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Instructional Empowerment Program Misses the Mark for CRCSD High Schoolers

Instructional Empowerment Program Misses the Mark for CRCSD High Schoolers

Among the new changes to the Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) curriculum, the Instructional Empowerment program package has been implemented for use in K-12 classrooms.

The CRCSD introduced the Instructional Empowerment program in a Board of Education Special meeting on Jan. 25, 2024. Teachers were provided training regarding the use and implementation of the Instructional Empowerment program in the past year. 

The package consists of Agree/Disagree conversation cards to be used in a conversation circle with one learning monitor, one facilitator and the remaining students as team members. These physical resources are coupled with standards to guide learning. The conversation cards and team groups are used to prompt healthy conversation among students surrounding the class topic and standards.

“One of the big things about Instructional Empowerment is having by design opportunities for kids to really grapple with the content, to talk through and process the content, and for students to really make their own meaning of that,” Jillian Schulte Magnet Coordinator in the Cedar Rapids Community School District said. “So lots of student learning. The cards are one strategy, and that’s one of the first strategies that we use.”


I… 

 

The cards, aimed to promote listening and conversation among students, ask simple questions regarding the curriculum and trigger students’ conversations with tools rather than traditional methods of classroom discussion. 

The Agree/Disagree conversation cards originate from the Instructional Empowerment (IE) program. The program provides a model of instructions and training to improve K-12 learning, performance and discipline in schools.

“CRCSD’s goal is to increase the percentage of students that score proficient or above on the IASAP to 80% and to reduce academic achievement gaps in reading and math across all subgroups by 20% by June 2027. In order to achieve this goal, Instructional Empowerment consultants will provide services to build the district’s capacity and instructional systems, focusing on rigorous and engaging core classroom instruction,” The CRCSD Board of Education states. 

According to the IE website, their intensive support partnerships transform schools, with a reported 97% teacher retention rate after two years, 37% decrease in discipline referrals within one year and 93% closure in reading performance gap across Florida elementary and middle schools.

These statistics seem promising for any school district, however they only include data from middle and elementary schools. No information on the program being beneficial or even implemented in high schools is available on the IE website. While beneficial for lower grade levels, the cards seem to be a bit elementary for high school students. This raises the question of its purpose in CRCSD high schools.

In the 2022-2023 school year, the Florida Department of Education reported  120,297 total violence and discipline incidents. Florida’s State Assessment (FAST) in 2023 reported only 50% of grades 3-10 were on grade level or above on ELA  and 56% for grades 3-8 in mathematics. Florida school districts face different challenges regarding curriculum, test scores and discipline. The Iowa Department of Education reported 4,176 violence and discipline incidents in the 2022-2023 school year. Iowa’s State Assessment (ISASP) reported approximately 72% of grades 3-8 were proficient in both ELA and mathematics. 

In regard to decreasing State Assessment performance gaps, the IE program seems adequate for CRCSD elementary students. However the IE package resources and materials are not beneficial for high school students because they aren’t the targeted grade levels for the curriculum.

If the IE program is only beneficial for lower grade levels and addresses obstacles the CRCSD is not predominantly experiencing, why are they being implemented in high schools?


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The Iowa department of education has set required academic standards for a variety of subjects including but not limited to literacy, mathematics, science, social studies and 21st Century skills.

“The Iowa Academic State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (“the Standards”) are intended to ensure that all students are college and career ready in literacy no later than the end of high school,” the Iowa Department of Education states.

The IE package includes several materials to help students learn the standards required by the state. The cards, conversation circle and student roles are aimed to promote the standards. The teachers are obligated to follow the instructions in the package to guide students thinking with the tools provided.

The package instructions follow four simple steps to help students learn the standards:

#1 – What is the standard?`
#2 – What will students learn from this standard?
#3 – What tasks will help students meet the standard?
#4 – How will students share their thinking?

The steps seem simple and quite effective for helping students learn and expand on the curriculum. However, the cards used to push step four do the opposite.

The small laminated cards present four different statements followed by sentence starters. A student can choose to hold the card up to signify they agree, disagree, have more to add or even a question. Prompts are provided on the back of the cards as well to stimulate conversation. Such as “I agree because..” as well as “I am wondering..” and “I agree, and would like to add..” For most high schoolers the prompts seem like a given and automatic response for any conversation. The cards attempt to foster a healthy environment, but as a result leads to a degrading classroom for many high schoolers.

“I think they are pointless,” senior Blake Kroemer said. “The few times I have used them they haven’t sparked any discussion. It takes up more time to use them instead of just working as a class and they interrupt the flow of learning”

In the booklet provided with the conversation cards, instructions on how to navigate the cards procedure in a classroom setting are listed. In one section, it states how the students’ responses will create a chain reaction.

“Student #1 makes an initial statement, then waits for students to hold up their card in response. Student one picks students to respond,” IE’s How To Guide states.

“After Student #2 responds, expect students to hold up their cards and respond to the new statement. Student #2 then calls on the next student to talk. This is repeated until students feel the conversation is complete. Notice that the conversation is not regulated by you – the students call on each other.”

The cards disregard the education and knowledge of high school students. By utilizing the cards, high schoolers are made to seem like they can’t participate in a simple discussion without the assistance of adults or laminated sentence starters.

“I think at a younger level it can help students ask questions and spark discussions in class, but at the level we are at, it feels like high schoolers are just going backwards learning wise,” Kroemer said.

Instead of simply raising their hand, high schoolers are recommended to use the cards to guide their thinking.  Through the implementation of the IE packages in CRCSD, high schoolers are categorized as having the same conversation and understanding skills of elementary schoolers in their city.

As a result, a majority of students and staff do not utilize the cards, with many of the Instructional Empowerment packages sitting in the corner of classrooms unopened.

“I have only used them twice in all of my classes throughout the year,” Kroemer said.

The CRCSD spent $466,280.00 in total on the Instructional Empowerment Program training, materials and support services. However, the cards remain unused and useless in many high school classrooms. Students and staff find the use of the materials unnecessary and are reluctant to use them.

While some teachers are struggling to find a way to use them, others do not have the option. Due to the choices provided with the cards, they are inaccessible to some subjects and standard classwork. 


I have… 

 

The cards are impractical for other subjects taught in high school such as foreign language. All foreign language teachers were trained and provided the IE packages despite the cards only being provided in English.

“I don’t use the actual cards themselves because they are in English and my class functions in the target language, but I think a lot of the stuff they are trying to get at are things that are already built into my class and that I don’t need a paper card to prompt me to ask students differently,” Kennedy German teacher Milaena Reade said. “In a language class, the intention is that we are not just learning about the language but we are functioning in it as well. So all the instructions like taking out your papers and open your book and students asking to go to the bathroom or borrow a pencil are all done in the language, to have comment cards in English would make no sense.”

In a foreign language setting, the cards are practically unused because they are provided in English. However, they can be effective when discussing cultural differences in the target language.

“I could see places where they could be used, for example when we are talking about culture, we will be doing a comparison between American Iowan culture vs. target language culture and that could be helpful and could be used if you’re having issues with students engaging in conversation,” Reade said.

In advanced foreign language classes, students converse almost entirely in the target language. The cards create a drastic shift in foreign language classrooms, abruptly switching from fluent conversation in the target language to holding up cards in English that do not relate to the curriculum and standards at hand.

“I don’t find them effective in their current form because they are in English, and I also feel bad because there are like nine foreign language teachers,” Reade said. “They could have saved quite a bit of money probably by not buying them in english for foreign language classes.”

With the advanced curriculum and elevated classwork, The Instructional Empowerment program is unfit for the needs of CRCSD high school students.

And so;


I have a… 

 

The IE program and discussion cards are beneficial at an elementary level, however applying a “one-size-fits-all” approach for all grade levels is not suitable for education. Instead of spending time and thousands of dollars on training high school teachers on elementary guided curriculums, could we have provided them with other resources that are effective for high schoolers? Are these cards truly benefitting CRCSD high school students?

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