INTERVIEW: INCREASING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AMONG DIVERSE STUDENT POPULATIONS

	Marjorie A. Kaplan, Ph.D.  Beat the Odds Institute Director

Dr. Marjorie Kaplan recently joined the Center for the Future of Arizona as director of the Beat the Odds Institute. She brings to the position an exemplary record of leading schools and districts to educational excellence. Previously, she was superintendent of Shawnee Mission School District in metropolitan Kansas City and superintendent of the Paradise Valley School District.

In the following interview, Dr. Kaplan discusses how educators can attain higher levels of student achievement despite increasingly diverse student populations.

 

Q. In both Arizona and Kansas, your schools attained consistently high levels of student academic achievement. What was the key to your success?

A. Whenever you are trying to achieve academic success, you have to be highly organized and systematic.

We began by looking at the overall design of the school, focusing on improvement of instruction and increasing academic performance. Once you identify your “bottom line,” it makes sense to utilize a diagnostic prescriptive approach to instruction.  

We asked three questions:

•	Where are the students in their learning?
•	Where do we want the students to go?
•	What kind of instruction should we provide to help them achieve?

Some schools were already incorporating a diagnostic prescriptive approach so they did not have to change much to meet the challenges of No Child Left Behind.

But not everyone was operating on this basis. For these schools in particular, we established a framework similar to what worked in the Beat the Odds study.

The Beat the Odds principle of a clear bottom line is important for teachers. Data assessment and analysis are related to the diagnostic prescriptive approach. You need to find out what students need to know and teach them the skills to achieve these goals. Collaboration is important. With a diagnostic prescriptive approach, teachers can coordinate curriculum horizontally and vertically — across grade levels and up and down. You need a strong and steady principal who can provide the leadership and organization necessary to achieve this kind of a climate in a school.

Q. What do you see as the greatest challenges facing Arizona educators?

A. There are two. One is how to teach students who do not speak English — what is the most effective approach? The other challenge is how to help students who live in poverty.

Teaching low-income students is challenging because we build on students’ prior experiences when we develop academic skills. Students may be able to learn the alphabet or phonics by rote but if they have not had the opportunity to travel out of their neighborhood, it is difficult for them to develop higher comprehension skills. For example, if I am reading a story about the beach, I can understand the story better if I have been to a beach.

Q. How can a teacher compensate for a student’s lack of life experiences and context?

A. We can provide enriching experiences for students. Field trips and video are two ways to introduce students to new knowledge. In addition, we need to incorporate what we call “activity-based learning” into instruction. People learn faster when they actually do something. I am going to learn more about driving if I actually drive a car than if I just read about how to drive a car.

Activity based learning works well for children who can’t understand English because they can see what you are doing. It gives children a base of experience they may not have had otherwise.  In a science classroom, for example, you would use hands-on laboratory situations in conjunction with textbooks.

Q. The student demographics at your schools became more socioeconomically and ethnically diverse over the years. What did you do differently to work with these student populations?

A. I am a big fan of having teachers learn about other cultures and sensitizing them to the needs of their students. Also, expectations need to be high. Research tells us that expectations tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In regard to instructional methods, I believe educators should be open to trying different approaches. Either formally, or informally, we can gather data in our classrooms about what appears to work best. Usually there is more than one way to achieve positive results as long as instruction is data driven and we provide enough time for learning.