Recently, the Virginia Senate passed a bill that would eliminate the 3rd grade SOL (Standards of Learning) Tests in Science and Social Studies. That means less standardized testing! As a Virginia public school parent, I should be thrilled, right? Not necessarily.
See my post on this over at The Core Knowledge Blog.
The Journal of Educational Change published important ideas and evidence of educational change.
Showing posts with label Education Policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education Policy. Show all posts
Charter or Traditional: Making Kids Play Musical Schools Is Wrong
Here's a composite of conversations I've had with other education folks (and myself) about charter schools:
Q: @re you in favor of or against charter schools?
A: Well, I'd rather we didn't feel the need to have them in the first place. I have what I think are valid concerns about segregation, isolation, inequity, and denying appropriate and accessible education to special needs and ELL students.
Q: Okay, but they're here. Would you rather have them all closed and go back to the structure we had?
A: No, no. I acknowledge they're here to stay, for the foreseeable future at least. But if their existence is a reality, I'd rather they be community and educator-initiated, under the umbrella of and accountable to the districts and communities where they're located with no profit motive (as Chad Sansing describes here).
Q: Well, charters sometimes form because the home district is too rigid and too dysfunctional. Look at DC. Charters formed their own system entirely apart from DCPS precisely because they were fleeing the dysfunction of DCPS. Then charters grew in part because people got even more turned off by Rhee-form.
A: Yes, yes, I understand that. And I understand it's much easier to say, well, make the traditional district better, more responsive, than it is for that to actually happen any time soon. How long must families wait for that to occur? Now I get to ask a question: What happens when charter schools are largely unsuccessful according to the current accountability schemes with the same population the traditional, home district seemed to fail with?
I'll answer my own question. If we're just going to judge schools' success or necessity according to (in many cases poorly conceived) standardized test scores then it doesn't matter, if they're charter or traditional, we're not going to know how successful or unsuccessful any school is in improving the quality and meaning of the education for the students they are supposed to serve.
This is why I am against closing charter schools based on test scores, just as I am against closing neighborhood based on test scores. There is so much else to consider. The IDEA Public Charter School in DC serves students at-risk for dropping out. It faces closure. The school has been around for ten years. I've never stepped foot in the school, so I don't know what or how much those students are learning. I don't know if they're getting the best and most appropriate and meaningful education possible under the circumstances. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Maybe it should be closed, maybe it shouldn't. But test scores alone most certainly don't tell me that either.
Just as when a neighborhood school closes, when a charter school that has become a fixture in a community, that the community is largely satisfied with, that fills a need that other schools don't, is closed, it will have a very negative effect on the student population and the community it serves. And what will then replace it?
Disruption as a goal is not a positive one for education. I don't care what kind of school they're in, kids and their families, especially those with enough disruption, crisis, and loss in their lives already, shouldn't be forced to play musical schools to the tune of "Get Those Test Scores Up." If that's our idea of reforming education, we're in big trouble.
Q: @re you in favor of or against charter schools?
A: Well, I'd rather we didn't feel the need to have them in the first place. I have what I think are valid concerns about segregation, isolation, inequity, and denying appropriate and accessible education to special needs and ELL students.
Q: Okay, but they're here. Would you rather have them all closed and go back to the structure we had?
A: No, no. I acknowledge they're here to stay, for the foreseeable future at least. But if their existence is a reality, I'd rather they be community and educator-initiated, under the umbrella of and accountable to the districts and communities where they're located with no profit motive (as Chad Sansing describes here).
Q: Well, charters sometimes form because the home district is too rigid and too dysfunctional. Look at DC. Charters formed their own system entirely apart from DCPS precisely because they were fleeing the dysfunction of DCPS. Then charters grew in part because people got even more turned off by Rhee-form.
A: Yes, yes, I understand that. And I understand it's much easier to say, well, make the traditional district better, more responsive, than it is for that to actually happen any time soon. How long must families wait for that to occur? Now I get to ask a question: What happens when charter schools are largely unsuccessful according to the current accountability schemes with the same population the traditional, home district seemed to fail with?
I'll answer my own question. If we're just going to judge schools' success or necessity according to (in many cases poorly conceived) standardized test scores then it doesn't matter, if they're charter or traditional, we're not going to know how successful or unsuccessful any school is in improving the quality and meaning of the education for the students they are supposed to serve.
This is why I am against closing charter schools based on test scores, just as I am against closing neighborhood based on test scores. There is so much else to consider. The IDEA Public Charter School in DC serves students at-risk for dropping out. It faces closure. The school has been around for ten years. I've never stepped foot in the school, so I don't know what or how much those students are learning. I don't know if they're getting the best and most appropriate and meaningful education possible under the circumstances. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Maybe it should be closed, maybe it shouldn't. But test scores alone most certainly don't tell me that either.
Just as when a neighborhood school closes, when a charter school that has become a fixture in a community, that the community is largely satisfied with, that fills a need that other schools don't, is closed, it will have a very negative effect on the student population and the community it serves. And what will then replace it?
Disruption as a goal is not a positive one for education. I don't care what kind of school they're in, kids and their families, especially those with enough disruption, crisis, and loss in their lives already, shouldn't be forced to play musical schools to the tune of "Get Those Test Scores Up." If that's our idea of reforming education, we're in big trouble.
Opportunity to Listen
Each day this week I have presented a response to different parts of Governor McDonnell's "Opportunity to Learn" education agenda. On Monday, I gave an introduction and talked about the goal of advancing literacy in the early grades. On Tuesday, I wrote about implications for repealing the unpopular Kings Dominion Law. On Wednesday, I talked about proceeding thoughtfully and carefully with expanding choice in the Commonwealth. On Thursday, I discussed evaluating principals and teachers. This concluding post brings me to the end and back to the place where I started in the first post of this series: Money.
It looks like McDonnell has some great funding initiatives in his agenda but it's hard to reconcile them with the major budget cuts and bleak fiscal outlook across the Commonwealth. Every day, I read a new tale of budget woes, possible layoffs of essential staff from school districts across Virginia including Culpepper, Norfolk, Richmond, York, Hanover, Pittsylvania, and Northern Virginia, and of cuts to essential education programs such as preschool for low-income kids.
I understand that a big part of budget woes stem from the mandated VRS contributions that localities now have to make. The Virginia Association of School Superintendents has said that the proposal to put $2.2 billion in Virginia's retirement system is a big cause of the draconian cuts. At my most cynical I think that McDonnell is doing this here and now to demonstrate that the benefits make we offer our public servants are unsustainable and to starve the public schools so that they're set up to fail. At my most charitable, I think Bob McDonnell is very nervous about having debt and wants to remedy the situation ASAP and that he doesn't understand that while there is always room to be more efficient, quality education is not something that can be done well on the cheap.
The public has to realize that retirement benefits are not extras; rather, they are deferred compensation. They have been promised as part of an agreement the state made with employees. The problem with striving to replenish the VRS funds all at once is that causes a bigger and longer-term problem: compromising the quality of education districts in Virginia can provide. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.
We will never improve our public education system by starving it of funds and pushing it to a breaking point. Redlining our schools is the wrong thing to do. Unfortunately, in this context, money matters. The government is not a business; schools are not businesses--that's for car dealerships and supermarkets. While there are always ways to reduce wasteful spending, providing a quality public education to ALL of Virginia's children is inherently inefficient, but in Virginia it's required by law and it's what good governments in healthy, democratic societies do. Fiscal conservatism is one thing, fiscal lunacy is quite another. As former Harvard President Derek Bok put it, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
So, Virginians, where should we go from here?
The VASS (Virginia Association of School Superintendents) set a fine example by presenting their vision in an education reform blueprint. Why not convene task forces and associations of other stakeholders from across Virginia to present their ideas? Teachers and principals from across could tell us what they specifically need to better support and evaluate all teachers, to attract and retain high-performing teachers, and to remove those who shouldn't be in the classroom. Parents could discuss what improvements and changes they'd like to see for their children's education and what they value in schools. Educators from colleges and universities in Virginia need to be consulted: What are deficits are K-12 students arriving with and what are K-12 schools doing well? Virginia-based industries should also be called on to let us know what kind of education and skills they need potential employees to have. Virginia's scholars could examine the curriculum and practices in schools and let us know where the gaps in the curricula we're presenting exist and how we can improve our pedagogy. School finance experts could let us know what's smart spending, what's wasteful, as well as what's possible. Finally, we need to hear from a diverse group of students about the kind of learning communities they'd like to be a part of.
I urge Virginia's governor and legislature to resist the pressure to bow to the interests of big money and lobbyists, to hear their constituents, the taxpayers, and the people of Virginia. The Governor and the legislature must do what's best for quality education for Virginia's public school students, in line with what their parents envision for them, with what our professional educators say is sound practice, with what Virginia's communities and industries need to grow and thrive, and with what's best for the future of the Commonwealth.
The next and most crucial step will be for Virginia's politicians to listen.
cross-posted at the Virginia Education Report
It looks like McDonnell has some great funding initiatives in his agenda but it's hard to reconcile them with the major budget cuts and bleak fiscal outlook across the Commonwealth. Every day, I read a new tale of budget woes, possible layoffs of essential staff from school districts across Virginia including Culpepper, Norfolk, Richmond, York, Hanover, Pittsylvania, and Northern Virginia, and of cuts to essential education programs such as preschool for low-income kids.
I understand that a big part of budget woes stem from the mandated VRS contributions that localities now have to make. The Virginia Association of School Superintendents has said that the proposal to put $2.2 billion in Virginia's retirement system is a big cause of the draconian cuts. At my most cynical I think that McDonnell is doing this here and now to demonstrate that the benefits make we offer our public servants are unsustainable and to starve the public schools so that they're set up to fail. At my most charitable, I think Bob McDonnell is very nervous about having debt and wants to remedy the situation ASAP and that he doesn't understand that while there is always room to be more efficient, quality education is not something that can be done well on the cheap.
The public has to realize that retirement benefits are not extras; rather, they are deferred compensation. They have been promised as part of an agreement the state made with employees. The problem with striving to replenish the VRS funds all at once is that causes a bigger and longer-term problem: compromising the quality of education districts in Virginia can provide. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.
We will never improve our public education system by starving it of funds and pushing it to a breaking point. Redlining our schools is the wrong thing to do. Unfortunately, in this context, money matters. The government is not a business; schools are not businesses--that's for car dealerships and supermarkets. While there are always ways to reduce wasteful spending, providing a quality public education to ALL of Virginia's children is inherently inefficient, but in Virginia it's required by law and it's what good governments in healthy, democratic societies do. Fiscal conservatism is one thing, fiscal lunacy is quite another. As former Harvard President Derek Bok put it, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
So, Virginians, where should we go from here?
The VASS (Virginia Association of School Superintendents) set a fine example by presenting their vision in an education reform blueprint. Why not convene task forces and associations of other stakeholders from across Virginia to present their ideas? Teachers and principals from across could tell us what they specifically need to better support and evaluate all teachers, to attract and retain high-performing teachers, and to remove those who shouldn't be in the classroom. Parents could discuss what improvements and changes they'd like to see for their children's education and what they value in schools. Educators from colleges and universities in Virginia need to be consulted: What are deficits are K-12 students arriving with and what are K-12 schools doing well? Virginia-based industries should also be called on to let us know what kind of education and skills they need potential employees to have. Virginia's scholars could examine the curriculum and practices in schools and let us know where the gaps in the curricula we're presenting exist and how we can improve our pedagogy. School finance experts could let us know what's smart spending, what's wasteful, as well as what's possible. Finally, we need to hear from a diverse group of students about the kind of learning communities they'd like to be a part of.
I urge Virginia's governor and legislature to resist the pressure to bow to the interests of big money and lobbyists, to hear their constituents, the taxpayers, and the people of Virginia. The Governor and the legislature must do what's best for quality education for Virginia's public school students, in line with what their parents envision for them, with what our professional educators say is sound practice, with what Virginia's communities and industries need to grow and thrive, and with what's best for the future of the Commonwealth.
The next and most crucial step will be for Virginia's politicians to listen.
cross-posted at the Virginia Education Report
Opportunity to Evaluate Teachers
Welcome to Part IV of my response to Governor McDonnell's "Opportunity to Learn" education agenda--we're almost to Friday, folks! On Monday, you read about advancing literacy. On Tuesday, you read about extending the school day/ year. Yesterday, you read my thoughts on expanding school choice in Virginia. Today, I'll share my thoughts about McDonnell's ideas for evaluating, retaining, and recruiting teachers.
The "Enhancing Teacher Quality, Strengthening Teacher and Administrator Contracts, Evaluation Policies and Streamline Grievance Process" section proposes to establish annual contracts and evaluations for teachers and principals. This, the McDonnell administration says will, "allow for a new evaluation system to work by attracting and retaining the top-tier educators in our K-12 public schools." The agenda also calls to streamline the grievance process. As long as due process is built in (and no, merely saying, "don't worry there will be plenty of due process" is not sufficient) no one I've heard of disagrees with streamlining the grievance process. However, McDonnell's ideas to "enhance" teacher quality and "strengthen" contracts are more controversial.
First of all, teachers and principals should be evaluated yearly and observed and given feedback even more often. The biggest question, though, is how this will be done, based on what, and with what consequences. Will teachers be evaluated with an eye on craft and content or with an eye on test scores? Will the goal be to improve practice and strengthen curriculum? Will the goal be to support teachers? Or will the eye be on standardized test scores parading as real achievement and learning, de-selection, and playing gotcha? If the eye is narrowly focused on boosting test scores and de-selection, we're going to lose good teachers and fail to attract new ones.
Another problem is that this walks and talks like yet another unfunded mandate. Virginia principals barely have enough time to do the evaluations they have. Furthermore, while there are certainly incompetent principals out there, at least one reason that incompetent teachers aren't removed faster is because principals have so much to do. Has Governor McDonnell ever been inside a public school principal's office and seen the students waiting outside, the stacks of unfinished paperwork, and heard the phone ringing off the hook? Has he ever tried to schedule an evaluation? Or how about re-schedule an evaluation?
Streamlining the grievance process may eliminate some paperwork, but mandating yearly high-stakes evaluations without making other changes will merely replace it, and then some. Tennessee recently changed their teacher evaluation process without thinking it through and it's been a nightmare for principals and a largely useless, bordering on absurd, process for many teachers. If we want all principals and teachers to be evaluated once a year, we had better fund it, staff it, and make sure the process is fair and that the tool itself is useful.
I would add a peer evaluation component to the evaluation process. I'm not quite comfortable with students doing high-stakes evaluations but I certainly think collecting and implementing feedback from students should be a required part of a teacher's evaluation process. I'd like to see master educators in each school who evaluate and mentor other teachers while still teaching some courses of their own. Also, we need to diversify evaluations: What a first-year teacher needs is different from what a veteran needs and what a math teacher needs is different from what an art teacher needs. For ideas about where Virginia districts might go, this Massachusetts teacher, who has published a book on the subject, has some great ideas for better evaluations. Montgomery County, Maryland, has had great success with their peer-review teacher evaluation process. Finally, two districts in California have done well revamping their teacher evaluation systems by integrating support and evaluation. Finally, Accomplished California Teachers put together an important report about improving teacher evaluations, with one of the authors, NBCT David Cohen, offering some further insights on the process here.
As for one-year contracts, I don't see how using them (which by the way will not be a big change in some Virginia districts as budget woes have forced many principals in recent years to offer one-year contacts) strengthens contracts. In fact, it sounds more like weakening contracts (and like spinning one's education agenda). I also don't see how offering them exclusively will attract top-tier educators. Here's a job. Please leave the one you have or give up other opportunities for this one-year contract. Now run along and get those test scores up. I don't see that as a winning recruitment strategy. Moreover, as Chad Sansing pointed out, it's not really going to grow the profession as much as it will offer "jobs."
One-year contracts will also undermine stability and continuity in communities. Of course I want my children to have the best teachers possible, but the fact that the educators at the schools my kids attend have gotten to know our community, our family, and my children as learners, facilitates that. Most of them and most of the educators I have worked with work long hours with too much to do. I, for one, don't want to reward them with the prospect of one-year contracts and I don't want the uncertainty of not knowing which educators will be back each year. In these hard economic times, Virginia's families have enough uncertainty already.
I've also heard McDonnell wants to use merit pay. I was glad that his administration took a more cautious route and merely piloted merit pay before going all out with it. And as I explained here, I think we need to raise salaries across the board, as well as differentiate pay more than we do currently, based on a combination of responsibility and experience. Educators who lead extra-curriculars, or who take on mentoring, peer evaluating, or more responsibilities should be paid more. Also, we should pay teachers more who work in hard to staff schools with more challenging populations. They have to work harder and have more difficult jobs. Also, it is harder to attract STEM people. It just is. I am not a STEM person and I don't like that they would get paid more, but I understand we can't ignore labor market forces. Nevertheless, merit pay should not be based on a boost in test scores and nor has such merit pay proven to raise achievement in other places. As it has in DC, such an approach easily turns into: Here, you teach the more affluent kids who score higher on standardized tests. Congratulations! Here's some extra money.
By all means, let's re-imagine and then revamp our evaluation tools and processes in Virginia. Let's pay educators more and let's attract the best ones we can to our state. But let's do so in ways that are fair, meaningful, and cognizant of the unique roles educators play. A hasty switch to annual high-stakes evaluations, one-year contracts, and merit pay based on standardized test scores will increase paperwork and teacher turnover and lower morale without growing the profession or improving the quality of teaching. We can do better by our educators and by our students.
cross-posted at the Virginia Education Report
The "Enhancing Teacher Quality, Strengthening Teacher and Administrator Contracts, Evaluation Policies and Streamline Grievance Process" section proposes to establish annual contracts and evaluations for teachers and principals. This, the McDonnell administration says will, "allow for a new evaluation system to work by attracting and retaining the top-tier educators in our K-12 public schools." The agenda also calls to streamline the grievance process. As long as due process is built in (and no, merely saying, "don't worry there will be plenty of due process" is not sufficient) no one I've heard of disagrees with streamlining the grievance process. However, McDonnell's ideas to "enhance" teacher quality and "strengthen" contracts are more controversial.
First of all, teachers and principals should be evaluated yearly and observed and given feedback even more often. The biggest question, though, is how this will be done, based on what, and with what consequences. Will teachers be evaluated with an eye on craft and content or with an eye on test scores? Will the goal be to improve practice and strengthen curriculum? Will the goal be to support teachers? Or will the eye be on standardized test scores parading as real achievement and learning, de-selection, and playing gotcha? If the eye is narrowly focused on boosting test scores and de-selection, we're going to lose good teachers and fail to attract new ones.
Another problem is that this walks and talks like yet another unfunded mandate. Virginia principals barely have enough time to do the evaluations they have. Furthermore, while there are certainly incompetent principals out there, at least one reason that incompetent teachers aren't removed faster is because principals have so much to do. Has Governor McDonnell ever been inside a public school principal's office and seen the students waiting outside, the stacks of unfinished paperwork, and heard the phone ringing off the hook? Has he ever tried to schedule an evaluation? Or how about re-schedule an evaluation?
Streamlining the grievance process may eliminate some paperwork, but mandating yearly high-stakes evaluations without making other changes will merely replace it, and then some. Tennessee recently changed their teacher evaluation process without thinking it through and it's been a nightmare for principals and a largely useless, bordering on absurd, process for many teachers. If we want all principals and teachers to be evaluated once a year, we had better fund it, staff it, and make sure the process is fair and that the tool itself is useful.
I would add a peer evaluation component to the evaluation process. I'm not quite comfortable with students doing high-stakes evaluations but I certainly think collecting and implementing feedback from students should be a required part of a teacher's evaluation process. I'd like to see master educators in each school who evaluate and mentor other teachers while still teaching some courses of their own. Also, we need to diversify evaluations: What a first-year teacher needs is different from what a veteran needs and what a math teacher needs is different from what an art teacher needs. For ideas about where Virginia districts might go, this Massachusetts teacher, who has published a book on the subject, has some great ideas for better evaluations. Montgomery County, Maryland, has had great success with their peer-review teacher evaluation process. Finally, two districts in California have done well revamping their teacher evaluation systems by integrating support and evaluation. Finally, Accomplished California Teachers put together an important report about improving teacher evaluations, with one of the authors, NBCT David Cohen, offering some further insights on the process here.
As for one-year contracts, I don't see how using them (which by the way will not be a big change in some Virginia districts as budget woes have forced many principals in recent years to offer one-year contacts) strengthens contracts. In fact, it sounds more like weakening contracts (and like spinning one's education agenda). I also don't see how offering them exclusively will attract top-tier educators. Here's a job. Please leave the one you have or give up other opportunities for this one-year contract. Now run along and get those test scores up. I don't see that as a winning recruitment strategy. Moreover, as Chad Sansing pointed out, it's not really going to grow the profession as much as it will offer "jobs."
One-year contracts will also undermine stability and continuity in communities. Of course I want my children to have the best teachers possible, but the fact that the educators at the schools my kids attend have gotten to know our community, our family, and my children as learners, facilitates that. Most of them and most of the educators I have worked with work long hours with too much to do. I, for one, don't want to reward them with the prospect of one-year contracts and I don't want the uncertainty of not knowing which educators will be back each year. In these hard economic times, Virginia's families have enough uncertainty already.
I've also heard McDonnell wants to use merit pay. I was glad that his administration took a more cautious route and merely piloted merit pay before going all out with it. And as I explained here, I think we need to raise salaries across the board, as well as differentiate pay more than we do currently, based on a combination of responsibility and experience. Educators who lead extra-curriculars, or who take on mentoring, peer evaluating, or more responsibilities should be paid more. Also, we should pay teachers more who work in hard to staff schools with more challenging populations. They have to work harder and have more difficult jobs. Also, it is harder to attract STEM people. It just is. I am not a STEM person and I don't like that they would get paid more, but I understand we can't ignore labor market forces. Nevertheless, merit pay should not be based on a boost in test scores and nor has such merit pay proven to raise achievement in other places. As it has in DC, such an approach easily turns into: Here, you teach the more affluent kids who score higher on standardized tests. Congratulations! Here's some extra money.
By all means, let's re-imagine and then revamp our evaluation tools and processes in Virginia. Let's pay educators more and let's attract the best ones we can to our state. But let's do so in ways that are fair, meaningful, and cognizant of the unique roles educators play. A hasty switch to annual high-stakes evaluations, one-year contracts, and merit pay based on standardized test scores will increase paperwork and teacher turnover and lower morale without growing the profession or improving the quality of teaching. We can do better by our educators and by our students.
cross-posted at the Virginia Education Report
Opportunity to Expand Choice (Maybe)
I've been busy responding to my governor's education agenda. On Monday, I wrote about the initiative to advance literacy. On Tuesday, I wrote about possible implications of repealing the Kings Dominion Law. Today will be a much meatier post about choice. I want to take a minute to acknowledge that school choice is a very thorny and complex issue; I do my best to approach it as such. To read a sampling of related posts on my blog, please go here.
In "Expanding Educational Options for Virginia's Students," McDonnell talks about virtual learning, charter schools, university lab schools, and granting tax credits to businesses that contribute to private school scholarships for low-income students. Many of these ideas seem to have been borrowed from Florida. One recent Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed praised education reform in Florida, but Florida has hardly proceeded carefully. Virtual schools have a very mixed record there with some schools giving out worthless diplomas. The McKay Scholarship Program, intended to give vouchers to parents of special needs, though a savior for many who know how to navigate the choices, has been a harrowing experience for others, "pioneering" an industry of fraud and chaos. As for charter schools, those in Florida enroll far fewer poor and special needs students. Furthermore, they operate as a parallel school system controlled largely by for-profit management companies and private landlords with very little oversight and too much corruption. Finally, by their own measurements, charter schools in Florida aren't getting the results advocates said they would. Virginia's education system and efforts to reform it would be better served if we learned from Florida's mistakes rather than if we imitated them.
Using technology to expand learning spaces, methods, and opportunities is exciting and well worth exploring, but as with extending the school year or day, it needs to be done thoughtfully, based on evidence and with strong considerations of design. I was incredulous when a high school teacher in my district told me about p.e. as an on-line class, but when she explained to me the requirements and curriculum, I changed my tune. With that in mind, as we explore virtual education options, we should first tap the knowledge of our in-state resources. We need to look at what our districts are already doing in this arena and learn from their successes and failures. Furthermore, we should consult with Virginia-based virtual learning scholars such as VCU's Jon Becker. Even then, we need to be very careful that virtual learning is offered for the good of students and not merely for the benefit of those with a financial stake in the virtual education industry. Furthermore, we need to ensure that for Virginia students, any virtual learning is quality learning--for some caveats, see here, here, here, and here.
As for charter schools, if the goal is to offer more choices and further racial and socio-economic integration, magnet programs such as have been started in Miami-Dade County, Florida and Wake County, North Carolina, seem to have relatively stronger and more stable track records. We should also consider merging some of our urban and suburban school districts such as has been done in the afore-mentioned Wake County and also recently in Memphis, Tennessee, challenges notwithstanding. Montgomery County, Maryland, offers a magnet school/ choice-system of sorts at their traditional high schools--an effort worth studying. Each district in Virginia should examine its structure and programs--magnet schools and programs, Governor's Schools, alternative schools, vocational and trade schools, and even course offerings per school--to make sure it's offering the most options possible in the most inclusive and accessible way possible, towards meeting the needs of ALL students.
After this, if the people of the Commonwealth decide they do want more charters specifically, then we must make sure they're done right: initiated and managed by communities and educators and held accountable to the districts where they exist. Chad Sansing has a great post on this. As he describes the already existing charter schools in Virginia:
One final thought on charters: They will only be as "innovative" as high-stakes-testing and accountability schemes allow them to be. Schools will only be as good as what we hold them accountable for. Most of the glowing reports about Patrick Henry, for example, in the same Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed cited earlier, glow about their test scores:
If we're going to expand choice in Virginia, we need to do it with two goals in mind. First, we should make choice as fair, equitable, and democratic as possible. Exclusion of special needs students and English Language Learners, and increased racial and socioeconomic segregation should not be the outcome of increased school choice. Second, the choice provided should be diverse options between different schools, rather than a competition to get the best test scores. Increased choice could be among programs that provide rich and meaningful learning and quality teaching along different dimensions (such as language, science, or arts magnet schools) while meeting the needs of all students. Or choice could simply be among schools beholden to the same corrupting incentives that undermine real student learning in our current system, which means having many poor choices, which, frankly, is no choice at all.
cross-posted at the Virginia Education Report
In "Expanding Educational Options for Virginia's Students," McDonnell talks about virtual learning, charter schools, university lab schools, and granting tax credits to businesses that contribute to private school scholarships for low-income students. Many of these ideas seem to have been borrowed from Florida. One recent Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed praised education reform in Florida, but Florida has hardly proceeded carefully. Virtual schools have a very mixed record there with some schools giving out worthless diplomas. The McKay Scholarship Program, intended to give vouchers to parents of special needs, though a savior for many who know how to navigate the choices, has been a harrowing experience for others, "pioneering" an industry of fraud and chaos. As for charter schools, those in Florida enroll far fewer poor and special needs students. Furthermore, they operate as a parallel school system controlled largely by for-profit management companies and private landlords with very little oversight and too much corruption. Finally, by their own measurements, charter schools in Florida aren't getting the results advocates said they would. Virginia's education system and efforts to reform it would be better served if we learned from Florida's mistakes rather than if we imitated them.
Using technology to expand learning spaces, methods, and opportunities is exciting and well worth exploring, but as with extending the school year or day, it needs to be done thoughtfully, based on evidence and with strong considerations of design. I was incredulous when a high school teacher in my district told me about p.e. as an on-line class, but when she explained to me the requirements and curriculum, I changed my tune. With that in mind, as we explore virtual education options, we should first tap the knowledge of our in-state resources. We need to look at what our districts are already doing in this arena and learn from their successes and failures. Furthermore, we should consult with Virginia-based virtual learning scholars such as VCU's Jon Becker. Even then, we need to be very careful that virtual learning is offered for the good of students and not merely for the benefit of those with a financial stake in the virtual education industry. Furthermore, we need to ensure that for Virginia students, any virtual learning is quality learning--for some caveats, see here, here, here, and here.
As for charter schools, if the goal is to offer more choices and further racial and socio-economic integration, magnet programs such as have been started in Miami-Dade County, Florida and Wake County, North Carolina, seem to have relatively stronger and more stable track records. We should also consider merging some of our urban and suburban school districts such as has been done in the afore-mentioned Wake County and also recently in Memphis, Tennessee, challenges notwithstanding. Montgomery County, Maryland, offers a magnet school/ choice-system of sorts at their traditional high schools--an effort worth studying. Each district in Virginia should examine its structure and programs--magnet schools and programs, Governor's Schools, alternative schools, vocational and trade schools, and even course offerings per school--to make sure it's offering the most options possible in the most inclusive and accessible way possible, towards meeting the needs of ALL students.
After this, if the people of the Commonwealth decide they do want more charters specifically, then we must make sure they're done right: initiated and managed by communities and educators and held accountable to the districts where they exist. Chad Sansing has a great post on this. As he describes the already existing charter schools in Virginia:
These schools matter to their students and communities and serve as examples of grass roots start-up efforts in Virginia schools. Because of their local origins and capacities to address local needs, these schools might not “scale up”, but the community-based processes used in their development are definitely replicable.Districts, for their part, need to stop being hostile to groups of parents and educators who want to try something different, lest they drive them into the arms of profit-minded and unaccountable outsiders. Finally, while charters such as Richmond's Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts were started with a mind towards more integration, we must keep in mind that nationally charters are leading to increased segregation.
One final thought on charters: They will only be as "innovative" as high-stakes-testing and accountability schemes allow them to be. Schools will only be as good as what we hold them accountable for. Most of the glowing reports about Patrick Henry, for example, in the same Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed cited earlier, glow about their test scores:
Recently, Richmond's first charter school (and the state's first elementary charter), the Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, announced that its students surpassed school district and state averages in every subject on the Standards of Learning tests in its first year. In fact, every group of its students (white, black, economically disadvantaged) outperformed both district and state, an accomplishment made more impressive by the fact that the school teaches a more truly diverse population of students than any other in the city.Test scores certainly give us some information about how a school is doing and we can glean some other useful information from them, but what's more important is what kids are actually learning (curriculum) and how they're being taught (pedagogy or instruction). If we keep doing the same thing we've been doing for the past ten years and focus on scores on limited and narrow standardized multiple-choice tests, instead of on what is actually being taught and learned and how, education in our state will not progress or innovate, and our students won't engage in meaningful, challenging learning, whether they're in traditional schools or charters.
If we're going to expand choice in Virginia, we need to do it with two goals in mind. First, we should make choice as fair, equitable, and democratic as possible. Exclusion of special needs students and English Language Learners, and increased racial and socioeconomic segregation should not be the outcome of increased school choice. Second, the choice provided should be diverse options between different schools, rather than a competition to get the best test scores. Increased choice could be among programs that provide rich and meaningful learning and quality teaching along different dimensions (such as language, science, or arts magnet schools) while meeting the needs of all students. Or choice could simply be among schools beholden to the same corrupting incentives that undermine real student learning in our current system, which means having many poor choices, which, frankly, is no choice at all.
cross-posted at the Virginia Education Report
Opportunity to Extend the School Year
Yesterday, I posted the first post in a series of five in response to Governor McDonnell's recently announced education agenda, entitled, "Opportunity to Learn." The first post provided an introduction and discussed McDonnell's ideas to advance literacy.
Another major piece of Governor McDonnell's agenda included "Reducing Mandates on Local School Divisions," which in this case means a repeal of the "Kings Dominion Law." In substance, this is mostly uncontroversial and seems to make sense, i.e., letting districts decide how to set their calendars. Some have made the leap to, "the Governor is pushing a longer school year," but so far, I don't see it. Many school districts don't like the law, and thus the Governor wants to repeal it.
Now, I'm in a bit of a bind here because my county, the home of Kings Dominion (otherwise known as The Promised Land among the under-10 set in my house) is opposed to repeal of the law as it would mean a big loss of revenue in particular for them. Given our bleak budget outlook, particularly for education, we need that revenue. Of course, there are (horror of horrors) other reasonable ways to raise revenues. Also, it is rather ironic that as the current local political climate is infused with cries for smaller government and fewer mandates, some seem to want an exception made for the mandate that helps them. Sigh.
Back to the topic at hand, if the idea is in the long run to reorganize the school year and extend the school year and/or school days, it needs to be done thoughtfully. While doing so would certainly benefit many kids and I bet many working families in Virginia would welcome it, the most important thing is not adding more time but rather what is done with the added time (or even with the time we already have. . . ).
If a longer school year and day means more test prep, more narrow focus on reading strategies and math drills, then Virginians should say: No, thank you. However, if we're talking about more time for meaningful and interesting project-based learning, extra-curriculars, clubs, school newspapers, unstructured play, P.E., sports teams, science, social studies, art, music, theater, practical skills (cooking, financial literacy, etc.), foreign languages, gardening, computer science, robotics, entrepreneurship, etc., then we should say resoundingly: Yes, please!
Furthermore, any longer day or school year must be matched with increased pay, staffing, and resources. Otherwise, we'll have yet another unfunded mandate. And no, throwing some cheap math workbooks at teachers does not count as increasing resources, nor will piling such activities on to the school day improve the quality of education Virginia's children receive.
If we're going to extend the school year and day in Virginia, we need to do so in a way that's smart, fair, and that will provide meaningful and rich learning experiences for students.
cross-posted at The Virginia Education Report
Another major piece of Governor McDonnell's agenda included "Reducing Mandates on Local School Divisions," which in this case means a repeal of the "Kings Dominion Law." In substance, this is mostly uncontroversial and seems to make sense, i.e., letting districts decide how to set their calendars. Some have made the leap to, "the Governor is pushing a longer school year," but so far, I don't see it. Many school districts don't like the law, and thus the Governor wants to repeal it.
Now, I'm in a bit of a bind here because my county, the home of Kings Dominion (otherwise known as The Promised Land among the under-10 set in my house) is opposed to repeal of the law as it would mean a big loss of revenue in particular for them. Given our bleak budget outlook, particularly for education, we need that revenue. Of course, there are (horror of horrors) other reasonable ways to raise revenues. Also, it is rather ironic that as the current local political climate is infused with cries for smaller government and fewer mandates, some seem to want an exception made for the mandate that helps them. Sigh.
Back to the topic at hand, if the idea is in the long run to reorganize the school year and extend the school year and/or school days, it needs to be done thoughtfully. While doing so would certainly benefit many kids and I bet many working families in Virginia would welcome it, the most important thing is not adding more time but rather what is done with the added time (or even with the time we already have. . . ).
If a longer school year and day means more test prep, more narrow focus on reading strategies and math drills, then Virginians should say: No, thank you. However, if we're talking about more time for meaningful and interesting project-based learning, extra-curriculars, clubs, school newspapers, unstructured play, P.E., sports teams, science, social studies, art, music, theater, practical skills (cooking, financial literacy, etc.), foreign languages, gardening, computer science, robotics, entrepreneurship, etc., then we should say resoundingly: Yes, please!
Furthermore, any longer day or school year must be matched with increased pay, staffing, and resources. Otherwise, we'll have yet another unfunded mandate. And no, throwing some cheap math workbooks at teachers does not count as increasing resources, nor will piling such activities on to the school day improve the quality of education Virginia's children receive.
If we're going to extend the school year and day in Virginia, we need to do so in a way that's smart, fair, and that will provide meaningful and rich learning experiences for students.
cross-posted at The Virginia Education Report
Opportunity to Develop Literacy
On Monday, January 9th, Virginia Governor McDonnell announced his education agenda, entitled, "Opportunity to Learn." This has been covered by The Virginia Education Report, The Washington Post, as well as commented on by many throughout the state (For Chad Sansing's excellent commentary, read here. Or, for a partial listing of other reactions, see here.) I am going to offer my reactions in a series of posts starting with this one.
Before I comment on the agenda, I want to reiterate a point that Chad Sansing made in his piece:
Now, on to the education agenda:
In the "Raise Standards - College Workforce and Readiness" section, the McDonnell administration proposes, among other things ("other things" being streamlining diploma requirements, positive youth development, and expanding dual enrollment programs--none of which I have any objections to, so far :), advancing literacy. McDonnell wants to make sure all third graders can read before they move on to fourth grade. That is a worthy goal, but I'm not sure that his way of achieving it is sound. McDonnell wants to pay kids who learn to read. Harvard Researcher Roland Fryer tried something similar to this, and it didn't really work. If kids aren't reading by third grade, it's not (good grief!) because we're not paying them. Nor do I think the strategy of waiting until third grade and then simply holding kids back will help much--it's too reactive.
If we want struggling readers to struggle less, we need to do two things:
1) Invest in reading intervention programs that work and reach out to struggling readers long before third grade. Many of the children who are likely to struggle with reading would probably benefit from the very preschool programs McDonnell is looking to cut, so if he wants to advance literacy he should reconsider cutting those programs. One program that my school district successfully uses and that helped my own son when he was struggling to learn to read was Reading Recovery. Such programs are expensive and require investment and commitment. (UPDATE: After I drafted this post, I read that McDonnell proposed adding $8.2 million to the budget for early reading programs. This is good news, though I'd want to know more about the efficacy of the specific programs being funded and the real estimated impact of the dollars allotted.)
2) We need to spend much less time teaching reading as a subject and teaching reading strategies beyond their utility and much more time teaching content or subject matters, such as literature, science, social studies, p.e., art music, foreign languages, technical education, etc. Yes, most kids need to be explicitly taught to decode and yes, to a point reading strategies are useful. Of course, content should be taught as reading and writing intensive. However, literacy is largely representative of someone's background and content knowledge, and knowledge of vocabulary and does not develop or improve without it. As the University of Virginia's own Dan Willingham says, teaching content is teaching reading. (It's also much, much more meaningful and interesting for kids.) My regular readers know that I talk about this ad nauseum. In case you're new to my writing on education, here are some posts that elaborate further: here, here, and here.
You know what I've found, as a parent and in my observations of my kids' teachers, is the best reward for kids who are working hard to learn to read or who are already reading? More books. Let's reward students for reading by giving them more books.
UPDATE: In a misguided effort to get Virginia third graders to do better on reading and math tests, State Senator John Miller (D-Newport News) wants teachers to spend even more time on reading and math and even less on science and social studies. And he wants to do so to get test scores up in fifth grade (not necessarily because it will mean better education). Ugh. Even supporters of NCLB say the bill is too limited in scope by just focusing on math and reading. Sorry, Senator Miller, but this bill will take us in the complete wrong direction!
cross-posted at The Virginia Education Report
Before I comment on the agenda, I want to reiterate a point that Chad Sansing made in his piece:
McDonnell’s blueprint promises “a bold education proposal that will dramatically increase money for Virginia’s teachers and students by $480 million a year.” Meanwhile, his budget plans also include “hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts, including to child-care subsidies for low-income families and to health and parent-education programs for poor pregnant women.” Families who need social and support services to help their kids attend school and access curriculum won’t benefit from McDonnell’s cuts.I will return to issues if budgeting and funding in later posts but for now I'll assert: We're not going to succeed in improving education for low-income children with one hand if we're squeezing their parents and communities with the other. As I explained here, single-issue advocacy is problematic and students don't lead single-issue lives. Furthermore, the more we deny help to those in need, the more needs our students will come to school with and the more resources our schools will need to adequately serve those students. And right now there is a growing number of people in need.
Now, on to the education agenda:
In the "Raise Standards - College Workforce and Readiness" section, the McDonnell administration proposes, among other things ("other things" being streamlining diploma requirements, positive youth development, and expanding dual enrollment programs--none of which I have any objections to, so far :), advancing literacy. McDonnell wants to make sure all third graders can read before they move on to fourth grade. That is a worthy goal, but I'm not sure that his way of achieving it is sound. McDonnell wants to pay kids who learn to read. Harvard Researcher Roland Fryer tried something similar to this, and it didn't really work. If kids aren't reading by third grade, it's not (good grief!) because we're not paying them. Nor do I think the strategy of waiting until third grade and then simply holding kids back will help much--it's too reactive.
If we want struggling readers to struggle less, we need to do two things:
1) Invest in reading intervention programs that work and reach out to struggling readers long before third grade. Many of the children who are likely to struggle with reading would probably benefit from the very preschool programs McDonnell is looking to cut, so if he wants to advance literacy he should reconsider cutting those programs. One program that my school district successfully uses and that helped my own son when he was struggling to learn to read was Reading Recovery. Such programs are expensive and require investment and commitment. (UPDATE: After I drafted this post, I read that McDonnell proposed adding $8.2 million to the budget for early reading programs. This is good news, though I'd want to know more about the efficacy of the specific programs being funded and the real estimated impact of the dollars allotted.)
2) We need to spend much less time teaching reading as a subject and teaching reading strategies beyond their utility and much more time teaching content or subject matters, such as literature, science, social studies, p.e., art music, foreign languages, technical education, etc. Yes, most kids need to be explicitly taught to decode and yes, to a point reading strategies are useful. Of course, content should be taught as reading and writing intensive. However, literacy is largely representative of someone's background and content knowledge, and knowledge of vocabulary and does not develop or improve without it. As the University of Virginia's own Dan Willingham says, teaching content is teaching reading. (It's also much, much more meaningful and interesting for kids.) My regular readers know that I talk about this ad nauseum. In case you're new to my writing on education, here are some posts that elaborate further: here, here, and here.
You know what I've found, as a parent and in my observations of my kids' teachers, is the best reward for kids who are working hard to learn to read or who are already reading? More books. Let's reward students for reading by giving them more books.
UPDATE: In a misguided effort to get Virginia third graders to do better on reading and math tests, State Senator John Miller (D-Newport News) wants teachers to spend even more time on reading and math and even less on science and social studies. And he wants to do so to get test scores up in fifth grade (not necessarily because it will mean better education). Ugh. Even supporters of NCLB say the bill is too limited in scope by just focusing on math and reading. Sorry, Senator Miller, but this bill will take us in the complete wrong direction!
cross-posted at The Virginia Education Report
When single-issue advocacy causes multiple-issue empowerment
Education journalist Joy Removits recently wrote this article on the education "reform" lobby. The article was not particularly remarkable, but I did discern a bit of pivoting on the part of some of the organizations, such as Students First, Stand for Children, and DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) Removits wrote about. In particular, they talked about being "single-issue" advocates and financially backing politicians only based on their advocacy of issues the reform lobby pushes. For example, Removits wrote,
Even more recently,Whitney Tilson of DFER fame wrote something (h/t Alexander Russo) that pushed back on the idea of single-issue advocacy. I blogged about the limitations of his revelations in my last post. One of his basic points was that poor people aren't going to ally themselves with powerful people on school reform when the powerful are at the same time voting against other measures meant to help poor people such as housing, healthcare, and jobs. From Tilson (as he perceives poor people and/or people of color would respond):
Rick Scott, for example, wanted to drug test the urine of those who need some help from public assistance. We want to reform your schools but let us invade your privacy and question your integrity first. Or how about by supporting politicians who want to cut off health care for women, particularly for poor women? We want you to get a better education and go to college, but first we're gonna make sure your mom has no access to family planning or cancer prevention services. Also, what about being beholden to foundations funded by corporations who treat their employees and the communities they live in so ruthlessly? The wealth of the Walton family, for example, comes in part due to their ruthlessly efficient management and employee practices. We want to help your children with better education but first let us exploit you and help to sustain the awful conditions of poverty you live in. But when we look for philanthropy, we can't trust you, we'll give the money we made exploiting you to other rich people who say they want to help you. Finally, what about gay people? How can education be improved for everyone when some education reform-minded politicians don't accept gay people? We support better education and schools for all kids, but if you're a gay or transgender kid, you're an abomination. Will school will get better for the gay kids in that elected official's district? I don't think so.
How is education improved by supporting politicians who say climate change science is a hoax? Can positive science education reform come from people who think we should "teach the controversy," i.e. teach creationism side-by-side with evolution? What kind of social studies education are we going to get from decision makers who want to make up their own facts and de-emphasize teaching the influence of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson because he's not Christian enough for them? Some reformers think that Rick Perry's (the man who held a Christian-centric, fundamentalist prayer rally as a way to solve political problems) anti-intellectual ideas for higher education are "visionary."
When reformers see fit to hand over the reigns of a sacred, public, democratic institution to people who hate the government, how is that supposed to work out? How can these education "reformers" imagine that anti-intellectuals can have anything of substance to offer to the intellectual pursuit of education? Is getting your questionable education reforms passed really worth empowering people who don't value knowledge-based education, public or otherwise? At some point, being anti-science and anti-intellectual means you're anti-education. If you have disdain for the creation of knowledge, or for knowledge itself even, you can't really be trusted to oversee the reform of one of our society's principal mechanisms for generating and transferring knowledge.
The problem with a single-issue approach to education reform is that students don't lead single-issue lives. Democrats and neo-liberals who support decision-makers who would use their power to crush the Democratic party (through a war on unions of all stripes), who hate gay people, who deny climate change science, who support the disastrous Wars on Drugs and Terror, who don't even have the support of the saner members of their own party, who sell their states off to the highest bidders are acting irresponsibly and short-sightedly.
Do we really want to employ a pyromaniac to fix our fireplaces if it means giving him the opportunity soon thereafter to burn down our homes? When I do the calculus, I don't see children or students, public or knowledge-rich and meaningful education winning. I see homo-phobic, poverty-criminalizing, anti-intellectual, knowledge-agnostib, right-wing ideology winning and I have yet to understand why any self-described liberal or education reformer would support that.
Melton stressed that StudentsFirst is a single-issue group. "We support candidates that have positions on other issues we don't support," he said.Now, I can see agreeing with someone on one issue even when you disagree with them on most others. I, for, example, agree with Ron Paul's position that the War on Terror and the War on Drugs have been disasters, and have resulted most detrimentally in a War on Civil Liberties and a War on Dissent. But would I go so far as to vote for Ron Paul? Would I back him financially if I worked for the ACLU? I'd really have to weigh the pros and cons overall of a potential Ron Paul presidency. For example, Paul is also opposed to most civil rights legislation, saying naively that racial discrimination is "ancient history." Would ending the War on Drugs, aka The New Jim Crow, be better for our society and specifically for blacks, Latinos, and poor people than would keeping civil rights legislation in tact? Even then, the positions taken in his name make it clear that he should not be in any sort of position of political power.
Even more recently,Whitney Tilson of DFER fame wrote something (h/t Alexander Russo) that pushed back on the idea of single-issue advocacy. I blogged about the limitations of his revelations in my last post. One of his basic points was that poor people aren't going to ally themselves with powerful people on school reform when the powerful are at the same time voting against other measures meant to help poor people such as housing, healthcare, and jobs. From Tilson (as he perceives poor people and/or people of color would respond):
Even if I put aside the jobs issue, and even if I believed that you were genuine in caring about the admittedly lousy schools in my community, I don’t like or trust you one bit because on every other issue, you are waging war against me and my people. If you really gave a tinker’s damn about my community, you’d see that the issues go far beyond the schools: job training, unemployment benefits, healthcare, social services, immigration, voting rights, etc. On EVERY one of these issues, everything you stand for is contrary to the interests of me and my people.As I said in my post, I think this is an astute observation. You're not going to get poor or working class people to go along with education reform if you're killing them on every other issue they care about. I would push Tilson's analysis a step further. I don't agree with many of the specific education reforms that he and those Removits wrote about do, but even if I did, I have no confidence that meaningful education reform can happen if those empowered to legislate those reforms are at the same time generally anti- certain groups of people, anti-science, and anti-intellectual.
Rick Scott, for example, wanted to drug test the urine of those who need some help from public assistance. We want to reform your schools but let us invade your privacy and question your integrity first. Or how about by supporting politicians who want to cut off health care for women, particularly for poor women? We want you to get a better education and go to college, but first we're gonna make sure your mom has no access to family planning or cancer prevention services. Also, what about being beholden to foundations funded by corporations who treat their employees and the communities they live in so ruthlessly? The wealth of the Walton family, for example, comes in part due to their ruthlessly efficient management and employee practices. We want to help your children with better education but first let us exploit you and help to sustain the awful conditions of poverty you live in. But when we look for philanthropy, we can't trust you, we'll give the money we made exploiting you to other rich people who say they want to help you. Finally, what about gay people? How can education be improved for everyone when some education reform-minded politicians don't accept gay people? We support better education and schools for all kids, but if you're a gay or transgender kid, you're an abomination. Will school will get better for the gay kids in that elected official's district? I don't think so.
How is education improved by supporting politicians who say climate change science is a hoax? Can positive science education reform come from people who think we should "teach the controversy," i.e. teach creationism side-by-side with evolution? What kind of social studies education are we going to get from decision makers who want to make up their own facts and de-emphasize teaching the influence of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson because he's not Christian enough for them? Some reformers think that Rick Perry's (the man who held a Christian-centric, fundamentalist prayer rally as a way to solve political problems) anti-intellectual ideas for higher education are "visionary."
When reformers see fit to hand over the reigns of a sacred, public, democratic institution to people who hate the government, how is that supposed to work out? How can these education "reformers" imagine that anti-intellectuals can have anything of substance to offer to the intellectual pursuit of education? Is getting your questionable education reforms passed really worth empowering people who don't value knowledge-based education, public or otherwise? At some point, being anti-science and anti-intellectual means you're anti-education. If you have disdain for the creation of knowledge, or for knowledge itself even, you can't really be trusted to oversee the reform of one of our society's principal mechanisms for generating and transferring knowledge.
The problem with a single-issue approach to education reform is that students don't lead single-issue lives. Democrats and neo-liberals who support decision-makers who would use their power to crush the Democratic party (through a war on unions of all stripes), who hate gay people, who deny climate change science, who support the disastrous Wars on Drugs and Terror, who don't even have the support of the saner members of their own party, who sell their states off to the highest bidders are acting irresponsibly and short-sightedly.
Do we really want to employ a pyromaniac to fix our fireplaces if it means giving him the opportunity soon thereafter to burn down our homes? When I do the calculus, I don't see children or students, public or knowledge-rich and meaningful education winning. I see homo-phobic, poverty-criminalizing, anti-intellectual, knowledge-agnostib, right-wing ideology winning and I have yet to understand why any self-described liberal or education reformer would support that.
Just Because They're Poor Doesn't Make Them Saps
On Alexander Russo's This Week in Education blog, I read a really interesting e-mail written by Whitney Tilson who is a founder or president or something or other of DFER. You should read it and then read the comments.
The two main points he makes can be encapsulated in the following quotes:
But nor can we be oblivious to the negative impact on our kids when they lack the minimal resources needed to prepare them to come to school.Yes! Glad to see this. And I agree with Tilson that no one should wait for poverty to be fixed before endeavoring to improve education.
Then,
You are exactly on target with the issue of poverty. We cannot have people vote against all of the things poor families need – jobs, housing for low and moderate income families, health care, food programs, etc. – but then say, "But I support vouchers or charter schools." To help the students who need the help the most we need both things: parent choice and programs aimed at getting people out of poverty.
I don't necessarily agree that choice and vouchers are the right reforms, but I think Tilson's analysis of ambivalence and distrust about certain political allegiances in light of rigth-wing platforms and politics beyond education is right on. I've thought the same thing myself.
There are, however, a few things that seem to be totally absent from Tilson's revelations:
1) What Robert Pondiscio said in the comments: education and education reform should be presented as a way to improve communities and not as a way to get away from them.*
2) The very real possibility that at least some of the reforms themselves are not palatable and not what at least some of the people in the communities Tilson talks about engaging want.
It's as if Tilson saying that poor people and people of color only reject the current reforms because they're top-down, brought by rich white people, and will cost them jobs. This reminds me some of what I took such issue with Richard Whitmire several months ago for saying about education reform in DC.
First of all, yes, people want change, but if people like Tilson come in and don't listen to what community leaders say is needed in particular to reform schools (and not just to help bring housing, jobs, and healthcare) and do something entirely different. This line of Tilson's is very telling:
Many in our movement have figured this out and are taking important steps to, for example, engage poor/minority parents, bypassing conflicted and sometimes corrupt community “leaders”, but much more needs to be done.There's an assumption that "conflicted" community leaders must automatically be by-passed, that conflictedness, in other words skepticism, is not to be heeded.
Furthermore, what about the substance of the reforms (or lack of substance)? Is Tilson assuming that poor people and people of color don't know what good education is? What if at least some of them do know or have opinions about what good education is and don't have confidence that the policies that DFER et al promote have brought or will bring it? Have Tilson et al ever considered that at least some of their ideas might be bad ones? Don't they think it's time they did? Perhaps the unpopularity of Tilson's product is not just due to how the product is being sold and to who's doing the selling. Perhaps people aren't buying what Tilson et al are selling because they're selling a junky product. Perhaps people know better.
*UPDATE: I want to push back a little against what Robert says here in his comment:
Toward that end, it might help if reformers positioned their work as a way to improve the intellectual capital and economic prospects of the neighborhoods they served.If reformers' "work" includes promoting (or as is often the case, forcing) knowledge-free content such as the likes of Balanced Literacy, Everyday Math, and little to no teaching of any other subject, I'm not confident much "intellectual capital" will be brought back to any neighborhood.
In which I nitpick on the subject of the opportunity/ achievement gap, charters, and Rhee's legacy in DC
With the release of the NAEP TUDA stats, there's been a lot of conversation swirling around achievement gaps and the efficacy of neo-liberal education reforms in urban districts. In particular, there's been some talk about how to judge Michelle Rhee's legacy, especially in light of the fact that that DC has the largest achievement gap between black and white students and one of the highest between poor and non-poor of all the cities featured in the report. Education journalists such as Alexander Russo weighed in here and Dana Goldstein offered some mostly solid analysis here.
Some folks are saying that Rhee's policies caused the gap. I don't agree with this. While Rhee's policies are no good, let's be honest: there were large educational opportunity and achievement gaps ways before Rhee came to town. Furthermore, DC has always had relatively large income inequality (but, yes, paralleling the national trend, it's gotten worse). The main industries in DC (government, lobbying, non-profits, etc) are such that the demographics in DC are unique. While there are service industry workers there are almost no blue collar workers. The middle and upper-middle class population in DC is not typical--its members are largely much more highly educated and well-traveled. I could go on--this is a very complex topic, an entire book could be written about it. But Rhee didn't cause this. She may symbolize it (the 1% making policy for the 99%, etc), but her policies didn't cause it.
One thing, though, that's been claimed by many, and implied by both Alexander Russo and Dana Goldstein is that Rhee deserves "credit" for the fact that charter school enrollment went up in the years she was there. Giving her "credit" for this makes no sense. Charter schools in DC are run completely separately from DCPS. She talked a lot about choice and charter schools but she didn't actually do anything for the charter schools while she was there. There's a lot more to the relationship between the two or the lack thereof, especially given the complex genesis and history of charter schools in DC, than has been covered.
Furthermore, I don't see how that makes Rhee et al look good if charter school enrollment went up. Did DCPS enrollment go up? Did it go up uniformly throughout the city and not just in the neighborhoods where test scores tend to be higher, where principals are left alone, and where the schools got renovated? If yes, give her credit for that. But saying that she deserves credit for charter school enrollment going up is like saying that the CEO of Coke deserves credit for more people purchasing Pepsi (and hence drinking more cola in general) because they're dis-satisfied with Coke. If the competition model (which I don't subscribe to, by the way) is supposed to make systems and schools compete for students than how can it be said that Rhee was successful on her and her similarly-minded reformers' own terms if she drove families away from DCPS and into charters. If that's the measure, then as head of DCPS, Rhee failed. She competed for and lost students.
Some might then counter, well, who cares if DCPS lost students under Rhee as long as options or "choice" expanded? As long as public schools overall, including traditional and charters, gained students? Well, okay, but then why should someone like Rhee, who is ambivalent about the existence of public, democratic institutions such as traditional public schools, be running them? How is getting someone who doesn't care in particular about neighborhood schools to run them going to help them improve?
Also, for the record, Rhee did not "streamline" the bureaucracy as Goldstein suggests in her post. As I discussed here and here, the bureaucracy actually got bigger and costlier under Rhee and Henderson. But I guess that's part of the Common Wisdom about Very Serious People that Very Serious Education Pundits are too busy and underpaid to shake themselves of. Or perhaps it's part of some misguided attempt to "balance" coverage. If the information is not accurate, if the coverage is based on assumptions rather than on facts and evidence, however, then that's not "balance," it's misinformation.
Yes, Michelle Rhee did lots wrong and surely she did some things right. But education reform skeptics, fans, and journalists alike should find out what those things actually are first and then examine them in light of the NAEP scores and other data and outcomes. Sheesh.
Some folks are saying that Rhee's policies caused the gap. I don't agree with this. While Rhee's policies are no good, let's be honest: there were large educational opportunity and achievement gaps ways before Rhee came to town. Furthermore, DC has always had relatively large income inequality (but, yes, paralleling the national trend, it's gotten worse). The main industries in DC (government, lobbying, non-profits, etc) are such that the demographics in DC are unique. While there are service industry workers there are almost no blue collar workers. The middle and upper-middle class population in DC is not typical--its members are largely much more highly educated and well-traveled. I could go on--this is a very complex topic, an entire book could be written about it. But Rhee didn't cause this. She may symbolize it (the 1% making policy for the 99%, etc), but her policies didn't cause it.
One thing, though, that's been claimed by many, and implied by both Alexander Russo and Dana Goldstein is that Rhee deserves "credit" for the fact that charter school enrollment went up in the years she was there. Giving her "credit" for this makes no sense. Charter schools in DC are run completely separately from DCPS. She talked a lot about choice and charter schools but she didn't actually do anything for the charter schools while she was there. There's a lot more to the relationship between the two or the lack thereof, especially given the complex genesis and history of charter schools in DC, than has been covered.
Furthermore, I don't see how that makes Rhee et al look good if charter school enrollment went up. Did DCPS enrollment go up? Did it go up uniformly throughout the city and not just in the neighborhoods where test scores tend to be higher, where principals are left alone, and where the schools got renovated? If yes, give her credit for that. But saying that she deserves credit for charter school enrollment going up is like saying that the CEO of Coke deserves credit for more people purchasing Pepsi (and hence drinking more cola in general) because they're dis-satisfied with Coke. If the competition model (which I don't subscribe to, by the way) is supposed to make systems and schools compete for students than how can it be said that Rhee was successful on her and her similarly-minded reformers' own terms if she drove families away from DCPS and into charters. If that's the measure, then as head of DCPS, Rhee failed. She competed for and lost students.
Some might then counter, well, who cares if DCPS lost students under Rhee as long as options or "choice" expanded? As long as public schools overall, including traditional and charters, gained students? Well, okay, but then why should someone like Rhee, who is ambivalent about the existence of public, democratic institutions such as traditional public schools, be running them? How is getting someone who doesn't care in particular about neighborhood schools to run them going to help them improve?
Also, for the record, Rhee did not "streamline" the bureaucracy as Goldstein suggests in her post. As I discussed here and here, the bureaucracy actually got bigger and costlier under Rhee and Henderson. But I guess that's part of the Common Wisdom about Very Serious People that Very Serious Education Pundits are too busy and underpaid to shake themselves of. Or perhaps it's part of some misguided attempt to "balance" coverage. If the information is not accurate, if the coverage is based on assumptions rather than on facts and evidence, however, then that's not "balance," it's misinformation.
Yes, Michelle Rhee did lots wrong and surely she did some things right. But education reform skeptics, fans, and journalists alike should find out what those things actually are first and then examine them in light of the NAEP scores and other data and outcomes. Sheesh.
Labels:
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The Importance of Being Honest (in ed reform conversations)
I have a few follow-ups to offer and a few loose ends to tie up. Fortunately, for the sake of coherent (well, maybe) blogging, they all tie together.
1) As a follow-up to my recent post on parent engagement, parent accountability, and charter schools, I wanted to add that I think one way to solve the problem of charter schools keeping students out because their parents won't fulfill requirements of the school would be if charter schools worked under the umbrella of the district where they were located. What if we took the concept of "competition" between schools out and replaced it with "collaboration" among schools? If the charters and the traditional schools worked together to find the place school placement for kids? Either working with families or in the case of parents-in-absentia, teachers, counselors, and principals could recommend certain students to certain charter schools or there could be "education placement" counselors assigned to students who don't have parent advocates.
Of course, this would pose a bit of a funding problem but not if there was more sharing of resources (though not co-locations--as has been demonstrated in New York City, those are a bad idea). We would also have to minimize top-down mandates and bureaucratic red tape for ALL schools. Accountability schemes that are degrading to traditional/neighborhood schools are going to be just as degrading to charter schools that are evaluated by the same standards.
Another potential problem is that (initially, at least) the very reason for charter schools in DC, for example, is that DCPS was so terribly run--educators, social service providers, and parents wanted to free themselves of the DCPS administration. I was a bit put off recently when I read one tweeter arguing to another that, "Schools and teachers don't make kids drop out." While I believe we have much more a problem of systems rather than of individuals, and it's not always the case, poor schools and teachers do in some cases drive kids and families out. Some kids do have bad experiences in some schools and with some certain teachers and in certain systems. There was a real need for change and reform in some of those systems, let's not kid ourselves. Now, DCPS continues to be terribly run (only now its employees have Ivy League degrees and wear J.Crew, so people assume otherwise) but it's also more top-down than ever and ideological, to boot. I can't see those charter school people who are dedicated to rich and appropriate education wanting anything to do with that, either.
2) Which leads me to this. The DC Public Charter School Board recently employed a new ratings system to rate their schools, the idea being that the lowest-performing schools would be closed based on those ratings. Okay, so accountability for charter schools via a sort-of jury of their peers is a good thing. The problem as I see it is what they're being rated on. From The Examiner article:
3) Which leads me to this. The city-by-city report of NAEP scores is out and guess what: DC has the largest achievement gap between black and white students than any other urban center in the report. Michael Casserly said this to explain the gap:
I have great sympathy for that and he's right on about the demographic differences between say Cleveland and DC. I appreciate this nuanced and informed explanation. How refreshing! But isn't this what some ed reform skeptics have been saying all along and haven't they oft been shouted down by cries of, "Poverty is not destiny!" "Poverty is not an excuse!" Casserly represents many school reformer superintendents (such as Chancellor Henderson of DCPS). Is this an admittance that income inequality and poverty can make not an insignificant impact on standardized test scores and academic achievement?
4) Which leads me to this. In response to DC parent Natalie Hopkinson's School Choice op-ed, Fordham Institute's Michael Petrilli chalks up the dearth of choice in DC to gentrification; there used to be a lot more spots for out-of-boundary students in high-performing schools west of the park but now those are being occupied by more affluent (and often white) kids who live in boundary. He is not wrong about this. But he leaves two important things out:
A) There was and is preferential treatment for Ward 3 schools. The facilities funding has been greater for Ward 3 schools as has been the responsiveness to Ward 3 communities. One of my sources tells me it's hard to get folks from DCPS central administration to even attend meetings in schools east of the Park.
B) It's very hard to replicate for all kids in DC what charter schools in DC do when: i) By law, charter schools must be city-wide and can not give preference to neighborhood kids and ii) Some charter schools don't serve kids, for example, with special needs or don't serve kids, for example, whose parents don't sign contracts or agreements of commitment. And private schools that accept vouchers can't be forced to accept (and retain) students for the same reasons. It's not reasonable to expect that expanding charters and vouchers will help neighborhood kids when those schools don't necessarily have to (or mean to) serve neighborhood kids.
Of course, many systems were in need of reform. Of course not every school can serve the needs of all kids. A conversation about the values of charter schools and choice is one worth having. What are the pros and cons of different policies? Of different systemic models? How have they worked in in the past? In other districts? In other countries? What will do the most kids the greatest good? What are the implications of such policies on our democracy?
But there can be no conversation about these things if the participants aren't being honest about all of the factors, including mistakes and shortcomings. I'm all for not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. But dishonesty, inaccuracy, and hypocrisy are the enemies of them both.
*UPDATE I: Reading tweets from @teacherken and @samchaltain of Pasi Sahlberg's talk at the Finnish Embassy in DC last night, I was reminded that "responsibility" is a much better term than "accountability" in this context as in, we should "Prioritize collective responsibility not individual accountability."
1) As a follow-up to my recent post on parent engagement, parent accountability, and charter schools, I wanted to add that I think one way to solve the problem of charter schools keeping students out because their parents won't fulfill requirements of the school would be if charter schools worked under the umbrella of the district where they were located. What if we took the concept of "competition" between schools out and replaced it with "collaboration" among schools? If the charters and the traditional schools worked together to find the place school placement for kids? Either working with families or in the case of parents-in-absentia, teachers, counselors, and principals could recommend certain students to certain charter schools or there could be "education placement" counselors assigned to students who don't have parent advocates.
Of course, this would pose a bit of a funding problem but not if there was more sharing of resources (though not co-locations--as has been demonstrated in New York City, those are a bad idea). We would also have to minimize top-down mandates and bureaucratic red tape for ALL schools. Accountability schemes that are degrading to traditional/neighborhood schools are going to be just as degrading to charter schools that are evaluated by the same standards.
Another potential problem is that (initially, at least) the very reason for charter schools in DC, for example, is that DCPS was so terribly run--educators, social service providers, and parents wanted to free themselves of the DCPS administration. I was a bit put off recently when I read one tweeter arguing to another that, "Schools and teachers don't make kids drop out." While I believe we have much more a problem of systems rather than of individuals, and it's not always the case, poor schools and teachers do in some cases drive kids and families out. Some kids do have bad experiences in some schools and with some certain teachers and in certain systems. There was a real need for change and reform in some of those systems, let's not kid ourselves. Now, DCPS continues to be terribly run (only now its employees have Ivy League degrees and wear J.Crew, so people assume otherwise) but it's also more top-down than ever and ideological, to boot. I can't see those charter school people who are dedicated to rich and appropriate education wanting anything to do with that, either.
2) Which leads me to this. The DC Public Charter School Board recently employed a new ratings system to rate their schools, the idea being that the lowest-performing schools would be closed based on those ratings. Okay, so accountability for charter schools via a sort-of jury of their peers is a good thing. The problem as I see it is what they're being rated on. From The Examiner article:
Schools are ranked based on factors such as performance on state exams, attendance, re-enrollment rates, and attention to critical grades. In the elementary and middle schools, a school's year-to-year improvement accounts for the lion's share of the rating at 40 percent.There is no consideration of curriculum, pedagogy, or instruction, or of what is actually being taught or what is actually happening in classrooms. People tell me this rating system is better and more comprehensive than what DCPS uses, but if it doesn't evaluate schools on the quality of education being offered, I don't see how it's valuable. Our schools will be what we hold them accountable for.*
3) Which leads me to this. The city-by-city report of NAEP scores is out and guess what: DC has the largest achievement gap between black and white students than any other urban center in the report. Michael Casserly said this to explain the gap:
The District’s racial gap is really an income divide, said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents the largest urban school systems.“You’ve got relatively more well-to-do whites in Upper Northwest quadrants, particularly Ward 3, which score higher than white students nationally and you’re comparing it with poor, African American students largely in Wards 7 and 8,” Casserly said. “There are extreme income disparities.”
I have great sympathy for that and he's right on about the demographic differences between say Cleveland and DC. I appreciate this nuanced and informed explanation. How refreshing! But isn't this what some ed reform skeptics have been saying all along and haven't they oft been shouted down by cries of, "Poverty is not destiny!" "Poverty is not an excuse!" Casserly represents many school reformer superintendents (such as Chancellor Henderson of DCPS). Is this an admittance that income inequality and poverty can make not an insignificant impact on standardized test scores and academic achievement?
4) Which leads me to this. In response to DC parent Natalie Hopkinson's School Choice op-ed, Fordham Institute's Michael Petrilli chalks up the dearth of choice in DC to gentrification; there used to be a lot more spots for out-of-boundary students in high-performing schools west of the park but now those are being occupied by more affluent (and often white) kids who live in boundary. He is not wrong about this. But he leaves two important things out:
A) There was and is preferential treatment for Ward 3 schools. The facilities funding has been greater for Ward 3 schools as has been the responsiveness to Ward 3 communities. One of my sources tells me it's hard to get folks from DCPS central administration to even attend meetings in schools east of the Park.
B) It's very hard to replicate for all kids in DC what charter schools in DC do when: i) By law, charter schools must be city-wide and can not give preference to neighborhood kids and ii) Some charter schools don't serve kids, for example, with special needs or don't serve kids, for example, whose parents don't sign contracts or agreements of commitment. And private schools that accept vouchers can't be forced to accept (and retain) students for the same reasons. It's not reasonable to expect that expanding charters and vouchers will help neighborhood kids when those schools don't necessarily have to (or mean to) serve neighborhood kids.
Of course, many systems were in need of reform. Of course not every school can serve the needs of all kids. A conversation about the values of charter schools and choice is one worth having. What are the pros and cons of different policies? Of different systemic models? How have they worked in in the past? In other districts? In other countries? What will do the most kids the greatest good? What are the implications of such policies on our democracy?
But there can be no conversation about these things if the participants aren't being honest about all of the factors, including mistakes and shortcomings. I'm all for not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. But dishonesty, inaccuracy, and hypocrisy are the enemies of them both.
*UPDATE I: Reading tweets from @teacherken and @samchaltain of Pasi Sahlberg's talk at the Finnish Embassy in DC last night, I was reminded that "responsibility" is a much better term than "accountability" in this context as in, we should "Prioritize collective responsibility not individual accountability."
School "Reform" in DC: Is the Problem Choice or What Compels Families to Choose?
After reading the New York times op-ed on school choice in DC, I asked some folks close to what's happening in education there for their thoughts. Mary Levy sent me what is written below and (with her permission), I decided to use it as a guest post. Mary Levy has analyzed DC Public Schoolstaffing, budget and expenditures, and monitored the progress of educationreform for thirty years. She is a majorsource for fiscal, statistical and general information on DCPS for the media,government officials and non-profit, business and civic groups. She directedthe Public Education Reform Project at the Washington Lawyers' Committee forCivil Rights & Urban Affairs for 19 years, during which she played a majorrole in developing the District of Columbia’s school funding systems, wrotenumerous reports on DCPS, and participated in every major reform planninginitiative. Previously, in private practice with Rauh,Lichtman, Levy & Turner, she did civil litigation in civil rights, laborlaw, and school finance, including major litigations in New York and Maryland.
I share Natalie Hopkinson’s frustration, as expressed in an op-ed in today's New York Times and have for a long time. Unfortunately, some of her facts are wrong (Has the New York Times now dispensed with fact checkers?) Furthermore, the larger problem in the District isn't choice per se, but why families feel compelled to exercise choice.
To address some of the inaccuracies, what Congress has done is little compared to the work of DC's own elected officials. In 1995 Congress produced only the charter law and there was nothing about an option to transfer. The DC Council at the same time separately enacted a parallel law. Congress never did a choice policy for DC. Vouchers, which came later, were in fact, much to the chagrin of some of us, endorsed by our elected officials, including the Mayor, the Council Chair, and the President of the Board of Education. As for performance on tests, charter schools in DC on average have test scores somewhat higher than DCPS schools, though not by a lot. As to the closure of schools whose students struggle the most, the schools that then Chancellor Rhee closed on the whole actually had higher test scores than the schools to which their students were later sent; they were also more likely to have made Adequate Yearly Progress. And a reminder: Rhee was not appointed by Congress but by the popularly elected Mayor Fenty.
The argument about choice has been going on at least since I become involved in DCPS in the mid-1970s and probably before that. Many school activists from east of Rock Creek Park argued passionately against out-of-boundary placements, even when they were (allegedly) based on need. The assumption is that if the government forces people to stay in neighborhood schools, the parents will stay and make the schools be good. The result here has not been so felicitous--those with the means, or the moxie to get outside help, move to the suburbs or pay for low-cost independent or parochial schools. In fact, part of charter growth is from those schools, rather than from DCPS. I have watched over thirty years while determined parents tried to make their neighborhood schools better--and were mostly rebuffed or ignored. Even west of the Park, where my children attended DC Public Schools, we spent the majority of our efforts trying to neutralize the damage done by the DCPS administration. Still, we were more successful than those east of the Park.
With the appointment of Michelle Rhee and the end of any avenue for meaningful parent involvement or influence, the situation is even worse. The schools west of the Park and some in gentrified Capitol Hill are favored, and DCPS administration is more authoritarian and unresponsive than ever to the rest. It is also elitist, and more uninformed, more unstable, more arbitrary, and less competent than before the mayoral takeover--a distinctly dubious achievement, since the situation was pretty bad before. That’s why so many people--both families and good staff--leave.
Now our elected officials and their appointees are threatening to close more neighborhood schools and bring in outside charter operators. Currently, charter schools in DC are city-wide by law and may not give preference to neighborhood children. Many current DC charter schools are local products, started by DCPS parents, teachers, principals, and social service providers who couldn’t take any more of DCPS. They’re going to be under threat too--because of the latest “reform” panacea, closing schools in order to bring in new operators and their programs with no little or no evidence of effectiveness, and new teachers and principals, many poorly prepared and foreign to communities here. I see the advent of charter school chains as trading a remote DCPS bureaucracy for a remote private bureaucracy located elsewhere in the country.
In the old days there was a lot more out-of-boundary space in the schools west of the Park; in addition, though few people realized it, there was a lot of out-of-boundary placement within neighborhoods and wards. Now, due to demographic change and favorable treatment, there is not much out-of-boundary space in schools west of the Park, so we could get a test of the parents-can-make-their-neighborhood-schools-good proposition east of the Park. But only if the schools stay open and only if the parents stay.
It's the substance & the stress (not the salary), stupid.
As some of you know, I am starting to look for, ahem, a job, including positions that would put me back in the classroom. The position of "unpaid writer" isn't exactly putting food on the table and I'm starting to feel antsy writing so much about education without actually doing much about education. Reading over and updating my teaching resume, I am reminded of former students, colleagues, schools, and yes, curriculum. I am reminded of how much I enjoy teaching, for teaching itself but also for the content I got to ponder. I graduated at the top of my class in high school and went to an elite college. I'm "the type" many education reformers talk of attracting to teaching and, initially, attracted I was, but given what teaching has become in many cases, I am somewhat reluctant to go back.
The first reason is the working conditions. While I agree teachers are underpaid and I appreciate Secretary Duncan's strident acknowledgement of this, I would do the work at the current salaries if the working conditions made the job more manageable: if I knew classes would be reasonably and appropriately sized; if I were given adequate time for planning, development, collaboration, and frankly, bathroom breaks; and if I knew the school where I might work would be fully staffed with content teachers, a librarian, a nurse, a social worker, enough administrators, etc. If I knew I could do an adequate job in a 40-hour week (obviously, it would be more some weeks and a bit less during others and yes, the work would always be on my mind), I might never have taken the break I did in the first place. I can't work the punishing hours because I have my own children to raise. And I'm in favor to the idea of changing compensation systems to reflect the different roles and demands of different teaching jobs. If there are teachers out there who have the space in their life and desire to take on more work and responsibilities than I can, I think they should be paid more. I would be happy to take on a lesser teaching position for less money than a harder working colleague if it meant I could be in the classroom again and still be the parent I want to be. Unfortunately, it became clear to me that I had to choose.
Second of all, I was attracted to teaching because it's intellectual, interesting, stimulating, creative, and socially useful. Well, at least it should be. As Diana Senechal put it in this comment:
As Nancy Flanagan put it in her typically thoughtful way,
As teacher James Boutin describes here (and again here), at some point in my teaching career, I began to feel like a bureaucrat:
So thanks, Arne Duncan, for saying teachers should be paid more and thanks for your attempts at debunking flawed research that states otherwise. For a next step, consider advocating against acceptance of the "new normal" that translates to terrible working conditions for teachers and principals and terrible learning conditions for students. And then consider how you're going to attract more serious college and graduate school students to the profession if the work you're asking them to do lacks substance and insults their intelligence and, eventually, expertise. Finally, consider that if the most educated among us don't want to do to the work because it's bankrupt of creativity, intellectual exercise, meaning, and substance, then the education our students are going to be getting will hardly be rich, meaningful, and relevant. Think about how many of our best and brightest would rather get paid poverty wages working as adjunct professors and journalists than teach in the classrooms your and your predecessors' policies are molding.
Perhaps this isn't the best post to put out there as I apply for teaching jobs, but then again, I'm not going to lie or pretend. I'm going to do my best to be a team player and to be open to the advantages of a more quantitatively- or data-based approach to teaching. But I'm not going to give up my principles or knowingly engage in educational malpractice. Frankly, I'd rather scrub floors.
The first reason is the working conditions. While I agree teachers are underpaid and I appreciate Secretary Duncan's strident acknowledgement of this, I would do the work at the current salaries if the working conditions made the job more manageable: if I knew classes would be reasonably and appropriately sized; if I were given adequate time for planning, development, collaboration, and frankly, bathroom breaks; and if I knew the school where I might work would be fully staffed with content teachers, a librarian, a nurse, a social worker, enough administrators, etc. If I knew I could do an adequate job in a 40-hour week (obviously, it would be more some weeks and a bit less during others and yes, the work would always be on my mind), I might never have taken the break I did in the first place. I can't work the punishing hours because I have my own children to raise. And I'm in favor to the idea of changing compensation systems to reflect the different roles and demands of different teaching jobs. If there are teachers out there who have the space in their life and desire to take on more work and responsibilities than I can, I think they should be paid more. I would be happy to take on a lesser teaching position for less money than a harder working colleague if it meant I could be in the classroom again and still be the parent I want to be. Unfortunately, it became clear to me that I had to choose.
Second of all, I was attracted to teaching because it's intellectual, interesting, stimulating, creative, and socially useful. Well, at least it should be. As Diana Senechal put it in this comment:
The McKinsey researchers examined teacher recruitment and retention in Singapore, Finland, and South Korea. They found many factors that make teaching an attractive profession in those countries: salary, job security, autonomy and trust, cultural respect, and more. Given their own findings, it’s odd that they or anyone would conclude that financial incentives should reign supreme. And there were things they should have investigated but didn’t–for instance, the intellectual and spiritual appeal of the profession.
Look at the talented people in professions where the pay is decent but not stellar–the arts, humanities, teaching, scholarship, nonprofits, journalism, and more. What brings people to these professions? Not incompetence, but interest. The work has substance.
Yes, the work has substance. Or it did. Or it should. Of course teaching is going to have some busy work--all jobs do. Sometimes I even look forward to the busy work as it gives me a break from the harder tasks of thinking, evaluating, planning. Of course, there are going to be some tasks I enjoy more than others. Reading up on the Bubonic Plague, planning how my students will learn about it for a world history class, and then assessing what the students have learned counts as enjoyable. Figuring out how to teach the standardized reading test to my world history students and doing a technocratic version of reading tea leaves, i.e., charting who got the "main idea" and "context clues" questions wrong on said standardized tests is not. And when the job starts to become mostly useless, fruitless busy work and mostly teaching vapid curriculum, that's when I'd rather work as a self-employed, unpaid writer and blogger or work at something less demanding that would still save time and energy for writing.But when the substance is driven out, when the work turns into busywork, people turn to professions that offer the combination of qualities that they seek.
As Nancy Flanagan put it in her typically thoughtful way,
Good teaching is not about classroom rules, cute videos, raising test scores, cool field experiences or unions. It's about relationships, mastery, analysis, persistence, diagnosis and continuous reflection. It's complex, layered intellectual work. And it happens in hundreds of thousands of "regular" classrooms, every day.Yes, it's complex, layered, challenging, and intellectual work with so many decisions to make at almost every turn. This is primarily why I want to do it. Okay, so the pay isn't great, but when you take away the substance of it, I no longer even enjoy the work and I don't want to do it. I'd rather do something mindless (wait tables, bar tend, or be someone's personal assistant) where I won't have to go against my principles.
As teacher James Boutin describes here (and again here), at some point in my teaching career, I began to feel like a bureaucrat:
During a visit I made to a private school in Denver last November, one of the teachers there confided in me that he moved out of public education because he didn't want to be a bureaucrat. The comment struck me. I'd never thought of myself as a bureaucrat before, but he's right - I am.Yes, there's certainly more room for me to be more data-informed and consider the values of a technocratic approach. But if that's what I wanted to do, I'd go be a bureaucrat or a technocrat. If I wanted to teach test prep, I'd go work for Kaplan. That's not what I see as the primary role of a classroom teacher. As James further demonstrates in this must-read series, the data-driven dimension of teaching has gotten out of hand and has become a huge waste of time and resnurces for educators and students alike. Moreover, as I was engaged in it and was forced to make ill-advised curricular choices, I realized that such tasks weren't helping my students learn or improving my teaching, but were fueling political point-scoring and sustaining the education reform industry.
So thanks, Arne Duncan, for saying teachers should be paid more and thanks for your attempts at debunking flawed research that states otherwise. For a next step, consider advocating against acceptance of the "new normal" that translates to terrible working conditions for teachers and principals and terrible learning conditions for students. And then consider how you're going to attract more serious college and graduate school students to the profession if the work you're asking them to do lacks substance and insults their intelligence and, eventually, expertise. Finally, consider that if the most educated among us don't want to do to the work because it's bankrupt of creativity, intellectual exercise, meaning, and substance, then the education our students are going to be getting will hardly be rich, meaningful, and relevant. Think about how many of our best and brightest would rather get paid poverty wages working as adjunct professors and journalists than teach in the classrooms your and your predecessors' policies are molding.
Perhaps this isn't the best post to put out there as I apply for teaching jobs, but then again, I'm not going to lie or pretend. I'm going to do my best to be a team player and to be open to the advantages of a more quantitatively- or data-based approach to teaching. But I'm not going to give up my principles or knowingly engage in educational malpractice. Frankly, I'd rather scrub floors.
Education Films Series V: American Teacher
There are two ways to look at American Teacher, the recently released documentary by Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari:
1) If you don't know much about public education and school reform, then American Teacher is a well-made film which very poignantly and realistically portrays what it is to live the life of a teacher. Everyone agrees that teachers are under-paid and undervalued (well, almost everyone). After seeing this film, the public will be more aware of this.
2) If you are steeped in public education and school reform, then American Teacher is a well-made film which very poignantly and realistically portrays what it is to live the life of a teacher. Everyone agrees that teachers are under-paid and undervalued. However, it will drive you nuts that the film skips over the wild disagreements between various educators, education scholars, and education reformers on how to increase compensation for America's teachers. The film features the ideas of Linda Darling-Hammmond, Eric Hanushek, and Jason Kamras (of DCPS) as if they were all on the same page and as if the research on merit pay, VAM, and economic predictor models were uncontroversial in education reform debates.
While I still hope lots of people see it, I think it would have been better if the film makers had let the vignettes speak for themselves, alone, if they trusted the viewers to come away with their own thoughts about and reactions to education policy. The narratives and stories were so compelling and so complex, it was a shame to have them mixed in with such a confusing and shallow presentation of policy ideas.
If I am not making a clear case for what the film's flaws were, Dana Goldstein absolutely does in her review.
One personal upside to my watching American Teacher, poorly done aspects and all: Being so steeped in education and education reform topics, I was reminded to be much more skeptical of simplistic accounts from other policy topics of interest but about which I know considerably less than I do about education, even if it's coming from people and organizations I respect.
1) If you don't know much about public education and school reform, then American Teacher is a well-made film which very poignantly and realistically portrays what it is to live the life of a teacher. Everyone agrees that teachers are under-paid and undervalued (well, almost everyone). After seeing this film, the public will be more aware of this.
2) If you are steeped in public education and school reform, then American Teacher is a well-made film which very poignantly and realistically portrays what it is to live the life of a teacher. Everyone agrees that teachers are under-paid and undervalued. However, it will drive you nuts that the film skips over the wild disagreements between various educators, education scholars, and education reformers on how to increase compensation for America's teachers. The film features the ideas of Linda Darling-Hammmond, Eric Hanushek, and Jason Kamras (of DCPS) as if they were all on the same page and as if the research on merit pay, VAM, and economic predictor models were uncontroversial in education reform debates.
While I still hope lots of people see it, I think it would have been better if the film makers had let the vignettes speak for themselves, alone, if they trusted the viewers to come away with their own thoughts about and reactions to education policy. The narratives and stories were so compelling and so complex, it was a shame to have them mixed in with such a confusing and shallow presentation of policy ideas.
If I am not making a clear case for what the film's flaws were, Dana Goldstein absolutely does in her review.
One personal upside to my watching American Teacher, poorly done aspects and all: Being so steeped in education and education reform topics, I was reminded to be much more skeptical of simplistic accounts from other policy topics of interest but about which I know considerably less than I do about education, even if it's coming from people and organizations I respect.
Will Flat NAEP Reading Scores Mean More Flat Reading Instruction?
At first I was annoyed with Matthew Di Carlo of the Shanker Blog for criticizing people for things they hadn't yet said. Speaking of the NAEP, he predicted, "People on all 'sides' will interpret the results favorably no matter how they turn out." But, he was right.
The results in my state of Virginia, were reported in The Richmond Times-Dispatch as follows:
Yes, my children spend more time on math than on other subjects, but that doesn't bother me nearly as much. Now, I don't know much about teaching math but from what I can tell from the elementary math curriculum used in the Virginia county where my kids attend school and from what I can tell from the work they bring home, yes, they are learning different strategies to solve math problems, but they are also learning math facts.
There is such a thing as math strategies. There is such a thing as mastering the mechanics of reading, which is essentially decoding and there is such a thing as reading strategies, but they aren't nearly as useful or applicable as math strategies and needn't be taught nearly to the extent that they are. There is such a thing as math facts. But there is no such thing as reading facts; there's just facts, background knowledge, and vocabulary, the more of which one knows, the better of a reader that one will be.
On a series of posts on Eduwonk between Eric Hanushek and Diane Ravitch about Hanushek's tiresome silver bullet solution of firing the bottom 5-10% of teachers based on standardized test scores (yes, teachers who don't do their jobs or who do them poorly should be removed, but I have no confidence that Hanushek's handwaving gimmickry will achieve that), superb edu-thinker Diana Senechal commented that:
While Jeff Bryant did well to point out that NAEP shouldn't be looked at as a report card per se and "Nation At Risk" co-author James Harvey highlighted some short comings of NAEP as an assessment, I still fear the influence of these NAEP results over instruction and curriculum decisions. I worry that with NAEP reading scores being "flat," that educators and reformers will take an even more draconian and ill-informed approach, and call for beefing up reading standards and spending even more time on teaching reading and even less on everything else. For example, in a recent essay in Education Week unrelated to the NAEP release of NAEP results, Eric Witherspoon, superintendent of District 202 in Evanston, Illinois, called for just that:
Matthew Di Carlo's prediction was right on. Let's hope for the education of our children that mine isn't.
The results in my state of Virginia, were reported in The Richmond Times-Dispatch as follows:
Virginia's fourth- and eighth-graders perform better in reading and mathematics than their peers nationwide, but less than two-fifths have a solid grasp of reading and less than half have a solid grasp of math. . . . In math, 40 percent of Virginia eighth-graders achieved proficient scores in 2011, up from 36 percent in 2009, according to the report. Forty-six percent of fourth-graders performed at the proficient level, compared to 43 percent in 2009.According to VA DOE spokesman Charles Pyle, in short, Virginia students did relatively well nationally, but there's much room for improvement, especially in reading:
A lack of significant improvement in Virginia's eighth-grade NAEP reading scores over the last couple testing cycles as well as on state achievement tests has informed state efforts to pursue more rigorous standards in the subject, Department of Education spokesman Charles Pyle said. The new reading standards will take effect in 2012-13.Oh dear. "More rigorous standards in reading"? Aren't they already "rigorous" enough? Let me enter the fray and tell you why I think reading scores are unimpressive in Virginia and flat nationally: Because in the (albeit, well-intentioned) mania to make American kids better readers, we're spending overwhelming amounts of time teaching reading as a subject, as a skill, at the expense of teaching knowledge of other subjects such as science, social studies, foreign language, art, music, PE, theater, etc.
Yes, my children spend more time on math than on other subjects, but that doesn't bother me nearly as much. Now, I don't know much about teaching math but from what I can tell from the elementary math curriculum used in the Virginia county where my kids attend school and from what I can tell from the work they bring home, yes, they are learning different strategies to solve math problems, but they are also learning math facts.
There is such a thing as math strategies. There is such a thing as mastering the mechanics of reading, which is essentially decoding and there is such a thing as reading strategies, but they aren't nearly as useful or applicable as math strategies and needn't be taught nearly to the extent that they are. There is such a thing as math facts. But there is no such thing as reading facts; there's just facts, background knowledge, and vocabulary, the more of which one knows, the better of a reader that one will be.
On a series of posts on Eduwonk between Eric Hanushek and Diane Ravitch about Hanushek's tiresome silver bullet solution of firing the bottom 5-10% of teachers based on standardized test scores (yes, teachers who don't do their jobs or who do them poorly should be removed, but I have no confidence that Hanushek's handwaving gimmickry will achieve that), superb edu-thinker Diana Senechal commented that:
We talk so much about achievement but do not adequately address the question “achievement of what?” This explains, in part, why “literacy” scores are much more stubborn and difficult to raise than math scores. There is no such subject as literacy, and we are spinning our wheels trying to teach it. There is literature, grammar, rhetoric, composition. Teach those things, and you will see some gains. (Math curricula are far from perfect in this country–but at least, in comparison with literacy curricula, they have some sort of substance and sequence.)Exactly. Beyond teaching decoding and some limited reading strategies, if we want our children to be stronger readers, we need to teach them content (which yes, includes language arts as just outlined by Diana).
While Jeff Bryant did well to point out that NAEP shouldn't be looked at as a report card per se and "Nation At Risk" co-author James Harvey highlighted some short comings of NAEP as an assessment, I still fear the influence of these NAEP results over instruction and curriculum decisions. I worry that with NAEP reading scores being "flat," that educators and reformers will take an even more draconian and ill-informed approach, and call for beefing up reading standards and spending even more time on teaching reading and even less on everything else. For example, in a recent essay in Education Week unrelated to the NAEP release of NAEP results, Eric Witherspoon, superintendent of District 202 in Evanston, Illinois, called for just that:
Reading is the gateway to all learning. Literacy must be addressed in every classroom, every day—reading strategies must be an integral part of history class and math class and of physical and technical education. At ETHS, teachers receive training to help them implement literacy-learning strategies in everything from history and math to physical education.Certainly, all public school teachers in America should be prepared to work with and help struggling readers, but do we really need kids in PE, math, and history to learn reading strategies? What will that serve other than teaching our kids to know less about PE, math, and history (and every other subject) than they already do. Yes, reading is a tool to learn content--indeed, it's a "gateway to learning"--but learning content is the gateway to becoming a stronger reader and more educated in general.
Matthew Di Carlo's prediction was right on. Let's hope for the education of our children that mine isn't.
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