What is the Three-Cueing System?

Three-cueing is an approach to teaching reading that relies on text (the letters on the page) as little as possible and instead uses language cues. ExcelinEd describes it like this:

Instructional strategies that employ the three-cueing systems model of reading include visual memory as the basis for teaching word recognition or three-cueing systems model of reading based on meaning, structure and syntax, and visual – which is also known as MSV.

Reading is not a natural skill—it is a learned one. Consider learning to shoot a basketball. There is a preferred form, and players who learn it early tend to become more accurate and consistent. But if a child is left to figure it out on their own (or learns bad habits) they may end up with a jump shot that “works” to some degree, but is hard to fix later. In the same way, poor reading strategies such as three-cueing can become ingrained if not corrected early. Reading instruction should be grounded in the skills that lead to fluent reading from the beginning.

Research consistently shows that the best way for students to become fluent readers is to:

• Decode: connecting letters and letter patterns to spoken sounds.
• Encode: connecting spoken sounds to written letters when spelling.

Over time, skilled readers come to read every letter rapidly and fluently as they connect the letters’ sounds with their oral vocabulary, out loud or silently. In contrast, the three-cueing system encourages students to rely more on memorization, contextual clues, or how the “whole word” looks.

What Missouri Can Do in the Future

SB 68 makes phonics instruction the primary strategy for teaching reading in Missouri. At one point during the legislative process, the bill included a ban on three-cueing, but the final language only bars three-cueing from being a “primary instructional method.” This vague language could allow for the continued usage of three-cueing in Missouri classrooms. As ExcelinEd notes, an ideal policy would “prohibit the use of curricula that employ the three-cueing systems model of teaching students to read.” Research shows that states committed to phonics have improved reading outcomes. In the future, Missouri should fully prohibit three-cueing.

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Ben DeGrow is the Policy Director of Education Choice for ExcelinEd.

Ben worked nearly two decades in state-based public policy, providing expert analysis in school choice, school finance and more. In his time at Colorado’s Independence Institute and Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy, he led dozens of studies and research project initiatives while also managing or supporting various coalitions to advance student opportunity through greater parental choice. Ben’s classroom experiences include service as a university graduate assistant, high school history teacher and a substitute in Michigan public schools. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Hillsdale College, a Master of Arts degree from Penn State University and a Certificate in Education Finance from Georgetown University.

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Adam Peshek is Senior Director and Senior Fellow at Stand Together Trust, where he focuses on education policy. Prior to joining STT, Peshek spent eight years in leadership positions with ExcelinEd, including managing policy director. In this role, Peshek provided strategic support to state leaders interested in developing and implementing policies that expanded educational options for children. He also served as vice president of advocacy, directing the organization’s advocacy efforts with governors, state legislatures and departments of education, and other stakeholders.

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Michael Q. McShane, Director of National Research at EdChoice, Susan Pendergrass, Director of Research and Education Policy at Show-Me Institute, and Patricia Levesque, Chief Executive Officer of ExcelinEd discuss the state of accountability in education, why state leadership is critical, and how Missouri and other states can reform their accountability systems.

Accountabilty Matters

Missouri schools are failing to teach the core subjects of reading and math and the most recent test scores show that students are falling further behind. Missouri’s Department of Secondary and Elementary (MO DESE) has not offered the level of transparency regarding student performance that is necessary to create an education system focused on higher standards, reducing achievement gaps, and results-based accountability. The status quo is leaving thousands of students behind without the fundamental skills to pursue higher education or compete in the modern labor market. In response to DESE’s failure to perform one of its most basic functions, we launched The Missouri School Rankings Project and MoSchoolRankings.org.

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• In Nebraska, Scottsbluff High School received an innovation grant from the state department of education to establish career academies within the school. The academies began operation in 2016, and students have the opportunity to graduate with college credit, job offers, and even associate’s degrees in six different career fields.
• In Florida, the Principal Autonomy Program Initiative began in 2016 in order to encourage principals to embrace innovation by relaxing certain regulations in return for improved student achievement. What started out as a pilot program was made permanent in 2018.
• Four states—Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, and Utah—created programs to promote competency-based education, including grants to help schools transition to the competency-based instruction model. Instead of students taking classes at same speed as their peers and either passing or failing a course, competency-based learning requires students to master certain skills but allows them to do so at their own pace. They advance as their skill set grows, not because the semester or school year is over.

Of course, states need to evaluate these new programs to ensure they are working and are a worthwhile use of tax dollars. Before launching any program, school administrators should establish specific metrics and goals by which the program will be assessed. For instance, career academies should be tracking graduation rates, training-related job placement, and the number of students earning industry-recognized credentials. If programs are not meeting expectations or are too costly, then they should be phased out so resources can be directed to programs that are delivering.

Whether it is grants for new programs, waivers for certain regulations, or embracing models like charter schooling, why doesn’t Missouri’s state education policy welcome local innovation and reward high performance? Sitting on the sidelines while educators in other states experiment with new ways of teaching the next generation of students isn’t working.

The post It’s Time for Missouri to Embrace Innovation in Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

IRCs are awarded by third-party industry organizations and certify that students have mastered skills needed for a particular job such as a welder, automotive technician, certified nursing assistant, or software developer. Recent research from ExcelinEd shows that, in addition to improving employment prospects, earning an IRC is associated with increases in graduation rates, college enrollment, and earnings.

In the study, which was released this month, researchers looked at outcomes for hundreds of thousands of students and found overall positive outcomes for IRC earners. In Florida, Indiana, and Kentucky, earning an IRC was positively associated with graduating from high school on time. Students in Florida and Kentucky who had earned an IRC were more likely to receive an associate’s degree if they enrolled in community college. The researchers also observed up to a 12 percent boost in wages for full-time workers after high school in Florida and Indiana.

The only potentially negative effect the researchers observed was that credential earners in Kentucky were less likely to graduate with a bachelor’s degree if they enrolled at a four-year college or university. One possible explanation they provided is that “the opportunity cost of each additional year of education is higher for credential earners than non-earners.” In other words, students just may not have thought it was worth finishing a bachelor’s degree and would rather be working.

Unfortunately, high schoolers in Missouri earn only about 8,000 IRCs each year, meaning that only a small fraction of the over 180,000 high school students who participate in a career and technical education program earn an IRC.

Some states have enacted policies that reflect the value they see in credential-earning, and Missouri should take note. For instance, Florida implemented a bonus program for teachers awarding them $25 or $50 for each student who earned an IRC. During the 2007–08 school year when the program started Florida high schoolers earned only 803 credentials total. Last year, they collectively earned over 121,000 IRCs.

Missouri policymakers have already shown a willingness to invest in our workforce—the legislature just passed Fast Track this session to help adults who want to pursue degrees in high-demand fields—but are they funding programs that are proven to work? Clearly, financial incentives have worked to get more students IRCs in Florida, and students have benefitted. With such a payoff for a relatively small investment, teacher bonus pay looks like a win-win-win for the state, teachers, and students.

Listen to our podcast on this subject here.

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During the 2017–18 school year, over 180,000 high schoolers in Missouri took at least one CTE class, but fewer than 28,000 concentrated (taking three or more classes) in any one area. What’s more, fewer than 8,000 students earned an industry-recognized credential (IRC), a signal to employers that the student has mastered some set of skills. Many Missouri students—especially those not interested in going to college—could benefit from earning an IRC and leaving high school career ready. 

A recent report from ExcelinEd shows that there are thousands of well-paying jobs that could be readily accessible to Missouri’s high schoolers if they were earning the right credentials. According to the report, Missouri met only one out of five indicators of a quality CTE program.

To put in perspective what kind of opportunities students are missing out on, let’s take a look at careers in just two industries. In 2018, some 617 students in Missouri earned an Automotive Service Excellence Certification. But there were over 3,600 job postings requiring that credential, and these jobs paid over $15 an hour last year. The unmet demand is also apparent in digital designing. There were over 3,300 job postings for Adobe Certified Associate and Adobe Certified Expert credentials each—again, these jobs pay at least $15 an hour—yet there were only 146 Missouri high school students who earned an Associate credential, and none received the Expert credential. Perhaps not enough students are interested in these careers to meet the demand, but are they even aware of these opportunities?

One way to improve awareness and options for students is through teacher bonus pay. If CTE teachers have skin in the game—for instance, $50 for every student of theirs who earns an IRC—they would have an incentive to get more students that could excel in a particular field working towards earning an IRC. Florida has such a program and students there earned over 140,000 credentials during the 2016–17 school year. Overall, one in six Florida high school students earned a credential, compared to just one in twenty high school students in Missouri.

Like many states, Missouri has a workforce problem. But with some simple changes, which other states have implemented successfully, we could increase the number of students earning credentials, while aligning those credentials to the job market. Good information paired with the right incentives can help move Missouri’s CTE in the right direction. 

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The Foundation for Excellence in Education has a great new video out about Texas’s course access program. Click on the link above to check it out.

Why should Texas have all of the fun?  Let’s get stories like this out of the Show-Me State!

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In Ascension Parish, Louisiana, high-school students don’t have to wait until college to access technical education—they can take courses through their traditional public schools, as The Foundation for Excellence in Education depicts in a recently released a video titled “Course Access: Expanding Access & Equity in Louisiana.”

Course access (or “course choice”) allows students to direct funding to approved course providers outside of their traditional public school and to receive credit for classes they successfully pass. This allows students to customize their education while remaining in their home districts. Enrolling in welding courses has put students like Stormi Honeycut (shown in the video) on the path to high-paying careers without ever having to pay thousands of dollars to a technical college.

According to www.tech-schools.us, 69 colleges offer technical programs at 91 locations in Missouri. Some tech programs cost as much as traditional university education. Ranken Technical College in St. Louis, for example, costs $14,000 per academic year, which is impractical for many students.

If Missouri adopted a course access program, students could enroll in courses through approved technical programs at no additional expense to the students or taxpayers while still in high school. Funds would simply be redirected from what the school district already uses. By the time they graduated, students could be well on their way to a solid career in a trade.

When I first started at the Show-Me Institute, I told the story of my experience teaching in a low-income school district. I wrote:

…one day, I noticed a child staring out the window at the construction site adjacent to the building.  The student mumbled to himself, “if only school was doing construction work, then I’d have an A-plus.”

As a teacher, I learned that if students want to be welders, schools that want to make them into philosophers won’t help them, no matter how effective the teachers are. Imagine the reverse—we would surely oppose trying to make students who want to be philosophers into welders. Why don’t we recoil when folks try to make welders into philosophers? For students more interested in a vocational career than a philosophy degree, course access offers a path forward.

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In twelve states and numerous school districts, course access programs are providing students with an opportunity to experience a wider variety of classes than they usually would. In Louisiana, students are using their funds for career and technical certification programs; in Minnesota, students are getting back on track in high school through an online credit recovery program; and students in rural Texas are preparing for the University of Texas through tailored online coursework. 

These programs are beneficial not just to students, but to school districts as well. It can be resource-intensive for a school to create a whole class to meet one child’s interests or readiness for advanced coursework. With course access, a student interested in taking AP Calculus could just head to the school’s library and log into any number of courses offered by universities or other providers.

On the flipside, course access programs also offer school districts an opportunity to earn additional revenue. Teachers can create courses that other students from around the state can attend, and schools can charge for them. Schools that have invested in a highly specialized teacher for a foreign language or advanced math or science course can help defray the cost by having that teacher create an online version of his or her courses.

Such a program would do a world of good in Missouri. Most discussions about educational issues in the state usually involve St. Louis and Kansas City, but it’s easy to forget that more than 97 percent of the land area in Missouri is rural. While 476,765 students attend school districts classified as urban, 383,883 students attend school districts with a rural classification.

Students in rural districts often lack access to advanced math and science courses, Advanced Placement courses, diverse foreign languages, and technical skills training. This puts rural students at a disadvantage. A course access program could greatly expand these students’ horizons.

In an increasingly tech-oriented age, course access is an inevitable step. I hope Missouri join states around the country in this emerging trend.

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On Thursday, the Missouri Legislature passed Senate Bill 493. Described as the “transfer fix,” the bill contains many provisions. One is the ability of students to use public dollars to attend a nonsectarian private school. If you believe the hype, I should be celebrating. After all, I am a proponent of private school choice. Sadly, I have been wrestling with whether this is even a victory for the school choice crowd.

Don’t get me wrong. I am glad that the legislature moved in a bipartisan manner to get this bill passed. Unlike the education establishment, I am willing to compromise and there are many needed aspects in this bill. Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel as if the students who need educational options got the short end of the stick with this deal.

Am I being too cynical? Should I be celebrating? To answer this question, I asked several school choice policy experts this question:

Is this a win for school choice or does it do more harm than good?

Here were their responses:

Mike McShane – Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

The number of hoops parents and schools are required to jump through in order to participate will most likely prevent students from ever accessing a private education. This is Potemkin private school choice.

Patrick Wolf – Professor and 21^st Century Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas

I wouldn’t expect more than a handful of families to navigate all of those huge roadblocks to exercise private school choice, especially since religious schools are excluded from the program. When families have a broad set of private school choices, nearly 80 percent of them choose private schools with a religious ethos. That is their preference. This is essentially a private school choice program without the private school choice part.

Jonathan Butcher – Education Director at the Goldwater Institute

I don’t think it does more harm than good, but I’m not sure it will accomplish anything. At least not right away.

Matt Ladner – Senior Advisor of Policy and Research for the Foundation for Excellence in Education

The academic catastrophe going on in Kansas City and Saint Louis have been well understood for decades. On the private side of things, this legislation brings to mind an inspector on the Titanic making conditional offers of an approved life vest three years in the future.

Jason Bedrick, policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and Jay Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, both pointed to the exclusion of religious schools and the testing requirement as very negative aspects of the bill.

“It’s especially painful when a ‘school choice’ program is designed in such a way that its passage is, to say the least, no cause for celebration,” Bedrick wrote.

Greene cautioned that this legislation might stifle future pushes to create school choice programs in Missouri.

A fix to some of the transfer issues was needed and on balance, the bill is mostly positive. But given these comments, I think my initial reaction was correct – this is not a school choice bill. It addresses some issues, but it does not expand options for students.

Summary of the private option:

Students in unaccredited schools within unaccredited districts are free to transfer. They must first apply to an accredited school within their district. If there are no spaces, they are able to transfer to another district or, upon voter approval, a private school. The private school must be located within the unaccredited district, nonsectarian, accredited, administer state tests, and meet a few other criteria. There is no transportation for transfer students.

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On Feb. 24, the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger published an editorial supporting the establishment of education savings accounts (ESA) in the Magnolia state. The Mississippi ESA proposal closely resembles a proposal currently before the Missouri Legislature in that it would provide support to students with special needs. Essentially, it would allow students with special needs to receive financial assistance from the state. The students could then use that money to tailor their education to fit their needs.

The Clarion-Ledger wrote:

The Parents’ Campaign and others who oppose the proposal — called the Equal Opportunity for All Students with Special Needs Act — claim it’s a voucher program that would strip money from local districts.

But parents of special-needs children and others who support it say it’s a lifeline and a last-resort measure that will give them the ability to do what the state apparently cannot: Educate their children.

School districts doing a good job educating special-needs children have little to fear. Nary is the parent who will withdraw a child from an excellent educational setting.

In Florida, which passed a statewide choice program for special-needs students in 2001, just six percent of eligible students use the program, according to the Florida-based Foundation for Excellence in Education.

We support public schools, but we cannot support the systemic failure of certain students over the course of several decades without any signal from MDE that something will change.

As I have written before, “the beauty of ESAs is that they are versatile.” They put children and their families in the driver’s seat regarding their education. The Clarion-Ledger editorial board recognizes this fact.

Arizona was the first state to create an ESA program and parents have been very satisfied. Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Iowa may be the next states to adopt an ESA program. Will Missouri join that list? It would certainly help if papers such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or the Kansas City Star came to the same conclusion as the Clarion-Ledger — that ESAs are good for kids.

(H/T Matt Ladner and Jay Greene.)

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