Improving Public Schools (#10): Looping(revisited)

John Merrow Uncategorized

Back in mid-August, I began recommending concrete, specific, small, and doable steps that would, I believe, improve public schools. My first recommendation was for Looping, the practice of keeping an elementary school class with its teacher for at least two years.   The logic is pretty straightforward:  Would you change your child’s pediatrician, music teacher, sports coach, et cetera, every year?  Of course not, because you want them to know your child in order to be better able to help him or her.  That logic applies to teachers as well.  Looping assumes that teachers are professionals, determined to help each child achieve to the maximum.  Time matters.

A few days ago in the pages of the New York Times, Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, made the case far more eloquently than I, and I urge you to read what he wrote. His essay, “What Most American Schools Do Wrong,” strongly endorses Looping, and he backs up his endorsement with hard data from Finland, Estonia, and the United States.

Here’s part of the essay:  In North Carolina, economists examined data on several million elementary school students. They discovered a common pattern across about 7,000 classrooms that achieved significant gains in math and reading performance.

        Those students didn’t have better teachers. They just happened to have the same teacher at least twice in different grades. A separate team of economists replicated the study with nearly a million elementary and middle schoolers in Indiana — and found the same results.

        Every child has hidden potential. It’s easy to spot the ones who are already sparkling, but many students are uncut gems. When teachers stay with their students longer, they can see beyond the surface and recognize the brilliance beneath.  Instead of teaching a new cohort of students each year, teachers who   practice “looping” move up a grade or more with their students. It can be a powerful tool. And unlike many other educational reforms, looping doesn’t cost a dime.

        With more time to get to know each student personally, teachers gain a deeper grasp of the kids’ strengths and challenges. The teachers have more opportunities to tailor their instructional and emotional support to help all the students in the class reach their potential. They’re able to identify growth not only in peaks reached, but also in obstacles overcome. The nuanced knowledge they acquire about each student isn’t lost in the handoff to the next year’s teacher.

I’m certain your first question is “What if a child gets stuck with an ineffective teacher?”  Grant addresses that issue: (I)n the data, looping actually had the greatest upsides for less effective teachers — and lower-achieving students. Building an extended relationship gave them the opportunity to grow together.

He makes the point that I have been stressing in my series: No single step is going to fix everything, but that proverbial journey always begins with a single step.

The Times invited readers to comment, and 677 people weighed in.  Most interesting to me are the comments from teachers, including one from “Maestraz,” somewhere in New England: “I taught in a middle school that operated on a looping model for 7th and 8th grades. As a Language Arts teacher, it made so much sense to me. It saved me so much time in the second year, not having to reorient my kids to my classroom routine. I really enjoyed being able to nurture my kids as readers and writers over two years, except when there were hideously awful kids in the mix, whose parents were total enablers of their behavior and disruption.”

“Shimr” in Spring Valley, a 40-year veteran teacher, also weighed in: “The quiet student will open up as familiarity breeds more than contempt; it breeds comfort to the student who shyly fears being ridiculed with an unknown teacher, but not with the teacher who knows him/her.”

Grant concludes that Finland and Estonia have the best public school systems in the world, but not just because they practice Looping: Finnish and Estonian schools don’t invest just in students who show early signs of high ability — they invest in every student regardless of apparent ability. And there are few better ways to do that than to keep students with teachers who have the time to get to know their abilities.

Here are the other eight steps that I believe will improve public schools, with hot links to each: Looping, Play, Practice Democracy, Business Cards for Teachers, Involve Outsiders, Multiple ‘Talent Nights’, Extended Homeroom, and Ask the Right Question. Please share these links with others.  The war on public education is real, and in some places the bad guys are winning. It’s time to fight back, and an important part of that fight is making schools better.

13 thoughts on “Improving Public Schools (#10): Looping(revisited)”

  1. Another good piece. In taking another look at the several steps you suggest to improve public schools, I realize they all directly relate to school culture. It is a truism that institutional culture is a significant determinative of institutional success, whether it’s a church, business, school, whatever. A positive culture always breeds greater success. A negative culture always breeds flaws. In schools, rampant bad school culture directly impacts discipline practices, absenteeism, teacher turnover, mental health and student performance. All of your pieces are related to building school culture. The problem is they are a series of transactional reform efforts. They need a framework. I think that framework, based on personal experience and research is restorative practices. Take a look at the op ed I wrote for the Baltimore Sun, published on line a couple of days ago, in print today…https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-maryland-school-culture-blueprint-20231023-ogwo3rq7njfi7ptn7ruvn5yf4y-story.html. Community building, relationships, trust, valuing others, accountability for one’s actions, together, represent a mindset, a way of life. When it’s present, the eight parts you’ve addressed so far become natural expressions. Similar community building initiatives will begin to spring up throughout the school. Anybody who wants to see more, take a look at our website http://www.restorativeschoolsmaryland.org and Sean Darling Hammond’s research brief issued May 18,2023…https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/impact-restorative-practices-report

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  2. Add to the list of benefits of looping is the deeper sense of professional accountability that is based on the notion that a teacher may have to work with a student over multiple years and not pass the problem student or student with difficulty learning getting passed on to the next grade and teacher.

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  3. So John, agreeing with you that looping is one of a number of research-supported approaches that schools would be wide to adopt
    1) Why do you think more schools aren’t using this approach?
    2) What do you think would help convince more schools to adopt this?

    These are intended as friendly questions. I’m interested in what you and others think it takes to convince schools to adopt more of these research-based strategies.

    Thnx

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    • That’s always the central question: Why is education so resistant to change? (Is it worse than other fields? I know that doctors resisted washing their hands for years, despite strong evidence that not doing it was literally killing patients!)

      But you and I know from years of experience that many school people fight against change, and so do many parents, who feel that, since they went to school, they are experts! Some of this is inertia–we’ve always done it this way. Some of it is ego–you know how new superintendents are wont to drop their predecessor’s programs and reforms, for example.

      Finally, some of it is the result of our collective failure to argue about and decide what the purposes of schooling are….. That’s hard work, and we aren’t doing it.

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      • Thx Joh,n I agree with most of what you wrote in the first 2 paragraphs. In terms of deciding the purposes of schooling – my sense is that
        a. There are massive, and in some cases unresolvable differences among many families about what they want from schools.
        b. I do not agree with or support efforts from some families to restrict what ALL students have access to. I have supported legislation here that allows families to “op out” their youngsters from certain lessons. Do you support such op out provisions?
        c. If schools started out the school year with a family student conference, in August, every year, with every student, to learn more about student interests and family priorities, I think there would be more trust & collaboration (that’s what several schools I’ve worked in or with found.
        d. However, not everything gets resolved by listening. I remember a father who was furious because the school where I worked taught that women as well as men have the right to explore and prepare for a career of their choice. This man felt that the appropriate role for women was to be a wife and mother. He said we (educators) were trying to promote destruction of his cultural values. Not surprisingly, his daughter agreed with educators and disagreed with her fathers. But he definitely was vocal in the community in asserting that we were racist and intent on destroying his culture.

        The above is one – not the only – but one reason I believe in public school options, open to all.

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  4. Sorry, meant to say that looping is one of a number of research-supported strategies that schools would be WISE to adopt

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