny Wellington's students were gathered in a circle debating Henry David Thoreau's positions on personal responsibility.

"Do you think Thoreau really was about 'every man for himself?'" asked one 16-year-old boy.

"He lived alone in the woods and didn't want to pay taxes," another student shots back. "So, yeah."

Sitting off to the side, Wellington took rapid notes. When she noticed the conversation being dominated by a couple of voices, she politely suggested someone else chime in. Otherwise, she stayed out of the way and let the discussion take shape.

Welcome to student-centered learning at Pittsfield, a grade 7-12 campus in its third year of an innovative approach to education.

"There used to be a lot more of teachers talking at you-it didn't matter if you were ready to move on. When the teacher was done with the topic that was it," said Noah Manteau, a senior this year at Pittsfield. "This is so much better."

Educators, researchers, and policymakers at the state and national level are keeping close tabs on Pittsfield, which has become an incubator for a critical experiment in school reform. The goal: a stronger connection between academic learning and the kind of real-world experience that advocates say can translate into postsecondary success.

Pittsfield, a former mill town, has about 4,500 predominately white residents, and the Middle High School serves about 260 residents. Fifty-six percent of them qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Student-centered learning is fully in place in the high school, and elements of it are being phased in at the middle-school level. The long-term plan is to eventually add it to the nearby elementary school.

Pittsfield's superintendent, John Freeman, is among the first to acknowledge that adopting student-centered learning was a bold move. Student performance on statewide assessments has long been uneven, and teachers and administrators know there is still significant work to be done. But test scores are just one indicator, and based on multiple other measures, including higher graduation and college-going rates, Freeman feels confident that student-centered learning is moving Pittsfield in the right direction.
"There used to be a lot more of teachers talking at you. "This is so much better."
At Pittsfield, student-led discussions, small-group work, and individual projects dominate. The traditional grading system has been replaced with a matrix of "competencies," detailing the skills and knowledge students are expected to master in each class. Students are graded on a scale of 1 to 4-with 2.5 considered "proficient"-and those numbers are converted into letter grades for their transcripts. Teachers meet at regular intervals to review how closely their instruction is aligning with the competencies; they use an online database to continually track individual student growth. Additional online classes allow students to further challenge themselves and earn college credit. Family engagement is considered a key part of each student's progress. And the Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) program allows students to earn credit for workplace experiences that reinforce their academic studies, such as interning at a dentist's office or the local radio station.

All of this means students are shouldering more responsibility for their own learning. And they are expected to develop the kind of critical thinking skills-not just rote knowledge-required for "real world" success. As a result, advocates of student-centered learning say it provides superior preparation for both college and career.

As senior Ryan Marquis put it, "I had to switch from 'Here's your study guide and here's your answer sheet' to 'How do you want to learn the content, and how can we support you?'"

Student-centered learning in Pittsfield-located in the Suncook Valley about 40 minutes north of Manchester-began to take shape in 2008, when the district asked for community input on ways to improve local schools and found overwhelming support for more personalized approaches. The following year, Pittsfield's high school was rated one of the state's lowest-performing, based on students' standardized test scores. The one benefit of that dismal ranking was that it later qualified Pittsfield for a $1 million federal School Improvement Grant (SIG).

This set in motion intensive public-private partnerships, and the creation of a community working group to help come up with a new instructional approach. After extensive research, planning, and conversations with parents, the district opted for the student-centered learning model, and the plan was implemented in January 2012.

"People in our community wanted schools to be places where students' passions and interests were recognized, and their deficits and weaknesses addressed," said Freeman. "We're thinking not just about what happens within these walls, but preparing them for success at least seven years beyond high school graduation."

Around the same time, the district was considering how to implement New Hampshire's mandate that high schools use a competency-based model, rather than traditional seat-time hours, to award course credit. New Hampshire had also adopted the Common Core State Standards, which set grade-level expectations for what students know and can do, but do not dictate classroom instruction.
"They all get feedback from me every time, after every discussion. That's hard data for them, and they love it."
Rather than becoming competing forces, this unique combination of circumstances provided Pittsfield with enviable synergies, education experts say. "One of the downfalls of personalized learning has often been a regression to the lowest standard," said Sonja Santelises, vice president of K-12 policy and practice for the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Education Trust. The confluence of the Common Core, high school competencies, and student-centered learning in Pittsfield, said Santelises, offered "a rare opportunity" to set high expectations for learning that are supported by a rigorous and innovative instructional framework. At the same time, she added, the community's buy-in has been critical, particularly during the earliest planning stages. Accountability must also be a top priority, Santelises said: Teachers should be continually checking students' progress against the standards and adjusting instruction accordingly.

"These are not just nice things to have-they're absolutely essential to have if you're going to bring about meaningful change," Santelises said.

What is student-centered learning? In its broadest sense, it describes an approach where teachers function more as coaches than lecturers. While it's gaining momentum nationally, the definition is still evolving. The term is sometimes used-incorrectly, say the model's advocates-to describe any kind of free-form learning that is not "teacher centered." The New England-based Nellie Mae Education Foundation defines the model as personalized instruction that allows students to advance at their own rate, with opportunities for "anywhere, anytime" learning outside the confines of the traditional school day and building. Students must also have input in determining how they will learn, choosing among opportunities such as online classes and independent study. Project-based learning, in which students build connections between the academic course content and their own interests and career goals, is another popular route.

According to Rebecca Wolfe, director of the nonprofit Jobs For the Future's Students at the Center project, student-centered learning shares the Common Core's underlying goal: helping students develop their critical thinking skills while better preparing them for the real-world challenges of college and career. "They are absolutely complementary-and should be part of the same whole-when done right," Wolfe said.

Student-centered learning is not without its critics. Some question the philosophical premise, while others worry about the potentially daunting logistical requirements. There are also concerns that student-centered learning can result in a chaotic classroom environment, and that some students won't progress quickly enough to cover the required curriculum. Learners who already trail their peers could be the most vulnerable.

"The idea of 'student-centered everything' is one of those orthodoxies where it's easy to fall off the end of the cliff," said Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow and vice president for external affairs at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C. "It works a lot better in the content areas than in skills-based instruction like reading comprehension, for example."

As for letting students demonstrate proficiency by non-traditional means, Pondiscio said "as long as the projects are rigorous and challenging, I see no problem with allowing students to produce work product that interests and engages them-provided it's aligned to the content expectations."
They are expected to develop the kind of critical thinking skills, required for real-world success.
Recent research from the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education found the student-centered model is working in unexpected places, including urban high schools with high percentages of minority and low-income students. Consider a June 2014 study looking at student-centered learning in four northern California public high schools, all smaller, open-enrollment campuses. The Stanford researchers concluded that regular assessments were helping teachers better monitor student progress and adjust instruction accordingly. Students were also finding ways to connect their learning to their own interests and the wider community outside of school.

"Students in the study schools exhibited greater gains in achievement than their peers, had higher graduation rates, were better prepared for college, and showed greater persistence in college," said Stanford University Professor and SCOPE Faculty Director Linda Darling-Hammond in a statement about the new research. "Student-centered learning proves to be especially beneficial to economically disadvantaged students and students whose parents have not attended college."

At Pittsfield, the shift to student-led discussions was a fairly steep learning curve for everyone, including teacher Jenny Wellington. To build her lesson on Thoreau, Wellington first turned to the school's "competencies," which are drawn from the state's Common Core standards. For the 11th grade, that means students should be able to interpret the literature they read, and craft arguments using the text as evidence. Wellington uses a mix of student-led discussions, small group work, writing assignments and the occasional traditional test to measure the progress of the class.

"I'm giving them a point of focus but I'm not telling them what to think," Wellington said. "My role is to make sure they are following through with a thought or an idea and not just jumping around. Once they hit on something they have to go deeper-and find support for their position from the text."

The students keep track of how often each of them contributes to the conversation, setting goals both for themselves and for the class overall. For the most part, Wellington remains on the sidelines, although she occasionally stops the conversation for an in-class writing assignment to give quieter students an extra moment to collect their thoughts and consider what they want to say.

"When I have really strong student dominating the discussions, I'll tell them privately to hang back a little," Wellington said. "They all get feedback from me every time, after every discussion. That's hard data for them, and they love it."

There have been unexpected developments: When Wellington used a traditional multiple choice test to measure students' grasp of the content at the end of a subject unit, many of them scored poorly on some of the basic facts of Thoreau's biography. But their written responses to the essay portion of the test, asking them to explain and interpret transcendentalism, were a different kind of surprise. "They blew me out of the water," Wellington said. "Their understanding was clearly deeper than just those facts."

In an age when Google's search engine is as close as a cell phone, "I would question whether a student knowing the year Thoreau died is really essential," said Robert Rothman, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington, D.C.-based organization focused on high school transformation. "If students didn't know that he lived in the 19th century, that might be problem. If you're going to talk about transcendentalism you need to know facts about it, and about the people who espoused it, to provide evidence for your conclusions."

There are other education theorists who take this argument even further, insisting that there's little need for much of the rote learning that takes place in public schools. However, "there's a danger of going from one extreme to another," Rothman said. "Just testing students on basic facts doesn't help students develop those deeper understanding and learning. And just having them show they can communicate and write longer essays without some basis in knowledge isn't going to help them, either."

Like many of the nation's public schools, both large and small, Pittsfield must contend with a high-need student population and a post-recession struggle for adequate funding. Until recently, those challenges were exacerbated by a culture of low expectations for students, say Pittsfield teachers. In 2013, Pittsfield's 11th graders had a proficiency rate of 61 percent for reading on the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) exam; the statewide average for reading was 77 percent. In math, Pittsfield's proficiency rate of 36 percent was the same as the state average, but that's almost double the 19 percent that the school reported for the 2008-09 school year. Until 2011, Pittsfield had been on upward trend for several years, but during the past two school years, scores have fallen.

The district has also been challenged by system-wide instability. Pittsfield has a higher-than-average number of residential rental properties, which means it has more student turnover than many of the state's other small towns, said Superintendent Freeman, who took the helm in 2008 after nine years as one of the district's principals. Teacher turnover has also been high: Since 2011, about 60 percent of the teachers and administrators at the middle-high school have been replaced, in part because some staff members rejected the shift to student-centered learning. Freeman said the school has also taken a more aggressive approach to evaluating the performance and potential of non-tenured teachers.
"To let go of the idea that I have to be center stage all the time has been incredibly freeing. I feel like I'm a better teacher."
Test scores aside, Pittsfield has improved in key areas since it launched its student-led curriculum. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, Pittsfield's dropout rate in 2013 was 2.3 percent, down from 3.6 percent in 2010. During the same three-year period, the graduation rate climbed to 80 percent from 75 percent. And the college-going rate jumped to 60 percent from 47 percent.

Laureen Avery of UCLA's Center X also points out that the school is no longer in the bottom 5 percent of the state's high schools. Avery is the lead evaluator of the school's Investing in Innovation (i3) grant, a $5 million federal investment it shares with a network of 12 other New England campuses; the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and the Rural School and Community Trust have each contributed an additional $500,000 to the group of schools, and Nellie Mae, located in Quincy, Mass., has awarded a separate $2 million grant to Pittsfield specifically to put student-centered learning into place.

"I've never seen any school-big or little-pay such close attention to student data," Avery said. "They have a really well-developed way of tracking progress. Yes, Pittsfield is a unique, small school. But they're succeeding with processes that could be transferrable to another campus."

Paul Leather, New Hampshire's deputy education commissioner, emphasizes that a student-led program like Pittsfield's could not have worked without strong leaders, supported teachers, and an engaged community. "You can have the best ideas in the world," Leather said. "But ultimately, it all comes down to implementation."

To that end, Freeman has worked hard to carve out time for professional development. He has also eliminated the principal position and instead installed two deans at the helm: one for curriculum and instruction and one for building management. That clear delineation of duties means the first dean can focus on supporting classroom teachers while the second deals with the day-to-day tasks involved in running the school.

For Jenny Wellington, who has spent 12 years teaching-six in New York City public schools, two years at the University of New Hampshire, and four at Pittsfield-it's still a daily challenge to manage everything student-centered learning requires. The academic, social and emotional needs of her Pittsfield students are not dissimilar to those of her former pupils in the Bronx, Wellington said.

But she says the changes at Pittsfield have made it easier for her to respond to those challenges. She regularly visits her colleagues' classrooms, gleaning ideas about how to get students to steer their own learning and looking for opportunities for joint projects. This fall, for example, biology students will be expected to write a persuasive essay about the use of human stem cells in research-an essay that will also be evaluated by their English teacher.

"I've learned to step back more and let the students lead," Wellington said. "To let go of the idea that I have to be center stage all the time has been incredibly freeing. I feel like I'm a better teacher."
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University.

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When a New Hampshire district found itself struggling with low test scores and high turnover, it made a radical decision: Flip the traditional model and let kids take over the classrooms.

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Developing Responsible and Autonomous Learners: A Key to Motivating Students

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Research has shown that motivation is related to whether or not students have opportunities to be autonomous and to make important academic choices.

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It is probably not surprising that one of the most consistent findings in educational research demonstrates that the more time students spend engaged during instruction, the more they learn (Gettinger & Ball, 2007). Schlechty (2002) defined the five levels of student engagement so we can learn to gauge student interest and increase the effectiveness of our structured literacy instruction.

Five Levels of Student Engagement

Authentic Engagement-students are immersed in work that has a clear meaning and immediate value to them (reading a book on a topic of personal interest)

Ritual Compliance-the work has little or no immediate meaning to students, but there are extrinsic outcomes of value that keep them engaged (earning grades necessary for college acceptance)

Passive Compliance-students see little or no meaning in the assigned work but expend effort merely to avoid negative consequences (not having to stay in during recess to complete work)

Retreatism-students are disengaged from assigned work and make no attempt to comply, but are not disruptive to the learning of others

Rebellion-students refuse to do the assigned task, act disruptive, and attempt to substitute alternative activities

Measuring Engagement in the Classroom

The level of student engagement can vary from student-to-student, and lesson-to-lesson so it can be difficult to get a general feel for how engaged a class is as a whole. To that end, Schlechty (2002) also outlined three categories that can be used to measure the level of engagement for an entire classroom.
The Engaged Classroom
In the engaged classroom, you will observe that all students are authentically engaged at least some of the time or that most students are authentically engaged most of the time. Passive compliance and retreatism are rarely observed and rebellion is non-existent.
The Compliant Classroom
The compliant classroom is the picture of traditional education. This type of classroom is orderly and most students will appear to be working so it would be easy to infer that learning is taking place. However, while there is little evidence of rebellion, retreatism is a very real danger as it is very common in the compliant classroom.
The Off-Task Classroom
Retreatism and rebellion are easily observed in the off-task classroom. This type of classroom is each-student-for-them-self so you will see some degree of authentic and ritual engagement, along with passive compliance as well. Teachers in the off-task classroom spend most of their time dealing with rebelling students rather than teaching lessons that engage.

Seven Student Engagement Strategies

Student engagement is a byproduct of effective instruction that has major payoffs. When students are engaged during explicit phonics instruction they learn and retain more information. Student engagement during reading instruction also increases the likelihood that your students will become passionate about reading. So, how can you increase the amount of time that students in your class are engaged during reading instruction? Here are some suggestions:

1. Use the 10:2 method. For every 10 minutes of instruction allow the students 2 minutes to process and respond to the instruction or reading material. This can be done in various ways: have them write about what they have learned or read, have them ask or write down questions they have about what they have read or learned, or have students discuss the lesson or reading material with a partner.

2. Incorporate movement into your lessons. Require students to respond to a question about a reading passage or lesson by moving to a certain spot in the room, writing on whiteboards, or standing (or sitting) when they are done thinking about the question, etc.

3. Pick up the pace. One misconception is that we must go slow for students to really understand and engage in a lesson or story. There is a lot of evidence that shows that when teaching and reading are done at a brisk pace, students have more opportunities to engage, respond, and move on to the next concept or idea (Carnine & Fink, 1978; Williams, 1993; Ernsbarger et al., 2001).

4. Provide frequent and effective feedback.Correct students as they learn new decoding skills or reading strategies. Be sure students know how to use each strategy correctly so they experience success and mastery.

5. Allow students 5-7 seconds of 'think time' when asking a question about a story or reading passage. At the end of the time draw a random name to answer the question.

6. At the end of a lesson have students use the 3-2-1 method of summarizing by having students record three things they learned, two interesting things, and one question they have about what was taught or read. Allow time to share their findings with a peer.

7. Periodically pause mid-sentence when teaching and require students to fill in the blanks.

Learn more about teaching reading strategies ›

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Conclusion

At the end of one of my recent day-long trainings, a teacher approached me and said, "This was a great training. I know, because I didn't get my knitting needles out one time." Whether we are teaching young people or adults, it is important to keep in mind that student engagement is more than just listening. If we are constantly monitoring the level of student engagement in our classroom we can consciously work to increase the amount of time that students are involved in learning and expect greater success in our teaching.

Related Articles
Five Ways to Activate Student Attention, Anticipation, & Interest During a Lesson The 4 C's of Effective Instruction That Boost Student Engagement What is phonics instruction? >Misconceptions About Phonics Instruction - #2 - Phonics Instruction is Boring
Interested in learning more about Early Literacy? Explore our free educational resources to learn how you can help the young readers in your life! Take a look at one of our Reading Horizons reviews (from California - the state).

*Carnine. D., & Fink, W. T. (1978). Increasing the rate of presentation and use of signals in elementary classroom teachers. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 11, 35-46.

*Ernsbarger, S. C., Tincani. M. J., Harrison,T. J., Frazier-Trotman, S., Simmons-Reed, E., & Heward. W. L. (2001, May). Slow teacher/fast teacher: Effects on participation rate, accuracy, and off-task behavior by pre-K students during small-group language lessons. Paper presented at the 27th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis. New Orleans. LA

*Gettinger, M., & Ball, C. (2007). Best practices in increasing academic engaged time. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology V (pp. 1043-1075). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

*Schlechty, P. (2002) Working on the Work. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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How to Measure and Increase Student Engagement During Reading Instruction

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Reading is fundamental to all learning and is crucial for your students' future success. Researchers have found that the more students are engaged during instruction, the more they learn. So, can you be sure your students are engaged during reading instruction?