Humanities, history and Harper Lee

I read a novel twice for the first time recently. I followed that up by reading another novel for a second time. I don’t know why I have not done this before, but I recommend it. Rereading literature can increase appreciation, something about a more complete situation model. The more literary the work, the greater the effect, or so the story goes.1 I also recommend reading about the books you read. Who is the author? What motivated the book? How was it conceived? Context adds value.

I wanted to read about the enigmatic Harper Lee whose To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most widely read American novels and among the most popular books to reread. I was inspired by Casey Cep’s Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee to reread To Kill a Mockingbird (it had been at least 25 years) which led to rereading Go Set a Watchman which led to reading Atticus Finch: The Biography by historian Joseph Crespino. The four books framed a short course in publishing, literary criticism, character development, history, sociology, and biography; a fascinating interplay of stories, real and imagined, and the fine lines that separate them.

The publication of Go Set a Watchman in 2015 created fresh opportunities to research the life of Harper Lee and review To Kill a Mockingbird and its characters, especially Atticus Finch; for some a disconcerting affair but also an enriching complexity that re-frames the field of view, removing from the shadows details in the lives of Lee and her characters that enrich rather than diminish her work. To Kill a Mockingbird is fluid and refined, simple even. But Go Set a Watchman is unencumbered, rough and raw, complicated by dissonance. Go Set a Watchman is the story that poured out of Lee first in the initial weeks of 1957 after a Christmas gift of time allowed Lee to quit her job and devote herself to writing. Go Set a Watchman provides insight into Lee’s life not available in To Kill a Mockingbird, exposing hidden kernels of her life’s truth that inform the lives of her characters, most undeniably that of Atticus Finch.

Lee’s writing life is fascinating and so was the process by which To Kill a Mockingbird emerged and grew to become one of America’s most purchased, most read, most celebrated novels, and how Atticus Finch became one of American literature’s most beloved characters. In The Furious Hours, Cep describes Lee’s interest in writing about the events surrounding a bizarre series of deaths in 1970s Alabama; an interest, Cep asserts, motivated by Lee’s experience helping Truman Capote research his true crime opus, In Cold Blood. While Lee never published this book, Cep tells this haunting story for her. But it is the second half of The Furious Hours that was most compelling; Lee’s childhood friendship and difficult adult relationship with Capote, her significant work on his most famous book, and her discomfort with the fame that came with the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird. In Atticus Finch: The Biography, Crespino delves more deeply into Lee’s relationship with her father, the inspiration for Atticus Finch, and the civil rights movement that provided the backdrop for the writing and publication of To Kill a Mockingbird.

While I was interested in the comparative literariness of Harper’s two novels and, upon rereading, came away with a greater appreciation for both books, it was less the construction of each novel and more the dynamic between them, played out in Lee’s real life story and covered so well by Cep and Crespino, that made reading them again so engaging. The Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee and Atticus Finch: The Biography are well researched, well written, and well worth the time.

Framing the history of school choice

In Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America, Robert N. Gross surveys the historical ground upon which American public and private school systems emerged and the legal context in which their relationship has evolved. Gross’s major assertion is that the state-sponsored frameworks erected to support public school development were also applied to private schools seeking a secure place in the education market in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The state participation and public regulation that promoted private school development can, Gross argues, also inform how we understand the nation’s larger regulatory state “with its often-blurred distinctions between public and private.”

Gross doesn’t make a value judgement about the merits of public or private education, either today or historically. Instead, he deconstructs their relationship to reveal the premises upon which today’s debates are still based.

Not gripping but fascinating. Not conclusive but thought provoking. Public vs. Private provides some answers but raises more questions. Read it if you want to better understand one of the nation’s oldest dilemmas, discern its component parts, and contribute to the current discourse.

The Fiery Trial is artistic inquiry

Hardcover, 448 pages

2011 Pulitzer Prize for History 

Abraham Lincoln said writing is the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye. The assertion that writing is an art is certainly evident in Lincoln’s most famous pens. Read the Gettysburg Address. But a second, underlying, proposition in Lincoln's observation is perhaps more relevant to understanding the man himself. Writing informs thinking.

Lincoln’s private secretary, John G. Nicolay, referred to Lincoln’s pre-writing habits, jotting notes and recording fragments, as his “process of cumulative thought.” Lincoln used writing to understand the world around him. Indeed, Lincoln called writing the greatest invention of the world and the key to human progress.

In The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, historian Eric Foner tracks Lincoln’s personal and professional transformation, producing a sharply focused historiography of Lincoln’s evolving disposition toward the institution of slavery. Foner relies on Lincoln’s writing, his command of language, unique among presidents, along with his own deep understanding of 19th century American politics, to reveal Lincoln’s social, political, and moral maturation on the issue of slavery.

Foner notes that it is the precision of Lincoln’s writing, along with his principled consistency, that makes Lincoln’s record especially credible. For readers who only know the transcendent emancipator, Foner re-humanizes Lincoln. He synthesizes a process, discernible in the arc of Lincoln’s writing, that Lincoln pursued to grow unto himself and for the country.

If history is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence, The Fiery Trial is artistic inquiry. Foner questions, considers, infers but always returns to Lincoln’s own words, the evidence, to tell the story of a protagonist, conflicted, ambitious, yet sincere, who prevailed. The story is, in the mind’s eye, both tragic and triumphant. And well worth the time.

An essential tome for readers of American history... and other good reads

Henry Clay: The Essential American by David and Jeanne Heidler is an essential tome for readers of American history. Congressman. Senator. Secretary of State. Strategist. Negotiator. Presidential Candidate. The Great Compromiser, Henry Clay occupies a place in antebellum statesmanship that few others can claim. And he clashed with most who tried. The Heidlers' research is impeccable, supporting great storytelling and providing context for the study of a life few surpass in influencing, sometimes for better and sometimes not, the turbulent youth of America's republic.

There There: A Novel by Tommy Orange is a mournful, haunting call about being homeless at home. It’s about race and place, past and present. A précis of Native American experience in the prologue foreshadows a discomfiting read. And the stories of a dozen characters moving toward a single, fateful day delivers on that promise. The story is heavy but makes evident, through provocative, elegant language, what is not but should be in plain sight.

Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 by Carl E. Kaestle is less a chronology of public-school history than a study of the social context in which public school systems emerged in the early years of the republic. It is relevant for those interested in the debates about public schools today, not so much form or function but purpose, especially the common school focus to develop citizens that could maintain government of the people, by the people, for the people, something that has been lost in today’s standardization movement in which schools are asked to do everything but develop citizens for democracy.

Visceral. Emotional. Tragic. Hopeful. Real. Raw. Powerful. The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a must-read for anyone interested in learning about the mental and emotional strain occurring as a result of injury or severe psychological shock; what is known, what is not known, and what might be on the horizon. David J. Morris writes with energy, urgency, and a personal authority that pulls the reader into the pages, into the stories, and as close to the minds of those suffering from PTSD as may be possible in literary prose.

Beware of snakes in the grass

Most people have a healthy fear of snakes. I don’t. I have an incredibly unhealthy fear of snakes. I see them where they are. I see them where they aren’t. I’ve been known to toss a bowl of popcorn into the air when they suddenly appear on the television screen. So, when I learned about the Cobra Effect, the circumstance in which a plan to reduce the venomous snake’s threat to humans actually increased the threat, I was horrified. But that’s nothing compared to the alarm I felt in reading The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better in which Daniel Koretz uses the Cobra Effect as a mechanism to organize the junk drawer of problems with standardized testing in public education.

Specifically, Koretz outlines an example of the Cobra Effect known as Campbell’s Law in which social scientist Donald T. Campbell asserts “the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." Insufficient measures generate distortions, and Koretz argues that in education, standardized testing is the insufficient measure.

The distortions?

There are too many for a short review but Koretz does a good job organizing the basic misunderstandings, unintended consequences, and defeat devices associated with standardized testing. From the widening gaps among the intended, taught, and learned curricula… to the people-sorting nature of standardized tests… to the incentivizing of instructional behaviors that run counter to how people learn, Koretz reviews the specifics of how standardize testing is an incomplete instrument for evaluating teaching and learning.

More importantly, in using Campbell’s Law, Koretz includes education in a broader discussion about social change processes, cleverly applying in his thesis what he recommends for education evaluation; broaden the discussion, increase balance in the evaluation process, recognize that there are tradeoffs in managing complex systems, and stop trying to quantify everything.

As much as I would like to make the comparison, standardized tests are not the Cobras of this story. Unfortunately, the Cobras are the distortions and unintended consequences of their misuse; score inflation, test prep, the needlessly diminishing reputation of public education, the struggles of the poorest students in a system not designed to account for them, and the limitations of an evaluation instrument built around regression to the mediocre.

I won’t throw a bowl of popcorn into the air the next time I see a standardized test, but I do fear the real snakes in the grass, the unintended consequences of misusing standardized tests. The charade, as Koretz calls it, will eventually come back to bite us.

Sowing the seeds of time

I don’t remember reading William Shakespeare’s Macbeth in high school, but I might if Dave Fogelstrom or Rusty Weaver had been in charge. I will remember reading their collaboration, McBeth and the Everlasting Gobstopper, for two reasons. One, it landed on my summer reading list after a chance encounter with Weaver in the shadow of one of the world’s most dangerous volcanos; a symbolic reminder, perhaps, that reading (and writing for Fogelstrom and Weaver) is a great way to let off a little steam. Second, the book’s super-heated, irreverent tone belies a sincere, soulful introspection that resonated with my own experience as a teacher. Gobstopper made me laugh but it also made me think and reflect and think some more; about the importance of teaching, about the worthy journey of learning, about the teachers I had in high school and what they might think of me today and about my own students and what I would think of them today.

I read Gobstopper shortly before having what Fogelstrom and Weaver call a Blue Heart diamond moment, one of the rare occurrences for teachers when the “fog of the unknown” lifts briefly, allowing a glimpse at the “mature result of our work.” It was a wedding; a moment in which the time between then and now dissolved, an occasion in which a former student’s thoughtful sentiment about the role of this teacher hit home. It was a moment to cherish, fleeting yet indelible. It was also a reminder that teachers breathe a song into the air, having faith that knowledge, wisdom, and the important stuff will go forth and be found again in the heart of a friend. Gobstopper reminded me of my own song, and my Blue Diamond moment revealed one of its resident hearts, which warmed my own. For that alone, it was reading time well spent.

Mount Rainier by Ed Suomenin | Flickr

A Shout in the Ruins leaves a lasting impression

The challenging part of historical study is listening, having the presence to hear the echoes of life long ago and appreciate the contemporary implications of an age from which all personal experience has passed. Literature can fill the gaps between names, places, and dates on the timeline, distill the subjective knowledge of life long ago, the affective derived only from context, from seeing, hearing, and feeling what once was. 

A Shout in the Ruins by Kevin Powers is an instrument for hearing the echoes, a model for historical reflection, a consideration of the experience and legacy of slavery, the physical and mental brutality of the time, and its reach far into the future. With language lyrical and laconic, Powers tells a story of love and loss… of one man’s life in the century after the Civil War and his attempt, near his term, to go back in time, to make meaning, to listen to the echoes of his own life. George Seldom’s search is for knowledge, not the kind found in history books, but the kind found in memory and experience. From the formative George, those things were hidden by the raw, remnant residue of slavery and war.
 
There is intensity in the rhythms of Powers’ writing that allow the reader to feel the moments in time the story traverses… the violence, the sadness, the despair but also the hope that the long arc of history does indeed bend toward justice.

Chernow reconstructs the life of U.S. Grant

The stories of people who lived before the age of sound recording often carry with them a mystic, spectral quality in the sense that a subject’s disposition must be inferred, even imagined. Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer of American revolutionaries George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, published his latest historical excavation last year, this time reconstructing the life of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant, a comprehensive, single-volume biography of the Hero of Appomattox and the 18th President of the United States, unearths details covering the entirety of Grant’s life, from the tensions of his personal relationships to the tumult of his professional endeavors.

Chernow’s work demystifies Grant, distinguishing his veracious, sentient nature from the complex, often adverse, and politically virulent environment in which he lived. What emerges from the narrative is an appreciable portrait of a man engaged in a life with purpose and perseverance. But it’s Chernow’s ability to extract and profile Grant’s emotional intelligence that leaves the reader with a sharper sense of Grant’s character and how he pursued his life, including the work of war, with the energy and intensity for which he is remembered.

The surprisingly sensitive nature of Grant’s character emerges slowly as the narrative unfolds, fully exposed by the time the story ends. Far from innate, Grant’s disposition during the Civil War was derived from life experiences that were often painful, marked by failure and frustration but balanced by family and friendship. Extensively researched, yet not constrained by trivia, Chernow’s work reveals how empathy and intuition, in addition to experience and strategy, guided Grant’s thinking and behavior in times of success and failure.

Extensive yet fluent and forthright, Grant is a tremendous volume of scholarship and an indispensable contribution to the story of the American character.

In his own words: Annotated Grant memoir compliments Chernow biography

A great companion piece to Ron Chernow’s, Grant, is the 2017 republication of The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, a complete annotated edition of the highly acclaimed memoir edited by John F. Marszalek. Written in the final months of his life, the story is dry, dense in specifics, yet brief… into the weeds and out again, moving on to the next battle or movement of troops, much like Grant’s approach to leading his armies.

There are moments in the book where Grant shares some personal insight or perspective, usually incidental as would occur in conversation, like the time President Lincoln made a private, yet laugh-out-loud joke to him about a Confederate officer’s oversized overcoat or his haunting reflection 20 years after that the historically horrific nature of the Civil War “should teach us the necessity of avoiding wars in the future.” It’s those moments that keep the pages turning and make Grant’s memoir well worth the time.

Weir serves up another helping of sci-fi filet

As a launching conceit, a heist on the Moon is a meat hook. And for lovers of The Martian, Andy Weir’s second novel, Artemis, serves up another helping of sci-fi filet that pushes readers beyond the horizon but not so far that they can’t find their way home.

People have not yet been to Mars, let alone survived under the circumstances in which Mark Watney found himself, but it sure seems a likely story after reading The Martian. Likewise, there are no cities on the Moon, but Weir provides a percipient account of how Moon life might emerge as a matter of routine... along with a few exceptional haps.

The emerging consensus about Artemis seems to be “it’s good, but not The Martian.” I don’t disagree. Weir will undoubtedly have to deal with comparisons, and rightfully so, since Artemis was created in the same near-future, kind-of-plausible-not-yet-possible vein. But while Artemis comes across as sort of a Martian Lite, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. Weir knows how to put characters into acutely stressful situations and let us watch them try to work free, all-the-while integrating complex science with comedic, high-drama. Weir proves again that writers can direct-teach while spinning a good yarn; the learning doesn’t necessarily have to be inferred. But it’s the story, not the education, that makes Artemis worth the time. It’s conflict, tension, suspense, and consequence that keep the pages turning. Weir’s newest protagonist, Jazz Bashara, is eminently relatable. Mark Watney was an extraordinary figure in extraordinary circumstances. I wouldn’t be able to get near him in his time or mine. But Jazz Bashara is an ordinary person with ordinary problems (relationships, debt, petty crime... you know). And it’s those problems that help Weir extract a sophisticated yet accessible story from an environment as inhospitable as the Moon. 

Little Soldiers widens the discourse on public education

It seems at times that Americans don’t quite know what to make of China. And it occurred to me after reading Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve by Lenora Chu that this is perhaps because China doesn’t quite know what to make of itself as it changes and continues to open up to the world. In Little Soldiers, a cultural inquiry that feels like a memoir, Chu, with wry, self-deprecation, recounts her experiences as the mother of a young American child beginning his formal education in the Chinese public school system and as a journalist trying to understand the context in which this system operates. Chu’s cultural dissonance and the Chinese education system’s traditional resolve emerge early in this heart-felt, reflective story in which Chu never quite seems to reconcile her own educational experiences growing up in Texas with those she wants for her children. She does, however, come to respect the discipline that characterizes the Chinese system and even embraces it as an important component of her son’s early education. This realization seems to unsettle her as much as anything, and drives her to learn more.

Chu’s past and present circumstances position her uniquely to tell the story of the Chinese and American educational systems. Chu takes a humanities based approach, compiling observations, perspectives, experiences, and research to produce a thick, context-based synthesis that reveals both the irreconcilable differences and common features of these two systems.

Chu senses a slight Western shift in the Chinese educational system as the country embraces the tenets of capitalism. And she offers the thought that American schools, particularly early on, could benefit from a slight Eastern shift. Chu ultimately advocates for widening the lens through which we view educational practice. While schools are a reflection of the societies in which they operate, Chu finds these systems are capable of change. Indeed, change may be the desired permanent state for both systems… all systems, even.

Near the end of Little Solders, Chu recounts an education conference she attended in Beijing in which one participant noted that “the speed of change in the way we educate is staggering. We will reach 2030 and none of the things we are talking about will be relevant at all.” I am not sure I recognize this speed of change from within the American system but perhaps if not solving the riddle of public education, Little Soldiers’ contribution is to expand the view of the education landscape for readers, allowing them to calibrate their assessment of what defines success in education and think more precisely about how to achieve it.

Electric October magnifies the mortals of the '47 Fall Classic

Joe DiMaggio was there. Jackie Robinson was there. Yogi Berra was there. Pee Wee Reese was there. And I felt like I was there after reading Kevin Cook’s Electric October, an account of the 1947 World Series as seen through the eyes of six men whose names haven’t traveled to the present quite as prominently as DiMaggio, Robinson, Berra, and Reese. DiMaggio was returning to the Fall Classic for the first time since serving in World War II, and Robinson was the first African-American to play in a World Series. But while Cook situates the ’47 Series in its appropriate social context, DiMaggio’s celebrity and Robinson’s courage are not featured. Rather it’s a story of triumph and tragedy for more marginal players whose baseball lives did not become immortal but who provided the moments that made the ’47 Series thrilling and dramatic.

A big hit, a near miss, and a great catch charge the current in Cook’s story. For Dodger third baseman Cookie Lavagetto, it was the biggest hit of his career… and the last. For every big hit, someone served it up. And for Yankees pitcher Bill Bevens, Lavagetto’s was the only hit he surrendered in his one Series start… and one of the last of his career. Finally, Dodger outfielder Al Gionfriddo recorded an out that was the bang at the end of his short run as a Major Leaguer. Also featured are Snuffy Stirnweiss (probably the Series MVP if it had been awarded then) and managers Bucky Harris and Burt Shotton (the last manager to wear street clothes in the dugout).

The subtext to the Series’ defining moments, eloquently captured by Cook’s narrative, is the tremendous surge in baseball popularity after World War II. Cook revives the excitement produced by a record 389,763 fans in Brooklyn and The Bronx that week as well as the sustained tension of each game that only baseball naturally affects.

There are some engaging anecdotes too, like how the Grapefruit League got its name, why players left their gloves on the field while they hit, and who started what would become the sabermetric revolution in baseball. Well researched and written, Electric October folds the time between today’s game and its forerunner, revealing that what made the game shine in 1947 still energizes baseball 70 years later. Nearly 19,000 players have worn a Major League Baseball uniform in the league’s 142-year history. Most are mortal, and like stars, they arrive on the scene, sparkle for a little while and then fade away. Electric October is a powerful telescope that lets us see some of the game’s mortals as they once were in their brightest moments.

Killers of the Flower Moon reminds, if not resolves

The devil, they say, is in the details. In the case of the Osage Nation, he was in the tribe's midst in the 1920's, unleashing a Reign of Terror in which dozens of tribal members were killed for their rights to the mineral money flowing from the tribe's underground reservation in the wild west prairie of Oklahoma. One man, one plan.

At least that's the official story.

In is new book, Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann delves deeper into the details, revealing perhaps a larger scope to the terror that consumed the tribe after it began reaping the benefits of its oil-rich land.

Grann tells the story of the federal investigation into the murders of Osage head-right holders and the small degrees of separation among conspirators, opportunists, and politicians that set the stage for the insidious schemes devised to separate the Osage from their land and wealth. If not a microcosm of the larger Native American experience, it's certainly an exposé of the potential for human depravity. It also expatiates the cultural disorientation of Native Americans "straddling not only two centuries but two civilizations."

While most of the elements of compelling drama are present in Grann's narrative - ego, mystery, conflict, escalation, discovery - the sad truth is that resolution has eluded the tribe. Time and tombs have locked away the full truth. However, Grann's research relates remnants of the historical record to an abiding Osage consciousness that the Reign of Terror was not just the concerted scheme of one bad actor, and a few lost souls, but a systemic culture of killing that began earlier and ended later than justice avowed.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, Grann is attentive to his subject, emotionally, but also in the intellectual rigor of his research, his engagement with the culture, and his commitment to fully telling a story that can no longer be fully told.

Smart Baseball gets a win (even though wins are "an inherent failure of logic")

Baseball is often derided as being stodgy, stuck in the past, clinging to how it’s always been done. But Keith Law's new book, Smart Baseball, reveals just how progressive the grand old game has become. Law shows how Major League Baseball teams have embraced the information revolution, changed the nature of work in front offices, and transformed decision-making; all fascinating, informative, and, in Law’s view, indicative of the right way to think about baseball.

But there is more to the story, and Law ignores too much of it to call this story smart. Law makes three broad assertions in Smart Baseball, one of which stands up, one of which doesn’t, and one of which you should run from as fast as you can.

First, Law makes the case that sabermetrics is now the driving force behind player evaluation and game strategy. On the surface, it’s an easy case to make. The saber-driven Red Sox and Cubs have both, with great acclaim, broken generations-old championship droughts. The analytically-minded Cleveland Indians nearly did the same last year, and the extreme moneyball Houston Astros have emerged as one of the best teams in baseball. Even casual fans can tell it’s more than intuition leading teams to deploy dynamic defensive strategies, rethink small baseball, and increasingly buck what Law calls the “Proven Closer” system. But Law effectively, and with humor, takes the reader beneath the surface, insightfully comparing old and new game statistics and illustrating how the evolution of sabermetrics has provided teams increased descriptive and predictive tools. His analysis shows how the information age has created new thinking and new jobs in baseball. Law is well-versed and convincing in this discussion, and, as an experienced saber-minded insider, he has credibility.

On the other hand…

Law’s argument that old game statistics are ruining baseball is less convincing. He tears at the game's traditional statistical fabric with acerbic diligence, snarky in his dismissal of those, especially media, who still talk about the game traditionally. I get this to an extent. Law’s success with Smart Baseball is in revealing statistical flaws that have probably contributed to bad game strategy, player contracts, and even Hall of Fame selections. And Law’s chapter on the Save statistic is a must-read essay that is probably the most convincing part of his ruination thesis.

But, statistically speaking, most traditional measures, if somewhat predictively weaker, still correlate strongly with success in baseball. Hitters with the highest On Base Percentages tend to fare well in Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA). Starting pitchers with the most Wins are usually among leaders in Wins Probability Added (WPA). I’m not missing the point that competitive advantages are earned in the margins. I’m just making the point that old game statistics aren’t destroying baseball.

Also, the game is healthy. Despite the haters’ hopes that baseball is in decline (and Law is clearly not a hater but a lover of baseball), overall participation in baseball was up nearly 8% last year while baseball and softball had nearly 25 million combined participants in 2016, more than any team sport in the country. The last 13 MLB seasons are the most attended seasons in baseball history, and last year’s World Series was the highest rated Fall Classic in 15 years with 40 million viewers for Game 7 alone. It doesn’t seem like baseball is on the road to ruination to me.

Finally, Law’s assertion that his way is the only way to think about baseball makes me shudder. I am skeptical of anyone claiming to be the keeper of a one-stop shop. Life’s not that easy. Complex problems require complex thinking, and anything involving people tends to be complex and not as predictable as one might infer from Law’s work. Getting to the endgame usually requires hacking through a thicket of tangled, interdependent variables where both quantitative and qualitative heuristics are necessary. While sabermetrics makes the decision-making context richer, it’s an additive not a substitute.

Taylor S. | Flickr

Law writes that baseball “isn’t particle physics (yet!) but has followed a similar path of hypothesis to discovery” in that the information revolution has revealed about baseball at the micro level what “we knew to be true at the macro level.” But in particle physics, scientists have learned that even with complete information, outcomes remain generally unpredictable. Baseball’s Statcast technology certainly provides more, if not all, possible information on the field. But it won’t provide a baseball theory of everything.

In Smart Baseball, Law uses Orioles manager Buck Showalter as a punching bag to train for his bout with the Save statistic and the larger fight against what he perceives as stubborn resistance in baseball. Showalter’s failure to use the sabermetrically most appropriate pitcher available late in the Orioles extra-inning loss to the Blue Jays in the American League Wild Card game last fall was viewed with wide derision (and I agree deserves criticism).

But by making this one managerial mistake a fulcrum for the sabermetric argument, Law ignores the complexity of managing people. He attempts to bypass the thicket. Anyone observing Showalter over a 24-year managerial career should also recognize his dexterity with less measured, yet no less critical aspects of leadership required for success in baseball, or anything for that matter.

Showalter’s leadership style considers emotional intelligence and self-determination; and finesse with how confidence and perseverance also correlate with performance. Psychology is not an exact science and not perfectly predictable. Neither is particle physics. Neither is sabermetrics. Showalter is 25th on the all-time Wins list, still the most important statistic in sports last I checked.

Smart Baseball is enlightening, entertaining, and well worth the time for baseball fans. I laughed. I yelled. I learned. And… if not the one right way to think about baseball, it gave me some additional ways to think about and enjoy my favorite game.

A story to learn

It was a 1980’s political strategist working for George H.W. Bush that coined the phrase... perception is reality. While Lee Atwater gave this concept packaging in helping to elect the 41st President of the United States, politicians throughout history have utilized its premise to seek advantage. In Ron Chernow’s masterful biography, Washington: A Life, the first President’s instinctive application of this political maxim shines forth.

From his military strategy of diversion and improvisation during the Revolutionary War… or his resignations from power only to be drawn back to it by duty and ambition… to his habit of mounting a white steed to project strength and majesty before entering a town on official business… or his publicly regal lifestyle hiding struggles with cash flow and debt, Washington was a master of messaging. He also thought a great deal about posterity. Compelled by love of country, if not an eye toward reverence, he was meticulous in recording his life and managing his papers. And when it came time to exit the stage, he wanted to leave a lasting impression.

In his new book, Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations, John Avlon adds dimension to the impressions left by the first President through his farewell message and makes the case that Washington still has much to offer to America’s political discourse.

A highly accessible, fast-paced narrative, Washington’s Farewell was an excellent chaser to Chernow’s expansive examination of the President’s life. In unpacking Washington’s 6,000 word treatise on American citizenship, Avlon walks the President’s final message backwards from his time in office, then forward through the 19th and 20th centuries, showing how Washington’s experiences formed his perspectives on self-government and how the farewell has lived on long after its author.

Avlon’s readers also discover that the farewell message should not be disaggregated to support narrow propositions, as has often been the case since its publication. Its various components are not built upon mutually exclusive ideas but derive value through interdependence. It should be interpreted holistically to glean the guiding principles upon which the original work was based.

In calling for a reconsideration of Washington’s farewell, Avlon is arguing for a need to “reflect on first principles” rather than a return to political or social norms of the day. The first President’s final words on the American experiment, he suggests, can still serve as a broad model for discourse and direction. But you have to take its full measure to minimize the gap between perception and reality and apply its wisdom to the current challenges facing the republic.

Cardio for the mind

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions but a finding published in Social Science & Medicine may change my thinking on this tradition for 2017. And it won’t be a new gym membership. Yale University researchers found that reading books prolongs life. This is good news. While I like running and exercise, I love to read!

The findings are less about the act of reading and more about type of reading. Book reading as opposed to more general reading facilitated a “survival advantage” the researchers attributed to enhanced cognitive engagement.

The researchers analyzed the reading habits of 3,635 people aged 50 and older and observed a 20 percent reduction in mortality for those who read books compared to those who did not. They believe the effect was created by the cognitive engagement that comes with the “slow, immersive” process of book reading. Cognitive engagement involves a commitment to exert the effort necessary to comprehend complex ideas. That process leads to a stronger mind, a not-so-trivial component of health and well-being. It also perhaps leads to enhanced emotional intelligence which may contribute to survival.

Importantly, the findings were true despite the participants' level of education, gender, health status, and baseline cognition. Also, the amount of time reading wasn’t a determining factor. Participants spent nearly twice the time reading periodicals as books. The researchers found that “any level of book reading gave a significantly stronger survival advantage than reading periodicals.”

So if you’re thinking about resolutions for the New Year, consider immersing yourself in a good book. You might even think of it as cardio for the mind!

Below are the top cognitively engaging books I read in 2016:

Bloodland: A Family Story of Oil, Greed and Murder on the Osage Reservation | by Dennis McAuliffe, Jr. 
Good books can make you think and re-think. McAuliffe succeeds at this with a sad, yet honest personal story that shows how legacy matters; that choices made long ago have long-term implications. Bloodland tells the story of the Osage Nation and the “Reign of Terror” perpetrated against tribal members in the 1920s. McAuliffe investigates the death of his Osage grandmother, learning and sharing more about himself in the process than I suspect he imagined when he started. It was the personal connection to my own life (the Osages in my family) and a gripping, suspenseful narrative that made this book so engaging. The book also provided some valuable historical and present day context for our visit to the Osage Nation in Oklahoma this fall.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon | by David Grann
So I knew the Amazon was an exotic place. What I didn't know when I started reading The Lost City of Z was that David Grann would manage to bring the sights, sounds, smells, and textures of the Amazon into my living room. The Lost City of Z is the story of Percy Fawcett, one of the World’s great explorers whose dangerous and difficult work brought light to the great shadows of the Amazon. Fawcett’s engagement was his theory of an ancient and advanced civilization lost to the ages somewhere in this great South American jungle. Grann’s deep research and descriptive style combined to make this an accessible, thrilling read. Upcoming in 2017, I am looking forward to Grann’s coverage of the Osage Reign of Terror in his soon to be published Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis | by J.D. Vance
Reading can cause reflection and enhance awareness. Hillbilly Elegy does both for its readers. Vance shines the light on his own life and the issues of poverty, opportunity, and responsibility in Appalachian America. Vance relives a difficult childhood and engages the reader by generating more questions than answers, nudging others to examine the uncomfortable issues affecting a large percentage of Americans and consider solutions to some difficult problems.

The Greatest: My Own Story | by Richard Durham, Muhammad Ali
The news of Muhammad Ali’s passing motivated me to learn a little bit more about one of the most celebrated and controversial athletes of all time. I am not old enough to recall Ali’s work in the ring. My earliest memory of him is a 1980s commercial for bug spray. But for me, as a child of the '70s and '80s, Ali joined Babe Ruth, Jack Nicholas, and Wilt Chamberlain as sort of mythic figures in my immature sports mind. Reading Ali's 1975 memoir was interesting because it was the voice, 40 years later, of a myth from my childhood and a man for whose accomplishments and controversies I now had context. Co-authored by Richard Durham, The Greatest was a well-written, first-person narrative of Ali's life (or least what he wanted us to know), in and out of the ring, from his late childhood in Kentucky through his defeat of George Foreman to regain the heavyweight title in 1974. It definitely did what good biographies do; it humanized Ali. And while the myths around athletes enjoyed by my young-self have long been shattered by maturity, The Greatest was not just a window into Ali’s life but into a time in my own when athletes weren't really real.

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE | by Phil Knight
My favorites list this year is filled with memoirs, and I think it’s the feeling of spending time with the author that makes this genre so engaging. Phil Knight was fun to hang out with in Shoe Dog. Knight takes the reader back to the early days of the company that eventually became NIKE. While the book is not so much about Knight’s personal life (there are references to family involvement but none that are very revealing), his personal feelings about his professional life shed light on the cultural development of NIKE and the persistence it takes to create something world renown. Knight’s experience is textbook engagement. He built is work around his heart and, ultimately, shared it with the world.

Natchez Burning | by Greg Iles
Natchez Burning is my favorite fiction read of the year. The first volume of a trilogy that addresses the racial history of the American south, Natchez Burning’s 800-page marathon seems more like a 400-page sprint. Iles strikes a balance between pace and character development that allows the reader time to generate emotional responses to the characters but keeps the yarn spinning. Books two and three of this trilogy are on my "To Read" list, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m writing about one or both of them at this time next year.

Bavishi, A., Slade, M., & Levy, B. (2016). A chapter a day: Association of book reading with longevity. Social Science & Medicine, (164), 44-48.

It is what it is... or is it?

I love the Olympics. Pageantry. Drama. Suspense. Triumph. The spectacle of the whole thing. It's a time to learn about and celebrate the world's diversity. But the Olympics always reminds me more of our similarities than our differences. Sportsmanship. Pride. Joy. Disappointment. Love. Grace. Our common humanity.

Paul Tough and Anders Ericsson write about our common humanity in their recently published books Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why and Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Both writers eloquently interpret the findings of current research. While Tough's work leans toward nurture and Ericsson's toward nature, their ideas intersect in an interesting and not-so-surprising place.

Engagement.

Engagement is a multidimensional construct that includes behavioral, cognitive, and emotional attributes associated with being deeply involved in an activity. Both writers base the success of their assertions on its presence.

In How Children Succeed, Tough writes about the importance of a child's environment on the development of non-cognitive capacities, the "emotional and psychological habits and abilities and mindsets" that enable children to negotiate life effectively. These capacities include things like empathy, perseverance, self-control, and focus. In school, they are reflected in a child's ability to understand and follow directions, maintain focus, communicate effectively with others, persevere, and learn from failure. Tough asserts that non-cognitive capacities are distinct from cognitive skills in that their development is not the result of direct instruction and practice but more the byproduct of a child's environment. Furthermore, stress, the kind associated with poverty or growing up in adverse emotional conditions, inhibits the development of non-cognitive capacities. Tough points to evidence that traditional pedagogies in school perpetuate the consequences of stress because they rely on incentives that don't facilitate the kind of motivation it takes to become deeply involved in academic work.

In Peak, Ericsson writes about cognitive adaptability and the idea that we have been "overestimating the value of innate talent and underestimating the value of such things as opportunity, motivation, and effort." Scientists have realized that the brain is much more adaptable than previously thought. Geniuses, once thought to be born rather than made, are not exceptions to some rule that binds most of us to so-called normalcy. Even the most exceptional among us are not genetic outliers but ordinary humans who, through what Ericsson calls deliberate practice, have worked for whatever it is that separates them from others. Deliberate practice involves the building of mental representations, the encoding of information specific to the domain of learning that allows one to store ever-increasing amounts of information in long-term memory and advance conceptual understanding. It's hard, iterative work. But it's also qualitatively distinct from forms of practice that emphasize volume and repetition. It typically requires facilitation by experts who can assist learners in identifying and focusing on the details of performance. For Ericsson, meaning and purpose, an essential element of behavioral and cognitive engagement, are the ingredients that motivate people to maintain the intense focus and attention to detail that is required to become an expert in something.

Both writers insist learners must be active, not passive. And deep learning is not generally solitary work, but connected to others. Tough advocates interactive pedagogy in schools, discussion, and collaboration among students; project-based learning that takes students through "extensive and repeated revisions based on critiques from teachers and peers." Ericsson writes that one does not "build mental representations by thinking about something; you build them by trying to do something, failing, revising, and trying again, over and over." Passion and perseverance for long-term goals is also necessary. The work of Angela Duckworth regarding the concept of grit makes and appearance in both books. Grit is also, in part, a function of environment. In her work, Duckworth cites the work of Benjamin Bloom regarding the development of world class pianists, neurologists, swimmers, chess players, mathematicians, and sculptors. Bloom observed that in every studied field, high achievers had a strong interest in the particular field in which they excelled. In other words, it was meaningful to them. Intrinsic motivation develops when people, in the pursuit of something, are able to feel competent, connected to others, and in control of their own behaviors and goals. When people experience these three things, they become self-determined and are able to be intrinsically motivated to pursue the things that interest them, that have meaning to them, to persevere in the face of difficulty… to show grit... to become engaged.

Tough's non-cognitive capacities strongly influence the cognitive work of developing expertise that Ericsson writes about. Conversely, Ericsson's revelations about cognitive adaptability should inform discussions about supporting students growing up in less than ideal circumstances with early intervention and focused support. Both How Children Succeed and Peak are profoundly optimistic books. I think they are fundamentally about hope and potential, aspects of our common humanity restricted neither by circumstance nor genetics. Olympians are a great example of this. To become Olympic, they had to hope, care, connect, focus, practice, and persevere. They had to fulfill potential and even expand it. They had to engage.

• Ericsson, A. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
• Tough, P. (2016). Helping children succeed: What works and why, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 

Book review: The Importance of Being Little

Practice makes progress. My 4-year-old is learning this. If you work at it, you’ll get better. It’s an important lesson for kids. But while practice makes progress, it doesn’t make new, according to Wharton professor Adam Grant in a recent New York Times op-ed. In other words, it doesn’t foster creativity. 

Expertise relies on depth of knowledge. People can get really good at something with a lot of practice, but it doesn't necessarily lead to something new. Creativity, Grant points out, relies on both depth and breadth of knowledge. Grant urges parents to back off a bit. He says "creativity may be hard to nurture, but it's easy to thwart." Focus on values rather than rules and respond to the intrinsic motivation of your children. Give them guidance, facilitate practice, but give them the room to discover and explore interests. Let them go into the weeds to see what's there.  

It was Grant's article that I kept coming back to as I read Erika Christakis' book, The Importance of Being Little: What Preschoolers Really Need from Grown Ups. Christakis reflects on her experiences as an early childhood educator and offers guidance about closing the gap between schooling and learning, two things she laments are often not aligned. Young children have the capacity for tremendous growth, learning, and creativity, but rather than focus on those dimensions of learning most crucial to development, standardization (increasingly even at the preschool level) has led to a focus on "skills and metrics that look nice on paper but don't really tell us much about what individual human beings do." 

Christakis, like Grant, urges us to back off. Only she is talking to all of us: parents, educators, politicians, pundits, and anyone else responsible for schooling but not focused on learning.

To be sure, Christakis doesn't succumb to the either/or dilemma John Dewey lamented in Experience and Education. Namely, that one must choose between traditional or progressive instructional ideas. Like Dewey, she argues for recognition of the intermediate possibilities. 

And that's one of the most valuable lessons of the book. Christakis attempts to articulate what occupying the middle space would look like for the preschool world. While she notes that "getting out of the way is often the best thing we can do for a young child," her book makes the point that child-centered doesn't mean unstructured. Just the opposite. It takes tremendous effort and expertise to design and facilitate learning environments that take into account the intermediate possibilities. 

Christakis argues that among the obstacles we face in changing how we think about early childhood education is changing the way we think about childhood. One unintended consequence of advances in the understanding about individuality is what Christakis calls the "fragmentation" of childhood. Rather than looking at childhood holistically, as a period of life through which all people go and in which variances could be considered normal, our learning has narrowed the focus from childhood as a thing unto itself to childhood as a collection of discrete parts, resulting in labels that she fears may be inhibiting or leading to some of the obstacles put in the way of children. Behaviors, personality traits, learning styles, disorders, and symptoms, while, on the one hand, reveal much about the human experience and have led to appropriate, helpful treatments also lead to labels that perhaps, on the other hand, result in restrictive learning environments and undermine children's confidence or freedom to learn. 

"The human brain appears unwilling to zoom in on both the background and the foreground at the same time," she writes. "So, at every level of observation, we are missing something - the big picture or the small parts - and there is always a cost to observing only one."

What's the cost? 

American scores in creative thinking measures have declined in the last 20 years with the greatest declines occurring among elementary and early secondary aged children. Kyung Hee Kim of the College of William and Mary found that children’s ability to produce ideas has significantly decreased. Children have become less verbally expressive, less imaginative, less perceptive, and less able to connect seemingly irrelevant things. Kim suggests the causes include children’s diminishing freedom to participate in the mental processes required for creativity and their diminishing ability to assess themselves apart from the assessment of others (internal locus of evaluation).

I think this is reflected in what Christakis observed in The Importance of Being Little. 

While explicit and systematic instruction is effective for "imparting intentional knowledge," young children "learn primarily from their relationships" and benefit from opportunities to be creative. For Christakis, creativity means "a sense of generativity" or a child's desire to be productive. "Creative, generative children feel confident that they can create meaning - whether from an idea or even a relationship - because they see a world of possibility and see themselves as capable of unlocking that promise."

Creative. Confident. Capable. Sounds like a pretty good outcome to me. ★★★★★

• Christakis, E. (2016). The importance of being little: What preschoolers really need from grownups, New York: Penguin Random House.  
• Kim, K. H. (2011). The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Creativity Research Journal, 23(4), 285–295. doi:10.1080/10400419.2011.627805

Reconcilable differences

Sir Ken Robinson told a group of Texas educators recently that the problem with standardization in education is that people “don’t come in standard versions.” Simple. Common sense. Square peg, round hole. People are unique. Standard education doesn’t account for that fact.

So what to do?

Since it’s not likely that people will come in standard versions anytime soon, we need to change the educational environment so that it takes “proper account of the different talents of students.” Educational systems should be designed to preserve the intrinsic motivation for learning with which children are born. They should encourage the self-determination that leads to a life of purpose, productivity, and personal responsibility.

There is an opportunity at hand this year for Texas to influence system design for the better in education.

The Texas Commission on Next Generation Assessments and Accountability held its first meeting in January. Created by legislation passed by the 84th Texas Legislature and charged with studying and making recommendations for changes in the state’s testing and accountability system, the commission will meet six times this year before filing a final report in September.

What direction should the commission take?

In his latest book, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education 1, Robinson makes the point that a problem with most current assessment systems is that they are too light on description to “convey the complexities of the process” they are meant to summarize. To enhance assessment, we need to expand the elements of description and the evidence upon which learning is evaluated.

Research is providing direction for this kind of work if only we can muster the will to think and act in different ways. A study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology last month, The Narrative Waltz: The Role of Flexibility in Writing Proficiency 2, could inform a discussion about next generation assessments.

Long story, short… the researchers found that context in the evaluation of learning matters.

Short story, longer… having longitudinal data to make decisions about student learning is critical; specifically, in this case, in evaluating writing proficiency. The researchers were trying to understand the extent to which high school students’ linguistic flexibility across a series of essays was associated with writing proficiency. Flexibility refers to students ability to adapt their writing styles and use various linguistic properties according to the specific context of the writing task; properties like cohesion, rhetoric, complex syntax, explicit argument, reported speech, contrasted ideas, and narrativity.

To analyze flexibility, the researchers utilized both natural language processing techniques and dynamic methodologies to capture variability in students’ use of narrative text properties across 16 argumentative, prompt-based essays.

Why narrativity as opposed to another linguistic property?

One, they needed a property to quantify and analyze, and narrativity, as an easier writing style for high school students to use, was likely to be more prevalent across multiple writing assignments. Two, they wanted to address what they believe is a common misunderstanding about the use of narrativity in essay writing. Research has shown that texts with more narrative elements tend to be easier to read and comprehend. Narrativity, therefore, is often assumed to be a sign of essay quality. But this assumption is not supported in the literature. The majority of research on essay quality suggests the opposite; that higher quality writing is associated with decreased levels of text narrativity.

In the current study, the degree of narrativity was assessed using a narrativity component score provided by Coh-Metrix, a computational text analysis tool that analyzes text at the word, sentence, and discourse levels. Coh-Metrix calculates the coherence of texts on many different measures. The Coh-Metrix narrativity Easability Component score, based on the results of a previous, large-scale corpus analysis, served as a measure of text readability based on the degree of story-like elements that were present within an individual text. To quantify students’ narrative writing patterns, the researchers applied random walks and Euclidian distances to create visualizations and classifications of students’ use of narrative properties across the 16 assigned essays.

The researchers found that it was students’ flexible use of text properties rather than the consistent use of a particular set of text properties (in this case, narrativity) that correlated with established measures of essay quality. The situational influence of narrative text elements on writing quality varies. It’s not just about frequency or consistency of use, but the writer’s ability to use appropriate techniques given the context. Flexibility informs writing proficiency.

Bottom line? Writing proficiency measures should account for a student’s sensitivity to multiple linguistic profiles, which can only be determined by evaluating multiple writing samples over a period of time.

The authors argue their findings suggest standardized test developers should “aim to develop more sophisticated assessments that can capture students' writing skills across a number of different contexts." In other words, when designing assessment systems, we need to think in terms of expanding the elements of description and the evidence upon which learning is evaluated.

The square peg and round hole are not irreconcilable. It’s a question of commitment to a process of developing “original ideas that have value.” Or what Robinson calls... creativity.

1 Robinson, K. & Aronica, L. (2015). Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education, New York: Penguin Publishing Group.

2 Allen, L. K., Snow, E. L., Mcnamara, D. S., Allen, L. K., Snow, E. L., & Mcnamara, D. S. (2016). Journal of Educational Psychology Proficiency The Narrative Waltz : The Role of Flexibility in Writing Proficiency.

The earlier, the better

Jennuine Captures Photography | Flickr

The latest National Assessment for Educational Progress scores were released in October, and 4th grade English language learners (ELL) remained more than twice as likely as non-ELL students to score below Basic in reading.

Eighth grade results were similar, but 4th grade represents a critical juncture for ELLs because students who enter kindergarten as ELLs and have not been re-classified by the upper elementary grades become less likely ever to make the transition. This, from a study published recently in Educational Policy that also sheds light on the relevance of primary language in English language acquisition.1 Karen Thompson, an assistant professor at Oregon State University, found that entering kindergarten, proficiency with academic language in the primary language was positively related to the likelihood of reclassification by the end of elementary school.

Of course, experience with academic language in English matters as well. Using nine years of longitudinal data, Thompson found that students with high levels of proficiency in both their primary language and English entering kindergarten were 24% more likely to be reclassified by the end of elementary school as students with low levels in both languages. However, students with similar proficiency in either English or their primary language had "statistically indistinguishable likelihoods of reclassification" by the end of elementary school.

Early academic language proficiency in English facilitated quicker reclassification, but it was having a basic grasp of academic vocabulary itself, not the language, that mattered most in reaching reclassification before the elementary window closes.

This is an important finding because it informs how schools and communities might look at school readiness strategies for families with ELL students. Parents not proficient in English can still be very helpful in preparing their children for the English language acquisition process once school starts.

And the work parents do or don’t do with their children before they enter schools matters a great deal.

Academic language is “school language” and language used in the workplace; the language used in textbooks, essays, assignments, class presentations, and assessments. It's a meta-language that helps learners acquire the 50,000 words they are expected to have internalized by the end of high school. And, it develops with deliberate, diligent, exposure to diverse language experiences…

...early in life...

...like from the very beginning!

While formal education moves this process along, prohibitive gaps among students exist before children ever get to school age. Toddlers living in poverty hear less than a third of the words heard by children from higher-income families. By the age of four, this extrapolates to a 30-million word difference between low and high income children… a prohibitive gap.2

And the economic problem may be getting worse.

By Robert D. Putnam, 2015

In Texas, 60.2% of public school students are economically disadvantaged, 14% higher than 20 years ago. The same is true nationally. In 2007, the south became the first region in which the majority of students were economically disadvantaged and that extended to the nation as a whole by 2015. Furthermore, the achievement gap between children from high and low income families is 30-40% larger among children born in 2001 than 25 years earlier.3  While the achievement gap has been growing within racial groups and actually narrowing somewhat between them, ELL students - a growing percentage of Texas public school students - are more likely to come from low-income homes. Of the 23.7 million people in Texas who are five years of age or older, more than a third speak a language other than English at home. A large majority of those — almost 85 percent — speak Spanish.

Thompson's findings, as she suggests, have implications for the design of instructional interventions for ELL students, how and when ELL students are assessed (including how primary language assessments are used), and the need to expand access to high quality preschool programs (ELL students attend pre-school at a much lower percentage than non-ELLs, nationally).

However, Thompson's study should also be used to look backward from the school starting line.

Parents are the first and most important teachers in a child’s life. They are responsible for virtually all language development before children reach school age. Parent involvement is essential to a successful comprehensive school program, and a comprehensive educational program begins before children reach school age.

Research sheds some light on how to think about this as well. Ultimately, it’s an engagement issue.

Solutions to the challenges facing Hispanic families with potential ELL students lie within the communities themselves, according to researchers who evaluated a comprehensive educational program for Hispanic parents with young children.

A random-assignment study of Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors, implemented by the Los Angeles Unified School District, published last year by Child Trends found statistically significant positive impacts on reading with children, storytelling and discussion, studying letters, and real-world interaction with language; all important in helping children acquire language.4

Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors was launched in 2007 as a parenting program dedicated to getting young children ready for school. Today, it reaches 70,000 families in 35 states. Ten interactive sessions draw from real-life experiences, incorporate data about local schools and communities, and focus on helping parents understand their role in their children’s learning life. Also, the program is available to parents in Spanish; important in light of Thompson's findings about the relevance of a family's primary language in English language acquisition.

Across all socio-economic and racial groups, students with more engaged parents do better in school. They are more engaged, have higher grades and test scores, earn more course credits, participate in more advanced academic programs, and are more likely to graduate high school and pursue college.5

Student engagement begins with parent engagement, family engagement, and community engagement. But the engagement has to begin before school does.

1 Thompson, K. (2015). English learners' time to reclassification: An analysis, Educational Policy, published online Aug. 2015, 1-34.
2 Hart, B. & Risley, T. (Spring 2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap by age 3, American Educator, 4-9.
3 Putnam, R. (2015). Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, New York: Simon & Schuster
4 Moore, K., Caal, S., Rojas, A., Lawner, E., & Walker, K. (2014). Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors Parenting Program: Summary Report of Program Implementation and Impacts, retrieved online.
5 Tarasawa, B. & Waggoner, J. (2015). Increasing parental involvement of English language learner families: What the research says, Journal of Children and Poverty, 21(1), 129-134.