My students graduate on June 2 and go off to college and into the world.

I remember one of the first things I did when I got to UC Berkeley. I bought a subscription to The New York Times. I’d grown up with the San Francisco Chronicle, but I noticed that my peers had upgraded to The Times. Getting a subscription was one of the best decisions I made. Twenty years later, I still get home delivery now.

I’d like your help in giving two lucky students print subscriptions when they get to college in September.

The college student rate is $3 a week. That’s $36 for a three-month subscription. After that, the student will decide whether to extend the subscription.

The home delivery subscription will also allow the student full online access to nytimes.com.

Interested? Just click the ChipIn! button over on the right sidebar. Donate as much or as little as you want.

Thank you so much! 

 Florida got its state test results back and decided yesterday to lower its standards for writing.

Check out this news clip from an Orlando local news station.

In our current climate, this story is not new. It goes like this:

1. Public officials bemoan the quality of public schools and demand that schools raise standards.
2. Teachers make adjustments to their curriculum, often teaching directly to the tests.
3. Students take the tests and sometimes don’t perform well.
4. Public officials lower the standards, let the students pass, and then blame the teachers for doing a bad job.
5. Repeat from Step 1.

One of the strongest arguments being made right now in educational reform is that non-educators should be leading the way. After all, the argument goes, if something is broken, we shouldn’t rely on the people who broke it to fix it.

While I understand that theory, it also doesn’t make sense for non-teachers to make large pronouncements about education and then blame teachers for failure.

I do not have a problem with someone telling me that I need to do better. I already know that. But it’s not OK to talk big and serious about standards and then backpedal when the results come back lower than what you want. And please, let’s stop blaming teachers. It’s just not effective. 

 Here’s a typical way that reading is done in classrooms: The teacher assigns a reading, the students read the selection, and then the teacher assigns reading questions to determine how well the students understood the passage.

A newer approach, influenced by reader-response theory, goes something like this: The teacher introduces questioning as a reading strategy, the students practice coming up with questions as they read a selection, and then the class discusses the student-generated questions.

We know that both approaches can be effective. After all, sometimes the teacher wants to direct the lesson and emphasize specific pieces of the reading. On the other hand, sometimes it’s best to allow students to interact with the text themselves to find their own meaning.

The Common Core standards, which go into effect in 2014, emphasize close reading of challenging nonfiction texts. David Coleman, the architect of the English Language Arts standards, argues that classroom activities should be based on text-dependent questions. In other words, the curriculum should come from the texts and authors themselves, not from the students or teachers. Instead of injecting ourselves into the reading, we should find out what the reading and author intended.

This might be a good theory, but many reading experts have begun to protest. I’m finding out that most opponents of Mr. Coleman are teachers who work with struggling readers. Here’s a recent tweet from Kylene Beers, author of When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do. (I hope it’s big enough to read.)

Ms. Beers makes a good point. If the questions should come from the text, and if the text is challenging, doesn’t that just mean that teachers will continue to generate the questions, thereby making students passive in their reading?

I know it’s not as simple as that — that good teachers will continue to encourage students to read actively. Nevertheless, Mr. Coleman wants students not to include their personal feelings and experiences into their reading.

While I appreciate that Common Core and Mr. Coleman have articulated a strong stance on reading, I worry that they’ve missed a big point. It’s not enough to assume that great authors, texts, and teachers will engage struggling readers. If a student hates reading or can’t read well, then text-dependent questions will do little to garner interest.

Maybe it’s true that teachers abandon texts too quickly, opting too soon to ask students how they feel. Maybe it’s not best to have students connect the reading with their own lives.

But on the other hand, I believe that there is a relationship between the author and the reader — a transaction that takes place. If students are going to read on their own and to care about what they read, they must be allowed to bring themselves to texts, to think about where and how they enter, and to wonder what the author is trying to tell them.

Please let me know what you think! 

 There are just two weeks left before the end of school, and I’m still trying to get two of my Kindles back.

My students want to keep them.

“But I need to finish my book!” says one. She’s still not finished.

“Sure, I’ll bring it back tomorrow, Mr. Isero,” says the other. He doesn’t bring it back.

Sure, I’ll get my Kindles back eventually. But it won’t be without a fight.

I think this is because my little experiment, the Classroom Kindle Project, has been a huge success this year. More than any of my other campaigns, this one struck a chord with my students.

The project convinced me that teenagers like to read but have to be encouraged to do so. The Kindle does that. It has the perfect combination of technology and flexibility.

Again, thank you to all the donors who contributed to the first year of the Classroom Kindle Project. I’m ending the year extremely happy with 12 Kindles and 140 e-books.

I can’t wait to see what happens next year. In the summer, I hope to find a few more Kindles so that I can reach my goal of a classroom set of 25. If you have friends who would like to donate their Kindle, please let me know. 

 David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards, will become the president of the College Board in October.

I’ve been following Mr. Coleman for a while. Many English teachers are leery of him because of his emphasis on teaching nonfiction over fiction. They also don’t like that he believes in New Criticism, or close reading, over Reader Response. Finally, Coleman is controversial because he claims not to tell teachers what to do but has spent the last year traveling across the country and offering a way to teach Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Now he will lead the College Board, the behemoth organization that administers the SAT and Advanced Placement tests.

In the New York Times article that I read, Coleman said he is interested in building solid curriculum that will prepare students for the high-stakes tests. It also sounds like he wants to level the playing field for students taking advanced placement courses. “The College Board should consider any student in an AP class a student in our care,” he said. “We need to find better ways to support their success.”

But some educators, including reading expert Stephen Krashen, are not having any of it. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“There’s no reason on earth for common core standards and these tests that we’re wasting billions of dollars on,” said Stephen Krashen, an emeritus education professor at the University of Southern California. “The problem is poverty, poverty, poverty. Middle-class children who go to well-funded schools do very well, but even the best tests, the most inspiring teachers, won’t mean anything if the kids don’t have enough to eat.”

It’s weird. I still don’t have a good read on David Coleman. I mean, I think he means well, but he seems out of touch with teachers and students. On the other hand, I want to like Stephen Krashen, and I do — at least on the subject of reading. But his emphasis that poverty is the reason for all educational ills cannot be the answer, either.

One last thing: Coleman will make $750,000. 

 With graduation just two weeks away, my students have entered a stressful period that is filled with deadlines.

For example: The last day to turn in their senior project was yesterday. The last day to turn in their community service hours is this Friday. And there’s more.

Today, I’ve been thinking about the nature of deadlines and their place in schools.

Some people think that deadlines are the way of the world, that deadlines are equal to rigor and high standards, that there should be severe punishment if students don’t meet deadlines, and that there shouldn’t be extensions granted.

Other people think that the world has different kinds of deadlines, that some are soft and some are hard, that students should learn from missing deadlines but not be punished severely, and that deadlines are unfair and amount to perpetuating a discriminatory system that excludes.

The first group seems unfeeling and machine-like. The second group seems caring and thoughtful.

As an teacher, I locate myself squarely in the first group.

If I’m clearly communicating an assignment’s expectations, and if I’m helping my students meet those expectations, and then they don’t, then they haven’t met the standard. It’s not my fault, and it’s not their fault; it just means that they didn’t meet the expectation, and therefore shouldn’t receive the credit.

Now I concede that some students have emergencies and special circumstances. But accommodations and communication must happen before the deadline, not afterward. As a teacher, I have no problem in most cases to grant an extension if there is a solid justification. But I don’t like solving a problem for a student after a deadline has passed.

On the other hand, we know that there is sometimes arbitrary power behind deadlines. After all, why is something due on one day and not on another? If a student isn’t ready on the deadline, should we cast him out? Many proponents of standard-based grading oppose deadlines and believe that giving zeroes to students is tantamount to pushing them out of school. Their reasoning goes that schools perpetuate racist patterns by creating unfair hoops for students.

I hear that argument and am amenable to change my ideas about deadlines. However, I haven’t yet found a better way. My experience has been that building flexibility into due dates leads students to do less work. Maybe my approach is rigid, but it’s clear and it gets most kids to move.

There has to be a better way — maybe somewhere in the middle. But whatever that approach is, it must be well thought out. Sure, perhaps deadlines aren’t the answer. But neither is the absence of deadlines.

What do you think? 

 Learning Matters’ John Merrow reported last night on the PBS NewsHour about reading instruction and the trend toward teaching less fiction.

It’s 10 minutes long. Please take a look:

Merrow reviews three major reading instructional approaches: basal readers, balanced literacy, and core knowledge.

Most elementary schools have moved away from basal readers, even though the approach is cost-effective, and now use a balanced literacy program, which offers a combination of teacher-assigned texts and student independent reading.

The Core Knowledge approach, developed by cultural literacy proponent E.D. Hirsch, has become more popular with the spread of the Common Core standards. In Core Knowledge, “content is king,” Merrow says. Instead of focusing on teaching strategies, the idea is that students become better readers by building prior knowledge. The more you read, the better reader you become.

What’s interesting to me is that each of these programs does not immediately meet the demands of Common Core, with its emphasis on close reading, evidence, and New Criticism.

And yes, I’m still worried about the demise of fiction. Although I love informational texts, the last two years, I’ve come to realize the importance of fiction in young people’s lives. Here’s another article that supports my view: “You Are What You Read.” While nonfiction will build our analytical skills, fiction builds our empathy.

Please let me know what you think! 

 The AP test is over, and now it’s time to give thanks.

Back in September, I realized that my students’ writing skills needed dramatic improvement. There was no way I could give my students enough individual support. So I decided my students would benefit from working with an online writing mentor.

I pitched the idea to some of my friends and posted my request on Facebook. The response was quick. It took just one week to get each of my students a mentor.

Their task: Log on Google Docs every Tuesday and spend 15-20 minutes offering suggestions, making corrections, and noting trends in grammar.

Yes, you read that correctly: Every Tuesday — from September through May.

Their dedication was deep; their commitment was impressive. I am grateful. So are my students.

Some mentors reported early on that reading and responding to their student’s essay took far longer than 20 minutes per week. That’s probably true, especially if you’re not a teacher and have high standards. (To survive, teachers learn to get through papers in 10 minutes or less.)

Despite the time commitment, the mentors pushed through. Some weeks were tough. After all, it’s never fun to read an essay that seems worse than the previous one. But overall, the mentors were impressed by their student’s growth in writing.

This year, my students wrote 16 essays. They feel accomplished. Although they understand they must still improve, they’re proud of their growth in writing.

This growth never would have happened without the students’ online writing mentors. Thank you so much. 

 It has been a few days since my students took the AP English Literature examination. Now it’s time to do a little reflection.

The good news is that my students felt prepared and were generally happy about their performance on the test. Also good was that my students reported that the test was a fair one. (Teachers never get to see the multiple-choice section and receive the essay prompts at a later date.)

But there was plenty bad news, too.

For one, the testing space — a middle-school science laboratory, complete with Bunsen burners — was incredibly uncomfortable for my students. The lab stools were high and didn’t have chair backs. Yes, lots of discomfort. When I tested the stools, they didn’t seem uncomfortable to me, but then again, I didn’t have to remain immobile for three hours.

Several students reported that they spent an entire hour writing their essays standing up. One student said he had to sprawl out on top of the lab table in order to complete his last essay.

Horrible conditions, right? Actually, no. For our school, this was the best testing space we’ve had in years, and it took considerable work on the part of the administration. In the past, students have had to take their tests next to loud classrooms or down in cold basement storage.

I told my friend about my students’ testing room. She reminded me that we took our AP tests in a lush Hewlett-Packard conference room.

It’s just another thing that’s unfair about the AP. Because schools must furnish the testing space for students, underfunded urban schools get short shrift.

That’s right: Every student across the country takes the exact same test, but my students — who already have to scrap to pass it — have to overcome a makeshift space. They don’t mind; they’ve done it all their lives.

But it’s still bothersome. 

 After eight months of hard work and preparation, my students take the AP English Literature examination today.

Please wish them luck!

There is no way to predict how they’ll do. After all, this is the first time I’ve taught the course, so I don’t have an accurate sense of what’s considered good enough.

I’ve tried my best, and so have my students. I am hopeful that some will pass the test. But you never know. Last year, only one student passed. A talented, experienced AP teacher — whom the students loved — could not manage to eke out higher scores. That’s why I’m so scared.

Here’s the truth: My students grew a lot in reading and writing this year. I say it; they say it; their other teachers say it. Unfortunately, this growth likely won’t be enough.

For those of you out there ready to excoriate urban public education, please refrain. Instead, read this article, which tracks the surge in the AP program, along with its advantages and disadvantages. Did you know, for example, that Indiana had 21 school districts (not schools) in which no students passed any AP test last year? In short, achievement data from AP tests seems to mirror the gap we see in the rest of our public school system: On average, White and Asian students  pass, while African American and Latino students fail.

If all the stars align, I’m hoping that a few of my students will interrupt that gap. Right now, out of my class of 23 students, I am crossing my fingers that five will earn a passing score.

We’ll get the results in July.